Archive for category Apple
iPhone Tethering Hack – Nothing New!
Recently my fellow iPhone owners discovered with the latest 3.0 Firmware for the iPhone, that they were now able to enable tethering with no more than a small download using their phone’s browser. Thus “sticking it to the man” and allowing their iPhone’s to now work as a modem for the laptops.
The problem? Well, there are actually two:
First – It’s a violation of AT&T’s terms of service and you MIGHT get into a little trouble for enabling it.
Second – It’s nothing new. There have been hacks around for years that would allow you to use your Blackberry as a Bluetooth Modem for free, versus paying the $60 to enable a Smart Phone tethering plan through AT&T. What IS unique about this situation is that tethering was a HIGHLY PUBLICIZED missing feature from the iPhone 3.0 firmware for AT&T customers, so it’s compromise has drawn much more attention as previous “work arounds” have.
So what’s AT&T and iPhone owners everywhere to do?
Importing movies from a Samsung NV24HD into iMovie ‘08
Posted by eric in Apple, General Software, Multimedia, iPhone on February 11th, 2009
I’ve been using my Samsung NV24HD camera for some time now to capture both standard resolution (640×480) and high definition (720p) video, but recently my wife needed to import one of those movies into iMovie to edit it down in size. To my surprise, even though Quicktime is able to play the MP4 files created by the Samsung camera, iMovie 08 is unable to properly import the videos and just locks up.
Turns out that the MP4 files made by the Samsung NV24HD camera are a of a non-standard H.264/MPEG-4 AVC format. So what’s to do?
Well, if you’re an Apple user (which I assume you are since you’re reading blog entry about iMovie 
), then you’re in luck. There’s a tool you can download called ffmpegX which allows you to convert the MP4 files to iMovie compatible MOV MPEG-4 files. In addition, ffmpegx can convert video files to a multitude of formats inlcuding iPod, iPhone and DivX formats. So even if your issue isnt EXACTLY the video files from the Samsung NV24HD camera, ffmpegx is still a great utility to use for video transcoding/covnverting in OSX 
Screen Shot of ffmpegX
The only down side I had to doing this was the time it took to convert. It took over two hours to encode a 25 minute movie at 640×480 on my 2.4ghz Macbook Pro. So if you’re planning to use this method, plan to leave your Mac plugged in for a while.
Also, I’ve yet to try newer iMovie ‘09 which also just may fix this issue. When I’m able to get my hot little hands on a copy of iLife ‘09, I’ll be sure to let everyone know if it works out!
Hope this post is able to help out my fellow Samsung and Apple users out there!
Cheers!
Pimping out my hosting provider again.. to those who need one! :)
A friend of mine called today saying he was looking for a Hosting Provider that’d let him host his setup for Microsoft SeaDragon (or DeepZoom, whichever you call it). Basically he needed to host a large amount of pictures and not have to worry about hosting disk space or monthly transfer amounts.
Of course I pointed him over to my posting provider, InMotionHosting! Why? Because their cheap $6.95/mo hosting account has UNLIMITED transfer and UNLIMITED storage! So of course it fit his needs perfectly and I think anyone would be insane not to jump at a hosting offer like this at such a cheap rate.
I mean seriously, these are the features for their ‘low end’ business account:
- Unlimited Storage Space
- Unlimited Bandwidth
- Up to 7 domains on the account
- Free Nightly Backups of all your data
- Two MYSQL Databases (which are also of unlimited size)
All for only $6.95/mo! Seriously! I know, shameless plug but it’s seriousliy rediculous what you recieve for the price.
Use the link below and check them out!
Cheers!
What I’ve been up to…
Posted by eric in Apple, General Software, Hardware, Opinion on October 26th, 2008
Not that anyone who finds my blog will actually CARE what I’m up to, but it’s my blog and I run this dog & pony show!
My projects as of late have mostly been electronic in nature. I’ve actually had three projects on the burner:
Replacement of the capacitors on my Mortal Kombat 2 arcade machine’s CRT controller
This was far more time consuming that I thought it would be. Not because it took me an actually long time to desolder and replace the capacitors on the board, but ordering the CORRECT caps and waiting for them to be delivered took the most time. I decided to use Mouser for my components and they delivered as promised. I posted pictures of my extracting the CRT controller here. From what I was able to gather with some Google-Fu and the few English markings on the board, I determined it was a Wei-Ya C829HR CRT board. Of course there aren’t any cap kits for this board (for whatever reason), so I had to order all the caps (about 30) one by one getting their voltage and capacitance from the one’s that are currently on the board. The one cap that I wasn’t able to find (easily) a replacement for was this monster bipolar 75v 4.7uf cap.
FINALLY finishing my Replica 1 computer (which I posted about starting here… over a year ago)
I know, totally lame right? I’d like to say it got put down during the move and I forgot but I literally think it was just the time of year and I was tired of freezing my ass off in the garage with only the glow of a soldering iron to keep me warm 
So I picked back up the kit and finished soldering the rest of the 50-or so IC pins and fired it up. I got a response on the video port but when I reset I get random giberish. I checked and the oscillator is clocked in at 1mhz and voltage at the test points looks OK. I’m thinking it’s probably a bad rom. I’m currently e-mailing the project creator and he’s been very helpful!
Building a Blue Box
This year I decided to be Woz for Halloween (I figured Fat Nerd is an outfit I’d be able to pull off ) and I wanted to have a sweet accessory to go with my outfit of a vintage apple shirt, name tag and rockin facial har. I decided what cooler than actually building a function blue box! I found this schematic which seems to be the defacto one that everyone since the 80’s has been using. The down side? Exar no longer makes the XR2207 voltage controlled oscillators. I tried to get samples straight from the company, but no luck. I was able to find them through some IC resellers, but they wanted $30 per chip, so F’ that noise!
Again, I activated some hardcore Google-Fu and found this slick project by a website called ProjectMF.org. He used a PIC microcontroller to generate the frequencies which is waaaaay easier and makes sense in a more modern world I used his schematics and again ordered the parts from Mouser. I was able to solder together the power supply portion and will fire up the PIC programmer later this week! Super cool!
So anyways, I haven’t been hacking away on the code or software projects lately but I find my creativitiy comes and goes through phases. I’m just in a hardware one right now, but I’m sure sooner or later I’ll fire up Visual Studio again
Cheers!
Apple Genius Playlist — It’s like Pandora for your IPod Tunes!
I finally took the time last night to setup the Genius Playlist option for my iPhone. Basically the Genius playlist option now lets Apple generate a playlist with songs in the same fashion that Pandora does for it’s Internet Radio streams.
For example, I selected the new Ben Folds song Hiroshima and it created the following playlist based on the songs that are on my iPod:
- Ben Folds – Hiroshima
- William Shatner – It Hasn’t Happened Yet
- Counting Crows – A Murder of One
- Weezer – Only In Dreams
- R.E.M. – Bad Day
- Beck – Loser
- The Offspring – Hammerhead
- Cake – The Distance
- Tom Petty – The Waiting
- Ben Folds – Give Judy My Notice
- Blues Traveler – Hook
- Steve Miller Band – Take The Money and Run
- Beck – Where It’s At
- They Might Be Giants – Particle Man
- Counting Crows – Raining in Baltimore
- Weezer – Surf Wax America
- R.E.M. – Imitation of Life
- Oasis – Hey Now!
- Green Day – Long View
- No Doubt – Spider Webs
- Disturbed – Down With the Sickness
- Ben Folds – Rock This Bitch
- Tom Petty – American Girl
- Beck – Devil’s Haircut
- William Shatner – That’s Me Trying
So as you can see, not only do I have a pretty diverse selection of music on my iPhone but the Genius Playilst generation is pretty smart! Big ups to Apple adding this because it’s 2008 and the ’shuffle’ feature is soooooo 1995
I suggest everyone give it a shot! It does take a bit of time though. My modest selection of ~600 took about ten minutes to generate the information for. I’m not sure if this had anything to do with data transfer speeds because I was using my MacBook Pro over wireless while the music resided on my NAS.
Also as an additional point I have to also say that I’m a big fan of the new Ben Folds album, Way To Normal. This is probably one of the more FUN records he’s put out since Rockin’ The Suburbs in 2001. A few choice tracks are (of course) Hiroshima and also Bitch Went Nuts.
Ben Folds - Way To Normal
Also as a little window into my life, Ben Folds – The Luckiest was our wedding song. It WAS going to be Andrew W.K. – Really In Love … but we changed it at the last minute in an effort to not take years off my in-laws life
Let’s take a dive into XCode and Objective-C!
Posted by eric in Apple, General Programming, General Software, iPhone on August 6th, 2008
So, I’m diving into the pool!
I recently purchased a MacBook Pro for the sole purpose of developing software for the Mac/iPhone platform. It’s completely unknown to me and currently the XCode IDE looks nothing if not completely confusing compared to the friently intuitive interface of Microsoft Visual Studio that I’m used to
What brought me to this point? Well, two things.
First, I’ve been wanting to dive into Objective-C for a little over a year now and started dabbling with it a while back on my old G4 Powerbook. I was impressed with the coolness of it, but being that I was developing on a G4 Powerbook, I was limited as by this time Apple had begun the mass migration to Intel based systems.
Second is that I want to develop applications for the iPhone. Not to make a mint or anything, more or less because I think I have some good ideas on programs people would use. Like how Apple provided the iTunes controller, well, hows about a WWWinamp controller for the iPhone? Perhaps one that lets you search your library locally on the iPhone without even connecting to WWWinamp?
I started down this path because there’s currently a program for sale on the iTunes App Store that lets you control your instance of WinAmp remotely… for $4.99!!! What the crap?! I was floored that the author would expect that kinda money for a program when there are PLENTY of other FREE alternatives out on the web (like WinAmp Remote, AjaxAmp or WWWinamp). I made it my mission to release a comparable program
It’s just going to take a month or so to ramp up on the new IDE and learn how to do SOAP calls and whatnot. Should be a fun adventure though! My wife begins the final semester of her Teaching Credential program in a couple weeks, so I’ll have four nights a week alone to myself to nerd out and gorge on Hot Pockets!
I have another version of WWWinamp in the works as well. This is basically some code modernization for sections that I wrote over a year ago. Updating things to use Generic Methods and whatnot. You know, fun .NET stuff
Cheers!
WWWinamp v4.2 Build 2990
Posted by eric in Apple, General Programming, General Software, Internet, WWWinamp, iPhone on March 9th, 2008
Well, after about a week of off and on work the latest version of WWWinamp is ready!
I’ve taken the “beta” tag off of it as it seems the recode of the HTTP request processing seemed to work without issue and no bugs were reported (other than the ‘paging’ issue, which really was a defect in the script parser).
Changes for this version are:
- [HTTP] Daemon will now start if a WinAmp instance is not found
- [HTTP] Able to specify max number of HTTP threads to process (Default 25)
- [Script Parser] Fixed “Paging” issue when searching through the Libary
- [Script Parser] Script Files (*.wwa) will be run from the same folder as the file requesting them
- WinAmp Handles will be updated if a new instance is detected
Be sure to use the latest config file included with this release as it has a new key value, WWWinamp.HTTP.ListeningThreads, which tells the HTTP daemon how many threads to use max. This is set to 25 by default if no key is found, but it will throw an error. So if you don’t want to use the packaged configuration file because you’ve hacked together your own, you can manually add this key with any value you’d like.
This value isn’t a huge addition but it can help maintain system stability under heavy load. This way WWWinamp won’t spin up an infinite amount of threads if there’s heavy resource contention or there’s a problem that is causing threads to hang.
Also, the other ‘fixes’ were requests made by ‘dawolf’ here in my blog so I suggest more people get involved and we can make WWWinamp better!
In addition, if you’ve made your own skin and want to share it, please feel free to contact me and I can post it here to my blog for others to use.
As for future releases, they may be a little slow in the coming month. I’m going to be diving into the iPhone SDK and Objective-C programming using XCode on my Apple. I think a remote media interface would be totally awsome if I can have a native WWWinamp application on the iPhone talk to the WWWinamp server using WCF/SOAP. It’d be way easier than using the webkit crap and I could make it have a lot more functionality (perhaps tuning in to a shoutcast stream VIA the iPhone?). Anyways, just thought I’d give you guys a little bit of information on that.
Cheers!
WWWinamp v4.2 Build 2990 – Download (56k)
WWWinamp iPhone Compatible Skin — COMING SOON!
Posted by eric in Apple, General Programming, WWWinamp, iPhone on February 1st, 2008
Ever since the Apple iPhone was released last year, I was blown away by the multimedia and browser capabilities of it. I started wondering from the get-go about the actual usefulness of a software development kit that only allowed for development of applications in a mobile browser.
It was then announced that the official iPhone SDK which runs natively on the iPhone will be released later this month. So soon you’ll have a host of local applications which will most likely include 3rd party media players. It then dawned on me, if a user could use WWWinamp from the iPhone with an interface that interacted nicely on the iPhone, then someone’s iPhone could act as a remote control from ANYWHERE allowing them access to their home media library.
Well, this is just a heads up that I’m currently working on a skin for WWWinamp that will let it work on the iPhone (better)! Soon you all will be able to control your media center or home copy of WWWinamp from anywhere using your Apple iPhone!
I’m still working on the organizing the data on the screen in a manner that makes sense and is easy to use. All the functionality that comes with the default skin will be included in the iPhone version, including cover art and all the Winamp Playlist functions.
It’s actually pretty sweet controlling Winamp from an Apple iPhone and I hope I can polish this up and put out a beta version this weekend. I’m still trying to fish up some resources on the WebKit API and the WebKit specific tags to make things integrate nicely.
Keep your browsers posted here for updates in the coming days!
MacBook Air: First Impressions With The Solid State Drive
Today while on our lunch break a couple co-workers and I ventured over to our local Apple Store here in San Diego. We had seen on a few Apple related sites that the new MacBook Air had been showing up in Apple Stores so we decided we needed to take the latest laptop from Apple for a test drive.
A little background from my point of reference. My wife is currently using a 2.2Ghz Black MacBook with 1GB RAM and my personal laptop is an ‘ancient’ 17″ Titanium PowerBook with a 1.33Ghz G4 processor and 1GB RAM. Both are currently running the latest version of Leopard (10.5.1). So these are the benchmarks I’ll use when comparing the speed of the new MacBook Air.
The model I was testing was the ‘top of the line’ 1.8Ghz model with 2GB of RAM and a 64GB solid state drive (SSD). I verified that it was in fact the 64GB SSD because the system preferences labeled the available disk space after format as 55.35GB and the serial number was that of the listed 64GB SSD model.
Our first test was to just see how fast iTunes opens as this usually takes even a couple seconds on my wife’s MacBook. Even on a machine only clocking in at 1.8Ghz, iTunes literally took only a SECOND (we timed it) to open and be ready to use. I was floored! Other applications such as iMovie or Garage Band only took a second or two to open as well.
It’s obvious that performing every day operations will be much, much faster on the new MacBook Air with the additional ($999 additional as well) solid state drive. The benefit here is the seek time for non-cached data has dropped from milliseconds to NANOSECONDS. That alone greatly increases the load time of data, regardless of actual transfer rates once the data is accessed. Operations such as saving or opening large sequential files might seem a little slower on an SSD drive compared to traditional disk drives, but honestly, I feel the benefits far outweigh the draw backs.
What excites me is now we’ll have storage devices that can finally feed our fast data hungry CPU’s information at a rate that will actually make then earn their keep Even when booting Windows XP while watching the CPU monitor, you’ll notice that it’s not the CPU that’s the limiting factor in boot time. It’s the disk I/O that’s causing things to slow down. The hard drive has to trash around all over the disk loading information and god forbid you don’t defrag regularly
For additional reading, you can check out the benchmarks posted over at MacRumors where users in their forums are posting actual MacBook Air SSD Benchmark information using such programs as Xbench.
Cheers!
Apple TV: Another Internet Asshole’s Opinion
Posted by eric in Apple, Hardware, Multimedia on January 21st, 2008
I recall walking through my local Apple retail store a while back while purchasing my wife’s Black MacBook. One of the products that caught my eye was a little white box plugged into an LCD TV. It was my first exposure to Apple TV.
I was looking through the features and was somewhat interested. It seemed like a media extender for iTunes, which was fine if that was what you were in the market for. Built in WiFi was a big plus as was the built in hard drive. It had HDMI output and was setup on an HD LCD TV, so I decided to poke around the UI looking for some video content. The Apple store had pre-loaded it with a couple TV shows, movie clips and trailers. The content looked very pixelated and low quality. I assumed it was due to the Apple store not loading any HD content onto the Apple TV but after asking the ‘Genius’ at the Apple store what was up, I was informed that there was no HD content available for Apple TV or iTunes.
Say what? Apple built a media extender with HDMI and video playback capability rated at 720p and then decided not to release any HD content for it? Are they retarded?
I then let Apple TV slip into the back of my head as another hardware endeavor destined to fail, along with WebTV and the Apple Interactive Television Box.
This brings us to last week while watching Steve Jobs’ keynote speech at MacWorld 2008. Apple has completely revamped the UI and transformed the Apple TV into a media playing, HD streaming, video renting machine! Is this a good thing? I think it depends on how you handle your media.
Over the last couple years I was a big purchaser of DVD movies. Not only as a fan of cinema but also as a collector. I don’t want to think about how much money I’ve spent on movies as I’m sure it’d be both depressing and staggering. But as I sit here and look at the monolith that is my DVD collection, I look through the titles and think how often I actually watch them. The most I’ve ever watched a title is about once or twice a year, if it’s a movie I really enjoy. Some movies, I’m ashamed to say, are still in their original shrink wrap packaging.
So while watching Mr. Jobs’ speech, I began to wonder, is electronic delivery and rental the next step in my movie watching? At first I rebuffed the idea of buying an Apple TV for $229 because it seemed silly. I mean, $229 for a device that lets me rent movies? That’s like buying a golf cart you only drive to your local Blockbuster Video. But then I started crunching the numbers in my head comparing the upgrade of my home theater to a new HD format, say, Blu-Ray vs. getting an Apple TV.
Let’s assume I’m purchasing a player and movies that I’ll watch once a year. The numbers add up like this for an average of 20 new movies per year for the first year:
Blu-Ray:
- Player: $399
- New Releases (such as Superbad, or Simpsons Movie): $28.99
- Library Release (such as Blazing Saddles): $14.99
Apple TV:
- Player: $229
- New Releases: $4.99
- Library Releases: $3.99
Now if we assume that of those twenty HD movies I’m going to watch are only 75% new releases, our numbers add up to (for the first year):
- Blu-Ray: $908.80
- Apple TV: $332.80
The cost of Apple TV for the first year of ownership is almost ONE THIRD OF THE PRICE of Blu-Ray and most likely HDDVD, which probably won’t be around much longer with the departure of Warner Brothers to the Blu-Ray camp.
The reason I’m comparing PURCHASING Blu-Ray titles vs. RENTING iTunes titles is because there isn’t a Blockbuster or other video rental store within 15 minutes of my home (as they seem to be disappearing), so in order for Blu-Ray to have the same accessibility, it’ll need to be on hand. Unfair? Perhaps, but as I said before, this is MY interpretation of the matter at hand and how it’ll hit MY pocket book
“BUT ERIC,” you say, “BLU-RAY IS 1080P AND APPLE TV ONLY SUPPORTS 720P! YOU n00b!” – Probably You
Alas, I can’t deny the truth. But then, what does science have to say about the relevance of that argument? I point you over to this very good article at Audioholics.com titled “1080p and the Acuity of Human Vision“. If you have some time I do suggest you go read the entire article, but for those not in the mood for some math and reading I’ll quote directly from the article:
“Put bluntly, from 8 feet away while watching a 50 inch plasma TV, the human eye is generally incapable of reliably distinguishing any detail finer than that shown on a true 720p display!“
I’m not an Apple fan boy, far from it. I have just as many PC’s in my house as I do Apple computers. But personally, for MY own reasons and number crunching, it seems that Apple TV is a pretty sweet deal and is in a position to give Sony a run in the upcoming format DELIVERY wars, which will be streaming vs. physical media
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