Jan

28

Miro : Free Opensource Internet TV

16 years ago, at the end of January | 1 Comment

Somone has just directed me to Miro a free, opensource video player and downloader. What’s even better is that it runs on Mac’s Windows PC’s and Linux.MiroThis could well be a huge kick in the backside for the likes of Joost who offer a similar experience. The differences are important though. Miro is free, opensource and doesn’t use DRM – although in the long run the lack of DRM may actually hurt Miro. Miro has some good introductory channels for you to browse, you can even download screencasts of how to use it. My problem now is to find more disk space for all those youtube videos of talking cats.. 😉

I look forward to finding an Openmoko channel there soon.



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January 28, 2008 14:14

Jan

28

Nokia + Trolltech = Nutopia?

16 years ago, at the end of January | Leave a Comment

Espoo, Finland and Oslo, Norway , 28 January – 2008 – Nokia and Trolltech ASA today announced that they have entered into an agreement that Nokia will make a public voluntary tender offer to acquire Trolltech (www.trolltech.com), a company headquartered in Oslo, Norway and publicly listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. Trolltech is a recognized software provider with world-class software development platforms and frameworks. In addition to the key software assets, its talented team will play an important role in accelerating the implementation of Nokia’s software strategy.

I always loved the simplicity of the phone interfaces on Nokia devices now it looks like some changes could be afoot. Hopefully Nokia and Trolltech will result in many more open devices – Hey I can dream.



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January 28, 2008 9:16

Jan

23

TrackMe on the Neo

16 years ago, at the end of January | 4 Comments

Remember when I mentioned my tracking application for the TomTom Go? Well last night I found a little bit of spare time so I could port it to the Neo 1973. I say ‘port’, it wasn’t so much Tracker1a port as a ripping out of the TomTom specific stuff and adding a little GTK interface. It’s not massively impressive to look at but it is actually my first GTK application. There is quite a bit of hard coded stuff in there at the moment but I do intend to move this to a config file. Currently, if the distance between the previous and current positions is below a certain threshold, a packet is not transmitted at all and position checks only occur at 15 second intervals. The data that is sent out is encrypted with a very simple algorithm, but I’m more interested in low cpu usage and speed at this point. I’m also going to be fairly honest about the state of the code at the moment, it’s not a pretty sight at all. I need to put together something on the server side to decode the packets, I know I have it somewhere, it’s just a matter of locating it.

I did wonder if the application should have an interface at all or if it should just run in the background, ‘secretly’ so that if someone stole your Neo you might actually be able to trace it.

The one thing that this did show me, however, is that you can’t actually run gllin for a particularly long time. I think it’s a minor fix but it does tend to fill up the free space on the Neo with its log data. I guess just disabling this might help, though I haven’t actually bothered to poke around with that just yet.

The other news is that to build this application I used the new toolchain and I have to say it makes life a whole lot easier. As a result I will also be building the toolchain at regular intervals and providing downloads via my buildhost. Sorry, but I can only build 32 bit versions at this time.



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January 23, 2008 14:53

Jan

20

Tiny bluetooth adapter

16 years ago, mid-January | 6 Comments

Earlier in the week someone mentioned the Trust 2400p Bluetooth adapter to me. This littleTiny bt-2400p device is tiny and is designed to be installed in a free USB port and then “forgotten” about. I have no idea how well or badly these would function under linux but I’m quite happy to go out and grab one, particularly as the price works out at about £10 / 14 EUR. Since my Acer laptop didn’t come with Bluetooth this should fit nicely in one of the rear USB ports. My only concern is that when using Bluetooth adaptors before I’ve had issues with the wifi dropping out.

update I’ve just snagged myself one of these from a local shop. My SuSe 10.2 install saw it immediately and kbluetooth reported it as Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR which, in theory, should give 3Mbit /sec.

Update 2 This device uses hci_usb as the driver. It’s based on the Cambridge Silicon chipset.

Trust BT-2400p plugged into the back of a laptopTrust BT-2400p next to an AA battery



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January 20, 2008 1:07

Jan

19

IMIV = Music to my ears

16 years ago, mid-January | 1 Comment

I’ll admit it, I’m a Volvo driver. I don’t care who knows it, I love my S80. Recently I decided that I could really do with a decent stash of music for my long trips that I’m making every couple of weeks between the UK and Netherlands. For the longest time I’d been struggling with getting CD’s out of their cases for the single cd, or fighting with the CD Changer jumping at the slightest bump. IMIVI finally caved in and purchased an IMIV unit so I could connect an iPod and control it from the stock Volvo head unit. So far it’s working really well, although I seem to have the knack of putting it into firmware upgrade mode. I’m going to email the developers to see if it’s possible to disable the headunit trigger of an update. I’m pretty sure I’m never going to upgrade while in motion which means I’ll have access to the physical unit to switch to update mode. The interesting thing about the IMIV is that you can get it to pretend to be various different devices, mine presents itself to the car as a Mini-disc changer and TV input. This means that I can still have the CD Changer working just by using the IMIV pass through port.

Itunes sucks as it is, but since I don’t use Macs or Windows it means I can’t use that for my music. It’s a bit of a blessing in reality. There are a number of applications for Linux which allow you to manage your iPod, in the end I went with the simple to use, opensource gnupod Perl scripts. The best part of these scripts is the ability to use regex for generating the playlists, something that’s very important with the IMIV.

The IMIV will only work with MELBUS (Mitsubishi Electronics Bus) based Volvo systems, newer Volvos (XC90, new model S40/V50/C70 and S80) use MOST which is apparently fiber optic based.



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January 19, 2008 20:47

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