technology – Page 16 – Cubicgarden.com…

Chromefastic

I bought 2 chromecasts for me and my parents. The chromecast for me was to cover those couple times when I can’t get something to play on xbmc. And I won’t lie I want to hack around with it too.

For my parents its a serious gift because I know the chromebook they have is useful but they don’t really make use of the streaming media feature which I think they may actually like in the end. The idea of having to watch stuff on a small screen is never going to go down well my parents but to relive strictly again on HDMI channel 2 won’t be so bad. Even if they use it one in a while its not a bad buy.

Hopefully they will make use of it like how there finally making use of the chromebook.

So I fired mine up and was up and running in 5mins tops. The setup is simple and quick and while I was waiting for updates to download, I put the chromecast apps on my laptop, tablet and phone.

Its a elegant device and the standby screens are just as beautiful. Can’t wait to see more support but right now it feels a lot like the various xbmc browser extent ions which allow you send xbmc a URL. Of course some URLs xbmc can’t playback because their encrypted while deals have been done to make it work with the chromecast. Also up till recently xbmc remote URL throwers were somewhat buggy. Yaste solved this and much more.

Chromecast has cross over appeal and may be too cheap not to just have plugged into a HDMI input?

To answer the question I had, ages ago. Yes the Chromecast works in the uk without any modifications. It also worked on my Linux PC running chrome and my rooted tablet running CyanogenMod.

So threes nothing stopping you getting one or more… 🙂

Phones On Planes Are Inevitable In A Connected World

Stowe Boyd makes a good point about the phones on a plane debate which has broken out.

Flying on an airplane is not some weekend escape at a spa where we place hot rocks on our chakras and seek enlightenment. It’s just another mode of transit.

Yes, air travel has gone downhill, like most things in the postnormal. And yes, airlines will exploit this opportunity to gouge another pound of flesh from the meat that waddles on and off their planes. That’s the way things work.

But to hold to some quaint, antiquated notion of peace and quiet in the air is laughable. Airplanes are loud in the first place — 60-90 decibels — so anyone with any sense will bring earplugs, hearing protection earmuffs, or noise cancelling headphones. This is especially true of road warriors, who otherwise can get cumulative hearing loss.

So get over your antiquated, 1970s attitudes about phones on planes. In a connected world, people will naturally use whatever technologies they can to remain connected: their livelihoods and relationships are at stake.

Just like wifi on public transport…

I don’t really like the idea of people yammering away on phones while on public transport but we got use to it and found ways around the noise. Sometimes we put headphones on, sometimes we tell people to stfu. Frankly we will deal with it because being connected for many of us is not just a nicety, but a must. And unfortunately that does mean dealing with idiots who shout down a phone.

Replacements for dropbox?

I’m seeing some serious replacements for Dropbox hitting the market

They all seem to have there advantages and disadvantages. Anyone used one or the other?

Ultimately I’d like to use something which is peer 2 peer, encrypted, opensource and secure. It would have clients for Android, Linux and other platforms. Webdav would be nice if you can do encryption baked in.

I like what dropbox does but I can live without the central operation. I do also like the fact dropbox is being used as a storage add on, but I’m sure this can be done using standard protocols. OAuth+Public key encryption surely can solve this problem easily enough? I’m also thinking this might also allow sharing and access control properties of folders and files within reason.

Your smart TV could be spying on you?

How ironic that there is an article suggesting we should stop trying to make the TV smart.

From friends on Facebook, it seems clear LG smart TVs are spying on their owners.

I found a rather creepy corporate video advertising their data collection practices to potential advertisers. It’s quite long but a sample of their claims are as follows:

LG Smart Ad analyses users favourite programs, online behaviour, search keywords and other information to offer relevant ads to target audiences. For example, LG Smart Ad can feature sharp suits to men, or alluring cosmetics and fragrances to women.

Furthermore, LG Smart Ad offers useful and various advertising performance reports. That live broadcasting ads cannot. To accurately identify actual advertising effectiveness.

In fact, there is an option in the system settings called “Collection of watching info:” which is set ON by default. This setting requires the user to scroll down to see it and, unlike most other settings, contains no “balloon help” to describe what it does.

At this point, I decided to do some traffic analysis to see what was being sent. It turns out that viewing information appears to be being sent regardless of whether this option is set to On or Off.

I kind of thought this kind of thing was going to happen. Although LG’s response is frankly shameful. Having a always on LAN connection is just too tempting for these big companies. With my Toshiba smart TV, I had to read a long EULA before I could use the TV, I had a read of most of it and there was some parts about relaying information back to Toshiba. The TV channel viewing I don’t really care too much about because 90% of the time I’m watching XBMC not live TV. What is worrying however is sending the details of a USB or mass storage device’s details.

I made an even more disturbing find within the packet data dumps. I noticed filenames were being posted to LG’s servers and that these filenames were ones stored on my external USB hard drive. To demonstrate this, I created a mock avi file and copied it to a USB stick.

This is out of order and got to be an invasion of privacy…

With that in mind, would you trust them with cameras and microphones?

Good pointer for a couple of projects I’m working on including Perceptive Media and the mentioned here and there iot Signals project. Back to the wired piece…

Bottomline: The TV ecosystem is waiting to be created. But consumer electronics companies won’t be the ones to create it.

This will take more than hardware expertise. It will require a service that controls the consumer device. Most importantly, it will require mutually beneficial relationships and data exchange between the service provider and content providers to enable a new business model for video distribution.

I certainly agree with the first part… consumer electronics don’t get it, and this LG spying story proves this.

Cyanogenmod on the playstore, Yeah!

I knew there was a push to make installing custom rom Cyanogen easier to install but I didn’t know they had already gone this far… Thanks to Chris for bring it to my attention

Two months after raising $7 million to build a better version of Android, CyanogenModhas released a one-click installer to put its custom firmware on your Android device. Installation requires the phone to be tethered to a Windows PC via a USB cable. A companion PC app will be released later today as a free download. “Our goal for the installer has always been to allow more users to experience the benefits of CyanogenMod, without the hassles of technical guides and concerns associated with the process,”

So I look forward to Linux support real soon? And you got to love the FAQ

Do I need to root my phone before installing?
- No. You can have a rooted phone, or not. The installer doesn’t care.
Do I need to unlock my bootloader first?
- No, you don’t. If your bootloader is locked, we’ll unlock it for you.
Can I install if I’m running a custom ROM?
- Provided the installer can identify your phone correctly, it doesn’t matter which ROM you’re running.

And I was just thinking about rooting my HTC 1X to join my Samsung Galaxy Tab 7+ on Android 4.2.1. Now I don’t need to bother. Excellent news!

Quantified self heads into the mainstream

Thanks to Rosie on Twitter, for alerting me to the BBC’s Science Club programme better known as the Dara O Briain’s Science Club. I had never heard of it before and to be fair when I watch it, I thought it was going to be crappy. However it was good, almost like the BBC had taken science very seriously. And now I understand why people are comparing Dr Helen Czerski to Brian Cox.

Science Club explores how powerful, affordable technology is ushering in a new era of DIY science that everyone can get involved in. Science journalist Alok Jha is in California to see how citizen science is being used to save lives in the early detection of earthquakes.

Dr Helen Czerski goes to Brazil and discovers an ingenious innovation – in an attempt to eradicate a killer disease, mosquitoes have been modified to self-destruct. In the studio, Dara and Professor Mark Miodownik get to grips with an inflatable crash helmet, a beat box made from vegetables and capture lightning in a box. And the team delve into tech hacking to see how stripping down and re-using technology promises to change our world

The whole theme of the show was DIY science and there was plenty of it including a whole piece on the Quantified Self. The piece wasn’t the amazing but did a good job of explaining the basics, what you could do and what people are already doing. As I said it wasn’t bad at all. Well worth watching…

Then…

Jasmine today (Monday) tweets about BBC Horizon: Monitor Me.

Dr Kevin Fong explores a medical revolution that promises to help us live longer, healthier lives. Inspired by the boom in health-related apps and gadgets, it’s all about novel ways we can monitor ourselves around the clock. How we exercise, how we sleep, even how we sit.

Some doctors are now prescribing apps the way they once prescribed pills. Kevin meets the pioneers of this revolution. From the England Rugby 7s team, whose coach knows more about his players’ health than a doctor would, to the most monitored man in the world who diagnosed a life threatening disease from his own data, without going to the doctor.

The likes of these shows talking about what people are doing with the quantified self in a more public setting is certainly driving adoption in the mainstream. Hopefully the core principles will stay…

Facebook try again

I un-installed Facebook home from my HTC One X recently, and it sounds like I’m not the only one.

The European launch of the “Facebook phone” has been delayed following disappointing US sales and negative feedback. The HTC handset runs Facebook’s enhanced Home software, designed to be more integrated into the smartphone than a normal app. UK mobile operator EE confirmed that “following customer feedback” the Europe launch had been stalled.

For me Facebook home was interesting but I really don’t use Facebook enough to really make use of it. Its also a bit of a hog when it comes to resources of the phone. Once again I’d like to upgrade to Android 4.2 for daydream or maybe try one of the other more interesting launchers.

Push me a message

Pushover makes it easy to send real-time notifications to your Android and iOS devices.

I love the fact its simple and works with ifttt. Heck I can imagine some scenarios with ifttt and taskrabbit. But I’m left wondering the advantages of a private push service over using something like xmpp/jabber?

Yes its going to be somewhat cheaper than using SMS, more extensible than twitter direct message and less hassle than xmpp? But running yet another service on your phone? Isn’t this what Amazon SNS was about?

XBMC used for in hotel system

I was in Amsterdam for the Quantified Self conference (blog post coming soon) and the whole conference was in a hotel called Casa 400. It was a good conference but what was strange was the TV in my hotel room which look familiar to me.

I swear it was XBMC underneath but unfortunately the functionality they could have enabled like Samba/NFS shares, DLNA, UPnP and heck Airplay were not available. If they were it would make for an amazing in room system on top of a already technically great hotel. Couldn’t knock there wifi deployment one bit, even with 4 devices using it all day…

Upgrading the Pacemaker’s hard drive

Been doing some of the odd jobs I’ve been meaning to do.

One such task was finally buying the right SSD from Amazon and replacing the old Pacemaker hard drive.

I was looking at the pacemaker forum where someone posted how they replaced their original hard drive with a Solid State Drive (SSD). So after much time I decided to buy the Kingspec 1.8inch drive from Amazon. Its only 64gig big but to be honest with the old drive I was only using 32gig anyway.

For those thinking about doing the same theres a number of things to bear in mind… You need a ZIF 40-pin SSD/PATA Solid State Disk (MLC type). Zif is the connection and its a ribbon connection like you see on motherboards.

Everything was pretty straight forward till it came to putting in the new drive.

As the forum post wrote…

DO NOT MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE I DID AND RELEASE THE ZIF RIBBON FROM THE ACTUAL PMD MAINBOARD ITSELF! IT WILL MAKE YOUR LIFE EASIER IF YOU LEAVE IT IN PLACE AND ATTACH THE NEW HARD DRIVE TO IT!

Well somehow I started to rip the ZIF ribbon when moving the drive about and so I was forced to use the longer version which came with the SSD. That extra length is a real pain as you have to fold it without breaking it when putting the device back together.

Carefully I put the whole thing back together and as the post says, it came on and complained the device needs a firmware update. After doing that and loading all the music back on to the device from the pacemaker app I was back in action again.

To date everything has worked and the battery life is much better than with the hard drive. Things seems a little more punchy too, so menu updates, etc are a tiny bit quicker (but it was already pretty quick). Can’t wait to put in the new battery and boost that up too.

As you can see in the photo, I’m planning on replacing the battery at some point. The battery seems easier but will need some soldering as the one I got has no connector. From the forums it looks like the battery is a 3.7V 1600mAh lithium battery Polymer while the one I got from ebay is a 3.7V 1000mAh lithium Battery Rechargeable Polymer Li-Po. The hope is that my pacemaker battery which back in 2007 lasted on average about 5hours but only last 30-40mins now will jump to about 3-4hours with 1000mAh.

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