Archives For Media

Digital Media Bytes: Last100 Edition

Dave Zatz —  January 11, 2009 — 3 Comments

A periodic roundup of relevant news… from our friends at Last100:

Have we just witnessed the second coming of Palm?
The company unveiled its brand new Palm operating system (dubbed the webOS) running on a new smartphone called the “Palm Pre” that features a 3.1-inch multi-touch screen and slide out portrait keyboard. It’s of course early days until we see the first reviews of the Pre and I get to personally play with the new Palm OS and device but from what I’ve seen, I’m very, very excited.

ASUS Eee ‘media center’ Keyboard, Eye-Fi does video, and Negear Internet TV
Although the expo floor of the Consumer Electronics Show doesn’t open until tomorrow, there’s already been a flurry of press conferences and sneak previews fueling the tech press and blogosphere. Here are a few products that have caught my eye.

Internet TV partners: Intel and Adobe, Roku and Amazon, Netflix and LG
A number of industry players announced partnerships relating to getting Internet content onto the TV – a theme that will, once again, be prevalent at CES.

Hackintosh Netbook: Goodbye XP, hello OSX
Although it’s been possible to run OSX on the MSI Wind (or in this case the Advent 4211, a Wind clone) for many months now, it previously involved swapping out the WiFi card for a compatible one. That is until RealTek released an unofficial driver for OSX last month. So how does it run?

In Media, Mobile, Software, Video
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Browse Your Friends’ Phones?

Mari Silbey —  January 10, 2009 — 2 Comments

Over at the Qualcomm booth today was a strange little application called Mikz from a company called Conveneer. Just launched on select Qualcomm phones, Mikz gives your cell phone a URL so that other people can browse the media on your handset.

I know. First reaction: Huh? But here’s why it’s cool. You can set permissions for the people you want to have access and for types of media you want them to see or hear. For example, with Mikz I could have all of my CES pics on my phone instantly available online for anyone I want to see them. And while it’s not ready yet, the VP I spoke to said video support is on its way.

Mikz also has a Facebook widget (I foresee pic-publishing disasters at college parties everywhere) and can show your location on a map. The company says more phones with the app are on their way. I’ll update this post if we manage to get a listing of currently supported phones, carriers, and regions.

In Media, Mobile
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DISH DTVPal DVR and Verismo VuNow Shipping

Dave Zatz —  December 24, 2008 — 1 Comment

Folks who pre-ordered the DISH Network DTVPal DRV or Verismo VuNo may be receiving some pretty exclusive holiday cheer this week.

The DTVPal DVR ($250) is dual-tuning high definition DVR designed to record digital signals solely via antenna (OTA, ATSC), without requiring an ongoing TiVo-esque service fee. While interest in this product has been extremely high, early reports are a bit mixed. High quality visuals, though two reports of “pulsating” anomalies and timers (recordings, too?) seem to be scheduled via time slot, rather than content title. Guide data quality is dependent on the thoroughness and technology utilized by local broadcasters. However, this is a live platform and at least two initial customers have reported receiving firmware updates when connecting their unit over Ethernet.

The compact VuNow media streamer comes in two flavors, a standard definition “PoD” ($99) and an HD variant ($149). In addition to the requisite YouTube access, VuNow also aggregates a variety of other web video sites into a searchable interface. Through the addition of your own USB or network storage, local video, music, and graphics can also be enjoyed. Unlike that other diminutive $99 box, WiFi is not built-in – although wireless capabilities can be added via a fifteen dollar USB dongle.

I’m in touch with both DISH Netowrk and Verismo… and looking forward to getting my hands on a pair of review units. Speaking of devices I’m anxious to test drive, the Western Digital Media Player (~$120) seems to handle just about any sort of video thrown at it – with the caveats of no network connectivity and you must BYOD (Bring Your Own Drive). It’s on my wish list, too.

In HDTV, Media, Video
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Drobo Recovers from Drive Crash as Promised

Dale Dietrich —  December 23, 2008 — Leave a comment

Data files on each of my web server, laptops, primary computer and iMac are regularly and automatically backed up to my networked Drobo. I also use the Drobo as a primary repository for 100’s of Gigabytes of centralized data – accessible from any device on my home office network, including my Apple TV, TiVo, PS3 and Xbox 360.

As of three days ago, I had two 500 Gigabyte drives and 1 Terabyte drive installed in the Drobo. Two days ago a flashing red light appeared beside one of the 500 Gig drives. This meant that the drive had failed. I purchased a 1 Terabyte Western Digital replacement drive for $114 at infonec.

True to data robotics claims, I was able to hot swap out the defective 500 Gigabyte drive and slide in the new Terabyte drive without incident. It took about 15 seconds to do. Subsequently, it took about six hours for Drobo to reconstitute data redundancy – ie: to format the new drive and redistribute my data across the newly constituted drive array such that data would once again not be lost if any drive failed.

Read the rest of this entry at The Daleisphere »

In Gadgets, Media
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Are You Backing Up?

Dave Zatz —  December 23, 2008 — 18 Comments

The holidays, and related precious photo opportunities, are upon us… so it’s time for a backup public service announcement. And, unfortunately, I have a feeling most non-geeks leave their data vulnerable to loss.

The point was driven home recently, when I recovered the mother-in-law’s PC – containing thousands of irreplaceable photos, including a trip to China and her son’s wedding. After numerous attempts, the XP machine wouldn’t boot into Windows. Which is when I was called in. I figured either the install had been corrupted or the hard drive was failing. Since the drive was still functional, the first order of business was ensuring the safety of her priceless data. I popped the SATA drive into an external dock (above, ran me about $35 at Micro Center) and offloaded her content onto my Macbook. Then I went about restoring XP (on the same drive), followed by her files. And left her with a backup DVD. However, it’s just a stop-gap… and folks need a more comprehensive archive strategy.

Ideally, data is backed up both locally (convenience) and remotely (redundancy). Apple attempts to bring simple, seamless local archiving and restoration to the masses with Time Machine. While a Time Capsule is probably the easiest implementation for novices avoiding clutter, I periodically hang a 750GB Maxtor One Touch 4 off my MacBook via USB. In the days when Windows was my primary OS, I relied on Acronis True Image for disk images and incremental backups. My main Vista install is a Boot Camp partition, and I’ve used the free Winclone to take a baseline image that I can rebuild from should the need arrive. For remote storage, I was a Mozy customer for some time… But have since moved on to SugarSync. While it’s not quite the Mozy+Mac Gallery+Dropbox über solution I was hoping for, they’re off to a good start – I’m willing to give them some time to refine and and enhance their service. (Neither of these cloud storage services would be appropriate if your ISP restricts you to a low data transfer cap.)

So, are you backing up… If so, how? If not, why? And standby for a post by Dale on his Drobo RAID-like storage usage.

In Gadgets, Media, Software
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