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Paul's Time Sink

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Bluetooth for car audio

Paul Westbrook | 18 February, 2006 00:56

Cybt100UI though that I had found a solution to allow me to integrate my cell phone with a car head unit.  The Panasonic CY-BT100U is a handsfree kit for Panasonic head units. When a call is received, it automatically mutes the audio and shows the CallerID on the display of the head unit.  Then you press the button on the dash to answer the phone call.

One thing that I don't like about it is that you can not make calls with the car kit.  Also you can't make calls with the phone when it is paired with the car kit.

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New Bluetooth Hands-Free profile

Paul Westbrook | 14 February, 2006 22:45

A new version of the Bluetooth Hands-Free Profile, and the Phone Book Access Profile haven been announced.  These are supposed to improtve phonebook and dialing handling for car Bluetooth.

I wonder when car head units will support these profiles.  Also I assume that cell phones would have to support these profiles.

[via Wi-Fi Network News]

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Camino 1.0

Paul Westbrook | 14 February, 2006 21:24

About a week ago, I accidentally deleted all of the passwords that were stored in Firefox.  So I have been manually reentering the passwords for each of the sites that I visit.  If Firefox used the Keychain, this would be less of a hassle as the passwords would just be stored there.

Camino is a Gecko based web browser, that has a lot of the support for the Mac OS X features.  It integrates with the Keychain, Address Book and Spotlight.

The one potential downside is that it doesn't support the collection of Firefox extensions.  This is not really an issue since it has built-in support for blocking ads and popups.

I am now running Camino browser as my default.

[via The Apple Blog]

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iTunes Statistics

Paul Westbrook | 14 February, 2006 20:44

iTunes Statistician is yet another tool to visualize an iTunes library.  This is yet another visualization tool like iTunes Signature Maker or OGMT.

Here are my statistics:

 (More)

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iPod thoughts

Paul Westbrook | 13 February, 2006 23:44

I have been using the iPod for about a month and I do like it, but there are things that I would change:

  1. When a podcast track ends, the iPod goes back to the main menu.  This is annoying when you are playing a podcast of short content.  (Like Uwe Hermann's Music Podcast)
  2. Video podcasts should not appear in the Audio podcast section.  (How many people want to listen to the audio of a video podcast?)
  3. Better support in iTunes for libraries larger than the size of the iPod.  (By default, iTunes will pick a subset of the music for you, but you would have to manually update it.)  This page describes a good smart playlist for handling this, but it talk about weighting the randomizer with rating information

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script to filter tracks by location

Paul Westbrook | 13 February, 2006 23:20

When I added all of the tracks from our server to my iTunes library, I had a lot of duplicate tracks.  On my laptop, I had the protected AAC files, and the server has the mp3 format versions.

First I used iTunes "Show Duplicate Tracks" menu item to display all of the duplicate tracks.  Then I selected all of the tracks and created a playlist with those.  Then I ran this script which puts all of the duplicate tracks that are located on the server into a new playlist.

 (More)

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Copy remote music to iPod

Paul Westbrook | 12 February, 2006 01:06

I keep most of my music on our server, for a couple of reasons. 

  1. I don't want to use up the 70GB of disk space on my laptop for all of this music.
  2. I want the music to be available to be played when my laptop is either asleep or not in the house.

But now that I have been using an iPod, I now want this music to be able to be copied to it. 
 (More)

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Audio over power lines

Paul Westbrook | 10 February, 2006 21:53

Marantzzc4001Marantz will be coming out with the Marantz ZR6001 and ZC4001.  This AV receiver can be configured for a second zone of audio.  But instead of using an RCA cable to send the audio signals, it can use the electrical wiring with DAvED (Digital Audio via Electrical Distribution).  Up to six clients can be connected.

I wonder how well this works.  Will it work across the multiple phases of most homes electrical systems?  How does this handle interference on the power lines?

[via Engadget]

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Pandora

Paul Westbrook | 10 February, 2006 20:42

It looks like Slim Devices is updating the SlimServer software to integrate with Pandora's music recommendation service.  Pandora's service allows you to enter a name of an artist, and it will create a "radio station" of music that is related to that artist.  The new software will automatically make that radio station available for your Squeezebox.

I went to Pandora's web site, and tried their flash version of their service.  I liked the recommendations.  I don't have a Squeezebox, but I would like to listen to these stations in iTunes or on my iPod.
 (More)

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StreetDeck

Paul Westbrook | 10 February, 2006 20:20

Mp3Car6788The StreetDeck looks like a very easy way to get a computer into a car.  The StreetDeck is a 1.5 GHz PC with 512MB of RAM, running Windows XP Home. It comes with a built-in GPS receiver.  Optionally, you can connector a FM or XM tuner.  You can also connect this to the car CPU through a OBD-II connector.

The StreetDeck Trunk Mount Bundle includes the CPU and a 7 inch motorized touch screen monitor.  The bundle is $1699 at MP3Car.com.

[via Gizmodo]

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MediaCentral

Paul Westbrook | 08 February, 2006 22:06

I downloaded MediaCentral, and I was pretty impressed.  MediaCentral essentially has the same functionality as FrontRow, but has some additional features.

  1. It will automatically display video files in your home directory.
  2. Integrates with the eyeTV devices to display live TV
  3. Shows listings of IPTV shows.
  4. Supports various remote controls.

The interface is pretty intuitive.  It doesn't have the sound effects like FrontRow does, but it does run pretty well on my G4 laptop, and not just the new iMac and the Mac Book Brow.

[via PVR Wire]

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Pay for email?

Paul Westbrook | 07 February, 2006 19:54

I heard about AOL and Yahoo's plans to charge for email delivery today on the Digital Experience Podcast.  It appears that AOL and Yahoo will charge email senders if they want to guarantee that the message will get to the recipient.  If the sender doesn't pay, the email may be stopped by the spam filter, have the attachments stripped, or have the urls removed.

I wonder how successful this will be.  If I were an AOL or Yahoo customer, I would be upset if mail that is destined for me is not delivered.  Also as a sender, I am not going to pay to send email.  This is the same way I feel about challenge-response spam filters; I will not respond to a email challenge.

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Verizon and EV-DO

Paul Westbrook | 07 February, 2006 01:54

Verizon is now allowing customers to use their cellphones a broadband modem.  They are supporting this on the LG VX9800 and VX8100 and the Motorola RAZR V3c and E815.

Officially Verizon is only supporting this when connecting to the phone with USB.  I haven't tried the Bluetooth connection since this change, so I don't know what the speed would be.  I will try it out when I get a chance.

[via Engadget]

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Product rebates

Paul Westbrook | 07 February, 2006 01:41

I always thought that companies like using rebates because more people would buy the products.  But in addition to that, I am sure that only about 50% of people actually fill out the rebate forms, so the company doesn't have to pay out a rebate for each person that buys the product.

DIRECTV had a rebate when I got the HD DIRECTV DVR.  I haven't gotten around to filling it out.  Most companies will just let the rebate expire.  But DIRECTV has sent me two letters reminding me about the rebate, and actually included the rebate form again. 

I wonder if DIRECTV got in trouble with not fulfilling rebates in the past.

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Funny Engineer and Manager Joke

Paul Westbrook | 03 February, 2006 04:33

This joke is pretty funny, but scary how true it is.

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