Useful Technology

Coming Back ...

2007-12-13T08:50:00.000+01:00

It's a long time since my last Post. A quick summary: In the meantime I have changed my country again (Italy), discovered that someone is really reading my Blog by watching AdSense stats (I still have to figure out how to get more detailed figures), and bought my current favourite tech tool an Apple TV (together with a full Apple echosystem including a MacBook and Airport Extreme WiFi router). More on all of this later in the next posts because today's piece of news for me it's Goldman Sachs research that provides some hints to Apple TV future. According to the note the next change or upgrade is scheduled somewhere in the second half of 2008 and might include the addition of an LCD screen.
Obviously we get this type of information quite frequently and only a minimal part of them turns out to be true. Personally I believe that this could be the case: if there is something that Apple TV doesn't need is an embedded display: what this little box desperately need is software updates to show it's real potential. Hackers all over the world have shown that with a little coding effort the usefulness of this box can be multiplied by X times by adding features like streaming from NAS, additional codecs like DIVX and others, Internet Radio, YouTube, etc. (the starting point for Apple TV hacks is certainly the AwkwardTV site).
Much more could be done and I am a little bit surprised that nobody is trying to address some design weaknesses like the ability to download or stream podcasts or videocasts DIRECTLY from the box without having to use iTunes on a computer. So come on Apple give us a few fixes and the popularity of the device could multiply further.

Italian IPTV list

2006-05-02T16:15:00.000+02:00

IPTV is becoming big and it's becoming a real revolution in the way we look at television. I'm Italian but I live UK: I don't have a satellite dish on my roof but I can watch most of the italian shows and news and the reason is IPTV. By installing the free TVersity upnp server I can even watch the same video content on my standard TV through my Media Adapter (D-Link DSM-320).
The only big annoyance is the amount of searching you need to do for video feeds: we still don't have the equivalent of a IPTV guide, that's why I decided to start writing one.

By using Webjay playlist site I started cataloging all interesting italian IPTV sites. By installing the new TVersity version (0.9.5) you can import the list directly on the Video navigation tree. My italian IPTV playlist is here. If anybody reading this Blog is interested in contributing with new IPTV feeds just let me now and I will update the list.

My NAS is arrived: now what next ?

2005-11-24T18:21:00.000+01:00

My NAS is finally arrived now I haven't decided which approach to follow next.
I am the happy owner of a MP101 and I always found that the key problem is actually not it's fault: the need to keep a PC on all the time. For this reason, after having read a lot of forums I have just bough a Linksys NSLU2 and a 250 Gbyte Hard Disk to use as a UpNP server with Twonkyvision. There are only two annoyance I can see:

- installing unslug (I have some experience in Linux but a long time ago)
- not being able to use FAT32 and thus just take my hard disk and laptop with me when travelling

The latest Linksys firmware (V23R63 not mounted in my unit) allows FAT32 access but I don't think that Unslug, that is based on an older version, is doing the same. The other insteresting thing is that if you look at the firmware update notes you can see that in a previous unreleased release they enabled UPnP AV than they took it out for some unknown reason. Maybe it was reliability or just because they have started selling a media server recently...

Anyway at this point in time my understanding is that if I want both UPnP and I need to do a lot manual work. Useful Technology but unuseful marketing approach...

If everything goes well I'm thinking of buying another MP101 and a video adapter (not decided yet but I like Kiss DP-600) for the living room. Any views ?

I have ordered my NAS solution

2005-11-17T16:53:00.000+01:00

A NAS is really the vital component of any home network. Basically it's a place to store all of your files: documents, pictures and possibly audio and video. But a NAS is not limited to that, as recently they started to look more like servers. They can be configured as Web ot FTP servers or, more interestingly, as UPnP servers which basically means that they can serve media content to all the media clients around your network: PCs but also Media Adapters for Audio and Video.
I already have a Netgear MP101 that I like a lot to listen to my MP3 music at home but the problem is that it always require a switched-on PC to work. It doesn't really make sense when all you are using of it is basically its Hard Disk.
That's exactly where a NAS fits into the picture: they are cheap (compared to a PC) and efficient. In my case I plan to use a Linksys NSLU2 a small and neat diskless unit with two USB port that you can connet to external storage. I'm also going to buy a Buffalo HD-HB250U2-1 USB 2.0 Drivestation 250 Gb to have enough space to store my music and a lot of videos in the future (but that's a future project). All of this is only around £130.
Unfrtunately today setting up a NAS with extended functionality still requires a little bit of hacking that will probably keep me busy in the next weeks (see http://www.nslu2-linux.org/). my plan is initially to install Twonkyvision as UPnP media server.

Accenture study on consumer adoption of digital home solutions

2005-07-14T11:30:00.000+02:00

This news is again coming from eHomeUpgrade but source is actually...my company ! yes, Accenture has delivered a comprehensive study on consumer adoption of digital home solutions.

MyLife Bits: how to store and recover a complete life of information

2005-05-04T15:55:00.000+02:00

The original link to this interesting project has been provided by eHomeUpgrade one of the best Blogs on prosonal home network technology (with a very good useful vs. hype ratio). MyLifeBits is what you get when you are able to digitize every bit of content happening in your life (photos, music, documents, voice mails, meetings ...) and put it in a single searchable repository. The weak points are: how do I input in a time effective way all of this stuff in my repository and how to label and organise knowledge without spending too much time on it. Maybe Google with his Desktop search engine might have an interesting solution to the last point.

This blog is starting from my pda...

2005-04-30T11:03:00.000+02:00

That's were I can get some free time to deal with my thougts: doing my commuting every day on the Tube. I can do this just because I'm using a piece of useful technology my hp 4150 iPAQ pda. Why it's useful ? Because it's actually amplifying my life expanding my ability to be productive or even simply to do something funny in a location like the London Underground that is not supposed to be like that. So we found a definition of useful technology: something that expand the range of things you can do. My station ... Tomorrow we will consider another dimension of simplification and maybe what are my plans for the future of this Blog