Archive for the ‘Tech Comment’ Category
What Speed Will We Get From the NBN?
I have just been reading an article on the capacity of the data cables going from Sydney through to Guam, and then on to the US. Currently it stands at 4Gb/s but with the new cable from Pipe Networks that should increase over time to 6Gb/s.
Trouble is that doesn’t stand up with a 100Mb/s NBN. When you look at the figures: -
The totally capacity coming into Australia when this is up to capacity will be 6Tb/s. The NBN will provide data connections at 100Mb/s or 0.1Gb/s. That means that just 60,000 connections at a full 100Mb/s, or assuming that maybe 20% of households are on the net at the same time connecting to the US (20% of 8.5M households is 1.7M connections) gives just 3.5Mb/s per connection.
Okay I know that there will be local caching, but this is going to need to be huge in order for us to see more than a connection at roughly the same speed as ADSL.
No Audio on Macbook (and red light in headphone port)
I have recently had the misfortune of having the sound on my Macbook going off after about 10 minutes, and a red light appearing in the port.
After much research I found out that this is actually a VERY common problem (c’mon Apple you should fix this up). It seems to relate to plugging non-Apple plugs into your headphone port. Mine certainly happened when I started plugging in a lead to go to some external speakers. The problem is caused by a little switch inside the port which is there to sense whether they plug you plug in is optical or not. The larger plug size seems to cause it to somehow waver between detecting it as an optical port and not.
The standard advice to fix this is to ram your plug in and out a few, or to stick something in there and fiddle around at roughly the 7 o’clock position. I tried this and it worked for 10 minutes, then went off again.
What has worked for me is the advice from Macriot (sorry I can’t put the link in as Safari 4 crashes when I try, but it is http://www.macriot.com/article.php/20080718032528619). They say:
f you have these symptoms, we recommend a very gentle and minute tinkle of WD-40 into the audio output jack, followed by gently inserting and removing the audio input jack a few times. At least until the sound is returned to normal and red light ceases to glow from the audio output jack.Remember, we said “tinkle” not spraying into the jack like there’s no tomorrow…”
This seems to have done the trick for me and I have now been complete with audio for the last 4-5 hours! Hooray!
Apple iPhone Rumour
I am going to start a new rumour that the iPhone will include an HD video camera as per the Flip MinoHD (just bought by CISCO as the next big thing) and the new cameras from Kodak/Sony etc. The video will synch straight into iMovie to give the iApps integration and will synch with iTunes.
I’m not sure whether this will actually happen, but it makes sense and would be very cool! C’mon Apple…..can’t wait until June!
NSW Schools Lenovo Netbooks with Photoshop!
I have just read that the NSW OLPC for schools system has approved Lenovo IdeaPad S10e netbooks with Adobe Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver on them, as well as ‘free’ versions of Windows and Office.
I have to say that there are a few issues I can see here. Firstly free software from MS!? There is no such thing as free! Even if it is provided free, the cost is that MS will expect a return by pushing the user, and the school down the Windows route rather than Mac or Linux. Not that good for a department of education to get suckered into that one!
Second issue is Flash, Photoshop and Dreamweaver running on a netbook with 1GB of RAM and integrated graphics card on a 10″ 1025×576 screen![b] You have to be kidding me![/b] Maybe you could get them to load up, but do any work! Checking Adobes website for PS CS4 they require a 1.8GHz or faster processor and a 1024×768 screen, Flash recommends a bigger screen and Dreamweaver requires a 1280×800 screen. Obviously these netbooks don’t meet this requirement.
This is not good for Adobe or the students. The students will get frustrated with the UI and slow or none existent performance and Adobe will lose customers as they will think their software is buggy. Oh, and I should add that we will pay for this too.
IE8 InPrivate Filtering, A Google Killer?
In the final release of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) there is a feature called InPrivate Filtering. What this does is as follows: -
Today websites increasingly pull content in from multiple sources, providing tremendous value to consumer and sites alike. Users are often not aware that some content, images, ads and analytics are being provided from third party websites or that these websites have the ability to potentially track their behavior across multiple websites. InPrivate Filtering provides users an added level of control and choice about the information that third party websites can potentially use to track browsing activity.
Although this would seem like a good idea, and to be fair has to be enabled on a per session basis, is this a thinly disguised dig at Google Analytics?
Most sites these days tend to use Googles Analytics stats package which puts a cookie in the browser to allow the package to track repeat visitors etc.
Although Google don’t specifically say much about what they get out of Analytics the last code update made it fairly clear that site owners could track across domains, so it seems likely that Google are too.
Obviously this information is valuable to Google for advertising purposes, but it also ensures that potentially all of us are being characterised probably without any identifiying information, but characterised all the same.
InPrivate filtering seems to be Microsofts approach to reducing the amount of data Google can collect. By blocking Analytics cookies you are essentially also blocking Googles, and the individuals websites ability to track you. A smart move on Microsofts part.
As mentioned earlier this has to be enabled on a per session basis, so is it a shot across Googles bows saying that if your not careful, we’ll block 65% of the information you receive?
What is my feeling on this? As a site owner, I would hate analytics, or any other stats package to break. This helps me improve my site for others and is an invaluable tool. However I am concerned that information on my browsing habits could be being collected on me to serve me ads., or for some other purpose I would hate to consider.
On the other hand I don’t see MS as a fighter for our rights either. Seems to me that this is just good business for Microsoft, and if they can make it seem like they are doing good at the same time….
AWA DP747 DVD player review
I have just bought the AWA DP747 DVD player and have set it up and watched a couple of videos on it over the past 12 hours or so.
First impression was a good price for the features, which include playback of mp4 format video from a memory card or USB stick.
When setting up you get the typical Chinese, rather garish splash screen (I often wonder, do they think apples designs are drab and lacking in colour). Running the setup on the tv was painful though. I have connected my standard def but 16:9 format tv using standard yellow (video) and red and white (audio) cables supplied in the box. I am not sure that these connection are important, but I cannot select the tv format to be 16:9, the option is just greyed out. Other options are pretty standard, but that one means that I cannot get full use of the widescreen format (and let’s face it, the native resolution) of the DVD. I will try other connections over the next few days, but that is just annoying.
On the flipside, video reproduction seems good, and the discs themselves spin very quietly, making my foxtel iq seem even more annoyingly loud.
Mp4 playback was interesting in that it didn’t pick up a mac formatted disc, but when I moved a film to a memory stick, it worked well, again with good reproduction. I have yet to try an h.264 formatted movie with the m4v extension iTunes uses and will report back on that.
Overall I would recommend this DVD player if you connect by hdmi or component, or have a standard def 4:3 form factor tv. If like me you have a 16:9 tv and want to use standard video, yellow cable, stay clear as the squeezing of the image will drive you nuts!
UPDATE: 26 October 2010
This DVD player has just died, so you can get a rough idea that this one lasted about a year and a half. Overall it has been a good machine. The only problems I have come across are: -
- It has crashed a few times, particularly when you try to access something when it is first starting up. Once it has done this it just locks and the only way to restart it is to pull the plug. Once you’ve done that a few times you just make sure you wait for 20-30 seconds after hitting the start button before you try and eject a DVD.
- When it finally died, it did so with a DVD in the tray. To get that DVD out of a machine that had no power meant that I had to take the whole thing apart, literally! Even the DVD drive itself didn’t seem to have a manual way to eject so I had to take that apart too!
AppleTV leads
As you may know from previous posts I have bought an Appletv and connected via HDMI to my computer monitor.
I am starting to build up some content on it so thought I would buy a lead to connect to my main tv which is scart or s-video. I bought a foxtel lead for almost $70 which I was told would be ok as it is basically a scart-component video out.
Unfortunately I have not been able to get this to work at all. Not even to get sound. I am not sure why as it doesn’t look like it could be 1 way (it is actually made to take scart output of foxtel box and send it to component tv).
Anyway, moral of the story is don’t buy this lead! Maybe use bits and pieces combo solution instead!
NBN Network and Wireless Broadband Continued
After another post pushing the virtues of a wireless system rather than a wired NBN, I have the following comments which I made on an article in iTWire.
- The wireless system is capable of reasonably high speed, but there is a latency issue which means anything where packet priority (read Skype/VOIP) is an issue, wireless will be a problem. Not surprising then that Telstra is pushing it as it will mean they keep their expensive phone line rentals.
- ADSL2+ is great if you live 10m from the exchange. Go onto whirlpool and you can see all the people that upgraded to 2+ and got no change in speed over standard ADSL. This is because speed drops off quickly the further you are from the exchange.
- FttN is really expensive to implement and speeds they are looking at seems to be no higher than you can get anyway. In 5 years time they will seem pathetic (as our speeds do now to much of the world)
- BPL (Broadband over power line) could have potential in the bush, and is currently being rolled out in the US for remote locations
In short there is no clear answer. The best solution would be a combination of the above. Maybe no fibre nodes within 1km of an exchange where ADSL2+ would be better, fibre nodes in the city and BPL in the country. One thing that seems clear though is that wireless is a supplementary connection and shouldn’t be regarded as your main connection unless we want to cripple our VOIP service and keep Telstra shareholders happy for the next 10 years!
Securing Airport from WPA Hack
I have just finished listening to the excellent SecurityNow podcast on the first WPA hack. Having heard some of the recommendations I went into my Airport Utility to try to set it to only use AES not TKIP encryption. Trouble is I didn’t get those options.
However what I did find is a setting which lets you change the WPA Group Key timeout. As the WPA hack requires a minimum of 12 minutes for the first intrusion, changing the WPA Group Key timeout to anything less than 12 minutes should prevent the hack from working.
The other bit I like about this is that it takes less than 30 seconds to do (not including resetting your Airport).
Australian NBN Network – FttN?
IBM has recently announced that they are going to put in a broadband over powerline (BPL) system to
“targeted primarily at rural areas in the US where the sparse population has prevented other ISPs from laying down lines for cable and DSL services”
In Australia on the other hand we seem locked in to providing a fibre to the node (FttN) system to 98% of the population, which will include a large area which is remote and difficult/expensive to lay fibre to.
It seems to me that a BPL system would suit the Australian environment even better than the US. It would be fine to lay fibre in the major cities, but to keep the costs down, it doesn’t make sense to do the same in country areas. In the same breath, country areas should have equal access to broadband as the city. This technology seems the perfect fit.
For more info see: -
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2230428/ibm-gets-back-bpl-business