Gidley's Gossipings

Back to pc

2013-04-20T11:22:00.001+01:00

I've been a Mac user for about 5 years and my iMac is now struggling and I was looking to upgrade it. This proved a challenge as the screen is awesome, but the innards are dated. I did look at macs but there wasn't a good option.
So I've just bought a windows tower to plug into it. I got windows 8 and am currently 'learning' metro.

Windows Mobile update

2013-03-05T19:26:00.000Z

I have finally given up on my Nokia Lumia 820 (after less than 4 months!) - in short it was the software.
What made me swap was less any specific weakness (though there are lots) but more playing with a LG Nexus 4. The experience is just so much more integrated.
A few issues with Windows Phone where Android beats it

Maps - These are meant to be a strength of nokia and the road mapping is ok. However places (e.g. shops, addresses) are much worse than google. It often can't find places based on the name. It is also rubbish at suggesting what is in the area.
Mail - GMail is buggy on it - the activesync mode crashes and imap takes ages
UI - although nice it is quite restrictive if you leave an app it takes more clicks than it should to get it
Apps - There are apps for most stuff, but a lot have glitches

So overall I have given it up and don't miss it. Also Android has some killer apps e.g. Ingress!

Music industry isn't doomed... Some lessons for the TV industry

2013-03-04T19:24:00.002Z

The news from last year is the music industry appears not to be as doomed as previously thought - in 2012 it grew revenue overall (0.3%) and digital grew 34%! This should provide some hope to those who aren't predicting the wholesale collapse of the content creation industry due to the internet.
It also provides some hope for the other industries - one of the key lessons seems a strong market in legal options reduces privacy and increases sales.
This does point to some lessons for the TV industry

Make content available in as many countries as possible in legal ways - all to often due to 'rights' content is not available in some countries or has a substantial time delay driving privacy.
Offer a range of purchase options - subscription, pay per view etc
Offer content with 'frictionless' user experience
Offer content on a range of competing delivery choices - exclusivity is common for TV but rare for music. In the internet world this is hard to maintain and further incentivises piracy.

Lumia 820 - 1.5 months in

2013-01-18T17:27:00.001Z

I thought one final update on the Lumia 820 was worth doing. I have now have 1.5 months and some things have changed since my previous reviews.
Firstly I am still very happy with the phone - it is one of the better phones I have owned. It works, it's easy to use and generally very functional.
The big changes I have noticed since last time

The email sync to Google Mail is flakey. It was initially set to use ActiveSync, but it kept crashing. It would stick syncing and you would have to reboot the phone. Google appear to have done me a favour by forcing a change to IMAP. I switched it to IMAP manually and it all works fine. There is no more push email but otherwise it works.
Nokia Maps - it's good, and the offline mode is nice. However the places search is a lot worse than google. A lot less places are found.
The 'other' space on the phone memory has filled up on my phone and there doesn't appear to be a way to clear it. It is unclear what is in there and lots of people have this problem. Removing some apps has helped but it is a bit annoying to have a phone complaining of running out of space all the time.
Windows Phone sync for apple has been updated and now it works on my mac without crashing. It is very slow (it took over 1 day to sync my 5000+ songs on iTunes!).

Overall I'm still happy with it - but some of the above is really annoying!

2012 Trips

2012-12-26T11:00:00.000Z

I have been tracking my travelling on business and decided this year to try and have a map!
The map is courtesy of Tripline which provides a neat service for tracking and mapping where you have been.
The most interesting trips of the year have been the 2 long trips I took to visit Irdeto offices in the US. In January I got to go to CES (Las Vegas), visit our Carlsbad office and our Minnesota office. A great part of the trip was driving from Las Vegas to Carlsbad and seeing a bit more of America in the middle. I didn't get to see much of Minnesota on that trip (too cold for me!), but luckily I got to go back early October when the weather was great.

The Full List

Nokia Lumia 820 - 2 weeks in

2012-12-15T17:55:00.000Z

I have had my Nokia Lumia 820 now for 2 weeks and I thought I should update my initial review.

A few things I have learnt

Battery life is ok but not great - I have had it totally lose battery once (but it was after a days Geo-Caching)
Geocaching.com app now works! However I did also find a second app Maaloo Geocaching which works well.
Windowsphone.com has no geo-detection so it keeps guiding me to the US store and tells me I can't buy stuff!
Nokia Maps is good but it's local database isn't anyway near as good as google's
The UI is awesome - smooth and nice to use
Skype is a bit unreliable - it often notifies days after a message has been sent - which is surprising given it's a MS app!
Camera is very nice, works well and quickly.

Overall I'm very pleased with it - it is a great phone and definitely better than recent Androids/iPhones I have used!

Synology NAS, SMB, NFS and Macs and Autofs

2012-12-14T17:52:00.003Z

I recently got a Synology NAS to store my videos, photos and music on and decided to try and set it up with my home iMac to store transparently my movies, videos and photos. In principle on a unix mounting a drive should be a simple thing... but in practice it turned into a bit of a mission

1) Plan A - AFP/SMB

I set up the NAS to expose a 'Music' folder via AFP and SMB and easily could see it and add it from my mac. By default you do this with finder and it mounts it under /Volumes. However I wanted it to appear in my 'Music' directory - that way iTunes can transparently use it as though it a local disk.

For that to work I need 2 things

Automatically Mount it
Permissions to look allow easy writing/reading

To make it more fun I keep my music in /User/Shared/Music so other account on the computer can see the same music so the group permissions matter otherwise other users can add music.

So I tried using autofs to mount the drive. I found a bunch of instruction sets on the net and got it all configured but the drive mounted owned by root and my user can't read it. Some googling later suggests this is an issue since Mac 10.7 - if you use autofs with AFP/SMB. I tried a range of flags to fix this and none helped :(

2) Plan B - NFS Issue

So I thought I would try NFS. I enabled this on synology and configured it via autofs. The steps are quite easy...

On the NAS

Enable NFS for the share (in the share manager)

You need to add the IP of the mac machine or you can add IP of your whole local network

Enable SSH on the NAS
SSH into the NAS as root@NAS using the 'Admin' password
cd /etc/
Edit exportfs and add 'insecure' to the flags e.g.

/volume1/Movies 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0(rw,async,no_wdelay,root_squash,insecure,insecure_locks,anonuid=1025,anongid=20)
NOTE the insecure flag doesn't make it insecure, it just allows the mac NFS client to use ports above 1024 (which are usable by non-root processes). This is the default behaviour on mac's.
NFS in using a netmask like this is very insecure as any machine on your wifi can access the share!

On the Mac

Edit /etc/auto_master
Add a line like

/- auto_cabbage
Make sure there is an empty line at the end of the file

Create a file called /etc/auto_cabbage (cabbage is the name of my NAS)

Add a line mounting the drive e.g.
/Users/Shared/Movies cabbage.local:/volume1/Movies
Make sure there is an empty line at the end of the file

Once done cd into the folder and you should be good to go.

I then hit permission problems - I had copied my files onto the NAS via SMB so they were 'owned' by my 'ben' user on the NAS which had a group ID of 100. Whereas my Mac 'ben' user has a group ID of 20. To fix ssh onto the nas again and cd /volume1 and run 'chgrp -R 100 Music'

So end result is iTunes (and Photo's) all now transparently use the NAS and my poor overworked iMac can take a break!

1) 'insecure' flag Issue 2) 'UID/GID' mapping

Data, Three UK and it's 2G Network

2012-12-08T08:43:00.001Z

I have been using Three for a while now and one of the great features was they used Orange's 2G network as fallback when their network didn't have coverage. This is quite useful as their 3G coverage (although good) doesn't quite reach everywhere.
Recently I had noticed my phone had often failed to get data when it dropped to 2G. I thought it was a configuration setting (it was running custom firmware) so had ignore it. When I got a new phone (a Nokia Lumia) it thought when on 2G is was roaming and thus disabled data.

@bgidley It is roaming if it's on 2G, we don't have a 2G network. You'll be connecting to our 2G fallback network which is Orange.
— ThreeUKSupport (@ThreeUKSupport) December 5, 2012

So I asked a bit more about the settings and they said

@bgidley It's not available on 2G anymore.
— ThreeUKSupport (@ThreeUKSupport) December 6, 2012

So it appears three have decided we don't need data on 2G. Which is really annoying - there are huge chunks of the country where they only have 2G coverage. It's also annoying they have done this but a quick google of their web site suggests they don't mention it anywhere!

Nokia Lumia 820

2012-12-02T16:48:00.000Z

I just got a Nokia Lumia 820 Window 8 Mobile and thought I would write some of my initial impressions.

The device itself is really well made, feels substantial but not too heavy and looks nice. The soft 'shell' case looks great and fits in your pocket nicely.

The main thing about this is the Window 8 software and it is excellent. There are a few rough edges but the main experience was great.

Things I liked

The wireless charging just works
The UI is smooth, I haven't seen any glitches yet
The Gmail integration worked perfectly - email, contacts and calendar all just worked
The apps from the store are good - with the exception of music and geocaching I have found excellent apps for everything I use on Android

A couple of the glitches I noticed

The setup sequence assumed (wrongly in my case) that data would work on the card straight away so got stuck trying to log in. It didn't offer an option to set up wifi.
Lots of the Apps (even new ones like Nokia Drive) won't download stuff in the background. So I had to wait while Nokia Drive downloaded its maps.
Some of Microsoft's apps (e.g. SkyDrive) kept prompting me to login - can't they do single sign on with the Windows Live account on the phone!
For some reason a lot of the core Nokia apps aren't pre-installed, instead they have icons on the home screen that then install them from the store - why?????
Geocaching.com's app won't login it just has some error - this seems to be WP8 issue as others have noticed it.

The most disappointing thing is the Music support. Nokia music looks like a nice app, but I can't get my music onto the phone. I tried the Windows Phone for mac software (on two macs) and it just crashes when I connect my phone. The internet is full of people who have the same issue so hopefully they'll fix it soon! There also aren't apps that work with my preferred Cloud music providers (Amazon and Google). Hopefully one will appear soon. In the meantime I'll have to manually sync the phone by copying the files to a SD card and putting it in!

Overall it's a really nice phone - and a nice replacement for my ageing HTC Desire S. I mainly got this phone so I could try the Windows ecosystem and so far am happy. I'll see how easy it is to live with after a few weeks!

Walking website

2012-05-23T19:00:00.000+01:00

I grew up in Brockworth at the foot of Coopers Hill (of Cheese Rolling fame) and have always been a keen walker so know the routes in the woods up there very well. Over the years a number of circuits to/from Cranham have become favourite walks for me (often including a great pub lunch at the black horse pub).
Helen and I recently 'invented' a new route for walking around Coopers Hill/Cranham/Painswick Beacon - and I decided (after mapping all the paths on openstreetmap) to upload it a site with walking routes. However that is where I hit a flaw - I can't find a decent on!
There are a bunch of (ugly looking) sites where people upload photo's and bad maps, there are some that have ok maps but charge people to download the routes (if I give something away it should be free so won't use them), but none I could find that will let me upload my route, with a nice map (ideally openstreetmap or Ordinance Survey).
If I had more spare time I may build one... but in the meantime if anyone out there knows of one let me know...

Prior Art

2012-05-22T16:42:00.002+01:00

I have always been interested in how the law and practice regarding software patents is working out and one of thing that you often hear is that things that have already been thought of/invented have been patented. I don't have a problem with patents for genuinely new ideas, but often they seem to be minor tweaks on existing ideas...
The problem appears to be that you can patent 'non obvious' ideas, but for people who examine patents things may not look obvious that are obvious to people working in that technical area.
So I think someone (not me!) should create a website of bright ideas people have had, that should provide evidence of prior art and maybe even share some useful ideas.

Family Tree (Mk 2)

2012-01-02T12:14:00.003Z

I have now added in the first batch of the Gidley information that was collected by Gillian. It is online at

Gramps Web Output (for humans)
Gramps GED Output (for computers)
Relationship Graph (monster PDF which you can zoom in to see everyone)

We now have 348 people in our family tree - which isn't bad. I am pretty sure there is more information somewhere in our storage unit so will have to update it a bit more...

Family Tree (mk 1)

2011-12-31T16:37:00.001Z

We have had in storage a tonne of research done by my mother-in-law (Gillian Falla) into our family tree's. It is in the form of hundreds of bits of paper with notes (and I believe there is even a box with copies of source material in!), I decided as a Christmas project to start digitising it.
Initially I was going to scan in it, but when I thought about it a bit harder it struck me a more sense to put into a database of some sorts to make it easy to find stuff. So I did a quite google and found 'Gramps' online which look likely to do the job. So I started typing...

A few days later and I now have the entire 'Falla' side of the tree loaded. The Gidley side is delayed as I can't locate the paperwork to go with it right now... (the storage unit is also full of several hundred classical 78 rpm records which makes finding things quite hard).

So I thought I would upload it in case anyone else out there is tracing the family tree. Gillian got back to the 16th century which I suspect is quite a long way to get in family tree terms! Right now it has 303 people in it with the oldest being born in 1521.

We also get a chart of the most popular surnames in the tree

[Missing Surname], 7% (22)
Berry, 3% (12)
Selby, 3% (11)
Falla, 2% (8)
Hatchard, 1% (6)
Moat, 1% (5)
Mair, 1% (5)
Hall, 1% (5)
Gidley, 1% (5)
Gibbon, 1% (5)

One of the nice things Gramps does is summarise the data so I can now see that the average life span of this lot is 72.3 years (which sounds quite high to me!).

Gramps Web Output (for humans)
Gramps GED Output (for computers)
Relationship Graph (monster PDF which you can zoom in to see everyone)

I still have quite a bit to do on this including

Loading the Gidley side of the tree
Adding pictures for those I have pictures of
Fixing the geo-coding on all the places so all the maps draws (you have to look up lat/long for them!)

But it seems a good start - seeing all the effort that must have gone into gathering this information I thought it is best to get in a format people can use!

Experiment...

2011-12-31T09:09:00.001Z

I have recently 'upgraded' (translation fixed) my Grannies PC and as part of it I had to re-install everything and we came to to the tricky point of putting MS office on. Last time I used a license I had - but now I have moved to Mac I don't actually have any to hand, so this time we have set up Google Docs.
In general I am wary of upgrading or changing anything on the computer - as it can confuse her (she is 89 after all!) but in this case I suspect it may be better. She was taught to use MS Office by the local college (on Office XP) and if anything Google Doc's is closer to that than Office 2010.

Annual Trips Round Up

2011-12-31T09:04:00.001Z

This year has been a big year for travelling so I made a list for myself of all the places I had been for work!

2011/01/04 - 2011/01/07 - Newark NJ, USA
2011/01/25 - 2011/01/27 - Solana Beach, CA, USA
2011/02/01 - 2011/02/03 - Sao Paulo, Brazil
2011/02/08 - 2011/02/10 - Newark NJ, USA
2011/03/01 - 2011/04/09 - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
2011/06/07 - 2011/06/09 - Toronto, Canada
2011/07/05 - 2011/07/07 - Dubai, UAE
2011/07/10 - 2011/07/16 - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
2011/08/02 - 2011/08/04 - Warsaw, Poland
2011/10/03 - 2011/10/12 - Hoofddorp, Netherlands
2011/10/22 - 2011/10/29 - Beijing, China
2011/11/14 - 2011/11/16 - Hoofddorp, Netherlands
2011/11/22 - 2011/11/24 - Hoofddorp, Netherlands
2011/12/04 - 2011/12/07 - Johannesburg, South Africa

It's quite a list... hopefully next year will involve a bit less travelling!

IPTV DRM and the 'news' for Flash

2011-11-23T18:25:00.000Z

There has been quite a bit of interest and discussion about Adobe's decision to stop supporting flash plugins on mobiles (e.g. Android and RIM). A lot of people seem to be reading a lot into the announcement that I don't think and was there and also are misunderstanding the impact - especially for video delivery.

Let's start with the announcement - a lot of people have been writing stories saying 'end of flash on mobile' and similar. This is not what they are saying at all! They are saying they are focusing on app development using Flash as opposed to shipping a browser plugin. This is a big story but not as significant as people are making out. Flash on mobile has been vaguely useful, but it hasn't found a killer application so far. Many flash applications need tuning/tweaking for mobile today as the flash player shipping today doesn't support all of desktop flash's features.

I am mostly interested in how to deliver video to mobiles, pc's and tablets. Adobe has a DRM platform called Flash Access (which is not the same was the widely hacked RTMPE) which is approved by all the major US studio's which lets people deliver their content to a range of platforms. Adobe offering Flash plugin on mobile offered a possibility that within the near future (as right now the plugins don't support Flash Access) you could browse to a video website and see a premium video. Now Adobe have withdrawn this option the isn't likely to be a way to deliver premium video to mobiles and tablets, through the browser for the foreseeable future. A number of commentators have said HTML 5 is the answer - it certainly can play video, but it can't protect the content and no-one is offering a strong HTML 5 solution for protecting content via the browser. Even if someone builds one - (e.g. on Android) - there is unlikely to be one on iOS as Apple won't let anyone bypass the app store for premium content.

So where does this announcement leave us - well actually with a range of options. Adobe are still supporting 'AIR' for mobile devices which will hopefully shortly have Flash Access support. This is important a quite of lot of devices are beginning to support this - including YouView, Samsung TV's, Google TV, Android, iOS and Blackberry QNX. This should provide a way to write an application for one of these devices and relatively easily port it to the others. In theory this is all great - Adobe can now focus on making this a better environment and make it more reliable on these devices.

Adobe has better positioned themselves to sell AIR, but they are missing a big problem - AIR isn't actually that good for cross platform applications! AIR implies a standardised UI and most of these platforms have different and strong UI conventions. If you use AIR you end up ignoring them (as best) and breaking them (at worst). User experiance is critical in such applications and you can't get away with this! A skilled developer can deal with this - but it becomes easier to build all the applications natively!

If I were involved in building an IPTV solution (an oddly I am) I would look at building native applications for most of these platforms using a range of DRM's and video formats as required. Each of these devices has different stengths and weaknesses so I would build

Device	DRM	App Technology
Android	Playready via Cloakware or Authentec	Java
iOS	Playready via Cloakware or Authentec	Cocoa/Objective C
QNX	Flash Access	AIR
Samsung	Playready	HTML 5
LG	Playready	HTML 5

The key thing now is to be able to support whatever DRM and app technology the client device requires. In order to keep costs sane - the applications will end up as thin wrappers around a server side API that provides a lot of the shared logic.

Preparing files for HTTP Streaming with FFMPEG

2011-07-30T08:04:00.001+01:00

I recently wanted to do some video streaming using only 'free' tools to produce the files and deliver the streams. This is now possible as both Apple and Adobe Flash support HTTP streaming, which works with pretty much any web server.

The key steps to product video's for HTTP streaming are

Encode video to H264
Package video for HTTP streaming
Upload to web server

Annoyingly Apple and Adobe use slightly different methods for HTTP streaming so the process is different. Also generally Apple streaming is used to target iOS devices, whereas Adobe is for Android and PC's, therefore you normally want higher quality video for Adobe compared to iOS.

For both platforms you should start with a good quality original, the Adobe example below has the top bit rates at HD levels.

Adobe Packaging

The script below takes a input file (anything that ffmpeg supports) and then converts it to the relevant bits rates.

For this to work you need to install

Recent version of ffmpeg (if it says x264opts is not recognised you need a newer version)
MP4Box (part of http://gpac.wp.institut-telecom.fr/)
Adobe f4fpackager (http://www.adobe.com/products/httpdynamicstreaming/)

#!/bin/bash

echo "Converting $1 into formats"

echo "Outputs are CBR 256, 512, 750, 1024, 1200, 1500, 2000, 2500 kbps"

echo "Below 750 are 512x288, above are 480p up to 1200, 720p above that"

echo "This assumes ffmpeg, MP4Box and f4fpackager are on the path"

size=256

ffmpeg -i "$1" -y -s 512x288 -vcodec libx264 -vpre baseline -x264opts bitrate=$size:keyint=30 -acodec libfaac -ab 65k $1_512x288_256k.mp4

size=512

ffmpeg -i "$1" -y -s 512x288 -vcodec libx264 -vpre baseline -x264opts bitrate=$size:keyint=30 -acodec libfaac -ab 65k $1_512x288_512k.mp4

size=750

ffmpeg -i "$1" -y -s 512x288 -vcodec libx264 -vpre baseline -x264opts bitrate=$size:keyint=30 -acodec libfaac -ab 65k $1_512x288_750k.mp4

size=1024

ffmpeg -i "$1" -y -s 768x576 -vcodec libx264 -vpre baseline -x264opts bitrate=$size:keyint=30 -acodec libfaac -ab 65k $1_768x576_1024k.mp4

size=1200

ffmpeg -i "$1" -y -s 768x576 -vcodec libx264 -vpre baseline -x264opts bitrate=$size:keyint=30 -acodec libfaac -ab 65k $1_768x576_1200k.mp4

size=1500

ffmpeg -i "$1" -y -s 1280x720 -vcodec libx264 -vpre baseline -x264opts bitrate=$size:keyint=30 -acodec libfaac -ab 65k $1_1280x720_1500k.mp4

size=2000

ffmpeg -i "$1" -y -s 1280x720 -vcodec libx264 -vpre baseline -x264opts bitrate=$size:keyint=30 -acodec libfaac -ab 65k $1_1280x720_2000k.mp4

size=2500

ffmpeg -i "$1" -y -s 1280x720 -vcodec libx264 -vpre baseline -x264opts bitrate=$size:keyint=30 -acodec libfaac -ab 65k $1_1280x720_2500k.mp4

echo "Transcoding Complete"

MP4Box -add $1_512x288_256k.mp4 $1_512x288_256k.mp4

MP4Box -add $1_512x288_512k.mp4 $1_512x288_512k.mp4

MP4Box -add $1_512x288_750k.mp4 $1_512x288_750k.mp4

MP4Box -add $1_768x576_1024k.mp4 $1_768x576_1024k.mp4

MP4Box -add $1_768x576_1200k.mp4 $1_768x576_1200k.mp4

MP4Box -add $1_1280x720_1500k.mp4 $1_1280x720_1500k.mp4

MP4Box -add $1_1280x720_2000k.mp4 $1_1280x720_2000k.mp4

MP4Box -add $1_1280x720_2500k.mp4 $1_1280x720_2500k.mp4

echo "Reboxing Complete"

mkdir $1_packaged

cd $1_packaged

f4fpackager --input-file=../$1_512x288_256k.mp4 --bitrate=256

f4fpackager --input-file=../$1_512x288_512k.mp4 --manifest-file=$1_512x288_256k.f4m --bitrate=512

f4fpackager --input-file=../$1_512x288_750k.mp4 --manifest-file=$1_512x288_512k.f4m --bitrate=750

f4fpackager --input-file=../$1_768x576_1024k.mp4 --manifest-file=$1_512x288_750k.f4m --bitrate=1024

f4fpackager --input-file=../$1_768x576_1200k.mp4 --manifest-file=$1_768x576_1024k.f4m --bitrate=1200

f4fpackager --input-file=../$1_1280x720_1500k.mp4 --manifest-file=$1_768x576_1200k.f4m --bitrate=1500

f4fpackager --input-file=../$1_1280x720_2000k.mp4 --manifest-file=$1_1280x720_1500k.f4m --bitrate=2000

f4fpackager --input-file=../$1_1280x720_2500k.mp4 --manifest-file=$1_1280x720_2000k.f4m --bitrate=2500

cd ..

echo "Flash Conversion complete"

The steps above are

Use ffmpeg to produce a range of bit rates for http streaming. This is using 'baseline' preset from x264. You can actually use high profile for flash on PC - but it takes a bit longer so I didn't bother.
You shouldn't need to use mp4box, but due to some incompatibilities between ffmpeg and f4fpackager you need to. This simply 'fixes' the wrapper file that contains the video.
Use f4fpackager to produce a f4m file

To deliver this video you have to install the adobe http dynamic streaming apache module http://www.adobe.com/products/httpdynamicstreaming/ and point at the highest bitrate output f4m file.

Apple iOS Packaging

For Apple the process is nearly the same except you will generally use different encodes.

#!/bin/bash

echo "Converting $1 into formats"

size=128

ffmpeg -i "$1" -y -s 320x240 -vcodec libx264 -g 30 -vpre ipod320 -x264opts bitrate=$size:keyint=30 -acodec libmp3lame -ac 1 $1_lo.mov

size=256

ffmpeg -i "$1" -y -s 320x240 -vcodec libx264 -g 30 -vpre ipod320 -x264opts bitrate=$size:keyint=30 -acodec libmp3lame -ac 1 $1_med.mov

size=512

ffmpeg -i "$1" -y -s 480x320 -vcodec libx264 -g 30 -vpre ipod320 -x264opts bitrate=$size:keyint=30 -acodec libmp3lame -ac 1 $1_high.mov

The final step using mediafilesegmenter and variantplaylistcreator - this is a free tool you can download from developer.apple.com. However you do need a mac or iOS developer account. Once you have it run on a mac

#!/bin/bash

mkdir $1_apple

cd $1_apple

mkdir low

mkdir med

mkdir high

mediafilesegmenter -f ./low -I ../$1_lo.mov

mediafilesegmenter -f ./med -I ../$1_med.mov

mediafilesegmenter -f ./high -I ../$1_high.mov

variantplaylistcreator -o $1-all.m3u8 \

low/prog_index.m3u8 ../$1_lo.plist \

med/prog_index.m3u8 ../$1_med.plist \

high/prog_index.m3u8 ../$1_high.plist

cd ..

If you don't have an Apple developer account or a mac there is an opensource reimplementation of these tools http://code.google.com/p/httpsegmenter/.

The apple segmenter steps above work - if you modify them be warned

The tool cares about file extenions file.mp4 won't work, file.mov does (same file!)
You have to create the subfolders for it

To play these files just put them on any old web server and point your player at the all.m3u8 file.

Asus eee Pad Transformer TF101 Review

2011-06-11T15:23:00.000+01:00

I recently got myself an Asus eee Pad Transformer which is a Android 3 Tablet with a detachable keyboard and I thought after a couple of weeks it would be a good time to write a review.

The basics
The tablet feels well made, the first thing I noticed was the feel of the outside of the tablet which is ridged plastic and feels soft to touch. The tablet is light, but not as light as a kindle - but you can hold it comfortably in one hand. It does look nice and shiney and I think it looks as good as an iPad!
With the keyboard docked the whole unit looks like a netbook. The keyboard weigh enough to balance the device nicely. A really nice feature is the battery boost the keyboard offers, it has batteries that charge the main unit when docked. The tablet has a micro SD reader, and the dock has a full MMC/SD reader. The dock also has USB ports that work with normal USB keys!
The screen is bright and high resolution. I have found it a little dark if you leave it on 'auto' brightness - but it is easy to manually change. The touch sensitive screen is very responsive - about the same as on other devices I have used. There is a front/rear camera's both seem ok, but I haven't put them to much use.

Honeycomb (Android 3.1)
The main feature of this device is that it is Android 3.1 which is google's tablet os. It seems to be a well thought out upgrade to android. All the built in apps have been updated to take advantage of the larger screen.
Apps are essential to tablets and the market does seem to have quite a few however annoyingly there doesn't appear to be a way to see just apps optimised for tablets.

Touchdown for exchange. Provides a exchange client for the tablet. It is mostly tablet optimised but has a few glitches (e.g. if you click a notification it opens in phone mode)
Evernote - I have the beta for tablets from their website (the one in the market is for phones) - this is excellent and provides perfect note taking environments
TweetCaster HD - provides a good twitter client. I did try TweetDeck - but they haven't optimised it for tablets yet so for now this is better.

A lot of (major) apps are not yet tablet optimised, but work ok - including Skype, Four Square, Blogger, Google Reader and Facebook. It is interesting that Google themselves haven't got round to updating all their apps to support the larger screen. A few phone apps won't work at all, and others work but behave oddly due to the screen size (e.g. the BBC iPlayer app).

The browser is worth mentioning separately it is excellent. The flash support means I can use iPlayer, SeeSaw (for a little bit longer) and a range of other sites. The only annoying thing is a number of sites switch to 'mobile' mode and you have to switch back manually! I tried Opera Mobile and it is also good, but I haven't really thought of a reason to use it!

I have hit some issues

Getting files onto it - From a Mac you can't copy files onto it via USB. According the Android websites you can use a file transfer programme they supply to do this - but it doesn't work with the Asus. Asus appear to have implemented some own-brand software for PC and this has broken the built in mac support. I solved this by copying files onto a SD card - but that is a hassle!
Finding tablet optimised apps - It would be great if the market had a section/filter for this

Keyboard
The keyboard was why I bought this rather than another android tablet, now I have it I am not so sure it is needed. Even with the keyboard it isn't a great device for creating content (for example I started this blog on the tablet but gave up as the app couldn't do bullets and the web editor wouldn't work). The keyboard also has some annoying behaviors - if you are typing, fast, it seems to move the cursor up a few lines randomly. I thought originally I was knocking a key, but I have tried again and again and it keeps happening. The software keyboard on the tablet is very good, it supports 'swype' and direct typing and for most purposes it is all you need.

Overall
I think it is an great device - I went on a (business) trip to Canada last week and barely used my laptop at all. The device was invaluable on the flight back as the in-flight entertainment was broken and I could watch stuff on it! I think these are a strong competitor to the iPad and we will see the current weak selection of app's rapidly fixed.

Marmite and porridge

2011-06-05T08:03:00.001+01:00

While I was in malaysia I was missing marmite so bought some at a sumpermarket. On the back was a suggestion to try marmite on porridge!
So i tried

The result was interesting but not very nice and I love Marmite.

Adieu SeeSaw...

2011-05-29T10:15:00.000+01:00

So the news is now out - SeeSaw.com is shutting down. It has taken a lot of my time over the last few years so I thought it deserved a blog post...

I started on Project Kangaroo (then called Sherbet) in July 2007 when I joined ioko. We spent several years bouncing around different offices in February 2009 when the competition commission shut the venture down. I helped them spend several months trying to sell it, (to a range of people) and Arqiva picked it up (in August) and decided to launch the UK site. Arqiva also decided to redo the UI and it ended up launching to the public in early January (after a closed beta). Since then we have added extra features (paid content, subscriptions) and even have a range of stuff on the shelf that is ready but never got released :(.

It's quite a shame the latest release never got out as it added subscription packs and was a lot quicker. We had moved the site over to a 'nearly no SQL' architecture and it made it much more personal and responsive. We also have a revamped player that is smoother than the old one and supports newer DRM which would have let us have better content.

It has been an interesting ride, and there have been many ups and downs (and this still may not be the end for the SeeSaw tech!) - I would like to thank all the people that I have worked with on this over the years - it was a pleasure!

I have been following a couple of the press responses to the shutdown and I thought one deserved comments

Paid Content - made a number of good points but got a couple of facts wrong. SeeSaw did not inherit any content rights from Project Kangaroo - they all had to be arranged again. As a result it lost a lot of key content.
They also mock the ad-selector - this is a model that actually worked well for SeeSaw and is now proven on loads of sites (including Hulu).
I think they were correct in analysing that competing with iPlayer, 4OD, Demand 5 made it very hard to succeed.

To wrap up I have an interesting collection of fake adverts we made over the last few years for SeeSaw Testing...

This is from early 2009 and has pictures of most of the then project Kangaroo Team on it.

This is our favourite 'test' advert from the project Kangaroo phase with Ian Petzer demonstrating the (then new) logo!

And we also have one of our ever popular 'build rabbit'. It didn't last very long as it annoyed people way too much!

And finally seeing as most of the SeeSaw team know the whole thing off by heart - our favourite test programme - Big Buck Bunny (and for the record I am not the squirrel despite rumours to the contrary).

End of the Java language????

2011-02-09T18:59:00.000Z

I appear to have got caught up in a passing trend - namely starting to wonder if Java (the language) is going to fade. On one hand we get news of Oracle screwing around with the Java community daily, we have ThoughtWorks issuing papers saying that we should consider moving elsewhere and we have the rise in 'cool' technologies and ideas like RoR and DevOps which tend to avoid the 'old' J2EE stack.

I was arguing myself a few weeks back that we should start getting people trained up outside of the .NET/J2EE world that ioko live in - so we can make sure we stay competitive.

HOWEVER I also think all this talk should be tempered with some thoughts...
- Oracle although they will annoy and alienate the Java community will still push Java into loads of companies
- Oracle is licensed by almost every company - they are very good at growing accounts - you will therefore start to see people getting Java included in their enterprise wide deals.
- At an enterprise level (and I accept there is a argument this can be simplified) there isn't really an alternative to .NET/J2EE. You can build components in Ruby/Python etc but most enterprises will stick with the 'big' systems for their core systems.
- There are bazillions of J2EE developers out there. Some will move to other languages but most will stay exactly where they are (as people generally prefer to do nothing)
- Most the other options are only incremental improvements over Java (with the possible exception of functional programming). RoR is potentially nice, but Java has tricks that do all of the same things (admittedly you have to find them). Incremental improvements are not enough to persuade large enterprises to jump ship
- J2EE is good - it is easy to forget this, yes it has been around for over a decade, but innovation on it hasn't stopped. All the latest ideas in programming can be found in Java world. It is not as is often (lazily) cited like Cobol. Cobol had a ton of issues in basic syntax and paradigm.
- I also hear that functional programming is going to 'take over the world' on a regular basis. It kind of doesn't matter how good it is - that kind of radical shift is unlikely to take hold as most developers won't be inclined or able to learn it!

That's not to say I don't think these technologies won't be important or interesting - its just I don't see any of them displacing J2EE/.NET in any short period. I will still be advocating monitoring and learning about these technologies and maybe doing a project or two in them. However I don't expect J2EE to be going anywhere.

Widevine and Google

2011-02-08T20:42:00.001Z

A few weeks ago Google bought Widevine who made one of the few DRM's that are approved by the US Studios - this was about the same time as they decided to remove H264 from Chrome. This development could be quite interesting

- Widevine is included in the Google TV box and many connected TV's (e.g. Samsung's)

- It works on a range of file formats including H264. It doesn't support WebM today but it shouldn't be too difficult for Google to get it to support it.

- Rumour has it Widevine is now free for content providers

This could shake up the DRM market quite a bit. Most content web sites are using Flash RTMPE, Flash Access or Microsoft PlayReady. It could also boost WebM - if a range of content, protected by Widevine, and encoded in WebM starts appearing on the internet.

Google TV (Logitech Revue) - The details

2010-11-07T15:34:00.001Z

I have had the Google TV in the form of a Logitech Revue at home for a couple of days (don't panic ioko folk I'll probably give it back - eventually...).

Internet Video
Internet Video is the main point of Google TV and it is probably the real reason to buy one. It doesn't disappoint. Internet Video is delivered via a copy of Chrome and Adobe Flash and this works for iPlayer, 4OD, ITV.com, Channel 5, SeeSaw, Blinkbox, You Tube and plenty more! The browser is quick (not quite a quick as a desktop one, but not far off) and is easy to control.

You can find video either by browsing to the site in Chrome or using the search. The search works really well - type a programme and it will generally find it. Oddly iPlayer isn't appearing in the search results right now - which is probably something to do with the box being aimed at the US right now!
The 'remote' is a basically a wireless keyboard with a trackpad - this works surprisingly well. I have tried other browser based boxes that simulate the mouse using a d-pad which gives a smaller remote - but doesn't really work too well.

A keyboard isn't what you expect for a remote - but it works and I think people would get used to it.
Networked Video
The box also supports playing video from your computer via DLNA. The problem with this (as with all DLNA stuff) is it doesn't 'just work'. I often use DLNA with my PS3 via PS3 Media Server which works with other DLNA clients too. However with Google TV it just complained about network issues - which is odd as the PC showed the Revue accessing the server in its logs.
USB Video
The box supports playing video's from a USB key - this is done via the Logitech Media Player application. Unfortunately I couldn't get this to work - I had a key full of video's that works with my TV's player - but in the Revue it just said the 'key was damaged'. Oddly enough after rebooting the box it worked - and the video on the key played back fine.
Universal Remote
The Logitech Revue features Logitech's harmony technology - that allows it to work as a universal remote for all your other devices. This worked well - allowing me to control my Sky HD box and TV direct from the Revue remote. There is also an iPhone/Android app allowing you to use your mobile as a remote. This worked but was quite basic - this version could do with more features and a nicer interface for example rather than show arrow keys for sky HD it simply listed 4 buttons (up, down, left, right) in a row.

Other Services
The Google TV supports a few applications - they are all aimed as the US market right now - some many don't work in the UK.

Google Picasa - a nice browser for your photo's
Netflix - A US only video on demand service
Pandora - A US only music on demand service
Amazon Video - A US only video on demand service
Twitter

I was interested to see mspot - who I use to sync my music to my Android phone have built a special Google TV portal for it and it works well.

Bad Points

There are a few obvious bad points

It never turns off - which is just weird - there is no way to turn it off it just stays on regardless.
It doesn't have the ability to install applications - right now it is locked down to the applications that shipped with it. This is a bit disappointing.
A lot of the features (such as TV Guide, PVR integration) don't work in the UK - however that isn't really surprising as we had to get this box posted from the US!
It has crashed a couple of times requiring the power to be pulled out

Technical Notes

The box tech specs are very important - this is the first retail box I had seen that have a 'proper browser' and Flash.

Chrome - It reports an Android version 7. Using http://html5test.com/ my desktop Chrome gets 247 points - whereas Google TV's get 197.
Flash 10. - this does support the latest RTMPE which is important for VOD sites. It reports a version of GTV 1.,1,86,139 running on Linux.
Android - 2.1

Summary

This is a very impressive first version for Google TV. It is far ahead of any other box available at retail today. It's great to see SeeSaw on TV (at last) - it also shows the most likely way forward set top TV will be though a browser! There are a couple of emerging standards such a HBB TV to make it easy but for now I suspect HTML + Flash will win out. I will probably buy one as soon as a UK version is out!

Google TV - First impressions

2010-11-04T07:54:00.000Z

The Google TV arrived yesterday - it is the box on right - with a few other items in place to give you an idea of its size.

My first impression is that it is extremely good. It is fast and is able to play back pretty much any web video site I asked it too (including SeeSaw). It is definitely optimised right now for the USA, but the search is finding UK VOD sites like 4OD and SeeSaw. For most sites it seems to simply navigate to the page on their website and let you play the content.

The oddest thing to my mind is the 'remote' which is nearly a full size keyboard with a touchpad to control the mouse. Having used other boxes with similar feature that have decided to omit this I think even though initially it looks huge - it is a good idea - websites really work a lot better with a mouse.

I think when they start selling this in the UK properly it is going to be popular - iPlayer, SeeSaw, 4OD all work well on it. It is an extremely open platform using google search to find things (and that is any website) and chrome as a browser.

Google TV - it arrives...

2010-11-02T21:06:00.000Z

We are getting a Logitech Revue tomorrow that we (ioko) got shipped from the states. I am curious as to what it does when plugged in here. A lot of video sites are geo-blocked so it will either

Put a message up saying it isn't meant to work in the UK
Look like it works but half the video will say it doesn't work in the UK
Switch to UK based site automagically...

I hope it will do the 3rd but I reckon it's more likely to do 1 or 2. It will be interesting to see which!