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  • Toshiba Announces World’s Largest SD Card – Gadgetwise Blog – NYTimes.com

    SDXC is yet another memory format all manufacturers will have to adopt. Isn’t it frightening how much the removable memory market has fractured into mico-formats for memory cards. About a week ago I was playing with an Olympus voice recorder at work. It had it’s own funny shaped memory cards you had to buy from Olympus if you wanted to increase the storage size. One positive thing I will say though is this. SDHC at least has consolidated some of the mindshare around a commonly supported form factor for removable storage. Compact Flash once enjoyed a similar amount of support. But nowadays you cannot even find a laptop with CardBus slots anymore. Many add-ons for laptops are installed on internal PCIe busses now.

    I hope all the device manufacturers get onboard with the SDXC format only because of the limits on the FileSystem on these cards has needed to adapt to the vagaries of long form video shooting. I remember the painful days of 4GB file size limits for video. That took a long time to dissapate on the desktop computer. It’s high time it disappeared on digital video cameras as well.

    Toshiba says all three new cards will bring a maximum write speed of 35 megabytes per second and a read speed of 60 megabytes per second. For videophiles, the new SDXC format will enable video files to extend beyond the current limit of 4 gigabytes.

    via Toshiba Announces World’s Largest SD Card – Gadgetwise Blog – NYTimes.com.

  • AppleInsider | TomTom for Apple iPhone released in U.S. App Store for $99

    Apple Insider reports this morning that the TomTom GPS application has appeared in the U.S. AppStore. And if you decided to get the external antenna you can even use your iPod Touch as a GPS. That is way cool and way more useful than I had previously thought this was going to be. Kudos for TomTom to make the thing more widely available on the iPhone platform.

    The product works with the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS, which include an integrated GPS receiver. It will reportedly also be compatible with the first-generation iPhone and the iPod touch once the separate combo hardware kit is made available. TomTom has not yet announced a price for the hardware package.

    via AppleInsider | TomTom for Apple iPhone released in U.S. App Store for $99.

  • AppleInsider | Apple’s tablet

    Theres no way the tablet will be as hot as the iPhone
    There's no way the tablet will be as hot as the iPhone

    Market projections are a black art. How big is the market for an as yet unreleased product? Marketing departments always have to do the  research and focus groups and test marketing to see what the projections are. But even these can be wrong or misleading. Based on this article one Wall Street analyst firm bases their projections on the market for the Apple TV a niche product if there ever was one. In the first year of it’s production the Apple TV sold 1.2million units. Given the appeal of the iPhone and iPod Touch, the projections are the Mac Tablet will sell far better than the 1.2 million units of the Apple TV. And with a list price of ~$600 US then the revenue generated would be approximately 3% of total revenue. This is all pad on paper estimates based on the up take of a somewhat less successful product, so it could be way off the mark. I’m hoping there’s something new, something nobody has guessed at so far that Apple will include in this device that will help really, really differentiate it. It should be unlike other tablets, and unlike its little brother the iPod Touch.

    We believe an Apple tablet would be priced 30%-50% below the $999 MacBook, and would offer best in class web, email, and media software,” the report reads. “In other words, we believe Apple’s tablet would compete well in the netbook category even though it would not be a netbook.”

    via AppleInsider | Apple’s tablet will be more than a niche product – report.

  • Reseller lists TomTom iPhone kit

    Not an iPhone, but definitely a lane assist!
    Not an iPhone, but definitely a lane assist!

    It’s not cheap, but the TomTom accessory kit for the iPhone 3GS is now listed on a re-seller’s website. Hopefully the Navigon and AT&T iPhone Apps haven’t stolen the thunder of the original TomTom announcement. But I guarantee the GPS performance will be a lot faster with an external device. I’m not criticizing the internal GPS on the iPhone. It is a compromise design that allows everything to sit and play well within the same old iPhone footprint. For good GPS reception and quick locks on satellites, that compromise is going to get in the way. Especially for anyone who has used purpose built, standalone model GPS navigators. My fingers are crossed in hopes the TomTom at least matches the low end of the navigator market with its hardware/software combo.

    The application is said to take advantage of iPhone OS 3.0’s support for true, turn-by-turn directions. The software will have both nation-specific and international maps from TomTom, will work in either landscape or portrait modes, and give voice directions.

    The software will reportedly be available for separate purchase from the App Store, and would rely on the iPhone’s internal GPS receiver. The hardware kit, however, comes with its own, separate GPS. It will be one of the first external accessories to take advantage of iPhone 3.0’s capabilities.

    via AppleInsider | Reseller lists TomTom iPhone kit for £99.00 ($168.50).

  • iTunes U: The Beginning

    It’s interesting to see how the whole iTunes U structure works. I’ve been reading documentation about the ‘web services’ enabled within iTunes U. It completely replicates the GUI functions but through a semi-automated interface. Reminds me a little of how you can change the underlying LDAP directory structure using LDIF commands or LDIF files with all the changes embedded within it. In iTunes U, you do an HTTP PUT securely with a signed token, and the iTunes U Web service sucks that up and executes all the commands embedded within your XML file that you put. Very powerful, but very scary too as these changes are made to your production environment. So there’s no real easy way to test the results of your commands without just taking a big risk, leaping in and seeing what happens. This is like SQL commands where you DROP TABLE, not a fun thing to do. DROP TABLE is a big black whole that makes your data disappear in an unrecoverable way. iTunes U has similar functions where you delete the structure AND the data at the same time. You may restore the structure (by backing up your data tree in XML format), but the data embedded within the tree, well that’s gone. So restoring stuff is going to be impossible if you get the syntax wrong in your XML file. The only real benefit to me now is the ability to get a listing of the whole site structure using the Tree command and then forcing an update to any groups that are of the type RSS Feed. The update will be necessary if anyone adds files to a podcast being hosted on servers within our institution.

    I discovered or re-discovered a tool called Woolamaloo which was introduced to me during the Apple iTunes training. University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana created it to allow you to use a GUI to control the Web services from a desktop OS. This is good as I was at a loss to adapt the sample code into anything like a reliable generator of tokens to send to iTunes U web services. I couldn’t figure out what parts of the java example to comment out and recompile. Starting this Monday I’m going to put Woolmaloo through it’s paces. If I can force the RSS feeds to update on demand when somebody has a problem updating their Podcast feeds, I can at least speed things up. But I’m still very leery of deleting or merging any section. I will copy so I can make a course appear in more than one place without using the iTunes multi-click interface. But I will not delete or merge.

    And just today I also discovered there are Apple Automator scripts readily available that add a graphical layer on top of all the web services goodness. So now I can integrate a bunch of steps from uploading bunches of files, forcing RSS feeds to update to merging/rename whole sections all from Automator. I’m going to test it and se how good it really works.

  • links for 2009-07-30

    • Kodak Zi-8 has a microphone jack!
      In the small pocket camcorder market Kodak has fired another shot across the bow of Pure Digital. They are including a microphone jack in their latest camcorder.
      (tags: video)

  • AppleInsider | Augmented reality in iPhone 3.1; new Snow Leopard build

    It appears Apple is on board for fully pushing through the whole Augmented Reality capability of the iPhone. Follow the link below:

    Apple promises that its upcoming iPhone 3.1 release will be the first to officially support augmented reality apps that support the iPhone 3GS’ camera. Also, a new seed of Mac OS X Snow Leopard has been handed to developers.

    iPhone 3.1 needed for augmented reality

    via AppleInsider | Augmented reality in iPhone 3.1; new Snow Leopard build.

  • Tablet device coming early next year

    True to form, Apple is keeping a tight lid on their Mac Tablet. But all rumors are pointing to a release early in 2010. The announcement of the device may come in September of this year at the point where new iPod products are announced. Other scuttle-butt indicates Verizon may be providing it’s Fourth Generation (4G) network for the new device so that it can stay connected to the Internet wherever Verizon cell phone towers are available. It will be interesting to see how the market might fracture between cell phone and tablet users. I would guess this whole project may turn into an Macintosh Cube experience where Jobs reach exceeded his grasp.

    Tablet & iPhone
    This is how big the 10" tablet might be

    However, the past six months have reportedly seen the critical pieces fall into place. Jobs, who’s been overseeing the project from his home, office and hospital beds, has finally achieved that much-sought aura of satisfaction. He’s since cemented the device in the company’s 2010 roadmap, where it’s being positioned for a first quarter launch, according to people well-respected by AppleInsider for their striking accuracy in Apple’s internal affairs.

    via AppleInsider | Apple’s much-anticipated tablet device coming early next year.

  • links for 2009-07-25

  • Web Applications for cheapskates

    I wonder if there are any readers out there they may have experience using these web applications for doing work or even for recreational computing purposes? You see some people just want to have fun and kill time on their computers.

    Jing – screenshot, or short movie maker – mini version of camtasia mostly used for desktop recording. You record yourself performing some action on the computer and Jing will capture video frames of where you go, what you select and what you type in to accomplish those steps within the application. Then it dumps that out to a movie file you can link to on the Internet, for all to see.

    Picnik – online photo editing through a web page. It can link up to a photosharing account you may already have like Flickr. There are lots of special effects filters and tools for cropping and adjusting the color balance and exposure of your pictures. You can add text or change captions for the pictures you have on a photosharing website.

    Dvolver – animation maker, but not just any animation. This is the kind of junk you see at Hallmark dot com for making greeting cards or birthday cards to send to people in email. I’m not terribly impressed, but I’m sure it will absolutely knock the socks of my co-workers.

    Gabbly – chat tool to use on web sites, or better yet,  Simply type gabbly.com/ in front of a webpage’s URL, you will be able to chat with anyone visiting the page at the same time! For example, to chat on CNN.com, just visit ‘gabbly.com/cnn.com‘ in your browser. You’ll see the CNN website with the Gabbly Chat window floating on top.