Perth Metro Project for Google Earth

I've been inspired by some of the hacks in my last article (as well as the ease of programming Google Earth) to make a layer, or as close to one as I can come, with the Perth, Australia public transport system in it. So far I've done most of the train stations, their connections and some 11 bus routes. Maybe a community mapping project (map the areas you know or use) would be a way to get useful map data into Google Earth, much like the very successful www.tvguide.org.au does for television schedules. Comments anyone? I'll post a link to my Earth file later on. Watch this space.

Google Earth Mac leaked beta

By now you're probably all aware of the Google Earth beta for Mac OS X that has been leaked. This is the best news ever! I've been playing with it for the last couple of days, clearly there's a lot of work to go, but the good news is that it works well now.
A couple of tips, the Help, Email and Plus features aren't there, and fullscreen doesn't work for me. However, anything you can't do directly you can write in KML using XCode. To get the format, follow the APIs link on code.google.com
There's heaps out there that you can add to the maps - I can recommend searching the lists on www.googleearthhacks.com
The satellite imagery and terrain models are really good, even in Australia, though we don't get roads (UBD, please sell, Google, please buy!) So all of the search features are superfluous. Worth the download, though be careful and test it on a non-critical Mac first.

Back door to a Mac MythTV frontend

This is how I now watch TV on my Mac: Apple DVD Player. This application has the unfair advantage in MPEG2 decoding. However the combination of Tiger allowing reading of VIDEO_TS folders and Myth's improved MPEG2 transcode means DVD Player and hence acceleration is possible. The job queue allows me to have the DVD folders prepared within minutes and my laptop now makes an okay frontend. Comment if you want to know more and I'll post some files.

Y! On 3

3 have added Yahoo! Messenger to it's growing list of services. This one looks good. It is delivered as a Java application which on my phone means I should be able to stay online permanently. $5 per month for this one.
Also recently added is TransportInfo for bus and train timetables. It's not perfect and the interface is a little inefficient, but it's the most useful $2 per month service on Planet 3.

Xbox 360: Australia March 2 2006

XB360INFO.com has an article suggesting that March 2 2006 will be Australia's 'green circle' day. Yay. Prices are also quoted, $50 more than I predicted here, but as I feared, the exchange rate hasn't been our friend recently, and Microsoft will be hedging I guess.

The fairly early launch is very pleasant, considering I was reading an article on IGN recently where Microsoft couldn't commit to any quarter (!) of 2006.

Sony Music CDs infect Macs, too!

(via digg and macintouch) I was very concerned about the nastiness being employed in the music world thanks to Sony BMG kicking off the rootkit wars, but was confident I was immune, thanks to almost exclusively using Macs.
Well the good times are over friends, Macs are no longer immune -- however the SHIFT key still looks to be your friend on Windows (to stop AutoPlay) and it appears you still had to run an Installer on the Mac side too (owing to not having AutoPlay).
This really stops me buying CDs (not that I bought many), though I'm loving the iTunes Music Store, but guess what? Sony BMG's not on that!
I'd love to see Sony BMG's market share and revenue drop this and future quarters, just to prove a couple of points...

read more | digg story

SE K600i/K608i/V600i now Mac-supported

If you download and install Mac OS X 10.4.3, released this week you will no longer need to modify iSync or Address Book. All three versions of the phone are now supported by Apple. (Information from apple.com, and tested with my K608i and iMac G5.)

Australian iTunes Music Store opens

Again this is old news. The store has been open for a week now and has food much damage to Australian credit cards. Given the lack of Sony, it has an excellent range, interface, and is very fast. It's worth getting a prepaid card for the free tracks alone (last week's was Shadowland by Youth Group and was excellent). I highly recommend using a shopping cart and prepaid cards, otherwise it can get dangerous! :-)
I must say I feel for the New Zealanders who missed out. Along with the Sony issue I hope that gets resolved, though the chances of either soon is remote.

iMac Software Review

There is so much installed on my new iMac, over 20GB, that I haven't got through it all yet.
I spent most of my time in Front Row, the new fullscreen media application. It is very simple to use, which unfortunately translates to some simplifications. Dig beneath the surface and you can see it's just a frontend. An excellent example is the DVD playback. Front Row offers no way of controlling Zoom (a feature of Tiger's DVD Player), however if change the Zoom setting manually it holds for Front Row.
Another nice thing I discovered is that you can start a Music playlist, then exit to the menu and select Photos and have a video and music slideshow (hint: since the iMac has TV out with an adapter you could record this instantly to tape or DVD!)
Movie trailers come up really well, King Kong was an awesome example of this, however the movie poster interface was a bit sluggish for me.
I was a little disappointed by the lack of streaming radio and no visualiser mode in the Music mode.
No doubt Front Row will be refined and I expect to see in iLife '06 come January.
As for other software, almost everything was pre-installed, except for Apple X11, which stopped OpenOffice.org from working out of the box. More when I've had more of a play.

Back to Blog: The new iMac G5

Well I'm almost done with uni, and so have time to blog again. Let's start with Apple's new iMac G5 that I received yesterday.
Firstly, it's a very nice box. The hardware itself is excellent, though the Mighty Mouse did take and Apple still force you to turn on the right mouse button yourself. The remote control is also very nice to use, working not only in Front Row, but also to sleep and wake the computer and change the volume from the desktop. Unlike my iBook the fans haven't disturbed me so far and the speakers go very loud. The widescreen display is also excellent, for both desktop use and movies. It has a decent viewing angle horizontally, which was a problem I had with DVDs on my iBook. If you can get your hands on one (they're in very short supply) it's worth it. (By the way, I have the 17-inch model.)

SE phone tip for AMR audio

This is a tip that probably applies to many Sony Ericsson smartphones, including my K608i. AMR, or Adaptive Multi Rate, makes really small sound files, mainly for voice. However if you create AMR files, the phone's Media player doesn't read them. (The File manager does play them.) The key is to make a 3GP file with only an AMR audio track, this will play, and enables seeking, minimizing, pausing, playlists and all the cool features of the Media player. Apple's QuickTime or possibly the open source ffmpeg programs can create such files.

You have to see Serenity!

Fans of Firefly have been waiting a long time for this and boy was it worth it.
4.5 stars
It's got action sequences that outclass Star Wars, the wit of Joss Whedon, and actors that really know their characters (having had the TV show to hone them).
However it is one for the fans, with a steep learning curve if you haven't seen at least the Serenity pilot episode of Firefly.
Highly recommended. Run don't walk to the cinema for this one.
Join the GeekiNtainment Serenity Launch Party and visit the messageboards for more at http://www.geekshow.us (jking_ok)

You have got to be kidding... Podcasts in 5.1 Surround

Next week's Diggnation will be offered in Dolby 5.1 Surround. Personally I
think this is insane (and anyway totally the wrong podcast for this
technology). I'm surprised that this is happening firstly to a podcast,
although it fits perfectly with the podcast appearance of being
anti-corporation and giving the users what they want (our commercial
broadcasters won't even give us Dolby 5.1 Surround and the technology is
there as well as the bitstream).

PR stunt, won't last, while it's nice to see 5.1 being pushed the Internet
is not the place (will the audio bitrate exceed the video bitrate on this
episode???)

I want less definition in my podcasts.

Source: Systm-announce e-mail message. I'm sure you'll find the press
release on digg.com or revision3.com

Hidden Tiger option: Use CD/DVD at login

The macosxhints team have uncovered another hidden Apple gem -- this one allows you to ask Mac OS X Tiger to open a media item (for example, audio CD or DVD) upon login. In the past you had to kludge this with AppleScripts, now it's built-in.

More Apple Mac OS X hints can be found at macosxhints.com.

read more | digg story

Recommended podcasts and vidcasts

Here are the podcasts and vidcasts that have stood the test of time for me:

• GeekiNtertainment -- A talk show about entertainment relevant to geeks, including movies, anime, comics, television, video games and DVDs. Very active messageboards.


• BuffCast -- From the people who bring you GeekiNtertainment, the BuffCast is a season by season summary of the hit television (and DVD now) series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Released roughly monthly, episode two came out this week.


• This Week In Tech -- Now recorded in front of a live audience, TWiT brings you commentary from the biggest names in technology broadcasting (later episodes now available in video if you have a fat enough pipe).


• Command-N -- From Amber Macarthur and Mike Laz. (sorry!) from Call for Help Canada comes a summary of tech news, web picks, how tos, reviews, interviews and views.


• triplej's Hack -- Current affairs, talkback and analysis from Australia's national youth radio station triplej, available as daily episodes or top stories. Great job ABC!

Honourable mention to Digitallifetv, an internet television exclusive from Ziff Davis hosted by Patrick Norton. They now offer heaps of download formats, small to large including audio-only. I omit them from the list because I haven't found an RSS feed I can add to my podcast client yet.

Feel free to leave your comments if you have any 'casts you'd like to add.

Heads up! Revision3 podcasts and unique URLs

My server downloaded diggnation three times over the weekend. This is not good. Turns out that the guys at Revision3 have tested one of the greatest assumptions of podcasting -- that only 1 URL will be put in an RSS feed for a given item. They are now dynamically generating the URLs every time you request the RSS feed. This means that if your podcast client uses the URL as a unique identifier (such as podracer/bashpodder in my case) it will continually download the file.

I had to edit podracer to fix this, not sure what the best solution is but I filtered the dynamic parts out of the URLs leaving the domain name and the file name as the unique identifier -- anyway heads up.

Some more SE K608i (et al) tips

Here are some random tips I've come across with my Sony Ericsson K608i phone. Many of these will also work with other Sony Ericsson or other Bluetooth phones. For example, Telstra are now offering the K600 which is essentially the same phone.

Firstly Mac users should head over to mobile.feisar.com for all of the files to use with the phone, including better instructions for iSync than I provide. Great site that I should have mentioned sooner (sorry!).

Secondly, if there is a file type you are frequently sending to your phone (such as MIDI or AMR audio), on your Mac you can set the application to launch them to Bluetooth File Exchange. Do this by selecting the file, pressing Command-I, and clicking Change All..., then you can double-click and hit Enter to send the file.

On the phone itself you can make Notes permanently visible by using the Show in standby option. This is very handy for to-do notes. First write the note in the Notes menu (under Applications) and Save it. Then in the notes list, select More and select Show in standby.

Make use of the shortcut menu! This is accessible by pressing up on the joystick while in standby. You can save a lot of keypresses with this. For example, I use this for the Select network (which is otherwise buried) menu item, giving me back a feature which was only one button press away on my old phone.

Opera is going free!

From digg: "Opera Software has removed the banners and licensing fee of their Opera Web Browser, and it is now freeware."
This is good news. I suggest you give it a try -- and if you do, here's a tip for you digg fans. Add digg as a side panel! Choose View|Toolbars|Customize... and on the Panels tab choose Add Web Panel... Enter digg's details and click OK. Now you'll have a digg button you can use. To make the web page fit better in the panel, choose Small Screen from the View button above the panel.

read more | digg story

Content providers listen -- DigitallifeTV

Digital Life TV, from Ziff Davis (the people who pay Patrick Norton), are now offering their IPTV show in low and high resolution formats. This is massive step forward, and a suggestion that this team are listening to their viewers. Please support this show for making this move.

Thank you team and kudos for implementing a solution so the whole world can get your show!

(FYI the smallest file runs at about 1MB/min, so you should be able to download it at about 1/4 real time, so 3 hours on dialup)

read more | digg story

Open letter: Request and suggestion for super-low bandwidth pod- and vid-casts

I'm having trouble finding e-mails for some of my favourite pod- and
vid-casts so I'm putting this out there here:

Dear pod- and vid-cast producer,

Firstly congratulations on the success of your content, I'm an avid consumer
of it.

I wish to suggest the implementation of super-low bandwidth versions of your
content -- such as in the 3GPP mobile phone standard [1] -- for a number of
reasons:
* To reduce bandwidth costs for everyone
* To increase your consumers by way of international and dial-up customers
-- not everyone yet has broadband and even for those who do, many
(especially internationally, I speak for Australia here) have limited
monthly data allowances and/or slower speeds to international sites.
* To increase the type of portable devices that your content can be viewed
on -- I very happily use my mobile phone on the train and bus for pod- and
vid-casts. High-bandwidth (even 128kbps MP3s) files are often not suitable
here due to limited internal memory of mobile phones.
* To retain compatibility with iTunes -- my suggestion uses QuickTime which
is native to iTunes so enables dial-up customers to get your cast through
iTunes should you choose (video included).
* To allow you to offer previewing of your casts directly from your site --
this is something no-one seems to have exploited with pod- and vid-casts, to
try something new requires downloading a whole large episode. A low
bandwidth file means people can quickly view and decide whether they want to
get the (possibly larger format) whole version of your cast.

I suggest using the 3GPP standard, which is supported by both Apple
QuickTime 6.5 [2] or later (Pro or by way of tools such as BitPlayer [3]),
and ffmpeg [4], either or both of which may already be part of your existing
workflow.

For audio, you can encode to narrowband AMR (GSM Adaptive Multi-Rate codec)
at 12kbps, and for video 64kbps (56kbps MPEG-4 video, 8kbps AMR-NB or AAC)
are acceptable values which optimise downloading time, file size and
quality.

I've been doing this for myself for about a month now with great success but
it would be most beneficial for the cast producers to provide this, since I
am from the category (international, mostly on dial-up, broadband with
restrictive data volume) of users most affected and cannot continue to
transcode on my end with the increasing amount of compelling content being
provided. There are third parties [5, 6] offering this to a limited extent.

Feel free to communicate further on this, I hope to continue to enjoy your
casts into the future!

[1] http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/3gpp/
[2] http://www.apple.com/quicktime
[3] http://www.macupdate.com/BitPlayer
[4] http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net (there are some limitations when using
ffmpeg)
[5] http://www.zerovertex.com
[6] http://www.pod2mob.com

Joshua King
jking_ok@yahoo.com.au
http://techtransit.blogspot.com