Category: Technology

I am quite excited about adding a Google map to my site. That way I could show where I have travelled in the past. For this post I tried to simply copy the code from my Picasa Web Album to this blog. That did not work though. I had to take a snapshot of the little map in my gallery – far from what I had in mind. Of course, I may not always have photos uploaded to Google either. In other words I will have to provide coordinates to build the map.

The documentation on Google’s pages for their API is pretty good. However, to get the coordinates for all of one’s trips organized it would be nice to auto-generate the JavaScript code from a database. Anyone have an easy-to-use way to do this, leave a comment, pleeease.

There are few things that are as rewarding as returning from a vacation and going through the new photos you’ve taken. It means reliving the past few weeks and starting to digest all the new impressions. You also get to see the results of your photographic experiments. Everything from ISO settings to shutter speed comes under the microscope… But what are all the steps you should be taking when you get back to make the most out of your pictures? Here are a few ideas.

• Copy all memory card contents to the computer (1 folder per card)
• Backup all folders to a CD or DVD (raw data)
• Fix the EXIF date and time if necessary (time zone adjustment)
• Rotate pictures with Irfan’s lossless JPEG transformation (optional)
• Import pictures into Picasa (or other image library app)
• Delete junk pictures
• Crop, straighten, fix red eyes at will
• Mark your favorite photos or put them into a special collection
• Add captions to the top photos
• Export the top photos for web use (800 x 600 pixels)
• Upload photos to a gallery & inform family and friends
• Backup the folder with the edited pictures to DVD (final)

That seems to do the trick for me. It’s a lot of work but those digital memories are well worth it, I’d say.

I don’t get to write much these days, I guess. Anyways, here’s what happened with the streaming business: Finally I gave in and dropped my scepticism about Apple products and purchased the Airport Express. I liked it ok at first: installation was a breeze but I couldn’t get the remote speakers and the computer to produce sound at the same time – bummer! I thought maybe it is only a feature on a Mac and with a PC I would be out of luck.

Then, I found a firmware update for the airport hidden on the Apple website. Once I upgraded the little toy everything worked as expected: both sets of speakers playing music simultaneously – and I mean simultaneously. When you are in between rooms you can simply hear no delay on either end. So, that was a good experience in the end.

During the hot days here in Cologne my Claxan multi-purpose server appliance started acting weird on me. It didn’t hold a connection with the internet for more than 5 minutes. That was enough of a reason to downgrade. I retired the CL-SA113 and went for a plain vanilla setup with the Airport Express. Consequently, my 300GB web space / NAS is sitting on the shelf and I need to look for new solutions…

One of the things that I simply have to get my hands on in the near future is a streaming audio device. The idea to stream music wirelessly from one room into the other seems very appealing. So, I started doing my research and I came up with a few very interesting toys.

The Squeezebox (slimdevices.com) is a high-quality device that plays internet radio without the need for a computer. It uses an open source server application and has modern day wireless security built in. Not a bad choice, I’d say.

Another candidate would be the Roku SoundBridge Radio (rokulabs.com). It plays audio streams, music off of SD cards and even has an alarm clock built in. What I did not like was the fact that it does not play music from the iTunes music store. Maybe they’ll fix that in the near future…?

One of the cheaper solutions is Apple’s Airport Express (apple.com). It simply plays back the same music that is playing on a computer in another room. It is a proprietary solution and works with iTunes only. I do have to say though that Apple’s software player is growing on me. Therefore, this is definitely an option.
I’ll let you know what the decision is in the end.