Author Archives: feeling entropy

Good movie compression is every movie/video pirate’s best friend. Divx is a huge player in the game of compressing videos. In my personal historical experience, they did for video what the mp3 did for audio. Video files were huge, and transferring them across the internet required days of uploading and then downloading. Making the files smaller while losing little to no quality was desired. Divx didn’t just dream it, they did it. Now there’s no question that the power of this codec (short for compression/decompression) can be used for forces of good as well as evil. Pornography for example was the most searched entity on the internet until the mp3 came along, if you consider that good use of video compression.*

I ran into the Divx booth at the Connections Conference and had to hit these guys up. They had nifty pens, sleek silver booklets, and some portable media players for our fondling pleasures. I was excited to talk to someone who works for Divx, as a geek stuff like this is equivalent to a high school basketball player chatting with someone who designs Nike shoes. It’s just cool, and she told me about Divx 6.0 coming out real soon.
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Connections Conference attendee NetCentrex Inc was nice enough to set me down and show me exactly what’s going on behind their curtains. There weren’t actual curtains there but they did have squishy chairs for a for a full demonstration run through.

What is Triple Play was my first question, I’ve played my TV, radio, and computer all at the same time, does that count? No, was her answer. Then she asked me for my phone number! That’s right kiddo, right in the middle of us ordering The Lord of the Rings movie as a VoD (Video on Demand) she asked me for my phone number. My striking resemblance to Aragorn Mortensen was more apparent than I thought. Then she started to dial my number on the TV remote control. A phone sitting next to the TV started to ring a funny ring, she picked it up and didn’t say anything. As soon as she put the receiver to her ear, my phone started to ring. It was her calling me!

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Thanks to the Connections Conference I now must have minimum $10,000.00 in new up to date home networking equipment. I have no idea how I lived without these great new inventions, and once I get them will never want to be without them. SmartVue agrees, and provides a solution to keeping your new home networking things in your home.

Camera surveillance is nothing new, even wireless cameras aren’t a new technology. SmartVue has introduced a new spin on old technology. Wireless cameras for the home surveillance, connected to the net, and available anywhere (even your mobile phone).

The spec breakdown for those who like numbers: Continue reading →

I’m not old, but I sure do remember back in the good ol’ days when candy bars were a nickel, movies cost $0.50, email accounts had 2MB limits, and attachments were measured in Kilobytes. My friends and I dreamed of the days when cars flew, videophones lined the streets, and we could email 2GB attachments to each other with the easy of simply pushing ‘send’.

Thank you Streamload, and no they don’t make flying cars. My latter fantasy however has been fulfilled thanks to this San Diego based company. I ran across these guys at the Connections Conference, they have more storage than you can imagine and allow you free unlimited uploads. Movies, music, videos, files, photos, and anything else you can imagine.

(note: this is a “contest post” so leave a comment!! )
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The files are basically FTP’d Continue reading →

If you’re like me (then I feel sympathy for you) you probably have more than one computer in your household. Each computer holds its own library of media: music, movies, and photos. Setting up a network then sharing files is a huge chore thanks to our buddies at Microsoft. Let’s face it: I want more than just a normal, boring, computer network these days.

My digital appetite may be satisfied with something I came across during the Connections Conference, the Dedicated Devices Inc. (DDI) Digital Home System. Mediabolic has teamed up with DDI to bring a new type of home network. Considering you paid $12,000.00 for that 62” plasma screen, and $5,000.00 for your 5.1 Dolby surround sound stereo, why the heck are you still listening to mp3’s and viewing photos on your 15” computer monitor!?

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Wires aren’t feeling so well these days. Wireless this, wireless that, everyone wants to get rid of their wires. You’d think this to not be good news for our friends at Belden, global wire manufacturers. But as much as we’d like to free ourselves from wires, the need for quality wires will not go away just that easy. I visited the Belden booth at the Connections Conference unsure what I would find from a company that makes such a simple product.

Was I wrong. I approached the booth and said “So you guys just make wires eh? Which one is your favorite?” The Belden woman pointed directly to a bundle and called it the banana bundle. She grabbed a 12” section which had two Cat5, two Coax, and one fiber wire all bundled together.
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The Connections Conference was full of new ways, and ideas for connecting existing components of your digital lifestyle. New ways to network your TV, computers, phones, stereos and anything else you may have lying around the house. Intellon, a company I had never heard of, held a boot at the conference. I figured that I’ll pass them up and go onto a company which I was more familiar with until pretty flashing LEDs drew me in. Intellon was giving out flashing LED pendants that I could not live without. So I moseyed on over to see if I could score one.

After making myself a walking flashing “HomePlug Powerline Alliance” advertisement I noticed some Netgear products that I had not seen before. Further inquiry and I found Linksys, BellSouth, Belkin and others just to name a few.
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When I think pepper the first thing that comes to mind is salt. I asked Jon Melamut, VP of sales & business development for Pepper where they got their name from as my first question. “Peppers are hotter than apples”, he replied with a joking smile. Jon admitted immediately that he was an Apple lover, but couldn’t resist when I set him up so good. “Pepper is just an easy name to remember, it sticks” he then told me with a bit more sincerity. Pepper’s aim is to make something that’s easy, simple, and fun, their name definitely reflects that.


What is the Pepper Pad? In this gadget geek’s opinion, it’s somewhere in that middle haze between laptops and PDA’s. The Pad is designed for recreational use only, this is not a work related device! AIM, email, internet browsing, and digital media are the focuses that Pepper put into it’s Pad. Linux runs this bad boy, which keeps viruses and spyware to a minimum yet stability at a maximum. The browser is powered by the Gecko engine, which not coincidentally powers our favorite friend Mozilla’s Firefox. POP3, IMAP4, and AOL mail can be accessed on these 2 lbs of fun. The screen is a touch screen and the icons are very self explanatory. Tabs are incorporated into each app making it easy to switch between areas of a program. Bluetooth, WiFi, USB 1.1, and SD/MMC expansion card slots are built in to Pepper. It can act as a remote control for pretty much everything but the kitchen sink (unless you have a IR port on your sink, which I would actually like to see for kicks).
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Macrocomm has what looks like the biggest and best fax machine ever. This is not just a fax machine, scratch that, it’s not a fax machine. This prototype model will be released in Europe come this July 2005. I was lucky enough to sit next to Dave, the Managing Director, for lunch and inquired what it was he had to bring to the Connections Conference. Before I knew it, during a 30 min break and he pulled a box from his hotel room and met us a the terrace. His prototype do-it-all machine wasn’t at a booth for this conference, yet I managed to grab an exclusive look at this baby.

Touch screen, VoIP, IPTV, HDTV, dual boot Linux and Windows, DVD player, 5.1 Dolby Sound, USB 2.0, and starting at $850.00. This device is destined to end up in hotels, hospitals, conference rooms, dormitories, airports, and consumer homes. Combine it all and here you have it: the all-in-one for the budget consumer. Still, I say it looks a bit like a big screen fax machine.

I’ve been deemed a “computer guy” by my parents and friends simply because I know how to re-install Windows, add RAM, and use the T-Bird RSS feed reader. Being a computer guy means that I’m a free 24 hour help desk.

Pure Networks has a solution to most of my family’s problems, which eventually turn into my problems. I got a chance to see it working in action at the Connections Conference held in Burlingame [read: San Francisco Airport area]. Install the Network Magic program on each PC in your house, and start networking. The program does what windows should do, makes networking computers easy.

Share printers, see who’s online, restrict little Timmy’s computer until he has finished his homework, see if the router is the reason for a lost connection or if it’s your wireless signal. One of the questions I get asked the most is “how do I know if someone’s stealing my wireless internet”, Network Magic will tell you. Stay tuned as there is a very high possibility that LIVEdigitally will produce a full review on this in the near future!

**Sorry Mac fans, this is only available for the PC. But then again, Macs network easily without 3rd party help!

The Hyatt Regency, a beautiful hotel located south of San Francisco kicked off the 9th Annual Connections Conference today. Companies from around the world came together in order to share their different home connection innovations. A woman by the name of Tina Sharkey from AOL stood before us for the keynote speech. She started off with a few numbers pertaining to a day in the life for AOL:

53% of all people who are on the internet manage to make their way to the AOL network.
1.83 billion Instant Messages are sent. (heck, I can allot for half of that)
392 million emails
560,000 blogs posted
20 million photos shared
AOL holds exclusive music sessions, similar to an MTV unplugged session (but they are plugged), and rapper 50 Cent generated 6.1 million streams from that the first day.
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