After my last post, I’ve been itching to make another video post. Last night, it all just fell in my lap while perusing HackADay.com. A recent post there, “Multitouch project roundup” talks about the many variations of multi-touch devices people are building in response to Microsoft Surface and the technology that preceded it. The problem with surface and some multi-touch implementations is that Surface will undoubtedly be out of your price range and mine and other DIY implementations have appeared daunting and still fairly expensive to pull off. Last night, one implementation, called mtmini, stood out from the crowd as a relatively simple and very inexpensive multi-touch project, so I decided that I just had to try it.

Below is the video, summarizing the creation of the multi-touch interface and some demonstration of it in use. I’m still working on my editing skills and the interface could use some fine-tuning, but I was pleased to have it actually working without a lot of effort. If you want to skip the building and commentary, jump to 3:26 in the video. It is also worth noting that Logitech didn’t have XP drivers for the camera I originally mounted in the box, so I ended up pulling that out and using a WebCam Live instead.

By all means, feel free to link to this post or share, embed, or link to the video on YouTube. Try to make one, yourself using either my method or the original (non-desk) method and post a link to your results here.

I don’t shoot much video, and the video I do capture is not of me when I can help it, but let’s face it. Video is taking over the web to a degree and I would be denying a new market opportunity if I didn’t at least poke at some online video. After some urging from Jim Kukral, I bought myself a Pure Digital Flip video camera and then headed to Jim’s site, OnlineVideoToolKit.com for some video tips. The video below is the the result of a Saturday out playing with my new toy. (Please look past my scratchy voice, shaky hand, and inability to remember where I am at any given time)

Having watched the video, it’s clear that I figured out a couple transitions and how to put the videos together with Microsoft Movie Maker, but I could use some practice handling the camera. Despite my clumsy newbie ways with a video camera, I managed to come up with something not too catastrophic, and that’s a testament to the Flip. So what’s my verdict? Let’s just break it down to the pros and the cons…

Pros
- Small and very light weight
- Much better video than I get with my still camera’s video recording
- Super fast to get going
- Super fast to get the video on my computer
- Cheap and easy video publishing solution

Cons
- Where’s the threaded tripod mount? (design flaw in my older version, it seems)
- Non-upgradeable memory
- USB interface is a bit clumsy without a cable

I bought the cheap version just to play around without putting a lot of money on the line. I spent about $72 (shipped) to buy mine on ebay. If you’re thinking about getting one, spend the extra money and get a 1GB or 2GB model, tripod-ready, with the extra features. Either way, I’m still pretty happy with it since I won’t need that much memory and the tripod and cable issues are easily fixed.

Now that I’ve jumped on the video band wagon for a test run, should I pack the camera (and my video blogging aspirations) into a box and hide it in my closet, or would you like to see more video blogs on JoeTech.com? Drop your thoughts in the comments area or post a video response on YouTube.

Since I just recenty bought my very first laptop and also because I have a disfunctional history with computers I thought it wise to read up on laptop maintenance.
Laptops require the same basic maintenance that my home pc needs, while also needing some extra precautions:

1. Defragmentation: This way you ensure that your laptop runs efficiently. Defrag your laptop at least once a month to allow programs to run more smoothly and off course more effectively use the space you have on your hard drive.

2. Keep the hard drive clean: if you are like me than your laptop is probably full of junk you no longer use. For me it is always hard to part with things as I have collectors syndrome (you should see my room). But it is important to keep the hard drive clean and remove unused programs and files as often as possible. Try scheduling in 1 day a month to go through the stuff you have accumalated. Take the time to decide what can be burned on a cd and what can be deleted. A clean hard drive runs much smoother.

3. Update your software: This is a very important step in your maintenance routine. Software that is outdated is basically just useless. Try keeping your anti virus, spyware and firewall software as up to date as possible. And while your at that take a look at the other software on your computer asses what is outdated, what can be replaced and what just needs an upgrade.

4. Stay cool: Laptops generate heat, this heat is not only uncomfortable on your lap it also risks damaging the internal circuits of the machine. To increase the longevity of your laptop keep it ventilated and in a cool environment. Also important cooling tip never block the vents on the side, back and bottom of the machine.

5. Use the battery: I read on a website that the laptop battery is basically like a muscle, if you don’t use it, it will die. The laptop battery needs the occasional work out, so unplug and play. Let your battery tell you when it needs a recharge. This way your battery will last much longer. I’ll take their word for it.

6. Don’t treat it like a dog: The laptop does not need walking, I’m serious people. Shut it down for transportation. Never walk with it while still on.

7. Keep away from electrical devices: just trust me on this one

For more info on Santousha please visit my personal blog Seeking Serenity.

Have you ever measured the starting time or the boot up of your Windows XP or Vista? If you haven’t you might wanna try the following method which I’m going to show you (make sure you are using Windows as your operating system before proceeding to read this post). There are different methods to measure the starting time for WinXP and Vista. In both cases, the BIOS is not taken into consideration since it’s not a part of the Windows.

It is really easy to measure the time in WinXP because we are going to use a nifty software to do so. It is called Boot Timer. The measuring tools record the time between initialization of the first Windows file (XP: “ntloader.exe”, Vista: “bootmgr.exe”) until the complete loading of all services and auto-start programs. Copy the boottimer.exe to your desktop and start the measurement by double-clicking it. The Boot Timer will show the starting time in seconds when Windows is re-booted.

In Vista, you only need to type Eventvwr in the command prompt. This will start the “Event Viewer”. In the directory file of the program, click “Application and Service Logs | Microsoft | Windows | Diagnostics Performance | Operational”. To find the correct log, click on “Filter Current Log” in the “Actions” area. In the “Filter” directory, select the “Last Hour” entry under “Logged” and activate the “Warning” option. Now specify the “Diagnostics-Performance” as “Sources” and write in the line with the “Event-IDs”: 100-199. A click on the “OK” will show the starting time of Vista in milliseconds. If you see several logs, just select the one with the ID “100″, in which the current time has been specified along the date.

About the author: You can reached him at nimrodjo.com which you will find his other writings. He is learning about tech-stuff on weekly basis.

Today, once again “Something is Technically Wrong” with Twitter. From my memory this, just happens to be the second time that Twitter has had to restart the caching system. According to the Twitter blog.

Part of our caching service required an unscheduled restart. That means a slow rebuilding of data. You may notice some of the normal browsing related features (such as pagination) are missing while we repopulate the caching service. This is so we can get it done quicker.

This seams to spell trouble for Twitter, while Mashable blames the Democrats, (Deep down so do I) I think this is something deeper in the works of Twitter. According to an uptime tracker Twitter is online 98% of the time, but it seams to go down at the worst times. This year Twitter crashed during the Macworld Keynote and whenever something significant happens Twitter starts to get slow.

Twitter likes to blame Ruby on Rails, their web framework, for all their downtime. Something Twitter likes to refer to as “scaling problems,” and there have even been rumors Twitter might rebuild the system completely with either Java or PHP.

But for now it looks like were stuck, Twitter is “stressing out” so it looks like this bug is temporarily prevalent for everyone.

* Matt is a guest blogger for JoeTech. He blogs for fun and profit at Duhh and SocialFeed.