RSS FeedAfter talking to Kodak about the SanDisk memory card that wasn’t working with my Zx1, I returned it to SanDisk and ordered two Transcend 16GB SDHC cards instead.
Why two? I want 32GB of storage for my Zx1, one way or the other. In 720p at 30 fps it consumes about 1GB per 20 minutes of film, and as we all know... 20 minutes of raw footage results in maybe 5 minutes of usable video material. Since I will be going to a the Amphi Festival in Cologne this summer, I want to be able to shoot some decent video without having to whip out my mini note all the time to offload the raw footage.
With 32GB I can shoot about 10 hours of video before I run out of space (I would still have to swap batteries now and then, of course…). Another cool feature about the Transcend cards is that you get a free USB card reader with them, which is always nice. 
I like multimedia. I love taking pictures of places I go to, and share them with the world. Unfortunately, a picture only tells so much. Video is even cooler! My cell phone makes nice photos, but crappy movies. So I decided to look for something better, and ended up with the Kodak Zx1 portable video camera.
The camera can record video in 3 settings: VGA 640x480 pixels at 30 fps, HD 1280x720 pixels at 30 fps and “HD60” 1280x720 at 60 fps. Yes, this puppy can record HD video at 60 fps! 
It encodes the videos in Quicktime MP4 format with h.264 video and AAC audio. Aside from the video’s it can also make some semi-decent photos at a native resolution of 2048x1536 pixels.
So from now on, all “moblog” videos will be shot using the Kodak Zx1.
I’m an audiophile, I admit… and specifically I like a deep, warm and lush bass. Unfortunately, most consumer headphones (won’t drop names, but you know which brands I speak of 
) either have no bass at all, or have deep lows but absolutely no midrange bass. I found a solution for that in the Beyer DT 770 PRO, but walking on the street with a full-sized studio headphone looks kind of wonky, so I decided to look for something more compact for outdoor use.
The search led me to the V-Moda “vibe”, a pair of aluminum ear buds. I’ve been using them for about two months now, and think they deserve to be mentioned.
The sound is just amazing. The highs are crystal clear, the mids are lush and alive and the bass is just all there. So far I’ve only discovered one negative aspect about them: if your MP3 file is poorly encoded, you will notice it. The ear buds are unforgiving and relentless when it comes to poorly encoded MP3’s, but that is a good thing as well. It means the ear buds don’t add any bullshit to your signal, but just give you exactly what you’re supposed to hear.
They’re pricy (€ 85,-), but they are worth every cent of that. They deliver what they promise and look stylish while doing it. In short: 100% kickass.
A couple of days ago I saw a video on YouTube of some guy playing “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” by [url=http://www.daftpunk.com/[/url]Daft Punk[/url] on his iPhone. First thing I thought was “I want that!”. Un fortunately, the program is/was only available on the iPhone. So if I want it, I’ll have to make it myself… and that’s what I’m doing right now!
This is the first test. It’s a small ( still 1mb though.. ) application that I made in C# using Visual Studio 2008. At this point it’s just a simple form (UI layout) with some primitive sound playing code. It doesn’t support synchronous playing of sounds yet (they’re queued at the moment), but it’s a start... Stay tuned
Working for an IT retailed definitely has its benefits. Last week my boss sent an e-mail around the company informing us of this really nice deal he made with Hewlett Packard.
So what’s this really nice deal, you wonder? Well… Hewlett Packard had a Christmas discount deal for its employees, so that they could purchase a Hewlett Packard 2133 UMPC at manufacturing costs + taxes. My boss heard of that, did some professional ass kissing, and made it possible for us to buy one at a hefty discount!
The 2133 mini note comes in various configurations that range from € 269,- to € 599,- (ex taxes) depending on the features installed. The version we got, the FU344EA, has a list price of € 459,- (ex taxes), but we were able to get it for € 189,- (ex taxes). Quite the deal, I’d say! Needless to say I was one of the first people in the company to place an order.
So what did I get for that money? Let’s go over the features a little bit:
By default it comes with Windows Vista Home Basic installed. But given the specs of most mini notebooks, that doesn’t seem like a good idea to me. So first thing I did was install Windows XP on it. Most of my co-workers initially decided to leave Windows Vista on it, but all complained that the 2133 took nearly 3 minutes to boot up, and was constantly at 100% CPU usage. My Windows XP boots up in just under 30 seconds, and doesn’t suck up as much juice from the processor. After my co-workers saw that, most of them came begging at my desk to install XP on it.
By default it has 1 Gigabyte of RAM, which is provided by a single PC5300 DDR2 SDRAM module. First thing I did was replace that with a 2GB module. Some of my co-workers ordered an additional 1GB module, but found out later that it has only 1 memory socket. As always, it comes down to the simple matter of doing your homework properly by reading some reviews before making a purchase… 
It has a 1.6 GHz VIA C7-M ULV processor. According Hewlett Packard it has an 800 MHz FSB and 128 KB L2 cache, but VIA’s website claims that it is 1.5 GHz with 400 MHz FSB. Maybe Hewlett Packard made an exclusive deal with VIA, but in any case the CPU is pretty ok. This particular CPU is known for its low power consumption, but also has somewhat lower performance than the most commonly used Intel Atom processor. I’m curious why Hewlett Packard opted for this processor instead.
To accompany the CPU, the chipset features a VIA/S3 Chrome 9 video chipset, which uses up to 128 Megabyte of the main memory. It’s not the best video chipset, but it does have some basic 3D capabilities. Some 3D games run perfectly on it, others have problems. I’ve seen a video on YouTube of a guy playing some nice games on it. Of course it goes without saying that a net book is not a super game system, but playing some Quake 2 on the train ride home from work... It will do that pretty ok. I, for one, found a good use for my huge collection of Game Console Emulators
The 8.9 Inch Screen has a native resolution of 1024x600 pixels (WSVGA), but a nice feature of said VIA/S3 Chrome 9 chipset, you can also set the video resolution at 1024x768 pixels too. The chipset will scale it down by 168 pixels, so it looks a bit squished; but it’s a nice feature if you need that specific resolution (for games that only support the standard 4:3 resolutions, for example).
Above the 8.9 Inch screen is a tiny webcam that has 640x480 pixel resolution. It’s a typical notebook webcam, which has a pretty decent image quality with normal daylight, but goes very grainy with lower light conditions. My co-worker Rowan noticed that to the right side of the webcam, inside the casing is a tiny blue led that creates a blue haze in the lower right corner of his webcam. My 2133 doesn’t seem to have that problem though.
To the left and right of the webcam are 2 tiny holes (about 1mm in size) where apparently there are 2 microphones; this means it has a stereo microphone, which is quite uncommon for notebooks. Most notebooks, even the really pricy ones, have a mono microphone; but this little rascal has stereo, which definitely has some big advantages with voice chatting. If you’re slightly to the left or right of the laptop, you still get good sound, where most laptops lose volume rapidly if you’re not strait in front of the microphone.
To the left and right of the screen are the speakers. Some co-workers said that it looks ugly to have these black bars next to the screen, but it has 2 benefits. Firstly, the whole screen has a thick black frame, which gives the screen’s contrast a good boost; The colors are just better visible when there’s a black frame around a screen. And secondly, the speakers are aimed strait at you when you’re sitting in front of the mini notebook, so the sound quality is better too.
Most laptops have the speakers in the base, and deflect the sound either via the screen or via the desktop to the user. That way a lot of volume and sound quality is lost. With the 2133 the sound travels directly from the speakers to your ears, which is much better. The speakers may be tiny, but they have an incredibly full and rich sound, with remarkably high output.
The keyboard is amazing! Hewlett Packard claims that the keys are 92% of a regular desktop keyboard’s size, and they’re not lying. My parents have an Acer Aspire One, which has a “normal” net book keyboard, and I’m always hitting two keys at a time. With the 2133 I don’t have that problem at all; while the 2133 isn’t even that much bigger than the Aspire One (maybe 1cm longer and 1cm wider).
On the left side of the notebook we find the headphone and microphone/line-in plugs, a powered USB port (for external hard disks or USB CD-ROM drives, for example) and a VGA-out port. The right side of the laptop hosts an ExpressCard slot, an SD card card reader, a regular USB port (2.0 of course) , the power connector and an RJ45 network socket.
Connection wise it’s pretty well configured. It has an 802.11a/b/g wireless network card and a 1000 Mbps wired network connection. Unfortunately, the model we were able to buy has no built in Bluetooth adapter, but Kensington sells a really small USB Bluetooth receiver that fits very snuggly into the powered USB port (the port is slightly recessed), so I might pick one of those up sometime soon. My Cell phone has internet connection sharing and a 7.2 Mbps HSDPA wireless internet connection. I can use that on the 2133 for some browsing or perhaps even online gaming
Modern times ask for modern Communications. My old phone was still “ok”, but the features were not up to my demands anymore, so it was time to get an upgrade. I looked around a bit, and found the perfect replacement, which arrived today.
My new phone is a spiffy HTC Touch Pro. If you get it without a subscription, then the phone is a bit pricy (about € 600,-), but since I bought the phone via my work; the payment is done in parts. The phone is pricy, but given the features and possibilities, I’d say it has definitely been worth it. A quick run-through:
It has a 2.8” screen with full VGA resolution (640x480). Most other Windows Mobile based phones have QVGA, which is 320x240 pixels. This phone has a much higher resolution on the same screen size, so the picture is much sharper and just looks amazing.
It has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, but with separate numerical keys. This may not seem like a big feature, but on most other Windows Mobile phones (including my old one), this is not the case. On those you have to fiddle with press-and-hold keys to get numbers, which can get quite annoying if you’re typing lots of numbers in an E-mail, SMS or MMS.
It has a built in GPS receiver. It’s not the world’s greatest GPS receiver, and probably not one of the fastest; but it does it’s job quite well. I’ve installed Google Maps and TomTom Navigator 7 (with full European maps) on it, and those work just great.
It has UMTS and HDSPA capability. In other words: up to 7.2MBps mobile internet. This was my main reason for replacing my old phone. The old one had just GPRS (64Kbit), which was more than enough for just MSN, but sometimes you want to look something up quickly, and that just took forever. I bought this phone because it has UMTS support, but to my great surprise my service provider also supports HDSPA. My mobile internet is lightening fast, and the Opera 9.5 browser works really nice too.
It has a 3.2 Megapixel autofocus camera with a flash, that produces very decent pictures. My old phone had a 2 Megapixel camera, but it had no autofocus. The pictures were always a bit grainy and blurry. I used to carry around my 7.1 Megapixel photo camera 24/7 to make photos for the website, because the photo’s from my old phone weren’t cutting the cheese. With the HTC Touch Pro, the pictures are crisp, sharp and pretty decent quality. So from now on, I won’t be dragging my normal photo camera around 24/7 anymore, and most of the photos that you see in the blogs will be made using the HTC Touch Pro.
It has a tilt sensor. This has some fun uses.. you can use it in games, you can use your phone to level something out, and when your phone is ringing when you’re sitting in a meeting for example.. you can just flip the phone upside down and it will mute the ringer till you flip it back up.
It has TV-out. Cool, this means I could use the HTC Touch Pro as a mobile DivX player. I could hook it up to a beamer for presentations, and I can even use it as an S-video webcam (with some software you can already use it as an USB webcam).
It has a built in radio tuner. I probably won’t use this feature a lot, but it’s cool that it’s in there.. you never know when you might need it.
I really love my new phone, and will be using it a lot probably. It opened up a new level of possibilities for me, which I will definitely be using.
Today, one of my closest friends celebrates its 50th birthday! Happy birthday, Integrated Circuit!
Exactly 50 years ago today, on September 12th 1958, Jack Kilby from Texas Instruments demonstrated the first integrated circuit. It was a germanium based, gold wired semiconductor. Unfortunately for him, he neglected to file a patent for it, but did receive a Nobel Prize for it in 2000.
The Patent was filed by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, who founded Intel later. Gordon Moore was also the father of Moore’s Law. He predicted that the speed of computer chips would be doubled every two years.
I’ve always been a big gadget junkie. I love electronic toys (no… not that kind, you pervert), so when one of the sales guys at work had two mini laptops (ACER Aspire One and MSI Wind U100) on demo for a customer, I couldn’t help drooling a bit.
Speed: They both have the same CPU, but the ACER definitely has some more speed in it. This is most likely due to the fact that the ACER runs a trimmed down Linux distribution, and the MSI runs a fully fledged Windows XP.
Sound: Both are quite soft, but that’s no surprise. After all you can’t stuff big speakers into a small laptop. But overall, I think the MSI has slightly better sound.
Webcam: The ACER wins here, without doubt. The webcam on the MSI was too bright for my taste, which resulted in an off-colored image. I looked more like a zombie than a human being, and as far as I know that’s not the case (…yet).
Screen: The MSI has approximately 1 inch more screen surface, but has the same resolution as the ACER (1024 x 600). The MSI has a matte non-glare screen, where the ACER does have a glossy screen. The MSI has a much brighter screen, as you can see on the photo, but still the ACER wins as far as I’m concerned. The screen is less bright, but due to the glossy coating and the smaller size, it just looks sharper somehow.
“zOMG how cute!”-Factor: Without doubt, the ACER wins here simply due to the fact that it’s also available in baby pink; and that’s indisputable.
Extra features: The ACER has a built-in 3G modem, which means you can get a mobile internet subscription and stuff the simcard right into the laptop. No USB plugs, no Bluetooth receivers... you just stuff the card into the laptop and you got high speed mobile internet just about anywhere.
All in all, I liked the ACER more than the MSI, due to its features and finish. I’m not too sure I like the Linux distribution too much. For most users it does its work perfectly… but I’m not a normal user, I’m a geek. So I want somewhat more functinality. Fortunately, the ACER also comes in a version with 1GB memory and a 120GB hard disk with Windows XP on it. I’m very curious about that one.
Aside from my trip to France, I was planning to go to more places; but due to the shitty weather, I decided to spend the money on something else. My computer was 5 years old, and even though it still worked fine, I badly needed a better computer.
When I ordered the computer they told me it would arrive Thursday, but since I would be in France that Thursday, I asked them to send it over the next Tuesday. Today my new machine arrived: an Acer Aspire M3640.
4GB memory
640GB Western Digital hard disk
Nvidia Geforce 8600 GS with 512MB memory.
It’s not the latest hardware, but compared to my old machine it’s a very good upgrade. I also ordered a 4GB USB2 memory stick, which I use with Readyboost to make the system even smoother.
Intel recently released a toolkit for Apple developers to make full use of the Dual Core processors that are being used in the new iMac and MacBook Pro. The final retail versions of the tools will be available in April or May, and will probably cost a fortune. In the meanwhile, Intel has launched a developer program where free Beta versions of the Math Kernel Libraries, Integrated Performance Primitives, a Fortran Compiler (Holy crap, they still use Fortran nowadays? ) and a C++ Compiler can be downloaded.
To support migrating developers, Intel launched a special online service. They’re sure making a lot of work out of it.