Okay I know what you’re thinking — why is some genetics testing service being reviewed on Stammy’s tech blog? Well for one, because 23andMe is at the forefront of technology that is slowly but surely enabling the general public to get access to their genome data that would have cost thousands of dollars just a few years ago. I heard about 23andMe in 2008, when they were charging $1,000 for a DNA test and access to the results. Now the price is somewhat more reasonable, but still expensive at $399 for access to ancestry information, $429 for health or $499 for both. Each of those prices is just for one person. 23andMe operates in the personal genomics space and they have a few competitors like Family Tree DNA and Navigenics among others.

23andMe Genetic DNA testing – Ancestry Edition Box (but this review is for the Complete Edition, see disclosure notice)

I decided to give them a shot for almost entirely one reason — Google co-founder Sergey Brin. He not only financially backs 23andMe but he’s married to 23andMe co-founder Anne Wojcicki. Brin blogged about how he used 23andMe to learn more about Parkinson’s disease in his family:

But, of course, I learned something very important to me — I carry the G2019S mutation and when my mother checked her account, she saw she carries it too.

The exact implications of this are not entirely clear. Early studies tend to have small samples with various selection biases. Nonetheless it is clear that I have a markedly higher chance of developing Parkinson’s in my lifetime than the average person. In fact, it is somewhere between 20% to 80% depending on the study and how you measure. At the same time, research into LRRK2 looks intriguing (both for LRRK2 carriers and potentially for others).

This leaves me in a rather unique position. I know early in my life something I am substantially predisposed to. I now have the opportunity to adjust my life to reduce those odds (e.g. there is evidence that exercise may be protective against Parkinson’s). I also have the opportunity to perform and support research into this disease long before it may affect me. And, regardless of my own health it can help my family members as well as others.

I’ll be honest, a lot of the technology and processes employed by 23andMe go right over my head. The gist of it seems to be that they use single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping to analyze more than 580,000 locations in a person’s genome and find DNA sequence variations. They then compare that to known clinical and research reports backed by many trials proving correlations that certain SNPs have with disease risks and traits, with a certain amount of accuracy (the more people in the study, the more accurate). SNP genotyping is not the same as Full Genome Sequencing, a more complex and accurate process, which used to cost around $50,000 per person just a year ago but is now in the sub-$5,000 range. IBM received some press in late 2009 with their efforts to get that down to $1,000 through their “DNA transistor” breakthrough.

In a nutshell: personal genetics testing is still maturing and will provide an important platform for medical breakthroughs such as personalized medicine in the near future. At the moment, companies like 23andMe have preliminary offerings aimed at providing consumers with a useful glimpse at what can be found in their DNA: basic ancestral origins, trait comparisons to other individuals, likelihood for certain known diseases and so on. As I will discuss later on, the means through which this data is gained cannot be trusted 100% and it is not entirely clear at all times whether 23andMe uses general data about ethnicity to provide risk correlations (ie, if you are European you are more likely to…) or personalized “only you” type stuff.

Disclosure: I personally paid $413.95 for the Ancestry Edition then approached 23andMe about receiving an upgrade to the Complete Edition for purposes of this review. They upgraded my 23andMe account free of charge (would have cost me $100).

Um… Why?

Why would I ever plunk down a several hundred dollars to learn more about my genetics? Primarily — I enjoy discovering new technologies and services first-hand (if you haven’t noticed already, I’m an early adopter) so this new-to-me industry was extremely interesting and I just had to grok it. While purchasing this kit I did not know what to expect.. at all. I had grand expectations of having a detailed family tree practically created for me, going back many generations, or getting a peek at how my genes affect my health.

Unboxing

After ordering the kit online, I received a small box soon after. It was pretty light and there wasn’t much inside: a spit tube contraption, some documentation, a specimen bag and padded mailer.

Spit Acquisition and Delivery

There was not much involved with sending my DNA sample to 23andMe: spit in the tube a few times to fill it up, close the flip top, unscrew it, replace it with a small cap, shake it up to mix the saliva with the preservation fluid that was in the flip top, place in the specimen bag and mail it to 23andMe.

Thorough instructions for spit acquisition

Close-up of 23andMe spit tube – the top portion has some liquid that helps preserve your spit during transit

Spit tube all filled up and ready to be shipped out

After sending the DNA sample, I had to wait around 2-4 weeks to receive access to my results online. But before that could happen I had to setup my 23andMe account and claim my kit with a number that came on the spit tube.

Online Account Setup

As you might imagine with such a sensitive subject, there are a few forms you have to read and accept before you can finalize your 23andMe account.

Entering the code that came with the spit tube

After typing in the claim code I was greeted with a lengthy document to read through.

Consent and Legal Agreement

Here are some items in the agreement that I found worthy of mentioning:

• While certain genetic markers—SNPs in this case—are associated with a higher incidence of certain diseases or health conditions in certain populations, accessing your genetic information through 23andMe does not translate into a personal prediction
• Furthermore, the 23andMe Personal Genome Service is not a test or kit designed to diagnose disease or medical conditions, and it is not intended to be medical advice.
• While we measure many hundreds of thousands of data points from your DNA, only a small percentage of them are known to be related to human traits or health conditions. The research community is rapidly learning more about genetics, and an important mission of 23andMe is to conduct and contribute to this research. By obtaining 23andMe’s services, you are agreeing to contribute your genetic information to our research efforts as described below. These efforts could translate into meaningful information about your genetics.
• You may learn information about yourself that you do not anticipate. This information may evoke strong emotions and has the potential to alter your life and worldview. You may discover things about yourself that trouble you and that you may not have the ability to control or change (e.g., your father is not genetically your father, surprising facts related to your ancestry, or that someone with your genotype may have a higher than average chance of developing a specific condition or disease). These outcomes could have social, legal, or economic implications.
• Genetic data you share with others could be used against your interests. You should be careful about sharing your genetic information with others. Currently, very few businesses or insurance companies request genetic information, but this could change in the future. While the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act was signed into law in the United States in 2008, the protection it will provide against discrimination by employers and health insurance companies for employment and coverage issues has not been clearly established.
• Genetic research is not comprehensive. Many ethnic groups are not included in genetic studies. Because interpretations provided in our service rely on these published studies, some interpretations may not apply to you.

From that agreement I gathered that 23andMe is experimental and very much a work in progress and that I should not put full confidence in my personal results nor use those results to change the way I currently live.

After that legalese there was a page asking whether I wanted to have my saliva sample biobanked. Biobanking lets 23andMe keep my DNA sample on hand for up to 10 years. I can see potential cases where this might come in handy when they release a new feature of DNA analysis — be it advanced SNP genotyping or a take at FGS — and this would allow me to not have to send in another DNA sample.

I selected yes, in hopes of getting a call one day that they have successfully cloned me. I rather enjoyed The 6th Day.

That’s the last step in the signup process and now I just needed to wait for the DNA sample to arrive and the results to be processed.

To kill time, 23andMe has lots of surveys users can fill out, ranging from medical history and health habits to a survey about optimism. But I digress, you’re here to read about the results.

Ancestry

I will split the results by Ancestry and Health, since those are two separate versions people can purchase individually or together as the Complete Edition. After a few weeks I got an email saying my results were available online. The first thing I learned was my maternal and paternal haplogroups. Yeah, that was my first reaction too — what’s a haplogroup? Fortunately, 23andMe has lots of explanation for every term used on the site.

Haplogroups are families of mitochondrial DNA types that all trace back to a single mutation at a specific place and time. Technically, every new mutation creates a new haplogroup, but geneticists only label the ones that help them trace significant events in human prehistory, such as the migration of people to the Americas or the expansion of agriculture from the Near East.

I discovered my maternal haplogroup was J1a* and my paternal haplogroup was T. 23andMe also provides some fun comparison info — for example Thomas Jefferson had the same paternal haplogroup. The site also provides haplogroup trees but they were of no use to me other than an interesting information visualization. So far I haven’t learned anything remarkable about myself.

Maternal Haplogroup Map

Maternal Haplogroup Tree – interesting visualization but I don’t really know how this helps me. Although I will say it gets more interesting as you begin sharing genome data with other members of your family/relatives and their icon shows up on the tree.

More screenshots: Paternal Haplogroup Map, Paternal Haplogroup History, Paternal Haplogroup Tree, Maternal Haplogroup History

Then there is something called Ancestry Painting which displays colored graphics of my chromosomes to trace their ancestry by indicating the geographic origins of each chromosomes and their segments. Mine are all the same color, the key for which tells me I am 100% European. Again, something I already knew but interesting to see verified nonetheless.

Ancestry Painting

Moving on, there is a Global Similarity feature that tells me I am most similar to people from Southern Europe and has a chart conveying my similarity to other people based on geographic origins. Again, nothing quite mind-blowing.

Then there is Ancestry Labs that has some experimental features like “Haplogroup Tree Mutation Mapper” and “Family Inheritance: Advanced.” The former was of little use to me and provided me with some raw data while the latter, described as “Compare your DNA, bit by bit, to see what segments you share with close and distant family”, would be interesting if I had any family or relatives on 23andMe that took the DNA test as well and shared their genomes with my account.

Ancestry Labs

So far.. well I am kind of disappointed. I have not learned much about my ancestry that I did not already know but what I did already know was presented to me in an instructional manner with nice graphics and background information. Oh, but what is this Relative Finder feature I seemed to have skipped over?

23andMe found 17 people in its database (of around 35,000 people) that it thinks might be 3rd, 4th, 5th or distant cousins of mine. This got interesting when one of them, marked as a 3rd cousin, contacted me. The site has a unique way of letting potential relatives contact each other, with privacy in mind first. Before I could continue contacting the relative there was a warning about how reaching out to potential relatives may freak them out or be unwanted news (in more professional terms of course). It should be noted that 23andMe users can opt out of this entirely. There are two checkboxes in the privacy tab of the settings:

• I do not want to receive sharing invitations from anyone.
• I do not want to participate in Relative Finder.
  
  

  By checking this box, your profile (Paul Stamatiou) will not be able to use Relative Finder to view or contact relatives. Also, you will not show up in other people’s Relative Finder results. If you change your mind, you may re-join at any time by unchecking the box.

I accepted my potential 3rd cousin’s request for contact and I shared my genetic data with him and he shared his as well.

23andMe lets you share this data in stages — Basic and Extended — depending on how much access you want to provide this person. This let me use the Compare Genes feature to see some neat similarities I share with this person.

The Compare Genes tool is likely even more useful if you have direct family on 23andMe sharing their genetic data with you. A related feature called Inheritance Calculator lets you select two people and see their offsprings potential traits.

At the moment I am still talking with this person to verify if and how we are actually related. He currently lives in a part of Greece (Heraklion, Crete) where my mother is from, so there’s a good chance he is a relative. 23andMe states that his paternal haplogroup is the same as my maternal haplogroup, so by that I know my mother’s side of the family could be related to his father’s side (Update from comments: turns out the haplogroups just have the same name and are unrelated). We are exchanging family information like last names of other relatives and so on. Google tells me he is a computer-savvy 30 year old. Then again I have many 2nd and 3rd cousins all over Greece so it’s not like this was a landmark discovery. However, the chances that someone related to me in Greece heard about some genetic startup called 23andMe and forked over the many Euros to try this service must be fairly small.

Relative Finder is one of the newest features at 23andMe and by far the most useful in my opinion, even compared to some of the health features below.

Health

Now on to the reports 23andMe provides with their Health Edition. There are three sections: Clinical Reports, Research Reports and Health Labs. There are currently 51 clinical reports on the site divided up into categories of Carrier Status, Disease Risk, Drug Response and Traits. Clinical reports are the most accurate of any other health-related data on the site:

Clinical Reports give you information about conditions and traits for which there are genetic associations supported by multiple, large, peer-reviewed studies. Those associations must also have a substantial influence on a person’s chances of developing the disease or having the trait. Because these associations are widely regarded as reliable, we use them to develop quantitative estimates and definitive explanations of what they mean for you.

Clinical Reports Overview

Each clinical report has its own page. This is part of a page on muscle performance that states I have a certain type of fast muscle fiber.

Research reports on the other hand give you information based on research with limited scientific evidence and have thus not been demonstrated through large, replicated studies. 23andMe currently provides 88 research reports.

Research Reports separated by risk and research confidence

Research Report for Caffeine Metabolism

Research Report for Heart Attack risk

Similar to how there is an Ancestry Labs section, 23andMe also has Health Labs for showcasing experimental features that “may still be in development, require specialized knowledge or be of interest only to a subset of our customers.” Currently I only see three inside of Health Labs: Reynolds Risk Score (10-year risk for heart-attack), Genetic Weight Calculator (how much of your weight you can blame on your genes) and ABO Blood Type (find your probable blood type).

While I did not find much value in the Ancestry Edition results, with the sole exception of Relative Finder, Health Edition results were more intriguing and provided me with little tidbits about myself. Of those tidbits was a laundry list of diseases I might be at risk for: something that might be heavy news for many folks and explains why 23andMe warned about the effects of receiving such information in their legal and consent agreement. Nothing I learned about myself was life-changing but I did learn some interesting things. For example, according to a research report (not clinical), my body metabolizes caffeine quickly and does not increase my risk of heart attack and may even reduce the risk. That is relevant to my interests as I have a passion for all things caffeinated, although I have stopped drinking soda ever since I got out of college. According to a clinical report I have two working copies of a fast twitch muscle fiber, which potentially makes me well-suited for thngs like sprinting versus endurance running. I also learned that I am resistant to norovirus strains (“stomach flu”) and that I have a decreased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease based on the research currently available (I lack the LRRK2 G2019S mutation).

23andMe has several reports that are “locked.” When clicking on these reports, users are told how the information to be presented is not thorough and only checks certain mutations associated with the disease or carrier at hand. The user then must click through to unlock the report. Several reports also have useful sections explaining genes versus environment that describe how genetic factors may contribute more or less than environmental factors.

Advanced

For those that are more do-it-yourself and were awake during their 8am honors genetics and bioinformatics collegiate class, 23andMe also offers full access to raw data.

Click the image to get a view of more advanced genetic data.

Verdict

I acknowledge that many people have no desire to pay $400-$500 for this type of information. On the other hand, a growing minority of people find great value in 23andMe’s offerings. I believe it is a remarkable field and we are living in a great time to have such advanced personal genetics information readily available to the public. If 23andMe’s legal and consent agreement offers any hints, it is that this is by far a very early-stage offering and results are not as accurate as they could be. That being said it is msot definitely a great insight into what is to come. Clinical and research reports are continually being added and updated.

I had a hard timing trying to decide how to rate 23andMe. There are a few reasons. For one, it’s a relatively new company in a developing space trying to offer cost-effective solutions to the public. You know how technology works; you just can’t expect any just service to be perfect the first time around, especially in such a volatile space where new processes are being evaluated incessantly. Second, 23andMe’s offerings become exponentially more useful the more people in your family you add to your account. You can compare genome data, build a family tree, see what traits might get passed down to potential offspring, find out what disease risks run in the family and much more. Of course that would run $400-$500 per person. Perhaps a family package would be interesting: $1,500 for up to 5 people.

23andMe receives 8 out of 10 Stammys.

What do you think about 23andMe and services like it in general? Would you be interested in trying it out? If not, why? Privacy reasons or cost? At what price would you consider checking out such a personal genetics service. What interests you most about this space? Leave a comment down below and let me know whats on your mind! Thanks.

Notice: To protect myself from this data getting in the hands some potentially evil entity, like my health insurance company, I have manually altered some data presented in screenshots via Firebug (not Photoshop, aside from blurring out someone else’s name). This does not affect anything in my review or how their results look.

Update 3/5/10 @ 6:15pm: Some great conversation about this post going on at Louis Gray’s Google Buzz, including some comments by Linda Avey of 23andMe:

This is one of the most thorough and accurate summaries I’ve seen (I’m the co-founder of 23andMe). One small point…the testing technology 23andMe uses is highly accurate, it’s just the interpretation of what the datapoints means which is, in some cases, early and subject to revision (this would be equally true if you sequenced the entire genome vs. genotyping, which is the SNP-based technique used by 23andMe).

Getting wider diversity in genetics research is a key objective of 23andMe…need to figure out ways to attract people of all backgrounds. Once we have enough representation of any given population, the statisticians can see if genetic associations replicate (or discover new ones!). Filling out the surveys is a much-appreciated contribution.

-Linda Avey

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Review: 23andMe DNA Testing for Health, Disease & Ancestry

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

People: Anne Wojcicki, Linda Avey, Sergey Brin

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Startup Riot, the biggest and most interesting tech event (in my mind) hits Atlanta for its third year. You might remember the first two Startup Riots which I blogged about: I presented at the Startup Riot 2008 and covered Startup Riot 2009. I’ll backtrack a bit first. Startup Riot 2010 is a startup pitch event and this year 50 startups in Atlanta, GA will take the stage for 3 minutes or less and talk about their startup company with just 4 slides. It’s an all day event and by far a pillar event for the growing Atlanta tech community. That being said, Robert Scoble came into town this week to attend Startup Riot. He works for RackSpace Building43 and RackSpace bought local startup Jungle Disk last year, so they decided to fly out from California to meet with the Jungle Disk team and network with local startups. Skribit Co-founder Calvin Yu and I went to the Jungle Disk offices yesterday for a video interview with Scoble that I’ll post up soon.

Now on to the point of this post. I am going to attempt to live blog Startup Riot today. This is my first time live blogging so there will likely be some snags along the way. Thanks for reading!

The event will be also be streamed live at live.startupriot.com.

Live Blog Coverage

8:20am Just getting to the Fabulous Fox Theater:

8:28am People slowing coming into the Fox theater. There’s a busy lobby area where several startups have demo booths setup. A/V crew is doing some sound checks.

Startup Riot Organizer @Sanjay

The Egyptian Ballroom of the Fox Theater in Atlanta

8:39am Sanjay is prepping the first batch of speakers.

8:44am Wi-Fi is acting up, hopefully they’re just rebooting it or something.

8:53am Voice over the PA says everything will start in 2 minutes.

8:58am Sanjay up making jokes and trying to stop people from eating doughnuts and come sit down.

9:01am Sanjay starting his 41 slide deck. Talking about success of Startup Riot. 400 people in attendance today.

9:02am Sanjay telling people how to pronounce his name. He does this a lot.

9:04am+ Sanjay talking Startup Riot basics. Big sponsors: Georgia Tech ATDC (disclosure Skribit is a member) and Jungle Disk. Other sponsors include Georgia Research Alliance, Georgia Tech Research Institute, Imlay Investments, MailChimp, Microsoft BizSpark, One, Siavage Law Group LLC, Silverpop, Development Corporate, Epilog Laser (laser engraved the netbooks that are prizes for the winning startups), Friendly Human Productions, Mashable, Mixergy, TechDrawl, Whynatte.

9:12am Wi-Fi keeps crashing. This makes Stammy sad.

9:13am Sanjay talking about his startup gossip mailing list. I’ve been subscribing for a while and have advertised in it for the last 2 months. Also mentioned Shotput Ventures.

9:15am Sanjay introducing the keynote speaker, Bo Peabody:

Bo is an accomplished entrepreneur and investor. He co-founded Tripod.com in 1994 and co-founded Village Ventures in 1999. Bo’s book, Lucky or Smart?, is available on Amazon. Wikipedia entry on Bo here.

You should also read this recent Washington Post piece that Bo did on social media, startups, and advertising models.

9:16am Bo takes the stage. Dude looks at least 15 years younger than I thought he would be.

9:17am+ Bo talking about his titles. He has been CEO of various companies and is now a venture capitalist. He also has a few restaurants.

Bo talking about how he wanted to be an entrepreneur when young and how his friends were all getting high-paying jobs right out of college. “What exactly does an entrepreneur do?” Talking about meeting women in a bar and how saying you are an entrepreneur is like “this guy is unemployed.”

9:25am Wi-Fi keeps dying and being slow. Sorry for the delay guys.

9:26am Bo talking about how every successful company at one point was very close to shutting down. At Tripod they wanted to provide 90% of the content and the audience would add 10% of the content by talking about it… was actually the other way around once they started working with it. This was in mid 90’s. Once they started seeing how the Internet worked, it took off.

Bo is now talking about his restaurant group Mezze. Tweaked to success: raised the lighting in the restaurant and made meals larger portion sizes, attracted an older crowd and got more business out of it.

Entrepreneurship is all about passion.

9:30am Bo takling about his sections of his book: Humilty – don’t believe your own press, and Level-Headedness – Best defense is a gracious offense. Just because he had a great piece on the USA Today, he shouldn’t have scrapped his great talk assuming that everyone read the great news piece. He was at a speaking gig on a book tour and asked the audience who read his book – no one raised their hand.

9:34am Story about a big meeting with some movie producers. Made tons of plans. Movie producer assistant called.. had to change meeting. Bo changed plans again. Two days later they call back again saying that day isn’t going to work. They reschedule again. Another call, that day won’t work either. They schedule once more time, Bo is pissed but talking about being gracious. Being an entrepreneur – constantly getting screwed. Time changed again, he told them “look, I’m going to be out in LA for an entire week.. if there is any 30 minute point at which I can meet with him, I can do it.” Assistant says “great”.. calls back right before the trip and has the final date. Bo goes to the meeting and gets the deal done. Enterpreneurship – gotta stick with it.

9:38am Bo talking about the VC fund he works with, Village Ventures – currently $134M. I need to pitch this guy..

9:39am Q&A starting…

“I’m trying to raise funding… I’m getting blown off a lot as well. Meetings cancelled, etc. Tell me the story of the first time you raised funding. Also, if you don’t have any connection.. how do you get in when you’ve got no lead?”

Bo says: you have a connection. Think about who you know and you’ll find someone with money – they might not be a traditional investor but they can connect you with who you’re looking for.

“What cosmic set of circumstances must occur for you to say yes to a deal?”

Bo says: Running a venture firm is just like running a business, just like you. When we’re dealing with a limited partner as a customer, we tell them a story. They remember that story pretty well.. if we veer from that story it creates problems with them as a customer. The story he tells them: I’m investing primarily in vertical media companies. Ones that are building out audiences in particular set of verticals that he has marked as being valuable to advertisers and consumers. First thing that has to happen – you have to be doing something that is interesting to me. Tells entrepreneurs to do their homework, look at their websites to find what they invest in and look at their portfolio companies.

“What are the verticals that you invest in?”

Travel, Health, Beauty & Fashion, Parenting, Technology Media, Financial Services Media, Food & Wine, Education

“Hi Bo – I’m trying to raise capital for a startup in Zambia, Africa. Investors are scared in funding in an emerging markets. Advice?”

Bo says: I think your best bet is to get to individuals who have an interest in Africa. Have invested in startups in Africa, et cetera. My guess is that a venture firm is not your best route.

“How much does geography play a role in investments?”

Bo says: It’s hard for me to invest in a company in LA, even though I think there is an opportunity out there in video and content creation etc, it’s really hard for me to manage a relationship that is a 3 hour time difference and 3,000 miles away. Focus on getting to local people in regards to funding.

“First Round Capital put together this entrepreneur equity share thing… diversification”

Bo says: Diversification is a good thing but I don’t want to back a company that is giving away their own companies equity. They should value their company’s equity very highly, more so than someone else’s startup.

10am Bo is done speaking. Sanjay is back on stage. We have a break now.

10:19am The pitches are starting…

Transaction Tree Problem with juggling receipts. Product gives consumer opportunity. Have their receipt emailed including marketing, survey, ads and coupons relevant to their current and past purchases. Not spammy. Saves retailers 30% over receipt paper overall. Looking for funding.

Mediasode Multi-media manager product enables you to coordinate a video stream along with other types of content. People absorb content in the order of their choosing. Term “sync the story” – fully augmented media. Not just a collection of links. Embed app on any website or device. Target cost-aware verticals with big media libraries. Designed for new touch applications like the iPad. Information at your fingertips with Mediasode.

Othernum.com Small biz and need a phone number with no crazy contract or pricey hardware? Virtual PBX platform that scales with your business. $9 a month for a number and get conferencing etc. Been working on it for about 10 months now, both co-founders still have their day jobs. Went through a private beta and now in public beta. Launched 2 weeks ago. An ATDC company. Fully operational. Needs customers. Use code “startupriot” at othernum.com

Ultralite Phototherapy machines to solve things like psoriasis. 2-3% world population have psoriasis. Typical treatments are drugs or phototheraphy. Phototherapy usually involves the patient visiting a clinic many times a week. Phototheraphy is somewhat dangerous as people can overdose on it. To prevent this, Ultralite has developed a prescription system for phototheraphy. The prescription is on a flash drive that is placed in the phototheraphy machine. FDA approved. Seeking funding for development and marketing.

CritSend Email delivery service. Ensures all emails go to inboxes. Easy setup and online reporting setup. Lowest price on the market. Showing example customer that got 3x better email delivery using CritSend. They are scalable. 24/7 monitoring system with people watching it worldwide. Setup takes just minutes.

Placevision Web development for urban planning. Communication gap between government and citizens. Government is confused as to what tools to use to close this gap. Product focuses on consultants such as architecture and urban planning firms to facilitate community outreach. They need a website to spread this info.. as it stands it is just a bunch of PDFs on a website. OnlinePlanGuide.com is 90% complete – comes with all architecture, visualization tools and plugins necessary. Raising funds to finish final development.

LessAccounting Most small biz owners use QuickBooks. “QuickBooks is fucking horrible.” All accounting applications suck, we just suck the least. LessAccounting helps small biz owners get back to working and making money. Data entry is a thing of the past. We import your bank transactions every night. All their tech support is book keepers.. they can help you sort your accounts. Integrate with lots of services. Packages from $12-$300/month. Here to take some money. Here to spread the gospel of LessAccounting.

Artisanal Influence Pair wine bloggers with wine brands. Wine bloggers are “our last best hope” to wineries. Sales are down in the wine industry. Many wine magazines are on the verge of bankruptcy. Product is a weekly mailing list. Wine marketers pay $50 to submit a promotion. Pair blogger with opportunity. Looking for additional funding.

neybor Free listing service that allows you to create online reports.. make money by partnering with real estate photographers that use their virtual tour product. Also local newspapers.

Drive Safe Glucose Monitoring System – Making driving safter for Diabetics. Product is patent pending, has a monitor watch device that monitors blood sugar 24/7 and alerts drive when too low. Ultrasound for measurement of blood sugar lows.. 98% accurate. Expect to launch within next 13 months and be able to save over 600 lives every year.

Viral Prints Lets users shop for merchandise inspired from their favorite videos and also create their own merchandise and profit from its sale. T-shirts and things. Website is seamlessly integrated with all the video services. Link between video and merchandise helps conversions. Over 100,000 uniques. Cash Flow positive, custom design application.

learn it live Online service marketplace. Like Guru and Elance do for outsourced labor we for top training. Consumers meet with business professionals. Interactive experience.. networking and communicating in an online forum. World of experts in the palm of your hands to find the information you need to know to succeed. For example Spanish teacher in Bolivia helping you brush up on your Spanish.

Gold Brothers Entertainment Mobile company creating (iPhone) applications. Games, educational apps and so on. Also building for the iPad. Also “agent” product helping authors get published. Received $250k funding.

NetParty, Tribester, We Just Click Properties devoted to making new connections and bridging gap between online and offline business connections. NetParty is “worldwide young professionals network” with sponsoring “networking with a twist” events in over 15 events in the U.S.. Ranked #1 in a CNET post “Professional social networks that take on LinkedIn.” Younger crowd than typical LinkedIn user. Tribester.com – Nation’s biggest singles event (4k ppl each year in NYC), biggest Jewish Facebook group (100k) competes with JDate.com. And in development property called We Just Click – like a mix of The Huffington Post, match.com and reality TV.

Rank’em “Accelerating Music Discovery” Rank songs from favorite artists. Private Beta at gorankem.com. Use their search engine to browse artists. Money made through affiliate partnerships. Helps artists change set lists based on location and what fans like.

napstay Marketplace for vacation home rentals. Vacation homes are generally cheaper per person compared to hotels. Huge market potential. Consumers – online bookings, no deposits, flexible stays. Owners – standardization and distribution. Currently building up inventory of properties.

jobtitled Career Analytics product. Problem – uninformed career decisions. Solution – data mining and statistical analysis. Crawl the web looking for CVs and resumes.. see how people move through careers and what industries they work in. Given any job title they can provide a list of next and previous positions, average time between positions. Give user an idea of how long to get to their end goal/ideal job. JobTitled.com – patent pending, public peta, tripled source data. JobTitled Edu – GA Tech, GA State joined pilot, alpha prototype completed. Here to meet with investors and advisors.

looxii Part of inaugural Shotput Ventures class. Social media analytics space. How do you best deal with a large amount of qualitative data and make sense of all of it? Then how do you interact with and engage? Looxii is social media analytics made simple. Site beta live at looxii.com

11:17am Lunch time!

1pm And we’re back for the next batch of presenting companies at Startup Riot 2010!

High Road Craft The Ben & Jerry’s for restaurants, hotels and resorts. Ice Cream on the market by this June. Already secured investment. Delicious premium ice creams, apparently.

CoreMotives “Detect, track and target online visitors who express interest.” Capturing and analyzing traffic on sites, landing pages, email interactions and look at where traffic is coming from. Secret Sauce – cross reference this data with sales data that their customers are already tracking so they can identify patterns and find people who exhibit buying behaviors. Four pillars: Web Analytics, Email Marketing, Lead Capture, CRM.

Ninja Post “Finally — a message board built for today’s internet.” What can I do to make my website more social? Modern Message Board software with a modern twist – real time updates, elegant design, integration with Twitter, Facebook and WordPress. Your site + Ninja Post = Sales leads, customer loyalty, web visibility and SEO. Business model – SaaS + premium services like SSO. Looking for angel investment of $150k and looking for customers. Also a Shotput Ventures incubator program company.

CoThrive Hard to drive accountability and track work my scouring your inbox. CoThrive takes email, messaging and communications and converts them into actions that can be tracked without having to leave the inbox. Reads and parses keywords like who is it for, who is responsible, et cetera and converts them into actions without having the user do anything unnaturally. Dashboard created entirely with emails. Paying customers, secured $1M funding and strong management.

Bee Well Wishes “What to send when you don’t know what to do.” Most gifts – “flowers die, food goes bad, not helpful, not useful, not memorable.” Bee well wishes are “lasting, useful gifts of comfort” like blankets, onesies and so on. All delivered in bright orange box with a personalized card. “Smart, infinite growth potential, non-seasonal, always relevant, endless customer base, personal.”

Nexpense Simple online receipt management system that lets you capture receipts real time with your iPhone, Blackberry or Android phone. Receipt goes off to the cloud and your expense report is sent to you via email weekly. Export expenses how you like. Freemium model. Tier 1 has limited receipts and limited history, second tier is $4.95 month for unlimited receipts and history. Tier 3 has a sliding fee structure for multiple users. Launching Alpha in mid-April, seeking users.

Quotejuice Online platform to quote, compare and purchase individual health insurance. Recurring commission revenue for each seal. Nobody wants to get hassled buying an insurance policy. User provides basic info (A/S/L), goes out and finds price quotes then matches plans. Not looking for investors but looking for customers.

SkyBuyHigh In-flight Luxury E-Boutique. “The only in-flight shopping service on private jet flights… and tax-free.” Electronic and displayed on wireless devices in-flight. They have no competition. Based in NYC and Atlanta.

HydroCoal Technologies “We Make Clean Coal Affordable.” Gasification systems for industry. An affordable approach to clean coal – scalable, efficient, reliable. He talked about techie stuff about coal gasifiers and stuff. “disruptive product” for where the GE industry doesn’t play. Seeking $1M for 6 month 2010 pilot.

CitiSync Helps college students discover and share events and specials happening in their city. CitiSync helps local businesses get their specials and events in front of students at the point of decision. I’m skeptical about these types of products. Lots of competition and an ADHD target market..

ElectronicNapkin.com A Show & Tell system for connecting people with ideas. Camera with mounting device.. like interactive whiteboard. Currently reviewing revenue models.

Regator Find the best blog content on the net – using editors and algorithms. “We make it really easy for everyone to find the best blog content and trends.” They have two iPhone apps (one free and one paid). 2010 plans – redesign for trends + social coming up, api to spread the love and app updates and iPad support.

Mobilization Labs Product is Wildfire Platform, helps causes and brands manage, mobilize and measure their support base. SRM — supporter relationship management tool. Like CRM with layer of social data and activities – how they are engaging with your brand. Looking for partners and customers.

Candeo Product is YouHaveAPackage.com and live and creating revenue. Every day thousands of packages are delivered to apartments, business and so on – mail room, front office staff, concierge deals with burden to tell person they have a package. That’s about 4 minutes of time for them each. Candeo’s service with handheld device takes only 20 seconds. Automatically text messages, calls or emails recipients.

Smart Video Interactive Product is digital signage panels. Model – take a huge market and niche it. Revenue positive and expense neutral. Content is key. Seeking $250k funding. Large HVAC distributor currently testing program.

LessMeeting Run effective meetings. Plan meetings, send out meeting minutes and follow-up to see how meeting went. Rate and analyze meeting. Long-run measure meeting productive at the personal level and across the enterprise level. Been around for 3 months with a beta version out. Subscription model starting at $5/month.

PawPawMail E-mail for Grandparents. Live product, lots of positive feedback so far. Moving towards groups – assisted living facilities, libraries and so on.

OpenStudy Get-Help Give-Help Study Network. Piloted with teachers, universities and students for the past 12 months. Students want to collaborate – more effective way to study. Revenue from student subscriptions and charging partners for data about how students using the service. “Connect & collaborate in real time.” Funding from NSF and GRA and looking to raise this summer.

3:05pm And we’re back with the last batch of pitching startups.

eCampus Wide Events calendar. Easy to create, organize, integrate and share. Embed on sites. Freemium model.

Kabbage Product for online sellers. Provides financing for online sellers as they list products for sale. First sellers list products for sale like eBay or Amazon. Then Kabbage makes offers for them and funds them in as few as 10 minutes – money directly put in their online checking accounts. Why Kabbage? It comes down to data. Take data to leverage FICO credit scores.. how much they should lend to them. Raised $1.4M in capital. Completed partnership with bank to fund all these loans online. 60 days from launch.

Chatfé Start conversations with like minded people. “post or find an entertaining comment or question, chatfé finds like-minded people and connects you, speak in real time with people who share your interests.” Both peoples’ phones ring – no phone number or other info is exchanged. Public beta is out now.

the plan is… Plan out your projects. Not exactly sure how it works. Description was confusion. “Visualize your plan, use trial and error, nothing to install, theplanis.com/sur”. Now in private beta.

Abundant Closet “What’s in the Closet?” Product is a patent pending outfit engine. Kind of sounds like Polyvore.com? Abundant Closet raised $350k in founder and family money.

itsFound.org The Craigslist of Internet lost and found. “Make it easy for finders to return items back to losers.” How it works – create unique identifier, print stickers, electronically collect. “If found, return via…”

Savont Helps people build ROSCAs using your social network. For example, saving cycle. Borrower and Saver. Let users pay down interest-bearing debt. Savont is an equal, paying member in every ROSCA.

Uvestor Problem: Inefficient real estate transactions to close any deal. “Uvestor is real estate in real time.” Makes it easier for bank, seller, broker, buyer, appraiser, agent. Monthly subscriptions to small businesses, realtors and individuals. Scaling revenue model.

GetUnBored Picture-based city and events guide. Affiliates and partners include ticketmaster, citysearch, entertainment book, facebook with valpak coming soon. I still don’t really get it. Need more screenshots.

Toomah “Interviewing made easy.” He mentioned an Easy button. Isn’t that trademarked by Staples? InterviewPlus product – review phone screens over the web. Voice-recorded and embedded back into the website.

Medivity Minimally-invasive medical devices. Go through natural openings instead making incisions. “PuncSure” advantages: safer, easier and faster. Market – up to 1.5M proceedures.. a $1B market. Looking to be a FDA Class II device. Exit strategy would be sale or licensing to a larger company.

doleaf Grow your garden. Online marketplace to find and buy plants from mom and pop specialty nurseries and garden centers. “Etsy for plants.” Looking to get the word out. They are asking for links to boost their PageRank.. (hint dont explicity ask for links..)

Softmaxx The FedEx of wireless software – a middleware that hooks modems together. Cellular M2M Market – every modem needs software.

MakeSmallTalk.com Become part of the conversation. “Content destination site.” First place to go when researching new topics – typical articles are short and concise, with a few facts up top.

3:49pm Pitches are done. Sanjay on stage talking about how voting is going to work. Each attendee is to give one pitching startup their lanyard.

And the winners are…

LessAccounting wins first and then Regator and Nexpense tied for second. They all won Startup Riot laser engraved netbooks along with some other prizes.

That wraps up Startup Riot 2010. Thoughts? Are there any events like this in your city? What do you think about fast-paced startup pitching events like this?

RSS ads (for the student loans, I promise!): PaulStamatiou.com runs the Thesis theme. View my usenet downloading how to then checkout my usenet host Giganews.

Live Blogging: Startup Riot 2010

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

People: Sanjay Parekh

Related posts:

1. What is Startup Riot?
2. Startup Riot Recap
3. Startup Riot 2009 Recap
4. Why I’m Enthused About Startup Weekend
5. Facebook Introduces Blogging Functionality “Notes”
6. Launch Something and Meet People at Atlanta Startup Weekend 3

There are two things I do not usually talk about on this blog — cars (okay maybe there are one, two, three, four, five or more exceptions) and iPhone applications. The former because I am not quite sure everyone here would be interested in reading about anything except the technology behind the car and the latter because most iPhone apps do not have enough substance and utility to create a compelling review. Well I am breaking both of those rules today and for good reason. A few months ago I discovered a $40 iPhone app by DevToaster called Rev.

What it does

At $40 for an iPhone app, Rev is most definitely not cheap compared to other iPhone apps. The only iPhone app I have purchased that was pricier was Navigon GPS and I rarely use it. However, when you are put into the mindset of a true car nut that spends over $300 just to install a single boost gauge, $2000 for a pair of cheap racing seats, $2000 for a basic coilover suspension setup, $400 for a professional dyno tuning session, $500 for a polished throttle body/plenum assembly, $15k for a crate engine and then $10k for a custom twin turbo setup and so on, then a $40 iPhone app is like an impulse buy of a Snickers bar at the grocery checkout.

There are several use cases for the Rev iPhone app, best described by the video below, but in a nutshell Rev gives car enthusiasts access to detailed metrics about their car’s performance, the ability to create a custom gauge cluster, check engine codes, log data and lap times along with GPS. It’s one of the most comprehensive vehicle tools I have seen. It is, however, a more involved setup than some of those automotive iPhone apps that rely solely on the iPhone’s accelerometer. Rev requires that you install an OBDII module in your car that provides real-time data from your car’s ECU to the iPhone — in this case via a Wi-Fi connection.

OBDII is a standard port on all 1996+ cars and provides onboard diagnostics information. If you look under your car’s steering wheel it will be somewhere there — car manufacturers are required by law to place the OBDII port within ~6 inches of the steering column. All OBDII ports are also required by law to utilize a friction fit and no snap lock, so installation is as simple as plugging in the module.

Why I got it

While others may be interested in using such a setup to keep an eye on MPG or checking engine codes, I purchased the Kiwi and Rev for the purpose of showing additional gauges and logging lap data. In my car I have relatively few gauges: tachometer, speed and fuel level. As someone that is very much into modifying cars and experimenting with various ECU tunes, I would like to keep an eye on air to fuel ratio, engine temperature, et cetera (note: some vehicles don’t have all these sensors and you may need to purchase the Kiwi version with iMFD and install your own sensors). Rather than purchasing and installing an expensive gauge cluster behind the steering wheel or in the A-pillar, I decided to check out Rev.

iPhone 3GS and Rev app with unboxed PLX Devices Kiwi Wifi

Of course there are a few downsides to this approach. For one it involves using an iPhone mount that can obstruct road view when mounted to the windshield (alternatively it can be mounted lower elsewhere but that defeats the purpose if you must constantly look down to check gauges, unless you are purely using it for logging purposes) and second if you do not always remove the iPhone windshield mount when parked, that imposes a break-in risk (even if the iPhone isn’t there, it has been said that thieves assume the device is hidden in the glove box and will break-in regardless. I have also even been told by a local police officer that some thieves look for windshield suction cup marks, so if you live in a crime infested neighborhood, keep a cloth and rubbing solution handy).

What you need

Everything you need: iPhone with Rev app, PLX Kiwi Wifi, Griffin WindowSeat mount, Griffin PowerJolt charger

• iPhone (3G or 3GS if you want GPS logging functionality)
• Some sort of iPhone mount. Rev displays and logs G-force data but requires that the iPhone stays perfectly steady after calibrated in a certain position. I went with the Griffin WindowSeat iPhone windshield mount but found the suction cup weak and hard to engage. Anyone have any better suggestions?

Griffin WindowSeat iPhone windshield mount

• iPhone car charger. Having the Rev app open all the time sucks battery life. I got the Griffin PowerJolt USB charger and think it’s one of the best ones out now. It’s compact and has 2 USB ports.
• Rev iPhone app
• A wireless OBDII module. There are several of these on the market but I decided on the PLX Devices Kiwi Wifi (~$150) and have been happy with it. There is a pricier version (~$250) of the Kiwi Wifi that lets you add other sensors.

closeup of the Kiwi Wi-Fi OBDII module

What’s next?

The next post in this series will go over installation of the OBDII module, Rev setup and a review of the Rev application itself.

Example screenshots of Rev

Thoughts? Are you a big enough car enthusiast to consider a setup like this on your daily driver? What about your weekend exotic?

RSS ads (for the student loans, I promise!): PaulStamatiou.com runs the Thesis theme. View my usenet downloading how to then checkout my usenet host Giganews.

Review: Rev iPhone app and PLX Devices Kiwi Wireless OBDII Module (Part 1)

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

Related posts:

1. Review: Slim Devices Squeezebox
2. Review: Apple iPhone 3G
3. Review: Eye-Fi Wireless 2GB SD Card
4. Review: Sonos ZonePlayer S5 All-In-One Wireless Music System
5. Review: Brother HL-2170W Wireless Laser Printer
6. Review: Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse

In late 2008 I wrote about my experience using the first generation 80GB Intel X25-M SSD — my first SSD. I had to pay the early adopter tax for that SSD, so it cost me around $700. The speed boost alone justified the price to me. Fast-forward about a year and that SSD stopped working. I’m not quite sure what died — the controller or something else — but I RMA’d it with Intel and they sent me a new, second generation X25-M that week. The second generation (G2) X25-M is based on 34nm fabrication compared to the 50nm first generation. The G2 is also substantially cheaper at roughly $299 and noticeably faster due to a new controller and firmware. Intel still claims the same “up to 250MB/s” sequential read speed and “up to 70MB/s” sequential write speed but the G2 brings improved (2x for 80GB, 2.5x for 160GB version) random 4KB writes.

The second X25-M G2 SSD prior to installation in a 17-inch Unibody MacBook Pro

But I digress, this post is not about why I love Intel’s SSD, but rather how using just one SSD was not fast enough. (It should be noted that the X25-M will not be top dog forever and will be getting stiff competition from OCZ and their “SandForce” controller that can compress data beforehand in the Vertex 2 Pro SSDs.) Getting to the point, I put two 80GB Intel X25-M G2 SSDs in my unibody 17-inch Apple MacBook Pro and then set them up with RAID 0 — striped data for better performance.

How this is possible? MacBook Pro laptops only support one hard drive/solid state drive. Well, I had to remove the optical drive. Not a big deal for me as I rarely used it and if I ever need it I can use it with an external USB enclosure.

What You Need

• Laptop of your choice: that uses a SATA interface for its optical drive. If you’re using a Unibody MacBook Pro you should be good to go.
• 2 Solid State Drives of your choice: For optimal results, ensure they are the exact same brand, model, capacity and generation.
  • Intel has the 80GB (~$289) and 160GB (~$489) flavors of the X-25M. Make sure to spring for the G2 second generation (linked).
  • Kingston has their SSDNow V-Series: 64GB (~$149) or 128GB (~$269)
  • I mentioned the new OCZ Vertex 2 Pro earlier but at the time of this writing I could not find one for sale to link to.
• MCE Optibay ($99): The Optibay is the special ingredient in this How To. It fits properly in the optical drive bay slot and lets you securely attach your second SSD to it. It is important to note that you need to buy the SATA version if you have the same Unibody 17-inch MacBook Pro as I do. Prior models used IDE for optical drives and the respective Optibays had onboard IDE » SATA converters that resulted in slower performance; definitely not what you want with a RAID setup. When I ordered my Optibay it came with a USB 2.0 enclosure for the SuperDrive I was taking out.
• Tools: The usual small (#00) Phillips head will do but there is also one screw that is very difficult to remove unless you remove a small T6 Torx screw in front of it. I have been quite happy with a small tool with changeable bits called the Teeny Turner.

These two tools have helped me void many gadget warranties over the years.

• No regard for Apple warranty: Unless you are have mastered the art of deception, if you ever take your MacBook Pro in for warranty repair they will likely notice that you have opened it up before. You can always claim the work was done by a Certified Apple Specialist but they might call your bluff. Or you could meticulously undo the RAID setup and put the optical drive back before walking in for an unrelated repair.
• Blank disc: You will want to make sure your SSDs have the latest firmware. Most SSD manufacturers require that you burn a disc and boot your computer into their software. [Intel SATA SSD Firmware Update Tool]
• External USB/FireWire hard drive: It’s always a good idea to have an external hard drive drive dedicated to backing up your computer, not storing excess media files and documents. In this case of this guide, the external drive will be used to boot off of during a phase of setup. I use a cheap 500GB My Book I bought years ago, but anything large enough will work.

Hardware Install

Unfortunately, swapping/adding hard drives in the 17-inch Unibody MacBook Pro (without user-removable battery) is a bit more involved than the simple procedure on the 15-inch Unibody MacBook Pro with removable battery. You will need to be comfortable taking out the entire back panel of the laptop.

Detailed instructions for taking apart your MacBook Pro can be found at ifixit.com

For my MacBook Pro there were ten Phillips screws in my way before I could take off the back panel.

The opened up 17-inch Unibody Apple MacBook Pro

Since I had previously already installed an 80GB X25-M G2 SSD in place of the hard drive the laptop came with, my next objective was removing the SuperDrive.

Removing the optical drive. Inset: disconnect bluetooth module first

The SuperDrive had a few more Phillips screws but there was also a display cable and Bluetooth module in the way. The Bluetooth module has a tiny cable that can be gently tugged and removed. Then you can remove the two screws holding the module in place. Push the display cable out of the way and remove the grounding pad near the hinge. Gently try to lift the optical drive up. When you have enough wiggle room disconnect the SATA cable from the SuperDrive.

Next, unbox the MCE Optibay and screw in the SSD into it.

MCE Optibay with SSD installed

Then position the Optibay, connect the SATA cable, screw in the Optibay, put the grounding pad back and reattach the Bluetooth module. Here’s the bad news — the screws for the Bluetooth module do not fit into the holes in the Optibay. The good news — the Bluetooth module is so tiny and lightweight that it’s not the end of the world that it isn’t screwed in. If you’re really worried about it use some Polyimide/Kapton tape to keep it in place or find appropriate screws.

Bluetooth module doesn’t screw into the Optibay using either the provided or original screws.

And finally, reassemble the laptop and put the ten back panel screws back. Boot the laptop to make sure all is well. Open Disk Utility to see if the new SSD is listed.

Place the SuperDrive you removed into the external USB 2.0 enclosure provided with the Optibay.

Install the latest SSD firmware

So the new SSD is seen by OS X and all is well. Great! If you haven’t already burned the firmware updater tool provided by Intel (or whatever company makes your SSDs), do so now. Boot up to the burned disc by holding down C on boot when the gray screen is shown. Follow the on screen instructions and 5 minutes later both of your SSDs should be loaded up with the latest firmware.

Usual firmware updating precautions apply — make sure all of your data is backed up on the off-chance the SSD gets bricked.

Software Config

Now you have two working SSDs in your MacBook Pro. You are currently in either one of two situations:

1. [My Situation] One of the SSDs has already been loaded up with OS X and the other is empty.
2. Both SSDs are new and empty. There is no OS loaded on either.

If you are in situation #2, I am guessing (not tried it personally) that you need to:

• put your OS X disc into the SuperDrive you placed into the provided external enclosure and connect it to your MacBook Pro
• hold down C and boot into the installer
• close the installer window and go to the top menu to open up Disk Utility
• create the RAID array and proceed installing OS X onto it

However, I have heard of some issues where the computer will not see the RAID array when you are booted off of the OS X install disc. You might need to create the array while booted off of another external OS X install or on a working OS X install already present on one of the SSDs — that’s why I recommend having an external hard drive lying around just in case. To clarify, it seems if you have the computer booted off of OS X on another drive, insert the install disc, run the initial setup from the inside-OS X installer that auto-reboots for you, that it should work.. if that makes sense. If not, leave a comment.

If you are in situation #1 like myself, then things are a bit trickier. In a nutshell, I cloned my OS X installation onto an external USB 2.0 hard drive, changed the startup disk to that external drive then booted from it, created the RAID array, cloned the external drive onto the new RAID array, changed the startup disk to the RAID array and rebooted.

While you can do the drive cloning back and forth like I describe below I always recommend doing a fresh OS X install whenever possible.

Alrighty, here we go. Download and install Carbon Copy Cloner (SuperDuper works too). Connect your external hard drive. I have had a cheap Western Digital My Book hard drive solely for Time Machine backups. I had plenty of extra space on the drive so I partitioned it so that I could maintain both Time Machine backups and a Carbon Copy Clone of my OS X install.

If you want to do the same and use your external drive for both Time Machine and a bootable OS X drive clone, connect the drive and open Disk Utility. Click the external hard drive on the left pane and then click the Partition tab on the right. Resize the current Time Machine partition to make room for a second partition. Apply changes and name the new partition.

Fire up Carbon Copy Cloner and select the internal SSD with OS X as the source drive and the new partition you just made on the external drive (if you did that) as the target drive. Make sure the drive will be bootable. It should say “This volume will be bootable.” Click Clone.

Somewhere around 30 minutes to a few hours later, drive cloning will be done.

Now we want to boot OS X off of that new external clone. Go to System Preferences » Startup Disk and select the external drive. Click Restart.

After successfully booting into OS X on the external drive, open Disk Utility once again. You may opt to first erase both SSDs before proceeding. Select one of the SSDs in the left pane (the root device that says INTEL SSD…, not the partition disk1s..) and select the RAID tab on the right. Select Striped RAID Set for RAID Type, and keep Format as the default “Mac OS Extended (Journaled).” Drag each of the SSDs on the left into the open section on the bottom right.

About to create the RAID array

Click Options. For RAID Block Size select 128K and then click OK. As for why I selected that value, I find it to be a great all around compromise for performance and versatility with files of all sizes. If the block size was smaller, it would perform slightly better with smaller files (versus just letting one SSD in the RAID 0 array receive the data of a file that is smaller than the block size) but it would not be as effective with larger files. If you’re still curious about this, feel free to ask me for a more in-depth explanation in the comments.

Selecting RAID array block size.

Click Create, then click Create again in the next window. Your new RAID 0 SSD array will be made momentarily.

Creating the RAID 0 SSD array

Sweet! The RAID 0 array is working and online.

There’s still no OS on the RAID array so we’ll need to fire up ye olde Carbon Copy Cloner again. This time select the external drive as the source disk and the new RAID array as the target disk. Make sure “Backup Everything” is selected. Again, check to see that CCC says “This volume will be bootable.” Click Clone. If it gives you a warning about deleting files on the target volume, click Continue.

Don’t use the computer and go grab a bite to eat or get a quad-shot cappuccino or something. Or comment on this article saying how you’re following along and all is going well and you’re super excited about the new speeds your laptop is about to see.

Cloning OS X from external drive to new RAID 0 SSD array underway – Carbon Copy Cloner

After cloning finishes, open up the Startup Disk pane in System Preferences again. Select the new RAID array you made as the startup disk. Click Restart.

Boot off of your new RAID array

When the computer boots up into OS X again, this time from your new RAID array, eject and unplug the external drive. One last time, open up Disk Utility. Click on the RAID array, select the First Aid tab and click Repair Disk Permissions. After that is done click Verify Disk and then Repair Disk if deemed necessary.

RAID Array First Aid

Now, one last check to make sure everything is running a-okay. Select the RAID array in Finder and hit Command+I (Get Info). Expand the Sharing & Permissions section at the bottom. Click the little lock and type in your password to gain access. Make sure that both “system” and “admin” have Read & Write privileges set.

Performance

I’ll let the numbers speak for themselves. You may click any of these screenshots for a larger version. Benchmarks were carried out by QuickBench after a fresh reboot and the numbers presented below were calculated as an average of 10 runs. Tests from 4KB all the way up to 100MB are shown below.

Without Cache Effects and Asynchronous I/O enabled, standard averages varied slightly from the test above: 206.885 MB/sec (seq reads), 106.755 MB/sec (seq writes), 162.901 MB/sec (rand reads), 72.378 MB/sec (rand writes).

Without Cache Effects and Asynchronous I/O enabled, max reads and writes were 520 MB/sec and 170 MB/sec, respectively.

If numbers aren’t your thing, how about some typical day-to-day tasks:

• Photoshop CS4 loads in 2 seconds and only takes another 7 seconds to load 5 hi-res images (each around 5-8 MB)
• It takes 6.5 seconds to load Photoshop CS4, Illustrator CS4 and Fireworks CS4 simultaneously.
• What other daily tasks do you do? Let me know in the comments and I will update this post with the results.

However, bootup times are not remarkably fast as it seems to take a while for the RAID array to get recognized. Not the biggest deal if you only happen to reboot every 50 days or so like I do.

Verdict

This RAID 0 SSD setup in my 17-inch Unibody MacBook Pro is just the way I like my cars and computers: pricey, impractical but hellishly fast. I give the 2×80GB Intel X25-M RAID SSD setup in my MacBook Pro 9.0 out of 10 Stammys. It’s not a 10 out of 10 because:

1. the X25-M is already outdated by the new SandForce controller SSDs, as well as offerings with Samsung or Indilinx drive controllers with caching, currently emerging on the market
2. the 160GB version of the X25-M has faster sustained reads and writes than the 80GB X25-M
3. the X25-M is MLC. while more storage at the expense of performance made it acceptable for a single SSD, having a RAID setup makes it easier to get two 64GB SLC SSDs and have much greater speeds

Q: So is this hardware or software RAID?
A: This MacBook Pro (or other Apple laptops for that matter) do not seem to have hardware RAID controllers, such as ICH10R and their ilk. As such, this RAID array is software. That just means that intense disk I/O is also accompanied with some increased CPU activity.

Q: OMG how do you live without an optical drive!!?!?
A: Easily. The last time I used my optical drive for anything was to burn a music CD for the car and that was just because I was too lazy to sync and charge my iPod Nano. Optical media is slowly dying. Although I would like to see the next Core i5 Apple laptops come with the option of a Blu-ray drive.

Q: But you’re running twice as many drives.. doesn’t that suck a lot of power?
A: I haven’t noticed any changes in battery life. Most SSDs have better power consumption profiles compared to their mechanical counterparts in most scenarios. For example, SSDs easily outperform spinning disks under high load situations in terms of power consumption.

Q: What about TRIM?
A: Well first off, TRIM isn’t even supported by OS X as of Snow Leopard so it’s not like that’s a big deal. However, while you could boot into Windows 7 previously if you had a dual-boot system and run TRIM from there (edit: but even that is of limited utility as Windows 7 can’t run TRIM on HFS+), that isn’t possible with an SSD RAID array. It is not possible to TRIM a RAID array now for a few reasons. No RAID controller (and this array is software too, so there is not a physical RAID controller) currently supports TRIM on RAID and it is not possible to TRIM each SSD separately since the file system needs to be seen and the RAID layer on top of that kind of abstracts it. This does not mean that TRIM on SSD RAID arrays will not be possible in the future but it requires that the OS, RAID controller and SSDs all support TRIM, which will invariably take some time.

In short: not being able to run TRIM is only a substantial concern once the entire volume has been written to once. I am currently using less than half of the array’s storage space so this is not a huge concern right now. Also this array will probably only exist on my computer for 9 months, then I’ll upgrade it with something faster.

Now that you’ve read all of this, here’s a bit of a warning: back up your stuff often. SSDs are kind of flaky in terms of lifetime. My first one died in under a year (I believe Intel claim 5 years of writing 100GB/day – correct me if I’m wrong – but still the controller can go out and random events), and it doesn’t help that I am now running 2 of them in RAID 0 without any way to run TRIM.

Thoughts? Is this something you would do with your laptop or desktop? Do you currently use a Solid State Drive in your main computer? Do you have the need for (computer) speed?

Follow me and my nerd musings on Twitter and FriendFeed.

This post was based on a Skribit suggestion. Have a good idea for a post? Let me hear it.

RSS ads (for the student loans, I promise!): PaulStamatiou.com runs the Thesis theme. View my usenet downloading how to then checkout my usenet host Giganews.

How To: Apple MacBook Pro RAID 0 Array with 2 Intel X25-M SSDs

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

Related posts:

1. First Impressions: 17-inch Apple MacBook Pro 2009 (Unibody, Anti-Glare)
2. Review: 2.53GHz Apple MacBook Pro
3. Apple Updates MacBook Pros
4. Intel-Powered Apple Notebook in 1 Week?
5. Apple Quietly Unleashes 17″ MacBook Pro
6. Apple Updates Boot Camp

Knowing how to keep your web traffic data safe while browsing the web on unknown networks is a vital skill that not enough savvy Internet surfers take part in. I have previously discussed a few ways of solving this issue through the use of SSH tunnels (manually-created and application managed). I have also discussed things like “anonymous” web browsing through the Janus Privacy Adapter as well as with public Tor nodes. (Side note: Anonymous in quotes because truly anon browsing requires encrypted, signed traffic over private Tor networks — not public, published ones everyone knows about — but I digress). While VPN is nothing new and has been used by businesses and their employees for over a decade, it has not generally been something aimed at the typical Internet user. However, there is a problem with all of these solutions — they are just too hard to setup for most users and have various drawbacks (see nerd talk at the end of this post).

Enter VyprVPN

A recently launched software development company called Golden Frog, inspired by the creators of Giganews, debuted their VPN service called VyprVPN. Having been a happy customer of Giganews for the last 2 years and therefore receiving access to VyprVPN in my account, I decided to put their claims to the test with this review.

VyprVPN provides a secure encrypted connection to the Internet, creating a solid layer of online privacy protection unavailable with traditional Internet security software. Valued at $14.99 per month, VyprVPN is free to Diamond customers for a limited time.

Before beginning with setup and my VyprVPN review, let’s see how it is marketed to get a better idea of its uses. Golden Frog mentions VyprVPN in the context of privacy, security, reliability & speed, as well as trust and stability. I’ll try to summarize what they’re aiming for briefly:

• “VyprVPN thwarts Deep Packet Inspection by encrypting your Internet traffic as it passes through your ISP.”
• “You get a high-speed connection with unlimited speed. VyprVPN has the bandwidth and high-quality server infrastructure to deliver 99.99% uptime.”
• “VyprVPN was developed by Golden Frog, a global software developer which is currently partnering with Giganews to beta the service for free with Giganews’ Usenet customers.”

What You Should Not Use VyprVPN For

I feel obligated to mention that using VyprVPN in an attempt to hide your tracks while doing nefarious online activities is not a good idea. I say “attempting to hide your tracks” because a quick read of the Golden Frog VyprVPN Privacy Policy and Terms of Service shows that they complies with criminal investigations:

Golden Frog cooperates fully with law enforcement agencies, yet there must still be a subpoena before Golden Frog provides a member’s identifying information – minimal information reasonably calculated to identify and no more. In a criminal investigation Golden Frog is required by the Law to not divulge the fact of the investigation to the member.

While on the subject, Golden Frog has a list of prohibited activites while using VyprVPN or any of their services:

• Spamming (email, Usenet, message boards, etc.)
• Copyright, trademark, and patent infringement.
• Defamatory or abusive language
• IP Spoofing
• Illegal or unauthorized access to other computers or networks
• Distribution of Internet viruses, worms, or other destructive activities
• Export control violations
• All other illegal activities

I just wanted to get that out of the way as there seems to be a consensus among tech-savvy people my age (or at least all my computer science friends have been to one too many Black Hat, DEF CON, HOPE and ShmooCon conventions) that SSH tunnels, Tor networks and VPN services were created solely for hiding their web traffic while doing shady things online. There are in fact real world legitimate uses for VPNs on a daily basis…

What You Can/Should Use VyprVPN For

• Using inflight Wi-Fi by a provider such as Gogo that uses a completely open and unencrypted Wi-Fi access point with no link layer security. Anyone on the flight could open up a packet sniffer and see what you are up to online.




• Using similar public Wi-Fi access points at coffee shops, airports, that inviting open access point named “Linksys” that just seems to follow you around or those hotel networks that allow you to see other computers on the network. Or even while on your own GSM 3G data card (but to be honest the chances of having your GSM 3G data packets sniffed are very, very slim as it’s not just as easy as any random script kiddie installing Wireshark or NetWitness Investigator)




• Bypassing your ISP’s port blocking and/or traffic shaping and throttling activities based on Deep Packet Inspection. For example, your BitTorrent uploads and downloads might be monitored and limited by your ISP alongside services like Skype VoIP calls.




• Providing additional security from pesky network admins at work. Did you know that many businesses have software on their network that lets your boss and/or IT guy know exactly what websites you are visiting, in real-time, as well as block access to other websites? If you’ve ever wondered why you can’t browse Facebook or Twitter at work, that explains it. They are employing something like SonicWALL Traffic Monitor, BLOXX Internet Content Filtering, Exinda WAN Optimization or a number of other solutions. Setting up a VPN will let you bypass them in most cases. Although they will be able to tell that you’re using a VPN and likely assume it’s solely for the purpose of bypassing their monitors and/or if they are using something like Apple Remote Desktop they’ll be able to see your screen, but I digress.




• Access services limited by geographic region (ex: Pandora, Hulu, Spotify, BBC iPlayer)

Competitive Landscape

In the interest of writing an unbiased article, I wanted to point out that there are many VPN providers and VyprVPN is in no way the first mover in this space. Some have limitations. Some are free. Some are paid. Some are by known companies, and some look like fly by night operations. In no particular order, below are some other VPN providers, with their supported protocol types listed along the side.

• Cryptocloud (OpenVPN)
• WiTopia (PPTP, SSL)
• iPREDator (PPTP) (run by The Pirate Bay guys)
• Torrent Freedom (OpenVPN)
• Black Logic (IPSec)
• BananaVPN (PPTP)
• Perfect Privacy (PPTP, OpenVPN)
• StrongVPN (PPTP, SSL)
• AlwaysVPN (OpenVPN)
• AceVPN (OpenVPN, SSL, PPTP, L2TP)
• PureVPN (PPTP, L2TP, IPSec)

To be clear, I have not used any of the VPN providers in the list above. I just did some research and found them. I am not implying they are in the same class as VyprVPN, which boasts its speeds and network performance just as much as their customer service.

Setup…

Now that you have an idea of VyprVPN and other VPN offerings and their uses, let’s proceed with installation and configuration. Since that all depends on your OS, I have gone through and written up install documentation with screenshots for Mac OS X 10.6, Windows 7, Ubuntu 9.10 and the iPhone.

Setup on Mac OS X (Snow Leopard)

Browse to Apple » System Preferences » Network and click the + icon found in the bottom left corner. In the drop-downs select VPN, PPTP and enter a service name of your choice, respectively, as shown below:

Adding a new VPN connection in Mac OS X

Click Create when done, then select the new connection in the left pane. On the right, enter one of the following for Server Address depending on which you live closest to:

• us1.vyprvpn.com (United States — Los Angeles)
• eu1.vyprvpn.com (Europe — Amsterdam)

Continue to fill out your VyprVPN username as described earlier for Account Name. You many optionally set Encryption to Maximum (128 bit only) instead of the default “Automatic (128 bit or 40 bit)” setting.

Click Authentication Settings and select the Password radio box. Supply your VyprVPN-provided password in that field and then click OK.

Set VyprVPN password – Mac OS X”

We’re almost done! Click Advanced in the bottom right corner of the window and ensure that Send all traffic over VPN connection is checked. Click OK.

Advanced VPN Settings – Send all traffic over VPN – Mac OS X

Check Show VPN status in menu bar if it is not already. Click Apply then browse to the new, odd-looking VPN icon in the menu bar and connect to your new VPN.

Connect to VyprVPN – Mac OS X

Disconnecting from the VPN connection can also be done by accessing the menu from that VPN icon in the menu bar.

Notes: OS X has a feature called VPN on Demand, listed as a tab on the Advanced page for VPN connections, that will theoretically automatically connect to the VPN when you attempt to access certain domains you provide. I say theoretically as I have tried many things to get it working without luck and have found users complaining about the same issue on Apple’s forums. If/when this issue is fixed, it will be a great way to automatically ensure you are always on a secure connection when doing things like going to your webmail account and so on.

Also, if you would like to use a different DNS provider, like OpenDNS or Google Public DNS, than you use with your primary connection, you can specify that in the DNS tab in the same Advanced VPN options page. Otherwise, OS X will inherit any DNS servers you have set on your Ethernet or AirPort connection. It doesn’t actually list those inherited DNS servers but I tested it and it still uses my OpenDNS configuration.

Setup on Windows 7

Fire up the Network and Sharing Center, most easily opened by clicking the Start button then using the search field to find it.

Under the “Change your networking settings” section, click Set up a new connection or network.

Set up new VPN connection – Windows 7

In the window that pops up, select Connect to a workplace. (If you already have another VPN connection, Windows 7 will ask if you want to use that connection. Select No, create a new connection and click Next.)

Click Use my Internet connection (VPN).

For Internet address, supply one of the following depending on which you live closest to:

• us1.vyprvpn.com (United States — Los Angeles)
• eu1.vyprvpn.com (Europe — Amsterdam)

Provide a name for the new VPN connection, such as “VyprVPN”, for Destination name. Click the checkbox for Don’t connect now; just set it up so I can connect later, then click Next.

Type in your VyprVPN-provided username and password and check the box for Remember this password. Click Close

Click Close.

When you are ready to connect to VyprVPN, click the network icon found at the bottom right of your screen on the taskbar. A window displaying available networks to connect to will open up. Under the “Dial-up and VPN” section, your new VyprVPN connection will be listed. Select it, right-click and then click on Properties.

On the Security tab, set Data encryption to Maximum strength encryption (disconnect if server declines). Under the Authentication section, click Allow these protocols and under it uncheck all but Microsoft CHAP Version 2 (MS-CHAP v2). Click OK.

Go back to the network menu, select VyprVPN again and click Connect.

In the next window, click Connect as well. A few small connection status windows will show up and then you’ll be successfully connected to the VyprVPN VPN service!

Disconnecting from the VPN can be done by clicking the network icon in the taskbar again, selecting the VyprVPN connection and clicking Disconnect.

Setup on Linux (Ubuntu 9.10)

Setting up a VPN connection is a bit more involved on a Linux box but for the better as you get easier access to some more advanced functionality. Start by browsing to System » Preferences » Network Connections » VPN.

If you have never setup a VPN connection before there is a good chance that all the buttons, like “Add”, are grayed out. Fix this by opening a terminal and running this command:

sudo apt-get install pptp-linux network-manager-pptp

Now go back to the Network Connections window and the VPN tab inside of it; the Add button should now be clickable. Click it, select Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) in the drop-down and click Create.

Type something like VyprVPN in for Connection name. For Gateway, supply one of the following depending on which you live closest to:

• us1.vyprvpn.com (United States — Los Angeles)
• eu1.vyprvpn.com (Europe — Amsterdam)

Type in the VyprVPN-provided password and then click Advanced.

In the Authentication section, uncheck all but MSCHAPv2. More on why we’re setting that at the end of this post.

In the Security and Compression section, check the box for Use Point-to-Point encryption (MPPE) and select 128-bit (most secure) in the drop-down below it. Then check the box for Allow stateful encryption and click OK and Apply.

If at any point during the VPN setup you see a keyring message like the one below, click Always Allow.

Restart the network manager by running this command in the terminal:

sudo /etc/init.d/network-manager restart

Now you are ready to take your new VyprVPN connection for a test drive. Click the network icon in the taskbar and click on your new VPN connection.

A few seconds later you should be successfully connected!

Setup on iPhone/iPod Touch

Browse to Settings » General » Network » VPN » Add VPN Configuration. Select the PPTP tab. Provide a name for the connection, like VyprVPN, in the Description field. For Server, supply one of the following depending on which you live closest to:

• us1.vyprvpn.com (United States — Los Angeles)
• eu1.vyprvpn.com (Europe — Amsterdam)

Type in your VyprVPN username and password in the Account and Password sections, respectively. Set Encryption Level to Maximum and toggle Send All Traffic to ON. Click Save.

Ensure that your new VPN connection is selected under the Choose a Configuration section. You can connect to your new VPN from this page or even more conveniently with the VPN toggle switch on main Settings page. Flip VPN to ON and it should connect shortly. VPN on the iPhone works with both 3G and Wi-Fi connections.

How do I know it’s working?

Before connecting to your VyprVPN connection, find your IP address. There are many ways of doing this but you can easily find it by going to SpeedTest.net. Your IP will be displayed in the bottom left corner. Then connect to the VPN and refresh the page. Your IP should have changed and the map will now think you are in a different location.

Performance

As to be expected when routing your web traffic through another service, your throughput takes a hit in exchange for the extra security. How big of a hit depends on a few variables — where the exit server is vis-à-vis the servers of sites you commonly visit as well as the protocol used for creating the VPN connection. (It is a myth that VPN performance depends on having a nearby VPN server. It is more important that the VPN server is on the path to the servers of websites/services you commonly interact with.) That being said, PPTP is what VyprVPN uses and there are other more robust protocols for VPN connections. It is, however, the easiest to setup, manage and is natively supported by many operating systems (can be fast if properly configured because it’s at the kernel level) right out of the box.

Bandwidth tests with and without VyprVPN in various cities

How I Tested: The test box was a Windows 7 PC connected to the Internet directly with an Ethernet cable — no router in between (Once you go past 80 megabits my router doesn’t route so well..). I fired up Firefox 3.5.6 with Flash 10.0.42.34 and went to SpeedTest.net. I did 5 tests at each location, with and without VyprVPN enabled and posted the best results from each. My Internet connection is a fiber line by DirecPath in Atlanta, GA.

As you can see, there is a noticable before and after difference in Internet bandwidth but nothing big enough to negatively change your typical browsing habits. The most important aspect is that download speeds remain high. The speed test at San Diego with VyprVPN enabled was the fastest of the VPN-enabled bunch because it is closest out-of-line location. Well actually, Los Angeles is where it exits but there is a bit of network congestion there. As the VPN-enabled speed tests get further away from San Diego, they naturally get a bit slower as they have to travel a further distance.

I should also mention that you can only connect to VyprVPN from one IP at a time, so using it simultaneously on your iPhone and laptop will not work; even if they are on the same router with the same WAN IP. I tried it and the new connection I made knocked off the other active VPN connection.

A Golden Frog Senior Engineer had this to say about speed tests, where they emphasize their support in helping customers optimize their speeds:

Speed tests are dependent on a number of factors such as the in-between network, home networking equipment, firewall and anti-virus software, and the speed-test location itself. One person’s results can be very different from anothers just by changing something simple like wireless router firmware. Golden Frog’s support staff will work directly with individual customers to get them the best speed for their specific conditions through their variety of network and troubleshooting options.

And here’s a simple test on the iPhone:

iPhone bandwidth test over Wi-Fi

In Short: VyprVPN’s network infrastructure is beefy enough to handle the needs of what you would do with a VPN — check email, surf the web, download files, consume content on sites that require a U.S. or European IP, et cetera. It would be nice to see VyprVPN add more VPN locations in addition to Los Angeles and Amsterdam.

Thoughts + Nerd Talk

In the beginning of this post I mentioned SSH tunnels. One of the problems with SSH tunnels is that if they are not configured properly your DNS requests will not go through the tunnel, easily exposing what websites you are visiting. While SSH tunnels and VPN, short for Virtual Private Network, achieve similar goals they operate at different layers of the OSI model (VPN PPP/PPTP at layer 2; compare to SSH at layer 7). VPN encrypts all traffic so you don’t have to worry about properly setting up ports with any SSH tunnels. Encrypting all traffic with VPN does come at the expense of some network overhead but I do not think this will easily be realized with a personal VPN setup.

However, that same DNS request leak issue manifests itself with PPTP VPN connections if encryption is not enabled (side note: the PPTP protocol by nature implies no encryption or authentication — that relies on the configuration of the authentication methods. Keep that in mind when reading people online say that PPTP leaks DNS requests everywhere.. all depends on the config!). I tested my Linux VyprVPN setup by running it in a VM and then capturing the packets in the parent OS. The VM used a different IP than the parent OS, instead of the typical NAT/shared setup, so I could ensure that the data I was looking at was for the Linux traffic only. With my VyprVPN connection on my Linux box, no DNS requests got through (that’s good!).

Click for larger version. On the left you can easily see DNS requests coming through (bad!) and on the right is the properly configured VyprVPN connection that did not leak any DNS requests through.

Windows Users: Windows (XP, Vista, 7) has a DNS leak issue. Read about patching it.

MSCHAPv2 is the most secure authentication method that VyprVPN supports. CHAP, MSCHAPv1 and MSCHAPv2 are all similar protocols, with the latter two being Microsoft’s implementation. They are all very old and vulnerable protocols. Security expert Bruce Schneier stated that with MSCHAPv2 “the fundamental weakness of the authentication and encryption protocol is that it is only as secure as the password chosen by the user.” Keep that in mind and change the default password provided by VyprVPN to something much longer with lots of entropy (Notice: as of this posting, passwords cannot be longer than 8 characters but will be supported out of the gate when VyprVPN reaches its final release). As for other authentication protocols we are not using, EAP is more secure but I could not get it to connect to VyprVPN with that setting. There is also PAP, which you should avoid at all costs as it sends your password in plaintext.

While I’m on the subject of security here, it should be noted that there are still some latent vulnerabilities associated with using PPTP VPN instead of IPSec (albeit more complicated to setup, manage and more resource intense). As Schneier said:

Since authentication and key-exchange protocols which do not allow passive dictionary attacks against the user’s password are possible – Encrypted Key Exchange and its variants, IPSec – it seems imprudent for Microsoft to continue to rely on the security of passwords. Our hope is that PPTP continues to see a decline in use as IPSec becomes more prevalent.

PPTP VPN connections can be compromised with man-in-the-middle and denial of service attacks that are protected against with IPSec VPN implementations. Examples of PPTP downgrade attacks were mentioned at the 2003 Black Hat Conference:

• During negotiation phase
  • Force PAP authentication
  • Force MS-CHAPv1 from MS-CHAPv2
  • Force no encryption
• During re-negotiation (plaintext Terminate-Ack])
  • Get passwords from existing tunnels
  • Misc attacks
• Force “password change” to get password hashes
  • Hashes can be used directly by a modified SMB or PPTP client
  • MS-CHAPv2 hashes not useful – force v1

Extra Reading
If this technical aspect of VPN interests you, Microsoft actually has some great resources: VPN Tunneling Protocols, VPN Security, VPN Overview.

In Short: VyprVPN encrypts data and hides DNS requests when properly setup. Unfortunately, the underlying VPN technology used here is PPTP that is often scoffed at by security experts for being old and insecure. I would love to see the final version of VyprVPN (it is in beta now) ditch PPTP in favor of IPSec, L2TP over IPSec or OpenVPN protocols.

Verdict

If you are looking for an extra bit of security while checking your email at the local coffee shop where you frequently work then VyprVPN is just what you’re looking for. It’s easy to setup and provides a sufficient layer of extra security. If you are trying to use the hotel Wi-Fi connection while attending Def Con, I do not recommend using VyprVPN or else your login information will end up on their wall of sheep. In that case you would want to find an OpenVPN, SSL or IPSec VPN provider.

VyprVPN is currently in beta and only available to Diamond level customers of Giganews until June 2010. They state the value of VyprVPN is $14.99 per month, so it can only be assumed that it will cost that much if and when it is offered on its own. Compared to other VPN providers this seems to be on the higher end of the scale in terms of pricing, assuming the others which I have not tested offer similar speeds. Combined with PPTP, VyprVPN will make for a hard sell for the utmost security minded folks. I hope VyprVPN will offer an OpenVPN service in the near future. This is what a Golden Frog Senior Engineer had to say when I asked them about future offerings:

We aim to be competitive with existing offerings in the space and are focused on not just providing the same kinds of VPN service, but VPN service focused on speed and reliability.

Hopefully by reading this article you have learned a few things and know how to shop for a VPN provider should you need one in the near future. The most important things to look for in a VPN provider are as follows: a secure protocol like OpenVPN or IPSec, a Privacy Policy and Terms of Service that aligns with what you plan on using that service for, a reasonable bandwidth allowance and servers near the sites you access (in general – if you live in the U.S. and visit U.S. sites often, a VPN provider with a U.S. location will suffice). Properly configured PPTP VPN connections are okay for adding a bit of security — enough to foil any random running a packet sniffer for their first time — but for anything important, avoid them:

IPREDator co-founder Peter Sunde, who also founded popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, told iTnews: “128-bit encrypted PPTP can probably be broken by someone that can eavesdrop on the traffic.”

iTnews – Pirate Bay’s IPREDator not a place to hide

VyprVPN gets 7.5 out of 10 Stammys with casual web surfers in mind, great support and a fast connection. The security-minded nerd side of me cannot score a PPTP VPN connection higher than that.

How do you currently browse the web when on untrusted, open networks? Have you ever used a VPN for the purpose of keeping your data safe or bypassing some ISP traffic shaping/etc limitations? Is VyprVPN something you would pay for?

Disclosure: I have a been a paying customer of Giganews since early 2008. Giganews bought me lunch at South By SouthWest Interactive last year and it was tasty. This post was not paid in any way, shape or form. I find this stuff interesting on my own and figured it would make for a great review. Some links in this post utilize an affiliate tag, which helps pay for some of my startup and living expenses as well as student loans.

Please leave a comment if you have enjoyed this post! Follow me and my nerd musings on Twitter and FriendFeed.

RSS ads (for the student loans, I promise!): PaulStamatiou.com runs the Thesis theme. View my usenet downloading how to then checkout my usenet host Giganews.

How To/Review: Surf Securely with VyprVPN

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

Related posts:

1. How To: Surf Securely with an SSH Tunnel
2. Review: Meerkat (SSH Tunnels Made Easy)
3. Review: AT&T 3G MicroCell
4. Review: Slingbox AV
5. Review: Slim Devices Squeezebox
6. Review: PGP Whole Disk Encryption for Mac OS X

Blippy is my pick for startup to watch this year (with Square being close by). Blippy enables people to automatically share their purchases done through a variety of services, such as Amazon, iTunes, Netflix and better yet their credit/debit cards, with their followers. At first glance many will be shocked and wonder why they would ever want to use such a service but that only brings up memories of people saying the same thing about Twitter just a few years ago. The concept behind Blippy is crazy enough that I believe it will take off rather quickly. In fact, they recently announced they are already tracking over $1M in transactions.

My Blippy Profile – Some aesthetic elements of Blippy are noticeably inspired from Facebook and Twitter, but that’s because they work well.

First off, for those worried about the security of providing such a service your bank credentials, it is no different than what Mint does; encrypt your account information and then outsource the rest to a trusted PCI-compliant and ISO 27002 certified service like Yodlee.

Rather than sounding like every other blogger being skeptical of Blippy due to privacy issues associated with sharing such financial information, I fully embrace Blippy and have linked my primary bank account in addition to my Amazon and iTunes accounts. The last decade has proven that people can safely lead completely transparent lives online. First it was blogging, then social networks and the rise of photo and video sharing sites, lifestreaming, Twitter and so on. Let’s face it — the majority of Gen Y and Gen X-ers having no problem sharing lots of information about themselves online. I believe social financial data sharing through services like Blippy is naturally the next step.

Linking accounts to Blippy

That’s not to say that some privacy elements are critical with a service like Blippy. In fact, they suggest having one credit/debit card as your social Blippy-linked card and have it linked to your Blippy account to share all transactions. I only have one card I really use all the time, so I have that linked and make use of some of Blippy’s privacy features like previewing and hiding purchases. I have found that there is often a delay before transactions appear on your profile so there’s no worry if you made a purchase you don’t want others to see; you can hide it before it goes live, or after.

Arguably the best feature of Blippy is the superior control over what is shared. You can preview and hide purchases manually at your discretion. For example, if you don’t want people to know you spent a lot of money on alcohol one weekend…

Blippy is fairly early stage, but I expect them to have a filtering feature in the near future. For example, if I never want my account to show trivial expenses that I feel would otherwise just add noise to my Blippy feed, like filling up at the gas station, or simply purchases that should not be shared for privacy reasons, like gluttonous visits to a particular bar or two, I could make a list of businesses that should never be shared. At the moment hiding purchases is a manual process for each transaction. Users may temporarily pause sharing from a particular card or account though. And of course some users may opt for complete lockdown and have a protected account that can only be viewed by approved users.

Users can see recent purchases by business/retailer

Blippy also gives you some control over purchase names and locations. You can do a quick search to add the location of the business. Unfortunately, I had to do that several times for separate purchases at the same restaurant as there was no way to make a global change to transaction names. However, Blippy does/should notice the same businesses and states how many times users have interacted there.

Blippy lets you rename purchases and add location information. Often credit/debit card purchases have cryptic and not too explanatory names. Also, probably a good idea to pause sharing on your linked accounts when visiting Vegas.

Utility

Okay so you might still be thinking “I use Twitter.. but why the heck would I use this?” Here are a few use cases. For one, you can see if you’re overpaying for anything as your friends will see what you bought and paid (certain accounts like Amazon, iTunes and Netflix provide itemized lists of what you purchased instead of just displaying price and business) and be quick to chime in if you got ripped off. They can also point you to helpful resources about that new camera you just bought. In this economy it’s a great way to find good deals through your network and comparison shop — albeit after you’ve already purchased the item. Or Blippy might end up just showing how much money you waste.

So.. does it work well?

Going back to the filtering idea, I think that will be vital to Blippy as it the numbers of users increase by orders of magnitude. If most users simply link all their accounts and don’t actively manage or utilize such an automatic filter, your homepage could become very saturated and noisy. At the moment some purchases made by the same person get clustered together and have a small expand link, but I think that’s just the beginning.

The homepage of Blippy can be a bit noisy at times with lots of nondescript purchases.

That being said, Blippy works very well with interesting purchases and conversations form around them:

And other times lots of great commentary can be found.

Want in? Here are some invites..

Blippy is currently in private beta and currently has around 1,000 users, according to my unscientific pagination math. I have secured 50 invites to give out (Thanks Ashvin!). Click through to this blog post (for those of you in RSS readers) and the invite code will in be the first comment below. Follow my Blippy account at @Paul.

Thoughts? Would you use Blippy? If so, would you share it all or just a few select accounts? If not, what do you think it needs before you would consider using it?

RSS ads (for the student loans, I promise!): PaulStamatiou.com runs the Thesis theme. View my usenet downloading how to then checkout my usenet host Giganews.

Review: Blippy (“What are your friends buying?”)

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

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I was recently in the market for an affordable, HD-capable pocket video camera. I knew Pure Digital’s Flip line of pocket camcorders like the Mino HD and Ultra HD were very popular in this space and as such I was just about ready to buy one. However, I decided to look around first and that’s when I discovered the $180 Kodak Zi8 HD pocket video camera. After having the Zi8 on hand for a few weeks, I believe it to be the best high-definition pocket video camera near the ~$200 price point on the market now. I’ll attempt to explain why in this review but if you’re looking for a quick answer, it’s because the Zi8 has an external microphone input, SDHC support and some interesting things I’ll get into soon.

Photo taken with D90 and my favorite lens: 50mm f/1.8

Unboxing

While the $180 Kodak Zi8 is cheaper than Flip’s 2nd Generation offerings ($230 MSRP for the 8GB Mino HD), the Zi8 requires that you provide your own an SDHC memory card. That is of course unless you think the measely 20MB of onboard storage is enough for your HD clips, which are typically 100 MB per 2ish minutes of video at the lowest HD setting (720p @ 30fps). Fair enough; SDHC storage is cheap and now with Class 10 cards, very fast. I purchased a 32GB Class 10 SDHC card (Patriot LX) to go with my Zi8 for about $100.

The unboxed Zi8 with the usual assortment of cables (A/V, HDMI, power).

On the upside the Zi8 unboxing yields more goodies than with the Flip cameras. You get a wall outlet charger, which would cost you some $20 with the Flip, as well as A/V and HDMI cables to connect the Zi8 to a TV for displaying your latest clips.

Getting to Know the Kodak Zi8

At 4.5-inches tall, 0.9-inches thick and 2.4-inches wide, the Zi8’s form factor is not unlike that of any other smartphone that might occupy your pocket on a daily basis. Also similar to a smartphone, you can charge the Zi8 over USB, a process that will take around 4 hours for a full charge or use the included wall charger to charge the Zi8 in just 2 hours.

You can’t tell in this picture but the Zi8 is substantially thicker than the iPhone 3GS.

The Zi8 sports a vibrant 2.5-inch LCD display boasting 230,000 pixels that rivals the 2-inch displays found on Flip’s current products. Unfortunately, it is not possible to turn off the display to save battery while recording. That being said, I got just 1 hour and 37 minutes of battery life when recording 720p @ 60fps. Kodak states an official battery life of 90 minutes when recording 720p @ 30fps, so my numbers seem accurate. However, shooting with EIS video stabilization enabled (pretty much all the time unless you’re using a tripod) battery life will look more like 75 minutes.

External microphone input, A/V out, HDMI, power

There are two solutions for those that require more battery life while on the go:

• Buy an extra Li-Ion battery or two. The Kodak brand one (KLIC-7004) runs about $25 or you can find a cheaper, generic brand with more mAh for about half that or less. However, keeping them all charged requires charging them inside the Zi8 so it might be a good idea to get a separate charger.
• Or better yet, use the USB to DC power cable that comes with the Zi8 and hook it up to a portable power source like the Tekkeon TekCharge MP1800 or MP1550. The larger of which will give you another 6+ hours of power for your Zi8 on the go.

For camera geeks: 6.3 mm, f/2.8, fixed focus; 35 mm equivalent: 61 mm (1080p), 46 mm (720p/60 fps, 720p, WVGA), 42 mm (still)

Like many other pocket video cameras at this price point, the Zi8 uses a small fixed focus lens rated at f/2.8 (compare to the better f/2.4 for the Flip cams). Fixed focus is good for these types of pocket cameras as it is fast and doesn’t have to spend time focusing on the subject you want it to focus on, arguably at the expense of some quality in different conditions. Unfortunately the way it is setup, it’s already “zoomed in” a bit from the start – 46mm for 720p videos and 61mm for 1080p videos. It just means you will have to be a bit further back from your subject(s). Flip video cameras have a similar issue which is why both the Zi8 and Flip cameras have an active community of people that modify their camera with external lenses. I plan on purchasing a 0.67X wide angle+macro, 2X telescopic and a fisheye lens to attach to the exterior of my Zi8.

On top of the Zi8 (visible in the very first picture in this post) there is a focus switch that lets you go between regular landscape mode and macro mode. Macro mode is a huge plus for me as I often record close-ups of gadgets and electronics at just a few inches away. The only downside being that it takes some effort to switch between the two and a mechanical clicking sound will end up in your video; less so if you are using an external microphone.

There is no optical zoom with the Zi8 but the 4X digital zoom works sufficiently but anything past 2X zoom and the video quality drops significantly. The zoom is twitchy and not smooth so if you’re trying to make a pleasant video you’ll want to zoom in first then begin recording. The Flip cameras only have 2X digital zoom, so the Zi8 gets some more points. Regardless, it’s best just avoid all digital zoom in any way, shape or form. Everytime you use digital zoom, a photographer somewhere in the world starts crying.

pop-out USB connector and SDHC

While I’m on the subject of battery life, it should be noted that a 32GB SDHC card will give you just over 5 hours of recording time with 720p @ 30 fps. I don’t know where Kodak came up with their “record up to 10 hours of HD video” statement, as 32GB is the largest SDHC card supported by the Zi8.

Now onto the subject of the Zi8’s Electronic Image Stabilization. EIS on the Zi8 is purely digital and not to be confused with optical image stabilization found on some more expensive cameras (for example Nikon VR or Canon IS). Kodak is the first player in the affordable pocket video recorder industry to release a camera with any type of image stabilization. This is a big deal for a camera that is likely going to be handheld (YouTubers) and not used with a tripod. Unfortunately, their Zi8 EIS doesn’t get stellar marks from me. First off, it should be noted that digital image stabilization just can’t turn a shaky handy while walking into a perfectly steady shot. That’s not the job of EIS. Instead it is supposed to turn a reasonably steady handheld clip into something with less perceived shakes. In my testing, EIS does not help much regardless of shooting style. Of course, that’s better than nothing. Kodak gets an E for Effort on this one.

Unlike the Flip, you can’t turn off the Zi8’s recording LED… no sneaky recording for you (pssst – try a small strip of black electrical tape)

The Zi8 also comes with face detection that shows little brackets around each face it recognizes while recording. Then it adjusts settings (not focus as the lens is fixed focus) to ensure the face is sufficiently illuminated.

The Zi8’s built-in mono microphone is adequate for picking up peoples’ voices from just a few feet away but any further than that and it struggles. This wouldn’t be an issue if it was possible to easily adjust microphone gain on the fly and see an on-screen measurement like in the settings. Fortunately, the Zi8 comes equipped with an external microphone input — great for people demanding a bit more in the audio department.

I tested the external audio input with a ~$50 Sony ECM-DS70P stereo mic and was quite pleased with the overall result. However, I found I had to lower the mic gain, then increase the volume in post-production to produce a less noisy final product. I would have to test with other microphones to be sure but it seems like the Zi8 has a noisy external microphone input as increasing the gain substantially increased the noise, where as this microphone is usually quiet.

Usability

I’ll be the first to say the user interface is not quite the best but it is far from being difficult to use. There’s a single settings menu with just a handful of things you can change, so it’s not like you can get lost in menus. The trouble comes more from the button feel. There are four buttons for settings, deleting videos, switching to recording mode or playback mode, in addition to a joystick that controls things like playback, recording, zoom and volume. The joystick was the first thing to annoy me on the Zi8. It’s not easy to control and you end up selecting menu items you didn’t mean to. Likewise, those four buttons could stand to be larger and easier to press.

Settings

Recording Sizes: 1080p, 720p @ 60fps, 720p, WVGA and a 5.3MP Photo mode

While the Zi8 can take 5.3 megapixel photos, something that its competitors don’t, it takes generally washed out, blurry photos that barely rival the camera on the iPhone.

Video Playback

Connecting the Zi8 to your computer can either be done by popping out the flexible USB attachment or taking out the SDHC card and putting it in a card reader. I prefer using my SDHC card reader as the Zi8’s internal USB connector is too short and bulky to fit next to or in between my used USB ports. I imagine traveling with the Zi8 itself without any cables or card readers will make me realize the handiness of the internal USB connector.

Video Quality

There are three HD recording modes with the Zi8: 1080p @ 30 fps, 720p @ 60 fps and 720p @ 30 fps. I found that recording at 30 fps 720p made the most sense as all of my content would end up on YouTube where it would get converted to 30 fps anyway, so I could save on storage space by recording in 30 fps. As for why I don’t bother with 1080p on the Zi8, it’s same argument — most of my stuff ends up on the web so shooting in 1080p is overkill and leads to longer iMovie / Final Cut importing and exporting times. It also seems that several of my clips recorded at 1080p have less smooth playback (even on my Core i7 HTPC) leading me to believe the frame rate was closer to ~20-25 fps than the stated 30. Also, recording at 1080p is like recording at the 35mm equivalent focal length of 61mm so you’ll have to stand back further than you would normally.

frame crop from 1080p video @ 100%. Click for full image.

Now for the big question, do the videos look good? Yes. The Zi8 does not like low light situations and produces considerable grain in those conditions, but everywhere else I was pleased with the video quality. However, there’s one slightly annoying issue I noticed: the Zi8 takes its sweet little time adjusting to extreme changes in lighting conditions. For example, moving from indoors to sunny outdoors or vice versa will overwhelm the Zi8 and it will take a few seconds for automatic white balance, exposure and ISO to fully adjust to the new lighting conditions.

I pointed out some of those situations with this footage video below.

Files saved by the Zi8 utilize H.264 encoding and are .MOVs.

My Zi8 Car Setup

I purchased the Zi8 with the intent of primarily recording driving and occasionally autocross and track day videos. I ended up going with a strong and cheap ($14 when I bought it) suction cup mount to test out. I ended up being very pleased with this setup. The Zi8 also supports an IR remote control sold separately by Kodak so if I feel the need to mount the camera to the back window/seats I can remotely trigger recording with that control, which appears to be sold out everywhere and/or discontinued.

The microphone used is the ECM-DS70P I mentioned earlier and I am quite happy with it aside from that Zi8 mic gain issue.

Kodak Zi8, Sony ECM-DS70P and Panavise 809 mount

Verdict

Overall the $180 USD Kodak Zi8 is a fantastic pocket video camera for the price. Low light performance has always been a challenge for these types of cameras and the Zi8 is no exception; expect some grain in less than optimal lighting conditions. In the end, the Zi8 is a winner due to its superior expansion features like removable SDHC flash storage and support for external microphones, as well as 1080p and 720p @ 60 fps recording modes.

I give the Zi8 9.5 out of 10 Stammys.

Thoughts? What do you currently use for your portable video recording needs?

RSS ads (for the student loans, I promise!): PaulStamatiou.com runs the Thesis theme. View my usenet downloading how to then checkout my usenet host Giganews.

Review: Kodak Zi8 HD Pocket Video Camera

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

Related posts:

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2. Review: Roku Digital Video Player
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6. Review: Samsung SC-HMX10C HD Camcorder

I always found it a bit ironic that I had less time to blog here as I started working full-time on a blogging startup. Well, my time spent on Skribit is starting to pay off. Today, Skribit finally goes out of what we’ve internally been considering our public beta — so it’s our official launch day. We have been laying low on the marketing and press front, except for my ramblings here, and now we are ready to tell more people about it. That being said, TechCrunch just wrote about Skribit (thanks Daniel!). This is the first step on our so-called “Customer Acquisition Plan”, as MBA as that sounds.

Skribit has always been in an interesting position due to our low burn rate. While I do work full-time on Skribit, I don’t take much in the way of salary as this blog has been paying for my rent and basic living expenses for a while now. You’ll see me playing and testing out different forms of advertising on this blog’s sidebar as I try to find a good combination of revenue streams.

Alright so what’s big in this Skribit release? While this is mostly a polishing-things-up update for those of you that have seen Skribit before, we’re also pretty excited about signup and login via Twitter. Big props to our Ruby on Rails intern Alex Coomans for that feature. Alex is finishing up high school and applying to colleges now; hopefully my letters of recommendation with help with that.

We’re happy about the launch and want people to take full advantage of some of the extra functionality only present in our Pro accounts, so we’re giving out some Pro accounts. Select the Pro account plan, sign up and you’ll be taken to a payments page where you can enter in promotional code “PSTAM” to redeem the account. At the time of this posting it’ll say the price is $1 — I’m going to need to hack in a fix but it should say $0 a bit later.

Thoughts?

Update 12-23-09: I wrote a follow up post on the Skribit blog called Thoughts on a Successful Launch.

RSS ads (for the student loans, I promise!): PaulStamatiou.com runs the Thesis theme. View my usenet downloading how to then checkout my usenet host Giganews.

Skribit Exits Beta, Gets TechCrunched

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

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For those of you that have been reading for a while (thanks!), it’s no surprise that I am a music fan. I wouldn’t quite say audiophile as I don’t find the need to spend sizable amounts of money on audio equipment, but I always have some music playing and enjoy a high quality audio setup. About two years ago I reviewed the excellent Sonos Digital Music System. The only problem with that setup was the price — just over $1,000 for all of the components. Since then I haven’t been able to get back into Sonos’ product line as everything was still rather expensive. Sonos hopes to change that with their new ZonePlayer S5, running at $399 USD.

What? Your kitchen doesn’t look like this?? Neither does mine. This is a press photo. Pretty sure they used fake ice for that wine.. since when do chilled wine bottles lack condensation?

What is Sonos all about?

While the S5 I’m about to review is great for small apartment dwellers like myself looking for one unit to do everything, Sonos is known for multi-room music systems. That is to say that you can get as many Sonos ZonePlayers as you have rooms in your house (as long as you have something like less than 42 rooms) and they play together nicely. You can control each so-called zone with any of their controllers and most importantly initiate “party mode” that links all of the ZonePlayers together and plays the same song/input over them.

My S5 “loft install.” With 14-foot ceilings, I simply placed the S5 on top of one of the walls and it easily fills my bedroom with music. Sonos states the S5 is “designed to sound best when placed 3 to 12 inches from a wall.”

Like all Sonos products, the S5 is an Internet-connected music device giving users access to their personal music collections (no support for iTunes FairPlay DRM, but Windows Media PlaysForSure DRM is supported) with support for iTunes playlists as well as built-in Internet radio stations, Pandora, Last.fm, SIRIUS Internet Radio, Napster and Rhapsody. I can’t stress how great these services are for music buffs. While several are subscription services, they afford users the ability to instantly find and play just about any music they want. In addition, the S5 can connect to other UPnP servers or NAS devices on the network, such as an Apple Time Capsule.

Playing a new album release with Rhapsody – Sonos Desktop Controller PC application

Going back to those built-in Internet radio stations, right out of the box the ZonePlayer S5 knows of over 25,000 Internet radio stations. I was able to give the Sonos Controller my location (Atlanta) and it listed all of the local radio stations. Stations can be searched by station name, show or host, as well as by music genre or type (Talk or Sports).

Browsing local radio station Internet streams while playing

Even with all of those streaming services, Internet radio stations and my own music collection, I still need access to less mainstream indie music, remixes or mixtapes that are easily found on sites like The Hype Machine, The Sixtyone or The Feel Good Initiative and not-yet-in-the-US-but-I-have-a-beta-account services like Spotify. That’s why it helps to have the S5 close enough to your computer so you can connect the two; at least until Sonos does some sort of Desktop Controller integration with Airfoil so you can hypothetically send any audio from your computer to the Sonos without having to run a line in cable.

Sonos Desktop Controller PC application – Line-in Settings

Backtracking a bit to the multi-room aspect of Sonos systems, equipping your house with a Sonos multi-room system can get pricey pretty quickly. Let’s say you have a four bedroom house: two S5’s in two rooms, an Ethernet-connected ZonePlayer 120 (acting as a ZoneBridge as well) in the living room with some decent loudspeakers and a ZonePlayer 90 connected to powered bookshelf speakers. Assuming you only use the free iPhone app or desktop controller software instead of one or a few Sonos Controller 200’s, that setup would tip in at just over $2,000.

That’s why I am so curious about the ZonePlayer S5. It’s perfectly poised to be a great all-in-one system for the small apartment dweller.

Details

The ZonePlayer S5 is a rather compact system measuring just one iPhone deep, two iPhones tall, about 3.2 iPhones wide and weighing in at just over 9 pounds. Beneath the unassuming exterior, the S5 packs in 5 speakers (two tweeters, two 3-inch mid-range drivers and one 3.5-inch woofer) with each controlled by a dedicated Class-D amplifier.

As with all of Sonos’s creations, simplicity comes first. There aren’t many controls on the S5 other than volume and mute. There are two LED indicators, a green LED for mute and a white LED for general system status. The status indicator LED can be turned off through the Sonos Desktop Controller application; attention to detail that is important for those placing the S5 in their bedroom and do not wish to have the ceiling illuminated by a bright LED at night.

There are all of 3 buttons on the S5, and they’re all volume related. The S5 is meant to be controlled by one of their controllers or applications.

The back of the S5 retains this simplicity, offering only a headphones jack, line in, power and a 2-port Ethernet switch so you don’t lose any of your router’s precious RJ45 jacks. Here’s a neat feature though: if the S5 is wirelessly connected, you can use those Ethernet jacks to connect other devices to your network. I turned off Wi-Fi on my MacBook Pro and connected it via Ethernet to the S5 and it instantly got online.

Rear connections on the S5

I would have loved if there was one more button on the S5 that instantly switched to playing line in. The user wouldn’t have to waste 15 seconds on the Sonos controller trying to switch to line in if they simply wanted to hook up a friend’s iPod or what have you. While on the subject of line in, if multiple ZonePlayers are linked together they can all play the same line in source connected to a single S5.

If you have a ZoneBridge already, all the S5 needs is power. The other cable was my own audio cable for connecting my PC to the S5’s line-in.

Install

My biggest beef with the S5 is that you will need to purchase the $99 Sonos ZoneBridge 100 if you plan on using the S5 anywhere you don’t have access to an Internet connection over Ethernet (assuming you don’t own any other Sonos devices). That’s a bit troubling to me because Sonos advertises the unit as “wireless”, which it is but that should be clarified with “wireless, if you already have another ZonePlayer connected with Ethernet otherwise you’ll need to buy a ZoneBridge.” Chances are that right off the bat this setup is going to run you $500.

The Sonos ZoneBridge 100 allows the S5 and other ZonePlayers to work wirelessly. It’s not necessary if you have access to an Ethernet connection where you have the S5 installed.

This is a bit out there – but I would suggest Sonos considers offering some sort of Sonos server software as part of the Desktop Controller software users can install on their 24/7-running computer that takes over the duties of the ZoneBridge 100 (so people don’t have to plunk down another $100) for those that already have a wireless network in place and only plan on using one ZonePlayer. Sonos employs a proprietary AES-encrypted mesh network of sorts — dubbed SonosNet 2.0 — to be able to let other ZonePlayers and controllers communicate with each other, analyzing link quality and automatically adjusting network routing. From what I could summize from engineer talk on their forums, it is just software on top of the 802.11b/g radios. Again, just my thoughts and it’s probably much more involved.

But I digress.

My glamourous installation of the Sonos ZoneBridge 100 with the rest of my boxes.

Despite my other criticisms, setting up the ZonePlayer S5 and ZoneBridge 100 was incredibly easy. Doing everything from unboxing to being able to control the system, less than 5 minutes transpired. In my case that involved giving the ZoneBridge power and Ethernet, and providing the S5 with power. Then I went through a simple install wizard on the controller application and it prompted me to press a button on the ZoneBridge after which it immediately saw the ZonePlayer.

Performance

With everything installed and working I first tried to setup my iTunes library with the S5. Using the Sonos Desktop Controller shown in screenshots earlier in this review I went to “Set Up Music Library” and added a path where it could find all my music. It then automatically imported my iTunes playlists. Unfortunately, it did not properly respect my iTunes playlist folders. Instead of making folders, the Desktop Controller just made a huge playlist composed of songs from each of the playlists inside of that folder. I was left with a massive list of playlists to browse through.

Slightly annoyed at that, I decided to just make a new playlist in iTunes. I went back to the Sonos Desktop Controller application to check out my newly created iTunes playlist, but alas it was not listed. I had to browse over to the Music menu and select “Update Music Index Now” then wait a minute or two for my new playlist and songs to appear. By default the music index is updated automatically every night.

Afterwards I began setting up my accounts for SIRIUS, Pandora, Last.fm and Rhapsody. No hiccups there. Browsing each of the services is intuitive with a variety of ways to browse or search for artists, albums and tracks. If I had multiple ZonePlayers setup, I would be able to control each of them individually — or all as one — with any Sonos Controller.

Does sound quality degrade with wireless distance?
In my limited testing, no. I tested the ZonePlayer S5 wirelessly connected to the ZoneBridge 100 in two settings: my small apartment where the two devices were line-of-sight and less than 15 feet from each other as well as in a house where they were 75 feet and a few walls away from each other. I was unable to distinguish any differences in S5 sound quality or behavior between the two cases.

How long does it take from clicking/tapping on a song in the controller before the S5 starts playing it?
Between 1.8 to 5 seconds for most Internet services and usually under 1 second for songs played off my local music collection (tested on two Internet connections, a fiber 80mbps line and a 15mbps cable line).

Has the S5 ever “stuttered” during playback?
Yes but only when I was saturating my Internet connection downloading and trying to play songs from my music collection on the S5, all on the same computer. This did not happen when streaming Internet radio under the same network conditions.

Is it loud enough to be my only sound system for my entire 723 square foot apartment?
The S5 is good for just one room in my 723 square foot apartment (about 400 sq ft) but anything larger than that and the sound does not travel well. For best clarity, Sonos states the S5 should be placed at the other end of the room from where you will be. Positioning the S5 such that it would fill up two rooms with sound resulted in lackluster, washed-out sound with a very “single-cabinet” and mono sound. The S5 works best in single, smaller rooms. For comparison, my Rokit RP5G2 studio monitors ($150 x 2), which use 5-inch primary woofers, are much more capable of producing sufficient bass for a larger room (although studio monitors are not meant for that), compared to the S5’s single 3.5-inch woofer.

So the S5 is properly installed in a not-too-large room. How does it sound?
While there is limited control over the S5 output (Balance, Bass, Treble and an on/off “Loudness” function), I was still happy with the S5’s above-par sound quality. The only issue is that since the S5 is a single unit there is little stereo separation. Sound meant for the left channel or the right channel all kind of mix together. This gets better as you move away from the unit as each speaker is angled slightly differently, but it does not compare to having two separately placed left/right loudspeakers.

Entire range is ever so slightly lumpy with different ranges being reproduced better than others. The S5 is superb at recreating highs through its tweeters, adding a crisp sound on top of a natural mid-range. The S5 could use some help in the bass department though. I perceived it as cold and a bit shallow. It is noticable at high volumes but at that point it becomes boomy rather than full and balanced. In short: it’ll be fine for most people at normal volumes, but this is most definitely not the kind of system to fill a room for a party.

Sonos Controller iPhone App

While there are alternative methods of controlling Sonos ZonePlayers, such as the Sonos Controller 200 ($349) as well as the aforementioned PC/Mac-compatible Sonos Desktop Controller application, I was most interested by their free Sonos Controller iPhone application.

Some screenshots of the application can be found below. In short: this is a full-featured Sonos Controller, all on your iPhone. It can do almost everything of which the Desktop Controller is capable. Small things I noticed it can’t do: turn off the status indicator LEDs on ZoneBridges & ZonePlayers and adjust line in level.

Sonos Controller iPhone App – Menus and equalizer

Radio station listing, alarm clock settings, top tracks listed by Rhapsody

Sonos app starting up, Pandora interface, and yes you can send out tweets. This was an autofilled tweet.

In Short: This iPhone app is well executed. I already go to sleep next to my iPhone so now I can conveniently control the music from bed.

Verdict

I will close this review up by bringing in some of the Sonos ZonePlayer S5’s competitors into the equation. These include products like the Bowers & Wilkins Zeppelin and Bose SoundDock 10, both of which are $599 and are more or less only iPod docks. At $100-200 cheaper, depending if you need to add a ZoneBridge, an S5 setup performs right up there with its competitors while offering many more useful features and support for a trove of music sources. Then there are products like the single-cabinet virtual surround sound $199 ZVOX Mini that packs a punch with a 4-inch x 6-inch subwoofer, but lacks all of the wireless connectivity and Internet music sources the S5 boasts.

Sonos is not known for making speakers but rather a brilliant wireless system ideal for easy multi-room setup. That being said, sound quality of the S5 won’t please an audiophile and needs a touch more low-end frequency response (a subwoofer out jack would be appreciated). If you are in the market for such a device, buy it for its impressive connectivity features, not jaw-dropping sound quality. Don’t get me wrong, the S5 is fantastic for adding music to a single bedroom or kitchen but that’s about it.

The Sonos ZonePlayer S5 gets 9 out of 10 Stammys — when was the last time your speakers streamed Rhapsody, SIRIUS, Pandora, Last.fm, Napster and more all on their own?

Disclosure: This S5 was on loan and sent back to Sonos after this review. Links to Sonos products on Amazon in this post utilize my associates tag and feeds me delicious coffee every morning.

Is the Sonos ZonePlayer S5 something that would be a welcome addition to your home? What kind of music system do you have in place at home or is it just your computer audio setup? Too expensive or good value?

RSS ads (for the student loans, I promise!): PaulStamatiou.com runs the Thesis theme. View my usenet downloading how to then checkout my usenet host Giganews.

Review: Sonos ZonePlayer S5 All-In-One Wireless Music System

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

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2. Review: Sonos Digital Music System
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On April 25th, 2009, I picked up a 2011 Ford Fiesta for what would be the next 7 months as 1 of 100 hand-picked Ford Fiesta Movement “Agents.” Okay, well technically it is a European-spec 2009 Ford Fiesta, but it is a close representation of what will be making its way state-side come June 2010. For a little background information, Ford ran a contest many months ago. They wanted to find 100 so-called influencers to help promote the new Ford Fiesta through their audiences; largely through social media means. (Original press release here.)

The Fiesta in Tech Square in Midtown Atlanta, GA. Photo by Tim Dorr with a Canon 5D Mk II

Note: Ford officially unveils the 2011 Fiesta on December 2nd, 2009. I will be at the launch at the Los Angeles Auto Show and will update this post with the official specs then. The Fiesta reviewed here is a European-spec model and I am not sure what packages and options it has. It is clear that it is a well-equipped model. Update: Details about the final US-spec Fiesta are at the end of this article.

Full Disclosure: Everything in this post is 100% pure, authentic Paul Stamatiou thoughts. Ford Motor Company has not given Fiesta Agents any guidelines about how to present Ford or the Fiesta. In short, I’m telling it like it is; much like my last car review, the 2009 Lincoln MKS with Microsoft SYNC. The Fiesta is not mine to keep and was just returned to Allan Vigil Ford as of this writing. Ford paid for my gas, insurance and mission-related expenses during the Fiesta Movement program. I previously owned a 2002 Ford Mustang GT and sold it during the course of this program.

The Ford Fiesta playing around at Road Atlanta

Fiesta Movement 101

Many of my friends suggested I would be the perfect fit for the Fiesta Movement — being a curious car guy and running great tech blog. At the last minute I entered the contest and submitted my hastily-made video. I had browsed the other entries and realized that the best ones were funny and talked about how they were influencers, so I came up with this somewhat-embarassing video:

After some phone calls, signing and faxing (more people need to use EchoSign) lots of documents, I received word that I was selected as one of a hundred Fiesta agents, out of some 4,000+ applicants. As for what the Fiesta Movement is all about, Ford puts it best:

The Ford Fiesta has come to play on the American roads. In the ultimate foreign exchange program, our 100 agents will spend 6 months behind the wheel of their own Fiesta, lifestreaming their experiences, and completing monthly missions to show you what the Fiesta is all about.

Unlike most Fiesta Agents upon hearing that they had been chosen, I had mixed feelings. Being the curious car and tech person that I am, I was interested in learning about the car and its technology, but at the same time I was thinking to myself that I was going to be stuck with a brightly colored, 118 horsepower 4 cylinder car for months and not have the option of modifying the vehicle (tint and turbocharger kit would have been on my list). Of course those were just my initial impressions. You’ll see how my thoughts changed during the course of the Fiesta Movement program.

Fiestas ready for pickup during the Agent Training Weekend

Every month during the program I was to select and complete a mission that Ford came up with and document my experience with video, tweets, blog posts, et cetera. Fast forward a few months and it has become clear that the Fiesta Movement is one of the best marketing initiatives by any car manufacturer ever. At the beginning of the program there were plenty of articles saying Ford was taking a huge gamble with the Fiesta Movement and risking their brand by letting 100 randoms go behind their cars and say what they want.

Fortunately for Ford, the results of the program are nothing short of impressive:

I can tell you what we’ve got so far: 4.8 million views of YouTube videos, 660,000 views of Flickr photos and 3.4 million Twitter impressions of the Fiesta Movement. In addition, we’ve seen over 50,000 hand-raisers indicate that they want more information about the vehicle as it goes on sale – 97% of whom currently do not own Ford vehicles. And a 40+% level of awareness of a vehicle that’s not even available in this country yet, which is the equivalent of the awareness of some of our vehicles that have been in market for 2-3 years.
All with $0 in traditional advertising.

We’re confident that we’ll be selling a huge number of Fiestas in North America, not only thanks to the great product that it is, but thanks to Ford being perceived as a company that “gets it” when it comes to social media.

Scott Monty
Global Digital Communications
Ford Motor Company
@ScottMonty

My Missions

Each month’s mission had a different theme: Travel, Technology, Style/Design, Social Activism, Adventure, and Entertainment. Big thanks to Chris Morrell for completing the 3rd and 4th missions on my behalf while I was ill with mono for two months. Also, I could not have done these without post-production help from Chris Keen (mission 1), Tim Dorr (mission 2) as well as Chandler Simpson and John Paul Giago from ITZU Media (missions 3-5).

• Mission 1 (Travel): Plates
• Mission 2 (Technology): Super Slick Fiesta
• Mission 3 (Style/Design): Edifice Education
• Mission 4 (Social Activism): Special Delivery
• Mission 5 (Adventure): A Map Crap Shoot
• Mission 6 (Entertainment): White Castle or Bust

First Impressions & Aesthetics

Now on to the actual car. The U.S. Fiesta will be a German-designed, Mexico City-built (Ford actually converted their Chihuahua Engine Plant from building F-series trucks to the Fiesta) subcompact B-segment car, with this particular version being a 5-door (4-doors plus hatchback); a sedan version is rumored for the U.S. launch. To give you a better idea of the subcompact B-segment car landscape, that includes vehicles like the Toyota Yaris, Honda Fit, Suzuki SX-4 and Nissan Versa. I’ll be the first to say that while I am not quite a fan of the Fiesta’s rear-end, the front and side are rather alluring.

The Fiesta is one of several current Ford vehicles created utilizing “kinetic design” concepts. That is to say they were designed employing a style that makes them look as though they are moving even when they are standing still, with features like swooped-back headlights. The European commercial explains what I’m talking about.

This particular Fiesta is coated in Squeeze Lime Green, which is now among my favorite colors, with some vinyl graphics that Ford let us choose.

After becoming familiarized with the Fiesta’s frontal styling, my eyes were immediately drawn to the 17-inch wheels. First off – you don’t often find 17-inch wheels on B-segment cars. You usually see hideous hub caps or 15-inch wheels and nary the option of factory 17s. I’m not sure if Ford knows it or not, but some of their designers must have a thing for exotic cars. The rear of the Lincoln MKS immediately reminded me of the Maserati Quattroporte and now with the Fiesta the wheels just scream Lamborghini:

Does the Fiesta have Lamborghini-inspired wheels?

The second thing I noticed was the use of rear drum brakes — a money-saving and less performance-oriented brake technology. While this is a bit offsetting, it is on-par with competitors (Fit, Yaris) in this subcompact segment.

O hai! Props to Eugene for the stellar photo.

Easy Fuel is one of the Fiesta’s features Ford is excited about. Essentially it is a capless fuel filling system, with added benefits such as it only allows gasoline nozzles to fit so you don’t accidentally fill up with diesel. Although I can’t imagine that is a huge problem in the United States.

Notice anything different? There’s no cap to forget.

However, Easy Fuel has a few downsides. For one, you need to keep a special funnel handy in case you ever need to fill up from a portable gas canister. Second — and it is too early to tell — replacing the Easy Fuel system will likely be much more expensive than replacing a faulty fuel cap, and consist of replacing the gas tank neck. After several years if your gas tank cap stops maintaining pressure, you can just replace it for a few bucks. Fixing a faulty Easy Fuel system sounds like it would be at least $100 or more.

The Fiesta has no problem fitting into parking spots.

In Short: The Fiesta is definitely a looker and it was easy for me to fall in love with the front-end, even while I am far from a self-proclaimed “hot hatch” fan.

Interior

I forgot to snap a picture of it, but there is some nice orangey/red accent lighting that illuminates the cockpit when your headlights are on. Also, the right side mirror becomes convex towards the end so you can see more around you. Takes some getting used to but well-liked.

Moving inside, the Fiesta is packed with handy technology not commonly found in its competitors. For example, while keyless entry is now standard on pretty much all new cars, the Fiesta goes one step further. Usually you would have to tap a button on the keyfob to unlock doors, and then once you’re in put the key in the ignition and rotate to turn the car on. With the keyless entry in the Fiesta however, all that is required is having the keyfob on you. The car will unlock the door when you simply tap on the handle. You never need to take the keyfob out of your pocket.

Push-button start. No keys involved.

However, push-button start on the Fiesta is not what I would consider “true” push-button start. Rather than just tapping it once, you have to hold the button down until engine is on. I and a few friends that drove the Fiesta noticed this right away. We would tap the button and the car wouldn’t turn on but the lights and gauges were on and it would require hitting the button again to turn it off, then holding it down all the way the next time.

Automatic Climate Control

Steering wheels probably are not something most people consider when looking at cars but considering it’s something they will be interfacing with regularly, it should be on the top of the list. The Fiesta steering wheel gets high marks from me, it’s comfortable and has thumbrests at the 9 and 3 o’clock positions, which are in fact the preferred places to put your hands, along with padded grips in those locations. Forget what your driver’s ed teacher told you about 10 and 2 o’clock; that’s wrong.

On the left of the steering wheel there are basic sound system controls. This Fiesta did not come equipped with cruise control as the U.S. version will, so I would expect to see cruise control buttons on the other side of the steering wheel. As for adjustments, the wheel telescopes in addition to the usual up and down movements.

The entertainment system features “Human Machine Interface” design as well as taking hints from mobile phone design. It has a 3.5-inch screen, with indicators on the side displaying stats from your Bluetooth-connected phone, such as if you have any messages. The final SYNC version will vary.

This Fiesta did not come equipped with the beautiful Ford/Microsoft SYNC “in-car communications and entertainment system”, so I will not be covering the entertainment system that did come with this particular Fiesta. This Fiesta had some features that will be vaguely similar to the final SYNC version though. For example, there is a button on the turning signal stalk to activate voice control, which was able to control the A/C, radio and a Bluetooth-connected phone. However, one small nitpick about the placement of the voice button is that it isnt easy to push with a single finger and you need to use your whole hand; not the best situation while driving. I would suggest making it a button on the steering wheel itself similar to the voice button on MINI Cooper steering wheels.

voice activated controls

While I’m on the subject of the steering wheel stalks, the Fiesta comes with automatic rain-sensing windshield wipers. Automatic in the sense that once you turn them on, they speed up depending on how much water/mud/what-have-you it has to clear off your windshield, based on data it gets from a rear-view mirror mounted sensor. Speaking of automatic, the headlights also have a setting to turn on automatically but it forgets if you had your fog lights on the last time you used the car, so if you are a fan of driving with fog lights on like I am you’ll have to tap that button each time. The Euro-spec Fiesta has a control to adjust the angle of the headlights (use case: if you have lots of cargo loaded, the rear of the car will sit lower, causing the headlights to point upwards – not good), but it is rumored the 2011 U.S. model will likely feature auto-leveling headlights. And while I am on the subject of automatic (noticing a trend here?), the rear view mirror in my loaded Fiesta was auto-dimming.

While I was disappointed that the headlights aren’t HID, they are definitely suitable for pitch-black road driving and create a clean beam with their projector styling that leaves little room for scatter loss. These are ECE/E-code headlights though, so it will be interesting to see if the DOT versions will be just as good in the 2011 U.S. Fiesta.

I’m also a fan of the bright, vibrant and most importantly easily readable gauge cluster but I would like to see more than just fuel, tachometer and speed readouts. That being said, the small display in the top of the cluster does show and let you cycle through things like approximate miles per gallon.

The cluster looks great at night, but as you can see the glossy housing is rather reflective.

My Fiesta interior came wrapped in leather, with the front seats having built-in seat heaters. However, the controls are poorly placed on the door-facing side of the seats, making it easy to accidentally bump and turn them on. There are no level settings — only on and off — which makes the heated seats look like an afterthought of a feature as they get pretty hot. I would have liked to see controls in the center console unit, with indicators showing their current setting.

I found the front seats comfortable even after hours of continuous driving, but I would enjoy a bit more seat bolstering to keep me from sliding in the seat while carving corners. Seat adjustments are done via manual controls. I was able to stuff the Fiesta with four other people including myself, but it was obvious that it was a slightly tight fit. If you want to be able to see out of the back window, I suggest you only drive around three others. When driving by myself, I often put down the rear headrests for an unobstructed rear view.

The 2011 Fiesta, featuring SYNC, will make use of this USB port to control your iPod/iPhone.

Below the USB port there are two cup holders and a small rectangular space to place things like your wallet and cell phone. Notwithstanding, that only works for a bit as the compartment is not very deep, nor covered, and your phone is more than happy to slide off during turns. The cup holders could stand to be deeper as they did not fare well with the tall-and-top-heavy-with-narrow-base soft drink cups frequently found on road trips (QuikTrip!!). On the upside, the cup holders fit a Red Bull-sized can perfectly.

Unlike other vehicles with USB ports, the one in the Fiesta is actually powered. It makes for a great iPhone charger.

Despite its subcompact size, the Fiesta can still fit a great deal of stuff. Unfortunately, the rear seats do not fold flat like the Honda Fit and others in the class. They are in a 60/40 folding configuration that reveals a still-large usable cargo area.

Sprinkled throughout the Fiesta are tiny features that make you applaud Ford’s attention to detail. One of these is the rear seat belt holder that ensures seat belts do not get in the way when folding the rear seats and loading up cargo.

Attention to detail: rear seat belt holder

Another one of these attention to detail items is the lockable floor mats to ensure they stay in place and don’t get loose and jam your accelerator pedal — a huge safety issue that caused Toyota to recall 3.8M vehicles.

However, there were some interior parts of the Fiesta that were, for lack of better wording, just made with cheap plastic. One of the first interior bit that broke was a little compartment under the steering wheel. Chris and I started keeping a little tube of Krazy Glue on hand.

The first thing to break in the Fiesta, after a month.

I also ran into another issue with Fiesta build quality. A friend closed the rear door a bit hard and the clips that fasten the door’s side panel broke off. This caused the side panel to come loose and when closing the door, get stuck on the interior of the car floor. From then on the door was impossible to open. The fix was rather simple — replacing some broken clips inside the door — but this would not be a problem if a sturdier design and/or materials were used. In addition, some of the weather stripping on one of the rear doors began coming off on its own each time the door was opened.

In Short: From the outside, you might think the Fiesta’s interior would be cramped. It’s not and is actually a rather comfortable place to be while you’re stuck in downtown traffic. It only takes a peek inside of a Fit or Yaris to see how the Fiesta’s interior excels. Hopefully tighter fit and finish will come with the U.S. model.

Performance

Ah yes, my favorite part — the real car talk. Under the Fiesta’s bright green bonnet sits a naturally-aspirated 1.6L DOHC 4 cylinder gasoline powerplant with twin independent variable camshaft timing (Ti-VCT). It churns out 118 horsepower at 6,000 RPM and 112 ft-lbs of torque at 4,050 RPM. For those of you that are unimpressed with those figures and about to close your browser tab, it should be known that the Fiesta is a lightweight.

Ford states this 2009 5-door Euro-spec Fiesta weighs anywhere from 2,158 lbs up to 2,466 lbs depending on configuration and other variables. (For comparision, a super-light Lotus Elise SC tips the scales at 2,000 lbs, the Toyota Yaris is around 2,300 lbs and the Honda Fit is a porker at around 2,500+ lbs). Not to mention rumor has it a 1.6L EcoBoost engine in the 180 horsepower range will be available at launch.

Power gets delivered to the front wheels that have quick, precise turning with the Electric Assist Steering. No torque steer.. well, because there is not much torque to speak of.

Rather than take you through pages of my experience, here’s what car afficianados need to know about the Fiesta:

• Ride quality is comfortable without feeling floaty or disconnected from the road experience.
• Ford states the sprint from 0 – 60 MPH takes 9.9 seconds and after several runs I was able to reach that, but the traction control system constantly intervened in my runs and cut the power off the line with my slight launches. You can’t turn off the traction control system at all. It allows for a tiny bit of wheel spin, then the engine bogs down for a second. I feel that the car would hit 60 closer to 9 seconds with a slight roll or the ability to disengage traction control. (Right about here I would list 0-60 times for the Yaris and Fit but I found many conflicting numbers from various reviewers so I’ll just leave it out in fairness.)
• As with most naturally aspirated engines, power delivery is more or less linear but the engine begins pulling more around ~4,000 RPM when it seems Ti-VCT kicks in more.
• With such a limited power band, a close ratio 6 speed manual would definitely come in handy, but the regular 5 speed transmission is fine, if a little inefficient.
• In fifth gear, the Fiesta does 65 MPH at 3,000 RPM, 75 @ 3,500 RPM, 85 @ 4,000 RPM, 90 @ 4,500 RPM. You’ll have to get used to the engine spinning that fast at highway speeds.

This Fiesta came with a 5-speed manual transmission but the 2011 U.S. model is rumored to have the option for Ford’s high-tech PowerShift dual-clutch 6-speed automatic transmission, which will let you do things like tap the brake to disengage the clutches (no more torque converter nonsense) and coast to increase fuel economy.

• I have two nitpicks about the 5 speed manual transmission: 1) the shift throws are long and the gates are not precise, so there’s wiggling room, which can and does lead to mis-shifts when trying to operate it very quickly. On the upside, others will find this makes for easy, one-finger shifts.
• and 2) the reverse gear needs a synchro, badly (especially for a car aimed at what will likely be people that have never driven manual before). You’ll want to go into another gear first then go into reverse, otherwise you’ll likely grind for a bit. This is not just an issue with the Fiesta, the TKO600 transmission I put in my Mustang had the same deal and it was widely taken as common practice among Mustang enthusiasts to shift into another gear to use its synchro, then put the car in reverse.
• There is a nifty stall prevention feature that will blip the throttle if it detects the engine is about to stall. Sounds good in theory, but rarely kicks in when you need it and will blip the throttle at times when it seems there is no apparent reason for it. It either needs to be more aggressive with the throttle blipping and have the option to turn off the feature (call it beginner mode), or just not be present at all.

Doesn’t get more patriotic does it?

• The steering feels great. Electric Power Assist rack-and-pinion power steering means that unlike traditional hydraulic steering, the power steering is only active when the car needs it. This means better fuel economy, easy low-speed driving while serving up a better feel of the road when at highway speeds (not as much or any electric-assist the faster you’re going). This technology is not to be confused with Active Steering found on other cars, which adjusts the steering ratio based on speed, driving style and road conditions, or Direct Steer that changes the steering ratio based on how much lock is applied.
• While the car does sit high, there is only a little body roll thanks to the fairly good suspension. There is noticeable suspension loading during moderate to harsh cornering and braking, as is expected with a suspension that is a great mix between sporty and comfortable. Slight understeer is present.

At Road Atlanta with Formula Ford race driver Rossella Manfrinato at the wheel

• While the brake package on the Fiesta won’t get you excited (2-piston caliper/10.2-inch rotors up front and 7.9-inch drums out back), the technology behind them will. In addition to the to-be-expected-as-standard-these-days ABS there is something called Electronic Brake-force Distribution, which is handy in situations before ABS takes over and “automatically optimizes the front-to-rear brake force distribution to reduce the tendency of rear wheel lockup.” There is also Corner Braking Control that helps the Fiesta get around tight, aggressive high-speed turns by automatically braking the inside rear wheel of a turn, letting the Fiesta get away with some nice carving. I got to try this out first hand during the Fiesta training weekend where we had access to an autocross track (read: big parking lot). Unfortunately, there is no indicator light to show you when it’s working, which would be cool for the car nerds.
• The Fiesta is unfortunately rather quiet. I like to know my engine is working hard for me and the 1.6L gives little indication that it’s actually on.
• Top speed is listed at 120 MPH, but you’ll need patience for anything past 100.
• Clutch and gas pedals were the easiest to push compared to any car I have ever driven. I am not sure if that is a good thing, I would prefer a bit more feedback.
• As for fuel economy, well I’m not the best person to ask about that. Ford actually contacted me to see if something was wrong with my Fiesta:
  
  

  I was looking through our monthly gas report and while most agents are getting about 29 mpg you are consistently seeing mpg in the low 20’s. I know you are a car enthusiast (nice write up on the MKS) and am wondering if you think the car is running okay or are you just driving it hard?

  Rest-assured the Fiesta was running great. I drive in the city the majority of the time and tend to drive enthusiastically.

• Ford states fuel economy for this Euro-spec Fiesta is around 39 MPG, but the 2011 U.S. engine will have a different compression & timing and use regular 87 octane instead of the premium required with this one, so the fuel economy (as well as horsepower and torque) may vary slightly.
• There’s an 11.9 gallon gas tank. (People trying to get the best mileage out of their car possible should take a look at the ScanGauge II. It’s an OBD-II automotive computer that tells you proper times to shift, how fast to go and so on while tracking your fuel economy, cost-per-mile et cetera.)

The Jeremy Clarkson Fiesta Review – If you haven’t seen this Top Gear review of the 2009 Euro Fiesta, it is amazing and definitely worth a watch:

In Short: While people will be buying the Fiesta for its utility and economy, and not as a weekend track warrior, they will not be disappointed with the Fiesta’s performance when comparing it to other B-segment subcompacts. I brought up several performance nitpicks with this car but they end up being trivial when compared to other cars in this class and price range. Of course, it wouldn’t hurt to offer a fantastic turbocharged version of the lightweight, agile Fiesta.

Safety

The Fiesta is the first small Ford car to come with a standard driver’s knee airbag. That airbag is part of the Intelligent Protection System (IPS) employed in the car, consisting of the following:

• Dual front airbags for driver and passenger
• Head and thorax side airbags for the driver and front-seat passenger
• Inflatable side curtain airbags to protect outboard occupants of the front and rear seat rows
• Three-point safety belts with dual-stage digressive load-limiting pretensioners for the front seat occupants
• Three-point safety belts for all three rear seat occupant positions
• Anti-submarining front seat design
• Whiplash-optimized front seats
• Beltminder safety belt reminder system for front seat occupants

That is just inside the car. Chassis design makes use of lots of high strength steel along with so-called “dual-phase” rails that carry the traits of both energy resistance and absorption. The exterior also has some design features (i.e. headlight, hood and front fascia) to protect pedestrians that I won’t delve into. Ford states the only body changes to the 2011 U.S. Fiesta will be for getting the Fiesta aligned with U.S. automobile safety regulations. European regulations stress the importance of pedestrian safety while U.S. regulations are more about passengers surviving a crash.

In Short: Ford is trying to change the way people think about car safety. Small, light cars can be safe too. Now if only they could convince my parents, who initially did not want me to even drive the Fiesta, thinking I would get obliterated by a Hummer on the highway.

The Crash Test

Okay, the title of this section is misleading; the damage above was definitely not intentional. My friend Chris Morrell had been helping me out with missions and frequently drove the Fiesta. Unfortunately one evening while he was en route to a Freeside (Atlanta Hacker Space) meeting, a car swerved into his lane, causing the Lexus RX SUV in front of him to mash the brakes. The Fiesta was not able to stop before colliding with the rear of the SUV at around 5 MPH (estimated from what Chris told me – ABS did not engage, which means it was at least slower than 12 MPH).

It would have been interesting to see how much such damage would have cost a consumer to repair. I was surprised the hood got crumpled like it did, considering the contact point of the Fiesta and the SUV was right on each car’s bumper (as noted by the large dent under the driver’s side headlight). The radiator was also damaged along with a headlight. The other vehicle has no visible damage aside from slight paint scuffs.

In Short: This looks expensive for such a small fender bender. Just my opinion. I do not know what other subcompacts look like after similar fender benders.

Verdict

For clarification, most things in this review are based on having had the 2009 European-specification Fiesta. When the 2011 U.S. Model Fiesta is unveiled at the Los Angeles Auto Show next month, I will update this post. While several things in the U.S. model are sure to change, I believe this review to be a good impression of what the 2011 model will be like. I did not mention any price points in this review as I did not have access to that information, but it is clear that the Fiestas used by Fiesta Movement Agents are far from your typical base model. I would assume pricing is competitive with the Yaris and Fit, placing it somewhere in the $12-20k USD range.

Alright, so what are my final thoughts? It should be noted that these are my ratings of the Fiesta in the scope of its competitors. For example, if I were to have no scope, my performance rating would be something like 3.0/10, with ratings below 3.0 being reserved for painfully slow cars like all of Honda’s CVT hybrid offerings.

Interior: 8.5/10
Technology: 10/10 (especially with the U.S. model sporting SYNC)
Aesthetics: 9.0/10
Performance: 8.0/10
Value: Pending final U.S. pricing information
Nutshell: Easy to drive, park, fill up and live with. Ford got me to rethink small cars.

Overall: The Fiesta Movement was an incredible program to be part of, especially as it is turning out to be a landmark case study in the power of social media ROI applied to real world marketing. Major props to Scott Monty and Ford on taking a random idea — putting 100 digital natives behind the wheel of 100 unreleased cars — and running with it.

Now I’m wondering if Ford will take the successful Fiesta Movement model and, well, try out a Shelby Super Snake 725 Movement..

As many of you guys are within the target demographic for this car, what do you think of Ford’s marketing efforts and the new Fiesta? What kind of car (subcompact, SUV, etc) are you currently behind the wheel of? Drop me a comment below!

Updates from the 2009 LA Auto Show

I got back from the LA Auto Show earlier this week, where Ford flew out as many of the Fiesta Agents that could fit the trip into their schedule. The trip was rather short at less than 2 days but it was a phenomenal event. Fiesta Agents actually went on-stage during the unveiling of the Fiesta and we pulled the covers off of the cars. My picture is now floating around on many car blogs as I was front and center of the stage. More pictures of the Fiesta Movement events can be found in this photo set.

While Ford themselves doesn’t offer a turbocharged Fiesta yet, tuning house FSWerks has this turbocharged SES model.

The rear of the new Fiesta sedan model

Now on to the details! Aesthetically, the front bumper received the bulk of the design changes — purportedly to accomodate a U.S. DOT approved beefy crash bumper. The grill was changed a bit (I preferred the Euro grill though) and fog lights were swapped out in favor of a vertical strip of LED “driving lights” that can either be wrapped with a chrome or black insert. Moving up, the side mirrors got rid of the convex mirror in place of a unique, separately-controlled blindspot mirror. Some new colors were introduced as well.

Inside the 2011 Fiesta, there were minor changes as well. Seat heater controls were moved to the center console area below the media center among other tweaks. More details can be found in the 2011 Ford Fiesta press release.

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Review: 2011 Ford Fiesta and the Fiesta Movement [UPDATED]

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

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3. Review: 2009 Lincoln MKS with Microsoft SYNC
4. Review: Sony GC1 Net-Sharing Cam
5. Review: Intel X25-M 80GB SSD
6. Review: Kingmax Super Stick 8GB USB Flash Drive

The third year of Atlanta Startup Weekend is less than a week away and begins Friday November 13th and goes through Sunday night. I am definitely biased as I have attended the last two Startup Weekends, but I strongly suggest attending if you are within the Atlanta area. For those unfamiliar with the concept, Startup Weekend is a 54 hour event where people with a variety of backgrounds — from legal to backend development — gather, pitch ideas and then take the selected ideas from whiteboard to working web application or whatever it may be. First timers can get caught up to speed here.

To date there have been well over 100 Startup Weekends across the world. That being said, Atlanta has been among the most successful cities of the bunch. Success defined as Startup Weekends that have had startups that are still under active development and have received some sort of investment: both Skribit and Twitpay fall into this category.

Early Startup Weekend and Skribit press that has been on my fridge for years

Atlanta Startup Weekend 2 was covered on CNN.com last year, with shout-outs to both aforementioned startups. Skribit was also covered in the Atlanta Business Chronicle shortly after the first Atlanta Startup Weekend.

Startup Weekenders having fun and watching clips from a commercial they were filming.

Building Community

Earlier this year TechCrunch brought attention to the work of two German bloggers that went through every Startup Weekend startup/project at the time to see how many were still alive and kicking. They found that only 12 of the 116 startups at the time were still considered active. That is mixed news – for one it goes to show that there’s something in Atlanta if we can consistently push out active startups, and second, that Startup Weekends are more about meeting people and actually being able to build relationships with those people because you shared a weekend working with them. Before my first Startup Weekend, I knew very few people in the Atlanta tech community and that changed it for the better.

Skribit is the earliest Startup Weekend startup that’s still going. (right click open link in new tab to see complete 2200px tall list)

That is all. Hope to see some of you out there. Of course I’m aware this blog has a pretty large reach outside of Atlanta so this and other local events I talk about aren’t relevant to everyone. Thanks for reading anyhow!

More of my posts dealing with Startup Weekend can be found here. Have you ever been to a Startup Weekend? What do you think of the concept?

RSS ads (for the student loans, I promise!): PaulStamatiou.com runs the Thesis theme. View my usenet downloading how to then checkout my usenet host Giganews.

Launch Something and Meet People at Atlanta Startup Weekend 3

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

Related posts:

1. Why I’m Enthused About Startup Weekend
2. Startup Weekend ATL and My Idea
3. What is Startup Riot?
4. TIME Wants Your Vote: 100 Most Influential People
5. Satisfaction: Slick People-Powered Customer Service
6. Startup Goals for 2009

The saga continues as I go to all lengths to find 5 bars of cell phone reception at home. It first started when I moved into my new apartment. I didn’t think to check my cell reception when first touring the property so I was in shock after I moved in and noticed I had No Service. In the meantime, I signed up with Vonage for a VoIP line, but I hated having two phone numbers. I experimented with the Wi-Ex zBoost cell signal booster and that worked, but there were drawbacks. It only provided a 6 foot radius of signal, the booster would need occasional reboots and had an unsightly cable and device stuck to my window at all times. Arrrgh!

The 3G MicroCell hidden behind my HDTV

Needless to say, when I first heard reports that AT&T was tinkering with femtocells back in January I was ecstatic. I called several high-level people at AT&T to find more about the femtocell and see if I could get in on the beta testing. That didn’t get me anywhere, so I waited my turn. A few weeks ago I received a flyer in the mail. AT&T’s femtocell offering, marketed as the 3G MicroCell, was at an AT&T store near me. At the time of this writing, the AT&T 3G MicroCell is only offered in limited test markets and is only available in North Carolina and parts of Georgia.

Femto-what?

Let me backtrack a bit and describe what a femtocell is and why it makes me happy. In layman’s terms, a femtocell is a small cellular base station designed for home use. A femtocell extends indoor cellular network coverage by connecting to a broadband Internet connection and sending voice/data information through that connection. Give the femtocell power and ethernet, and you receive 5 bars in return; or at least that’s the idea.

While femtocells are not technically VoIP devices, they are similar. Both use your Internet connection to transfer voice (and for the femtocell, data too), neither connects to a real cell tower, and both require that you register your physical address for emergency call (911, etc) purposes. Femtocells do utilize cellular service (not towers though) to connect to the phone, so they can’t be considered full VoIP devices. You might be able to get away with calling them Cell-to-VoIP devices. As you have surmised by now, femtocells are not repeaters or boosters like the Wi-Ex zBoost I reviewed.

Introducing the AT&T 3G MicroCell

As the name implies, the 3G MicroCell supports 3G data in addition to providing coverage for voice. There are two ways of purchasing the MicroCell. You can either pay a one-time price of $150 USD, or you can pay $50 for the MicroCell (via a $100 rebate) if you opt for the $20/month unlimited calling plan add-on, which gives you unlimited calling while your phone is connected to the MicroCell in your home. Also, any calls you start on the MicroCell and then move to the regular AT&T network (ie if you leave your house while on the call) retain the unlimited calling plan’s price, rather than sucking away from your minutes.

I don’t use many minutes on my plan (450 minute plan.. with thousands of roll-over minutes), so I just paid the $150 for the device. The in-store purchasing experience took a little longer than usual. They make you log into the AT&T website (be sure to know your login information) and register the device, as well as fill out and sign a form with your physical address, for E911 purposes. Once you have logged into the website and clicked the “Manage AT&T 3G MicroCell” link, you get a page like this:

The important bit is near the bottom, where you can authorize up to 10 phones/devices to connect to your MicroCell. However, it can only support up to four simultaneous voice/data sessions. I added a friend’s iPhone to the list, as he frequently visits. Surprisingly, he is able to connect to the MicroCell in most of his apartment. He lives 2 floors down and across a courtyard and gets 3 bars of MicroCell service — impressive!

Unboxing & Installation

Unboxing the MicroCell is a rather trivial event. Much like a Wi-Fi access point, you get the device, an ethernet cable and power adapter. However, unlike your Wi-Fi access point, the MicroCell has a stupid setup process. After giving the MicroCell some power and ethernet, it will start blinking the 3G and GPS LEDs. Wait, what.. GPS? Yep. To limit the MicroCell from working outside of test markets (or out of the country too), it must get a GPS lock on your location. AT&T suggests this should take no longer than 90 minutes. It took me about 5 hours.

Unboxing the MicroCell

My apartment gets absolutely no signal of any kind, so why would I be able to get a solid GPS satellite lock? Ridiculous. I called AT&T, as they recommend, after the MicroCell had not begun working after 90 minutes. They took my information down (basic stuff like how I had it setup, how fast my Internet connection was and if I followed the directions) and told me a higher-level technician would call back. The aforementioned technician did call, but only many hours later after the MicroCell began working on its own.

AT&T recommends temporarily placing the MicroCell within a few feet of any windows while it tries to receive a GPS lock during initial setup. After that it does not require a GPS signal. I had to open my window and teeter-totter the MicroCell on the window sill for 5 hours before it started working and lit up the satellite and 3G icons. Then I was able to move the MicroCell to a more permanent location in the middle of my apartment. That required disconnecting the device, which then led to 20 more minutes of the MicroCell booting up before it started working.

The business-end of the MicroCell

Others have reported the installation only taking 30 minutes to achieving GPS lock, so I am very likely an outlier with my horrible GPS signal situation. That being said, you might have noticed the tiny antenna jack on the rear of the MicroCell. That is for people in my situation with poor GPS reception to add an antenna to enhance GPS reception. Unfortunately, AT&T provides no information about where to find such an antenna, leaving all but the tech-savvy in the dust.

Performance

Aside from the troublesome setup, the AT&T 3G MicroCell is excellent. With a centrally-located MicroCell in my 723 square foot loft-style apartment with few walls, I received 5 bars in every room and no degradation of call quality while moving about. I have only tested the MicroCell with at most 2 devices connected, but in my experience call quality is as good as I have ever heard from an iPhone 3GS. The MicroCell does also improve 3G data speeds and I received 1.5Mbps download and 56kpbs upload speeds. Compare that to my typical 3G data speeds for good signal: ~930kbps down and ~50kbps up. Of course, this means little to me as my iPhone automatically connects to my Wi-Fi network at home.

Call quality depends, in part, on the speed of your Internet connection. As long as you have some form of broadband with decent latency (AT&T states minimum bandwidth of 1.5Mbps down and 256Kbps up), I do not believe you will have any issues with at least one phone on your MicroCell. You might, however, want to pause your downloads or any rigorous network activity while you are on a phone call.

In over a week of testing I have not experienced any degradation of call quality, even when I was soaking up tons of my bandwidth (I was downloading via newsgroups at about 11MB/sec). Although during rigorous network usage, a bandwidth test on my iPhone showed download speeds around 400kbps, from 1500kbps. For not as fortunate users that experience call degradation during heavy network usage, there is the option to setup the MicroCell in such a manner that cell traffic is given priority over all other traffic on the network (the MicroCell is connected in front of your router so it goes modem » MicroCell » router).

iPhone speed tests: Regular 3G, MicroCell 3G and Wi-Fi (you can see why I don’t use 3G at home..)

Another factor for MicroCell call quality is device distance to the MicroCell and how many walls are in-between. AT&T optimistically states that the MicroCell “supports both voice and data up to 5000 square feet.” However, I have a hard time believing this is actually achievable in homes that have these things called walls between rooms. If you live in a large multi-story home, you might be happy to hear that it appears you can have multiple MicroCells under the same account, assuming you are more than happy to give AT&T another $150.

Verdict

Go to any iPhone or AT&T forums where people are talking about the MicroCell and you will no doubt find a loud minority of furious AT&T customers. Those users believe, as do I, that AT&T customers should not have to pay extra to receive better cellular coverage to make up for AT&T’s sub-par network. However, my issue is not that AT&T has a bad network (I get 5 bars directly outside my apartment), it’s just that my apartment complex’s unfortunate construction is such that it blocks/reflects many signals. I gladly paid for the MicroCell out of my own wallet, which allowed me to dump my $26/month Vonage VoIP setup and not have to deal with having two phone numbers.

Out with the old Vonage VoIP setup…

AT&T has not gone on the record about a definitive national launch of the 3G MicroCell, rather they are slowly rolling out to new test markets. Seattle and San Antonio are coming next.

The AT&T 3G MicroCell gets 9.5 out of 10 Stammys. Setup was a huge pain, but I can forget about that for the great service and call quality it provides.

9.5 out of 10 Stammys. Funny graphic originally created by Tim Dorr as a joke.

Would you pay up for having 5 bars of AT&T service at home? What do you think about having to pay for cellular network coverage that you shouldn’t have to pay extra for? Currently an AT&T customer?

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Review: AT&T 3G MicroCell

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

Related posts:

1. Review: Wi-Ex zBoost zPersonal Cell Signal Booster
2. Review: Jawbone 2 Bluetooth Earpiece
3. Review: Apple iPhone 3G
4. Review: Rev iPhone app and PLX Devices Kiwi Wireless OBDII Module (Part 1)
5. Review: Slingbox Solo
6. Review: Dash Express GPS

Last week I had the pleasure of attending NoSQL East 2009, a new conference based around the non-relational data stores that I briefly covered in this post. In short, it was a rather intimate and highly technical conference on the grand scheme of things. There were roughly 120 people in attendance for the two-day event that gathered 16 speakers who discussed, more or less, which NoSQL technology they employed at their company and how they used it.

Pre-conference drinks at TAP

Held in the same auditorium as Ignite ATL 2009.

NoSQL East was unlike any other conference I’ve been to in how focused it was. Everyone in attendance seemed to be very well-educated and all in the same field, making for a great group of people to chat with. Jon Moore, Ph.D. Computer Science, put it best in his post covering this conference:

There was a telling moment in the first non-keynote talk where the speaker asked the audience “How many people have read the Dynamo paper?” and easily 95% of the audience put their hands up.

John Willis talking about Big Data

The intent of the conference was, as described by one speaker, to be less deep, technical talks and more of the applications and uses of certain types of NoSQL. However, a few speakers did get a bit technical.

Geir Magnusson of Gilt explains vector clocks used by Voldemort

That being said I rather enjoyed Mike Miller’s talk about CouchDB in particular because he went over several case studies and showed how various companies were using and fitting CouchDB into their architecture.

Mike Miller of Cloudant going through some CouchDB case studies

As for most intriguing NoSQL technologies, I liked Kevin Weil’s presentation on Pig, a new-to-me higher level language version of Hadoop. Why’s that? Because Pig “runs on a cluster computing architecture, on top of which sit several layers of abstraction that ultimately bring the power of parallel computing into the hands of ordinary users.” And to show this off, Weil displayed sample Pig code to run through large datasets — of which the equivalent code in another language would have involved many more lines of code.

Kevin Weil of Twitter showing off Pig (slides)

Silverpop’s MapReduce flow

Overall

NoSQL East 2009 was a great kick-off to what will hopefully be an annual conference devoted to next generation non-relational data stores. As I mentioned in my last NoSQL post, many people have debated about whether NoSQL is an appropriate term. After this conference it was clear that all of the speakers agreed the best solution is to have smaller RDBMSes where necessary and reserve the heavy lifting and Big Data to these so-called NoSQL technologies. Moore suggested something I rather liked; calling it NOSQL for Not Only SQL.

Alright so you’re probably wondering where you can find the intensely technical summaries of this conference. Since I am far from a DBA, I did not attempt summarizing some of the great talks I heard. Instead I’ll point you to Eivind Uggedal, who came all the way from Norway for NoSQL East 2009 and groks this stuff better than myself:

• NoSQL East 2009 – Summary of Day 1
• NoSQL East 2009 – Summary of Day 2

As usual, more pictures can be found on my Flickr account.

For those of you that were at NoSQL East 09, what did you think of it? For those of you at home, does this NoSQL talk interest you? I just wish I had a project to make sure of something like Pig or CouchDB. I’m still using my cozy ORM.

Disclosure: I attended NoSQL East 2009 free-of-charge on behalf of the organizers.

RSS ads (for the student loans, I promise!): PaulStamatiou.com runs the Thesis theme. View my usenet downloading how to then checkout my usenet host Giganews.

Recap: NoSQL East Conference 2009

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

Related posts:

1. What is NoSQL? Enter NoSQL East, conference of non-relational data stores
2. Recap: TTI/Vanguard Generation Techs Conference
3. Recap: WordCamp Birmingham 2009 + Skribit Updates
4. Recap: 2009 Georgia Technology Summit
5. Startup Riot 2009 Recap
6. Recap: BlogWorld Expo 2009

TechDrawl, an up and coming Atlanta-based blog representing technology, startups and entrepreneurs in the US census South (D.C. to Texas), often helps out local entrepreneurs with things like attending conferences that interest them through holding fundraisers on the site. When I made the rather last minute decision to attend BlogWorld this year (people like Andrew Hyde told me it was a must-attend event), I scrambled to make arrangements. Fortunately, I was approved for a full access media pass (worth some $1200), thanks to the credentials of this blog, but did not have the means at such short notice for providing for airfare and hotel costs.

That’s where TechDrawl swooped in to help out and raised over $850 through the generosity of many entrepreneurs and techies that donated. In addition, TechDrawl’s sponsor AirTran provided me with first class airfare to Las Vegas, where BlogWorld was being held. While the Atlanta area is behind Silicon Valley in terms of venture-funded Internet startup deals and all of that nonsense, Atlanta definitely has a strong tech community that I have had the pleasure of seeing grow in the last 3 years. What other communities band together like this to help out fellow entrepreneurs?

Without further ado, I invite you to check out to the detailed BlogWorld Expo recap I wrote on TechDrawl: The BlogWorld Experience.

Yours truly with celebrity Adam Carolla and Scott Monty, head of Ford’s social media efforts.

Enjoy!

Have you ever been to BlogWorld Expo? How about Vegas? Thoughts?

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Recap: BlogWorld Expo 2009

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

People: Adam Carolla, Andrew Hyde, Scott Monty

Related posts:

1. Startup Riot 2009 Recap
2. Recap: WordCamp Birmingham 2009 + Skribit Updates
3. Recap: NoSQL East Conference 2009
4. Recap: 2009 Georgia Technology Summit
5. Startup Riot Recap
6. Meet Me at SXSW Interactive 2009

By the time you read this, Microsoft’s latest attempt at making a decent desktop operating system (I kid, I kid), dubbed Windows 7, will have been released worldwide. I took it upon myself (and my debit card) to build a new computer properly suited for Windows 7, as well as some HTPC/gaming goodness, after receiving this Skribit suggestion. I have always been a fan of Small Form Factor computers, dating back to my old Shuttle SB61G2 (Intel P4) and SN85G4 (AMD Athlon 64) computers. When it came time to plan out my next PC build, I decided to stick with SFF and base the system off of the fairly new Shuttle SX58H7 barebones kit.

The basis for this PC build started out as a simple computer for Internet Explorer 6-8 testing for web development so I didn’t have to rely on VMWare Fusion with Windows setup on my MacBook Pro, which I always found rather annoying. Then this project snowballed into building a media powerhouse and Windows 7 tinkering machine.

Why SFF + Shuttle SX58H7?

Well for one, the Shuttle SX58H7 is the only Core i7-supported SFF created by Shuttle, and one of the only such SFFs out right now (the others are just ugly.. I’m looking at you iBuyPower). That being said, I originally looked at building a regular, non-SFF tower computer. After a few hours of searching for good cases, I gave up and went to the sleek Shuttle SFFs I have loved so much in the past.

Shuttle SFFs are sold as barebones kits. They include the case, power supply, motherboard and CPU cooler; you bring the rest.

The freshly unboxed Shuttle SX58H7 (protective wrap still intact) – Shuttle’s first foray into Core i7

Aside from aesthetics, the SX58H7 boasts much of the same features and more or less all of the performance served up by its full-sized bretheren. It sports a 500 Watt PSU, motherboard with Intel X58 chipset, support for up to 16GB of DDR3, and an onboard SATA RAID controller through the ICH10R southbridge. Historically, Shuttle SFF PCs have had heating and noise issues but recent kits have put those issues to rest.

In short: Never trust a computer you can’t lift. (ref)

Why Core i7?

Intel’s Core i7 platform has been in the early adopter stages for quite a while (released November 2008) and is just now ready for mainstream usage with more reasonable prices, and the typical unrivaled performance associated with Intel’s latest and greatest. (The mobile variant of the Core i7 was deemed the fastest laptop processor ever.) Actually, I take that back; Core i7 is not for mainstream, that’s more along the lines of what Core i5 is for.. but I digress.

Core i7 processors are the first to run on the 45nm Nehalem architecture, which includes such goodies as 30% lower power usage for the same performance, an integrated memory controller supporting DDR3 and better hyperthreading performance. The Core i7 processor I went with for this build is the low-end 2.66GHz quad-core Core i7 920 processor, namely because the next processor up had a huge price difference.

In short: Why build a new computer on the now-outdated Core 2 Duo/Quad platform? Start with a low-end Core i7 setup and if you feel the need for speed later on, just get a faster Core i7 processor (or overclock).

Why Windows 7?

The reviews are in and Windows 7 is leaps and bounds better than the 3 year nightmare known as Windows Vista. Reasons for this include much better device driver support (my printer just… worked!), a hugely revamped window manager (Aero) and pleasant performance (Windows 7 will actually run on a netbook without being horribly sluggish).

The number one feature I have come to enjoy with Windows 7? Aero’s hot keys for Aero Snap:

Win+Up Arrow: Maximize the current window
Win+Down Arrow: If the current window is maximized, restore it; if the current window is restored, minimize it
Win+Left Arrow: Dock the current window to the left half of the screen
Win+Right Arrow: Dock the current window to the right half of the screen

It’s not quite like Exposé but it sure does bring a lot of convenience to Windows 7. Oh and Jump Lists. Those are great too. Aero Peek is spiffy as well. So is the new taskbar. And Shake..

I could make this section a whole post, so I’ll stop there. Read David Pogue’s thoughts on Windows 7 in the NY Times for a basic overview of Windows 7, then checkout this post detailing some of the Windows 7 interface.

Pre-orders of Windows 7 at Amazon.co.uk in the first eight hours of its availability surpassed the demand for Windows Vista in its first 17 weeks. It became the highest-grossing pre-order in Amazon’s history, surpassing sales of the previous record holder, the seventh Harry Potter book.
-Wikipedia

In short: None of my computers run any version of Windows right now so I am giving Windows 7 a shot. Windows 7 brings back the excitement I once had in Microsoft products — I used to watch Bill Gates keynotes (I vividly remember watching the stream of Gates at XP’s launch on 10/25/01) like I now do Steve Jobs keynotes.

Parts List

Piano black Shuttle case looks sleek but is an epic fingerprint magnet

Prices as of October 2009

• Shuttle XPC SX58H7 $625
• LG GGC-H20L Blu-ray drive Discontinued ($169 as of 6/08)
• 2 x 1TB Samsung F1 RAID class/certified hard drives 2 x $132
• 6GB (3 x 2GB) OCZ Gold DDR3 $129
• Intel Core i7 920 CPU $279 (snagged mine for $199 with some deal at a Micro Center store)
• XFX ATi Radeon HD4890 video card $195
• Shuttle PN20 Wi-Fi adapter $69 (got it for $50 on Newegg, but it’s now “deactivated” there)
• Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate $319 for full, $219 for upgrade or free through Microsoft BizSpark

Note: Links above utilize my Amazon Associates tag. If you enjoy this blog and want to share the love, feel free to buy/browse through those links. One of the things I learned at BlogWorld Expo that I just came back from (that’s another post) is that it’s easier to sell a product, rather than get advertising. So I’m giving this affiliate stuff a shot. Otherwise, no hard feelings. I’ll keep blogging.

In short: A good amount of fast RAM, quad-core CPU, ~high-end video card with 1GB GDDR5, and lots of storage. A fine setup to put Windows 7 and any media/gaming tasks I have to the test.

The Build

Computer parts ready for installation

As with most Small Form Factor PCs, the Shuttle SX58H7 has rather cramped internals but the case’s superb design, with a removable drive cage, makes setup fairly easy. I’ll let the pictures do the talking:

Installing the Core i7 920 processor

Yeah I admit it, this post is more about detailing the computer build and the why’s about it rather than a pure how to article. If you have any questions about the specifics of building this, or any, computer drop me a line in the comments or my contact form.

The business end of the Shuttle SX58H7. Dual gigabit LAN is nice to see.

The final, assembled system with the case off

This system is equipped with two 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F1 hard drives sporting RAID certification. While you can just about RAID any two identical drives, if they are not RAID certified they are more likely to get dropped out of the array when doing error recovery. That is to say that the RAID controller might think the drive is offline/taking too long to respond while it is really just in the middle of some hefty error recovery, and the controller will incorrectly drop it out of the array; thus degrading or failing your RAID array. These RAID certified drives make those issues a thing of the past. (However, I’m not sure how relevant that still is as the ICHR10 RAID controller with the X58 chipset isn’t too shabby either.)

Setting up 2×1TB RAID

Installing Windows 7 Ultimate

The Shuttle nicely tucked away behind a 24-inch display.

While not initially intended to be a replacement for the HTPC I built and wrote about last year, it seems like this new computer has become my primary media PC.

Questions?

There will very likely be a follow-up to this piece, so please let me know what you’d like to see next – suggest on Skribit (and/or comment below). Did you end up waiting in line for the Windows 7 midnight launch? Are you planning on upgrading to Windows 7 for your PC? Thoughts on SFF computers? on Core i7? Price still too high? on Windows 7? I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

RSS ads (for the student loans, I promise!): PaulStamatiou.com runs the Thesis theme. View my usenet downloading how to then checkout my usenet host Giganews.

How To: Build a Microsoft Windows 7 and Intel Core i7 PC (Part 1)

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

Related posts:

1. Intel Rolls Out ULV Core Solos
2. It Works! 2.16GHz Core Duo in an Intel Mac Mini
3. Intel Mac Mini: My Upgrade to 1.83GHz Core Duo
4. Intel Officially Releases Core 2 Duo Processor
5. New Intel Macs Can Run Windows
6. Driver Bug Kills Intel Core Duo Battery Life

So you’ve built a fancy new HTPC, with a custom case that fits perfectly into your home theater setup, but without fail you’re still using a wireless keyboard and mouse created with desktop use in mind. (Or maybe you’re up on your gadget game and have a gyro mouse or use software like Boxee that only needs a remote.) There’s something wrong with that picture and GlideTV has recognized the need for a custom mouse for couch surfers. GlideTV just announced what they are claiming to be the first “couch mouse” and it is dubbed the Navigator.

The GlideTV Navigator is much smaller than it looks. I was hoping it would be movie popcorn bucket sized.

At an MSRP of $149 USD, the Navigator is priced well beyond even upper tier wireless keyboard and mouse combos. However, in the true nature of a compliant HID device, it is supported out of the box by Windows, OS X, PlayStation 3 as well as “any set-top box that supports standard mouse and keyboard HID devices.” Thankfully that also implies Linux boxes as well as I know quite a few people with Linux-based HTPC setups.

The device is essentially a clickable touchpad boasting handy features for couch surfers such as one-thumb scrolling as well as standalone application buttons like Enter, Esc and Back. The Navigator also has backlit buttons for volume and playback functions, which is definitely a must for what I can imagine typical use would be — a dark room. However, some of the more interesting features — integrated search menu and an on-screen keyboard — rely on Windows-only software at the moment.

GlideTV showcased the Navigator at CES 2009 where it won the Best of Innovations Award, so there’s definitely something to be said about this first “couch mouse.” That being said I truly think such a device needs to be larger instead of something prone to getting stuffed under couch cushions or being dropped easily while trying to hold a beer and nachos.

What do you think of the Navigator? Is this something you would be happy to add to your HTPC setup? What keyboard/mouse/remote combo do you have with your current HTPC setup? My current HTPC setup has a cheap tiny wired keyboard that I only use for administrative purposes, with everything else being controlled by a Logitech MX Revolution wireless mouse.

RSS ads (for the student loans, I promise!): PaulStamatiou.com runs the Thesis theme. View my usenet downloading how to then checkout my usenet host Giganews.

GlideTV Introduces Navigator – first “Couch Mouse”

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

Related posts:

1. Boost Battery Life on Your Wireless Mighty Mouse
2. Review: Logitech MX Revolution Mouse
3. Review: Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse
4. Facebook Introduces Blogging Functionality “Notes”
5. Google Introduces Traffic Info to Maps
6. Pimp Your MacBook Critique

There’s a new tech conference coming to Atlanta at the end of the month. Unlike other events I have covered and attended, this one is for those who not only develop websites but also deal with large data sets at high load and have learned the struggles of dealing with relational databases like MySQL at such scale. The underlying concept (movement rather) is called NoSQL — a (much debated) term describing the next generation of data storage technologies.

Yeah, it’s a fairly technical conference and to be honest most NoSQL stuff is probably way over my head. That’s why I’m so intrigued by it. The only conferences that get press around here seem to be B2B-centric or talk about leveraging Twitter to grow your brand — not exactly stuff that whets my intellectual appetite.

NoSQL 101

Alright so you’re a technical person and do some web app work but are not exactly a DBA. What is NoSQL and what are the common applications for it? Well first off, the current limitations of relational databases need to be addressed. A relational database (RDB) like SQL can be most easily described as a table-based data system where there is minimal data duplication and sets of data can be accessed through a series of relational operators like joins and unions. The problem with such relations is that complex operations with large data sets quickly become prohibitively resource intense, although generally the benefits are reaped at the application level where database code need not be convoluted.

There are ways of getting around these limitations, as so well described by Adam Wiggins of Heroku in his aptly-named article SQL Databases Don’t Scale. He talks about the popular tactics of beefing up relational databases for huge applications (vertical scaling, sharding and read slaves) along with listing their downsides.

So why are relational databases just now becoming an annoyance? Eric Florenzano puts it best:

As the web has grown more social, however, more and more it’s the people themselves who have become the publishers. And with that fundamental shift away from read-heavy architectures to read/write and write-heavy architectures, a lot of the way that we think about storing and retrieving data needed to change.

Enter NoSQL: non-relational data stores that “provide for web-scale data storage and retrieval especially in web based applications because it views the data more closely to how web apps view data – a key/value hash in the sky.” NoSQL is meant for the current growing breed of web applications that need to scale effectively. Applications can horizontally scale on clusters of commodity hardware without being subject to intricate sharding techniques.

Of course if you are coming from an RDBMS background, you will preceive a functionality loss when moving to such non-relational key/value stores. I can’t go into much detail here as this is all still new to me. If you’re up for some technical reads:

• NoSQL: A Modest Proposal by Chris Williams
• NoSQL if only it was that easy by BJ Clark
• Notes from a NoSQL Meetup – Yahoo! Developer Network Blog
• My Thoughts on NoSQL by Eric Florenzano
• Social Media Kills the RDBMS by Bradford Stephens

As a clarification, I’m not trying to say that there is a looming war between relational and non-relational databases. There’s nothing stopping people from splitting up data in their web application and using both types of data stores where it makes sense. As Brad Anderson of Cloudant (YC S08) says:

NoSQL is about ‘right tools for the job’ as opposed to anti-relational, or replacing traditional solutions.

Event Details

Alright, now back to the actual conference: NoSQL East 2009 is being held October 28-30, 2009, at the Georgia Tech Research Institute Conference Center in Midtown Atlanta, GA.

And the list of speakers and the subjects they will be talking about:

• Arin Sarkissian // Digg talking about Cassandra
• Kevin Smith // Hypothetical Labs talking about Redis
• Kevin Weil // Twitter talking about Pig
• Chris Curtin // Silverpop talking about Cascading
• John Hornbeck // Engine Yard talking about MongoDB
• Mike Miller // Cloudant talking about CouchDB
• Cliff Moon // Microsoft / Powerset talking about Dynomite
• Justin Sheehy // Basho talking about Riak
• Mark Gunnels // Catamorphic Labs talking about HBase
• Tim Anglade // af83 talking about tin
• Emil Eifrem // Neo Technology talking about Neo4j
• Geir Magnusson // Gilt Groupe talking about Project Voldemort
• Yuan Yu // Microsoft Research talking about Dryad/DryadLINQ
• John Corwin // Yahoo! talking about Sherpa

You can signup with a promo code that I will be offering here later today: PROMO CODE Stammy250. Registration is appears to be closed at the moment but I will update this later today when the organizers figure out how to deal with adding people. I’ll be sure write a recap of the event and share what I learned after the event.

Disclosure: I personally know one of the conference organizers and offered to help him spread the word in the interest of promoting the Atlanta tech scene as well as for admission to the conference.

Have you heard of NoSQL before? What kind of web app/database stuff have you dealt with before?

RSS ads (for the student loans, I promise!): PaulStamatiou.com runs the Thesis theme. View my usenet downloading how to then checkout my usenet host Giganews.

What is NoSQL? Enter NoSQL East, conference of non-relational data stores

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

Related posts:

1. Recap: NoSQL East Conference 2009
2. Recap: TTI/Vanguard Generation Techs Conference
3. Webmaster Jam Session Coming to Atlanta
4. On RFID Tags & Privacy
5. AJAX for phpMyAdmin?
6. Startup Riot Recap

This past weekend I drove over to Birmingham, Alabama, for WordCamp Birmingham 2009. This was their second WordCamp and brought out some 180 people — three times larger than their first one last year. This was not my first WordCamp; I attended WordCamp San Francisco 2007. In a nutshell, WordCamp is a weekend event where WordPress users, enthusiasts, developers and other members of the community gather for a series of talks, sessions, Q&A’s and networking. If you have a WordPress question, you’ll find your answer at WordCamp.

Sponsoring #wcbhm09

A few months ago, Jeremy Flint contacted me to tell me about WordCamp Birmingham. A few weeks later, Skribit became a sponsor. The timing was just right as Skribit is now ready to start spreading the word. The Friday night before WordCamp Birmingham we deployed a homepage redesign, among other things, that I, Calvin and Alex have been working on for the last week.

Skribit Homepage Redesign. Now with more pitch and some CSS3.

I handed out some high quality custom cut vinyl digital press StickerGiant.com-created Skribit stickers and talked Skribit to anyone and everyone. WordCamp Birmingham is Skribit’s first ‘marketing’ move. We have not done any formal marketing otherwise. I figured the audience was just right and we decided to sponsor. We also built out a promo code system and created a discount for Pro paid accounts, using the same event hashtag for our promocode and spread it on Twitter a bit.

Recap

Innovation Depot – WordCamp Birmingham Venue for Saturday sessions

The two day event started out at an interesting and rather large venue called Innovation Depot — a technology business incubator in Birmingham. With the exception of keynote-style talks, there were two tracks people could attend. A regular/beginner track and an advanced track. I went to advanced track sessions and heard talks from Dougal Campbell, Jeremy Flint, Sara Cannon and Mitch Canter.

Opening Remarks by Organizer Andre Natta

Dougal (one of the very first WordPress developers) talked about WordPress plugin development and covered the basics like filters, actions, hooks and events. At one point in his presentation he pointed out the WordPress Codex, which I agree is an amazing resource for anyone looking to do anything with WordPress.

Dougal Campbell’s talk “Jumping into WordPress Plugin Programming”

Sara Cannon’s presentation was titled “WordPress and Your Brand” and she discussed finding a theme to fit your needs, designing for your brand as well as a sIFR how to. Personally I’m not the biggest fan of sIFR from a usability standpoint. It worked well when browsers weren’t as robust, but with CSS3 supported by most popular browsers now, we will see a strong alternative in CSS3 @font-face (althought setup is still a little tricky right now).

Sara Cannon talking WordPress and Your Brand

Jeremy Flint had an interesting piece on “Essential SEO and Analytics for WordPress” where he covered things like robots.txt, permalinks and keywords, as well as talking about popular SEO and Analytics plugins.

Jeremy Flint’s session on Essential SEO and Analytics for WordPress

Matt Mullenweg, Founding Developer of WordPress

Matt ran a ‘Town Hall’ style keynote; essentially Q&A and it turned out quite well. People asked about what was going to be in WordPress 2.9, what was going to happen to WordPress MU and so on. I’ll update this post and link to the video if I find it. However, the most interesting thing I learned over the weekend was during this Town Hall where Matt made a random comment about how you can easily add custom taxonomies. That is to say that you can set up your own specific tagging structures. Sure enough after poking around I realized it was truly as easy as Matt said — one line of code.

For example, setting up a taxonomy for People:

register_taxonomy( 'people', 'post', array( 'hierarchical' => false, 'label' => 'People', 'query_var' => true, 'rewrite' => true ) );

More info about custom taxonomies here or check out this popular plugin (Simple Taxonomies) if you don’t want to touch any code.

I also sat in a talk by Mitch Canter about WordPress security which covered basics like not removing the “admin” user (I prefer keeping it but giving it the lowest role – foils spammers into thinking they “got in” – and moving all posts over to your new account), changing the default database prefix, database backup and file permissions. Members of the audience, like myself, brought up things like the Stealth Login plugin to change the wp-login.php/wp-admin paths, using SSL to access the WP-Admin with HTTPS, automated server backups to Amazon S3, and locking down Apache.

Shift Workspace (co-working)

The last day of WordCamp was held at the lovely Shift Workspace. I was most interested with the “Genius Bar” idea they were implementing. Anyone that had a problem or needed help with something could pair up with an expert to get their issues resolved.

As for constructive criticism, there were a few issues with WordCamp Birmingham 2009 that I noticed and heard about from others. First off, someone apparently forgot to bring microphones for presenters, making particular people rather hard to hear. The projector(s) used were low contrast, low brightness, low resolution and tended to wash out many presentation slides/demos. Chairs were not exactly abundant so people had to move them from room to room during the event. The Wi-Fi that was hard to connect to (we were later told that some computer on the network was spreading a virus and using up lots of bandwidth; regardless, a single consumer router can’t support 50+ clients in a room), and there was a general consensus among people I talked to that the advanced track was still rather basic. All that being said, I enjoyed the sessions I sat in on, and talking with other devout WordPressians. It’s all about the community.

Ever been to a WordCamp or other such community-organized CMS event? If you were at WordCamp Birmingham, please leave a comment and let us know what you thought of it!

Speaking of events – I will be at BlogWorld Expo Las Vegas Oct 14th – 18th and will be in San Francisco Oct 21st – 27th. Let me know if you want to meet up.

RSS ads (for the student loans, I promise!): PaulStamatiou.com runs the Thesis theme. View my usenet downloading how to then checkout my usenet host Giganews.

Recap: WordCamp Birmingham 2009 + Skribit Updates

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

People: Andre Natta, Dougal Campbell, Jeremy Flint, Matt Mullenweg, Mitch Canter, Sara Cannon

Related posts:

1. Going to WordCamp? I am.
2. Startup Riot 2009 Recap
3. Recap: BlogWorld Expo 2009
4. Recap: 2009 Georgia Technology Summit
5. Recap: NoSQL East Conference 2009
6. Apple Updates iMacs, Mac Minis

Two years ago during a trip to San Francisco I met up with entrepreneur Steli Efti. He had previously contacted me and told me a bit about his story. He bought a one-way ticket from Greece to San Francisco with the intent of creating a startup called Supercool School. Steli wanted to change the way people learn. I remember talking with him then and noting how remarkably passionate he was about the idea of giving anyone the ability to teach or attend an online class about any subject. I thought to myself about how this type of passion is what startups are really about.

Stammy and Steli at the now non-existent Virgin Megastore in Union Square

A high school dropout and self-taught entrepreneur himself, Steli believes education should be free and limitless — making the web an ideal platform for this. Supercool School classes will always be free for anyone, including children in third world countries (which explains why he’s a fan of the OLPC). He stated in an interview that Supercool School will "spend 30% of our annual net profit on educational opportunities for children in third world countries." I believe this qualifies as the type of swinging for the fences and world changing that Sarah Lacy had in mind when she wrapped up her TechCrunch 50 coverage:

I did interviews with most of the TechCrunch50 experts backstage and there was a common gripe about the companies launching there: Not enough passion, not enough swinging for the fences, not enough trying to change the world. There were too many people building safe businesses, too many companies just trying to make existing things slightly better, and too many people wanting to be the next Mint.com, not the next Google.

Fast-forward to 2009 and Steli is still crunching away on Supercool School, along with some help. They worked on several iterations, at one point based around a Facebook application, before settling on their current website, which makes use of Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro to host the online classrooms, alongside their own software for the rest of the service. Supercool School is currently in private beta, and I have been tinkering around with their Startup School portion of the site. I became so intrigued with the classes I’ve taken or watched that I had to write about my experience.

Supercool School 101

It all starts with a request. Someone submits an idea for a class and specifies what they would like to learn or teach. The class request is then listed throughout the website, allowing anyone to join. When a request fills up, the site allows someone to come on-board as the teacher of that class. Users can browse classes — scheduled, recorded or requested — on the site.

A Class Request

That teacher can then set a date and time for the class. When class time rolls around, the teacher and students join an online, live interactive classroom of sorts. Anyone can share their audio and video, text chat, use a whiteboard and follow along with presentation slides. However, there’s no need to worry if a few people can’t attend the class; each class is recorded and archived for future playback at anytime by anyone.

The Online Class Experience

I took Supercool School for a test drive last month and attended a “Founders Interview” class, which is a series devoted to interviewing successful startup founders. This particular one was hosted by UserVoice co-founder Marcus Nelson. He talked about everything from the very beginning of the company to some of their marketing and sales tactics. Throughout the entire interview, users asked him questions via chat and audio. All in all, I was pleasantly surprised how relevant much of the information was to me and I started taking notes of my own (PDF), which I then shared with the class via EtherPad.

Supercool School – Startup School: Class Page

While there is a distinct teacher role in Supercool School classes, everyone is essentially treated as an equal and given the opportunity to speak their mind and ask/answer questions as they please. While this could lead to wildly irrelvant classes and unruly behavior, I haven’t seen that from the classes I have attended or watched. People are spending their own time to join the class, so generally everyone brings something to the proverbial table.

Live online class – anyone can share their audio/video and chime in.

The particular class I participated in had a few technical issues. For example the teacher’s microphone continually stopped working and he had to exit and re-enter the classroom and tinker around with settings. Other times the video and audio would be choppy, despite having a solid connection to the site. The classroom’s fit and finish is typical of a generic Adobe-created Flash product and not the sleekest out there, but it gets the job done.

Playing back a pre-recorded class.

One interesting class series is called “Pitch Your Startup” and encourages people to come and share their slides and talk about their projects. Other classes cover topics like iPhone development, using Google Adwords, marketing through Facebook as well as funding strategies. Throughout this blog post I was talking about the Startup School section of Supercool School, thus everything is startup related. I am not sure if there are any other sections live but there will surely be many more sections and curriculum genres up once Supercool School officially launches.

Thoughts

Bringing the classroom online is not a new concept by any means, but everyone that attempts it has their own way of getting the job done. Some such solutions aggregate content by subject matter and open up the site for users to comment on and add to, but this does little to engage users and establish a strong sense of interactivity or community. Supercool School takes the more literal sense of the classroom and brings it online.

Do you think Supercool School’s method of online education works? It might be too early to tell and I’ll have to see what kind of reaction other curriculums receive, but I am definitely a fan.

Supercool School competitors include sites like eduFire that charge money to attend classes, so how will Supercool School survive if everything is free? While Steli hasn’t given any hints as to the business model behind his startup, he said that they will not make money by “selling paid services, products or anything else that doesn’t bring additional value” to all members. That doesn’t seem to leave much room for anything else, so I’ll be keeping an eye on it.

Have you ever used any such online education/classroom sites before? Listened to one of those iTunesU podcasts? Can online education work or is there a real need for a physical classroom?

Leave a comment below (with a valid email address) and I’ll try to hook you up with a beta invite if you’re interested.

RSS ads (for the student loans, I promise!): PaulStamatiou.com runs the Thesis theme. View my usenet downloading how to then checkout my usenet host Giganews.

Review: Supercool School (Online Learning Startup)

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

People: Steli Efti

Related posts:

1. How Many Hours Do You Spend Online Daily?
2. You Know You Go to a Tech School When…
3. Online Presence and Why You Need It
4. A Realistic Back to School Guide for College Students
5. Bandwagon Launches – Online iTunes Backup
6. Back to School

It started out like any typical Friday morning. I snoozed the iPhone alarm about 5 times then got a late start to the morning and did a groggy stumble to the desk to check email before doing anything else. Unfortunately, this time my 11 month old 15-inch MacBook Pro (unibody) kernel panicked a lot, on every boot. It wouldn’t even see the Intel X25-M SSD I had in there although the drive was completely usable in two other computers. After a half-day of debugging I ended up going to the Apple store, doing a “quick drop” at the Genius Bar and buying a new 17-inch MacBook Pro so I could keep working; based on my experience that Apple repair can be slow sometimes and I didn’t want to wait a week or more before getting back to work. The problem ended up being the SSD, which is currently being RMA’d back to Intel to be replaced with the G2 version of the drive, but I digress.

If this were not antiglare you’d be seeing my reflection in the screen right now.

Why 17-inch? Why anti-glare?

So why did I opt for the 17-inch MacBook Pro this time? Well frankly, because I have never owned a 17-inch laptop before. I had the 13-inch original white MacBook, the 13-inch Air, the 15-inch first generation MacBook Pro, the 15-inch unibody MacBook Pro – but never a 17-inch. Aside from that, I wanted to see what it would be like to have a portable 1920×1200 resolution-capable laptop. Yeah it is kind of odd to see someone get a huge laptop so they can be more mobile but here’s my logic: with my 15-inch MacBook Pro I always had to dock it up to my 24-inch Dell LCD so I could get the resolution I’m used to working with and disconnecting it to move was a pain, and dealing with the reduced resolution while not connected to the external display was a definite bummer.

As for why I went with the $50 anti-glare option this time, well I got tired of looking at fingerprint smudges and my reflection with past glossy MacBooks. While glossy displays are better for video watching with slightly more vivid colors and darker blacks, I began to loathe it for daily use. I mean how often do I watch movies on my laptop? I have other computers and TVs for that. Also, have you tried watching a movie with a glossy MacBook on a plane? With all the overhead lights, or sun coming in the side of the plane window, the glossy screen is remarkably annoying.

Thoughts

The screen is brilliant — that is, once you get adjusted to the ridiculously high PPI (pixels per inch). Everything is small on this screen. A 15-inch MacBook Pro with a native resolution of 1440×900 has a PPI of 110. A 24-inch display with 1920×1200 resolution has a PPI of 94. The 17-inch MacBook Pro at 1920×1200 has 133 PPI.

PPI comparison: 17-inch MacBook Pro and 24-inch Dell. Look at the window shared across the displays. 133 vs 94 PPI

The downside of having such a high PPI with a relatively small display is that you can’t comfortably work from the screen from more than a few feet away – even with perfect vision.. everything is just small. That being said, I sold one of my monitors that I would have used to pair to my laptop and now rely solely on the MacBook Pro itself. The 17-inch MacBook Pro’s display is also 8-bit and has “60 percent greater color gamut that delivers desktop-quality color in a notebook.”

This is the MacBook Pro revision without any easily user-accessible parts. Instead of a latch to access the hard drive and battery, you need a screwdriver to remove the back panel. A bit of an inconvenience but it makes room for a (40% larger than previous generations) behemoth 95WHr battery. This lets Apple claim a ridiculous 8 hour battery life with the integrated graphics enabled. This translated to a real world runtime of about 4.5 hours (Wi-Fi + heavy web browsing + half-brightness) in my experience over the few days I have owned the laptop so far.

I’m still playing around with the laptop and will update this post if I have anything to add. Overall, I’m very pleased with it as long as I don’t remind myself that it cost $2,752. Unfortunately yesterday I realized that this laptop does not fit in my Timbuk2 messenger bag. Hrm.

Have you ever owned or used a 17-inch or larger laptop? How did you like it? What are your thoughts on “desktop-replacement” laptops? Where do you stand on the glossy vs anti-glare debate?

RSS ads (for the student loans, I promise!): PaulStamatiou.com runs the Thesis theme. View my usenet downloading how to then checkout my usenet host Giganews.

First Impressions: 17-inch Apple MacBook Pro 2009 (Unibody, Anti-Glare)

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

Related posts:

1. Review: 2.53GHz Apple MacBook Pro
2. First Impressions: Dell 24-inch LCD Display
3. First Impressions: 24-inch iMac
4. First Impressions: MacBook
5. First Impressions: Santa Rosa MacBook Pro
6. Apple Quietly Unleashes 17″ MacBook Pro

Two years ago I wrote one of my most popular articles, A Realistic Back to School Guide for College Students (and off-campus edition). In it I talked about how great cheap black and white laser printers were for the college student or pretty much anyone that isn’t printing out color photos (I leave that to Flickr Prints anyways):

Printers are the one item you can technically do without in college and be okay. Most, if not all, universities let you print out at the library, although you are likely on a quota, such as a max of 10 pages may be printed during any one week. If you don’t like making 3am runs to the library to print off a report, then getting a printer is for you. Considering that most of what you print will be PowerPoint handout slides and papers, it is best that you get an affordable black and white laser printer.

For the last 5 years I have been using a now discontinued HP LaserJet 1012 that I found for just $100. Since then I have run 3 or 4 toner cartridges through it, each with a lifetime of about 2,000 pages, so I have definitely put it to good use. However, when it came time to replace another toner cartridge, which sells for about $70 USD from HP (or ~$25 for a generic brand), I decided to see what other laser printers were out there. The HP I have is still in perfect working order but the lack of networking was a bit of a turn-off.

A quick search later and I ended up with the highly-ranked Brother HL-2170W laser printer that I snagged on Amazon for about $120 USD. The HL-2170W’s Wi-Fi and Ethernet support made this an easy decision.

The Brother HL-2170W tucked away in my little closet office, thanks to Wi-Fi.

Setup

Traditionally, getting a regular printer on a network has been a hassle. I remember having to purchase various USB to Ethernet adapters, none of which worked, trying to get an HP multifunction printer on a network. With printers that support networking natively, all you need to know is the printer’s IP address and ensure that you have the printer drivers installed on all client computers — something I learned while spending much time at high school as a “computer guy” working with huge 4000-series HP LaserJets and trying to network them with everything from G3s, G4s and G5s to 166 MHz Windows 95 boxes.

Fortunately with this printer, setup was a breeze and I had 2 computers printing over Wi-Fi in 10 minutes.

With Mac OS X, the printer was immediately detected with Bonjour after I temporarily hooked up an Ethernet cable during setup. After I added the printer and installed the supplied software I was able to provide it with the login credentials for my Wi-Fi network.

Dense apartment complex = tons of Wi-Fi networks

Windows 7 installation was a 2 minute ordeal. No drivers necessary.

You don’t need to install the software to setup the Wi-Fi network though. Just browse over to the printer’s IP address, which you can find by logging into your router and viewing the DHCP clients table, and use the default login of “admin” with password “access”. From there you can configure the wireless network information, and more importantly change the network name of the printer from the default “brw00242b547878″ to something cool like AdmiralAckbar or NeilPatrickHarris.

Brother HL-2170W web interface

Other things you can do in the web interface include setting up an email address for the printer (haven’t tested this out – does it mean it would print anything you email it?), adjust printer settings like toner save as well as print resolution, and check on toner life.

Mac OS X Printer Settings for Brother HL-2170W

Setup was a pleasant surprise and I was up and running in just a few minutes. Afterwards, I moved the printer away from my desk and into my closet. I used to have a shelf under my desk to store my old USB-tethered printer and that was always an annoyance.

Performance

The official specs state that the 2170W boasts a speed of 23 pages per minute. Quite the improvement over my old HP’s claimed 15ppm. So how does it stack up in the real world?

To test this I ran a few print batches. Laser printers require a bit of time to warm up and get going, so that’s why the “first page out” metric is pretty important. I ran four batches with two different types of documents. The first batch was the first 30 pages of Why’s Poignant Guide to Ruby – a PDF composed text and images. The next batch was 30 text-only pages of Paul Graham essays. Then I did one batch to see if the “toner save” feature saved time as well as toner. These tests were run entirely over Wi-Fi: both the test computer (Snow Leopard MacBook Pro) and the printer. My router only supports 802.11b/g, so there was no 802.11n magic going on here.

• Type: 30 Pages, Text and Images
• Resolution: 1200dpi
• Printer fires up: 55 seconds
• First page out: 1 minute, 9 seconds
• 30th page out: 4 minutes, 26 seconds
• Effective ppm: 6.8 ppm

• Type: 30 Pages, Text and Images
• Resolution: 600dpi
• Printer fires up: 17 seconds
• First page out: 26 seconds
• 30th page out: 1 minutes, 39 seconds
• Effective ppm: 18.2 ppm

• Type: 30 Pages, Text
• Resolution: 1200dpi
• Printer fires up: 1 minute, 43 seconds
• First page out: 2 minutes, 3 seconds
• 30th page out: 3 minutes, 17 seconds
• Effective ppm: 9.1 ppm

• Type: 30 Pages, Text
• Resolution: 600dpi
• Printer fires up: 17 seconds
• First page out: 25 seconds
• 30th page out: 1 minutes, 39 seconds
• Effective ppm: 18.2 ppm

• Type: 30 Pages, Text
• Resolution: 600dpi with Toner Save
• Printer fires up: 13 seconds
• First page out: 22 seconds
• 30th page out: 1 minutes, 37 seconds
• Effective ppm: 18.6 ppm

In summary: 1200 dpi is stupid slow and the first minute or so is spent just spooling the printer/sending data to it and you likely won’t be printing photos on a black and white laser printer anyways. 600 dpi is the best all-around setting by far. That being said there is virtually no time difference between 600 dpi prints of any type of content.

Complaints?

I have absolutely no issues with this printer. However, picky people will be easy to notice that this printer likes to curl paper. Laser printers get hot (nothing wrong, that’s just how they work) and when you’re running paper through a hot printer it tends to curl. Apparently the HL-2170W gets a bit too hot and causes the paper to curl up on the sides. I was using 24lb Xerox paper made for laser printers.

A brief explanation of this from HowStuffWorks:

Finally, the printer passes the paper through the fuser, a pair of heated rollers. As the paper passes through these rollers, the loose toner powder melts, fusing with the fibers in the paper. The fuser rolls the paper to the output tray, and you have your finished page. The fuser also heats up the paper itself, of course, which is why pages are always hot when they come out of a laser printer or photocopier.

To combat this issue, there is an option in the software when you go to print called “Reduce Paper Curl.” Below is an example of this feature at work. On the left we have a small stack of paper with that option enabled. To the right is a larger stack of paper, all done without any curl reducing setting.

My curious puppy and her tennis ball in the background.

The result? It kind of works.

Verdict

Setup was ridiculously simple and Wi-Fi support is outstanding. The supplied performance is great for my simple needs (usually typing out letters to mail, the occasional boarding pass printing and printing out of PDFs I want to keep handy for reference). I don’t really care about the paper curl issue, which was the only thing I could find and I looked pretty hard. The only other thing that might be annoying is that it comes with a “starter toner” cartridge, which basically means it is half-full and won’t yield as many pages as the replacement toner you will end up purchasing some amount of pages later.

Which brings me to this Amazon comment:

Brother has programmed the printer such that when its thinks the toner is empty, it stops working. This happened to me when I was printing some important documents. There is a clear plastic circle at each end of the toner cartridge. The printer shines a light through to see how full the toner is. Simply cover one of them with a piece of opaque tape, and the printer will think that the toner is full. I’ve already gotten 1500+ pages out of the starter toner that was “empty” at 983, with no difference in printed quality.

Regardless of these nitpicks, the Brother HL-2170W laser printer gets 10 out of 10 Stammys for remarkable value and ease of use.

Do you own a printer? Have you gone laser yet? How much and what do you print? I am always tempted to check out photo printers but I know I will never print more than a handful of photos and be suckered into buying ink every few months.

RSS ads (for the student loans, I promise!): PaulStamatiou.com runs the Thesis theme. View my usenet downloading how to then checkout my usenet host Giganews.

Review: Brother HL-2170W Wireless Laser Printer

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

Related posts:

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2. Review: Sonos ZonePlayer S5 All-In-One Wireless Music System
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5. Wireless USB Almost Here
6. Belkin Updates Wireless USB Hub, Maybe This One Works

Every once in a while I get the chance to check out some different kinds of gadgets – ones that I wouldn’t normally buy on my own. At first it was the $699 USD Wicked Lasers 155mW green laser that can ignite matches, and then I took a look at the $400 AE Light Xenide 20W HID personal searchlight. Today I’ll be taking a look at something a bit more ordinary, a LED flashlight by Neofab called the Legion II. Okay, well maybe it’s not that ordinary. With a rated output of 742 torch lumens, Neofab claims the Legion II is the world’s brightest single LED flashlight.

The Neofab Legion II at full blast in a room with no other lighting.

Details & Setup

The Legion II is a $179 USD flashlight sturdily crafted out of a few pieces of 6061-T6 aluminum with a hard anodized protective coating. Powering it are three 18650-size 3.7V rechargeable lithium ion batteries (batteries and charger not included). This is the first problem with the Legion II. The batteries are hard to find and expensive.

The Legion II and its power source

I ended up going with UltraFire batteries that were 3000mAh — that’s about the highest mAh rating I was able to find for 18650 batteries. Each battery runs about $10 USD and then you’ll need to get a charger. Unfortunately, everywhere I looked I could only find a charger that charges two 18650s at a time. The Legion II needs three, so unless you have two chargers, it will take about 40 (20*2) hours to charge all of the batteries. The higher the mAh battery rating the longer charging takes, and with 3000mAh 18650s, it took about 20 hours to charge two empty ones. (Note: numbers from the 5.5VDC/450mA 18650 charger I have.)

On top of that, charging the batteries requires taking them out each time and putting them in the charger. It would be nice if there was a simple charging jack, similar to the Xenide flashlight, especially since I found putting the batteries in to be a bit of a challenge. The tail cap of the Legion II has a PCB that relies on some small contact patches to touch the bare aluminum inside of the flashlight body. Getting good contact requires a lot of force, at least with my particular Legion II and batteries, so I ended up applying some foil to help with the connection. I think it would be better if there was a piece of copper that came up the inside of the body and made a better attempt at making contact with the tail cap.

Usage

Close-up of the reflector and ~10 Watt LED.

The heart of the Legion II is the powerful CREE XLamp MC-E LED, which paired to the 18650 batteries gives the Legion II a rating of 742 torch lumens. While technically it is a single LED, it’s like having four LEDs in one with a multi-chip design. Neofab claims the Legion II is the world’s brightest single LED flashlight. Before continuing though, it’s important to mention that the 742 lumens rating is torch lumens, compared to emitter lumens. Emitter lumens measures all of the light coming out of the LED in all directions. On the other hand, torch lumens is a more real-world measurement that excludes light that goes out of the back of the reflector, light that doesn’t bounce off and is used to heat up the reflector, light that is used to heat up the front lens and doesn’t pass through, light that bounces back to the emitter and heats it up more, among other things. It has been said that torch lumens can be as low as 2/3 of the emitter lumens. The CREE MC-E LED used in the Legion II has an emitter lumens rating of 90 lumens per Watt, so the real emitter lumens of the Legion II is likely closer to 900 emitter lumens. Overall, I’m just pointing out that the Legion II really is bright and the rating method used for it is realistic, where as you might see some other flashlights say they have 900 lumens when really they are just stating emitter lumens.

10 Watts for a diode is a lot

Using the Legion II is a bit interesting. It is controlled by twisting a spring-loaded ring on the body of the flashlight. The main benefit is that you can have access to every feature of the Legion II using only your thumb. The downside is that it’s not very intuitive. It can temporarily be turned on by moving the ring counter-clockwise, or turned on for constant use by keeping it in that position for a few seconds then letting go. However if the ring accidentally goes back to the middle and moves back to the clockwise starting position, the flashlight turns off. In addition, there are five levels of brightness available by twisting the ring counter-clockwise to go to a lower level or clockwise to go up a level. The lowest setting emits 98 lumens, the second gives out 157, the third 264, the fourth 456 and the full-brightness fifth level outputs 742 torch lumens.

I would have preferred if the control ring had notches and stayed in those positions as you moved it. While I applaud the creation of an innovative control mechanism, I find it a bit buggy in its current implementation. I have to think about using it, which shouldn’t be the case with intuitive controls. For example, if you are on the fourth level of brightness, there’s no way you could tell based on the position of the control ring. If it had the notches like I suggested, it would be easy to tell from a glance.

Control ring instructions from the manual:

Left = TemporaryON , and OFF when you release the ring.
Left + Hold (5 sec+) = Constantly ON. * * You can set the brightness level for this mode separately.

Right = Temporary ON, and OFF when you release the ring.
Right + Hold (1 sec+) = Constantly ON. * * You can set the brightness level for this mode separately.

When the light is constantly ON, you can use these functions:
Right + Hold (1 sec+) = OFF.
Left + Hold (1 sec+) = Battery Gauge.
Right = Brightness Level UP.
Left = Brightness Level Down.
Loosen the tailcap , then the light is OFF,then tighten the tailcap = Save the brightness setting.***
*** You can reach Constantly ON from Left or Right, and the setting will be applied to Left or Right depends on the way you turn on the light.

Performance

I did a run-time test of the Legion II at its brightest setting and it ran for 3 hours and 27 minutes with the 3000mAh batteries I was using. Unlike other flashlights that get dimmer as the batteries drain, the Legion II delivered the same full 742 lumens at all periods during my runtime test. However, when the batteries are done with, the beam shuts off immediately after flickering a few times. That’s why the Legion II has a battery gauge built-in to give you an idea of battery level as you’d have no idea otherwise. Runtime can go as long as 20 hours on the lower settings, but I did not personally test that.

As for how the Legion II can run at full brightness for so long, it does an excellent job at dissipating heat with the integrated heatsink design.

Beam throw is clearly visible compared to the orange glow of the sidewalk light. Photo not manipulated or touched up in any way.

My biggest issue with the Legion II is the lack of a user-focusable reflector setup. While you can purchase additional reflectors and swap them out yourself for different uses, it would be much nicer if you could just twist a ring to adjust the throw and width of the light beam.

Legion II lighting up a sidewalk

Almost looks like a lightsaber..

Video Hands-on

I wanted an excuse to test out VideoPress so I made this video hands-on of the Legion II:

Overall

The Neofab Legion II is a strong, well-built flashlight that lives up to its promise of being freakishly bright. However, at $179 USD without including batteries and a charger I began to question its value. I think the price includes research and development — similar to how electric-only cars started out being remarkably expensive (Tesla stated their Roadster price includes their R&D). The Legion II strikes me as an early prototype. I like where it is and surely future versions will be great, but I have a hard time recommending it right now. There’s not even any retail packaging yet and the website doesn’t have

The current implementation of the Legion II, despite its usability issues, does what a flashlight is supposed to do and executes that core competency well. I give the Neofab Legion II 7.5 out of 10 Stammys.

What do you think of the Legion II? Would you shell out $179 + shipping + batteries + charger for it? What would you use it for?

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Review: Neofab Legion II (“World’s Brightest Single LED Flashlight”)

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

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2. In The Lab: AE Xenide HID Flashlight
3. Review: Minty Boost iPod Charger Kit
4. Review: 2.53GHz Apple MacBook Pro
5. Review: Rev iPhone app and PLX Devices Kiwi Wireless OBDII Module (Part 1)
6. Review: Wicked Lasers Elite 150+

Alright, so you’re pretty down with the tech scene. You’ve gone to more BarCamps than you care to list, have a few WordCamps under your belt, maybe a Startup Weekend or two, and perhaps a SuperHappyDevHouse here and there. Maybe you’ve been to the invite-only Foo Camp if you’re all kinds of special. But have you been to an O’Reilly Ignite event yet? Until this past Thursday, I hadn’t. That’s when Atlanta held its first Ignite and I can say without a doubt that it went off without a hitch. I don’t know what the official count was, but the event had close to 500 RSVPs.

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers.

As the quote from O’Reilly’s site above states, Ignite is all about getting people to come together to share their hobbies, projects, thoughts, whatever, in an interesting 20 slide, 15 second per slide format. There were 18 speakers at this IgniteATL that was held at the Georgia Tech Research Institute in Midtown Atlanta. Organizer Colin Ake convinced me to present something. I was originally going to do a talk on something blog related, but after reading more about Ignite and seeing how it was more about people not talking about their main line of work, I ended up doing a talk entitled “HDR Imaging for n00bs.”

The main room. There was an “overflow” room that had the audio and video as well.

Other talks covered a variety of topics like space, hydrogen, computer overclocking, art, beer, biology and business.

Me yammering on about HDR Imaging.

Below are my slides and a video of my talk (thanks for recording Ivan!). Watch at your own risk..

Hats off to the organizers, Atlanta’s first Ignite night was a blast and I’m eager to see what kind of talks spring up at the next one.

Have you been to any such Ignite nights or similar events? What did you think of it? Props to Nathan Fowler for letting me use some of his great pics of IgniteATL. This was the first time I used Keynote to make a presentation and it was a delight. Stammy approved.

Unrelated: I’ll be at WordCamp Birmingham later this month as Skribit is a sponsor.

RSS ads (for the student loans, I promise!): PaulStamatiou.com runs the Thesis theme. View my usenet downloading how to then checkout my usenet host Giganews.

Atlanta Gets Its First Ignite (It Rocked)

© Paul Stamatiou 2005-2010

No related posts.

Welcome to the third and likely final part of my series on High Dynamic Range photography. In the first part I covered what HDR imaging actually is and how it works while the second part went over DSLR camera setup for taking shots necessary for the HDR imaging process, in addition to configuring a regular Canon Point-and-Shoot camera for auto-bracketed RAW shooting. If you’ve been following along, you should now have several RAW images to use for HDR imaging. If not, take your camera outside and take some nice shots. I’ll wait right here.

More Shooting Tips

As I said in the Part 2, you need to shoot in Aperture Priority (or Program mode and keep the same Aperture for all auto-bracketed shots) and choose an f stop in the middle so you have some room to experiment. I suggested something like f/8 in that post, but it obviously depends on your camera, lens and subject. Read up on F-number and Depth of Field if you’re not too sure. In general, the F-number corresponds to how wide open the shutter is. The lower the f-number, the wider open the aperture is, the shallower/smaller the Depth of Field and less time and light required for adequate exposure. It’s hard to see the effects of different F-number changes on the screen of your camera while you’re shooting, so just take a bunch of shots at different settings and analyze them at your computer later.

In this article I will be using 3 auto-bracketed shots because that’s the most my Nikon D90 can capture. If your camera can do 5 or more, by all means go ahead and try that. The software processing techniques I show in this article won’t vary too much, if at all, with more photographs. Here’s a handy list of the maximum number photos some cameras support for Auto-Exposure Bracketing. The more shots your camera can take, the lower the EV difference you’ll want between each shot. In the last post, I took some example shots with an EV difference of 1 across 3 shots. I have since started shooting with an EV difference of 2 between shots for a more interesting final HDR image, but that’s all subjective.

Oh and try to shoot something that isn’t moving. Here’s an extreme example of ghosting that will be shown in an HDR image if you are shooting a moving subject. This was created with 3 shots (-2, 0, 2 EV) and processed with Photomatix Pro with the “Attempt to reduce ghosting artifacts” option enabled:

Visible ghosting of cars on Highway 75/85 in Atlanta, GA

As I said above, that’s an extreme example of ghosting. At most, you’re more likely to see a slightly blurry outline of trees moving between shots for example. Instead, you can just take one 0 EV shot in RAW and manually adjust the exposure to create 2 more shots and use those for HDR. Here’s an example of such a pseudo-HDR shot. I didn’t spend too much time on it so it’s not the best looking final product but you get the idea:

A simulated HDR image using the single RAW file at 0 EV on the left. HDR on the right. Look, no more ghosting of the cars on the highway!

What software to use?

Now its down to the actual meat of this entire series — how you can actually take your shots and convert them into an HDR image. But first we have a dilemma. What software should we use?

Panotools.org has the most comprehensive software overview list and comparison chart I have found. I have tested several of these and have only come to like one program, Photomatix Pro, which is available as a standalone Windows and Mac application, and a Photoshop or Aperture plug-in. Unfortunately it is not free and runs a sizeable $99 USD. Before explaining why I like Photomatix Pro, I’ll talk about the basics of what we’ll be doing and mention some other tools that can be used for HDR.

What We’re Doing Here: So you have 3 RAW photos, ready for HDR right? Good. Some pieces of software I mention can’t accept RAW files, so if you run into that, convert them to something like 16-bit TIFF files. Here are the basics, regardless of software:

• Generate HDR image by importing the 3 photographs
• Run a tone map and adjust settings until you like the way it looks
• Export and save!

There’s not much to it in practice, but it can be quite difficult to get the look you’re aiming for depending on what software you use. After testing a handful of applications for HDR processing I’ve found that the free applications are generally either:

1. much more difficult to use and require users to have an idea about how to work with histograms, sometimes with toning curves, OR
2. extremely limited in what they can do.

One such application is FDRTools Basic. The interface isn’t anything special and after you add your 3 exposures, you are greeted with some histograms and not much else. Even if you know what you’re doing, it’s difficult to get vivid final HDR images without taking your final image and then tweaking it some more in another application.

Using FDRTools Basic requires a bit of skill.

Then there is GIMP with the exposure-blend script. This one requires a bit more hands-on work and coaxing. After importing the images you have to do things like image alignment manually and work with masks and channels substantially to get the look you’re going for — not something for the first timer this article is targeting.

GIMP with the exposure-blend script

To get a bit nit