.NET From India

Media Sharing and PS3

I have always had a number of computers at home, but till recently all media(videos/music) etc was always centralized on my main desktop. Then around six months ago, I upgraded an old disposed computer and installed Windows Home Server (currently running Power Pack 3) on it. I love the automatic backup and centralization that Home Server provides and slowly started moving some of my media over to the home server. Everything was fine as the main desktop was still the place where I watch the media from and I just integrated the home server path into my Windows 7 Videos library and everything was fine.

Then I got a PS3 (mostly for the BR functionality) as a part of a bundled offer and there I had a media extender connected to my TV. So obviously I wanted to now watch my videos on my TV rather than my monitor (which was smaller).

It was a no brainer with the Win 7 desktop. You turn on Media Sharing and then if required you can select which devices to allow etc. I just set it to allow all devices on my home network and everything was fine. My PS3 was able to find all the videos in my Library (This is a really cool feature of Windows 7. So all my different folders of Videos are now available in a single place and easy to find). No problems there. (From what I read online, looks like it was a little more complicated with Vista and Windows 7 and the latest firmware upgrade of PS3 actually make this integration easy).

PS3 was also able to find my Home Server easily as a media source, but was not able to load all the videos from my videos share. I was able to find only a couple of folders (actually only 2 from around 7 folders in my video share got listed). I searched online, did all kinds of setting changes, but even after 2-3 weeks I was unable to get my all home server videos streaming to the PS3.

So in the end I gave up trying to get the home server to stream the videos and decided to install a new media server software on my home server to do it right. I ended choosing PS3 Media Server, just because of the name.. This is a open source DNLA compliant UPnP server, targeted to work for PS3. One of the main features of this media server is that it would actually transcode videos that are in a format that cannot be handled by the PS3. Obviously if you need to transcode videos, then you better have the CPU power to do that. My home server built from a old PC, cannot actually support this, but almost all of my videos are in PS3 compliant format (esp since PS3 now supports DivX). Another cool feature of PS3 Media Server is that it has an option to run it as a service. This is the option I use as it is not always that I am logged into my home server.

 

With this setup, I am now able to stream all of my videos out of my home server into my TV via the PS3…

Technorati Tags: PS3,Windows Home Server,Media Sharing

Creating a Wireless Access Point on the Fly

Most WiFi networks are setup with WPA or related security and you are able to connect to it from most devices. But connections in places like airports have special login pages which prevent some devices from being used. Also sometimes, you have a wired connection, but your other devices (phone etc) do not have a way to connect.

This is where the new tool called Connectify helps. Connectify creates a virtual wireless connection based on the network connection you have on your laptop/desktop. It just uses your existing Wireless Card and does not need any other hardware. The only caveat is that it will run only on Windows 7, as it uses technologies that are part of the Windows 7 stack.

So once you are connected to a network on your computer, you run the tool and you can then setup the properties of your WiFi connection, including the type of security setting you want, WPA2 or WEP, and the connection name.

 

Start your hotspot and there you have a new WiFi hotspot. Connectify is still in beta and the initial versions had a number of problems that would not allow me to even start the hotspot due to some IP problems with my router. But the current version seems to have solved most of these problems.

 

There are still a number of small problems and mostly it will tell you reset your wireless connection and restart, but this is still a cool tool and really useful in a number of scenarios.

Under the scenes this use the Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) built into Windows 7 to  enable you to share the internet connection.

Once you connect to the access point, you are on the network, your laptop/desktop is on. The desktop app also shows the clients connected to this hotspot, so you can monitor to make sure there are no hop-ons.

PDC Downloader - No More !!

A few months back I wrote and application called the PDC downloader and Viewer and released it at CodePlex.

Over the last couple of weekends, I kind of updated the application, so that it can also be used to get the Mix 2009 videos. So now it is a more of a generic Event video downloader and viewer. If MS continues to use similar naming conventions, this application can be updated quite easily to download and view videos from other future events too.

The new version 1.0.0.3 of the updated Event Video downloader and viewer is now available for download from Codeplex.

Technorati Tags: PDC 2008,Mix 2009,Video Downloader,Project,Codeplex

Play a game with a virtual partner

GIVE (Generating Instructions in Virtual Environments) is a online 3D game where you partner with a computer to win the game. The idea is to use the interactions to improve the AI system, based on the feedback from gamers.

The game is available at http://www.give-challenge.org/.

The feedback from gamers will be analyzed by the game developers to compare how well each of the four AI systems did in the GIVE challenge, with the goal of making computers better partners in a variety of both virtual and real world tasks.

GIVE is the first online game in which your partner in the game is the AI software itself. The challenge adds to a growing movement among AI researchers that allows Internet users to participate in the development and assessment of intelligent software.

The game is open till Jan 2009.

The system seems to be built on top of Java and does not use the HTTP port to communicate with the server. So if you are behind a firewall, you are out of luck.

Internet Bog down

Nemertes Research , an IT research firm has published a report that predicts that there will be a major problem with the availability of Internet bandwidth by 2012. They had initially predicted this will happen by 2010, but taking the current economic meltdown, they have modified the date to 2012.

Press Release: User Demand for the Internet Could Outpace Network Capacity by 2010

Nemertes emphasized it is not projecting that the Internet will crash or shut down altogether. Rather, the typical user probably will experience Internet "brownouts," where such high-bandwidth applications as high-definition video-streaming and peer-to-peer file-sharing will stop performing up to users' expectations, the firm says.

Another fallout mentioned in the report is in the area of innovation around the Internet. This includes a number of areas that are proving to be the hotbed of new innovations like around mash-ups, SaaS, service oriented applications etc.

Looking forward, Nemertes says that if this capacity issue is not addressed, the Internet will fracture into a tiered system where companies with the most money will pay for specialized network infrastructure that will ensure their content is delivered at higher speeds than non-favored content.

This fractured system -- where certain entities can pay extra money to give their content favored treatment -- is what advocates of network neutrality have been working to avoid by preventing ISPs from discriminating against certain types of content. The Nemertes report gloomily concludes that although the Internet will not shut down entirely, it will experience a dramatic slowdown in innovation because "new content and application providers will be handicapped by the relatively poorer performance of their offerings vis-à-vis those created by the established players."

We are already seeing quite a bit of capacity problem starting with ISPs like Comcast putting in place the so called "Network Management Systems" and putting in place bandwidth caps. There is also talk of different ISPs trying out bandwidth based pricing schemes.

Revisit Ancient Rome

Another example of how technology is being used to generate interest in something that we (meaning public at large) normally will not spend time researching. :)

You can now visit Ancient Rome without travel both in air or time via a new simulation that is available on Google Earth.

Ancient Rome 3D, as the new feature is known, is a digital elaboration of some 7,000 buildings recreating Rome circa A.D. 320, at the height of Constantine’s empire, when more than a million inhabitants lived within the city’s Aurelian walls.

It consists of about 7,000 buildings reconstructed through the efforts of Bernard Frischer, director of the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities. The project involved the collaboration of Google Earth, the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, and Past Perfect Productions, a company whose specialty is 3D cultural heritage models.

The above video is of some of the fly-thru of this model.

NY Times Article (may require registration) : Exploring Old Rome Without Air (or Time) Travel

Free Web Conferencing

I am looking out for a free web conferencing service that I can use for some technology webcasts/webinars for the community. The options that I want are:

1. Do a presentation using PowerPoint
2. Share applications or the desktop to show demos
3. Audio over the Internet
4. Video via a Webcam support (something that is not a must, but I kind of would like it)
5. Recording of the whole conference for later feedback either as WMV or other video formats
6. Unlimited attendees (or atleast a large number of attendees).

I am even fine if there is a low monthly fee, but most of the services either seem to restrict the number of attendees in the free or low cost form and need an enterprise license for the higher attendee support. The reason I want a high attendee count is because this is aimed at the community, it makes little sense if it is restricted to 5 attendees etc. Though I understand unrestricted attendees maybe too much to ask for, I would be OK with 500+ attendee support.

Skypecasts seem to be right for this, but then I found that Skype has pulled the plug on that one.

I kind of like Livemeeting, which is around USD 15 per presenter (in the professional version), but allows up to 1250 attendees per meeting. But you need to buy at least 5 user license. No single user license.

Any ideas anyone? If you/your company do run a webinar service and would like to offer Ad supported service I am OK with that too. Leave a comment, use the contact me link in the blog.

GPS Spoofing

GPS is such a important part of our everyday life in the US. It is also now becoming available in India and am sure in the next couple of years the usage will grow.

So it was interesting to find this article on how lax the security on consumer GPS really is. The military side does have security built in, but the consumer side was just an added feature. I assume they did not spend too much time thinking about security for that.

SAAS vs travel

I found this interesting post at SQL Performance.

In some sense it does make sense comparing SAAS to a taxi. You want to get to a place, you don't care about the make, how it is run etc. You agree on certain response times, cost etc. and focus on getting to the place.

You also get some of the same disadvantages, you have limited control on how the car looks, how fast it can go, how fast it can respond to changes in your plans etc. You may also be left in the lurch once in a while when your taxi just does not turn up at the right time.

Also if you plan to take the taxi to work everyday, you are looking at a very costly proposition. You usually use the taxi when the travel is not core to your business. When your business depends on it, most probably it is cheaper and definitely safer to get your own car, even if it means a little bit extra up-front.

Instant On Laptops

ZDNet has a blog post on the new Dell Linux based Instant On environment. The post talks about how this is a great thing and why this maybe something that MS maynot like so much.

My take:
It is a good thing to have instant on, booting a machine is the most frustrating time for me. But nowadays I rarely boot my laptop. It is almost always in sleep. I reboot only maybe once a couple of weeks or so when I have installed something that wants a reboot, or I just want to do a shutdown as I may not be using the machine for a couple of days.