Archive for July, 2008
2008
07.28
Tags: Car Adapters, Car Auto, Car Charger, Car Chargers, Car Port, Charger Adapter, Fuse, Google, Headphone, iPhone, Jabra, Jawbone, Mini Usb, New Model, Port Usb, Power Inverter, Power Invertor, Radar Traps, Short Circuit, Usb Adapter, Usb Ports, Usb Sockets, Www Amazon
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I’m such a nerd, right now, I need no less than six car chargers in my car. Here is what I need:
- Escort 9500i. This actually has a dedicated cord that attaches to its own charger. Shame on them for not just using 5V, but OTOH, it works super well I have to say. There is a new model out that let’s you download radar traps online like the TomTom does. It has a GPS, so its logical. Wish I had the new one. So I need one adapter for this.
- iPhone 3G. Just need a USB adapter that is USB
- Jawbone headphone. Has a strange head, but is just USB on the charging end.
- TomTom 720. This is mini USB on one end and regular USB on the other
- Blackberry. This is my chinese phone. Need a mini USB here. It is a high current device, so needs more than 500mA, so doesn’t work with all car adapters.
- MacBook Air. For those long trips, nice to plug it in. Require unfortunately a 120V AC adapter as for some reason the MacBook only has an airplane adapter. Everything fits, but it doesn’t work. This draws 45 watts VAC for the MacBook, so need about 4 amps without losses at 12VDC. Most of these circuits are 8-10 amps out of the car, so that means it should work OK.
Even a new 2008 Mazda with two 12V adapters doesn’t have enough, so here’s a solution:
- Two port USB, I can get the TomTom and the iPhone working. That’s two devices.
- Four adapter on the inside has the 120VAC adapter, then two splitters with a total of four USB ports for the Jabra, Blackberry, Escort, MacBook with one left over.
There are not many reviews of the google:”dual usb car charger”, but here is what I found:
- USB Fever’s USB Car Charge Adpter. This is more expensive at $15, but does run at 2000mA for each. That’s important because iPod and iPhone and Blackberrys need 1000mA or double what the 500mA standard is for USB. It is also not as ugly being white and with light blue front and has a fuse in it.
- Schoshe Black Dyal USB Charger s $9 from Newegg and has decent reviews, although 2 of the 5 people said it was too cheap and didn’t last long. Certainly is ugly!
- Eforcity 2-port USB Car Charger Adapter or from Amazon ($5). Rather than just one USB per car port, get a pair. Highly recommende.d It also has short circuit protection rather than a fuse you have to replace.
There are plenty of power inverters out there according to Newegg that are less:
- Kensington Ultra Portable Power Invertor 150 is what the Apple store folks recommend. It is 150 watts so can work with a MacBook Pro. Just make sure you don’t drive it too hard as at 85 watts it is drawing close to 10 amps at 12 volts which is close to the limit for many cars. It is $70 from Apple direct, but Newegg has it for $60. It does have a fan, so it is not whisper quiet
- Tripp Lite PV150 is $28 is highly rated on Amazon reviews. This is one is completely silent which is a big deal if you have a car at slower speed. I have an el cheapo adapter from Radio Shack and it sounds like a 737 taking off, so being quiet is a big deal
FWIW MacBook Pro’s have lots of issues on planes because the Empower adapters are typically limited to 75 watts, so the MacBook Pro’s cause the circuit breakers to trip on an airplane.
2008
07.26
Tags: Choices, Fission, Fission Rock, Garageband, Hard Drive, Intermediate Format, iPod, Leopard, Losses, Macintosh, Macs, Microphones, Mp3directcut, Mp3s, Powerpc Application, Tascam, Tr 1, Transcoding, User Interface
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Had a chance to record a concert with the Taxcam DR-1 highly recommended. It is quite a bit bigger than the iPod, but has really high quality builtin microphones. I was amazed at the quality. The user interface is primitive but it lets you record in real time in MP3 format and most importantly when you connect it via USB to your computer, it looks just like a hard drive, so you can copy off the MP3s of the concert.
To actually edit the MP3s and make it nice, I like to use on the PC MP3DirectCut by mpe3sch3.de1.cc because not only is it free, but it edits the MP3 directly. That is, it doesn’t translate it to another format and then reencode it. You aren’t going to have any loss if all you are doing is trimming things like I normally do.
On the Macintosh, the choices are more limited. GarageBand comes with Macs and works, but only seems to export in AAC format. There is also Audacity but it does have an intermediate format and then you reencode which means you have some losses and it is slow. The best choice seems to be a defunct package called Audion which is discontinued but is the only package I’ve found that edits directly in MP3. It is a PowerPC application and seems to hang sometimes on Leopard.
For payment, there is Fission which does cost a nominal $32, but also appears to be a direct editor. I have to say Fission is kind of amazing, a super tool. Let’s you split thing really easily and I love their interface that shows two timelines, one zoomed in and very nicely done. Also, the right click and then you can save a section as a different name is just about perfect. A great labor saver if you have to take a part a giant MP3. It is a direct editor so you don’t lose anything in editing and is much faster than transcoding between the editor and MP3. Tied with the high quality MP3 that the Tascam produces, I can get really high quality sound recording for the many kid concerts I seem to go to.
2008
07.25
Tags: Drm, Hat Tip, iPhone, Iphones, Itunes, Two Computers
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The apps on an iPhone use Fairplay DRM which allow five machines to be authorized. So here is how to get two iPhones in your family works. Hat tip to TUAW for this note from allforces
It is complicated, but basically what you do is to have two computers and authorize both for a single iTunes account. Then re-download applictions that you bought on one computer to the other.
2008
07.24
Tags: E Mail Management, Home Button, Image, Images, Interface, iPhone, Iwork, Keyboard, Mail Application, Mail Attachments, Mass Move, Microsoft, Microsoft Files, Microsoft Powerpoint Files, Sleep, Software Review, Software Reviews, Support Microsoft, Tips And Tricks, Web Pages
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Most of these are not that obvious to me but the Edit button in Mail is useful as is saving images from the web
PDAStreet: Software Reviews: Review: iPhone 2.0 Software Upgrade
E-mail Management: You can now mass delete or mass move e-mails in the Mail application. Just tap the Edit button in the top right of the interface to call up the controls.
* E-mail Attachments: The Mail application expands its attachment abilities with support for iWork and Microsoft PowerPoint files.
* Image-Saving: It’s now simple to save images from Web pages or e-mail attachments by tapping and holding the image. You’ll get a message asking if you want to save it, and the saved image will end up in a new iPhoto folder.
* You can also take a screen shot of your desktop by quickly pressing the sleep/wake button and the Home button at the same time.
* To end .net, .com or .org, press and hold the .com button or if there is an @ sign on the keyboard, press and hold the period “.”
2008
07.24
Tags: Desktop Calendar, Desktop Calendars, Download Free, Free Solution, Freeware Windows, Gcal, Godsend, Google, Google Download, Mac OS X, Mac Users, Os X, Sync
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Featured Download: Calgoo Goes Free, Syncs Desktop Calendars with Google CalendarMac users haven’t had a free solution for Gcal-to-iCal sync, which makes the free offering from Calgoo a godsend. All Calgoo products are now freeware, Windows and Mac OS X only.
2008
07.24
Tags: Domain Options, iPhone, iPod, Keyboard, Mobile Safari, Url Shortcuts, Urls
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How cool is that, very useful. Need more shortcuts like this!
Iphone 2.0: Domain Shortcut Helps Type URLs in Your iPhone More QuicklyFirst, in Mobile Safari, just hold down the .com button for a second to see other domain options (namely .net, .edu, and .org). Second, when the keyboard has the @ symbol but no .com key, you can hold the ‘.’ (period) key to get the same domain shortcuts
2008
07.24
Tags: Mac Client, Running, Time Capsule, What The Heck, Wifi
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What the heck is going on with networks. It is complicated as heck. Try Airgrab and iStumbler to try to figure out what it out there. Still haven’t figured a simple way to find out what is the channel and actual speed of the network a Mac client is running. I can see how to monitor this from an Apple Airport or Time Capsule with the Airport Utility.
2008
07.24
Tags: Custom Ringtones, Ehow, Free Iphone Ringtone Maker, Free Ringtone, Free Ringtones, Freeware Program, Garageband, iPhone, Itunes, Love, M4a, Mp3, Music Folder, Ringtones Free, Unprotected Music
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On older version 1.x firmware, there were some nice tools to let you use any music as a ringtone. Wiped out with 2.0 arriving. And who wants to pay $1 for a ringtone when you already own the music. Some solutions
For the total roll your own, eHow shows you exactly how you do it with Garageband. You basically have to use the “Cycle Region” button to get the 40 second clip that you can use for a ringtone and then Send it to iTunes. Couldn’t be easier! Only problem for me is the ringtones don’t seem to show up anywhere on the iPhone. Sigh
I haven’t tried it but Pocketmac.net has a $15 tool that let’s you use unprotected music as ringtones.
If you love danger, iRinger is a freeware program that does this as well. It only runs on Windows though 
However it also turns out that the easy way to do this is to take your MP3 convert and edit it with Garageband or Audacity to 30 seconds as an MP3. Then open iTunes and right click on the song and export it into AAC format. Then go to the music folder and rename it from a M4A to a M4R extension. When you readd this to iTunes, you can drag it into the ringtone section.
Of course, the easiest way if you have a Mac is to load Garageband, drop an MP3 on it. Then edit it down to 30 seconds and choose Share/Export Ringtone to iTunes 
2008
07.23
Tags: Cool Games, Dialog Box, Entry Index, Expert Mode, Firmware, Home Button, iPhone, Itunes, Mirror, Openssh, Org Forum, Pacman, Partition, Recovery Mode, Tiff, Usb Port, Vanilla, Wipeout
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Be careful, I did this on my iPhone 3G and everything seemed to work, but the phone network doesn’t, so I’m restoring my iPhone now to vanilla 2.0. Too bad, I like Mac Pacman!
iClarified has a tutorial for jailbreaking your iPhone 3G so that you can load all kinds of cool games. As if the appstore with its 900 applications isn’t enough As an aside, there is a tiff with Zibri about different methods of hacking iPhones. Good reading.
- Download Pwnage “2.0.1″http://www.hackint0sh.org/forum/mirror/PwnageTool_2.0.1.zip
- Download iPhone 2.0 Firmware 5A347 IPSW
- Start Pwnage 2.0.1 and select Expert Mode and browse to find the IPSW file
- Select Activate and Disable partition wipeout
- Select Cydia and click on download package, this is used to create a custom IPSW that will be restored onto your phone. OpenSSH for instance let’s you get into your phone later.
- Click on Build and it builds a your own IPSW restore file
- Now connect your iPhone to the USB port and restart it in DFU mode that is hold the Home button and power simultaneously for 10 second. Then release the power and hold the Home for 10 seconds
- Now start iTunes and it will see your iPhone in DFU or “recovery mode”
- Hold the Option key down and click on restore and you will get a dialog box that will let you find your custom IPSW and let iTunes restore it.
