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Posts Tagged ‘Computer’

Light Touch – any flat surface becomes a computer

Thursday, January 7th, 2010
Light Touch

Light Touch by Light Blue Optics

OK, when this hits the consumer market I’m getting one.  I think this is one of the coolest things to come out in a long time.

Created by Light Blue Optics, this interactive projector works by detecting your finger placement and responds to your touches on any flat surface. It sports a 10 inch screen (same as many newer netbooks) and has full color laser projection.

Also included are features like WiFi, Video IN, built in speakers, headphone jack, and micro USB.

Website Link: http://lightblueoptics.com/products/light-touch/

Imagine going in to a coffee shop, setting the Light Touch down, and the table becomes your interactive computer screen. Your kitchen table could turn into a personal finance workspace. Watch a movie on the hood of your car. Or edit video clips using your bedroom wall. The possibilities are endless.

I really like the idea of leaving behind the bulky laptops and desktops we’ver been using for years.  This may not be the next huge technological evolution for computers, but I think we’re getting closer. This is at least a step in the right direction. While most companies are focussed on the need for more cool hardare, needing LESS hardware (no keyboard, mouse, or monitor) is actually a refreshing change.

One thing they didn’t explore on their website is the possibility that these devices could interact with each other.  Perhaps the devices would behave differently if the image from another device was detected. This could allow for security verifications, sharing profile information, granting privileges, etc.

Or what if this thing (now were into speculation) could see barcodes and instantly take you to the company’s website, or ebay, or youtube, or amazon, or wordpress and show related content.. I know we already have barcode scanners, but this could take that idea to a new level.

Right now the Light tough by Light Blue Optics runs Windows CE as it’s operating system and also has Adobe Flash Lite. So out of the box it is capable of doing some amazing things. Games, video, photos, office programs, email, social networking, web browsing, etc. 

Although I haven’t had hands on experience with this yet, it has sparked my imagination and so I think it is on it’s way to being a successful product.  We’ll see.

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Posted in Cool New Gadgets, Product Reviews | No Comments »

The N game – The game that incarcerated my concentration

Monday, January 4th, 2010

The N Game

This game could have been created in the 80s.  The graphics are super simple. The game play is easy to learn. And yet it’s challenging enough to keep you enraptured for hours at a time.  The N-game (sometimes called N+) is simply amazing.

Remember “LINE RIDER”?  Yeah, this is sort of like that game in many respects. Simple yet adictive.

Now I’m not someone who plays a lot of computer games.  I find them a waste of time most of the time. Occasionally I will play a little Halo or Star Wars with my oldest son. Sometimes I spend some time with my 2nd son playing racing or flying. But in general I just can’t seem to find the time when I’m not trying to be ‘productive’.

Enter “The N-Game”. My son started playing this a couple of weeks ago and I though it was pretty funny to watch. When the little stick figure guy dies he sprays into little tiny pieces.  He can jump super high and runs very fast for his size.  And the playing arena is all done on one screen.

So I watched for a while and then one day said “Hey, let me try that.” That’s all it took. I was hooked. For the first time since college my wife will occasionally come into the room and catch me playing, to my slight embarrassment. But I just can’t help myself. It’s just so fun.

Plus the N-game is available for a bunch of different platforms.  X-box, PSP, and my favorite, the PC web browser. It is a flash-based game that plays with any internet connection.  (It may be available for more systems, but these are the ones I know about).

PLAY IT HERE: http://www.madgravityradio.com/ngame.html 

…THEN BOOKMARK IT!  You’ll need later. :)  

I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.
Let me know what you think. Comment below.

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Posted in Games, General Living, Product Reviews | No Comments »

Combine several VOB files into one

Sunday, January 3rd, 2010

Star Trek

First of all… What is a VOB file and why should you care? Right?

VOB is the default file type for standard movie DVDs. More detailed information here at Wikipedia. If you want to back-up a DVD onto your computer, you will immediately come in contact with VOB files.

So my son gets a PSP (Play Station Portable) for Christmas and right away wants to put movies on it to watch by himself. So I say “Fine, we have  a bunch of movies here that I can transfer to the PSP.”  I grab a DVD off the shelf and stick it in the computer. Then I grab one of my handy dandy conversion tools and get to work.

  • DVDDecrypter (Download Here)
    • I first tried DVDDecrypter because this program simply transfers the raw DVD files (VOBs) onto the computer without compressing them or changing them in any way.  But that didn’t work for this particular DVD. 
  • DVD Shrink (Download Here)
    • Then I try DVDShrink because it does a good job transferring DVDs also. It worked. The whole DVD, all the VOB files, were transferred successfully to the hard drive.  But OOPS, I forgot to check the little box that says “Make one big huge VOB file from the DVD”. So instead the movie was chopped into 5 pieces, each one with it’s own VOB file.
      • DVDShrink is usually used to compress a full movie from a double layer disc (up to 8gb) so it will fit  onto a regular DVD (4.7 gb). And it does this very well. But in my case I didn’t need compression, just file transfer.
  • AVS File Converters (Download here)
    • I almost always use AVS File Converter to convert the VOBs into other formats, like AVI, MP4, MPG, MOV, FLV, etc.  It does a great job and has a very easy to use interface.  Problem is, if I try to convert the DVD files as they are, I’ll have 5 little movies. That won’t do. I need to combine them into one big VOB.

Come to find out… WIndows has a built-in VOB combiner. And it’s easy to use.   Just follow these instructions.

  1. Go to: Start > Run, Then type Cmd (this opens a DOS window)
  2. Type: cd \Videofiles(“Videofiles” being the folder where decrypter saved your VOB files. you’ll need to navigate to the location YOUR files are located.)
  3. Then type: copy /b vts_01_1.vob + vts_01_2.vob + vts_01_3.vob + vts_01_4.vob new.vob
    1. Be sure to include each VOB file you’re wanting to combine and in the order you want them to play.
    2. The very last file in the sequence (in this case “new.vob”) is the name of the combined file you want to create.
  4. new.vob is now 1 VOB file of the movie.

I then used AVS to easily convert to a PSP compliant format and copied it to the memory stick that my son uses. 

This whole process ended up taking about 2 hours. But I think I could knock a bunch of time off that now that I know what I’m doing.  For example, in the process I found out that AVS will convert the entire movie directly from the DVD. So, assuming there wasn’t any DVD encryption to deal with, that right there could have saved a bunch of steps.  In my case the DVD WAS encrypted, so I would have needed DVDShrink anyway.

Hope this helps SOMEBODY out there.  If you have any other solutions for this problem, please comment below.

Inspiration for this post found here: http://forums.snapstream.com/vb/beyond-media-user-user-troubleshooting-support-forum/38077-multiple-vobs-combining-into-one-file.html

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Posted in General Living, How To, Movies and Video, Programming, Tips and Tricks | No Comments »