Category: Tech

Thinking about Facebook

~ rbonini ~ 2 Comments

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Above is Shel Isreal’s Friendwheel of his Facebook Contacts . In the interests of disclosure, I’m not on it. In fact I’m not even on Facebook. And I’m exploring why in this post.

The above picture shows a true social network, pardon the term for a minute. Most people who know Shel know others in his contact list as well.

There are a few hundred contacts here, and it is a reasonable number of people to know and be in contact with. See the difference between being like Scoble who has 5000 people who happen to read his blog and having a shortlist of  “real” people that you know personally and do business with?

If you sit down and consider this for a moment, you’ll see the logic of that statement. We all have  lists of contacts, in Outlook, Messenger, in our Mobile Phones or perhaps written in a phonebook. They are there because we know these people personally and communicate with them often.

Now I would not have the email address and phone number of my readers ( assuming I have regulars who read my blog) on my mobile in Messenger or in Outlook ( actually Google Mail, now).

Why should it be any different on FaceBook???? Why do people add contacts that they’ve never met in person?

 (And Scoble, by the very nature of his work, needs to keep a pulse on the Valley – thus his large contact list. I was just using him as an example)

Now I DO concede the point that this is exactly what happens in business – people exchange cards on a whim in the hope of acquiring business or services from someone else.

Which leads us to the next question? What do you characterize Facebook as? Is Shel’s Facebook Contacts made up mostly of froends, ore mostly of people in the same line of work ( I guess its the latter)? In other words, is Facebook a social of a business contact site?

I ask since Facebook was originally a students only site.

So why am I not on Facebook? Simple. I don’t need to be.

PS. I addition to the above, where does Facebook add value? If its business-oriented how does it do this? If its Socially-oriented, how?

iPhone Accelerometer Tricks

~ rbonini

Another iPhone story landed in Google Reader (via TUAW):

today, we’ve got hot off the press news about what they’re up to with the iPhone’s accelerometer. Erling has found a way to pull the raw data off of the iPhone’s LIS302DL, a 3-axis accelerometer that’s currently used for noting when you’re looking at Safari vertically or horizontally. A few hackers, like the folks behind Tilt, have been able to catch the iPhone noting the change itself, but this is the first time, I believe, that we’re seeing live data come right off of the unit at a high sampling rate, enabling Erling to pull off the magic seen above.

 

Source code is available here.

PodTech:iPhone: What We Know, What We Don\’t Know

~ rbonini ~ 1 Comment

I Quote:

From iPhoneDevCamp, this presentation by Christopher Allen (slides available). Christopher covers the various aspects of using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, different media formats, and then the human interaction methods to keep in mind when developing for the iPhone. Also, check out the community site iPhoneWebDev.

[podtech content=http://media1.podtech.net/media/2007/08/PID_012381/Podtech_iphone_known_and_unknowns.flv&postURL=http://www.podtech.net/home/3990/iphone-what-we-know-what-we-dont-know&totalTime=1987000&breadcrumb=09db1b9d189b4fd8a8892e90837044ae]

Clean Up

~ rbonini

Norton 2007 took an age and half to complete last night. Took 3 hours and found 1 million files. Whew!!!

Which inspired much frustration since getting work done while Norton is running is rather like sitting in a dentists waiting room 🙂 .

It reminded me of this post from Scott Hanselmann where he suggests the following clean up operations:

Check out your own systems…drop out to a command prompt (cmd.exe) and do:

  • cd %tmp% and cd %temp% – You’ll usually end up in C:\DOCUME~1\username\LOCALS~1\Temp.
    • At this point, I like to do the equivalent of a deltree and go up a directory and:
      • cd ..
      • rd Temp /s (it usually won’t manage to delete the whole dir. Someone will have a file open and the final directory deletion will fail)
      • md Temp (in case it was deleted.)
  • Everything in %windir%\temp – There’s lots of Perfmon counters in here, so you won’t be able to delete everything. Often you can del *.* and anything that shouldn’t be deleted is currently open.
  • If you are a developer, and have developed ASP.NET for years/months, clean up %windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\ <VERSION> \Temporary ASP.NET Files. I had 4 dozens sites in here.

Tidy up, my friends.

And I’m taking a look at Add/Remove programs to see if there’s anything I don’t need.

Just to get Nortons to finnish faster….

Windows Home Server Help!!!!!

~ rbonini

Knew it would come to this…

The server has been running at 90% CPU for a few days.

Investigation using Process Explorer  tells me that the culprit is the Interrupt process that is chewing up 50% to 70% of the CPU ( DEMigrator.exe was the other suspected culprit) . As you can imagine, this has a wonderful effect on Server response times and watching SageTV 🙂 .

I figured that the Hauppanuge  Nova 500-T  board that I use for sageTV  (over the network using thier add-in) was throwing all the interrupts ( since its not officially supported on WHS, right?).

 I update the driver off the Hauppanuge’s website. And Reboot.  No change.

I physically remove the PCI-board from the the server. Still no change.

Nothing else has changed on the server(save for the fact its now in danger of blowing up from overheating).

So help please!!!!!!!

 

PS I cross-posted this over at the WHS Forums

SageTV 2.6 and Windows Home Server 2

~ rbonini ~ 2 Comments

Got my shiny new Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T 500 – Dual Digital Freeview TV tuner and hooked it up to the server.

Driver installation was painless. the server picked it up with no problem.

I installed the SageTV V2.2 Add In via the console. At this point, I have to say that it offers zero settings to configure either on the tab or under settings. On one had it does wonders to the confusion factor. On the other, being unable to do something as pedestrian as changing the storage location is frustrating . Since this is for WHS, you should know that the system partition is 20GB and it makes no sense to store video files there. Try a Share.

As long as you remember to download the SageTv client off the site, it works fine.

Channel set-up was a breeze. My only beef is the EPG via tvtv.co.uk. 90% of the channels don’t show up in the EPG yet for some reason. I’ll give it time to load all the channels up before emailing tech support.

To test it I had to do some acrobatics with the cable coming down from the antenna. I’ve not tested it with both tuners in action. I’m going to get the TV guys down here tomorrow to turn it into a permanent set-up with both tuners working.

The quality is amazing on the client. The user interface is well designed and unobtrusive.

Some points from a first impression.

Talking of the user interface:

  1. I wish you could expressly dock the window to the taskbar like you can do with the  video window of the Windows Media Player Toolbar.
  2. Being able to remap the channels could be a lot easier.
  3. Choosing channels could be a lot easier. Instead of giving the user an exhaustive list of every free-to-air digital channel in Europe, simply show the ones found in  the channel scan. Make the huge list an option.
  4. Configuring the screen size could be less confusing. Took me a while to realize what to do.

The whole EPG thing could be improved. Surely you could pick this information up from the Tv signals themselves? How come my set-top box does it quite easily? I’ll have a play around and see if there is that option.

I’m a wee bit confused about the license structure. In 15 days, what do I do? Do I buy a SageTV license for both Client and Server?  

And finally, when can we expect a release?

Looking ahead. I plan to get the Extenders for the Tv’s at some point. And I plan to grab another dual tuner to make sure everyone can watch what they want.

I love it when a gamble pays off big. 🙂

TV Tuner for WHS

~ rbonini

I’ve just ordered the Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T 500 – Dual Digital Freeview TV tuner from amazon.co.uk and it should be here tomorrow.

I’m dying to tryout the SageTV Add-in and Placeshifter ( they are both Release Candidates, but then again, what on the server isn’t?) and will play around tomorrow (assuming Amazon’s delivery estimate is correct 🙂 ).

We Got Served says:

SageTV is designed to be your “always on” digital entertainment hub that’s accessible at home or over a broadband connection. Put any Video, Music or Photos onto your SageTV Media Server and enjoy them on any TV, PC or Mac screen.

  • Enjoy all your TV, Video, Music or Photos anytime, anywhere using SageTV Placeshifter to connect to your Windows Home Server from any broadband connection
  • Connect your TVs at home to SageTV on Windows Home Server with SageTV Media Extender
  • Handles nearly every Video, Music and Photo format
  • Works with Cable, Satellite and Broadcast TV around the world including NTSC, ATSC, PAL and DVB

    • As long as it works in the UK, I’m happy.

    Download | More Info