Joe Tech » Computers

Video Conference In HD With Warpia ConnectHD

Joe Tech — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 22:50:07 +0000

With the ability to watch movies and TV series on Hulu, Amazon, iTunes, those of us without an Internet-ready TV have been settling for watching at a computer desk or on a smaller laptop screen. One way around this is to get the video from your computer to the TV as seamlessly as possible. Last year, I reviewed Warpia’s USB PC to TV video adapter, which provided decent wireless video up to 720p. After that review, many people asked about 1080p video and other features. Today, I reviewed Warpia’s latest product in this line, the ConnectHD.

1080p HD USB PC to TV Video Streaming

Like other streaming products, the ConnectHD includes a USB adapter for sending video and a receiving unit on the television end to convert the signal and display it on your TV. This is accomplished by Windows treating the Warpia adapter as a duplicated monitor and feeding it all the video you see on your screen. That video image is then streamed wirelessly to the receiver and shows up on your TV. I tested this with video in 1080p and it streamed very well. At the request of my wife, several additional tests were conducted with full episodes of Sons of Anarchy from Amazon.com. The 1080p video testing from YouTube looked great and the additional tests passed Michelle’s scrutiny.

HD Video Conferencing

The premier feature of ConnectHD is the ability to, well, connect in HD to others. The TV adapter includes a 720p HD video camera and the ability to stream video both ways. On your computer, the camera shows up as any other camera you might connect directly. This makes the ConnectHD uniquely suited to act as video conferencing hardware for applications like Skype and MSN Messenger. I tried it with Skype today and was pleased with the results. The video quality showed some signs of compression, but that may have been more Skype than the camera as the image was crystal clear in Skype’s video settings panel.

Warpia ConnectHD Video Demonstration

During my testing, I created video of some of the process, showing how well the ConnectHD works and demonstrating the features as seen below:

Conclusions

Listed on the Warpia site with a sales price of $199.99, ConnectHD is a good bundle considering the $100+ prices of most HD PC to TV video solutions and the cost of a good HD camera. ConnectHD bundles both to ensure they will work well together. If video conferencing is something you won’t likely do from the couch, $199 can seem steep, so Warpia and other companies offer cameraless solutions for a lot less cost. This solution performed very well in all of my testing and works great for the task at hand.

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STOP SOPA! Keep Uncle Sam’s Hands Off Our Internet

Joe Tech — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 06:52:48 +0000

If you haven’t heard about S.O.P.A. yet and why it needs to be stopped, spend five minutes and read on.

What Is S.O.P.A.?

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the less known PROTECTIP (PIPA) are proposed legislation that aim to give more control to the U.S. government and copyright holders to thwart piracy online. Sadly, the legislation will instead give our government the power to blacklist sites that allegedly contain any small amount of infringing content, thereby blocking the whole site from users. As an example, if I post a video on YouTube of my cat being funny and it happens to have a pop song playing in the background, YouTube has to remove it quickly or face harsh consequences. And if they’re not fast enough? That’s when Uncle Sam gets to start messing with DNS (the naming system of the Internet), making the site unreachable by normal means to most people in the U.S. If that doesn’t work, private companies (RIAA and MPAA, for example), can get advertising and payment companies like Google and PayPal to shut down the accounts of the allegedly offending site.

In this case, YouTube could vanish to anyone in the U.S. and lose all advertising revenue if I don’t edit some music out of my kitty cat video. Sounds reasonable, right?

And if you want to read the full text, here’s H.R. 3261
Pay attention to 102(c)(2)(A)(i) regarding DNS re-routing and 102(c)(2)(B) regarding search engines.

If all that’s too much to read, check out the SOPA infographic from Mashable or watch a video about the legislation below:

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Wikipedia And JoeTech.com Are Going Dark In Protest

At 12:00 AM on January 18th, 2012, the English version of Wikipedia will go dark for 24 hours, and so will JoeTech.com and we’re certainly not alone. Reddit got the SOPA Strike rolling, and Mozilla has been vocal about this for a while. My dedicated server provider, Codero, voiced their own opinion about SOPA/PIPA, urging customers to get educated.

During that 24 hour period I’ll have a blackout page up, but as of 12:00 AM on January 19th, 2012, JoeTech.com will be back to normal.

How You Can Protest

If you have a web site, go on strike with me.

Even if you don’t have a site, you can make your voice heard. That link will do the work for you to connect you to your senators to voice your opinion about SOPA/PIPA. Politely urge them to consider the freedoms we fight so hard to protect before voting on this horrible legislation.

Share this post on Facebook, Twitter, and Google +. Better yet, share any of the helpful links above.

Stop waiting for bad ideas to become laws.

Update: It looks like our politicians are listening, promising to make changes to the bill to help with our concerns, but we’ll have to wait and see what comes out of it. At this point, the bill may be vastly changed for the better or may just die completely.

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iPhone And iPod Touch IOS 5.0.1 Untethered Jailbreak With Siri

Joe Tech — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 18:30:07 +0000

A while back, I ditched Cydia and my jailbreak on my iPhone 4 (Verizon) for the bells and whistles promised by IOS 5. At the time, I thought about all the advantages of my jailbroken IOS and decided that the new features of IOS 5 outweighed the features I was actively using from being jailbroken. Then came Siri and this month, I learned that Siri was soon to be ported to jailbroken iPhones running IOS 5.0.1 and couldn’t wait to jailbreak again. This morning, the untethered IOS 5.0.1 jailbreak AND the Siri port (named Spire) are both available.

How To Jailbreak IOS 5.0.1 Untethered

First, make sure you have one of these supported devices:
- iPhone 4 (GSM – CDMA)
- iPhone 3GS
- iPod touch 4G
- iPod touch 3G
- iPad 1

You’ll also need to make sure you’re on IOS 5.0.1 If not, update your device now, because Apple is sure to release a new version soon to close up some open doors.

Got everything you need? Good, you’re ready to begin. Just follow these steps:
1. BACK UP – You don’t know how many times this has saved me. Do It!
2. Download Redsn0w 0.9.10b1 (Windows – Mac OS X).
3. Unzip the Redsn0w archive you downloaded and run Redsn0w 0.9.10.b1.
4. Click the button to Jailbreak and follow the on-screen instructions.

After a couple minutes and a reboot, you should be jailbroken. Props go out to pod2g for making it possible.

How To Install Siri On iPhone 4

Ryan Petrich and chpwn have released a port of Siri, called Spire, to Cydia. This is about 100MB, so you really should install via Wifi. To find it, just search for Spire in the BigBoss repository.

This is the best port of Siri to date, but it still requires authorization from Apple to run. This means that you have to find and use a proxy in order to use Siri (for now). For more information on how to get a proxy, see this post from cydiahelp.com.

Unbrick Your iPhone

Just like anyone, I can make mistakes. Sure enough, while trying to re-jailbreak my iPhone, I wound up turning it into a paper weight when I did something wrong and it wouldn’t boot up. If this happened to you, don’t worry because there’s hope. Sadly, it will take some time to restore and you may lose some settings, though. If your phone is stuck with error messages or won’t boot, you can start by doing a factory restore. This will reset the phone to the stock or latest IOS install. After this, you need to restore from your latest backup. You did make a backup, right? Once the backup is in place, you’re ready to jailbreak again. Good luck!

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I’m Watch : A Smart Phone For Your Wrist

Joe Tech — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 19:45:51 +0000

In the past, I had a chance to play with a pretty cool cell phone watch from China, but today I’m looking to another part of the globe for an even cooler offering.

I’m Watch, from Italy, seems to be turning some heads lately. This watch from a company called Blue Sky disguises all the tech savvy of a full sized Android or IOS smart phone into a beautifully designed watch. Looking more like an iPhone for your wrist, this Android powered smart watch is set to hit CES in January while it simultaneously opens up for U.S. sales.

The watch will boast an app store filled with applications and compatibility with IOS, Android, Symbian, Bada, RIM, and Windows 7. The I’m Watch also features “the first ever capacitive touch display on curved surface”. This all fits in a device a little bulkier than a normal watch and at a price not too far off from an iPhone. I’m waiting for the availability of review units in January, but until then, the video below offers a pretty good preview of how I’m Watch works.

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Like Codero, Win Cool Stuff

Joe Tech — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:22:41 +0000

By now, my regular readers know all about my love for my dedicated server host, Codero. I really never have any problems at all and my uptime is always 99.99%+ This month, they’ve given me more reason to love them. From November 1st through the end of 2011, Codero is giving away a lot of cool prizes and all you have to do to be entered to win is Like Codero on Facebook. I’m entered and I’m hoping to take home the iPad 2. Below is a list of all the prizes:

Win These Prizes

11.04.2011 Wii Video Game Console (sorry… Jan Warner already won this)
11.11.2011 Amazon $200 Gift Card
11.18.2011 PlayStation PS3
11.25.2011 Amazon $100 Gift Card
12.02.2011 Xbox with Kinect
12.09.2011 iTunes $100 Gift Card
12.16.2011 GameStop $100 Gift Card
12.23.2011 iPad2 (32GB)

That’s a lot of cool stuff. If you want more info about the contest and the rules, head to http://www.codero.com/specials/#win-prizes

What do you hope to win?

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Enter To Win Vuzix Wrap 310XL Eyewear

Joe Tech — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 14:36:42 +0000

It’s not Christmas yet, but it is time for giving. For the next week, you can enter in a few different ways to win the awesome Vuzix Wrap 310XL eyewear shown below.

Vuzix Wrap 310XL Features

The Wrap 310XL widescreen video eyewear offers styling, performance, versatility and compatibility found in no other wearable display.

- Supports 4:3 and 16:9 display formats
- Adjustable brightness, contrast and color saturation
- Works with 2D and side-by-side 3D video format
- Supports “Vuzix Auto-3D”, automatic 3D detection technology[1]
- NTSC and PAL compatible
- Connects to all video devices with composite video
- Four hours use from a single AA alkaline battery
- Ten hours use from a single AA lithium battery
- Video zoom mode
- Onscreen display for video display adjustment
- Ultra-thin cabling
- Detachable premium quality noise-isolating earphones
- Includes 3 sizes of noise isolation inserts
- Wearable over most prescription eyeglasses
- Independent left and right eye focal adjustment
- Nine foot visual focus – reading glasses not required
- Adjustable, hypoallergenic nosepiece
- Changeable Fashion Shade covers (lens)

[1] Detects Vuzix Auto-3D Watermark enhanced video. When detected, Wrap eyewear automatically adjusts to the correct 3D video format configuration.

How To Win

In the past, I’ve managed my contests manually, but today, I’m trying a new contest management tool. Below, you’ll see several ways to enter. Entering is as simple as clicking the “Do it” link, following any instructions, and then clicking the “I did this” button. If you’re already subscribed to JoeTech.com via email or you already follow me or Vuzix on Twitter, you can skip right to the “I did this” button for those entries. Good luck!

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Geezer Tech Support – Or – NOT How To Remove A Computer Virus

Joe Tech — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 03:55:30 +0000

Although the following is a sponsored review, as always I strive to provide an honest opinion of the product reviewed.

A short while ago, I wrote about an edgy parody, Leaked iPhone 4S Commercial from the ADA Sport YouTube Channel. This week, I found out about a new one featuring a couple of old timers experiencing their first computer virus and their tragic lack of computer knowledge. Watch for yourself to see what I mean.

What’s funny about this is the fact that people can do some pretty dumb things with computers when they don’t know what they’re doing and think they’re fixing something. I worked in Internet tech support for years and can tell you horror stories. This animated tale brings some humor out of it all for your entertainment.

As you might have seen from the end of this video, it’s up against their Realistic Captain America parody to see which is best. So far, it looks like people are heavily favoring Captain America, but I like this one just a bit more. Watch them both and tell me which you’d vote for.

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Download And Install IOS 5 Early

Joe Tech — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 04:37:08 +0000

Apple has been teasing us for a long time with IOS5 and they’re just about to release it, but if you’re like me, you want to get your hands on it early. Everyone wants to try the latest and greatest first, but there’s another advantage to diving in early. If you’ve ever tried to update your IOS on the release day, you’ve surely realized the painful wait for the software to download as millions of other people try at the same time. Grabbing this early release should eliminate that problem as well. Warning: Back up before you begin! This kind of update can be riddled with unexpected problems, so be prepared for anything.

Here’s all you have to do to update early:

(edit 1: I added a new first step, to first install iTunes 10.5 Beta 7 or higher)
(edit 2: Plug directly into the computer – don’t use a USB extension cable as this can slow the backup/restore down a LOT)
(edit 3: Want the official release now? Download the latest iPhone ISPW and repeat steps 2 and then 5-7 below – 8 id needed)

1. Install iTunes 10.5 beta 7 or higher (Win 32, Win 64, or MAC OS X)
2. Sync your device and run a backup.
3. Download the file you need from the list below. It’s around 800MB, so it’ll take a while.
iPhone 4 (GSM)
iPhone 4 (CDMA)
iPhone 3GS
iPad 2 (Wi-Fi)
iPad 2 (Wi-Fi + 3G GSM)
iPad 2 (Wi-Fi + 3G CDMA)
iPad 1 (All)
iPod touch (3G)
iPod touch (4G)

4. Extract the file you downloaded. I suggest using 7Zip if you’re on a PC. Find it at Download.com
5. Hold down SHIFT (or “Option” on a MAC) and click “Restore” in iTunes
6. A file selection box should open up. Choose the ISPW file that you extracted from the DMG file you downloaded.
7. iTunes will wipe your device and install IOS5. That’s OK.
8. After the install, it should ask if you want to restore from a backup. Say YES and choose your backup from Step 1.

Thanks to this guide for the tips.

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Get A Sneak Peak At Your New Facebook Timeline Profile And Get Yours Early

Joe Tech — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 03:05:39 +0000

Nothing creates progress like competition. Of course, when we’re talking about all the changes Facebook continues to roll out, many just grumble and shake an angry fist. Sometimes I agree, but today I was actually impressed with a rather large update Facebook is about to roll out to your profile page.

(click to see it full size)

This new Timeline view has things rearranged to display all your posts in a timeline. The cool part about this is that you can jump to any spot on the timeline with the timeline navigation bar on the right of the profile. When in your own profile you can more easily hide content that you don’t want to show up and feature an item by making it span the full width of the timeline.

Another obvious change is the personalization updates, starting with the large header picture at the top. For my profile, I chose a picture I took of Phoenix at night but you can use any image from your uploaded photos or upload a new one.

Additional customization includes the ability to pick and choose what applications, etc to display. Although I need more quality time with this update, I like what I see so far. I don’t spend a lot of time looking at my own profile but I see some usefulness to this layout when viewing other profiles.

Get your new profile early

Want your update early? If you do, there’s a back door in to start playing with it before Facebook rolls it out to everybody next week. One of my favorite YouTubers, Household Hacker made this how-to video.

If you update your profile, be sure to comment below with your Facebook link.

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Netflix Apologizes, Renames DVD Service To Qwikster, Draws More Fire

Joe Tech — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 21:13:54 +0000

A couple months ago, the household name, Netflix, brought household outrage by eliminating their popular DVD/Streaming package and replacing it with the option to purchase two separate packages at a large price hike. Today, it seems that the wisdom “better late than never” might not apply to the apology email that Netflix sent out to its subscribers and posted on its blog. If the comments on the blog post are any indication, Netflix is in for another round of abuse.

The Apology that was sent out on behalf of CEO Reed Hastings started out feeling very heart-felt, opening with “I messed up. I owe you an explanation.” Hastings follows this with his sincere apology for the way Netflix rolled out the price/package changes:

It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology. Let me explain what we are doing.

After the brief apology, the email goes on to point out that the pricing and package change was part of a much bigger move to turn the DVD side of Netflix into a completely separate company, complete with separate charges on your card if you have both services. The new company, Qwikster, will handle all the physical discs with Netflix freed up to focus on streaming. This leaves me with an obvious question…

What Are You Doing, Netflix?

As a subscriber only to the streaming service, neither the previous nor the current changes leave me with the feelings of betrayal others seem to have experienced, but as a business owner, I’m scratching my head. Netflix built a wonderful monopoly on the DVD-by-mail business and even began a decent transition into streaming. Despite kiosk offerings from RedBox and Blockbuster, Netflix still had the largest selection with a solid customer base. The pricing and package changes damaged customer loyalty, but this feels like Netflix is positioning themselves to move out of the DVD-by-mail arena completely.

At Least There’s Games By Mail Now

One thing I felt positive about in this announcement is that ~~Netflix~~ Qwikster will be offering games by mail as well. Though I’ve honestly never gotten serious enough about the idea of games by mail to sign up for a competitor like Game Fly, I love the idea. Sadly, the thought that I can’t do it through Netflix leaves me in the “maybe some day” area. Frankly, I’ve always had small nervous breakdowns when a disc from Netflix or RedBox looks like someone tried to watch it by scratching it up with a set of keys, so maybe this saves me from a mid-game mental meltdown anyway. You disc-scratchers know who you are.

The Streaming-Only Upside

Because I only subscribe to the streaming service at home, this change may actually present a large benefit to me. I often wonder when Netflix will bring the streaming library up to speed. They have millions of discs for mailing out, but far too often do I find myself searching for something only to find it unavailable for instant watching. I’m crossing my fingers that we’re headed for a larger Instant Watch selection, but I’m not holding my breath.

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