First of all it’s fully wireless: the Soundlink works on long-lasting batteries and gets its music over Bluetooth easily up to 10 meters away. It’s really light, so you really carry it with you without thinking too much. Any time I get back to my room, I just press the icon on the speaker and it reconnects to my iPhone. I take it to the kitchen, the terrace on the rooftop, and it just keeps playing, even when I leave the iPhone in my room.

Most importantly: the sound is impressive. Everyone who heard my Soundlink was really impressed and started asking me for technical -and financial- details. Now, at 300€, it’s not exactly cheap, but it’s worth all that.

For all the ‘gadgets’ I use, I ask myself: does it make my life more enjoyable (for a reasonable price)? For the Bose Soundlink, that’s a definite ‘Yes’.

There is a big selection of camera bags at LoveCases for Canon and other SLR Camera Cases!

After reading some reviews on QNAP and Synology, I decided on the Synology DS410. I ordered it at Memoryshop for a decent price and some days later it was shipped to me together with 4 Samsung 2TB drives. Installation is swift and uneventful. I configured it as one big 6TB RAID-5 volume and started copying all my pictures, music and movies. The device comes with the shares /music, /video and /pictures preconfigured, and copying to these folders makes sense, because then the music appears in the handy iTunes server, and all media shows up in the DLNA Media Server.

The advantage of a Linux-powered NAS is that it comes with a number of easy-to-install applications (Torrent Client, MySQL, LAMP stack web server) and you can even install, through ipkg, lots of standard Linux packages. On the QNAP server at the office, I have file sync tasks running at regular intervals and it works flawlessly.

If you’re serious about your storage (because you need it for your work), don’t be content with just an external USB drive. Invest a bit more to have a NAS you can trust. And also: never trust it 100%. I now have +- 16TB of storage at home so that I have multiple copies of everything and I also use Mozy cloud storage for my exported pictures (‘only’ 12 GB for the moment).

Why I ‘needed’ a new TV

When digital TVs came out, the price for full HD (1080 lines instead of 720) was very high. I remember seeing all those 2000€+ beasts and it just didn’t make sense to switch yet, also there was almost no source of Full HD video. Blueray was launched around 2008 and seemed more like a ploy to make you buy all your old films again in a slightly better format. However, the prices of Full HD has dropped a lot, and I had more and more devices at home that had HDMI outputs and 1080p output that I could not show in full glory. So I started shopping around beginning of this year.

I knew I wanted an A-brand, which boiled down to Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, Philips, LG or Toshiba. Shopping for digital TV is exhausting. Each brand  seems to have 150 different models which are sometimes hard to tell apart. I know I was thinking during the shopping: I wish Apple made TV screens: they would have a 32, a 44 and a 56″ model: just pick one. I wish I was able to say that I made a huge spreadsheet with all models, features and prices, created a N-variable price model and chose based on that, but honestly, I just picked one that looked nice in the shop (Vandenborre) and seemed like a good bargain. So I now have the Panasonic 42″ Viera TV. Vandenborre offered to come bring and install it, but I opted for picking it up in the shop.

My new TV

In fact, the experience with the TV has been a sequence of pleasant surprises. Most importantly, the image quality is impeccable, visible from all angles, sharp and light. But it’s when I discovered the ‘Viera Tools’ button that the surprises started. I can watch Youtube on the big screen (one of the applications in the Viera Connect menu). For long videos like Bernstein explaining music theory, it’s more convenient. The TV can also do slide shows or play movies from an SD card or USB stick.

But the function I use most of all: the TV connects to my NAS (storage server) to show me all the music, photos and movies. (Technical: DLNA connection, to an 8 TB Synology). The TV reads most video formats (AVI, Quicktime, MKV, MP4, although I sometimes have problems with XVID) and now allows me to watch any movie or TV series straight on the TV. I no longer have a DVD player linked to the TV, all my DVDs are ripped on my desktop PC to .M4V (with Handbrake, in 720p ‘Apple TV’ format) and I view them from my sofa.

Prey lets you keep track of your phone or laptop at all times, and will help you find it if it ever gets lost or stolen. It’s lightweight, open source software, and free for anyone to use. And it just works.

Yes, I had Prey running on each PC. And then I looked at my Synology NAS (DS410, 4 disks, 8TB raw storage). It could be stolen too. And it’s basically a Linux box. And Prey is available for Linux …

So I figured out how to install Prey on a Synology box:

1. login via ssh as root
2. install the ipkg/’Bootstrap’ module on your NAS server – (from forum.synology.com) and this is a list of the right bootstraps for the right Synology model.
3. install bash shell – “ipkg install bash” (from forum.synology.com)
4. install textutils – “ipkg install textutils” (from forum.synology.com)
5. goto /usr/share and download the latest Linux version of Prey (wget http://preyproject.com/releases/...linux.zip ) and unzip it
6. create an account on Prey and get your API key from your Account profile.
7. create a new device (e.g. ‘NAS8TB (Syn410)’), indicate OS as Debian (it’s close enough) and get the device key.
8. edit the /usr/share/prey/config file and fill in the API and device key
   # you can get both of these from Prey's web service
api_key='yyyyyyyyyy'
device_key='xxxxxx'
9. now run the “bash /usr/share/prey/prey.sh” a first time – you should get a “-- Got status code 200! -- Nothing to worry about. -- Cleaning up!” response.
10. now edit /etc/crontab and add a line
    5-55/20 * * * * root /opt/bin/bash /usr/share/prey/prey.sh >  /usr/share/prey/lastrun.log
11. Now restart crontab in the following (non-standard-Linux) way (from forum.synology.com):
    /usr/syno/etc.defaults/rc.d/S04crond.sh stop
/usr/syno/etc.defaults/rc.d/S04crond.sh start

12. And it’s running! When your Synology is stolen, you set its status in your Prey account to ‘Missing’ and you will start getting email reports every 20 minutes. Because it’s a NAS, there is no webcam and no screenshots can be taken, but the external IP address will let you see where the device turns up.
    Remote IP: 78.29.245.xxx
Private IP: 192.168.0.108
Gateway IP: 192.168.0.1
MAC Address: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

Would this work on a QNAP server? I’m guessing, yes.

Recently I investigated web fax services like eFax, WebFax, RingCentral but for a low volume user like me they’re too expensive. You pay a lot of money for having a dedicated phone number for you, regardless of the number of faxes you send/receive. But I already have a dedicated telephone number, only it is completely disconnected from my ‘normal’ workflow: email, web, news reader. I would like to receive my faxes in my Gmail, because I never delete mails. With 7GB+ email storage, I don’t need to.

So what I would like to have, and what I don’t think exists yet: a Fax 2.0 device at home, let’s call it the FaxaPorta. It needs power and a phone connection, and … that’s all. So let’s make it look like this (not uninfluenced by the Apple Airport Express):

Here’s how it works:

• You plug the Faxaporta in a power outlet and connect to the phone plug.
• The device has built-in wifi and will connect to the internet in that way.
• You associate the device with your account on the Faxaporta website.
• Now you can configure how it is supposed to work:
  • Incoming fax: send it to an email address as a PDF file, print it (you can connect a printer to the USB port)
  • Incoming voice call: take a voice mail and send it to an email address as a MP3 file, forward the call via Skype
  • Outgoing fax: behave like a network printer, or you upload a PDF file to the Faxaporta web site (it is then downloaded by your own Faxaporta device and sent over your own phone line).
• But because your fax is now part of your web-connected world you can do cool stuff like:

• When you get a fax/voice call, the Caller ID (phone number of the sender) is being matched with your Google contacts to add name, company and email of the sender.
• The faxes your receive pass through Faxaportas service and are OCR’ed so that you can copy/paste the text on it (cf. the ScanR service).
• The voicemails are run through a speech recognition service so that you get a text transcript together with the MP3 file. (Google Voice has this)
• The whole configuring of the fax/voice service is no longer done on a silly small screen on the fax machine with 15 cryptic buttons, but online, from anywhere you want. New response message? Upload the MP3 file! New front sheet for outgoing faxes? Create it in a WYSIWYG editor!
• You have an RSS feed for your incoming fax messages, one for your incoming voicemails.

• try to route a fax to the right person (depending on who sent it, on names that were OCR’ed in the document)
• set up a Interactive Voice Response system through the browser (“For Sales, press 1”).
• create a searchable fax archive
• How about a fax ‘out-of-office’ service?

Does the Faxaporta exist already?

In a sensible world, all ‘small’ things would have a mini USB (5V) power connector, all ‘medium’ things would run on 12V DC with 1 (one) standard coax connector and the rest would be on 220V AC. Let’s see how far we are from that situation:

• A USB connection can power up to 500 mA (900 mA in USB 3.0 – wikipedia), although the iPhone  seems to draw up to 1A. So any device that required less than 5W or certainly less than 2.5W, can get all it needs from a USB connector. Why are there then so many GSM and Bluetooth device vendors that insist on using their own proprietary connectors? Samsung, SonyEriccson, LG … I’m looking at you! I remember having at one point 3 different Samsung phones in the house and they all used a different non-compatible power supply. Nokia at least tried to keep the same (coax-like) power connectors until they started making smartphones that needed more power, and they made adaptors with a smaller pin. But Nokia: if Apple can power their iPhones/iPods with USB, then you can do that too.
• Some devices need more power, so there should be standard for 12V too. You can run hard disks, routers, laptops and even desktop computers on only 12V! (“The Google plan calls for a shift from multivoltage power supplies to a single 12-volt standard” – NYTimes 2006). Unfortunately there is no such thing as “the 12V plug”. There are a number of similar but not compatible ‘coax’ plugs around. If there would be a standard for 12V DC devices: you could have a 12V circuit in your home, or at least next to your computer, so that you power all devices with 1 big, efficient transformer. Also, you would have a collection of 12V transformers lying around that you could interchange without thinking. Compare that to having to buy an extra Apple Magsafe adaptor at 90 euro (the Magsafe for Mac Mini: 16.5 V – 3.7 A = 60W!).
  
• If you need more than 60W, you can either take AC or think of some 24V standard.

I know the GSM industry is already talking about it (“The group agreed that by the 1st January 2012, the majority of all new mobile phone models available will support a universal charging connector” – GSMworld). Apparently they want to standardize on Micro-USB. It’s a pity I haven’t seen a lot of devices with Micro-USB yet. I hope we’ll have Mini-USB to Micro-USB dongles so that we can keep on using our ‘old’ power cables.

Micro /mini / USB-B / USB-A female / USB-A male

No iPhone, thanks

This is not my first iPod, I think I’m at n° 5. And before you start telling me “the iPod Touch is an iPhone, that can’t be used for calling. Why not buy an iPhone?”. Well, I don’t need a new phone yet, I’m probably gonna buy an iPhone in a year or so, when the GSM providers have reasonable data transfer prices, and there’s the price too: the 8GB iPod is slightly over 200 euro. The iPhone is 525 euro.

Applications

But this baby is really neat. It does music, sure, and video, like the previous one. But it’s got Wifi, a big, smart touch-screen, games, applications, and … From day one I’m using Google Mail (via IMAP), the Weather application, Google Maps. Then I started looking through the free applications on the App Store. So what am I using now:

• Games: Dactyl, Cube Runner, BlueSkiesLite, Sudoku, TapTap
• Stuff: iDoodle2Lite, WhiteNoise, Remote
• Network: AirSharing, Speedtest, IM+, Palringo
• Social networking: Facebook, AroundShare, GooSync, ShoZu, reQall
• Info: BuienRadar

I’ve just started using reQall, a kind of task list + shopping list, which allows you to add via the iPod/iPhone, via the web and via a IM (Gtalk) account. This looks promising.

The games are not bad. Dactyl is strangely addictive, the movement sensors work really well with BlueSkiesLite, … I expect to see some killer iPod/iPhone games in the future.

The only thing I miss now is a good sync with my Google Calendar. iTunes can sync my iPod contacts with Google Mail, but not my calendar. GooSync is supposed to be able to do that, but I can’t get it to work. Of course Apple wants me to use (paid) MobileMe, but I want to see if I can find a free way first.

In any case, I discover a new use every day. It’s … exciting, actually.

Wifi

I had Wifi on my Nokia N91, but I haven’t seen it so well integrated as on this iPod. It saves connection credentials and connects to known networks without asking. Well, the fact that I find this remarkable says more about the user-unfriendliness of the (Nokia) Symbian OS than anything else. But the feeling that you have a small Internet-ready device, that allows you to check email and read web pages comfortably everywhere, is awesome.

User Interface

People who know me, know I’m not the biggest fan of Mac OSX. Don’t try to convince me it’s easy and intuitive, because for me it isn’t. But this iPod Touch is another story. This is the best user interface ever.

You switch it on and it’s there immediately (not when it has to boot, of course, but when it’s just inactive) The screen is sharp and large. Text is easy to read. Images look great. You intuitively tap on a web page when it’s too small, and it zooms in until the paragraph is as wide as your screen. And then you turn the device 90°, your application switches from portrait to landscape and browsing becomes even easier.

The multi-touch screen feels totally intuitive. You flip through your photos by sliding them left and right, you scroll down by just dragging, you zoom in and out with two fingers and it feels like it’s the way things should have been all along. I even catch myself trying the two-finger zoom-in on my TomTom GPS, where it -obviously- does NOT work.

I took the iPod, did not read any manual (duh!) and I figured everything out in, what, 30 seconds? It’s better than the TomTom, and that one was already very good.

Hardware top 3

Apple makes great hardware. The MacBook looks slick and classy, the MacPro looks strong and professional, and this iPod Touch is not only beautiful, it acts likes it’s an extension of your brain, through your fingers.

It just entered my personal top 3 of hardware devices that make my life better. It jumped over the TomTom GPS and sits next to my Canon 350D. If some more killer apps come out, it’s totally gonna take #1.

The ReadyNAS is a 4-bay network-attached storage device with a nice set of features. Yes, it does storage, but it also has an FTP server, an iTunes streaming server and uPnP (Universal Plug-and-Play: works with Microsoft products like Windows XP and Xbox). I’ve been able to use one for over a month and in short: I’m probably going to buy one.

PRO:

• it’s big: 4 bays gives you a max size of 4TB. That should do for a while.
• it’s silent. It ran in my living room, and the noise was hardly noticeable.
• it’s fast (when connected to a 100Mbps client, I reached speeds between 7.3 MB/s and 8 MB/s – the theoretical max for 100Mbps is 12.5 MB/s)
• it’s robust: I experienced no downtime, but then again, 1 month is only a month.
• it’s full-featured: the streaming protocols and in the latest firmware, the BitTorrent client, make it very flexible.
• it’s scalable: the X-RAID technology lets you pop in new disks and scale automatically (without reformatting)

CON:

• price: it’s not the cheapest NAS on the market (e.g. LaCie has a comparbale device, but it does not support all the streaming/torrent protocols that ReadyNAS has)
• proprietary: I’m not sure how easy it is to recover data from an X-RAID formatted disk set. I don’t think you can mount them in a Linux system and recover the data.

I also received the latest Storage Central (successor of the SC101) to test, but I never opened the box. The trauma of the previous one was still too big.

In any case, it seems Netgear finally made a good choice by buying Infrant, with the ReadyNAS product line.

First thing is to see how Pixmania handles the warranty. They are supposed to send me a replacement for the broken drive, but I haven’t heard back from their customer support yet.

And then I have to make a decision about an alternative for reliable storage. Do I go for something semi-pro like the Buffalo Terastation Live (2TB, Raid5 for +- $1000) or do I build my own storage server with an old PC, a hardware RAID card and something like FreeNAS or Ubuntu. Decisions, decisions …

The only problem with the device is that within 6 months of buying it, the battery started running out very quickly. Actually, it is not always short of breath, but mostly. Sometimes when I turn off the ignition (which stops power to the GPS) it will die within seconds. Other times, it might keep on running for an hour. Feels like a bad contact inside but the standard engineering trick for this (“hit device hard with right hand”) doesn’t help.

According to TomTom support (but I don’t think that’s why my battery gave up):

Speaking of the battery, TomTom told me by phone today that I should navigate using the battery and not the in-car charger. The customer rep said that overcharging was an issue if I left it connected continually.
via reviews.cnet.com

When I check the boot screen (reset and keep pressing the power button while turning on, via) then my battery gives 4140 mV, which is a good enough score. So I don’t think buying a new battery would help (they sell for less than 20€ at e.g. www.mdsbatterie.com.fr). I guess I’ll just wait a bit and go for the TomTom One XL. Size matters.

• First try: I order the keyboard, do the checkout procedure, pay with credit-card and get an immediate reaction: purchase OK, shipment will follow soon. Wow, that’s slick. Several days later, UPS passes by my front door while I’m not there, they say, the package is signed off by a certain “Korenberg” and I get an email: delivery OK. Slight alarm bell: I know no “Korenberg” living at my appartment. When I get home this is confirmed: no one in the building knows anyone by that name. Keyboard is in the twilight zone. I file complaint with Logitech, they propose refund, I accept, I’m still waiting for confirmation. But, I still need a BG keyboard.
• Second try: I order another keyboard and try to pay with my credit card. Twice I give my credit card details, press “Process” and get redirected to the same check-out page, without any notion of whether or not my order is accepted. I check the “order history”, see that my recent purchase is not there and decide to give up on credit cards.
• I select “bank payment” and finish checkout. They tell me what bank account I should pay on (one of Bibit), and with which message. I do the payment, see that the number message is not a structured number (“gestructureerde mededeling”) and put it in the normal message box. Since then, nothing. Has Bibit recognized the money as the payment for Logitech? No idea. Has Logitech started fulfillment? I guess not.
• I visit the Logitech web site again, checking out the Squeezebox, and decide to test the checkout system again. I put a Squeezebox in my shopping cart. When I go to the customer care, I fly from shop.logitech.com (where I am logged in) to logitech-nl-emea.custhelp.com (which looks the same, but where another login is necessary, because both accounts aren’t linked, apparently). There I get into an eternal redirection loop, with an infinite number of “&cl=BE,nl” adding themselves to the URL.
• I try to break out of that loop by going back to the shopping cart page. For some reason my shopping cart now contains 2 Squeezeboxes instead of one. That’s it , I’ve had it.

Bottom line: this online shop of theirs is as trustworthy as Lindsay Lohan saying she’s gonna stop drinking. I buy online a lot from shops like Amazon and Pixmania, so I think I’m qualified to say that their shopping application stinks. I’m gonna wait until next week for reply on the second purchase, if there’s none, I’m cancelling that order, and I’m never shopping with Logitech again.