wan.to.blog

iPhone OS 4 on 3GS

2010-04-09T11:04:00.000+02:00

I could ramble on about this topic for a while, however I wont repeat too much

download it here

Read all about it here

I know steve jobs said there was no task manager, but there is? whats up with that?

And the task manager has a potential to ruin the user experience

New Nandos advert

2010-03-23T13:01:00.001+02:00

no fingers pointed at anyone we know right?

(via wesley blackmore)

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MERWEVILLE Road

2010-03-18T09:27:00.001+02:00

Whats is that ahead??

Maybe I should slow down !

Eish !!

To Late !!

How do we get out of this one? ?

Warning when driving to Cape Town!!

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Avatar II ...or ...wait ..wtf? who? no ....

2010-03-17T12:23:00.001+02:00

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chat roulette classic

2010-03-17T10:29:00.001+02:00

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The geek test! are you one? (not for wussies)

2010-03-15T22:29:00.001+02:00

http://www.innergeek.us/geek-test.html

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Not what you expected?

2010-03-10T14:26:00.001+02:00

http://www.dealextreme.com/feedbacks/browseVideos.dx/sku.29431~id.5794

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What happens when you fly in a $28m Jet.

2010-03-08T21:31:00.001+02:00

Take a ride on the wild side. Did you see the reporter pass out for a couple seconds. In air shows the pilots can pull about 5-8G's w/o wearing a pressure suite because there used to it. A normal person isn't. If there going supersonic 8-14gs they wear the suits.

http://alt.coxnewsweb.com/ajc/swf/blueangels/blueangels.swf

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How social facebook games are changing the playing field.

2010-03-05T09:35:00.001+02:00

Xbox 360 Games - E3 2010 - Guitar Hero 5

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Headlines!

2010-03-04T19:40:00.001+02:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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The world explained by graphs

2010-03-04T13:25:00.001+02:00

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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What an AWESOME video!

2010-03-04T09:44:00.001+02:00

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New Yacht

2010-03-04T07:42:00.001+02:00

Some people just have way too much money.....

A famous French shipbuilder ship company and one of Monaco joined hands together to build this yacht with enormous dimensions for their friend, Jo Ann. the WHY 58x38. (58meter long and 38 meter wide) After the first pictures of this project.

The yacht, an area of 3400 m2 with seating for 12 passengers and 20 crew.

This is a "green" yacht.

Wally et Hermčs use green energy to 20 to 30% fuel savings and 40 to 50% electricity consumption on board. Therefore there are 900 m2 equipped with solar panels, producing a daily output of 500 kW.

equipment:

Three decks, a 25 meter pool, a spa helicopterpad a 100m2 with hammam, sauna, gym and massage room, a promenade of 130 meter, a music room, a dining room, a cinema, sun decks, suites, terraces, a lounge, a bibi . The luxury is at the rendez-vous.

The decks are connected by stairs but there is also an elevator.

The suite of the owner (ie ikke !!!!!): Who needs a motorhome?????

With an area of 200m2 and completely covers the third deck. (This is the bedroom) The sea view is great and there is a private terrace of 25 meter long.

A sea of light.

The yacht has the shape of a horseshoe and has a roof so everything is bathed in a sea of light.

The spacious lounge.

On the lower deck are the common premises, such as lounge, piano bar and dining area .....

Dining Room

The dining room opens onto the sea view.

Suites for the guests

For the guests, 5 suites with sea views (on the middendek). There is also a reading room equipped.

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Carrier Landing

2010-03-03T12:00:00.001+02:00

Download now or watch on posterous

CarrierLanding_homevideo1.wmv (2545 KB)

LOOK CLOSE AND YOU CAN SEE THE GREEN LIGHTS OF THE BALL WHEN ABOUT TO LAND

Putting you in the co-pilot's seat up close and personal!

Here's some video footage of an A-6 approaching an aircraft carrier and landing. It was taken from the cockpit by the co-pilot. The conditions are ideal..... Calm sea, daylight and a stable aircraft. This is for all of us who have not had the privilege -- With the volume up, you can even hear the power changes necessary to maintain precision glide slope and prepare for bolter (a.k.a.. Abort the landing) in the event the arrest wire is missed. Feels like you are in the aircraft. Imagine what this would be like at night in IMC (instrument meteorological conditions - a..k.a. Pea soup)!

This is a very neat video. If you look very carefully, shortly before the plane touches down, you can see the 'meatball' to the left; the orange light between the row of green lights that tells the pilot he's on heading and on glide slope.

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Map of the human body

2010-03-03T10:48:00.001+02:00

Sam Lomen's Underskin charts a transit map to the human body. And no matter what the locals tell you, don't take the pink line to the yellow line. That's nowhere you want to go.

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formspring.me

2010-02-20T10:31:00.001+02:00

Ask me anything http://formspring.me/brennanbabb

Nexus one and mobile TV

2010-01-15T15:07:00.000+02:00

Google had a press conference a few weeks ago to introduce the "not so secret" nexus one to the world. They kindly gave all Google employees one of these phones for christmas and asked them to keep quiet about it until the announcement.

All the specs and press questions were asked and sort of answered live and streamed on ustream (very smoothly) with 15000 concurrent viewers. I must say I was very impressed by the stream and less restrictive access to the stream compared to Apple.

So let me get to the nitty gritty. The Qualcom chip inside the Nexus one is the following

Qualcomm QSD 8250 1 GHz

And on the Qualcom site this chip has the following specifications:

http://www.qctconnect.com/products/snapdragon.html

Technical Features for QSD8x50 chipsets

The QSD8x50 platform consists of the QSD8250™ which supports GSM, GPRS, EDGE, HSPA networks while the QSD8650™ supports CDMA2000 1X, 1xEV-DO Rel 0/A/B, GSM, GPRS, EDGE and HSPA networks. Both chipsets include:

1 GHz CPU
600MHz DSP
Integrated 3G mobile broadband
Support for Wi-Fi® and Bluetooth® connectivity
Built-in seventh-generation gpsOne® engine with Standalone-GPS and Assisted-GPS modes
High-definition (720p) video decode, and multiple video codec support
High-performance 3D graphics – up to 22M triangles/sec and 133M 3D pixels/sec
High-resolution up to WXGA (1280x720) display support
12-megapixel camera support
Multiple audio codecs: (AAC+, eAAC+, AMR, FR, EFR, HR, WB-AMR, G.729a, G.711, AAC stereo encode)
Support for mobile broadcast TV (MediaFLO™, DVB-H and ISDB-T)
Support for Windows Mobile®, Android, and a number of Linux®-based operating systems
Qualcomm’s hybrid mode alternative solution

So highlighted above is a great feature of the chip. The big question remains has HTC/Google attached an antenna to the TV portion of this chip or have they just decided to neglect it?

Who can tell me this? I want to say after reviewing the dissection of the device how an uncanny antenna circles the chips. Could it be the antenna for all the radios?

http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nexus-One/1654/2

This shows the teardown of the N1 lets hope some clever techie can give us this answer!

If it will happen the next questions is software and API middleware within android to access this chips feature set.

Is anyone working on this middleware? is there a team of go(o)ggles working making the software layer? anyone? anyone?

On lighter news, as of today I have witnessed DVB-H in south africa on an iPhone working!

Who is with me on this one? Rah! Rah!

How you say? um sorry cannot tell you just yet!

I just need to bask in the glory of the above discovery.

Mona Lisa!

2009-12-01T08:34:00.000+02:00

Three thousand Six hundred and four cups of coffee

jailbreak security

2009-11-23T13:55:00.000+02:00

In the past few weeks 2 instances of worms have been discovered for iPhones that have been jailbroken.
Namely here : rickroll

and here: worm report

One thing that jailbreak instigators did not take into account is the common password to access the secure shell connection to the iPhone, which is login: "root", password "alpine"

Being in south africa and the high use of Data Cards Vodacom and MTN are issuing prublicly viewable IP addresses to its iphone or data card users.

What this potentially does, is expose your iPhone to the internet. In doing this it exposes the SSH port which is open on the jailbroken iphones.

With this in mind we need to secure our iPhones from hackers.

To do this it is relatively simple if you have rudimentary computer skills by following these steps:

1: Connect your iPhone and Laptop to the same WiFi Network.

2a: (windows) In Google type "putty", dont hit search, hit "I am feeling lucky"

The top download link is "putty.exe" download this file.

The above 2 lines can be replaced if you have a better way to get an SSH client onto windows.

When downloaded run putty.exe

2b:(mac) Top right click magnifying glass, type terminal into the text box and click on the terminal .app file.

3:On your iPhone, goto Settings, click Wi-Fi, click on your active Wifi access point(same as laptop/PC network)

4:Click on the active Wifi network ">" icon

5:under the DHCP tab there should be an assigned IP which normally starts with "192.168.#.#"

6a:Take that number and connect to that IP address using Putty in SSH mode with username "root"

6b:In the terminal window type "ssh root@192.168.#.#" ( where the 192.168.#.# should be replaced with the IP address on your iPhone and press enter

7:The text box will ask you to accept the key, Click yes as below:

"The authenticity of host '192.168.239.124 (192.168.239.124)' can't be established.

RSA key fingerprint is 8e:a9:e1:ef:f2:20:d0:db:90:aa:ec:43:c9:dd:0b:b4.

Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?"

8: You will then be prompted to enter a password in the following format:

"root@192.168.239.124's password:"

9: Enter the password "alpine"

10: Brennan-Babbs-iPhone:~ root# should be displayed, replace my name with the name of your iphone you named in itunes.

11: At this point we are ready to change root password to one of your own passwords type the following "passwd root" <>

"Changing password for root.

New password:"

12: Enter a new password that you will remember that is not "password", "god" "sex" or anything obvious. Choose a password that looks tricky to remember for anyone else but you.

13: You will be asked to repeat it.

Congratulations you have just protected your Jailbroken iPhone from malicious hackers.

Give yourself a big noddy badge, a pat on the back and smile at yourself in the mirror for an uneasy amount of time.

You are now on your way to becoming an iPhone security expert and can teach others how to do this.

Do you feel good? I would, you deserve it! Now go get a coffee and boast about it to your peers phones who are still behind the Apple iron curtain of dictatorship.

-Brennan

iPhone tethering and thoughts on MMS

2009-06-18T17:19:00.000+02:00

ok here is my 2 c worth.
I have created a tethering link for vodacom and MTN here
I have tested vodacom tethering on iphone.vodacom.za and internet APN's
and they both work for vodacom, and the internet APN works fine for MTN.

From your iphone use the below link.
wan.to/iphone

One thing that this script does do is it replaces the Defaul APN settings for your phone in the MMS settings, which is an issue, but can be manually updated.

apple just released a firmware upgrade to the macbook/macbookpro/imac/macpro line for the bluetooth hardware in order to make bluetooth tethering work easier.

The USB tethering picks up the iphone as an additional Ethernet port and connects seamlessly on both mac and windows. Absolutely genius.

With regards MMS I am experiencing intermittent success and I can only assume the vodacom guys are working on the solution.
My guess is they will allow mms traffic for iphone over the iphone.vodacom.za APN allowing all iphone traffic to travel down a specific route.

Marc Forest has added a few tips on MMS and tethering over here:
http://www.marcforrest.com

Anyway
-eel

Samsung projector phone SPH-W7900

2009-04-28T00:32:00.004+02:00

Samsung projector phone

The boss came back from korea with this little puppy.
Extremely cool, locked , no wifi, but otherwise fully functional? :>
Thoughts?

Big Brother Live streaming

2009-03-16T23:49:00.009+02:00

Hello! yes I am saying hello to you.
I thought I would do a recap of the events, around the Big Brother Africa 3 live streaming oh and some techie stuff too!
[idiot] what the hell do you know about it?
[me] well I architected and planned it!
[idiot] who cares!
[me] me, it was fun okay so leave me alone!

So in the initial spec for BBA3 was "No live streaming" however being the ever optimist we decided to put the infrastructure in place in the event the powers that be changed there minds (which inevitably always happens).

20 odd days into the production there was a need to stream live footage online.
but but but ... Wouldn't that cannibalize the the paying subscribers on DSTV? Sure! :)

The plan was to create a "CROTCH CAM" ... I hear you say " a what?" yes I am not going to re-type it!

Yes a crotch cam online.
Seeing that Nigeria's legal system prevented M-Net from doing a decent shower hour show with copious amounts of Nudity! Nigeria Vetoed it! Was it because of the nudity?
yes , it's really just Nigeria's communist zipper that is hanging down, and we just happened to notice it!

a very regulated country!? Nigeria? never!

That is a bit of an obscure analogy *glances around nervously* anyhow.
But think of it this way, DSTV has loads of nudity on many many other channels but when its "Real People" and loads of publicity and *gasp* a Real naked Nigerian, then the authorities pull in and start laying down the riot act.

So the plan was to have a cam at crotch level, in the shower, filming the participant's crotches, streaming it on an online, 24/7 and try monetize it.
Well the idea was great, but to my knowledge(I stand corrected) _Koos_ (if you don't know who this is, try google his name and the holding company) said something to the effect of 'we cannot charge africans for video content', so it had to be free.
Woah we cannot give away free porn, that would be just like ..um ... (insert free voyeur porn site name here)

So the sex sells idea got toasted!

What about a garden camera! Whoopdeedoo how exciting... and lets make it free!
boom! smallsignofexcitement GONE!

The lets-rather-ask-for-forgiveness-than-permission motto was toasted!

So the tedious task of streaming a wide angle camera of a garden to the world for free.
How do we do it? pleasenotethesubtelboringundertone!

My initial instinct was to stream it using Flash (this was a relatively new concept) Flash is a great tool, We all now that site with all the video which I will not mention its name here at the risk of lifting its SEO rating on .... oh who am I kidding?
They do oodles of streaming video, but they do it on-dee-mah-nd, not live, which is what I am trying to do here!

So Adobe has this great server called "flash media server" which can cater for just that.
New media being the ever envelope pusher bought this product a generation too early when it had a limit to the number concurrent connected users to 100! yes, this model did not succeed. Any guesses why? *snigger*

So with an ever looming live deadline time frame *TVWAITSFORNOONE* and many emails back and forth to adobe to try sweet talk them into giving us a free upgrade to the unlimited (read: more than 100 simultaneous connected streams) version of flash media server.
What? adobe ? you don't want to get some free promotion on a Tv phenomenon? No worries, Windows Media is Free. :)

I must admit though that Adobe _DID_ come to the party, but alas after my deadline on the decision.
So easy decision lets download this free tool, to push our video feed to millions! *insert Dr Evil Laugh here* that will be branded with this funny waving flag that has 4 smaller disconnected coloured flags in primary colours.

So here is how it worked in a nutshell!
- {video feed from garden camera}
- {Osprey video capture card}
- {wintendo media encoder}
- {dual redundant internet connections}[neotell 2 meg][telkom leased 2 meg]
- {terminates at mweb}
- {windows media server}
- {frikinexpensivededicatedinternationalbandwidth.for.now}
- {akamai}
- {Akamai'sContentDistributionNetwork}
- {world distribution} now please replace the word distribution with domination!

So thats the nutshell for live streaming.
Ill save the on demand nut for another blog post when I get time.

On the stats side of things... lets just say that We would have had to have had one heck of of a lot of old Flash media licenses to cope with the onslaught of the connected norway hitting that live feed.

Norway brought the web servers to a grinding halt, which gives me some indication that the web developers need to be a lot smarter when building websites for next years world cup!

If you want to know why Norway brought our webserver to a grinding halt!? Our wonderful BBA producers decided to pull a Big Bro participant out of our house and swap him with a Big Bro participant in a Similar Norway production! Gripping stuff! well apparently it was for Norway!

I could make the next blog more technical and less satirically witty. Any takers?

MediaZone Rugby widget

2008-09-26T14:02:00.001+02:00

Nice little rugby app

Phone battery flat?

2008-09-14T10:32:00.001+02:00

Very cool little device that allows you to charge your phone, ipod, or pretty much any portable device and while you leave it there , there is a sterilization uv light which kills germs

Not sure if this would work in south Africa as there is no security for your phone, however great idea.

What your seat can do?

2008-09-11T12:23:00.001+02:00

So I have a small gripe about the klm biz class seats, but I will get to it after I list what it does
- three preset settings, namely seated , half leaning back and bed mode
- the "M" does a great back massage
- they are perpetualy heated
- then all the arrows move things around to your liking
- there is even a canopy that scoots over your head

However I could not frikken get comfortable as the bed mode does just not go flat and you keep slipping down, which is infuriating

I should have taken the sleeping tablet my wife gave me
Crap!!!