MediaCentral

I mentioned previously that I have been pretty frustrated with FrontRow.  MediaCentral looks like it will do pretty much everthing that I want, and does things that FrontRow doesn't do.

MediaCentral has some pretty cool features:

• Presents a catalog and can play IPTV streams


• Plays TV for DVB-T broadcasts


• Plays various video formats, both from iTunes and accessible in an mounted file system


• Plays DVDs and DVD VIDEO_TS files


• Plays music from CDs or iPods


• Plays music from iTunes Library or files accessible on mounted file systems


• Plays internet radio stations


• Skype integration


• Plays classic video games


• Views photos from iPhoto or on a mounted filesystem


• Plays photostreams from .Mac or flickr.

Library Books

Library Books is a cool application.  This application lets you track the library books that you have checked out.

The cool thing about Library Books is that it connects directly to the library to get the list of books that you have checked out.  Also you can use this application as an easy way to search the libraries catalog.

[via Lifehacker]

Videos in Gallery

Last night, I uploaded some videos to our Gallery2 installation.  Gallery2 supports videos by default, but there are some plugins that you will want to install:

• ffmpeg - This plugin generates thumbnails for movies.


• thumbpage - This plugin lets you select a time offset for the frame to be used for the thumbnail.

Even without those plugins, adding movies works fine.  The only things that don't work is the thumbnails don't appear, and playback doesn't happen in the embedded player.

Now that this is working so well, I think that I will be moving the movies that I have hosted on .Mac homepage to Gallery2.

links for 2007-07-04

• 
  
  iPhone root password cracked in three days - Blogs - Byte Club - Builder AU
  
  
  (tags: security iphone root password)
  
  

Starting Folding@Home at login

Now that I have started running the Folding@Home clients, I figured that I might as well install it on the kid's iMac, so that when they turn it on it can do something useful in the unused CPU cycles.

The easiest thing to do, and what is recommended in the Folding@Home documentation is to add the command line app to the Login Items in the Account Preference Pane.  The problem with this is that Terminal launches and the output from the tool is piped to the newly opened console.

I wanted to find a solution that would silently run a tool, on login.

Folding @ home on Mac Book Pro

I have been interested in distributed computing projects for a while.  I have decided to try Folding@Home.  One of this projects goals is to help understand the process of protein folding.

When I installed the Mac OS X client on my Mac Book Pro, everything worked correctly.  That is until I disconnected from AC power.  When I did that, the battery was being drained pretty quickly.

The Folding@Home client should have an option that would either pause or slow down processing when the laptop goes into portable mode.

links for 2007-07-02

• 
  
  jkOnTheRun: Verizon gets me again with a disabled feature
  
  
  Verizon has disabled the GPS feature on the BlackBerry phones they sell. This is to get people to sign up for their VZNavigator service
  
  
  (tags: Verizon GPS BlackBerry VZNavigator)