XBMC a Media Center for the Masses - Part 1

The allure of a Media Center Computer (MCC) in the lounge room is born of fantasy and practicality.  The coolness of having all your music, movies and TV shows at your fingertips/remote is that of having an age old problem solved in the geekiest way possible.

From a practical point of view, having your DVD/Digital collection in a place away from where the young children can use them as ammunition in a battle for the best seat in the living room is always a plus.  The reduction of clutter down to one small box makes the wife happy.

The battle with the MCC is that, in most cases, the old DVD player is a lot easier to use and tends to be more reliable.  For example, I have most of the kids DVD's on the MCC, but my wife still tends to put on the actual DVD, rather than go through the hassle of turning on the MCC, waiting for it to boot up, navigating through to the Hi5 directory, just to have it reboot itself 10 minutes into the show because Windows needed to be updated.

Click to read more ...

Kill Switch for All

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="153" caption="Image via CrunchBase"][/caption]

There has been a bit of news surrounding the finding of a "bad Apps database" for the iPhone, giving Apple a "Kill switch" option for any dodgy apps released into the iPhone.  Flack was fired at the Apple, but apart from keeping the company and the product in the news headlines, there doesn't seem to have been much effect.

Those who hoped the Google Phone (G1) was going to be a saviour from the new "restrictive" ways of Apple were sadly mistaken, after the discovery of Google's own "Kill switch".  Why are we so surprised that Google would have such a feature in their phone?  They have three good reasons - platform reliability, customer support, and finally, "Apple got away with it".

I was listening to the latest 1Up Yours Podcast (Gaming) to the discussion about the techniques gaming companies use to part us from our cash.  The point was made that with each generation, gamers become more de-sensitised to what, in previous generations, would never have been accepted.  Frog in boiling water scenario, anyone?  And guess what, gaming has many parallels with the tech industry, especially with the PDA battle going on at the moment.

Apple give us a great user experience, far better than the Windows mobile, or any other traditional offerings.  For us to have that great experience, though, Apple needed to lock down and restrict the hardware and software.  This annoyed a vocal few, but everyone else is too busy being cool to care.  Of course, Google know this (remember that Google know everything) and it would be silly of them to take a complete backward step over the ground that Apple has made with the iPhone.

Keeping the above in mind, the penetration of the kill switch may, in a few years, switch from the mobile phone, where it does have its place, to other, more open, platforms.  Anyones guess who will offer it first, but imagine Apple offering developers a platform where all pirated software could be remotely deleted?  I'm sure there would be a major customer shift to Windows if they implemented it, but guess where all the new tricked-out software would be found?  Adobe and others would shift to the platform that gives them the best security and quality for their customers who pony up for their software.

You're right, it probably won't happen.  In fact, I'm sure there will be hack for the Kill Switch on the G1 pretty soon, mainly because of its openness.

But is that a good thing?  Will you be trusting your data to a possibly unsafe platform? Or would you prefer a closed secure platform?  I don't really think Apple would do it, they have more to lose.  But if Microsoft offered it as part of a new cloud-based platform, I could see a shift in the playing field.....

Jason Remnant

..if it is Broken, why fix it?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Tmobile G1 vs Iphone review by LiveCrunch

The Mobile Platform

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="202" caption="Image via Wikipedia"][/caption]

Today, while listening to Cranky Geeks, a couple of the trends and upcoming announcements from Microsoft are starting to make sense, and I'm wondering if it might be a master stroke on their part.

Over the last couple of years, the Ultra Mobile platform has struggled to make any headway due to lackluster hardware and software that never really lived up to its promise.  The Windows Mobile PDA/Phone were probably the better of the bunch, but the OS never really got to a level of speed and reliability that would grab the everyday consumers interest.

Then came the iPhone.  I'm not sure if it was Apple's intent to create a new platform, or just offer their take on mobile computing.  The one thing they did was show that a mobile device could have decent storage, a full featured web browser and a cool factor that the everyday consumer ate up, all 10 million of them.

Having the iPhone as a closed platform was also a good move as it tends to invoke better reliability and user experience.  This, in turn, is moving more consumers to use and look at the Ultra Mobile devices.  What a great time for Microsoft to release an OS and Online product suited to the Ultra Mobile platform.

Microsoft already have the brand and are familiar in the mobile space.  If they dropped a lite OS with a full featured browser and bunch of Google Gears like desktop apps for web based "Cloud" style programs, they may just get the market share that will stifle the Google 'phone and relegate the iPhone back to the fan boys.

This move would give Microsoft back its business dominance and give them a measure of hipness if they could just get a couple of funky 'phone manufacturers on-board.  And hey, if you could have the complete experience, from desktop - netbook - phone/PDA - internet,  wouldn't you give it a go? (even if it was from the devil you know?)

Jason Remnant
..if it's broken, why fix it?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Microsoft Missing the Boat on Mobile?


• Google gears up for mobile security smackdown


• Why is Google Releasing a Browser?

Windows Cloudy

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Image by Getty Images via Daylife"][/caption]

Back in May I wrote a post on how Microsoft need to revamp their OS products, and one way to do that would be by making an Internet OS, or Cloud OS.  This was, at the time, more a piece of fantasy born from listening to an interview with the CEO of Sun Micro-systems, who said they were busy making lots of hardware for data centers.  And also listening to other people defending Vista.  It seemed to me that the time was right for Microsoft to do something different.

As I was pretty close to the money on this one, I thought that I might comment further.  If you look at the trends, and more importantly where the money is going/coming from, this sort of move by Microsoft is a no-brainer.  I'm sure they have been working on this long before my comments, but the implications of a move such as this for Microsoft, on the whole "cloud computing" argument is pretty big.

If you were worried about Google having all your information, are you going to be more comfortable with Microsoft having it?  If you were worried about the 'net getting gummed up by all the bit torrent traffic, what's it gunna be like getting your emails when you're competing for bandwidth with someone uploading their summer holiday photos?  And how do you recover from an internet "Blue Screen of Death"?

Well it looks like we are going to be finding out, as Microsoft will be announcing both Windows 7 (code named "Windows: A New Hope"), and the fore-mentioned Windows Cloud at the upcoming PDC 2008.

Jason Remnant
..if it's broken, why fix it?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Ballmer: Microsoft will soon release 'Windows Cloud' OS


• "Windows Cloud" Operating System to Be Released Within a Month [Windows]


• "Windows Cloud" Operating System Release Within a Month [Windows]

Two laptops, one Broadband connection

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="202" caption="Image via Wikipedia"][/caption]

Last week I was working away, and found myself and co-worker Tim in an interesting position.  I had a free Internet connection on the wall, but we had two laptops.  I guess we could have taken turns, but that isn't me.  If there is a way to do something with computers I'll find it, even if the time taken is greater than the time needed just to check some e-mail and updates on Facebook.

Now I have done plenty of Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) with Windows boxes before, but setting up the wireless without some sort of router is one of those things that I know can be done, but I've never needed to, until now.

ICS
Here is a nice How-To on ICS for XP. All you need to do for this exercise is put ICS on the connection that has access to the net, be that Dial-up, LAN, or Broadband.

Once this is done, the laptop is turned into a DHCP server and any other computers connected to it will (if they are set to DHCP) use the laptop as a Internet gateway.  Now all we need to do is connect to the first laptop wirelessly.

Ad-Hoc Connection
Once the ICS is setup, we just need to turn the first laptop into a wireless base station, which the second laptop will connect to.  To do this, we make an Ad-Hoc connection on the first laptop, which is nicely explained here.

Once the second laptop connects to the first, it should be given the right settings to share the Internet and you're done.  It works quite well and we were able to entertain ourselves for the evening, and of course get some work done.

If you have any suggestions or questions, or even a better way to do this, let me know.

Jason Remnant

Related articles by Zemanta

• Share Your Internet Connection in Leopard