Pandora plugin for Meedio

May 10, 2006 eirikso4 Comments

…or should I say “Pandora plugin for Yahoo GO TV”?

Anyway, it looks like an excellent plugin. It gives you the Pandora music recommendation engine directly in your media center. Unlike the Pandora plugin for Windows Media Center Edition this one also gives you a bit of control over the Pandora player from your remote.

When will the Pandora guys allow scaling of their player so it will be possible to make it fit better into the big screen user interface? Or even better, make full support for media centers?

(Thanks, Trond and Maarten)

Eirikso at the Nordic Media Festival

May 4, 2006 eirikso2 Comments

Nordiske Mediedager

I am going to speak at the Nordic Media Festival in Bergen next week. About the future of home entertainment, the new media consumer and the challenges for the television industry. The presentation will be in Norwegian and you find the details here. You can also have a look at the other speakers here.

I was looking forward to listen to Matt Stone and Trey Parker. The creators of South Park. Unfortunately they are speaking at a session that is parallel to mine. Meaning that I can’t listen to them and my session just got the worst competition possible at this event. I better be good. People opting out from Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker because they want to listen to me should really get an interesting presentation!

If I find the time for it I’ll post the presentation here using the format I did for my presentation at the Norwegian Computer Society.

Thomas Hawk’s 10 Tips for the New Digital SLR Photographer

May 3, 2006 eirikso5 Comments

Update:
After writing this article I have invested in a Canon EOS400D with some nice optics. So now I guess I have to make an illustration to tips number 7 as well… 🙂

Original article:
You don’t find many articles in this blog that is simply a link to a post in another blog. I try to add something when I write about interesting content from other blogs and web sites. Thomas Hawk had an excellent article about digital photography a while ago. And if I am going to link to it I also want to add something. The thing that I immediately missed when reading the article on Thomas Hawk’s blog was the illustrations. I know that Thomas has a huge archive of excellent pictures that could illustrate many of the 10 points. But I also know how much time it takes to find and include the illustrations. When Thomas has spent the time writing the excellent article I can spend a couple of minutes digging for some illustrations. Read the article over at Thomas Hawk’s digital connection and use this post for some illustrations. All the pictures can be clicked to bring up a larger version.

1. ISO, ISO, ISO.
Changing ISO changes the time of the exposure and the amount of noise in the picture. The two pictures below are taken at the same time, in the same lightning conditions but the one to the left is ISO 50 and the one to the right is ISO 400. At ISO 50 the exposure time was simply too long to give me a sharp shot with a hand held camera.

Now if we go in a bit closer we can also reveal the other factor. Noise.

2. Find something to brace the camera on.
Use your creativity. When using a digital compact camera you also have the possibility of not having to look into the viewfinder. When using the LCD on the camera you have very good possibilities of holding the camera against something when shooting.
3. Donâ€™t cheap out on a tripod.
I am not fortunate enough to own a Manfrotto, so I don’t have an illustration for this one… 🙂

4. Itâ€™s all about the glass.
Revealing bad optics are best done when examining the edges of a picture or sharp contrasts. Bad optics to the left and better optics to the right. An obvious difference in sharpness.

Going into some more detail it is easy to see some of the other problems with bad optics. The green colour along the sharp contrast between the sky and the metal angle.

5. Join Flickr.
I could add a screenshot from Flickr. But really. Just go there.

6. Know your rights.
This can only be illustrated by Thomas himself. Whit this story and this photo:

7. Shoot in RAW.
Photo. Video. Audio. Always obtain the best quality possible when out in the field. The better the original is the more you can do with it. Personally that means full resolution, higest quality JPG because I don’t own a camera that can shoot in RAW format. Something I would consider the biggest drawback with my Canon S2 IS. That’s why I could not make a nice illustration to show how flexible and sharp an uncompressed RAW picture really is.

8. Photoshop, Photoshop, Photoshop.
I have used Photoshop since version 2.5 It was truly amazing back then and is even more amazing now.

Edit:
I really hate el-cheapo crippeled scaled down versions of professional software. With one exception. Adobe Photoshop Elements. It is really amazing value and contains all the functions that you really need. I wouldn’t bother considering anything else if you want a relatively cheap but extremely powerful way to organize and edit your pictures.

So for the illustration. Original to the left and slightly photoshopped image to the right.

And some serious Photoshop magic here and here.

9. Take lots and lots and lots of photos when you shoot.
Could have illustrated this with lots and lots of photos. But I won’t. Just follow the advice.

10. Change your perspective.

Simple as that.

Pandora plugin for Windows Media Center

May 3, 2006 eirikso24 Comments

I have written about Pandora before. It is the first music recommendation engine that I actually like and find useful. When I tried it for the first time I instantly wanted a plugin for my Media Center that would let me open Pandora.

I guess I wasn’t the only one. Colin Savage has made a little ~~plugin~~ that not only let you open and start Pandora in your media center, but it let you start Pandora on basis of music from your local collection.

Update:
The links are dead and unfortunately I don’t know where this project is now.

The plugin is a little web application hosted on Colin’s page. It seems like he has some performance issues, so my friend Jahn-Tore has kindly offered a mirror. He has also done some minor changes to the plugin to make it look slightly better in MCE. ~~You find the modified version here~~.

Screenshot More Music Like This

Then what?

You can go to your artist listing, select an artist and hit the Info-button on your remote. Now select “More…”. That will let you start Pandora playing similar music to the artist or track you have selected.

In other words, I am listening to Tom Waits in my Media Center. Two clicks and Pandora streams similar artists choosen from the very detailed Music Genome Database that is the basis of the recommendation engine in Pandora.

The main problem with the plugin is the fact that the Flash based Pandora player does not scale and is not designed for navigation with a remote.

If now only the Pandora guys get the message, talk to Colin and implements a version that is tailored for MCE. Until then, this solution works fine. The fact that the Pandora interface looks like crap on your 40 inch LCD as long as it doesn’t scale does not destroy the good recommendations and acceptable sound quality from Pandora.

The installation of the plugin from Colin’s page is not 100% straight forward. It includes saving a file to the right directory on your media center and register the plugin. For the people that is afraid of starting that dangerous black command line window and write strange commands in there I have made a simple BAT-script that will register the plugin for you. Just right-click this link and select “Save as”. Save it to a place where you find it and double click it after you have saved the plugin from Colin’s or Jahn-Tore’s page in your eHome directory.

eirikso

Photo, media, technology

Month: May 2006