Biking is pretty cool because while it’s good exercise, at least you get to sit down.
Nexus One road test
Update: The test is now over. I think Jason saw it. I’ll have him leave a comment.
Today, I’m trying an experiment with the Nexus One. I hope it works.
At 9:15 AM (California time) I’m broadcasting live at qik.com/wysz (with location tracking!) using the Qik Android app while driving to work using Google Maps Navigation. I might also switch over to USTREAM to see how that works, so if I’m not broadcasting on one service, check the other. Some things that this will test:
T-Mobile’s 3G network
It will be interesting to see if the broadcast continues live for the entire commute. I think the Qik application will buffer and upload saved video if I lose the connection, creating a complete archive video, so I’ll have to rely on my live viewers to leave comments below letting me know if the live feed cut out at any point.
Multi-tasking
The Nexus One will be doing all of these things at the same time:
- Broadcasting live geocoded video using Qik or USTREAM
- Playing an MP3
- Providing turn-by-turn GPS navigation
- Running several background processes such as Swift (Twitter), Google Voice, and Gmail
Camera
Although the resolution and quality will be limited by the broadcasting applications, I’m hoping that the nice camera on the Nexus One is able to provide a clear image of the commute.
If you watched, let me know how it went in the comments.
Christmas/Birthday/New Year’s 2009
I’m back from my 15-day holiday break. Here’s some of what I did during this festive season:
Christmas in California
I usually don’t do any Christmas-related things in California, but this year I checked out Christmas Tree Lane in Palo Alto. It was nice to get away from the land of office parks and apartment complexes and discover that yes, people actually do decorate for Christmas in this state.
We also had a couple of reindeer visit at work:
One of them was too busy eating Sophia alive to pose for a picture. And yes, that’s snow on the ground. Don’t worry, snowshoes were provided:
Last-minute flight change
I was originally scheduled to arrive in Philadelphia on the evening of Saturday, December 19th. On the 17th, my family warned me that a snowstorm was expected to hit on Saturday, and that I should probably change my flight to avoid the storm. Not wanting to take any risks, I changed my flight to the red eye on Friday night. This turned out to be a very good move.
White Christmas
The timing of my new flight was perfect, even though we had a delayed takeoff due to being overweight. It just started to snow as we got close to home from the airport, and we got to enjoy the rest of the snowfall relaxing inside. My original flight was diverted to Pittsburgh, which while in the same state, is not right next to Philadelphia. The next few days had very nice weather, with the fallen snow creating appropriate scenery for the season. Christmas Eve was an especially nice day, and while it rained on Christmas, there was still enough snow on the ground in the morning to make it a white Christmas.
Here’s a shot from the 21st:
In 2008, I said that I wanted to get a better shot of my Charlie Brown Christmas tree. I finally got around to it this season:
Note that it is now kept warm by both a fire and Linus’s blanket.
Speaking of fires.
I won’t make a “stuff I got” list, but here’s one gift I just have to show off:
Yes, that’s a shrink wrapped copy of Mosaic in a Box from Egghead Software. It was definitely the biggest surprise of this Christmas. Thanks, Brendan. Be sure to click on the images for the full resolution versions if you want to read about all the great features possible when you combine the 32-bit power of Windows 95 with the 28.8 kbps speed of CompuServe.
Speaking of technology, I was unable to convert either our window candles or tree lights to LEDs in 2009. The availability of good products is a bit lacking at this point, but we’ll see what Christmas 2010 brings. On the bright side, I got a chance to take this cool picture of good old-fashioned burning filament in a window reflection:
Telluride
Two of my favorite places to go on vacation are New Hampshire and Telluride. Just after we ran out of snow at home, we hopped on a plane bound for more snow. First stop: Lincoln, Nebraska. Plenty of snow there. I think this was my first time in Lincoln. It looked nice.
And then the next flight was to Telluride, where I’ve even seen snow in the summer. Here’s a look at the mountains as we flew in:
I’ve been skiing for almost 20 years now, and until this past trip, without a helmet. Back in March, I decided that I should finally get one, and a helmet is what I found under the tree on Christmas morning. I also got a ContourHD helmet camera. On our first day of skiing, I wasted no time in testing out both gifts, thanks to some completely unexpected airtime at the bottom of a hill. Here’s a video of the test:
The helmet worked pretty well. I landed on my head and walked away with a scraped chin and forehead as well as a sore thumb. The camera did its job too. It kept rolling… even as it rolled down the hill after becoming detached from my helmet on impact. To get an idea of just how far I flew, watch and listen carefully after the camera stops tumbling. First, you’ll hear my footsteps as I walk back to grab the camera. Then, once I have my camera, you can see how many more steps I have to take to get back to the point where my skis stopped. Even though the mount snapped apart during the fall, I was able to easily clip it right back into place. Unfortunately, while the camera is durable enough to handle a faceplant, it has trouble in the cold (a known issue). I was only able to record a few videos on the trip using that camera, which was disappointing, but VholdR will be repairing or replacing my camera before my next ski trip, so I have something to look forward to.
On New Year’s Day when it warmed up a bit, I brought the camera out for our last afternoon run. The terrain itself is a bit bleh (I prefer something with a few more trees) and it was overcast, but it was fun just to see that the camera was in fact capable of recording longer videos, so I could get a full run without it being split into multiple segments. I got a bit nervous toward the end though, and stopped the camera a few times to make sure I didn’t lose too much footage in case the switch froze up again.
Here’s part one:
Part two:
Last bit to the base of the gondola:
And then back up the gondola for the last leg to Mountain Village, featuring the tip of my nose:
Even though I don’t have many helmet-cam videos to share, I was able to capture some of the scenery with my trusty PowerShot:
And I took a short video at the top of the Revelation bowl using my new Flip camera. If you pause the video at about five seconds in and look at the center mountain peak, you may recognize it as “the mountain on the Coors can,” also known as Wilson Peak.
In addition to photos and videos, I also recorded a couple of GPS tracks using My Tracks for Android. You can check them out if you’d like: Revelation to Mountain Village, Afternoon Run. The straight segments are likely chairlift/gondola rides.
New Year’s
To celebrate New Year’s Eve in Telluride, they have a parade of skiers go down the mountain holding torches and then set off fireworks. It happens at about 6:30; so at midnight we watched the ball drop on TV just like everyone else, except on a delay. This is what it looks like:
Airport confusion
I actually got confused in an airport on the way back to California. Do you know how hard it is to get confused in an airport, a place perhaps best characterized by its navigational signage? It’s pretty difficult, but I did it at the Phoenix airport.
I arrived Terminal 4 (which I didn’t know at the time) on a US Airways flight. I checked the status of my next flight, operated by United, on my phone and saw that it was leaving from a gate in Terminal 2. I looked around and saw signs for A, B, and C gates, which I assumed were for terminals A, B, and C. I figured that the website was just wrong, and that Terminal 2 probably meant Terminal B. I checked the appropriate gate number in the B section and didn’t find my flight. In fact, I didn’t see any United flights anywhere in the B gates. I headed to the end of the terminal, where the security line was, and saw signs for the A and C gates. I looked out the windows across to both A and C, and still didn’t see any United planes sitting outside. I was really confused, and there was no indication that this whole area was actually known as “Terminal 4.” I looked up my flight on both United’s website and the airport’s website, assuming they wouldn’t reference the non-existant “Terminal 2,” but, they both insisted that I should be looking for Terminal 2.
Finally, I asked one of the electric cart drivers where the United flights were. He said that they were in Terminal 2, and to get there, I had to go past security, then go outside and look for Door 22 to get on the inter-terminal bus. After getting over the initial shock that I would have to go through the whole security process again just to change terminals, I headed out in search of Door 22. What I found however were doors with numbers much lower than 22, but labeled with signs for an airport bus. I went outside, and there was no clear indication of where a bus would stop. So, I went back in and asked at an information desk. I couldn’t believe I was actually asking for directions in an airport. They directed me upstairs (I was on the wrong level), where I was finally able to find Door 22 and the inter-terminal bus. After that things were pretty normal, only as if I had just arrived at the airport via a car, and not another flight. I don’t know of any other airport in America where you have to exit the secure area, then go through security again while changing domestic flights, even if they’re on different airlines in different terminals. It’s a good thing I had rescheduled my flights to have a long enough layover, but thanks to the crazy terminal-changing shenanigans I didn’t have time to get anything to eat.
Year-end summary
I’m not really sure the best way to pick highlights from 2009, but I’ll tell you a few things that come to mind as I write this. In my personal life, I’m happy that I started biking on a somewhat regular basis. I hope to do even more of this in 2010. At work, I’m glad that the whole video thing caught on and that Mike and Beah were able to move back to the East Coast without leaving Google.
2010
2010 will be a big wedding year for me. And by big, I mean it will be the first year that I will attend multiple weddings. Two cousins got engaged in 2009, and I’ll be attending their weddings in June and September. My “I’m busy being the camera guy” excuse is losing its effectiveness, so I should start practicing my dance moves now. 🙂
Other than that, I’m not too sure what the year will bring, but I’m looking forward to it.
Bonus
Try to guess which elements of this post were created by my new phone.
2 Last-minute gift ideas (from a geek, for anyone)
*Last-minute gifts*
It’s Christmas Eve. If you’re still looking for a last-minute gift and don’t want to go with the usual Amazon gift certificate, perhaps one of these suggestions can help.
1. Backup
You know that backups are important. Without backups, family photos, music libraries, and critical documents are one step away from being lost forever. And you may be the one who is called to try and save them. Save everyone a headache by making sure that your family’s data is safe. The easiest thing to to if you are only backing up one or two computers is to gift a subscription service such as Mozy or Carbonite. That way they have an automatic, offsite backup wherever their computers have an Internet connection. If your family uses several computers, those subscription fees can add up pretty quickly, so something like a Time Capsule is probably a better idea, and there’s a pretty good chance your local Apple Store is open on Christmas Eve (and there’s at least one open on Christmas.) Or if you still want an offsite solution, see if a Pogoplug works for you. Just make sure you set up something that backs up automatically.
2. Photo scanning
If your family has a box of negatives or slides sitting in an attic, a gift certificate (or box if you have time) to ScanCafe could be a great gift. Not only does having photos scanned provide a backup, it also means that with a digital copy, sharing and printing old photos becomes incredibly simple. For example, most of my parents’ wedding photos were never printed, probably because getting prints of all of the photos wasn’t affordable at the time. Once I finish getting them scanned, however, ordering a book of full-page photos using the services available today is something that will be very easy.
*Other ways you can help out over the holidays*
There was recently a post on the Google Blog describing something that many of us are familiar with: coming home for the holidays and providing technical support. That post mostly focused on making sure your family is running a modern browser, so I decided to add my take on some tasks you may wish to perform while you’re visiting family.
Internet access
Your family may know how to keep their OS and browser up to date, but what about router firmware? Make sure that’s current.
I also like to do a walk around the house while streaming live video (such as TWiT Live) and make sure that every room has a good wireless signal with sufficient bandwidth.
Finally, if your family has had the same ISP for a while, take a look and see if there’s room for improvement. Is the cable modem that came in a box with Excite@Home branding not serving up the full bandwidth that your family is paying for? Might be time to buy or lease a new model. And alternative providers such as FiOS may not have been available in your area last time you checked, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t now.
Contact management
There are a couple of things you can do to help manage a family member’s list of contacts: sync and de-dupe. Think about all the places your family member may access their contacts: desktop email client, web interface, and phone are pretty common. If you use a cloud-based service such as Gmail, keeping everything in sync is actually pretty easy. Check out instructions for syncing with your iPhone or Mac.
And when you have everything in sync, watch out for those duplicates that can quickly appear. I meant to do this while I was home for Thanksgiving, but I’m glad I put it off, because since then, an awesome new feature has been released which makes it super easy to consolidate a duplicate-riddled list of contacts. Procrastination pays.
OS updates
Both Snow Leopard and Windows 7 have been released since last Christmas. Do those major upgrades if necessary, but at least do the incremental updates that are available online (and train your family to respond to your OS’s automatic upgrade checks.)
Prepare for future support
One of the reasons that I don’t have a huge tech to-do list when I get home is that my family is pretty tech-savvy. But another reason is that I check in with them often via video chat, where I can easily take a look at their screens (and control their computers) from across the country. If you get your family set up with a VNC solution, you can cut down on trying to interpret what they mean by “the Internet disappeared” and save yourself from giving instructions like “Click on the… oh, man how do I describe the Chrome icon?” I personally use iChat with my family since it’s free and easy, but if you’re on Windows you might want to look into something like GoToMyPC or GoToAssist, which I’ve never actually used myself.
Have fun
If all you show your family is how to manage backups and stay updated, technology can seem pretty dull. Think of some cool things you can show off to your family, and they might be happy to have you take some time to explain what cool new stuff is available. Show off your smartphone if you have one. Maybe someone has never seen their house (or their childhood home) on Street View. Does your local newspaper or TV station have a website with an RSS feed? Introduce someone to a feed reader. Are they interested in a particular field of study? A university may have free lectures available on YouTube. Still paying for directory assistance? GOOG-411. Have a Kindle? Show that off. Anytime you reach for a gadget, consider giving a tour.
Did I miss a good gift or tech support suggestion? Add more in the comments.
A better ATM
I’m not super-thrilled with some changes to my Chase accounts in the past year, but I was impressed by their new “DepositFriendly” (according to the flyer there is no space) ATMs. The deal with these is that when you make a deposit, you just stick your cash or checks into the ATM, and it automatically calculates the total and deposits the appropriate amount to your account. You don’t even need to feed them in one at a time; it’ll accept a stack of up to 30 checks or 50 bills.
That means:
- No searching for envelopes
- No searching for a pen
- No deposit slips
- No math
- You get the geeky joy out of experiencing the wonder of OCR while getting money.
If you’re in my area want to try one out, the Chase at El Camino & Castro Street in Mountain View has the updated ATMs.
Arthritic irony
I grabbed a new pen from the supply cabinet today:
The package, however, frustrated me as I initially tried to open it without scissors. I hate tough packaging.
But this made me laugh:
I’m not a snowflake
Nelson: can’t think of yourself as a snowflake
[via IM]
Captioning photos using image recognition
I’ve been having a lot of fun with Google Goggles, an image search app for Android phones.
In my previous post, I included a few videos to quickly show off what it can do, but tonight I found a very practical use for the application. I’ve traveled to Europe a couple of times and taken plenty of pictures of famous landmarks, but I never got around to actually captioning them. I may have been able to recall where everything was immediately after the trip, but years later I don’t even know which country some of the photos (which aren’t geotagged) were taken in. Fortunately, one of the things Google Goggles is pretty good at recognizing is landmarks. Knowing this, I’ve been able to figure out where many of my pictures were taken simply by taking pictures of my pictures!
I recorded a video to show how this works. The landmark recognition bit begins about 4.5 minutes into the video.
Two new things to try with your Android phone
Google Goggles
This is straight out of a science fiction movie. Search the Android Market for Google Goggles and install it. It’s free. Once you have it installed, you can search just by taking a picture. Don’t know what that famous landmark is? Take a picture of it. Want to look up online deals on a product? Take a picture of it. Learn more about its current capabilities on the official site.
New version of Google Maps for mobile
This is also available in the Android Market. If you’ve already downloaded a previous version of Google Maps from the Market, you should see “Update available” if you click on the Downloads tab in the Market app. One new feature is called “What’s nearby?” which, as you’d expect, tells you what businesses are near a specific location. This version also introduces Google Maps for mobile Labs, which allows you to test new features. I’m currently trying out “Compass arrow.” You can learn more about this new version on the Google Lat Long Blog. And don’t forget that on Android you get free turn-by-turn navigation!
For those of you who want to see a quick demo of Goggles, I just took a few pictures of things from my desk. There’s no audio in the videos since I took them at work. 🙂
Update: I’ve written a new post about a use of Google Goggles.
Scanning 4,419 family photos
In August, I shipped off a box of negatives from our family photo collection to ScanCafe, a photo scanning service. I was a little nervous shipping irreplaceable memories to people I didn’t know, but a couple of my colleagues had successfully used the service and I really wanted to get the photos digitized.
For those of you unfamiliar with the service, here’s the basic process:
- Place an order with ScanCafe.
- Ship box of photos to ScanCafe.
- ScanCafe scans your photos and ships the originals and files back to you.
There are plenty of reviews of the service already (mostly positive), and here I’ll talk about my experience.
Ordering and Packing
Estimating the number of negatives is tough. We had many envelopes stuffed with negatives from many rolls, so I couldn’t just multiply a number by 24 or other standard number of exposures. Fortunately, you don’t really need an exact count at all; you’re just supposed to enter in some number so that ScanCafe can provide an estimated cost, which you pay 50% of before shipping. I estimated about 3,000 photos and ScanCafe ended up scanning 4,400.
Because I was nervous about putting everything in one box which was eventually going to be shipped internationally, I randomly divided our photos in half and only sent one half in with the first order. With everything packed, I printed off the shipping label. The label had a weight mentioned on it (I guess determined by the number of photos), so I hoped that the package wasn’t too heavy, and fortunately UPS didn’t complain.
Scanning/Timeline
ScanCafe does a pretty good job of giving updates on the status of the order, which I expect and appreciate. You don’t get to see the scans come in live or anything, but you know when your package has arrived in at the facility, when scanning has started, etc.
Based on the status updates collected in my email archives, here’s the timeline of events for scanning 4,400 photos:
August 10th – ScanCafe received package in Burlingame, CA.
August 24th – Originals received at imaging center. Images expected to be available for review by September 19th.
August 31st – Scanning commences.
September 22nd – Scans available for review.
September 27th – Order completed.
October 13th – Received tracking number.
October 20th – Originals and DVDs delivered.
Image Review and Checkout
Until this point, everything with ScanCafe was as good as I expected it to be based on the reviews, except for it taking a little longer than I thought it would. To be fair, though, they did scan thousands of photos, and I’d much rather wait longer than see a compromise in quality.
One of the nice things about ScanCafe is that you can actually choose to not buy up to half of your scans (you’ll still get the originals back), so they let you preview them all online before placing your order. I wonder if anyone takes advantage of this feature, because the site is excruciatingly slow when loading images. Even loading thumbnails and album lists felt like being on dialup. I’m guessing that the servers are located in India, so it would be nice if they moved to U.S. hosting. The “express checkout” option looked very tempting from the start.
The lack of speed wasn’t what bothered me the most. The site is confusing at this point. There is an option to organize the photos, but I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do. I’m also not sure about the free restoration that’s offered. I didn’t see it as an option, and wondered if it would be something that I chose after selecting which photos I wanted. I had no idea if this process was applied to my photos, as some images definitely looked unrestored in the gallery. Maybe it happens automatically after you choose your photos?
Even though it’s not required to organize your photos before you send them in, they will name the folders based on an labels or containers, which is helpful. I had a few labeled APS cartridges, but everything else was loose, so most of my folder names are things like “Bag 10.” They do label the physical bags/boxes if you didn’t. One funny thing I noticed is that whoever wrote my folder names wasn’t very familiar with the English language. For example, Christmas was written as Charstmas, Chartmas, Charestmas, and Chnstmer.
Delivery
After checkout, things didn’t move as quickly as I thought they would. It took two weeks before I received a tracking number for the return package. I guess they batch up the shipments between India and the U.S., which could explain the delay. The photos arrived in good condition along with the DVDs in full-size DVD cases. The 4,400 photos came in the form of over 50 GB of JPEGs spread across 13 DVDs. I’m in the process of uploading them all to Picasa Web Albums, which fortunately just lowered its storage costs! It would be great if there was a way to directly transfer them from ScanCafe to PWA, though. That’s my feature request.
Unresolved confusion
In the final receipt, there was a line for the optional “pro resolution” service that I selected during the initial order. However, I’m not sure how to interpret this:
Actual Deleted Selected 4419 0 2962
I was charged for the “Selected” amount. Does this mean that some of my scans weren’t delivered at pro resolution? I sent an email to ScanCafe asking about this on November 27th, which was forwarded to the imaging center on December 1st, when I was promised an answer within 48 hours. I have not heard back.
Update on December 6th: ScanCafe wrote back and said that this is a glitch in the displayed image count. All of my photos were scanned a pro resolution. Phew.
Update on December 7th: They emailed me again to inform me that the bug has been fixed.
Overall impression
I obviously had some issues with the website, but overall I’m happy with the convenience of the service and the quality of the scans. A second order is on its way.
One more thing
It snowed today in Pennsylvania. I wasn’t there to experience it, but thanks to ScanCafe, I can still show you what I look like in a snowsuit:
