DrBill.TV #252 – Video – “The Slow Tech News Week Edition”

A s-l-o-w tech news week! What you can expect from Windows 8 Release-to-Manufacturing, Kodak may not sell digital imaging patent portfolio, GSotW: SecretSync, LeapFrog’s next-gen LeapPad for kids. –

Links that pertain to this Netcast:

TechPodcasts Network

Blubrry Network

Secretsync


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Available on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/PaD3WpYWirQ

Available on Vimeo at: https://vimeo.com/47840069


DrBill.TV #252 – Audio – “The Slow Tech News Week Edition”

A s-l-o-w tech news week! What you can expect from Windows 8 Release-to-Manufacturing, Kodak may not sell digital imaging patent portfolio, GSotW: SecretSync, LeapFrog’s next-gen LeapPad for kids. –

Links that pertain to this Netcast:

TechPodcasts Network

Blubrry Network

Secretsync


Start the Video Netcast in the Blubrry Video Player above by
clicking on the “Play” Button in the center of the screen.

(Click on the buttons below to Stream the Netcast in your “format of choice”)
Streaming M4V Audio





Streaming MP3 Audio

Streaming Ogg Audio

Download M4V Download WebM Download MP3 Download Ogg
(Right-Click on any link above, and select “Save As…” to save the Netcast on your PC.)

Available on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/PaD3WpYWirQ

Available on Vimeo at: https://vimeo.com/47840069


LeapFrog Tablet for Kids

LeapFrog TabletIt is a S-L-O-W Tech News week… sigh. Look, here is a tablet for kids. Ouch.

LeapFrog’s child-friendly LeapPad 2 goes on sale for $100, is ready for sticky fingers

“You might’ve already checked out our hands-on time with LeapFrog’s next-gen LeapPad, but starting today, now you can finally get your own palms on the kid-friendly slate. The company — who’s also introduced us to the Explorer — has announced its LeapPad 2 is now up for grabs at an array of online and brick-and-mortar shops, such as Target, Best Buy, Kmart, Amazon and, naturally, its very own site. Now, the $100 LeapPad 2 isn’t anywhere near the same class as Mountain View’s $200 Nexus 7, though for obvious reasons, as it’s targeted at a completely different audience. In other words, those 100 bucks might just be enough to keep kids away from your precious every-day tablet. We’ll let you decide that, however.”

Geek Software of the Week: SecretSync!

This is a great way to encrypt and fully secure Dropbox! Create a highly encrypted, secure directory within Dropbox for your most sensitive documents.

Secretsync

“Turn cloud sync into a private, encrypted pipeline for your files.

HOW IT HELPS

Your files never leave your possession without being encrypted first. SecretSync uses client-side encryption to give you absolute privacy and control over your data.

HOW YOU CAN USE IT

Secure synchronization

SecretSync is a great way to easily share proprietary, sensitive information using online synchronization utilities like Dropbox.

Offsite backup

Even if you’re not synchronizing, you can still use SecretSync to create an instant, secure, offsite backup. You can use it to backup financials, tax info, or any sensitive personal and business information you may have.

HOW IT WORKS

New! See the Getting started guide for more details.

We add an additional folder to your computer, a SecretSync folder. Anything that gets put in SecretSync is encrypted and then added to Dropbox to be synchronized to your other computers.

Before your files are synchronized by Dropbox to your other computers, they’re encrypted with 256-bit AES encryption, using a key to which only you have access. The files are only decrypted on the other end — that is, on your other computers.

Your files are always encrypted when online. This means that before your files leave the computer you physically control and own, they’re encrypted. They stay encrypted while being synchronized, until they’re back in your physical control.”

Kodak May Not Yet Sell Their Patents

Kodak has been a force in the camera and photography world for a very long time. It is amazing to see them reduced to where they are now. But their digital imaging patents may be their only real remaining asset.

Kodak: Maybe We Won’t Sell Our Digital Imaging Patents

“Kodak is having second thoughts about selling off its digital imaging patent portfolio.

The struggling photography pioneer, which for the past year has been gearing up to sell off some 1,100 patents as part of its effort to emerge from bankruptcy, said Thursday that it may not sell some — or all — of them, after all.

‘[Kodak] has not reached a determination or agreement to sell the digital imaging patent portfolio, and may retain all or parts of it as a source of creditor recoveries in lieu of a sale if it concludes that doing so is in the best interests of the estate,’ the company said in a statement.

Coming as it does on the ninth day of a patent auction that was originally scheduled to end this past Monday, Kodak’s statement suggests that the process is not going as well as it had hoped.

And, indeed, sources familiar with the auction say that bids for Kodak’s digital imaging patent portfolio thus far have come in below the $2 billion the company has been angling for. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that initial bids from the two consortiums favored to win the auction — one led by Apple, the other by Google — were only about $500 million.

How much the bids have risen since then, if they’ve risen at all, isn’t clear. Kodak says it continues to have ‘active discussions’ with potential patent buyers, and it has extended the auction in light of them. But the company clearly hasn’t yet managed to incite the sort of Nortel-style bidding-war blowout for which it had hoped. And now, with rival bidders mulling alliances that would keep bids on the portfolio low, Kodak may have lost its chance to do so.”

What is in the RTM Release of Windows 8

Ed Bott has an article on ZDnet that decribes what he found in teh official RTM (“Release to Manufacturing”) version of Windows 8. It makes for interesting reading.

Surprise! What you can expect from Windows 8 RTM

“On August 1, Microsoft released the final code to manufacturing. Today’s milestone is the first public availability of those RTM bits, to developers and IT pros who are subscribers to Microsoft’s MSDN and TechNet subscription services.

There’s a new build number, of course: 9200. (Trivia: Windows RTM build numbers in he modern era are always divisible by 16.) Its official version number is 6.2, making it part of the same evolutionary line as Windows 7 (6.1) and Windows Vista (6.0).

If you’ve spent any time with the Release Preview, you’ll see only small changes in the RTM code. The biggest difference is that the free previews are over, and you’ll have to pay (or find a trial version) to evaluate Windows 8 from here on out.

I’ve had a very brief head start with the RTM bits, long enough to install them on a couple of test machines and share some first impressions. It’s still too early to offer up a final review, with two very large pieces of the ecosystem still missing: the “modern” (nee Metro) apps, as well as what will presumably be a large number of devices built specifically for Windows 8.

I installed Windows 8 Pro on a pair of physical test machines and on one virtual machine, performing one clean install, one upgrade from Windows 7, and one upgrade from a Windows 8 preview. All three installations went quickly and without hiccups of any kind. (It’s worth noting that upgrading from the Windows 8 Release Preview migrates files and settings but does not preserve installed apps.)

One big change in setup: You can’t install Windows 8 without entering a product key.

If you’ve become accustomed to installing Windows 7 without entering a product key so that you can use it in evaluation mode for 30 days, you’ll definitely miss that option. After installation, activation is automatic. If you use a product key that’s already been used on another PC, you’ll be unable to personalize some parts of the Windows 8 environment.

On an unactivated PC, you’ll get regular notifications that you need to enter a valid product key. This message appeared in the upper left corner of the screen just now when I tried to visit PC Settings on an unactivated Windows 8 test PC. It didn’t appear to block any functionality, nor did the notifications degrade any features. It appears to be strictly a speed bump. (I’ll be looking into the exact implementation of activation and product key checking in the next few weeks.)

The setup routine includes one new element designed to address criticisms that the new user interface is unintuitive. While Windows creates a new user account, it displays a brief series of messages (starting with “Hi”) and an animated tutorial that point out how to find the new Charms menu.

One change is momentous in symbolic terms. The built-in Windows file manager, which has been called Windows Explorer for 17 years, is now called File Explorer. You might not notice unless you right-click its icon on the taskbar or search for it.

In my testing, performance was uniformly excellent, even on a nearly five-year-old Dell desktop PC. As was the case in the Release Preview, startup and shutdown are impressively fast, and every app I used was quick and responsive.

Most of the built-in apps have received only modest tweaks from their Release Preview predecessors. In a note to reviewers, Microsoft said, “The in-box Microsoft apps we have built for Windows 8 (communications, entertainment, etc.) will be continuously updated over time via the Windows Store. Some of the applications will be updated at our next milestone, when Windows 8 is generally available.”

My experience bears that out. The Mail app, for example, has no new features but a few UI changes. Music is now called Xbox Music and boasts new options in the Preferences pane (most notably an option that requires you to sign in before completing purchases).

One surprise in the Store was the first official appearance of the Xbox SmartGlass brand, which replaces the earlier Xbox Companion app.”

DrBill.TV #251 – Video – “The Roku, OUYA, NASA, and Other Four Letter Words Edition!”

The Hackberry A10, Roku gets 45 Million from investors, OUYA tops 8.59 Million on Kickstarter, LibreOffice 3.6! OUYA gets a web site, the Amazon Cloud Player coming to Roku! GSotW: Anti-Twin! NASA uses The Cloud for Curiosity! A GameMaster Segment! A Demo of the ZorinOS Linux Distribution. –

Links that pertain to this Netcast:

TechPodcasts Network

Blubrry Network

OUYA Open Source Console

Anti-Twin File Comparison Software


Start the Video Netcast in the Blubrry Video Player above by
clicking on the “Play” Button in the center of the screen.

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Available on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/bsX_A2s44_E

Available on Vimeo at: https://vimeo.com/47429003


DrBill.TV #251 – Audio – “The Roku, OUYA, NASA, and Other Four Letter Words Edition!”

The Hackberry A10, Roku gets 45 Million from investors, OUYA tops 8.59 Million on Kickstarter, LibreOffice 3.6! OUYA gets a web site, the Amazon Cloud Player coming to Roku! GSotW: Anti-Twin! NASA uses The Cloud for Curiosity! A GameMaster Segment! A Demo of the ZorinOS Linux Distribution. –

Links that pertain to this Netcast:

TechPodcasts Network

Blubrry Network

OUYA Open Source Console

Anti-Twin File Comparison Software


Start the Video Netcast in the Blubrry Video Player above by
clicking on the “Play” Button in the center of the screen.

(Click on the buttons below to Stream the Netcast in your “format of choice”)
Streaming M4V Audio





Streaming MP3 Audio

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Available on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/bsX_A2s44_E

Available on Vimeo at: https://vimeo.com/47429003


NASA’s Curiosity Rover Uses the Cloud!

I am jazzed about the huge, new, nuclear powered rover that is now exploring Mars! Dewd! How cool is it to have sent a Volkswagon-sized rover to Mars! But, it is also using The Cloud!

NASA uses Amazon’s cloud computing in Mars landing mission

“Although it boasts having ‘Earth’s biggest selection,’ Amazon.com’s reach has stretched to Mars.

Better known for being an e-commerce giant, Amazon has become a major player in cloud computing, with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory using the company’s Amazon Web Services to capture and store images and metadata collected from the Mars Exploration Rover and Mars Science Laboratory missions.

With so much large-scale data processing to be done, JPL is leading the way in the adoption of cloud computing in the federal government, said Khawaja Shams, manager for data services at La Canada Flintridge-based JPL.

“At this point, JPL’s data centers are filled to capacity, so we’re looking for ways to cost effectively expand the computational horsepower that we have at our disposal,” he said. ‘Cloud computing is giving us that opportunity.’

Using AWS’s cloud to operate the mars.jpl.nasa.gov website, Shams noted, enables JPL to get images, videos and developments to the public quickly, without having to build and operate the infrastructure in-house.

According to Amazon, AWS enabled JPL to construct a scalable Web infrastructure in only two to three weeks instead of months.

‘With unrelenting goals to get the data out to the public, NASA/JPL prepared to service hundreds of gigabits/second of traffic for hundreds of thousands of concurrent viewers,’ Amazon said.

The mission will continue to use AWS to automate the analysis of images from the planet, giving scientists more time to identify potential hazards or areas of particular scientific interest, Amazon said.”

Geek Software of the Week: Anti-Twin!

Anti-TwinA great way to find duplicate files in Windows, even if the files have diffrent names! It compares at the bit level!

Anti-Twin File Comparison Software

  • “Byte-by-byte comparison of user-defined files (file content)
  • Search for identical or similar file names
  • Pixel-based image comparison, e.g. search for similar pictures

Anti-Twin is a small software application which compares files, i.e. it searches for duplicate or similar files on your hard disk drive. All similar or identical files that were found can either be sent to the recycle bin or directly deleted. This will increase the hard disk space on your computer.

Select the option ‘Compare file content’ to compare the entire binary content of the files. This means that the file names are irrelevant. Here, the basic principle is: ‘Name is but sound and smoke – size matters! And never lose sight of the inner values.’

Anti-Twin is an excellent application to e.g. find and delete duplicate MP3 files in a download folder or to find similar images. Apart from that, Anti-Twin helps you clean up employees’ chaotic file repositories in company networks, e.g. by searching for unnecessary file copies and redundant data back-ups.”

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