Blog archives for September, 2006

10-layer DVD to trump HD-DVD and BluRay

Have a strong opinions regarding HD-DVD vs. BluRay debate? UK-based New Medium Enterprises, true to its name, developed a new medium - a 10-layer DVD capable of storing a variety of formats and encodings on its multiple layers: “The production costs of a multi-layer DVD using the new NME technology are estimated to be around 9 cents, compared with the 6 cents for a standard single-layer play-back DVD, according to Dutch company ODMS, one of the world’s leading makers of production lines for optical disks. This 50 percent cost increase compares favorably with the current generation of multi-layer recordable DVD disks which cost 3 to 5 times as much to produce than a single layer disk, due to low yields.” According to the company:

Presently, all optical laser devices such as DVD operate on red laser technology, have a frequency or wavelength of 650Nm (nanometres), and deliver Standard Definition (SD) quality pictures. New technology has since emerged using blue laser, an inferior wavelength or frequency of 405Nm that can store more information .The downside of this technology is that manufacturing production lines of drives and discs will have to be dismantled and changed entirely, naturally incurring significant costs to the producers, which in turn will trickle to the consumer.

Running gadgets reviewed

Anick Jesdanun of Associated Press is avid runner, and hence he signed up for a job of reviewing GPS-enabled running devices, which are supposed to help you track the distance, time, and all the data related to your workout. He also publishes at-a-glance reviews of Timex BodyLink, Garmin ForeRunner, Bones in Motion and Nike iPod kit.

Larry Wall’s State of the Onion 10

O’Reilly Network published Larry Wall’s State of the Onion speech with presentation slides. This is the 10th State of the Onion, and if you read any of the previous ones, you know that it’s usually about Perl, Larry Wall’s personal experiences, and other wacky things. Large portion of the speech is dedicated to what’s happening with Perl 6.

Interesting pages on Forbes.com

Forbes.com seems to run an array of interesting pages on their site that are not quite articles, but belong to “special advertising section”. The text-rich pages include such interesting topics as mesothelioma attorneys, debt consolidation loans, credit card processing and student loans.

eLoan.com moves into online savings - 5.50% APY

eLoan.com is another institution to start offering high yield savings accounts. The savings account offers 5.50% APY on balances over $5,000, and the CD rate for 6 months is 5.60%. The frequently asked questions are here.

Notice that eLoan account does not allow externally originated withdrawals, which means you cannot pay credit cards with it. You can only link one bank account at a time, and you cannot change linked accounts more than 4 times a year. The account allows unlimited deposits, but a maximum of 6 withdrawals per month. The money is FDIC-insured.

Jackass 2

The red rocket stunt and having a few dozens midgets run in underwear run down the streets of India was fun, but watching a guy pierce his cheek with a fish hook, and that specific stunt involving a horse was almost the last straw, where I wanted to get out of cinema.

Google and Yahoo! activity tracking

I was browsing my subscriptions on Google Groups today and noted an interesting module:

Recently visited pages on Google network

The little side module was tracking my signed-in activity, and the tracking didn’t amount to just Google Groups browsing. See that link to CNET Networks? That was the link to Google Finance, and indeed, a few days ago, I checked out the latest blog postings on CNET on Google’s Finance property.

That tracking is near and dear to me, since the same type of tracking is enabled on Yahoo! Tech site. Whenever you browse or search for a product, the information stays on your log, and both Google Groups and Yahoo! Tech allow you to clear it, if you don’t feel comfortable with that info being on the screen. Yahoo! Tech tracking your recent activityIf you use Yahoo! Local a lot to find reviews of good restaurants or dentists, you will notice a similar looking module on Local as well. The idea is that a few days later you might want to come back to the item in the database you visited.

Here’s however, the crucial difference - clearing the cookies (or alternatively, closing the browser and letting the cookie expire) erases the traces of your activity from Yahoo! sites. Even if you never bother to hit Clear, sooner or later you will close the browser, and on the next visit to Yahoo! get a totally different set of cookies, so there’s never really a decent log of what you’ve done and visited. It doesn’t seem to be the case with Google, which ties up the activity to the user id, and hence messing with the cookies would produce no visible effect on tracking.

Moreover, Yahoo! chooses the model, which separates tracking on per-site basis. Your recent activity on Local is never shared with Tech, and won’t appear on other Yahoo! sites, as far as I know. Google’s tracking is network-wide from the start, as my recent tracks in the system include read Google Groups and a page on Google Finance. Not sure which approach is best for the user, as in cases like this you trade convenience for privacy, but this is one of the interesting facts that’s just useful to know.

eWeek reviews TorPark

eWeek magazine reviews TorPark, a Firefox-based anonymous browsing utility released by the Cult of the Dead Cow.

Running from the system, Torpark ran fairly smoothly and was just a bit slower than a normal Firefox session would be. However, when we ran it from a USB drive, it was more like returning to the days of dial-up modems, with considerable wait times for many Web pages. Still, there are benefits to Torpark from a USB drive, especially since no records of the surfing session are left behind on the computer.

From my experience sessions in TorPark are consistently slower on Wifi than regular Firefox sessions, due to the need to re-route the Web request through the Tor network of serves.

ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0 - TV recording that finally works

Recording TV content at home has been on my priority list ever since getting the new TV. The options are numerous, and all come with a set of advantages and disadvantages. Buying a Tivo is one of the most mainstream choices out there, but series 3 seems just so unjustified in price, and series 2 is headed towards obsolescence with series 3 breathing heavily at its back. Plus there are all the subscription fees.

Renting DVR from the cable company seems to be a valid option, they only want $5 a month for it, but then you got to upgrade to their digital cable as well, and after all is done, you’re probably looking at triple of the bill and the same amount of channels you enjoy watching.

Getting a portable video recorder like Archos made sense at some point, but after discovering its lack of support for coax cable input (that’s the cable that the cable company provides you with), the thing was sent back to Amazon. Getting a PCI DVR card also seemed to be an option, but there’s always that fear that after tinkering with it and all the card won’t work, and at this point will not be returnable due to open shrinkwrap.

USB 2.0 DVR utilitySo when Circuit City had a sale on ATI TV Wonder USB 2.0, I jumped in. For $40 after rebates the price was definitely in a better range than $800 TiVo Series 3, and $400 Archos AV 700. The unit quite clearly featured the coax input, composite input/output (in case you still want to plug in your TV), USB 2.0 port for the PC and the power plug. The installation CD came with roughly 8 required applications that needed to be installed, and somehow my PC kept freezing on the Microsoft Direct X installs. Figuring that it’s always I can get later from Microsoft, I unchecked the check boxes on the installation screen, and after abou third attempt the installation went through. Couple of reboots, and the installed TV guide comes up and scans your cable input for the channels you have. Mine were all correctly identified, and overall getting the TV on the screen was no problem at all.

The TV quality is a bit grainy on a 24″ screen, but overall is quite acceptable. The scheduler is dead simple - the application looks at the local time on your PC, and you can tell it (a) which channel to record, (b) when to start recording, (c) when to stop recording and (d) how frequently repeat the process in case you’re recording your favorite show. The output supports WMV, AVI, MPEG, MPEG4 and something called ATI DVR format. If you have a DVD burner available, you can even specify the output to go to DVD directly.

Remains to be seen how I like the little TV tuner / DVR box after several days/weeks of usage, but so far I am quite impressed with what ATI delivers for mere 40 bucks.

Free stock trades from Zecco

Zecco.com online brokerage is launching soon with the coverage from TechCrunch and the founder’s friend. Zecco will offer free financial blogs, free forums and free stock market trades to its users, hoping to cover the costs by advertising.

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