Web Development

My Home Theater PC - HTPC

Chris Jefferies — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 01:13:00 GMT

Over the weekend, I put together a Home Theater PC (aka HTPC). Basically it is a PC that emulates a TiVo device where you can record your TV programs into a computer hard drive. Only More!

Mike Green sent a computer that he had retired (PIII-700Mhz, 70G HD, DVD Player) and I added a TV tuner card and video card with video output (to view on a TV) and made the conversion.

The main function is a Personal Video Recorder (PVR). Like a TiVo device, it can record TV programs, schedule recordings, or record all episodes of a TV series. There is a service called Zap2It Labs that offers a free download of the programs offered by our local Comcast cable service. See below for an image of the program guide. It also refreshes a 14 day listing every morning at 3am.

Additionally it can manage audio and video archives, allows you to set up and listen to Internet radio programs, and to play and rip DVDs. There are a number of plugins (more...) available which I will eventually figure out how to implement.

I started out by trying Media Center on the Windows Media Center Edition, but, try as I might to load driver after driver, it simply does not support the remote control that came with the PVR card I had (Hauppauge PVR-150). So I switched over to a free application called GBPVR. It works quite well and the images you see on in the PVR Gallery are from that application.

I have estimated that I will be able to keep about 6000 songs (our entire CD collection) and about 30 hours of video on the current hard disk, but I can expand that later. I'll also want to get a DVD burner to archive special videos.

Shows the TV Guide listing. Click to see more.

So far so good...

New computer systems

Chris Jefferies — Sat, 23 Apr 2005 14:20:00 GMT

So I've been very bad about blogging lately. I apologize for that and I promise I'll do better.

The main thing I've been dealing with lately is learning some new computer technologies; well, new to me. I have been primarily a Microsoft Windows person as a software designer of business applications developed with Microsoft technologies (Visual FoxPro database applications and lately ASP.NET/C# web applications) that run on Microsoft operating systems.

This new study is in the area of an alternative operating system known as Linux. Linux comes in many flavors but I am using one called Fedora; and the version is known as Fedora Core 3.

I have 2 older computers thast I have installed with Linux, one is a minimal installation of Linux and is operating as a firewall and the other has the full graphical user interface (GUI) that looks and feels much like the Microsoft Windows operating system.

The results of this can be seen on the new web server I installed on the Fedora based computer at: http://www.sparticles.net. It explains a little about the setup I'm working with.

What's interesting, I think, is that this setup is running on older computers, PII and earlier, that were headed for the garage (or worse) and they are running on totally free software. I've installed a blog, a wiki, and a database to store all the content and all are open source.

There's no magic about this stuff, it has a pretty large large learning curve and the development environments don't seem to be as sophisticated as those available on Windows. But it has come a long way and deserves some of my attention to keep up with this new appraoch to software development known as 'Open Source'.

New Genealogy site

Chris Jefferies — Wed, 15 Sep 2004 00:10:00 GMT

Over the last week I put up a new Genealogy site. It is written in PHP (with MySQL as the data store) and I got it from TNG. It cost me $27. I'm not much good at PHP but here it is, an entire web application for tracking genealogy and it includes the ability for users to edit the data and upload images. I'd like to try to rewrite it in ASP.NET, but lets see how much time I have to work on that.

Here's the new site: www.jumano.com/genealogy

Live in Fear!!!

Chris Jefferies — Tue, 14 Sep 2004 23:11:00 GMT

Here is the persistant threat level image from the Homeland security site at:

http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic

Here's an image that's supposed to reflect the same threat level. The banana should change to reflect the current threat level color with green being good and red being bad. Let's see if they match.

Peckinpah Observatory

Chris Jefferies — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 00:21:00 GMT

I put up a new web site on the Jumano server this weekend for the Peckinpah Observatory. Let me know what you think.

http://www.jumano.com/astro/

RSS Calendar - My Calendar in newsfeed format

Chris Jefferies — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 16:31:00 GMT

Here's an interesting new “news feed“ service that uses RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to deliver a personal calendar into a news reader or into a web page. You can see mine embedded in the Jumano home page at:

http://www.jumano.com

You can go to the site and set one up for your self at:

http://www.rsscalendar.com/rss/

I-Neighbors

Chris Jefferies — Thu, 19 Aug 2004 23:18:00 GMT

This looks interesting for community building...

Use I-Neighbors to:

Meet and communicate with your neighbors.
Find neighbors with similar interests.
Share information on local companies and services.
Organize and advertise local events.
Vocalize local concerns and ideas.

Who is I-Neighbors for?:

Individuals
Families
Local Governments
Tenants Groups
Community Organizers
Neighborhood Associations

http://www.i-neighbors.org/index.php

Blogon 2004 - the conference

Chris Jefferies — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 23:55:00 GMT

On Friday, I attended the BlogOn 2004 conference that was held at the Haas Business School on the UC Berkeley campus.

The morning started with a session titled “Defining Social Media“ which was moderated by Ross Mayfield of SocialText. The panel had some insights that I found interesting. One idea was whether social software is a product, or a feature of other products. In the HR space, it seems that blogs and wikis could be an addition to the portal which enhances corporate communications.

Another idea was that the load of media from digital cameras will fuel a need for blogs as people look to fulfill a need to express themselves with their new media.

Reid Hoffman (CEO of LinkedIn):

“Any large company, if they're not searching the blogs for what people are saying about their products and organizations, are fools. If you don't have some kind of blogging strategy -- much less response -- you need to think about that.“
“Brand value and trust will evolve completely. Individuals will become brands.“

The second session was titled the “The Dark Side of Social Media“. Danah Boyd was the moderator and was philosophical about this subject by thinking of the “Dark Side“ as being like the Dark Side of the Moon or “that which light has not yet been shed upon“. We should be vigilant and watch for the abuses possible in blogs and wikis. Another concept of the dark side was the fear of corporations who may feel that they are losing control of their corporate message. Here are some tidbits about how corporations should deal with social media:

watch and learn - fear shows deeper corporate problems - lack of transparency and flexibility
evolve what you're doing - Tickle vs LinkedIn - different users, different functions
copyright is dead, long live copyright - copyright to protect creators and encourage distribution
fan fiction - variations on Harry Potter stories by youngsters
corporations start with a deficit of credibility - social media helps build credibility

The final morning session was titled “Business Transparency“. It included a demo of the Microsoft Channel9 site by Jeff Sands and Robert Scoble. It is a forum that includes blogs and wikis and is a mechanism for Microsoft to provide corporate transparency to it's clients. Channel 9 is the channel used on airplanes for passengers to hear what the pilots are up to; hence the site name. Another form of transparency for the passengers. The second half of the session was about SixApart's customer relations nightmare that was eventually resolved by the use of blogs (which they market as Movable Type).

The afternoon sessions were about the business of social media and included the tried and true models of user subscriptions vs advertising. There was some discussion about the technologies of RSS news feeds and filtered content, but these discussions seemed to drift into standards issues.

The final closing session was titled “Who's Investing in Social Media?”. It was a panel of investors who talked about what they find interesting in the social media business. While most of them seemed to say that the social media firms were already in place, there was a ray of hope in an idea that would bring focused information from my friends on a local basis. Some examples were allconsuming.net and weatherbug.com. They also said there was too much money chasing too few companies.

BlogOn 2004

Chris Jefferies — Fri, 23 Jul 2004 00:02:00 GMT

I attended the opening reception and a panel discussion for the Blogon 2004 conference this evening. It was held at the UC Berkeley Faculty Club. I got there about an hour early and took some time to read the conference notes in the Faculty Club bar. $2.50 for a pint of beer. I think I'll stop in there again at some point in the future.

The panel discussion set the tone for tomorrows sessions by positing issues of concern in the field social media.

Moderators were:

Chris Shipley - Executive Producer, Blogon
Susan Mernit - Partner, 5ive

The panelists were:

Scott Gatz, Yahoo
Tony Perkins, AlwaysOn
John Roberts, CNET Networks
Bill Schreiner, AOL

The issues ranged from business models of blogging sites to branding and forms of advertising.

An interesting point was made by someone in the audience that branding used to be pre-defined and was delivered as a finished concept. Now, it develops as users respond to the product. Branding is no longer a promise, it is a fulfillment.

There was a general consensus that, just as CNN cable news slowly sapped the traditional networks of viewership, so too will independent journalism in the primary form of blogs take away readers of traditional news channels.

The opening session tomorrow starts at 8:30am. A bit early for me. I think it indicates that we have more business types than techies running this show .

This Weekend

Chris Jefferies — Mon, 19 Jul 2004 01:48:00 GMT

Spent the weekend cleaning up camp gear that we've collected for the past 20 years. Old stoves, wool socks, etc...

I moved the DSL modem and the firewall into the laundry room and ran a new phone line for the DSL connection in there as well. This puts the web server, the firewall, and the DSL modem all on the same 20 amp circuit. It made no sense to have them on different circuits because without all of them running it doesn't do me any good.

Added the Jumano CAM...