Archive for March, 2011
QNAP Pushes Out Native iPad Media Streaming App
0Network storage producer QNAP released a free iPhone app a while back that allowed you to stream your photos, music and video from your QNAP NAS to your portable device over the internet, now they’ve taken it one step further and released a native iPad version of their Qmobile suite.
There isn’t any additional functionality when compared to the small screen version, but the additional screen real estate of the iPad means that the whole experience is a lot more pleasant.
Basically, with a little bit of port forwarding set up on your home router, you’ll have full access to all of the media stored on your QNAP NAS drive from anywhere with a WiFi connection. Even on a 3G signal you’ll still be able to browse your photo library, though music and video will be off limits unless you can find a WiFi hotspot.
Qmobile will play back any MP3, WMA or (unprotected) AAC audio file. Unfortunately, video playback is restricted to the same MP4 files that the iPad can natively play, so you can’t stream, say, an AVI file to the iPad.
That being said, audio playback works absolutely fine, in fact I’m sitting in a hotel room right now streaming Newton Faulkner to my iPad as I type this. There’s literally a one or two second gap between tracks while it buffers but other than that playback is flawless, you’re even treated to a thumbnail of the album artwork should one be available.
Video playback is a slightly different story, I’m sure that with a faster internet connection available I would be able to receive streaming video, but so far I’ve just been treated to a black screen while it buffers. You also have to consider the upload speed of your home broadband connection, mine is reasonably quick but I doubt that many basic broadband customers would be able to stream video at all, at least for now anyway.
All in all, this is a great free update for QNAP, especially considering that it supports NAS drives that are now nearly 3 years old, as well as their latest models. It’s not exactly a reason to buy a QNAP NAS in the first place, but if you have one and also have an iPad it’s a fantastic way to reduce the amount of space tied up with music.
**UPDATE** – Well, I left the iPad buffering a video (more out of curiousty than anything else) while I went to have a shower, I came back and it was blissfully playing “The Marine” to itself (yeah, I know, but it’s the only film on my NAS in MP4 format). It obviously took a while to buffer but playback is flawless, it seems if your WiFi connection is fast enough you CAN happily stream video via Qmobile to your iPad.
Store And Share Files Online With Dropbox
0I’ve shown you how to use Skydrive to share files and folders online before. But there’s an even easier way to do so using a service called Dropbox.
With Dropbox you receive 2GB of online storage space for free, which is more than enough to store all of your important files or share your photos and videos with others. (more…)
Q&A: Can you play Divx (AVI) videos on the iPad
1Yes and no.
By default, the built in Videos app will only play video transferred from your iTunes library, and only in the specific Apple MP4 format.
But there are app’s available on the App Store which allow you to play AVI/XVID/DIVX files natively on your iPad. One of the best of these is CineXplayer, which is free for the moment, but has had a charge associated with it before. Development is ongoing, so more and more file formats are becoming supported as time goes on.
Once the app is installed, users just need to manually add video files from a local or network source through the App tab for your iPad within iTunes.
London Underground Getting 120 WiFi Hotspots
0Following a succesful trial at Charing Cross station, Transport for London is inviting bids to provide 120 tube stations with WiFi hotspots.
The idea is to have some, if not all, of the hotspots in place and working for the start of the 2012 olympics, but with confirmation of the contract due to take place at the end of the year this could be pushing it.
Around half of those customers questioned at Charing Cross said that WiFi on the underground would improve their travel experience, though it has to be asked how many of these customers would be willing to pay for access, which is the prevailing idea.
That being said, if the scheme could somehow be tied in to the Oyster system, with regular users getting preferential rates, then it could be a viable solution for ordinary Londoners.
No word yet on whether this service will extend to mobile phone coverage, though given the depth and length of some of the lines it would seem this would be no easy feat. After all, if it was easy then one of the mobile networks would have done it by now. That being said, with the provision of WiFi and an IP network, it’s perfectly faesible that users would be able to use VOIP services such as Skype, though whether the system will provide enough bandwidth for this isn’t clear at this point.
Further information can be found on the Transport for London Website.
Q&A: Which is better; AMD or Intel?
0I’m assuming that your question relates to processors, not other types of component made by either company, but even so this is a very difficult question to answer.
In terms of pure processing power, Intel’s processors tend to offer more than AMD’s. However the cost associated with buying Intel over AMD makes the decision a lot more difficult. Intel are almost always more expensive, particularly when it comes to the latest and greatest processors. But for a lot of people, the additional cost does not justify the, sometimes marginal, performance gain.
That being said, there are areas of the Market, such as Intel’s latest core i7 processors, where AMD does not currently offer a model that is able to come anywhere near to the level of performance shown by Intel.
In other areas of the market the lines are similarly drawn, Intel holds a large percentage of both the low power (with the Intel Atom) and server (Intel Xeon) markets. AMD are slowly making ground in these areas, but most computers from established manufacturers such as Dell and HP will still come with Intel processors.
In the end, it really depends on your budget and whether you can justify the sometimes ridiculous prices of Intel processors. Some would argue that the additional cost could be spent elsewhere in the machine to better effect, such as on a faster graphics card or additional memory. Personally I have always opted for AMD when building my own machines, though this was purely down to cost at the time!
How To Create Transparent Images with GIMP
0If you’re creating a logo or a banner for a website or blog then you’ll probably want to create a logo with a transparent background in order to make it easier to place upon different colour backgrounds etc.
Fortunately you don’t need to spend lots of money on expensive “photoshop” type programs to do this, in fact it’s easily done using the free graphical editing tool; GIMP.
The first thing you’ll need to do is download and install GIMP from this site. GIMP is available for Linux, Windows and Mac so there’s no need to worry about compatibility.
Next you’ll need to open an image with a coloured background in GIMP, in the example below I’m using a Tech Made Easy logo (JPG file) with a black background:
Next you’ll need to click on the “Layer” menu and move down to “Transparency”, then select “Colour to Alpha”, you’ll then see a window similar to this:
In this window, click on the colour palette and select the colour of your background (for this reason, it’s best to create your image with a white or black background, it makes it easier to select), your sample image will then show a checkerboard for a background, meaning that the background colour has been converted to a transparent layer. You’ll then need to click OK and save your new file, you MUST save your new file as a .PNG file. JPG files do not support layers so cannot have transparent backgrounds.
From here, you should be able to use your new layered image on websites and blogs in order to neatly match your logo to the background colour.
Crysis 2 Released – Huge Bugs Found
0Today marks the official release of Crysis 2 on PC, XBOX360 and PS3, and some pretty big bugs have already been found.
Many people have been concerned with the decision to make Crysis 2 a cross platform release rather than sticking to PC as the original did.
Chief amongst the concerns were fears that the level of graphical options available to PC players would be restricted, that the controls would be dumbed down for console control pads and that any cross platform game is likely to suffer more from bugs due to having to run on multiple architectures.
Unfortunately for Crysis 2, all three concerns seem to have been realised.
Many people are already setting gaming forums ablaze complaining that they’re not able to easily make any sort of changes to the graphics settings on the PC version, other than to select the pre-defined standards which differ greatly in terms of features.
Added to this, the game seems to have some pretty big graphical bugs when it comes to multi-core GPU’s or SLI based systems, check out the video below:
Skip to 4.00 to see the type of problem lots of users are experiencing.
That Crysis 2 could be released in this state is unbelievable, how any game could have such a huge bug effecting it at release is just bizarre.
Hopefully EA Games will get a patch at much sooner than the anticipated DX11 patch in order to fix these issues.
Have you bought Crysis 2? Have you experienced any of the bugs? Let us know by leaving a comment below…
Q&A: Why can’t I create folders in Ubuntu?
0It might be that you’re trying to create a folder in an area of the filesystem that needs “root” permissions to make changes.
To get around this, open a terminal window (alt+F2) and type the following:
gksudo nautilus
You’ll then be prompted for your root password, but then the nautilus file browser will open with administrative privileges which will allow you to create or delete pretty much anything you feel like.