Technology

After having returned an Airport Extreme Base Station for the lack of a Web Configuration Utility (so I can modify the config within a Linux system) I ordered a machine at more or less the same price: A Linksys WRT350 with Pre-N-Wireless and storage link to attach external USB devices. Today it arrived and I have already made some tests. But first things first: After opening the package I got a bad feeling seeing Software-CD while noticing the system requirements on the box: Windows XP or newer. My feelings got worse when I saw the first pages of the manual telling me I should insert the CD, blabla...

But finally I read something. If you want to do the alternate configuration via HTTP, do... So I quickly connected everything and boom! The HTTP interface let me configure all the things I needed. First I set the wireless name to 'Wardrivers Hell', then I made sure this router deserves this name :). WPA2 and a Mac filter did it for me. Then I enabled my MacBook wireless on Ubuntu with the Madwifi driver and... damn, it connected! Speed was only 54 MBits, but that's okay for me.

Amazon, the popular online shop, has recently launched its mp3 download store. As the name suggests songs can be downloaded in mp3 format, with every song encoded at 256 kb/s. Thus the songs can be played on any platform, and on any player, including the iPod and Zune.

As if this wasn't awesome enough, the songs are priced from 89 to 99 cents, and albums range from just $5.99 to $9.99. Is the music industry finally waking up and noticing that people do not like to be enslaved by DRM?  I guess the only bad news is that currently there are no plans to extend the shop to Europe.

Yes, Steve's at it again. All you Apple fans, make sure to watch the web closely tonight at 7pm Berlin time to see what Apple's strictly Mac-related event has to offer. There have been many rumors surrounding a brushed aluminum iMac with an ultra-flat keyboard similar to the one found in MacBook Pros (pictured here). I had also seen quite a few concept shots of the iMac itself, however they seem to have all been pulled from the web, possibly increasing their significance (posing that age old question: Would Apple pull a fake?).

Anyway, it's been quite some time since Apple has been concerned with computers rather than phones, and I for one, am really looking forward to something new in their Mac segment.

Hi everybody! Today I will talk about the GWT (Google WebToolkit). I have been using it for about one year now (not all the time), and I am now at a point where I can say, that I have a basic impression on how stuff is done or at least can be done. In this article I want to summarize what beginners with the GWT will probably face and give some (hopefully) useful hints.

For those of you who never heard of the GWT, I start with a short introduction. It is a tool/framework which lets you create AJAX websites without coding any line of JavaScript. Therefore it provides a compiler which transforms the client side of your project that is executed by the browser into JavaScript. You as a programmer just have to write Java code. You are restricted on the classes you can use on the client side though.

So what is the big picture of a running GWT application? On the client is JavaScript doing most of the application logic directly without bothering the server. More complicated tasks however can/must be done on the server side which consists of nothing less than a full featured Java Application Server like Apache Tomcat. The gap between the client and server side are overcome by using the GWT built-in RPC calls.

I don't know how you guys feel? When I first see the lego mindstorm humanoid robot, I'm nearly crazy about it. See http://mindstorms.lego.com/. Programmable interface, visual sensors, sound sensors, bluetooth ... etc. That means I can program a pet, who is able to say "Hi, lady, you are so hot! ", when it see a beautiful girl :)! And most important it is not that expensive as I thought, 239,75 EUR from a ebay seller.
With mindstorms I can better make use of my computer vision knowledge to make more fun. Not just differentiate a laser and inkjet printout or photocopies. Not suprisely you will find lots of communities, rototics research group etc. which use mindstorm as prototype for education, research and HOBBY!
Lego has joined the Microsoft Robotics Studio Program, which means your programs may not be robot dependent. You can also program lego robot with Java, see http://lejos.sourceforge.net/.
If you have more interests to this kind of stuff, there are a list of programmable robots at active robots.

Anyone who has been around me lately will know that I don't have the best of thoughts on Apple's policies at the moment. Too restrictive in both hardware and software, has been my common complaint. Although I disliked this sort of attitude, I could understand it. If things were more open, we could get back to the OS 9 fiasco of hundreds of system hacks interfering with each other, making any type of diagnostics for Apple or third party developers impossible.

But then there are the other annoying things: Apple's restrictions on all things music and movies. It is getting very annoying that I can't integrate so many of the open-source formats in any of the iApps, be it iMovie or iTunes. And that my mother had to buy an iPod so that she could play her legally purchased music off of the music store, and even then could not copy them directly onto her Nano, filled me with anger.

Hi, just thought I'd tell you what I've been hacking around with today, while I wait for my next movie to download off DC++.
I programmed a neat little utility that will attempt to locate almost any type of physical object (preferrably round and of a distinguishable color) in front of my iSight camera. By "locate" I mean calculate its 3-dimensional position in space. The idea is to be able to use some sort of trackable object to do 3D manipulation or drawing.
It actually kind of works already and is definitely pretty cool to play around with. The downside however is the comparably bad resolution of the iSight. For instance, as a test I made a little background app that lets me control the mouse by moving an object (in this case a Labello chap-stick) in front of my iMac. The cursor than mimics the movements of the object. Although I can actually manage to get to even small spots (i.e. close-button in a window), it is rather tedious, as A) you need to hold up the object, which gets rather tiring, and B) due to the low resolution of the camera and air static, the cursor has a "shivering" effect, even when you feel you are holding the object perfectly still.

Good news for all owners of the latest generation Apple computers. Today our mighty company offers us a firmware update enabling the wireless hardware to communicate with up to 540 MBits/s. WOW! (No, I am not talking about the Vista effect :))
Forced by U.S. law Apple has to charge us for the download with money. In Europe the price is 1,95 Euros. Nice thing in general I think. I only wonder if Apple could have made an exception for European customers, because the laws here would have allowed a different solution.

Oh, I forgot: If you buy an original Apple router, the update comes free of charge... but I am not sure if I'll buy that. For now I enjoy the speedup I got by switching from 11 to 54 MBits.

Update: A footnote in the U.S. Apple Store says: "The software license for the 802.11n Enabler software allows you to install and use it on all computers under your ownership or control."

Year, I think I control at least the computers of my friends! ;-)