The first book I bought to try to get new ideas on how I could better leverage my iPhone as a multimedia Swiss Army Knife was iPhone Fully Loaded by Andy Ihnatko. I have been really impressed by this book because it has some really excellent tips and techniques that go beyond many of the ideas I've seen discussed on iPhone-related blogs and websites.

Andy Ihnatko is a freelance journalist who writes a technology column in The Chicago Sun Times and appears regularly on The Early Show on CBS. He hit my radar screen through his regular gigs on The Apple Phone Show and MacBreak Weekly podcasts. Some of the concepts he discussed on those programs, such as using Smart Playlists to fill your iPhone with a constant amount of music that you like but haven't listened to recently (mentioned previously on Operation Gadget), and using Handbrake to convert chapters of DVDs that you own to clips that are playable on your iPhone, are prominently featured in this book. However, there are a lot more ideas that go far deeper into Mac and PC technology to pull together content that you have access to, package it in a form that's storable on your iPhone or iPod touch, and get it transferred on to your device.

There are also ideas that didn't appeal to me personally, but were interesting to read about from a general knowledge perspective. Andy is a big fan of comic books, so he includes an entire chapter on finding comics on the Internet and transmogrifying for your iPhone. He also talks about extensively about electronics and software that can be used to record radio programs for later playback on your iPhone. I used to listen to a great deal of radio myself, so this is interesting to me, but podcasts have largely replaced my radio listening habit since I got my iPhone, and I can barely keep up with the podcasts that I'm subscribed to now.

There are a number of other good iPhone-related books, such as The iPhone Pocket Guide by Chris Breen of MacWorld Magazine, but few are as jam-packed with ideas for filling your iPhone with content as iPhone Fully Loaded. This book always seems to be sitting near my MacBook Pro, and I think it will stay there for some time.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 5:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

• Top 7 Web Applications for Sending Large Files on Geekpreneur: "If you’ve ever had to send a large file to someone, you know the hardships that arise. Email services keep strict limits on attachment sizes. What’s more is that it’s often hard to send more than one attachment at a time. This kind of disservice has made email quite unpopular for sharing files- and thus, we have entered the age of hybrid email. The premise is simple: cut out the bulk, and just give us an easy way to send files over the internet!"

• Torvalds: Leopard file system "utter crap" on MacNN: "Linux creator Linus Torvalds recently blasted Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard for having a file system that is 'complete and utter crap' at a Linux conference in Melbourne."

  The Leopard file system, technically known as HFS+, has been around in some form since the last time I was a Mac developer-- 1992. Of course Apple would like to move to something more robust. They've been building up to switch to ZFS, or some other sophisticated file system, for some time now.



• Turn Your Nokia Phone into a Wi-Fi Hotspot with JoikuSpot on Lifehacker: Who needs tethering when you can make your Series 60 phone into an ad hoc WiFi base station for your laptop? Wow.


• How to record a kickass podcast between two macs — and cheap! on A Whole Lotta Nothing: "A lot of people ask me how I do the MetaFilter Podcast.... I know they ... mean... 'what software and hardware does it take to make a decent sounding podcast?' After almost a year of regular podcasts and trying out different software and equipment, I’ve gotten the workflow down cold and I wanted to share the my way of making a good sounding podcast on the cheap. This works perfectly well for me being in Oregon and talking to my friend Jessamyn in Vermont over Skype, recording at both ends, then tossing it all into Garageband to complete the podcast." [ via 43Folders ]


• Nike SPARQ Parachute Makes You Run Faster, Eventually on Gizmodo: "The Nike SPARQ Parachute is designed to create drag 'to force athletes to push themselves harder to achieve speed' and look like a moron in Central Park." Can I use this thing on the ice sometime?

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am a big fan of This Week in Tech, MacBreak Weekly, and The Apple Phone Show. They are all excellent podcasts that are have very high production standards.

What I'm most impressed with is the sound quality of each of these shows. I think that Leo Laporte, the host of TWiT and MacBreak, and Scott Bourne, the host of The Apple Phone Show, each have tremendous backgrounds in radio and TV program production, so they've had time to figure out what equipment and services work best.

I decided to do some research and see if they had ever published any how to articles on the craft of podcasting. Here's what I found:

• PodcastGearGuy.com: Scott Bourne has a blog on the subject of podcasting equipment and software called PodcastGearGuy. This blog hasn't seen a lot of entries since he started hosting The Apple Phone Show, but it makes good recommendations about semi-portable sound isolation booths to help you get clean audio, and digital recorders which podcasters use as backup devices when they are doing a multi-person podcast recording using Skype.
• TWiT's "Podcasting Equipment" Article: Leo Laporte does a good summary of the technology and services he was using during the mid-Summer 2006. I hope he updates this article if he changes his setup. From occasional mentions of different gear in his podcasts that I've listened to during the past few months, it seems like the setup he describes is pretty up-to-date.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'll probably end up doing some running around Newtown in the next few weeks.

Although I've had quite a few college varsity and club-level games on my officiating schedule so far this year, my schedule from December 7 to January 2 is totally empty. Part of this is the nature of college hockey scheduling: there aren't too many games between Thanksgiving and Christmas due to the holidays and exams at many schools.

This may give me the opportunity to actually begin a project I had thought about over the summer: trying to build "ultimate" playlists for a couple of different exercise activities. Over the summer I started thinking about what the ultimate cycling playlist might include-- probably lots of Kraftwerk stuff that got played on Versus during The Tour de France a couple of years ago.

My mind wandered to a similar but more intriguing project. I thought I might try to put together an ultimate hockey warmup playlist. This would include the best songs that get played during college and pro hockey warmup periods, and I would ask fellow officials as well as players for ideas. I could run to tunes like these. I haven't done anything on this project yet.

One guy who has done some work on a project like this is Jeff Perlman from ESPN. He just wrote an article called Run wild with the ultimate playlist which is his attempt to build the ultimate running playlist.

I think Perlman's list is a too rap heavy, but I enjoyed previewing the songs he chose on my iPhone using The iTunes WiFi Music Store. I think a couple of his ideas may make it on to my next running playlist, and I agree with him that nothing by Survivor is going to be part of my running soundtrack anytime soon.

If you have some ideas for songs for a hockey warmup playlist or a running playlist, feel free to comment here or just send me an email.

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I'm spending more time at work during the 2007 Tour de France than I am watching the coverage on Versus. For this reason, I have become a voracious consumer of non-TV information about the Tour. One of the things I've been doing is grabbing Tour de France-specific podcasts from iTunes and listening to them on the commute to work. This way I get 45 to 60 minutes of total immersion into yesterday's Tour news, so it's a good substitute for the Tour Pre-Race Show.

Here are the podcasts I'm listening to at the moment and why:

1. ITV Tour de France Podcast: Approximately 15 minutes of stage highlights and analysis from Matt Rendell and Chris Boardman. The advantage of listening to ITV's podcast is that they are a Tour rights holder, so they can grab excerpts of race action and rider interviews that the other podcasts really can't. Also Boardman is a very good color man.
2. Velonews TDF Podcast: 10 to 20 minutes of analysis with Joe Silva and Thomas Prehn. Prehn is the author of Racing Tactics for Cyclists. You can imagine that this podcast focuses on race tactics. It's probably the most analytical podcast I've heard so far.
3. The Daily Tour Podcast from The FredCast: 20 minutes of stage summary and analysis by David Bernstein. This podcast includes some useful information about Tour information resources and a section on basic information on the Tour for beginners. (The FredCast is a year-round weekly podcast for cyclists, so you may be interested in that podcast in addition to or instead of The Daily Tour).

This is the order in which I listen to the podcasts, which is probably proportional to the value of the information that I get out of each one. Your mileage may vary, depending on the amount of TV time you have, the experience you have in cycling, and the experience you have as a pro cycling spectator.

There are several other Tour-related podcasts that I haven't had the chance to listen to, and I'm not sure when or if I will be able to do so. If you have information about some of the other podcasts, feel free to post it in the comments to this article.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It was possible to buy either iPhone model last night in Central New Jersey.

My iPhone moments after I purchased it at the
Freehold, NJ Apple Store on June 29. See more
photos of my iPhone in my Flickr photostream.

I bought mine at the Apple Store at the Freehold Raceway Mall in Freehold, NJ about 7:45pm. The Apple Store appeared to have plenty of stock at that time. That didn't surprise me because I had read that the 140+ Apple Stores around the country would be staying open until midnight. Why would Apple bother doing that if they thought that they would sell out at most of their locations?

First Stop: A Sold Out AT&T Store

Before I went to the Apple in Freehold, I drove to the AT&T Store in West Windsor, NJ. This is a small store that I thought might not attract a huge line. I have no idea how many people were in line before 6:00pm, but when I arrived there at approximately 6:25, the store was already sold out.

What blew my mind was the number of people who stayed in line after the store manager announced that they were sold out. (I had just arrived when he made this announcement.) He told the people in line that they were welcome to stay and his staff would take orders from them. Many of the people were staying in their place in the line when I hit the road for Freehold.

Continue reading "I Got My iPhone Yesterday, Maybe It Will Work Today" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

I've seen a couple of really good tutorials on the proper use of UNIX power tools recently that I wanted to bring to the attention of Operation Gadget readers:

• Mastering Wget from Lifehacker.com: "... A versatile, old school Unix program called Wget is a highly hackable, handy little tool that can take care of all your downloading needs. Whether you want to mirror an entire web site, automatically download music or movies from a set of favorite weblogs, or transfer huge files painlessly on a slow or intermittent network connection, Wget’s for you...."
• How-To: SSH tunnels for secure network access from Engagdet: "Have you ever avoided checking your email over that free wireless access point for fear of someone snarfing your password? Secure, trusted networks aren't always available, so today we'll show you how to use SSH to keep those unencrypted POP3 or IMAP passwords and data safe."

SSH is installed and ready-to-run on every Apple Macintosh that runs Mac OS X. The article on SSH even shows you use a third-party utility called SSH Tunnel Manager as a front end. I thought Wget was part of MacOS X, but, it appears that Wget is a third party utility and is available for Mac OS X here.

Windows PC users have slightly different options. They can either download PuTTY and use it to create a tunnel, or you can download Cygwin which contains both Wget and OpenSSH.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Last Saturday, Scott Shalom, Bill Maurer, and I officiated a men's college ice hockey game between Drexel University and Villanova University in Philadelphia. I thought it would be interesting to see how Nokia N90 video clips of a hockey game would turn out, so I lent the camera phone to my friend Shane Hanlon who was at the game to evaluate our on-ice performance.

Before the game began, I gave Shane a 90-second explanation of how to shoot video with the N90. I showed him how to open the camera so it went into video camera mode, how to start and stop recording, and how to zoom in and out using the Carl Zeiss Optics Tessar 2.95/5.5 lens. Shane gave the N90 back to me with three video clips of the game on it. I decided to publish two of them as-is. I'm not publishing the third clip because it's very short and doesn't really show anything. It's pretty clear that Shane was just getting used to the camera at that point.

When you look at these two video clips, you'll probably ask, "Why is the camera focusing on the officials and not the play?" It's because Shane is there to watch the officials. He spent a lot more of his time taking notes than playing with the N90.

Drexel vs Villanova, December 10, 2005, 1 minute 09 seconds.

The point I'm trying to make by publishing these clips, however, is that the Nokia N90 is very easy to use and does a surprisingly good job of capturing the action in one of the fastest sports commonly played in the Northern Hemisphere. The lighting conditions inside the Class of '23 Ice Arena at The University of Pennsylvania in Philadephia are not very good, yet you can easily see the action and identify individual players and officials on the ice.

Drexel vs Villanova, December 10, 2005, 3 minutes 24 seconds.

Remember, these videos were shot with a palm-sized Nokia N90 mobile phone, not some dedicated video camera. These video clips are displayed at 246 x 210 pixel resolution here on Operation Gadget, but they are recorded at 352 x 288, so the image you see when playing the video directly off your PC with a media player is approximately twice this size.

Technorati Tags: Nokia N90, N-Series, Nokia, N90, hockey

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Associated Press reports that Howard Stern bid his terrestrial audience fairwell today and encouraged them to tune in to him on Sirius Satellite Radio on January 9, 2006. According to the article, Stern began his show by saying, "Good morning, and welcome to the last show on terrestrial radio," while the sound of "Taps" played in the background. HowardStern.com has a countdown to the day when there is "no more FCC, no more boss, no more interference...."

Whether you like The Howard Stern Show or not, you have to have a certain admiration for Stern's willingness to walk away from one of the most popular syndicated radio programs in the United States. He will attempt to recreate it in the context of a subscription service.

I'm wondering if lifting the speech and content restrictions that have been the bane of Howard Stern's existence since at least 1995 will be entirely positive for the show and its audience. There will have to be limits, but what will they be? I guess you'll have to tune in on January 9 to find out.

But, before you do, you'll need a Sirius-compatible radio. So check out a few options:

• SIRIUS Sportster Replay Plug-and-Play Satellite Radio, 6-line LCD display, 44-minute memory buffer
• JVC KT-SR2000 Plug 'n' Play Sirius Satellite Radio Receiver, smaller and less expensive than the Sportster
• Sirius S50 Satellite Radio Receiver System Pack, 50-hour recording capability, MP3 capability, built-in FM transmitter

Technorati Tags: Howard Stern, Sirius, Sirius Sportster, JVC KT-SR2000, Sirius S50, Hanukkah gifts, Christmas gifts

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My father-in-law has gotten back into LPs lately after the family got him a stereo with an integrated turntable. When he got it, the thought crossed my mind that someone who has a big vinyl collection and liked the sound would have all kinds of trouble ripping those tracks to their iPod. Ubergizmo reported yesterday on what sounds like a good solution. The Ion iTTUSB Turntable with USB Record works with USB-enabled PCs running Windows 98, 2000, or XP or Apple Macintosh computers running MacOS 9 or greater. No special USB drivers are required.

The iTTUSB Turntable works with 33 1/3 and 45 RPM records. It has adjustable anti-skating controls, line level RCA outputs, and pitch control for up to 8 percent.

The turntable comes with Audacity, a free, cross-platform sound editor that is often used by podcasters, as well as a trial copy of BIAS SoundSoap 2 which is a similar commercial product.

Update: On December 13, 2006, I decided to recommend the TEAC LP-to-CD Recorder Stereo System (also known as the TEAC GF-350 Turntable / CD-Recorder) instead of the iTTUSB Turntable. The reason is that the Audacity software that ships with the iTTUSB at this time is too complex for many PC users tastes. People who are not expert-level software users should consider the LP-to-CD Recorder Stereo System instead. Read the full article for a more detailed explanation.

Technorati Tags: Ion iTTUSB Turntable, iPod, Audacity, BIAS SoundSoap, LPs, 45s, USB peripherals

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Marketwatch.com reports that NBC Universal will make 300 episodes of 16 TV programs available via iTunes. NBC Universal and Apple said that certain content from NBC, USA Network, and the Sci-Fi Channel will be available for $1.99 per episode. Shows that are involved in this deal include:

• Law & Order
• The Office
• Surface
• The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
• Late Night with Conan O'Brian
• Alfred Hitchcock Presents
• Dragnet
• Adam-12
• Knight Rider

It's interesting that NBC has included a vintage show from the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s to its iTunes video distribution deal. Look for more appeals to vintage TV fans in the future.

Technorati Tags: Video iPod, NBC, Universal Television

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the hottest stories I've ever written for Operation Gadget is What Alternatives to Garage Band Exist on Windows?. I originally wrote this article in March 2004 and I've updated it at least three times because of feedback from our readers.

I just added a professional level audio editing tools discussion to this article where I discuss:

• Adobe Audition 1.5
• Sony Soundforge 8 and
• Steinberg Wavelab 6

I like Adobe Audition best of the three because of it's integration with other Adobe tools and the wealth of third party documentation and training materials. Check out the full discussion and let me know what you think.

Technorati Tags: Garage Band, podcasting, Windows audio software, Adobe Audition, Sony Sound Forge, Steinberg Wavelab

Posted by Dave Aiello at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Earlier today, Rush Limbaugh announced on his syndicated radio show that two music videos from Sgt. Clay Smith are available in iPod Video format exclusively on RushLimbaugh.com. The music videos videos were discussed on Rush Limbaugh's program on November 23 when Limbaugh replayed a call he took during a podcast that he refers to as The Fourth Hour. The caller, Sgt. Clay Smith of the U.S. military, called in from a U.S. base somewhere in the United Kingdom. The songs, called The Ones and Wings of Freedom were written by Clay Smith with music by Mark Salatin and video by M.R. Rodwell.

Whether you agree with Rush Limbaugh's politics or not, this is another indication that third parties are producing content for the iPod with Video Playback and that tons of content will be made available in this format in the near future.

The Rush Limbaugh Show has pushed the envelope of subscription podcasting for quite some time. The service called Rush 24/7, which began as a way to monetize live audio streaming of the program, has now evolved into a podcasting delivery program. They are extending the service on December 12 to support regular video podcasting as well.

Technorati Tags: Rush Limbaugh, Video iPod, iPod music videos, podcasting, video podcasting

Posted by Dave Aiello at 2:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)