I picked up a Seculine ProDisk Mini White balance/ Grey Card/Color balance card combo in Bangkok. Apart from the usual white balance calibration filter, grey card and color card. This one also comes with a mirror on the back. Now this is a complete mystery to me.
Wonder what's the purpose of a mirror? I hope it's not for checking my nose hair or something.
Three weeks into my photographic assignment. My teammate accidentally knocks the laptop running the backups, the laptop and the connected external drives crash to the floor.
Fortunately my LaCie rugged drive survives and lives to fight another day. The laptop and the other external hard drive took lot of damage. The moral of the story, mistakes happens especially when you are on the road and exhausted. Make sure you invest in good gear.
Over the last years, I helped non-profits use technology for social impact. At times the technology solutions were complex; at other times they were off-the-shelf consumer electronics. In this post, I'll share an example that added value to the NGO Resource Centre in Hanoi, Vietnam.
NGO Resource Centre needed a solution to improve the audio quality of teleconferences. People connected to the NGO Resource centre's working group meetings using Skype from all over Vietnam and the world. We need an affordable conference speakerphone, non-profits often have very limited budget for technology. This device had to be simple to use, without the need for additional training and able to capture voice of half a dozen people sitting around a large conference table.
First I considered using regular Bluetooth hands free speakerphone, however they are really designed for use of single person and the quality of microphone is not suitable for conference use. After some research, I found the Polycom Communicator C100 that fitted the bill perfectly. We were able to buy this device locally in Hanoi.The feedback from NGO Resource Centre staff and the participants of the teleconferences was very positive. The audio quality was really great. The dual microphones provide great audio quality and speaker volume was loud yet clear. The Polycom C100 plugs into your computer and works with Skype software client on the computer out of the box.
When providing technology solutions, it is very important that the technology should make one's life easier not challenging. That means finding a solution that is easy to find locally, easy to use and within the budget.
And don't forget to share your experiences working with technology for social impact projects using the comment form below.
Eating your own dog food or Dogfooding in technical parlance means the software maker uses their own software thus appreciate its strengths and weaknesses (and hopefully improve on those.)
Usually I dogfood multiple mobile phones running early releases of Cyanogenmod and Firefox OS. Doing this is easy when you have multiple SIM cards. But if you have to swap your SIM card between Nexus 4 (micro-SIM) and Firefox OS device (mini-SIM) then you'll love this inexpensive Nano SIM adapter from NooSY.
Robert Kaiser walks in with his Sunrizer bag and says "Here is what you need for Africa". This designer bag sports a flexible solar panel and provides USB connections to charge your devices while you carry. Stylish, Waterproof and rugged enough to hold your laptop, mobile phones, music player and charger cables. Love this bag but at €179.00 EUR it's expensive.
Checkout out www.So-fi.com for more solar products.
Amazon plans to use drones for making deliveries. They are not the first to use drones for transport of materials. Oppikoppi music festival attendees can order a beer using a mobile phone app. The DarkWing Beer Drone use the mobile phones GPS location to drop a beer straight into their hands or mostly onto their heads. Made this video of the beer drone demo at Tech4Africa 2013.
The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) commonly referred as drone will be more prevalent in the future.The United Nations (UN) is deploying drones in Congo. The cost of this technology is still prohibitively high. But social projects such ConservationDrones.org are trying to bring down the cost by using Open Hardware and Open Source Software. They are already using drones for field surveys in Indonesia. You can learn more about Conservation Drones here.
Do you know of any interesting use of Drones in social projects. Please do share it by leaving a comment below.
Walking through the Taipei National Museum, I noticed this interesting rig with six GoPro cameras mounted on a monopole. Asked the owner about the project, he mimed 'I am taking 360° videos of the palace grounds'.
Back at the hotel I searched for more information about this DIY project. Perhaps it is similar DIY-Streetview.com camera system.
Please do leave a comment if you have any information about this project. :)
Continuing my blog series about interesting accessories for your smartphone. Did you ever want to make shake-free photographs and videos with your smartphone. The $20 Joby GripTight Mount connects your smartphone onto any tripod to provide a stable shooting platform. You can also use the smartphone headphone button as cable release. This gadget is great for smartphone photographers and video bloggers. To learn more watch GripTight mount videos on YouTube.
If don't own a tripod, then try to buy GripTight Gorillapod Stand. They make wonderful Christmas gifts too.
Do you have one of these portable iPod speakers in your home. In this post I'll shared an idea that lets you play music straight from iPhone or Android device. You can pick up this $25 GTI Bluetooth Adapter from Frys. The device plugs into iPod connector on your portable speakers and receives music via Bluetooth A2DP. Similar Bluetooth receivers that connect to aux-in ports are also available.
The idea emerged while helping a friend re-design hotel rooms for tech savvy business travelers. Found these inexpensive Bluetooth A2DP receivers to reuse the existing iPod dockable clock speakers in the hotel rooms. Perhaps NFC is a better choice but right now there only few mobile phones with NFC support.
During the recent visit to Taipei, I visited the famed National Palace Museum. The Qian Long Chao new media art exhibition featured this Trees of colors interactive installation powered by Kinect. The installation detect the visitors dress color and decorates the Qianlong vase accordingly. You can view the video on Youtube.
Just stumbled across Snapstick on Mozilla-based applications page on Mozilla.org .
Snapstick combines the ease of discovering content on your laptop, tablet, or smartphone with the viewing pleasure of a big screen TV.
Now that sounds really cool. But it still doesn't explain what's the technology behind all this. Digging through the Snapstick.com site, I found the Engadget.com Snapstick review that explained the full details. Perhaps someone at Snapstick is listening, you need to put up relevant content where we geeks can find it easily. BTW did I mention that this product is powered by Ubuntu. :)
DigitalTrends.com compared 25 tablet computers at International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2011. It sure seems like 2011 is the Year of the Tablet. I feel that the small android devices from Asian manufacturers are going to eat up the market share of the big players if they get their act right.
Few days ago I sent a message on twitter "Anyone know the reason for Nokia's SIM Card Registration Failed problem?". Got quite a few solutions from my friends . It is the most common problem with Nokia mobile phones. Restarting the phone few times or removing SIM and cleaning the contacts also fixes the problem. Try some of the solutions that worked for me.
In countries like India, you need to register your SIM card. The cell phone company blocks the SIM if they don't receive the application within few weeks of activating the phone. Please check if this is case.
Take out the SIM and test it with a different phone, if the phone fails to read the SIM, get the SIM replaced. Few days ago this worked for a friend with a brand new Nokia handset here in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Take out the battery and SIM card. Use a clean eraser to wipe the gold contacts of the phone and on back the SIM card. Replace the SIM and make sure its firmly held in place. Few phones tend to start to working when you bang them on your palm a few times due to this reason. Tighten the tiny screws on the back panel of the phone near the SIM card if they are loose.
Despite all your efforts, the phone refuses to work then try to the phone repaired or replaced. Some users found that the cellphone firmware upgrade tends to fix this issue. I got a Nokia phone firmware upgraded, it fixed the problem for few months. But the phone started to have the problem again.
Unfortunately there seems to be no sure fix for this problem. Most cell phone service centers including Nokia Authorized shops often fails fix this annoyance. They even charge you service fee just for checking the phone :( .
I would love to hear your experiences, have you had this problem? Did you manage to fix it. Thank you ajuonline, BasilKurian, geohacker for your suggestions.
You heard about Google Nexus S and all the buzz right. Well, I asked a friend what he thought about his shinny new Nexus S. He said the he found the 4" Contour phone display screen little odd and the phone does seems to get hot.
What are your thoughts about Nexus S?
Using the Creative Zen Mozaic
My solution is to use the mtp-tools on command line. You can install the package by typing the following line on the terminal or use Ubuntu software center program.
sudo apt-get install mtp-tools
Next get rid of the Gnome Gphoto2 VFS program that will try to automount the device as a camera.
killall gvfs-gphoto2-volume-monitor
Now you are all set. Connect the device and lets see if we can detect the player with mpt-detect command.
$ mtp-detect
libmtp version: 1.0.3
Listing raw device(s)
Device 0 (VID=041e and PID=4161) is a Creative ZEN Mozaic.
Found 1 device(s):
Creative: ZEN Mozaic (041e:4161) @ bus 1, dev 6
Attempting to connect device(s)
USB low-level info:
Using kernel interface "usbfs"
bcdUSB: 512
bDeviceClass: 255
bDeviceSubClass: 0
bDeviceProtocol: 0
idVendor: 041e
idProduct: 4161
IN endpoint maxpacket: 512 bytes
OUT endpoint maxpacket: 512 bytes
Raw device info:
Bus location: 1
Device number: 6
Device entry info:
Vendor: Creative
Vendor id: 0x041e
Product: ZEN Mozaic
Vendor id: 0x4161
Device flags: 0x00000001
Now to get the list of folders on the device, use mtp-folders command.
To deleting a folder, type mtp-delfile -n <id> .
Lets create a new folder and copy all the mp3 files from the current folder to the device.
mtp-newfolder Classic_Hits Music 0
find -name *mp3 -exec mtp-sendfile {} <folderid> \;
If you have a similar MTP portable player, hope this short tutorial will get you started.
Love listening to music while hacking on my computer. The go-rock portable speakers are my prized possessions. I use the go-rock single portable speaker to listen music on mp3 audio player. The battery lasts for few days, always carry this speaker when traveling or spending time outdoors.
Got a second go-rock portable stereo speakers for mostly watching DVDs on my laptop. This speakers are designed in shape of an over sized pill, they break up to form two left and right speakers. The USB and Line-in cables can be retractable easily, just pull the cable and spring action will retract the cable smoothly.
The audio quality of go-rock portable speakers is good. You can unscrew the top for BASS mode. They are small enough to fit into my laptop bag and can be recharged with USB. Never had any problems with these speakers, except once I broke the locking notch by applying to much pressure. If you are looking for great portable speakers, go for go-rock.
. The player freezed on 'Do not disconnect' screen. :)After a quick google search I found that we do a soft reset by pressing the power button and volume up (+) button together. It didn't work. So I decided to do a hard reset by pressing the reset button (its a small hole next to usb connection socket) with a safety pin. It worked. Thankfully it didn't delete any of the content on the device either :)
Got a chance to use the Harman Kardon Go + Play Portable Speakers System with Dock for iPod
There are couple of downsides, I noticed bass sound was not great. Also you can't see the ipod screen when its docked. The large metal handle bar blocks the view and angle of the ipod faces upside. Its a major design flaw. Overall this is a great affordable ipod sound dock system. A Good buy!
Pqi i810 series USB flash drives from Power Quotient are extremely tiny in size. They not much larger than your finger nail. But don't let that fool you they pack lots of storage space, the one that landed in lap was whopping 8GB. And they are cute and pink :) . The Power Quotient product page claims that these are world's smallest USB flash drives. However I didn't find any reference to this neither on Engadget nor anywhere else on the web.
At first glance its looks more like a MMC card than a USB slot. It really felt strange to plug it into my USB drive. Like most exotic hardware I thought it would be a pain to make it work with gnu/Linux OS. And Surprise, surprise it worked just fine on my Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04 laptop.
The USB Id's of this device are given below.
Bus 002 Device 006: ID 3538:0059 Power Quotient International Co., Ltd
If you are planning to buy one, go ahead and indulge yourself.
