So we all remember that clas sin college that was a joke, but we needed to fill a requirement or just fill the needed hours. For me that class was a 1 credit class in Asthetics, that was very frew-frew. Well there is a new class that tops all of that, it is a class in how to use proper abbrevied SMS. If you do not know what I am talking about, here is an example.

If U do not know WOT I am talking about, here is an example. I WAN2 get together 2NITE 4 dinner.WOT time would U like 2 meet? WOT do U WAN2 do after dinner?

The idea behind text like this is that if you can read it, it becomes something that is easier and faster to type on the keypad of a cell phone. “Lasting for two hours and costing a mere £3, Strathclyde University’s Lifelong Learning Centre is already oversubscribed for the classes, which begin on 1 September. ” - That is a quote from this site which brought up this article. Where do I sign up?

-Matt

Now this whole USB Powered craze is just getting too insane, I found an article about a USB Powered shaver. I guess when you are sitting at your computer and decide that you need to trim that beard.

I think that I need to get a few more USB ports on my machine so that I can utilize all these new toys… Read more about this toy here

-Matt

For my birthday, Cindy let me buy a new computer for extending our sage sever into the living room, thus creating a media extender. I have been very happy with the computer, but I have not been as happy with the keyboard. The description of the Belkin Media Pilot keyboard sounded very interesting and exactly like what I could want. Here is the belkin website about the keyboard.

Basically, the keyboard is suppose to be able to control the keyboard as well as all my other AV equipment. This is great for a Media extender, since I still have a lot of other equipment in my setup, but least of all my TV and Receiver. First of all, let me talk about using this device for controlling the computer, in that respect I have been fairly happy with it. After some initial problems of not realizing that the keyboard was in AV mode, I have got it working with my computer and things seem to be going great. I use it to do just about everything on that computer without any problems. The mouse is a little slow to move, even when I turn up the speed in Windows…

Now to the AV side… First of all, I have had a lot of problems finding the correct codes to use for my equipment. I have mostly JVC equipment, but the only device that I could get working easily was the JVC VCR. All the other equipment, I needed to edit the file that contains all the remote codes and add in ones to the JVC section that would work with my equipment. So I did get most of the equiment working, but I am still not sure if and how I can control other features of my equipment, outside of basical chanel and volume control. The documentation is very sparse. Switching from Computer to AV mode on the keyboard does not seem to be right on my keyboard. It might just be that I got a bad keyboard, but it jsut does not feel like the switch falls into place when trying to control the AV equipment. After that, the actual remote functions just do not seem to respond very well. Like I can sit there pressing the Volume up button, but it takes a while for the receiver to get the signal and turn the volume up.

I love the concept behind this device, I just do not think that Belkin pulled it off as well as they could have. Now I am stuck with a wireless keyboard that I paid too much for, I could have gotten just a wireless keyboard for less, but I was hoping for the AV control. I guess I will have to keep waiting and seeing…

-Matt

The British government is going ahead with testing of an RFID enabled license plate. Not only is it enable, but it is using active RFID tags, which means that the information is transmitted up to 300 feet away. How long before a cop can say:

well the RFID signal from this car was received at mile marker 100 35 minutes ago, meaning that your average speed was 70 mph, so here is your ticket for speeding. (or some other scenario like that)

I am all in favor of trying to make the country a safer place, but this just seems like there are too many bad uses for technology than good uses. There is talk about how the US government has already begun using this in limited places to help track foreign cargo shipments.

So if you want to read more, you can read this blog here, or read the Wired News article here.

-Matt

I recently got an e-mail from the Chief Operating Officer of Orb Networks (probably a form e-mail) talking about a new feature that they have just released. It is an API to allow developers to create was for ORB to stream other information other than just the Videos, music, and pictures that is currently supported.
Matthew

Thank you for writing about Orb in the past on your blog. Thought I’d follow up with you and tell you about the latest exciting thing in Orb — we have published a programming extension to Orb to allow developers to build their own add-ons…

http://www.orb.com/api

The idea is to allow developers to leverage the transcoding, transmission, and presentation frameworks inside the Orb server to give user’s access to any applications or content that is on (or accessible from) the home machine!

So what does all this mean? I am not really sure yet, I am still working through the documentation. The first thing that comes to mind is a way to view RAW files. I shoot with my Nikon D100 in RAW mode, which produces non-standard images. Through this API, I might be able to find a way to view my RAW files located on my server at home…

So that is one way, but I am sirtting here trying to think what else would be good to implement in this interface. Looking at the ORB forums, there is a simple add-on that allows the creating of to-do lists. The important part is that this demonstrates using Orb in a two way communication method. Up till now, it has been a one way passing of data to the client, but if a client can pass things back, that would be great… Here is that forum discussion.

I am going to start thinking about this more and more, and see what makes sense to use in this interface…

-Matt