Moblie Media Adventure

Welcome to Mobile Media Adventures. I thank you for stopping by, but unfortunately I am no longer updating this blog. All is not lost however, I continue to post (and you can find most of this content too) over at my new personal site http://cjmart.in. Please visit me there!

Thanks, Chris

Many people may not realize that if you install apple’s “public source” Darwin Streaming Server on to a mac running a normal version of OSX (not server), it really seems to install the exact same Quicktime Streaming Server software that comes with OSX Server (minus some UI tools). Well I found this out earlier this year when I installed DSS on my powerbook to play with streaming content to a Nokia 6620.
I subsequently forgot that it was installed on my powerbook until tonight when I wanted to run phpMyAdmin and I was getting errors because… QTSS has been running this whole time (oops).
Of course I didn’t remember what my username or password was for the QTSS, and I found that it was quite a pain to hunt town how to change it (doesn’t seem to be in the docs from apple), so I will post the method here for anyone else with this problem.

Open a terminal and enter:
sudo cat /Library/QuickTimeStreaming/Config/qtgroups
You will see something like:
admin: yourQTSSuser

Now to change the password enter:
sudo qtpasswd yourQTSSuser

You may now go to http://localhost:1220 with your new password and carry on.

Here is some information for everyone interested in underage drinking in Athens Georgia. This will be one of the movie topics for the slam.

• Athens Banner Herald Search

Athens Banner Herald articles (user/pass needed, use abh2055/abh1234)

• Buyers and sellers are both responsible for underage drinking – letter to the paper, interesting to see community feedback
• Solicitor stepping up fight against illegal drinking
• Forum: Giving teens the wrong message

A few Red and Black articles

• Eateries busted on underage drinking
• Adams: If drinking, use moderation
• Police, woman collide – kinda funny actually
• New underage drinking penalty could include license suspension

I’ve never bothered to even try and code a page that would display properly in Mac IE, it’s bad enough trying to hack up good code to look right in Windows IE… Well now it looks like Microsoft has given up IE too (at least the mac version).

If you load msn.com using Mac IE, you are given a message that says “If you are using Internet Explorer for Mac, we recommend that you use another browser to have an optimal experience on MSN.”

I think everyone else should follow Microsoft’s lead on this one, and just stop bothering to make your stuff work in their browsers, instead politely suggest that users upgrade to a better browser like firefox (see link in sidebar) or if they’re lucky enough to have a Mac, just use Safari!
Please, anyone that is still using Microsoft IE for Mac, just stop!

At least MSN doesn’t crash Mac IE anymore.

screenshot for your enjoyment

Sony generally screws everyone when it comes to well, a lot of things (memory stick (memory stick duo), atrak3, locking down the psp, rootkit (2 3 4 5 6), etc…), but I do have to give them credit for some things.

1. The walkman phone does look pretty cool, and it seems MUCH better than the moto ROKR-POS, yet the Nokia music phones are still yet to be seen and I’ve heard good things.
2. Movies on UMD, psp in general. Does anyone buy those movies on UMD? I doubt it, but I have seen one, and it looked great. Plus if you have a big enough memory stick duo you can save your movies there and watch them on the amazing psp screen.
3. This is the kicker… The other two are cool, but this actually shows that sony might be learning something. Sony is going to be selling movies for mobile phones (2) on (drumroll) MMC cards! Yes, sony is actually looking forward and might be on to something. The iPod video has finally brought the idea of video on the tiny screen into the public eye, and cellphones just might be the next step. What do most modern cellphones have… memory stick duo MMC card slots!

Looks like someone in the world that is sony might actually be looking in the right direction here. Things like price, demand, and marketing might kill this idea, but I gotta say I’m shocked that they’re going for it (good shocked).

I read about an application the other day called SplittingImage that uses iMagine Photo to dice up a high resolution image into a bunch of pieces for better viewing on a color iPod and I thought it might be a great way to scale something like the UGA Bus Map (pdf) down to iPod size.
I have tried before to cut images down into a form suitable for the iPod, generally with negative results, but with SplittingImage, the final product turned out pretty well…

Looking at the whole map in the gallery view on the ipod.

Selecting a single image “zooms” into the map for greater detail.

The images of course don’t do the iPod’s screen any justice, but you can see that street and even building names are legible on the “zoomed” image. Having the whole map display is also nice as you can quickly scroll through to the specific section you want to enlarge.
Currently SplittingImage only works with the 5g “video” iPod, I think this is due to the actual software in the nano and 4g not letting you display separate albums independently which is necessary for the images to line up properly. The software has grayed out options for the nano and 4g however, so maybe with a future update things will change.

If you’re lucky enough to have a 5g iPod, and would like to view the UGA bus map, grab the images “here”http://storage.roundhere.net/images/UGA_Bus.zip (zip). To get them onto your iPod, just create a new album in iPhoto, add the images to the album, and tell iTunes to sync that album with the ipod.

This past week I’ve been working on my other project here at the NMI called Arch Cam. The idea is that we will mount a camera aiming towards the arch that can me remotely triggered via a phone call and certain key-press.
Well, most of it’s done. I present Arch Cam v0.5!

As of now, The camera is sitting in Clate Sander’s office, so the images are not all that fascinating, and the site displaying the images it just a standard (although cool looking) gallery. – But it works! If you dial a number here in the NMI (I’m not sure I want the whole world taking pictures of Clate’s office) and press the number 1, the camera in Clate’s office snaps an image and adds it to the gallery online.

Next steps, a camera downtown and a little fancier website, and we’re rollin’

And, it’s on the NMI servers (no database needed for now)

Wow November, the beautiful month that includes thanksgiving, my birthday, and… the rapidly approaching end of the semester, where did you come from!? November is upon us, and I need to give an update of where I am, and what I need to do, to get these amazing projects at the NMI finished and polished for public consumption. The past few weeks have been crazy, and it is now time to lay out what MUST be done for everyone to see (and hold me to).

Little Big Screen – I’ve got lots of great work done on this project. Unfortunately it hasn’t worked out that Cingular can throw some of their (probably insanely expensive) Jumbo-Tron time over to a student project (can’t say that I exactly blame them, although it would have been a GREAT move). You might think that the University would allow a bit ‘o time for some students… ok, if you know UGA you wouldn’t really think that. Anyway… it sadly doesn’t look like we’re going to be able to wow the world by being the first university to let fans send pictures directly to the screen at a football game (they just don’t understand).
However, this does not mean that the Little Big Screen project will not be a success. I am working on modularizing the project so that anyone who wants the ability to receive photos from a cell phones – to display on a monitor, screen, weblog, web site, etc. will be able to do so fairly painlessly. This process is almost complete, and I think with a few more hours will be looking great. I’m also working on moving most of the site over to the NMI, so that they can proudly show it off as an NMI student project (Dr. Shamp really told me how to do everything) – this should be done by next week.

ArchCam – The archcam project that I previously spoke about here has also made some progress, and I’m confident that there will be a working model within the month. I’ve started working with the ovoLab Phlink software, and with the minor complaint that it doesn’t work with a voip line coming straight to the computer over the internet (therefore removing the need for a landline phone line), it is a great piece of software; completely scriptable, this app can do anything you could dream it to do. I’m working right now on an applescript script to tie together other shell script’s I’ve written and include variables from phlink such as the incoming phone number and time of the call. Next steps – set up a computer in the NMI that can be used for testing all the time, write applescript like mad, and keep waiting for caller ID.

Challenges as of now… shifting to the NMI servers, both of these systems require access to databases and cron jobs. I can either put the code for the presentation on the NMI servers and run the databases and cron jobs on my servers, or, I can try and figure out the database and cron systems on the NMI servers (which is kinda hard when I have… FTP access).
Getting it all done.

N90
Originally uploaded by cjmartin.

First thoughts are that it’s a little confusing, as are all cellphones when you first start using them, but all the added features for the 2megapixel still/video camera take a little time to get through.

The picture to the right was taken on the phone, set to the highest quality setting and, on the phone and blue-toothed to the computer it looks great… However, when sent through an MMS it leaves a little to be desired, mainly because it’s about the size of a thumbnail! This is obviously a slight problem that needs to be figured out… I’m about to start diving into settings now.

Update: It was a setting in the phone. You can send the pictures at a full 2.0 if you change the picture size in the MMS settings, it just has it set to small by default so that other phones will be able to receive your images. Despite the fact that this phone is HUGE, it looks like it might be a really nice, very image able, cellphone.

See the full size glory 1600×1200!... maybe a new wallpaper?

If you look down in the sidebar… way down there below my del.icio.us links, you’ll see a location widget. Whenever I am online, weather at home, downtown on the WAG, at a coffee shop, wherever, if I’m online… you can find me. Not only that, but you can see information about the networks that I am connected to, free wifi nearby? pictures of spots around town? it’s a pretty cool site.

Check out Plazes – if you’re like me and have your laptop with you at all times, get out there and start tagging your locations. Check out my plazes here.