Amazon.com jumpstarted the stagnated ebook market with the release of the Kindle. Though at a glance the device comes off as a simple e-reader, it boasts a feature set that make the device as powerful as it is comfortable to read. A built in QWERTY keyboard makes it easy to annotate text, highlight passages, and leave notes beyond what would have normally fit in the magian of a conventional book. All without doing physical damage to the book in the process.
I really wanted to take my time with the Kindle before putting together a review. To that end, I have spent that last 5 months reading. In that time I have completed 21 Kindle based novels and 4 hard cover versions. More than enough time, I believe, to evaluate the content consumption device...
I have had two clients ask me about the Drobo Elite, an 8 bay BeyondRAID SAN solution from Data Robotic Inc. I'm already a fan of the 4 bay Drobo for USB 2.0 and FireWire 800 equipped machines, so I started reading up on the Drobo Elite. My first interest was in the disk speeds. I wanted to know what kind of data access speeds workstations could expect when connecting to the Drobo Elite via iSCSI. To my surprise, no benchmarks were available online. So when I had the chance to evaluate the Elite first hand, I ran some tests and put it through the paces.
My network centers around a 24 port gigabit D-Link switch. But since this is an unmanaged (consumer quality) switch, I wanted to make sure the fairly low end switch would not hinder test results. To remove the switch from the equation, I simply attached a Macintosh to each of the Drobo Elite's gigabit network ports directly via the Cat-5e network cables included with the Drobo. In the end, the tests I ran via a connection through the D-Link switch were directly comparable to the direct connection to the Drobo, but the following benchmarks were conducted via direct connection...
I recently had an opportunity to review the latest Drobo enterprise solution, the Drobo Elite. It boasts 8 SATA drive bays and can be configured for either single or dual drive redundancy. The Drobo Elite, like the rest of Drobo's product line is RAID made easy. In truth, its RAID maid drop dead easy. And with the iSCSI support built into this product, the folks at Data Robotic Inc. (makers of Drobo) have made iSCSI equally easy.
Those familiar with Drobo know that the company has forsaken the traditional RAID paradigm for what it has branded BeyondRAID. Its not just RAID with a clever little name for marketing reasons. Its RAID done right. Its RAID made simple. While traditional RAID configurations technically allow the mixing of different capacity drives in the array, they do it by sacrificing disk space. The smallest drive in the array becomes the usable capacity of every drive in the array. So, with an array made up of one 1TB drive and three 2TB drives, the capacity of each drive becomes 1TB in the eyes of the RAID controller...
I have a small stack of Visa check cards that have been collecting on my desk over the last year an a half. I buy a fair amount of tech gear online throughout the year. I get hardware when I find a good deal, and in many cases that involves a rebate from the manufacturer. But recent trends have the rebates coming back in the form of Visa check cards. No more rebate checks. Everyone issues the rebate on a check/debit card. I'm not sure of the upside for the company issuing the rebate, but when you want to redeem the gift card it can be a pain in the ass.
For example, say you want to use the gift card to pay for a meal. If its a $20 gift card, you can't actually spent the $20 on the meal. 15% or more is held back from the available limit to allow room for gratuity on the purchase. On top of that, the total for the bill will never equal that of the check card, so you either split the payment between the check card and a credit card, or you make up the difference in cash. And not knowing if the gratuity hold back is 15%, 20% or 25%, its impossible to spend the balance of the card without a lot of screwing around and hassling the already overworked waiter/waitress. Using a gift card for payment at a restaurant is a fail...
Vulcan's Forge was the first book in the Phillip Mercer series by Jack Du Brul. It was first published in 1998. I have read the Oregon Files series of novels by Jack Du Brul and Clive Cussler and had been eager to find out what Du Brul's initial solo effort was like. Not only am I eager to read the second book in the series, but I'm actually very excited that there are 5 more books in this series after that.
Vulcan's Forge introduces the lead character, Phillip Mercer, a creative and high energy Geologist with a knack for getting into trouble. The story actually starts in 1954 when a then state of the art transport ship is scuttled on its maiden voyage. The plan behind the destruction of the ship turns out to be a Soviet plot that will be decades in the making...
Getting digital content from the computer to the TV has long been a challenge. The fairly recent arrival of the Xbox 360 and Sony's PS3 have brought a solution to the mainstream that put the capability in the hands of the technically sophisticated. They both offer internal media players that will stream video, music, and photos across the network to the HD screen now found in the average living room. But such multi-media integration should be in the hands of the average computer users, regardless of their technical awareness or skill. The first product to do this, and do it well has arrived: Western Digital's WD TV Live HD.
Its a name that won't roll off the tongue, no matter how you practice. But the device works, and it works well. Where game consoles suck as the 360 and the PS3 make the computer based media available, accessing that content is still more difficult than it should be and still requires customers to shell out some big bucks to get the game console in the first place. The WD TV Live is a box that is currently listing for about $119 on Amazon.com and BestBuy.com. It is a small unit with its own remote control. It plugs into a HD TV and connects to movies music and photos by either linking to a networked computer in the house, or an external hard drive connected to the box via USB...
Back for the second season, ABC's Castle is one of this seasons prime-time shows that I am most interested in. Season 1 was compelling and sure to interest fans of Nathan Fillion. Many will remember Fillion from his role as Malcolm Reynolds on the classic but short lived Firefly series. Needless to say, Fillion's roll as crime author Richard Castle plays to the actors strengths and makes for an amusing series.
So, here's why I find this show interesting enough to warrant a post. The shows main character, Richard Castle, successful author who decides to kill off the character that made him famous. The plot explains that Castle is bored writing about the character because he knows him inside out. He wants to create a new character.
Castle spends some time with the NYPD and finds inspiration for a new character. He pulls some strings at the NYPD and the Mayors office and get assigned as a consultant to a detective on which he plans to based his new character. The new character, Nikki Heat, is based on NYPD detective Kate Beckett. Wikipedia has some interesting background on the characters.
At the beginning of season 1, Castle kills off the lead character that supposedly made him a house hold name and risks his career with a new book. He starts investigating strange cases with Beckett. Shortly into season 2, Castle is about to release the first book based on the Nikki Heat character. This is the part that I find fascinating.
In this weeks upcoming episode Castle's book is supposed to hit fictional store shelves within the show. But in real life, a physical copy of the book is also hitting book stores. In fact Amazon.com is offering both a hard cover version of the book as well as a copy of the Amazon Kindle e-book reader. And, just to be clear, the book is being published in real life. Further more, its being published under the author name of the fictional character, Richard Castle!
I was talking with my neighbor the other day and he was going on about his disappointment that while it was easy to watch Divx and Xvid movies over the network on his Xbox 360, there is no support for MKV files he had downloaded. Each video he had was a 720p or 1080p high definition download. And if he wanted to watch the video on his 360, he had to transcode the video to Xvid before he could watch it in his living room. This was taking him 8-12 hours to transcode even on his high end Mac.
I did some digging and found an obscure reference in a forum indicating that the transcoding wasn't really necessary after all as long as you had QuickTime Pro and used the correct settings. It turns out that the QuickTime export for MP4 has an option in its video settings to allow "Video Passthrough". This lets us open a MKV file in QuickTime Player 7 and export the video out to MP4 (Xvid really) in a fraction of the time it takes to transcode the video...
Project Motorsport started out as a fun way to spend an afternoon. We set out to shoot some motorcycle video and have a good time. Once when we brought the video back and began to edit, we realized we had the making of a music video.
Check out the video and see for yourself. And, if your interested in further information on the project, we give you that too!
The Freedom to Switch:
In 2003 Apple Computer released a marketing campaign with the intention of showing Wintel users how easy it would be to "switch" platforms.
One of the Mac's main selling points, ironically enough, was Digital Video Editing. Apple wanted the world to see how easy it was to edit video on the Mac platform. And, in overwhelming response, Mac users set out to show the world just how easy it really was.
The campaign was effective for Apple, but also spawned a unexpected parody campaign in the Mac underworld. Users from all of the world whipped out their camcorders and set to work making spoofs in the same cinematic style as the acclaimed commercial line.
With this, Maclive.net rose to the challenge and shot our own spoof. We think it proves that a Mac can be a powerful tool in the wrong hands. It also shows how far a couple of Mac fans will go for a laugh. We hope you enjoy our contribution, aptly named The Freedom to Switch.
Amazon.com jumpstarted the stagnated ebook market with the release of the Kindle. Though at a glance the device comes off as a simple e-reader, it boasts a feature set that make the device as powerful as it is comfortable to read. A built in QWERTY keyboard makes it easy to annotate text, highlight passages, and leave notes beyond what would have normally fit in the magian of a conventional book. All without doing physical damage to the book in the process.
I have had two clients ask me about the Drobo Elite, an 8 bay BeyondRAID SAN solution from Data Robotic Inc. I'm already a fan of the 4 bay Drobo for USB 2.0 and FireWire 800 equipped machines, so I started reading up on the Drobo Elite. My first interest was in the disk speeds. I wanted to know what kind of data access speeds workstations could expect when connecting to the Drobo Elite via iSCSI. To my surprise, no benchmarks were available online. So when I had the chance to evaluate the Elite first hand, I ran some tests and put it through the paces.
I have a small stack of Visa check cards that have been collecting on my desk over the last year an a half. I buy a fair amount of tech gear online throughout the year. I get hardware when I find a good deal, and in many cases that involves a rebate from the manufacturer. But recent trends have the rebates coming back in the form of Visa check cards. No more rebate checks. Everyone issues the rebate on a check/debit card. I'm not sure of the upside for the company issuing the rebate, but when you want to redeem the gift card it can be a pain in the ass.
Vulcan's Forge was the first book in the Phillip Mercer series by Jack Du Brul. It was first published in 1998. I have read the Oregon Files series of novels by Jack Du Brul and Clive Cussler and had been eager to find out what Du Brul's initial solo effort was like. Not only am I eager to read the second book in the series, but I'm actually very excited that there are 5 more books in this series after that.
Getting digital content from the computer to the TV has long been a challenge. The fairly recent arrival of the Xbox 360 and Sony's PS3 have brought a solution to the mainstream that put the capability in the hands of the technically sophisticated. They both offer internal media players that will stream video, music, and photos across the network to the HD screen now found in the average living room. But such multi-media integration should be in the hands of the average computer users, regardless of their technical awareness or skill. The first product to do this, and do it well has arrived: Western Digital's WD TV Live HD.
I was talking with my neighbor the other day and he was going on about his disappointment that while it was easy to watch Divx and Xvid movies over the network on his Xbox 360, there is no support for MKV files he had downloaded. Each video he had was a 720p or 1080p high definition download. And if he wanted to watch the video on his 360, he had to transcode the video to Xvid before he could watch it in his living room. This was taking him 8-12 hours to transcode even on his high end Mac.
