March 5, 2004
The FireWire ports have failed on my Mac.
Okay, this post isn't really the statement of a problem i'm having right now. It's moreso a catch to assist folks looking for help on their failed FireWire ports.
Basically, the short form answer is to read this excellent white paper on firewire port failures by WiebeTech. while firewire port failure is usually a very complex issue, the usual culprit isn't power but a failure of the lines that supply data to/from the host (anyone who's had the blue light on a lacie d2 drive come to life without mounting on the desktop knows exactly what i mean.)
If neat forensic photos are more of what you're in to, check out this medicalmac post on Dead FireWire (gosh I love their graphics!) That is all. Hope it helps.
Posted by yatta at 12:45 AM
February 12, 2004
brave new video.
funny how things work. i was typing notes for a paper on the future of video distribution when i came across andrew grumet's proposal for an RSS scheme for PVRs. Makes sense. Sounds familiar to eli's thoughts on video metadata. Browsing andrew's blog, I also came across a dowbrigade post about why we need video aggregators in order to decentralize the media, moving control away from the center. politically and technically, i agree with most everything he says.
my personal take on the thing is that once we open up the bandwidth to the last mile and video goes ip, anyone with a streaming server can be a quote-unqoute-broadcaster. more importantly, anyone who can read someone else's rss video metadata feed and aggregate their favorite content can become a video "channel." (video boingboing anyone?)
and therein lies the true disruption of a marriage between rss and video over ip: in a world where there is more bandwidth than video cache (on-demand content) and the number of distribution points (blogs) are near infinite, finite channel space (broadcast, cable) becomes irrelevant.
more importantly, branding becomes king. even if you've never distributed video before, if you have an audience that already trusts you for a particular opinion on whatever it is that you do, they will continue to go to you when you diversify into a different medium. that is why vice magazine can have a clothing store in nyc. if you trust their taste in music and movies, you'll probably be open to the idea of having them sell you a pair of pants.
it is the reason why the audience followed cnn from their cable box to the browser and it is why i think entities as diverse in purpose as wbai, the catholic church, the nra, and eyebeam will all have "video feeds" within the next 5-10 years. when you marry decent downstream bandwidth with the ease of weblog publishing and the simplicity of rss aggregation, anyone can be a rich-media content distributor. anyone can be a "teevee channel."
there will always be a need for live video events (sports, presidential speeches, the victoria's secret fashion show.) but if the video isn't time sensitive, it won't be distributed through a TV lineup. one day the idea of waiting until 8PM to watch the latest episode of My Favorite Sitcom will seem as antiquated as contacting a switchboard to put a local telephone call through for you.
i can't wait for the day that my grandchildren laugh at me when i tell them how video channels were once programmed in sequence. ; )
Posted by yatta at 1:48 AM | TrackBack
February 10, 2004
Josh's Map Server Hacking
check it:
I've been experimenting with the US Census Bureau's Online Mapping Tool. The great thing about it is that its totally hack-able! Its easy to tell from the URL exactly what information is needed to return a map image. In fact, you can get it to simply return a .GIF of a specific size in a specific location with a marker in a specific location and a label of your choice. Pretty cool!
Posted by yatta at 9:32 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 5, 2004
cnn develops a wearable vj pack
go cnn! i figured if anyone was going to beat drazen and i to the wifitv end product, it would probably be them. found at chapmanlogic & lostremote:
The new DNG system enables correspondents to edit packages and file reports on the scene without carrying bulky edit equipment or traveling to satellite feed points. The system integrates a software-based videophone into a laptop computer. With the addition of editing and transmission software, the laptop becomes CNN's single-solution platform for editing, compression, transmission and live shots.
the best part is that they did it all with off the shelf technology. i'm glad someone else in broadcast/cablecast gets it in a big way.
Posted by yatta at 2:05 PM | TrackBack
when's my bus arriving? fluidtime public transport app
the fluidtime public transport torino, a visual representation of arrival times of buses in Torino, Italy.
"Fluidtime supports flexible planning by providing people with personalised, accurate time-based information directly from the real-time databases of the services they are seeking."
yury and i had talked about the feasibility of doing real data version of this kinda app with the subway system here in nyc. install rfid tags on the lead car of each train, install ez-pass readers every 500 feet or so to capture positioning data that would be relayed to monitors in each station. but according to mr. gitman, it'd be almost impossible. he's spoken to folks in it over at the mta. it turns out that every new technology has a seven year evaluation period before it can be considered for implementation in the system. that means that most likely, something smaller, faster, better would be impossible to use once the testing phase was complete. what a pain in the ass. perhaps we need to put a test system into play anyway, get critical mass in support of such a system just to prove our point. found at nosenseofplace
Posted by yatta at 1:59 PM | TrackBack
February 4, 2004
metablogging with reblog
okay, this is pretty high on my pragmatic coolness list for the year: a meta blog for taking rss feeds and republishing them to your site (with the proper citations, of course. we didn't take library science classes for nothing, ya know.) eyebeam reblog, mike frumin's clever hack of the feed on feeds rss aggregator that pulls entries from feed on feeds and inserts them into movable type as new database entries. i can think of at least two dozen individuals or communities who could use this immediately, including myself. nice.
Posted by yatta at 7:12 PM | TrackBack
kunglog becomes ecto
okay. now that i have a laptop again, i can say that i'm fully settled into the new digs at eyebeam. now all i have to do is start posting to the braintag again regularly. but when i went to d/l a copy of kunglog and i come to find that it's been evolved into ecto. although it's no longer free (now $18), kunglog was so worth it that the money for ecto has already left my pocket.
Posted by yatta at 1:30 PM
January 28, 2004
del.icio.us social bookmarking.
the brilliant app with the clever domain name. you keep your bookmarks online through a simple link on your bookmark bar. the advantage of keeping your bookmarks online is that you have access to your bookmarks where ever you are. the brilliance comes in rather slyly after you post - you go to the front page and your link along with the number of other people who've also bookmarked the same thing. ha. love it.Posted by yatta at 3:08 AM | TrackBack
January 15, 2004
yatta's list of cafes with free wifi access in new york city
okay. this will be an always changing post. every couple of weeks, cally calls me up from the street, asking me to give her the name and location of a cafe with free internet access that's close to her. like i'm supposed to know all of this off of the top of my head.
but i try to accommodate her anyway. whenever i do a google search for free wifi hotspots in new york, i usually get a list of useless access points only acceessibl from the street. either that or a list of every verizon and starbucks/t-mobile location in manhattan. the nycwireless/nodedb list is extensive but a little too overwhelming (geeky data-centric) for most folks i send that way. rarely do i get a simple list of (open) APs in places that are actually usable for any reasonable amount of time (accessible from some place other than a sidewalk.)
so to better facilitate cally and anyone else searching for free wifi hotspots in nyc here is my list of cafe's i've confirmed have free wireless internet access in new york, along with any other possibly useful information i can find. i'm going to link this entry from the front page so that people like cally and i can refer to it before leaving the house. (or rather, i can refer to it when cally calls me from the street asking for help again.)
i know the table prolly formats strange on the front page so click on the permalink for better legibility.
if you've found a cafe in 212 or 718 with a free wifi node (meaning: you've actually confirmed the network's existence), email me and i'll add it to the list.
tricia suggested that i also provide this as a pdf for people to keep on their desktop. i think that was a good idea.
name | type | location | train stop | hours | ssid | notes |
| 275 Grand | Cafe | 275 Grand Ave, Bklyn (@ Lafayette) | G to Classon Ave. | 11.00a-1.00a | Boingo | First 1/2 hr free, $7 for rest of day afterwards. (Didn't realize it was Boingo) |
| The Apple Store | Retail | 103 Prince Street (@ Greene St) | N, R, W to Prince St. | 10.00a-8.00p | Apple Store | Just sit upstairs like you're waiting to be helped at the Genius Bar. |
Big Cup | Cafe | 228 8th Avenue (@ 22nd Street) | C, E Train to 23rd Street | 7.00a-1.00a | bigcup | is anyone in here not a male model? |
| Cafe Cafe | Cafe | 470-b Broome Street (Enter on Greene) | C Train to Spring St, N, R, W to Prince St. | 8.00a-7.00p | ? | there are 3 ssids in the area, two of them are open. |
Retail | Ninth Avenue (Between 15th and 16th Streets) | A, C, E Train to 14th Street |
| ? | lots of tables to sit at | |
Cafe | 41 Avenue B (Between 3rd & 4th Street) | F Train to 2nd Avenue | 08.00a-12.00a | dtut | decor feels like a Park Ridge, NJ living room. :) | |
| Esperanto Cafe | Cafe | 114 Macdougal St (@ Minetta) | A/C/E/B/D/F/V to West 4th St. | 24 hours | WiFi is a little weak, but they have ethernet hookups(!) | |
| Fix Cafe | Cafe | North 11th & Bedford, Bklyn | L Train to Bedford Ave | ? | fixlounge | Instructions listed. DNS Server: 204.254.224.2 |
| Full City | Cafe | 409 Grand Street (@ Clinton) | F, J, M, Z Train to Delancy St. | cally: what info do you have on this? | ||
| MNN | Community Org | 537 W. 59th St (Between 10th & 11th Ave) | A, C, B, D, 1, 9 to 59th Street Columbus Circle | 10.00a-12.00a | mnn.public.wifi | 2nd floor "edit" lounge. |
| open@ir | Bar | 121 St. Mark's Pl (@ Ave A) | F Train to 2nd Ave, L Train to 3rd Ave | 7.00p-2.00a | open@ir | Folks sit at bar w/laptops out. Check out share on Sundays. |
Soy Luck Club | Restaurant | 115 greenwish Ave (@ Jane St) | A, C, E Train to 14th Street | 8.30a-9.30p |
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Posted by yatta at 9:17 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
December 10, 2003
technology is to food....
just a quick thought i wanted to jot down before i left off on my day's journey:i've read recently that there is no money in whole foods. the only way to make a profit is to find a relatively cheap foodstuff, break it down, and reconstitute it as a mash-up of a product. i started wondering if the same rule will come to bear on the technology sector as more and more functions are defined in software. although you might be able to receive "radio" on your computer, the consumer may not want to deal with the complexity of configuring their own device. and looking at devices like the ipod makes me think that the profit margin on a radio device might be high enough that it may make more sense for companies to build specific devices instead of parts that extend functionality. (functions that compliment each other like telephony, messenger clients, and pims may be the exception.)
Posted by yatta at 2:15 PM
December 8, 2003
wireless gigabit.
check this from gigaom: wireless gigabit. my future contains always on, always connected devices that receive everything as IP data packets. the only difference between my cell phone, my radio, and my tv is the software codec and the I/O devices that allow me to interact with the device. i like my future.update: whaddya know: a press release touting a 150Mbps wireless chipset.
Posted by yatta at 11:28 AM
October 26, 2003
damn the excellence of rob flickenger! (projects, popularity, and prices.)
i've got to move faster. i've been planning my mini wifi community server in a box project for a few months now. picking up spare parts here and there from compgeeks. visiting the pc component stores down in chinatown for a card or two. and i was just a couple of winning bids away from picking up the major parts on ebay when two things happened: rob flickenger's wireless hacks book by oreilly and a nytimes article on mini pcs.i'd been searching for a reasonably priced fujitsu stylistic tablet pc for about a month now. thing is: they make good nocat wifi access points. i had my sights set on a stylistic 2300 for $150.00, then the oreilly book came out, and over the next week or two, the amounts on winining bids skyrocketed from the mid-$100s to well over $250. sellers, in turn, raised their buy it now prices from $175.00 to $300.00. feck! scraping through the listings, I eventually found a poorly listed stylistic 1200 for $70.00, so the access point is now on its way.
with the nytimes article, i'd been wanting to redo my community node as a web server in a tiny box for a while now. (notetoself: should i contact the craigslist folk about franchising?) i want to put it in a low-power, small form factor that can easily sit tucked away in a closet somewhere. i thought of using an old laptop as the server, but the performance of 2.5" hard drives have been a real turn off to me lately. so i started shopping around for a sub-$100 mini itx motherboard when the article appeared in the times. as expected, the ebay prices on via epia and shuttle mainboards have doubled and tripled.
Posted by yatta at 12:52 PM | TrackBack
panther is the meeeeeeeeowiest.
okay. did two upgrades this weekend. mandrake 9.2 went horribly wrong in a very merchant ivory sort of way. mac os x 10.3 went strikingly well in a, uh, mac os sort of way (selective memory? me?)my favorite thing about panther? they've toned down aqua. as "lickable" as pre-10.3 os x was, it was also a wee bit annoying. all the shiny throbbing buttons and pinstripes made me think the interface was competing for my attention. now it's all a lot more subtle. granted, the brushed-metal finder had me accidentally clicking on itunes when trying to get to my home folder every now and then, so i'll start cursing that until i decide to reskin something instead.
Posted by yatta at 12:00 PM | TrackBack
October 22, 2003
summary of conference summaries.
so many interesting conferences this week, so little travel funds. since i dont get to go to them through work, i attend them through the blog summaries of friends and other folks. yury went out to the ubiquitous computing conference in seattle. said it was pretty cool. i'm reading anne galloway's blog when i come across her assessment of ubicomp (including her convo with yury about play testing). meanwhile, kottke has a roundup of the poptech conference, complete with tidbits about cloning, a world without children, and how hard it is to keep an erection in zero-grav.Posted by yatta at 4:34 PM
October 15, 2003
Using Omnigraffle As A RSS News Reader
Had a good conversation with the Listen Up and YMDI folks yesterday. Gonna syndicate youth media content throughout the world. Should be a good thing. Anyways, in searching for a easy way to integrate their news into the youthchannel site, i came across this little ditty: an applescript to turn omnigraffle into a newsreader. Neat. (Oh yeah - if you need a great resource on RSS readers, go here.)Posted by yatta at 10:08 AM
September 23, 2003
Horoscopes For IT Geeks
You know that I've lost touch with reality when I'm posting IT humor on the regular. My horoscope: The compatibility issues that have been hounding you lately will magically seem to resolve themselves. Now is a good time to purchase new hardware, especially if you've been putting it off. The discipline you need to finally put your dreams and goals to work is at hand. Seek out an unconventional partnership. Despite personality differences, find the common denominator in professional relationships -- you're going to need help to accomplish your goals. Although your sign likes to be productive, your schedule has been challenging, even for you. Your hard work has not gone unnoticed, however. You've proven yourself and will have a chance to enjoy a bit of freedom and autonomy. Enjoy!Posted by yatta at 5:28 PM
September 22, 2003
Ximeta NetDisk - the revolutionary device that wasn't.
I was so excited for this device too! Nothing gets a sysadmin hot like the idea of 160GB of simple, inexpensive network attached storage for less than $300. That's why I almost went out and bought the Ximeta NetDisk as soon as I heard about it (at CompUSA no less!) Then tonight I come across a review on my favorite networking website this side of the bargains at techsoup. He hates it. Or rather, he dislikes it. Or rather, it doesn't matter if he doesn't like it b/c it's not compatible with OS X, Linux, or any other operating system that I use. Plus it relies on horrible client software that has to be installed on every machine. Plus, it only allows one client to write to it at a time. Which all equals up to a very disappointed sysadmin.Posted by yatta at 10:26 PM | Comments (3)