Browse the Web Without Installing Anything with ioSwiftFox...
Topic: Technology
8:18 am EDT, Sep 1, 2007
Linux only: Run a browser directly from RAM with open source "app" ioSwiftFox. ioSwiftFox requires absolutely no installation and doesn't even require root privileges to run for the first time. ioSwiftFox is a simple script that after some chmod foo you can use to browse the web. It runs faster than Firefox and even works with your existing Firefox extensions! If you want to get technical, ioSwiftFox is a recompilation of Firefox 2 for Infodomestic Objects.
Blue2CAN is an integrated solution for GeoTagging digital still images with GPS data. Using a BlueTooth enabled GPS unit and industry leading Nikon D200, D2X, D2Xs or D2Hs, Blue2CAN allows users to directly capture geospatially referenced images in the easiest, most reliable collection method today. Geo-spatial information (Lat, Lon, UTC etc.) collected from the GPS receiver is encapsulated in metadata tags of every image taken. For JPG files the geo-spatial data is contained in the industry standard EXIF tags, for RAW files the metadata is maintained by RAW image workflows and is put in EXIF tags when RAW files are converted to JPG.
For 279 dollars it's a bit high ... the serial cable for GPS that Nikon sells for less than 99, but you still need a GPS both ways...
Just an update for Micro-Trak fans, the European version Micro-Trak products are coming along well and should be in Byonics hands soon. These include the Micro-Trak 300 standard version 1.4 and the 8 Watt Micro-Trak 8000. This will be the first release of the Micro-Trak 8000 on the European frequency, and I am confident that our neighbors across the sea will like it!
New products under development are an 8 Watt, frequency agile transmitter, and an 8 Watt Transceiver based on the TinyTrak4. Since producing a transceiver means that I will have to devise a T/R switch, and buy lots of expensive and tiny little GaAs RF switches, I may revise our Micro-Amp in future versions to have a T/R switch as an option. Many people have asked me about whether the Micro-Amp could be used with flea power transceivers as a booster, and this would allow it to happen.
The two newest Micro-Trak versions are available on the Byonics website: http://www.byonics.com/microtrak/
These include the new 8 Watt single channel Micro-Trak, the Micro-Trak 8000, and the Micro-Trak 200 FA, the frequency agile/programmable unit. A European frequency version of the 8 Watt unit will be available in late August.
Allen VHS
This is great. I am going to try the 8 watt single channel unit soon here and see how well it works in my area. (out in the sticks...)
Joost™ provides a new way of watching TV that combines the best of full-screen television entertainment with the interactive and community benefits of the Internet to bring broadcast-quality video to viewers anytime, anywhere. Based on a state-of-the-art, secure, peer-to-peer streaming technology, Joost can be accessed with a broadband Internet connection and offers video content to viewers for free. Joost features more than 150 channels with programming across all genres, including: cartoons and animation; entertainment and film; sports; comedy; lifestyle and documentaries; and sci-fi. Channels and programs available on Joost vary by geographic region, based on copyright ownership. To learn more about Joost, visit www.joost.com.
If anyone here wants to try Joost let me know...
I am trying to figure out how it is streaming all this... I found some interesting things...
It's a good idea...
(FYI: This is for meme streams users... Do not ask if you are not a user of this site and don't sign up to 'just' get one... because you wont.)
An important summer project this year involves giving FWD (formerly, Free World Dialup), my 12 year experiment in participatory communications, new life as a standalone self-sustaining membership organization. Nearly one million people participated in FWD activities over the years as the project evolved from tinkering with firmware on PC sound cards to provisioning 700,000 SIP accounts. FWD initiatives include the first VoIP-PSTN interconnect (1995), H.323 interoperability (1998), SIP registration services (2002), SIP Peering (2003), FCC's Pulver Order (2004), pulver.Communicator with video (2005), and prior art for VoIP patents (2007).
FWD represents yet another example of the Internet disrupting the status quo by inserting "participatory" in front of a word like communication or democracy, journalism, and culture. The communication options offered by telephone companies in 1995 started and ended with plain old telephone service (POTS). POTS remains the primary business of the telephone company in 2007, but a long and expanding list of Internet enabled communication options exist for anyone motivated enough to make them work. FWD provides a participatory platform in finding ways to make Internet communications a viable option.
The work of FWD puts it at odds with the telephone company, because telco profits depend on controlling the availability of communication. The desire of people to communicate that makes the telephone companies so profitable comes from the same human need preventing people from accepting limitations to their communication options. Communication serves to build human relationships not to mention provides an essential input to economic activity. People join FWD projects because the telephone company scarcity business model conflicts with the need for six billion people on Earth to communicate.
Existing FWD services will remain free, but implementing a membership model will allow us to fund new services and make FWD self-sustaining. My funding of FWD over the last 12 years departed from any investment logic long ago. The membership fees will not provide a return for the investment, by I hope they remove the limitation my resources have on FWD reaching its potential. Support and maintenance needs of existing FWD services people tell me want can be liberated from my interest in spending on new services. The membership idea represents an experiment in itself in testing whether people will contribute a nominal amount as the price for communication freedom.
I asked Daniel Berninger (dan@danielberninger.com, fwd-12908, pstn- 1.202.250.3838) to lead the next phase in the life of FWD. Dan participated on the founding FWD technical team while still at Bell Labs (I was an IT manager on Wall Street) in 1995. Participatory Communications looks likely to keep the telco's on the defensive judging from the people that have already joined as paid members. One new member runs an Asterisk TrixBox 2.2, a MV-370 Portech gateway to GSM cellular networks, and several Atcom AG-168V single line POTS gateways provisioned to FWD. Suzanne Bowen, VP Super Technologies, Inc and DIDx joined as a business member. Suzanne understands her rapidly growing businss exists as a part of a new communication ecosystem that FWD's participatory communications platform helps evangelize and expand.
The Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has launched the Digital-to-Analog Converter Box Coupon Program (Coupon Program), as authorized in the Digital Television Transition and Public Safety Act of 2005.
Between Jan. 1, 2008, and March 31, 2009, all U.S. households will be eligible to request up to two coupons, worth $40 each, to be used toward the purchase of up to two, digital-to-analog converter boxes, while the initial $990 million allocated for the program is available. If NTIA requests the additional $510 million already authorized by Congress, then coupon requests during this "contingent period" will be limited exclusively to over-the-air households. Details on how to apply for the Coupon Program and our 1-800 number will be established later in 2007.
The softrock: small, low-cost, good performing 'software defined radio' receiver/transmitter...
Topic: Technology
10:53 pm EDT, Jul 7, 2007
The SoftRock is a small, low-cost, good performing "software defined radio" receiver/transmitter that plugs into a computer USB port and delivers I-Q audio signals to the computer's sound card. It was designed by Tony Parks, KB9YIG and Bill Tracey, KD5TFD as an "SDR sampler project" for hams everywhere to easily try out software defined radio.
These kits are low cost, easy to build, and just plain cool....
Welcome to New Radio, boys and girls. It stinks just like Old Radio, except the smell comes in clearer and there's more of it.
Topic: Technology
10:48 pm EDT, Jul 7, 2007
Driving across the Bay Area every day, you can't help but hear the great news: HD Radio has arrived! There are now secret stations hiding between the stations you can hear. All you have to do is go out and buy a new HD Radio and you'll hear your old stations in crystal-clear digital, plus secret ones that you've never even heard before. All with no subscription!
But after an investigation of HD Radio units, the stations playing HD, and the company that owns the technology; and some interviews with the wonks in DC, it looks like HD Radio is a high-level corporate scam, a huge carny shill. Do not tune in until your unit comes standard on that used Honda Civic you buy in 2015.
Between the high prices, poor listening options, homogenized content, and a decade and a half of FCC dealings that went into this monopoly, critics are calling the move to digital radio a "catastrophe" and a "complete giveaway" to behemoths such as CBS. Moreover, HD is pretty much a done deal.
