Month: February 2011

New Pacemaker firmware 16219

Pacemaker

Forgot to blog this but it seems like Tonium has pretty much disappeared from the scene but some how they uploaded a secret firmware upgrade package… If you have a Pacemaker and would like to try out the new firmware, here’s the details of how to do it. Bear in mind, this firmware is not official and was found on the pacemaker download site by chance. So its very beta, you have been warned

  1. Point you browser to this address: http://www.pacemaker.net/Default.aspx?documentID=158&
  2. once there you’ll be presented with a XML file… now Copy The sessionID… Then point you browser to this address : www.pacemaker.net/Default.aspx?documentID=159&FirmwareVersion=16219&SessionID=(SESSIONID)&DSN=00AA0xx101XXX
  3. Note Look at the address where is says (PASTE SESSIONID) cut that part and replace it with the ID you got from browsing the other page… once done you’ll can download the firmware file..
  4. Once downloaded, rename it to .ZIP… extract it…. the put the extracted file on you pacemaker in the .pacemaker directory (if you can’t find the .pacemaker directory make sure you can browse hidden files on your OS)… once done unplug the pacemaker and the update will be installedWarning: As there’s no official release, theres no manual as well…

You can also download the firmware here, if you can’t be bother doing the session ID thing.

I’ve installed it on my own and not noticed any side effects except the very small one of losing all my previous setup. After 5mins it was all back to as i remembered it.

New changes seem to be.

  • BeatLock – The beat lock has been much improved according to some people. I always use my ear so it little difference to me.
  • Snapping loops – I think the loops now snap to the beat, making it much easier to loop
  • Beat jumping – You can now skip jump beats if your timing isn’t quite right, this could be useful.

I would have liked to have seen more, but the community is getting organised so we may see some serious hacking very soon. I do wonder if they will respect the GPL by giving us all the source code.

A kindle review by a art direction student

Anna Frew is doing a masters in Art and Design and is majoring in the conflict of ebooks and books. I met her at a Manchester Social Media Cafe in January and found her very intriguing.

So after chatting for a while we got on to the topic of the kindle and ebooks. This was just after BBC Backstage ebook went live. So I had lots of tips how we did the ebooks and how I generally do most of my ebook stuff. Anyway, she wrote up some of the conversation on her blog while reviewing her new Kindle.

I also like how I can alter the line length on the screen. Reading from line to line is something I struggle with in large bodies of text. Often I find myself lost within a text so being able to narrow the text made it much easier to read longer passages. This is problem common for dyslexic people so I think the kindle has great scope as a tool for dyslexic students with long texts to read. I know I would have appreciated being able to do that with some of my readings. Also being able to have all of the texts you need in one place in light weight form will also increase its selling points for students.

The fact that you can very easily put your own work onto the Kindle is also a great plus. Something which is much more difficult with apple products. This is very useful for presenting my work for assessment. Using the hack ‘Calibre’ also has great potential. This is a programme which allows you to turn any online content into an e-book. For example a blog. This means I can put these blog entries straight onto my Kindle for assessment in an organised way, without time consuming reformatting.

Its also very interesting to see her list of positives and negatives for ebooks.

One person to watch in the future I think… (more of this to come soon)

Peer to peer live streaming the next battlefield

From Torrentfreak

So as we near the 10th anniversary of BitTorrent its inventor Bram Cohen is finalizing a new protocol, this time aimed at P2P-live streaming. Although P2P-live streaming is not something new per se, Cohen thinks that his implementation will set itself apart from competitors with both its efficiency and extremely low latency.

“Doing live properly is a hard problem, and while I could have a working thing relatively quickly, I’m doing everything the ‘right’ way,” Bram Cohen told TorrentFreak last year when he announced his plans. He further explained that the BitTorrent protocol had to be redone to make it compatible with live streams, “including ditching TCP and using congestion control algorithms different from the ones we’ve made for UTP”

In the months that followed Cohen figured out most of this complex puzzle and the technology is now mature enough to show to the public.

The demo he shows is, well…ummm… underwhelming to say the least. But to be fair if 10 years ago someone said look this is BitTorrent watching it go. You’d also be scratching your head thinking is that all?

There’s no doubt streaming is due a massive. A lot of the rights owners think they can beat P2P downloads with the experience of streaming. They might even be right.

Streaming is certainly the next battlefield. Theres already some high profile projects in this area including P2PNext, but anything remotely like Bittorrent for P2P streaming could be huge. Talking to some of the engineers at work in BBC R&D, anything which can even the field between the costs per person of traditional broadcast and ip delivery could be truly paradigm shaping.

Is this it? I don’t think so, at least not yet.

Thank you Google for the Android Market Web Store

In my frustrated posts over Okcupid and Match.com, I skipped over the whole Android Honeycomb announcement.

The main thing which strikes me as smart is the Android Market web store.

At long last Google recognises the app store model is broken and they are shattering the model by opening a web store. You can now browse the store using a browser of your choice and when you choice to buy an app, its sent to your phone or tablet. Just the way it should work. Heck you can even using links point to your favourite apps, comments, etc. Genius!

This means finally developers can link to there app and join it up with there own support forums, etc. This thankfully has to be the end of the app store model. And I for one, am thanking Google for killing the model dead!

NO MATCH: Update your okcupid profile now

Send a clear sign to OKCupid… We don’t like what you’ve done…

Add NO MATCH to your profile picture and lets tell them we’re really not happy with what you’ve done choosing to be bought by Match.com

You can download my one here and add your own picture. Mine fits perfectly with the online now sign as you can see above.

Continue reading “NO MATCH: Update your okcupid profile now“

I really want dataportability for online dating as OKcupid gets bought by Match

Tim Dobson sent me a tweet earlier this today but I only saw it recently because he usually sends dodgy and crap stuff (*smile*). Anyway the news threw me…

OkCupid Acquired by Match.com for $50 Million.

I’m shocked… and to be honest I really want to get off OKcupid pretty soon. But I really want to take my data with me. I’m already considering building some kind of scaper so I can get my data out. The only good thing is…

OkCupid co-founder and CEO Sam Yagan will stay on at the site to run operations.

Sam Yagan also recently said

We Will Not Charge Users Following Match.com Acquisition

“Our goal is that [the acquisition] will have no effect whatsoever,” Yagan told us, saying that no positions will change within the company, and that it will continue full-steam ahead as usual — sans censorship or fees.

Sounds great but is this all lip service? To be honest, as some people have already noticed. A article about paid vs free online dating has been taken it down!

Internet denizens have also pointed out that a popular OKCupid article from last year titled “Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating” has been taken down from the company’s blog.

“I chose to take that down. Match didn’t ask,” Yagan says, denying that the other site was attempting to censor OkCupid. Apparently, the story was pieced together from public information, and Yagan has learned that some of the assumptions made in it were untrue.

Also, he says, “It’s a common sense thing to do. We’re joining a bunch of new colleagues, there’s no need to have that post.”

There is the google cache of course. And no wonder it was removed… It starts this way…

Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating

Today I’d like to show why the practice of paying for dates on sites like Match.com and eHarmony is fundamentally broken, and broken in ways that most people don’t realize.

For one thing, their business model exacerbates a problem found on every dating site…

Oi! No wonder it was removed, its a scaving deconstruction of the match.com business model, oh whoops I mean our new boss.

And if that wasn’t so bad enough, this bit will have you in stitches.

Match.com’s numbers are just as grim. They’re a public company, so we can get their exact subscriber info from the shareholder report they file each quarter. Here’s what we have from Q4 20094:

And finally this flow diagram kills it dead. The owners of Match.com must have been having kittens by the point.

Remember, sites like Match and eHarmony are in business to get you to buy a monthly subscription. There’s nothing wrong with profit motive, but the particular way these sites have chosen to make money creates strange incentives for them. Let’s look at how the pay sites acquire new subscribers.

That for me is a clear sign that we’re about to be shafted. Yagan might be right that he was not told to remove the blogs but to be honest the fact he felt that he had to take it down speaks volumes! And its going to be a very bumpy ride down to the bottom, I can feel it now. And I want to get off now.

I want out! And I’m not the only one. I’ll be interested to see what kind of protest the people of okcupid put up. Might be worth starting off a specially branded avatar… Bit like whats been done on flickr before.

Google bought youtube and they laughed….

Google is buying video-sharing website YouTube for $1.65bn (£883m) in shares. So is this is a gamble or a winning investment?

Is this the best business model for an internet start-up? Have a clever idea, build a large audience while burning through lots of money, and wait to be bought by Google?

No matter how you look at it, you have to admit Google really did get a bargain with Youtube.com. Its now a corner stone of the web.

Funny enough further in the same piece…

YouTube is not MySpace

A few months ago the number of YouTube users overtook that of the web’s other great networking site, MySpace. Last year, MySpace was snapped up by old media giant Rupert Murdoch and his News Corporation for $580m. This, though, is not about who paid more for how many eyeballs. It’s about the underlying dynamics.

Thats pretty funny with the current state of Myspace