More Jelly Beans

Earlier this year I upgraded my Captivate to Jelly Bean  (4.2.1) using Cyanogen Mod 10.1. As expected with Cyanogen it has been rock solid. I even considered switching back to the Captivate for my every day phone. Lack of LTE and the inferior camera kept me on the Skyrocket.

AT&T finally announced the Skyrocket Jelly Bean upgrade (with Butter) on April 10, 2013. Samsung posted detailed instructions.

Similar to the Skyrocket upgrade from Gingerbread to Ice Cream Sandwich, the Jelly Bean upgrade was only available using Samsung's Kies.

As called for, I upgraded Kies. As I read and re-read the upgrade instructions the Jelly Bean update downloaded on its own. As this was the same laptop I used for Gingerbread to Ice Cream Sandwich all the necessary drivers loaded cleanly.

Unlike the Gingerbread to Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade I didn't remove the SIM card nor the microSD card. The FAQ specifically said that you could leave them in. I had no problems with either. I did not lose my internal SD storage either. I did not do a factory reset before nor after the upgrade although that is usually a good idea.

The upgrade went perfectly and took about 25 minutes. The laptop is an old IBM ThinkPad T43 and I could see the processor busy most of the time. I'd expect it to be quicker on a more powerful PC.

After the upgrade the first boot went through the normal "optimizing" phase and sometimes I'd see an app start slowly the first time. I presume that this is the Just In Time (JIT) compilation happening.

The Jelly Bean for the Skyrocket is 4.1.2 but I haven't noticed any of the differences between this and the Captivate's 4.2.1. As expected all of the Samsung customizations are carried forward, e.g. TouchWiz and the camera. And you lose a Jelly Bean feature here and there like the widgets on the lock screen. Maybe I just haven't figured that out.

You might want to screenshot your home screens before you start as the upgrade resets them. It also forgets ringtones, etc. Most apps kept their settings.

Jelly Bean is so nice. Here's a screen shot of the in call screen. iPhone users, eat your heart out.

And Google Now, just wow!

I had Googled "Happy Daze" on my laptop looking for the hours of a local hamburger joint. Look at what Google Now did with that signal.

Battery life? I don't know. It's so erratic. You can see my day by day usage here.

There's a lot of whining in the Android forums about the carriers not upgrading their older phones. While all of us geeks want the latest bits as soon as they are available, AT&T and Samsung have upgraded both the Captivate and Skyrocket twice in less than 2 years. I really can't complain about that.

2013 Honda i-MID

I knew in-car technology was going to come to this.

FASTOY X came to a sudden end recently in a pile of shattered glass and airbag dust.

Since I didn't have the luxury of picking the timing, my shopping for a replacement was somewhat shortened. Buy as usual I headed to my faithful Honda dealer.

I came home with FASTOY XI, a 2013 Honda Accord EX-L coupe with six-speed manual transmission.

I could write a book about the new FASTOY but for the moment I want to focus on one feature, really on one part of one feature.

Several of the new Hondas have Intelligent Multi Information Display (i-MID).

The i-MID interfaces with many of the Accord's systems and communicates it all on one screen. It displays everything from your current MPG to what's on the radio to incoming text messages.

But this post is all about one other capability of the i-MID. Honda has externalized many of the car's settings to the i-MID so you can configure how things operate that have never before been accessible.

I downloaded the owner's manual and captured the i-MID settings screens. There are 10 of them!


The groups are: System Settings, Vehicle Settings, Audio Settings, Info Settings, Phone Settings, and Camera Settings.

iPad vs. Data Center

Given that I call myself an IT architect, the headline caught my eye.

How the iPad ruined the lives of IT architects

The author describes how consumer technology has affected data center expectations.

In current times however, we’re being asked to regularly provide levels of solution availability that until recently were reserved for the largest of enterprises ...

This comes on continuing escalation of complexity in our solutions. I recall a discussion with the CFO of a Fortune 100 company about her expectations of IT. I related to her the increased complexity of an SAP TCP/IP solution compared to the previous CICS SNA solution. She was understanding of the challenges but that's where we had to go. And not just with the same availability but better.

What has caused this elevation of expectations?

Today ... the consumerisation of high quality IT has happened and is setting the standard for business IT. ... As a result of this turnaround, the role of an IT architect has got even harder, especially in the small- and mid-enterprise sectors where arguably the pace of IT change has never been faster and the lack of IT governance has never been lower.

I think the last point is also key. In my recent experience in medium enterprises (sub $1B) I've found that the lack of governance is a major problem.

Back to technology...

With their iPads always working and Facebook always being online, business users increasingly have the same expectation of the IT systems they use.

One of the business requirements I recently encountered was a CEO who wants to be able to walk into a customer's conference room and project that customer's business real-time. Stop for a minute and think of all the IT capabilities required to do that. Yet Facebook does it all the time.

Helping business users understand, justify, and quantify their requirements is the skill of a good architect, and is a process we can still use to define availability needs even if it’s to show that ultra-high availability needs bring ultra-high costs.

To the aforementioned CEO, it's just the cost of doing business. The challenge for the architect is "selling" that requirement through the organization.

(T)he problem architects now have is the delivery of infrastructures to support these expected levels of 24/7 availability. Quoting 99.5per cent availability SLAs these days suggests to me that we want the business to feel grateful for whenever the solution is available.

The CEO won't "feel grateful for whenever the solution is available."

(T)he answer ... seems to be for everyone but the richest organisations will almost certainly be the cloud. That brings a new and bigger challenge for the IT architect, how do we learn to trust a face-less cloud service provider?

This is why I think of myself a a Chief Worrier.

Windows Phone 8 EOL

Recently Microsoft announced the end-of-life for Windows Phone 8 and established an 18 month life cycle for the platform's operating systems.

Microsoft will make updates available for the Operating System on your phone, including security updates, for a period of 18 months after the lifecycle start date. Distribution of the updates may be controlled by the mobile operator or the phone manufacturer from which you purchased your phone. Update availability will also vary by country, region, and hardware capabilities.

At first blush this is bad.

But it's not. It's great!

Mary Jo Foley's column assesses this. Her position is that what this means is that there is going to be a continuum of Windows Phone operating system versions.

She bases this on the Microsoft Windows Phone team's tweet:

As we’ve said, one benefit of moving to the Windows core is that Windows Phone 8 is upgradeable.

Mary Jo reads this as Microsoft will be providing in place upgrades to the Windows Phone operating system regularly, more frequently than 18 months.

Obviously some equipment may not be capable of newer versions but given that Windows 7 and Windows 8 lowered the minimum requirements even this may not be a problem. We still have to worry about the carriers.

Let's hope Mary Jo is right.

Click to Play

With all the reports of vulnerabilities of various browser plugins, e.g. Java and Flash, my interest was piqued when I read Brian Krebs post on "Click to Play."

To turn it on in Chrome, go to Settings and click on "Show advanced settings..." at the bottom of the page. Scroll down to "Privacy" and click on the "Content settings..." In the pop-up window scroll down to "Plug-ins" and check "Click to play." Don't forget to click the "Done" at the bottom.

Seems like they could have made this easier.

When you browse to a site that has content blocked by "Click to Play," an icon will appear on the far right side of the address bar that allows you to add an exception for the current site.

Yeah, but...

Lots of web sites use Flash where you don't even know it.

Like this one.

Let's just say that's not "spouse friendly." I can put up with that but I don't think I'm going to roll it out to the rest of the house.

To Be Fair

To be fair, Google's Drive service went down recently as did Microsoft's Azure storage service.

To be fair, this is what I got when I went to Microsoft's Dashboard:

To be fair, this is what I got when I went to Google's Dashboard:

To be fair, Microsoft's lasted 12 hours compared to Google's 2+ hours.

To be fair, both probably had lingering effects.

To be fair, this is what life in the cloud is going to be like for the foreseeable future.

Web Collaboration

Recently one of my friends posted on Facebook:

Just as an FYI ... you can use Office Web Apps within the browser when logged in using your Microsoft ID. I use it to collaborate on true Office documents all the time - even machines that don't have Office installed. It's everywhere I might need it.

We have an ongoing discussion in our work group over whether to use Microsoft Office documents or Google Docs.

Maybe this was a godsend.

To test this I uploaded a .docx file to my Skydrive and edited it with Word Web App. I shared it with a co-worker. We were both able to get into edit mode on this document and the Word Web App told us that there were 2 concurrent editors.

But my co-worker couldn't see my changes until I saved it. Then since he had changed the same paragraph when he attempted to save it the save failed.

Why?

Here's the answer in an article from CBS News.

Co-authoring in Word is more or less the same as editing in Google Docs, but there are some key distinctions. Getting started is just as simple: Open the doc and start working. Word keeps you informed about who is also working on the document, and you can also check the Other Authors button in the ribbon's View tab to see who else is in the metaphorical editing room with you. Whatever paragraph you're actively working in is locked, so others can't accidentally create conflicts with what you're doing. 

One way that Word is different than Google Docs is seeing your co-author's edits. Rather than having their changes appear instantly (which I do find a bit disorienting), our co-author's changes are only incorporated into your document when he saves his work and then you save yours. When your co-author saves, you get a message telling you that you can save to see the latest updates, so you're never left wondering if there are new updates available.

Here's an article from Redmondmag with the same explanation.

The new document collaboration interface will indicate if someone is working on a document by popping up a screen note. It also marks the section that's being altered. Microsoft calls this approach "coauthoring," but it's not a real-time approach. Users can identify who is modifying which section of a document, but a refresh is required to actually show what was changed. 

If a user edits a document and saves the changes, all of the changes -- including those made by other collaborators -- will be shown at that time. The changes are highlighted in a green screen text.

Close but no cigar.

Google Latitude

I just look for things to play with.

The Google Maps Android application has Google Latitude integrated in it. On the iPhone there's a separate Latitude app. Latitude is a lot like Find My iPhone but Latitude can keep location history.

On Android you control Latitude from Google Maps.

This takes you to the Latitude screen.

Chose "Location settings" to set it up.

Enable "Report from this device." If you enable "Enable location sharing" you can "Manage your friends" just below. Here you can specify who can see your current location. Your friends can not see your history.

You'll have to keep an eye on this screen. I've noticed that some times an upgrade of the Google Maps application will reset these options.

What do you get for this? Go to http://google.com/latitude to see.

This is 30 days of history. You can click through the timeline and see place by place.

Latitude is fun to play with but you need to carefully consider how much information you want to retain and share. By default Google will notify you of your Latitude settings once a month.

Lessons from the Cloud

While researching the recent Microsoft Azure Storage outage I came across a presentation by Jason Chan of Netflix. While the topic was "Practical Cloud Security" there were a couple of slides that I thought applied to many organizations' situation.

We all remember how Netflix changed their business model several years ago going from mailing DVDs to streaming video online. This resulted in a 37 fold increase in API requests in one year.

Realistically most organizations don't experience that kind of growth but any organization that plans to grow should look for lessons learned.

Prior to the cloud migration Netflix was running their own data centers. Here's what they were doing in their data centers.

Sound familiar?

I especially like the "snowflake phenomenon" metaphor. That means that everything is a one-off. Nothing is reused.

Netflix's vision was to get out of the data center business and into the cloud.

We want to use clouds, not build them.

Their target patterns were much different.

Think about how this transition will reduce your costs and improve your delivery speed.

Maybe you can stream a movie in your spare time.

When Clouds Go Thump

Almost a year ago Microsoft's Azure product had a global service failure.

It's happened again.

On the evening of February 22, 2013 Microsoft's Azure Service Dashboard had the following notice:

Storage is currently experiencing a worldwide outage impacting HTTPS operations (SSL traffic) due to an expired certificate. HTTP traffic is not impacted. We are validating the recovery options before implementing them. Further updates will be published to keep you apprised of the situation. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes our customers.

The color is Microsoft's.

Most of the time when I went to the Azure Service Dashboard this is what I got.


Here's what triggered it.


Source: Windows Azure Forum on MSDN
MJFara, one of the posters (identified as a "Partner"), hit the nail on the head.

This is unacceptable, I'm supposed to release an enterprise app on this platform?
Imagine how many phone calls I would have gotten by now from very angry customers.
Sad...

The Register's summary:

It is the opinion of The Register that to have a core service fail in every data center across the world simultaneously is an extremely bad thing to happen to a cloud provider.

From my posting last year:

What I want to highlight is that cloud providers are not immune from service failures. They are likely capable of providing more redundant and resilient services than many organizations can provide.

Unfortunately this failure demonstrates that Microsoft doesn't seem to be "capable of providing more redundant and resilient services."

Go back and reread MJFara's comments. Think about it.

Powerline Ethernet Adapter II

Recently I mentioned that I was looking to upgrade my Powerline Ethernet Adapter from the Netgear XET1001 to something faster.

BestBuy had the Actiontec PWR500 for $50 so I bought 2 sets.

My installation experience was the same as with the Netgear. Just plug them in and they work. I didn't even have to do anything to the TiVo or router. And the one at the TiVo end is plugged into a power strip.

All 3 lights went instantly green. The Actiontec FAQ says that the "LK" light indicates the transmission speed. Green means "100Mbps+". Nice.

But...

The second set I bought was to replace the TiVo - Wireless-N Network Adapter used on the other TiVo.

In this location the "LK" light is orange. This indicates the network speed is "50-99Mbps". This is noticeably faster than the TiVo wireless adapter and very acceptable for streaming HD content within the house.

To be fair, I tried a Netgear XET1001 in this same location. I wouldn't even connect.

I also want to share the relative size of the Netgear and the Actiontec.

dd-wrt

The image speaks for itself.

Transcode Contest

After my discovery of Pavtube's HD Video Converter I wanted to compare the transcoding of HD Video Converter and Handbrake.

I took a ripped DVD and transcoded it to iPhone 4.

Product	Time	File Size	Format	Resolution
HD Video Converter	9 mins.	624,569KB	mpeg4	640x480
Handbrake	46 min.	689,317KB	H.264	720x480

There are a couple of other differences. Handbrake would use the ISO file as input. For HD Video Converter I had to mount the ISO (using Microsoft's Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel) and then navigate to the VIDEO_TS folder and select the VOB files.

Here's what the HD Video Converter output file looked like:

And here's what the Handbrake output file looked like:

TV Wiring Diagram

I just realized that I hadn't documented my TV wiring in over 5 years.

I've become a big fan of TiVos. They really simplify my TV wiring. Now the cable input goes direct to the TiVo. HDMI means that I can avoid the clutter of S-video and audio cables. I use HDMI connections to the TiVo and the DVD (I still haven't jumped to Blu-Ray).

As discussed earlier I'm using a 85 Mbps Powerline ethernet adapter. It's still working fine but I am watching for a set of the 500 Mbps models.

After Christmas I picked up a 1 TB Western Digital My DVR Expander to add storage to the TiVo.

I've also put a TiVo in the master bedroom. Without a DVD the wiring is even simpler.

For network connectivity I use the TiVo Wireless N Adapter. That does fine for the TiVo electronic program guide but really doesn't have enough bandwidth for streaming to the den TiVo. As a work around I transfer programs and watch them when the transfer is done. A third 500 Mbps Powerline ethernet adapter will go here.

Pavtube HD Video Converter

I've done a lot with video over the years - DVDs for Seniors, FairUse Wizard, Handbrake, TiVo Desktop, etc.

My video toolkit is capable but cluttered. I use SageTV, DVDShrink, DVD Decrypter, Ulead DVD Movie Factory, Handbrake, Windows DVD Maker, etc.

I've created Youtube videos, DVDs, H.264 videos for iPhones and Androids but what I hadn't done was to take AVCHD (H.264) videos from cameras and burn to a DVD.

That wasn't easy. I even tried the Panasonic PHOTOfunSTUDIO that came with the camera.

I finally gave up and posted on VideoHelp.com. I got a prompt and well thought out response that pointed me to AVStoDVD. AVStoDVD even has a portable version. I tried that but the portable version required a separate install of Avisynth.

One of my favorite software packages VideoReDo Plus has an upgrade that will do my specific task.

But then I came across the Pavtube set of products. They are a little narrowly focused but HD Video Converter said it would take almost anything as input and render almost anything as output.

And it does!

Further it reminds me of Handbrake in that it has a huge selection of predefined output profiles and you can tweak them and save as custom profiles.

Here's how it shows the characteristics of the input files:

Here's the selection of the output profiles:

And then how you can tweak them:

The Pavtube products are reasonably priced. They even offer some bundles but if you Google around you can find coupon codes that provide even further discounts.

Yum! Jelly Bean

I'm working my way through the Android deserts: Eclair, Frozen Yogurt, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, and now Jelly Bean. And a little Butter never hurts.

I am on the edge of my chair waiting for AT&T to upgrade my Skyrocket to Jelly Bean. Samsung has announced what's going to be in the upgrade for Korea but still no release date much less any discussion of AT&T's version. So I wait.

But I'm not patient. My Captivate is just sitting on the shelf since the Skyrocket.

I'd been lurking around xda and Cyanogen for Jelly Bean (4.2.1) ROMs for the Captivate. I never found a "one click" ROM so I finally just dove into it.

Several places along the way you'll need to have the Samsung USB drivers loaded on your PC so you might as well do that now. Get them from here.

If you've installed Java 7 you'll need to add back msvcr100.dll using either this (x86) or this (x64). Then remember to uninstall Java (just on general principles) when you're done.

Also, further down I'll talk about Google Back up. Make sure that you have that turned on and synced before you begin. Here's the setting screen on my Skyrocket Ice Cream Sandwich.

Back to flashing...

This thread on xda is the starting place.

They give you links to download the ROM and the gapps then go right into the installation. The ROM I downloaded was cm-10.1-20130114-NIGHTLY-captivatemtd.zip and the gapps was gapps-jb-20121212-signed.zip. By the way, I did this with the SIM and microSD both out of the phone. Better safe than sorry.

Watch out for that first step.

"Root your device and install ClockworkMod Recovery." That sounds so simple. That took me 2 or 3 times as long as actually flashing the ROM. I tried using SuperOneClick but it wouldn't root the Captivate running Gingerbread.

You can search high and low through that post and there are no instructions on how to root and install ClockworkMod Recovery.

This post is the technique I used to root the Captivate. At first glance it looks complicated but it goes real smooth if you read it very closely. I flashed the same kernel twice by mistake.

Notice that the last flash is of "KK4_stock_kernel.tar". Stock is the key word here. Stock doesn't have ClockworkMod Recovery.

Remember that the first step of the xda post said to "Root your device and install ClockworkMod Recovery." You just accomplished the first three words.

Now for the ClockworkMod Recovery part.

Buried deep in this "Idiot-Proof All-in-one Guide" is a link to another on Gingerbread. I followed this through the ClockworkMod Recovery installation. Since I had already rooted I stopped there.

Then I went back to the xda thread and picked up at step 2.

Oh, the "3-button-combo" is here. Power down first.

On the Galaxy S it done by using the Volume Up + Home + Power keys all pressed at the same time, (this is for recovery mode)
Download mode is: Volume down + Home + Power keys, all pressed at the same time.
Both are done with the phone turned off.

How to do a Nandroid backup is here.

1. reboot int recovery by powering down, then power back on holding vol up, vol down, and power at the same time. This will boot you into stock recovery.
2. using volume down, highlight 'apply sdcard:update.zip' and select by using the menu button (or where it would be).
3. you should now be in cwm recovery. Depending on which one you are using, the text will either be red or cyan in color. highlight 'backup/restore' using volume keys and select with POWER button.
4. select backup
The back up will start, and will take around 5-10 minutes to complete (depending on how much stuff you have in /data)
5. Once it is done, it will go back to the main cwm menu. Select 'reboot phone now' with power button.

As usual with Cyanogen Mod it went perfect after that.

Pretty much.

I told the initial setup to restore my settings from Google. This included downloading my apps from the Play Store. As they came down each one got "(app) could not be downloaded due to an error. (923)" and put an error in the notification log.

All I had to do was to click on each notification and the apps installed just fine. Subsequent downloads from the Play Store worked also.

Incidentally the Google restore restored many of my settings, e.g. Wi-Fi networks and pass phrases, ring tones, time zones, etc. Pretty neat.

I'm sorry I don't have a screenshot of this error but I couldn't figure out how to take one. This post tells you how to enable screenshots in Cyanogen Mod 10.1.

First enable it...
Go to settings>system>power menu...

Then when u press power key for 3-4 sec u ll see screenshot option there..

Jelly Bean with Butter is fast and smooth even on my 2+ year-old Captivate.

Remember that this is a "nightly" and not a "stable" release of Cyanogen Mod. For example the camera in the AOSP code base is not as complete as the Galaxy S III's camera, e.g. doesn't support storing photos on the microSD card.

Even the Jelly Bean lock screen is cool. When you get an incoming call, swiping to the right answers it, swiping up puts you in Messaging, and swiping left sends the caller to voicemail. If the contact has a photo it is displayed full screen. With the screen locked if you press the power key you can swipe in from the right for the camera and in from the left for a widget of your choice. The Jelly Bean keyboard works enough like Swype that I haven't loaded Swype. I'm sure there are tons more features I haven't found.

I'm not sure whether I'm going to make this my day-to-day phone. It doesn't have LTE nor the front-facing camera of the Skyrocket but it sure is nice and rock solid.

Postscript: In hindsight I think that the instructions here could have done the whole process. Try that and let me know how it goes.

DSL Upload Speed II

This is just a follow-up to my previous post on this topic.

I've continued to monitor this and it is working fine. I bumped my uplink speed to 400 Kbps for an extra 50 Kbps.

Recently I've been doing some big uploads to Youtube. The data is going across my LAN from a PC to the router and then across the WAN from the router to the Internet.

Here's what my link speeds looked like during this upload:

Xmarks

Ok, I'm a big Google user. I switched to keeping my bookmarks to Google Bookmarks with AddThis to add bookmarks.

While AddThis works well, Google Bookmarks isn't integrated into Chrome so Chrome's bookmarks are totally separate.

Grumble, grumble.

I'd had Xmarks on my To Do list for a year or more. I made a run at it recently.

I installed Xmarks on my Chrome browsers and my wife's Firefox. On a single account I established 2 profiles, one for me and one for my wife. Then I made the appropriate profile the default for each browser instance. Then I imported the Google Bookmarks into my profile and my wife's Firefox bookmarks into her profile. So far so good.

All seemed well for a couple of days until I noticed that my Chrome bookmarks had many copies of the "Google Bookmarks" folder.

It seems that Chrome's Sync settings were replicating Xmarks syncing.

So I needed to uncheck "Bookmarks."

But now my wife was complaining. It seems that when the Firefox Add-On was syncing to Xmarks the entire instance of Firefox would freeze. That raised the old adage of "When momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy."

Xmarks is now uninstalled on all browsers.

As an interim I am trying using Chrome's Bookmark Bar to access Google Bookmarks. First I went to http://bookmarks.google.com and bookmarked that in Chrome. Then I went to http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=100215 and dragged that bookmarklet to the Chrome Bookmark Bar. Then for clarity I renamed those 2 items to "See Google Bookmarks" and "Add Google Bookmark" respectively.

Here's what it looks like:

That is a kludge and doesn't do anything for Firefox. I may try to make a run at Xmarks again.

Bye, Bye Chromebook

I tried. I really did. But I returned the Chromebook.

It was a lot of little things. The SD card stuck out of the SD slot, the hinge was ugly, the keyboard mapping was odd, the touchpad was numb, overall it was slow, the updates to Chrome OS were behind, the Chrome extensions were backlevel, yada yada.

Besides the sluggishness in YouTube it was also slow updating Google Docs. I have a large Google Document that updates on the T420s in seconds. It updates on the X40 almost as quick but on the Chromebook it consistently took 20 seconds to update.

The price was great but the function was unsatisfactory.

21st Century Video

I've just moved into the 21 century with my video recording.

Way back when (2004) I built a PVR using SageTV. I took it through several versions of software and hardware. The hardware (Dell GX270) is now so old. In early 2012 the UPS died and the fan got real loud. I used the excuse of the UPS dying to just turn it off.

Most of my usage at that time was to record analog TV shows and burn them to DVDs for my granddaughter. The quality was fine for her.

I had moved to TiVo for my HD TV timeshifting but I hadn't tried to burn that content to DVDs.

This past weekend there was a football game that I wanted to keep. I fired up the old SageTV and recorded it there as well as on the TiVo. I did my normal process using the SageTV copy and burned a DVD. It looked awful on my 52" Sony.

Back to the drawing board. I downloaded TiVo Desktop and installed it. Go into TiVo Desktop, click File / Preferences and uncheck the box that says "Use fastest method available..." Then I moved the recording from the TiVo to my desktop. It was huge! 31GB for 4 hours.

But now what could I do with it? The file type was .tivo. After a fruitless session of Googling I just tried renaming it to a .mpg. Doh!

Then VidoeRedo Plus could open it and operate on it. I used VideoRedo to edit out the commercials and then truncate it to the end of the game. That got the file down to 21GB.

Then I took it over to Ulead DVD Movie Factory 6. After fiddling around a little I convinced DMF to create 16x9 output and to use a double layer DVD.

It worked pretty good for a first attempt. There were some compression artifacts in the high activity shots but I think there are some settings that I can change to improve this in the future. Remember that the TiVo file is 1280x720 and the DVD in 16x9 is only 720x405 so DMF has to transcode the video.

By the way, while I haven't exercised the TiVo movement exhaustively I haven't encountered any programs that are copy protected.

This may prompt me to move to Blu-ray!

Living In the Cloud

A while back I mentioned a couple of Cloud apps that I use.

Although I'm a huge Google user, I've been using Dropbox for even longer than Google Docs/Drive. And I've found that the app ecosystem around Dropbox is a lot more mature than around Google Drive.

I started off just trying to find way to maintain a To Do list that I could access from anywhere. I came across Epistle, an Android app, that lets you edit a text file from Dropbox on your Android device.

Here are my Epistle settings:

Obviously then you can edit the text files from your PC using Notepad or Writepad.

So my issue with To Do list was done. That worked so well I began looking for how how I could leverage that solution.

My wife and I are always making grocery lists on scraps of paper and then leaving them at home when we drive by the grocery store.

Epistle would fix that!

But my wife uses an iPhone.

One thing I don't like about iOS apps is that there are so many fewer free apps. It's not that I mind paying for apps, it's just that simple function should be simple cost, maybe even free.

After looking at a number of iOS apps that allow editing of Dropbox text files, I settled on Nebulous Notes Lite. As you'd guess from the "Lite" moniker, there's a paid version that eliminates the ads but it costs $5. Way too much.

Here are my Nebulous Notes settings:

My wife loves it. She'll update the grocery list and text me to stop by the grocery store and I've got a complete list.

So we're done.

Not so fast.

I got a new Google Chromebook. No Notepad there. Sure I could download a file from Dropbox, edit it using Google Docs, and reupload it to Dropbox but that wasn't cool.

So I Googled it some and found Writebox. It does the same thing as Epistle and Nebulous Notes but from a browser. Perfect for the Chromebook. And there's even a Chrome app if you want it more integrated.

Writebox doesn't have an automatic sync option like Epistle and Nebulous Notes so you have to press Ctrl+S when you're done.

The future is here.

Chromebook II

In my original post about my Chromebook I expressed some concerns. These haven't been assuaged.

This week I took the Chromebook into the "wild." I took it to work. As I waited for the meeting to start I started watching a youtube video. Occasionally I would switch to another tab and perform another task, e.g. checking my mail. When I did, the audio got choppy.

The youtube progress indicators were right on top of each other. The red line is the current position and the gray line is the progress of the download.

Hmmm. Must be that the facility's bandwidth was marginal.

Nope. What could it be? Processor?

Bingo! Incredible. 92% of a processor (remember it's dual-core) was being used to render the youtube video.

So I come home and begin to read my RSS feeds. Up near the top was Brian Kreb's post on yet another Flash update. Chrome browser on Windows 7 is prompting me to update it to v23.0.1271.64 m.

So I go over to the Chromebook. No prompt to update but maybe it's so slick it did it in the background.

Sorry Charlie. Build Date: Thursday, November 1, 2012. Specifically the Flash plugin is 11.5.31.2 on Chrome browser on Windows 7 and 11.3.31.518 on the Chromebook even a day later.

ChromeOS updated yesterday to a November 6 build (why did it take 4 days?) but it still had Flash 11.3.31.518. And not a word on the Chrome Blog.

C'mon Google!

Chromebook

On the day the new Samsung Chromebook was announced, I pre-ordered one from BestBuy. Long story why but it arrived last Thursday.

My wife has used it as much as I have and she loves it. She likes it because it is light and cool. She normally uses a ThinkPad T61.

Me, I'm a little more objective.

Since it only has a 16GB SSD I ordered a 32GB SD card to supplement it. The SD slot in my T420 lets the card go completely inside the chassis so I just assumed that's what the Chromebook would do also. Wrong.

The picture on the left is of the empty slot and on the right the card is inserted. You can see that the card protrudes about 3/8". You can't practically leave it in there as you'll break it off. Grumble, grumble.

Also notice how the screen hinge sticks up noticeably. I know it only costs $249 but that's UGLY.

The browser on Chrome OS isn't the same as the Chrome Browser on Windows.

For example, I use the Chrome Toolbox. Here's the Chrome Toolbox v1.0.32 Options screen on Chrome 22.0.1229.94 m on Windows 7.

And here's the Chrome Toolbox v1.0.32 Options screen on Chrome OS 23.0.1271.49.

"Double click on a tab to close it" is why I use this extension. No, that's not an option on the Chromebook.

I've just begun to play with Chrome Remote Desktop. On Chrome on Windows it is v1.9.1271.42, On the Chromebook it is v1.8.1229.66 and still labeled "BETA".

On Chrome on Windows the Chrome Remote Desktop is an icon on the new tab screen.

Not so on the Chromebook.

So how do you invoke Chrome Remote Desktop? Chrome Remote Desktop is the last icon in the app list.

From there on, it works fine.

Stay tuned for more discussion of Chrome Remote Desktop.

Now a Chromebook lives and dies by the Cloud. So you'd expect the interaction with cloud services would be exemplary? Don't get your hopes up.

Ctrl+M (more on that keystroke combo in a little) brings up the Chromebook's File Manager.

Yeah, that's not what I was expecting either. Folders are just intermingled with files.

Just to compare, here's the web presentation of Google Drive (from the Chromebook).

Ok, now to keystroke combos. I was using Google Plus and wanted to go to the top of the page. So I just needed to hit Home. Sorry, no Home key.

Nothing in Help to point me to it. A Google search turned up Ctrl+Alt+Up Arrow. Give me a break! It takes 3 keystrokes to enter something as fundamental to web browsing as Home?

So you want to know what the rest of the secret codes are? Good luck. Try Ctrl+Alt+/.

I'm not kidding. That's the documentation. Just poke around and discover what does what. Unacceptable.

I'm not sure about the Chromebook.

Update: More here.