Ed's Tech Tips

I've been away from this blog for a while. It has not been for a lack of things to blog about, but a shortage of time. I am here at home on a Sunday evening with a few minutes to spare and I thought I'd attempt to post a short article.

This past summer I purchased the Eye-Fi Explore SD card for our Canon digital camera and it is a great add-on and time saver. It looks like an ordinary SD memory card, but it is anything but ordinary. The people at Eye-fi were able to squeeze in a Wifi transmitter into the memory card that is able to automatically geotag your images based on your location (as long as there is a wifi access point nearby) and upload your images to your computer and to your favorite online photo sharing web site, such as, Flickr or Picasa. Refer to the diagram below:

 

 

The device costs $129, however you can spend less for models with fewer features and upgrade at a later time. We have used the camera on overseas trips and events on campus. It has preformed as advertised. Photos were uploaded to iPhoto on my MacBook and uploaded to Flickr wirelessly. I get email notifications whenver uploads start and end. Afterward, I can go into Flick and approve the images and make them public for the world to see.  If I was confident that all of the pictures were great I could have them viewable by the public by default, but I like to be able to preview them first. 

The only problem I've had with the card is that I can no longer initialize or browse the card via Finder on my MacBook, but I can if I use Windows XP in Parallels on my MacBook. Therefore, I know it is not my hardwe, but something to do with the softwareon the Mac. It did work when I first got it, but it stopped working after an update to either the Eye-Fi or to the MacBook. 

If you take a lot of photos that you want to share with others quickly and easily, the Eye-Fi is the way to go. There are a few new cameras that offer wireless transferrs and geotagging, but most do not. The Eye-fi is a great way to add those capabilities to an exisiting camera, just make sure it supports the SD memory card, I cannot use the card in our Sony cameras which use the Memory Stick format.

Last week I received a new device, the AMOD AGL3080, that I think will really enhance our travel photo galleries. It is a GPS Photo Tracker that assist you with geotagging your pictures so that you can show exactly "where" you took a picture by recording the GPS coordinates or longitude and latitude of the location of where the picture was taken.

The device is relatively inexpensive considering what it does. It costs about $70 from Amazon. Not only is it one of the cheapest trackers, it is one of the few that is Mac compatible. It is the size of mobile pager, if you remember what those are. It takes three AAA batteries, has three LED lights on it and two buttons, a power button and a flag button.

To use it, you simply power it on, wait for the satellite icon to blink, clip it to your belt and then start taking pictures. Make sure that the clock on your camera is set correctly. You then come back to your computer and download your photos. In addition to iPhoto I like to use a free photo management application called JetPhoto. I use JetPhoto for all of the Alumnae Association photo galleries and use it to upload pictures to Fickr as well. There are versions of JetPhoto for Windows and Macs and it supports geotagging manually or with a device such as the AMOD AGL3080. After your pictures are imported into JetPhoto, you then connect the AMOD to your USB port and import the GPS file, which is a text file that contains line after line of time stamps and coordinates. No drivers are required and if you are using JetPhoto, you do not need to install any additional software.

JetPhoto synchronizes the location data with the time stamps on the pictures. You can view the photos on a map and easily tweak the locations which are for the most part accurate within a few feet or yards. You can press the flag button to flag a location where you shot a picture, but you do not have to and just let the software match the photos with the locations.

Jetphoto can export your geotagged photos to a Google map photo gallery or to KMZ or KML files which can then be imported into Google Earth. I took a walk around campus on Thursday and shot photos of various dorms, academic buildings and some buildings just off campus in South Hadley. Within minutes I had the images in a Google map photo gallery. The satellite photos are out of date. Since the images were taken, the new dorm has been constructed, the soccer fields and track have been rebuilt and the tennis courts by the lower pond no longer exist.

The purpose of buying the device is to use it during some of the Alumnae Association travel programs. In the past I have tried to get staff to manually map where photos were taken, but they could usually only generalize where they had been, whereas the AMOD will be able to pinpoint thier location down to the street corner they were standing on. By being able to map the photos, it will make them more interesting. I would anticipate that once camera manufacturers reach the practical limit of th enumber of megapixels they can squeeze into a photo sensor, they will start including GPS into their cameras, along with WiFi and Bluetooth. There are a couple examples, one from Ricoh and another from Navman, which is a combination GPS navigator and camera.

A terabyte is a 1000 gigabytes and can be yours for less than $250. That's amazing! Storage prices have come down so much in the past couple years, you really do not have an excuse to be backing up data. About a year or two ago, hard drives were about $1 per gigabyte and you needed multiple drives to reach a capacity of 1 terabyte. Now you can get a single external terabyte drive for less than 25 cents a gigabyte.

I have recently purchased a Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus and a LaCie Big Disk Extreme +. Both are external drives and support USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 connections. The LaCie also supports Firewire 800. If you are on a Mac, use Firewire. It offers you a faster sustained data transfer that is less CPU intensive than USB. 

You can daisy chain the drives together or attach a camcorder to the drive to import video. LaCie even offers a mini rack to stack multiple drives. Why would you want multiple terabyte drives? If you do a lot of video or photography, you need a lot of space. I upgraded from a 320 GB Maxtor to the 1 TB Lacie for backing up my MacBook via Time Machine and to have more room to work on video files since I only have about 12 GB of free space on my internal 160 GB drive to spare.

The LaCie drives comes pre-formatted for Macs with HFS+. The Lacie is a very solid and heavy drive. I do not think it would be very suitable for traveling. It has a auto power feature to be more energy efficient.   It makes a little more noise when it is running than the 320 GB Maxtor that it replaced, but not much more and only when it is spinning up. The Maxtor 1 TB comes formatted for Windows computers. 

However, if you have some extra money the ideal solution is the Drobo. It is a small black box that holds four SATA 3.5 inch hard drives of any size and manufacturer. It offers redundant and almost infinite storage better than RAID 5, because it does allow you to mix and match drives of different sizes. It also easily rebuilds failed or replaced drives. For example, you can start out with a 160 GB,  2 250 GB drives and a 320 GB hard drive. When the 160 GB drive gets full the Drobo will let you know and you can swap it out and replace with a larger drive. You do not need to shut down the device, disconnect it or anything else. Drobo keeps on running and serving data. No additional software or drivers are necessary. The few downsides are that it is expensive at $450 for an empty enclosure. It only supports USB 2.0 and the network interface is sold separately for another $200.

 

The plastic case on my trusty longtime Casio watch which holds the metal pin which connects to the strap broke this past weekend. My wrist felt naked without it. I do not recall how long I have had the watch. I've replaced the bands numerous times and I think I replaced the batteries once, however, now it was time to find a replacement.

I usually prefer function over flash and just wanted the basics, so I was browsing through the watches at my local Target and was drawn to the Casios. They have proven functional, durable and reasonably priced. Plus, what geek can resist a company that sells solar, calculator or television remote control wristwatches. But as I said earlier, I really just wanted the basics, but I was attracted to a watch with a large face with easy to read digits, date, day of the week, stopwatch, multiple alarms, water resistance and world time. But the big selling feature of the Waveceptor watch is its ability to automaticall set it itself:

Several times a day the watch receives the official US government time via a time calibration signal from the atomic transmitter in Ft. Collins, CO, eliminating the worry about changing your watch for Daylight Saving Time. Our atomic watches also feature a perpetual calendar, eliminating the need to adjust your watch for calendar month to month inconsistencies and Leap Year. 

So far so good, but time will be th real test. Hopefully, it will hold up as well as my previous watch. 

 

I recently purchased a new camera for the Alumnae Association. Why does the Association need another camera? Let me explain. Rochelle, the Executive Director and travel guide, recently went on a Alumnae Association sponsored trip to the Peruvian Amazon (we have photos online). She took with her our super compact Sony DSC-W30 camera. It is very small, about the size of a deck of cards and easily fits in a pocket. You can easily carry it almost anywhere. It is 6 megapixels and has a 3x optical zoom, unfortunately it was inadequate for capturing the birds and monkys in the trees along the banks of the Amazon and Rochelle was frustrated.

The other camera we have is the Sony DSC-H1 5 megapixel 12X camera and it would have easily captured close-ups of those birds and primates. Unfortunately, it is a big two-handed camera. It is not something you would want to carry around with you for very long. We use it mostly for capturing campus events, such as, Reunion. 

We needed something in between. A compact camera with a big zoom lens and fortunately there are some very good cameras to choose from. The Digital Camera Resource Page has a a great database and in depth reviews. I search their database and found some options. Digital Photography Review is another excellent site for camera reviews, I mean really detailed and in-depth reviews. Check out the reviews of the Canon at dcresource.com and dpreview.com.

I discovered that I could get a 10x camera in a compact body, but I would have to sacrifice the viewfinder and depend on the LCD screen which is what most people use anyway when they use a digital camera to frame a photo. I narrowed my selections down to the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3 and the Canon SX100 IS. I also liked the Canon S5 IS, but it very similar to the Sony DSC-H1 in size and bulk.

I decided on the Canon for the following reasons:

• Canons are very popular and have a large following which translated into better support and familiarity with the camera. Many people do not know that Panasonic produces a line of cameras, despite the fact that they get great reviews.
• It uses standard AA batteries, as well as, rechargeable AA batteries which I have on hand for the Sony DSC-H1. I figured that a camera that is going overseas, it would be more practical to use standard batteries that can be bought almost anywhere if necessary.
• Image quality is a little bit better with the Canon. Digital Photography Review posted numerous side-by-side comparison images between the Canon and the Panasonic. 

Price was very comparable, as was the feature set. The camera cost $212 at Amazon. For a camera with this many features, I think that is very affordable, especially compared to what $200 bought just a few years ago. The face detection feature is pretty cool. I tested the camera on my one year old granddaughter, and the camera was able to track her face and focus the image for the most part. One year olds can move fast. The menus are easy to read and navigate. The print functions are pretty thorough. You can do a lot of editing directly on the camera itself and print directly to a compatible PictBridge printer so that a computer is not even required. 

One downside is that the flash can take a while to warm up between shots as was described in one of the reviews. But the zoom is excellent, as is the clarity of the pictures. Otherwise, I would recommend this camera for someone traveling and wants a smaller camera with some of the the features of larger models.

SingStar is a new video game from Sony for the PlayStation 2 and 3. There is even a new ceramic white SingStar version of the PlayStation 2 console that is still one of the most popular selling game consoles despite the success of the Wii and Xbox 360. 

SingStar games are distributed either as the software alone, or bundled with a pair of USB microphones - one red, one blue. The games are compatible with the EyeToy camera, allowing players to see themselves singing. 

The game is a competitive form of Karaoke where the better you sing or stay on pitch the more points you score. The microphones detect pitch using digital signal processing, which analyses the frequency of the incoming signal. The frequency is then compared to stored information to evaluate if the note is correct. Regular singing segments do not feature speech recognition, and so humming into the microphones at the correct pitch will also score points. Rap sections use a combination of speech recognition and rhythm detection.

My 17 year old niece got the Pop version for her birthday and it turned out to be a game that everyone (parents and kids ) could play together. It is much more tolerable than regular karaoke because you are listening to the original artist as well as the participants  while watching the original video, unless you have the Eyetoy accessory, in which case you can watch yourself.

The game featured songs that were familiar to both parents and teens and it may help some people be better singers. Unfortunately the tone deaf will probably continue to be tone deaf and sing off key and score poorly.I was able to beat my 8 year old nephew singing a song from the Clash which he did not know so well. He prefers Cyndi Lauper and Madonna.

Check out this video to see what the game is like: 

 

 

I just cannot afford it for her yet and that's my biggest complaint about the new slender notebook from Apple. Initially I had more complaints, such as, a battery that you cannot remove, a small hard drive, a lack of an optical drive and a shortage of external ports (there are only three: USB, headphone and video.) Many computer pundits shared my original point of view. I thought of the Air being suitable only as a secondary computer for the well off.

However, after some reflection and reading some other blogs on the subject I have since come to a different conclusion. While the MacBook Air may not be for me, a power user that dabbles in video editing, running multiple operating systems, programming, web development, running virtul machines, creating DVD's and the such. The Air is perfect for my wife.

Her main computer tasks are reading email, browsing the web, watching episodes of her favorite television shows when she misses them (Grey's Anatomy, Ugly Betty, Desperate Housewives) and sometimes working from home via the Citrex remote Windows client for her office computer. She'd rather not sit at the desk preferring the sofa or bed. So wireless is a must and a backlit keyboard and reduced weight are nice options.

She does not need a large hard drive and she would never remove the battery. While the processor is the slowest in Apple's computer line-up it is still many times faster than Intel's Pentium processor which many people are still using for basic computing tasks. 

So, while the Air has it's detractors, my answer to them is that Air was not meant for you, just the way the iPod is lacking in features (FM radio, voice recorder, support for OGG, etc.) for some while the simplicity is more appealing to many others.

As another blogger put it, the Air is like a sporty convertible coupe. It is not practical for everyone, but for some it gets them from point A to point B in style and comfort. Now, when Apple lowers the price it will become even more popular, like the Mazda Miata. I suspect that the price is due in part to the processor that Apple had Intel custom build for them. 

We have a G4 and a couple G5 PowerMac towers in use by the Quarterly and communications staff of the Alumnae Association. The Macs are still running strong. I recently upgraded them to Leopard and installed Microsoft Office 2008 without a hitch. Unfortunately , the offices are up on the third floor of Mary Woolley Hall where  they still have a 10 Mbps network. Because we are located in a College owned building and share the network with the Development offices the 10 Mbps switch or hub is beyond my control.

The cabling and switch were upgraded on the first and second floors when the offices were renovated last year. The networking department told me that they were going to upgrade the cabling and switch last summer along with the addition of some more outlets. However, that has not occurred yet. It is now February.

What was upgraded over the past year was the College's wireless network. There are now access points in every dorm and throughout the campus, except on the third floor of Mary Woolley but there is a signal that ranges between 20-40% in strength depending on where you are located.

With the wireless upgrades I thought the solution would be to install some Airport cards in the Power Macs and pull the computers off of the wired network, thinking that even with the reduced signal strength, going wireless would be faster.

 (More)

One of the coolest features of Leopard Mac OS X 10.5 is Time Machine, the automatic file backup utility. This is the perfect tool for the person who does not regulary backp their system. You just need to purchase an extra drive and then set and forget Time Machine. By default it initially performs a full backup and then backs up your changed files every hour. Usually you do not notice that it is doing anything in he background unless you have a older Mac.

At work I use a dual core MacBook with an external Firewire drive and I only really notice that a backup is occuring when I am ready to leave and disconnect the drive. At home I have a single CPU 1.8 Ghz G5 Power Mac with 1 GB of RAM. I bought an extra sata 320 GB internal drive that I configured Time Machine to use. Even with a internal SATA drive I noticed when files were being backed up. It can be a drag on the system. I can imagine it would be much more noticeable on lesser systems.

I do not use my home computer as often and really do not need it backed up every hour, but Time Machine is so streamlined (som may say "dumbed down" that there are no options to adjust when a backup occurs, at least until now.

 

 

I found the Time Machine Scheduler. A free simple utility that allows you to schedule backups between one and 12 hours. It was easy to install and set up. I scheduled it to backup evey six hours which is a lot more  often than I use to and is a lot less painful. I still get my files backed up, although not as often, but there is less of a drag on my system which I appreciate. Even with the scheduler, Time Machin eis still the easiest means of backing up your files.

Do you get tangled up in your headphone cable or pull your computer off the desk because you forgot that you are connected to it with your headphones? Some of my co-workers do and asked me about wireless headphones or headsets for use with Skype and music or streaming web audio.

Wireless headphones have until recently costs over a hundred dollars, whereas, a USB wired headset from Logitech costs $30. Mono Bluetooth headsets sold for use with cellphones might work, but they are mono and not so suitable for music.

Fortunately, Staples (which I cannot find now) was offering the Jabra BT620s Bluetooth stereo headset for $30. You can get it for $38 on Amazon. These headphones had cost over twice as much at $78 or so. Motorola sells comparable headphones for $99.

I ordered the Jabra headset and have tested it out with my MacBook. It was fairly easy to pair with the headset. It took a couple attempt, but once it was connected it worked very well. 

 (More)

 

At this year's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Taser International introduced a new line of compact consumer models available in a variety of colors including metalic pink and leopard skin print. Here is an overview from the Taser web site:

The TASER C2 is our newest product designed for personal protection. Utilizing the same technology as our proven law enforcement models, the C2 has incredible take down power.

The TASER C2 is a self-defense electronic control device. Electronic Control Devices (ECDs) use propelled wires or direct contact to conduct energy to affect the sensory and motor functions of the nervous system. The TASER C2 uses a replaceable cartridge, containing compressed nitrogen, to deploy two small probes that are attached to the TASER C2 by insulated conductive wires with a maximum length of 15 feet (4.5 meters). The TASER C2 transmits electrical pulses along the wires and into the body affecting the sensory and motor functions of the peripheral nervous system. The energy can penetrate up to two cumulative inches of clothing.

To make it easier to carry your new Taser there is a 1 GB MP3 player combo holster:

 

The leopard print model costs $380, while the solid color ones cost $350 each. The MP3 holster cost $80, while a standard holster costs $25. They are available in  matching colors. 

TASER devices are not considered firearms by the US Government. They can be legally carried (concealed or open) without permit required in 43 states. Prohibited citizen use in DC, HI, MA, MI, NJ, NY, RI, WI, certain cities and counties. CT and IL are legal with restrictions. So parents should not be buying them for their daughters while students on campus, but they might make a suitable graduation gift. I have mixed feelings about the devices. They are safer than a gun, but would it be as effective as a self defense course? Would it give a false sense of security? Is it sad that some people feel the need to contemplate having to carry such a device with them? It raises some interesting questions, but at least now you can defend yourself in high tech style.

 

Apple briefly stole the spotlight from CES (the international Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas) again this year, although not to the extent it did last year by announcing the iPhone. This time around the announcement was  about an update to the Mac Pro model which now features as standard equipment dual Intel Xeon quad core processors which adds up to 8  CPU cores.  This is a whopping  amount of power for a desktop tower computer. However, it is a large tower and you would need a large desktop. It is probably more suitable for the floor. Dual quad core processors have so far been regulated to servers for Windows PC's.

In addition to the increased CPU power you can now slide up to 4 terabytes of storage in four drive bays. There is also an option for the NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 with 1.5GB of graphics memory for an additional $2,850 - slightly more than the recommended configuration of the Mac Pro. 

This is a machine designed to do some heavy computational lifting including high definition video rendering and encoding and is overkill for most folks.  

At the same time Apple updated the Xserve with the same dual quad core cpu's which is targeted to small and medium businesses, however for the small businesses of under 10 people in a office the new Xserve would be  overkill unless your small business involves decoding DNA, video broadcasting, digital animation or similar tasks. Many small business need a server than can store office documents, connect to a printer and maybe host a web site and act as a mail server.

So, instead of the Xserve or Mac Pro I suggest you consider the Mac Mini as a possible server. You'll have to add an external firewire drive or two, but over-wise it could handle the job and you would not even need to install server version of Mac OS X which cost $499 for the 10 user license. The standard version of Mac OS X can easily handle many of your basic server needs.

The Mini consumes very little of everything: space, power and the knowledge needed to run it. Would a Mac mini be reliable enough? It does not have redundant power supplies or hardware RAID, but then again it costs much less, so much less that you could by two Mac Minis, one as a back up of the other - a Mac Mini cluster. Some web hosting companies are offering co-location services using Mac Mini's, such as, Macminicolo which would attest to it's reliability. There are instructions for setting up your Mac Mini as a web/mail server. Another blog, Nerd Vittles, boast 50 projects centered around the Mac Mini. 

Here is a nice example of Mac Mini server setup on the top shelf of a closet in a home office:

 

 

For the external firewire drives I would consider the models from Newertech which are the same dimensions as the Mac Mini and feature additional Firewire and USB ports for daisy chaining additional drives or connecting other accessories.

 

 

 

This weekend I decided to practice what I preach by buying another hard drive for my Power Mac G5 at home. It had a single 160 GB internal hard drive but no backup drive which I tell people never to do, but I was doing it myself. Trusting a single drive with all of my documents, photos and music despite the fact that it is not a matter of if your hard drive will fail but when.

The ideal setup would be a second internal hard drive that I could configure as a mirror to the first drive and then an external terabyte firewire drive that I could use for Time Machine backups and additional storage. However, I do not have the budget for a ideal setup. Instead I had about hundred dollars I wanted to spend. CompUSA had some weekend only deals on some Western Digital And Seagate USB 2.0 500 GB external hard drives for only $119 each. However, I would have preferred Firewire connections because they offer better performance. You may be asking how is that possible when USB 2.0 is rated at 480 Mbps and standard Firewire 400 is 400 Mbps? The answer is that differences in the architecture of the two interfaces have a huge impact on the sustained throughput.

• FireWire, uses a "Peer-to-Peer" architecture in which the peripherals are intelligent and can negotiate bus conflicts to determine which device can best control a data transfer 

 Read and write tests to the same IDE hard drive connected using FireWire and then Hi-Speed USB 2.0 show:
  (More)

My and daughters and I were featured in an article on GPS cell phones in the December 5th issue of the New York Times in a special edition of Circuits. There are numerous articles on a wide variety of GPS related electronics including devices for your dog, car, camera and bicycle. It's not every day that your name starts off an article in the New York Times:

ED GRAY’S two teenage daughters wanted cellphones, but the answer was a firm parental no — until Mr. Gray learned about a service that changed his mind...

I knew the article was coming out soon, but I was first made aware of it actually being in print from an alum of Mount Holyoke College, Ellie Landowne '56 who sent me an email after she saw my photo in the paper. While numerous articles had been written about the GPS phones, not many have focused on who is actually using them and the related location map services from providers like Sprint and Verizon. The reporter came across this blog and found a short article I wrote this past summer on the subject.

Amazon has just released a new product of their own called the Kindle, an ebook reader. David Pogue has a great review at the New York Times, so I won't go into great detail about here. However, I will say that I think this ebook reader has a chance. Numerous readers have come and gone in the past. At $399 it is still too much money. It is a $100 more than the Sony reader which is similar. It uses the same e-ink technology, has long battery life and fits easily in the hand. It is about the size of a DVD case.

What sets the Kindle apart is that it features free wireless connectivity and it is not WiFi. Instead, Amazon has teamed up with Sprint and is using Sprint's 3G data service that Kindle customers do NOT have to pay for. Instead it allows you to shop for books from Amazon without ever connecting to a computer.  You can be wherever you can use your cell phone and download a new book in less than a minute - in a cab, waiting in line at the bank or sitting in the doctors office. You also have free access to Wikipedia and can subscribe to daily newspapers, magazines and blogs that are automatically delivered to you. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal arrive at 3 AM ready and waiting you in the morning.

So far Amazon has 90,000 books -  over four times more than Sony has and Amazon plans on making every book they carry available for the Kindle. The Kindle store is similar to Amazon's online store. You can read a chapter of the book and read reviews from other customers. With the built in keyboard you can take notes, bookmark pages and search for books. The average price of books is $9.99 for best sellers - more than a paperback, but less than trade cover or hard cover. Finally, someone who understands that ebooks should cost less and has the weight t convince others of that fact.

As a student, this would be a great alternative to lugging around numerous books in a back pack. If you are a avid reader of newspapers and magazines, the Kindle would help keep your recycling bins from getting full.

Amazon is trying to to make it's Kindle the iPod of books and hopefully it will catch on and they will come out with cheaper models. They sold out of their initial stock. I do not know how many they had to begin with.