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Paul's Time Sink

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encryption in iChat

Paul Westbrook | 31 October, 2005 18:31

Ichat Encryption-1The 10.4.3 update adds encryption support to iChat.  Unfortunately it only adds it for people using AIM accounts from mac.com.  This is an artificial limitation, as these accounts are using the same AIM servers.

I don't know what type of encryption this uses, but I hope that it uses something compatible with the other IM encryptions (i.e. Gaim-Encryption)

[via TUAW]

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ATSC broadcast power

Paul Westbrook | 30 October, 2005 17:10

I wonder why broadcasters do this.  It appears that our local ABC affiliate does not broadcast at full power during the day.  We don't get good reception of KGO during the day, but at night the signal comes in perfectly. 

I could understand this if they were broadcasting some other digital channels during this time, but this doesn't appear to be the case.  I wonder if this is just to save electricity.

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STEALTHtenna amplifier

Paul Westbrook | 29 October, 2005 19:24

Since the STEALTHtenna was installed in the attic, the reception was a little flaky.  I bought the amplifier for the STEALTHtenna, and it has solved the problem.

While I was up there I attempted to make sure that the antenna was pointing in the "right" direction, according to a compass.  After I did this, I got no signal.  This may have had something to do with our attic being a little faraday cage, with the foil covering on the roofing matterial.  I had to go through the manual process to estimate the right direction to point the antenna.

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Making your Powerbook a Wi-Fi access point

Paul Westbrook | 28 October, 2005 21:31

The MAKE: Blog has a post that describes the steps to make a Powerbook running Mac OS X  into a 802.11 access point.  I haven't tried this is a while.  Last time that I did I wasn't able to get the DHCP server to hand out ip addresses.

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Large transmission tower

Paul Westbrook | 28 October, 2005 21:13

Tall TowerThis is pretty cool.  In Chicago, there is a proposal to build a 2000 ft tower to broadcast radio signals such as HDTV.  This would allow an unobstructed view for these signals for quite a range.

I would love it if something like this was done in the San Francisco Bay area, even though this would never happen.

[via HD Beat]

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More Vonage and TiVo

Paul Westbrook | 28 October, 2005 19:29

I have been having a difficult time to get my HD10-250 to make phone calls over the Vonage line.  The tips that I described before didn't seem to work.

I found this page that did have a tip that works for me.  This is the configuration that I use to dial:

Dial In Number: 1-212-277-3895
Call waiting: "*70,"
Dial Prefix: "*99,12122773895,,,,"
Tone/Pulse: Tone
Phone Detection: Off
Dial Tone Detection: Off

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D-Link NAS enclosure

Paul Westbrook | 27 October, 2005 19:50

3060000000050767.JpgThe D-Link DSM-G600 is a enclosure that would allow you to create a NAS by adding a hard drive.  This is pretty cool, especially since the NAS devices that have hard drives installed are pretty expensive.

The one things that I ams not sure on is what protocols this supports.  I would assume that this supports SMB and potentially AFP, but their specification doesn't state specifically.

[via Engadget]

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Olive Symphony

Paul Westbrook | 27 October, 2005 19:38

SymphonyNow this is a cool media player.  The Olive Symphony is a component digital music player that has some pretty cool features.  I has an 80 GB hard drive that can store the music files.  It has a CD drive that can rip audio cd directly to the hard drive.  Also you can burn cd from the Symphony itself.  When playing the music there are both Toslink and coaxial digital outputs for playing high quality audio

In addition to being able to rip the audio from CDs, the Symphony can access music on computers on the local area network, from either Bonjour or UPnP A/V protocols.  In addition to being able to access music from computers on the network, the music that is on the hard drive is made available on the network through the same protocols.
 (More)

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STEALTHtenna

Paul Westbrook | 26 October, 2005 10:07

Previously, I had bought an internal ATSC antannae.  I haven't been that happy with the reception of this.  I wasn't not able to get our local NBC affiliate, and I was only able to get ABC or CBS, if no body mooved in front of the antanne.

I decided to buy a Channel Master STEALTHtenna.  Since we live in a townhouse, I didn't want to put this antenna on the roof, so I decided to install it in the attic.  The installation was pretty easy.
 (More)

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Apple Store Experience

Paul Westbrook | 26 October, 2005 09:52

Yesterday, I went to the Apple Store because the hinge on the right side of my PowerBook G4 was a little loose.  I had this problem a little over a year ago, and they were able to tighten the screws in the store.  I had AppleCare back then, and I decided not to continue it.  I was hoping that they would fix again like they did last time.

when i got to the Apple Store in Valley Fair, there were a couple of people in front of me.  When it was my turn, I was told that I had to sign in.  (There were no signs that told people that they should sign in.)  Luckily, I the person was able to take the laptop into the back and tighten the screws.

I am hoping that I can make this laptop last until the new x86 PowerBooks come out.

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Free music

Paul Westbrook | 24 October, 2005 13:25

StanfordStanford has posted 30 tracks in the iTunes Music Store for free download.  The interesting part was that there the "Get Tracks" button, did not add the tracks to the Shopping Cart, but it started to download automatically.  Maybe this is true for all free tracks now.

I also noticed that the tracks that are downloaded are not Protected AAC tracks, but are just standard .m4a tracks.

[via TUAW]

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Automatically create torrent rss feeds

Paul Westbrook | 20 October, 2005 21:16

This looks pretty cool for someone who has a podcast.  It looks like you can log into your Prodigem account, and enter a rss feed, it can convert the attachment urls to urls for torrent for those files.  This makes it very easy to create the torrent feeds.

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Syncronize Firefox bookmarks

Paul Westbrook | 19 October, 2005 20:26

Bookmarks Synchronizer is a Firefox extension that will allow you to synchronize your Firefox bookmarks between computers.  This brings one of the features that is available in Safari to Firefox.  I am using this to synchronize my bookmarks between my laptop and my desktop at work.

[via TUAW]

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1080p DVD player

Paul Westbrook | 19 October, 2005 18:49

3060000000050047.JpgI saw this post about the Classé CDP-300, which is a DVD player that has some pretty cool features.  It has a touchscreen lcd display on the device itself, to allow previews of videos playing.  This is a great feature for playing DVD-Audio discs where you don't really need the video display.

The one feature that I don't understand, except for the bragging rights, is the 1080p output.  DVDs inherently have a resolution of 480i, so this DVD player has a line doubler that increases the resolution.  I don't know if this is better than the line doublers in nice HDTVs.  Also, I don't know how many TVs support 1080p input.

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spam blog tool

Paul Westbrook | 18 October, 2005 23:50

Almost a year ago, there was a site that had been taking my rss feed and using that to generate a blog with my content, without any acknowledgment.  It looks like this tool has been created for this purpose.

It appears that this tool will read an rss feed and the make posts to standard blogging systems.  The main headline on their site is:

Who Else Wants to Know How I Maintain Daily Posts to Several  Content Blogs on Various Subjects, All Without Writing A Single Word or Lifting A Single Finger?

This appears to be a software package thats main purpose is to plagiarize.
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