Ebook Week Day 2 : Undrm your Ebooks.
Nov 11If there is one thing that I hate with a passion, then it is DRM or Digital Rights Management. To explain it as simple as possible DRM is the technology used to screw over a paying customer. It is a form of copy protection that should prevent piracy of digital content but instead creates a paradoxical situation where it is more annoying for somebody who PAYED for said content vs anyone who chooses to pirate it.
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Control auto-starting applications on your Android device (or Android media center)
Jan 04The MK802 is just one example of Android “hopping over” to more different kinds of devices then the phones and tablets it was designed for. In essence the MK802 is a little computer that comes with a couple of USB ports and an HDMI port so you can hook it up to any TV/Monitor and instantly turn that machine into a ‘smartscreen’. With devices like the MK802, you can easily turn your television into a media center using applications like PLEX or Boxee who let your Android ‘stick’ become your media front end.
The only thing that is missing is that those applications should ‘start up’ automatically whenever your android device of choice boots. In order to make that work we found the free app called “Startup Manager” (how DO they come up with these original names).
You can either tweak your Android device by removing applications that run on startup (nice way to clean out some branded cruft) OR add some auto starting applications of your own. (perfect for launching VLC, Boxee or Plex at bootup).
Startup manager is free, does not require root and is available in the Android Marketplace.
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Play 1000 classic videogames in your browser (on ANY OS)
Jan 03When I see people standing in line for the next big new console game, I always think back of the good old days when I still had my Atari game console and played classic 8 bit games on a run down TV in a backroom. Thanks to the awesomeness of the internet, I can now do exactly that inside a browser window. So forget standing in the rain for the next GTA game (and possibly being robbed in the cue by a 14 year old ‘gangsta’ who wants your iPhone) .. I’m heading out to the Internet Archive. Over there some brilliant programmers have come up with a way to play classic console games right in your 2014-style browser. The “Console living room” as it is called does not only have the coolest cover picture in existence (Check out the neck beard on dad’s picture there) it ALSO has a full listing a tons of games that you could play on your Atari 2600 and 7800 , but also from some more obscure systems like the Colecovision, the Odyssey, the Astrocade and the very very first Sega.
Instead of having to install an emulator an jump through hoops .. all you need is to “click on the pick” and the game will launch in your browser. We haven’t tried this on mobile devices yet (but its worth a go) and so far results are awesome. You can go full screen if you want to. There is nothing like playing ET on a 52 inch High Dev television and waist a ridiculous amount of pixels, resolution and technological progress on a little alien that looks like a turn on the screen. Its a little tricky to find the right buttons on your keyboard, so thank the matrix there is also support for game pads (YES ! game pads and not those 500 gazillion button contraptions they call “controlers” these days ).
So ground your offspring and plop them in front of the television to teach them “How mom and dad Fragged bad guys back in da 80’s”. Finish that never ending argument with your older brother about “who was best at Desert Falcon” and rekindle hours of time devouring goodness on Kung Fu Master. Its GAME TIME !
Links.
Head on over to the Console living room project HERE.
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You know what to do ! Gtasks for Android.
Nov 15Getting things done can be a full time job. And I’m not talking about getting any work done. No ! I’m talking about the art of getting things done. Of constantly reorganising and optimising ones work flow, tools and strategies to achieve maximum efficiency in a minimal time span. Nothing better then being able to get a days work done in 4 hours .. so you can idly surf Reddit for the rest of the day. However , sometimes the quest in finding the right tools, takes up more time then the actual work you wish to get done. We have talked about some great apps in this field like Wunderlist, Evernote and Mindmeister, but when you are a real “I do everything in Gmail” kinda guy .. Wunderlist might not cut it for you. Enter Gtasks (for Android). One of the lesser know functionalities of Gmail (and Google Calendar) is the option to organise your tasks. But its all in the web interface. What if you want to go all Freddy Mercury and .. “break free” of your browser ? “GTasks is a simple and efficient android to do list app. It help you to organize your life in a simple and elegant way. It has both local mode and google account mode.” or so the website claims and .. it is correct. Simple in use, modest in functionality, brilliant in simplicity. It helps you to get things done on your droid-friendly device.
Gtasks is available from the Play Store.
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Ubuntu 12.04 : Mount that iPad : Play .Avi : No iTunes :-)
Sep 21We are very happy to line up one of our new guestbloggers on Knightwise.com. Its @McVries_ who kicks of the series with a great article on “sliding” from Ubuntu to IOS and hooking up your iPad .. without iTunes .. on a Linux machine.
Ubuntu 12.04 : Mount that iPad : Play .Avi : No iTunes 🙂
iTunes has some disadvantages, and one of them is a rather serious one for any linux user. It just isn’t available. Although some older versions are said to be Wine compatible I have a Windows virtual machine setup to be able to use iTunes (amongst other tasks). But since spotify I don’t sync that much music anymore and for my daily dose of podcasts I’ve dumped iTunes a long time ago. But what about movies? Well, i recently figured out that it’s a lot easier for an Ubuntu user to transfer them to an iPad then for, let’s say, a Mac or Windows user. How? Directly from the Desktop! And in a lot of cases you don’t even need to bother to convert it to a native iOs format. Een .avi or a .mkv plays very well.
The Recipe: An iOs device, in my case an iPad, one USB cable, your computer running Ubuntu and (for example) OPlayerHD Lite (Free as in beer in the appstore).
After connecting your iOs device you will see two mountpoints pop up in your filebrowser. One of them facilitates your photo import and the other one with a name like “Documents from {Username}” is the one we want now. This is the one that will help you ‘inject’ a file in almost any off the applications you have installed on your device. If you open it you’ll see something like this:
And OPlayer is in there as well. (Why do i use OPlayer? It supports .avi, mkv, and dvd-folders, locally and over the network). Double click it’s icon and finally you’ll find a folder called Documents and a folder “Inbox” within. Now just paste the movie you want to watch and watch it dive into your iPad at an enjoyable speed. Start the applicationon on the iPad, browse to the My Documents folder and Enjoy. Offline!
Some caveats: Copying a 8 GB Matroska (.mkv) would prove to be rather pointless, the iPad isn’t hefty enough i found. Take a more modest one, around 2 GB for 90 minutes and it seems to work well. Avi is no problem at all.
Links : oPlayerHDlite
A post by Guestblogger McVries http://www.mcvries.nl A blog about my experiences using an opensource OS while working as a Windows sysadmin, and being the techno advocate for the organization i work for.
@McVries_ Skeptic IT Manager with a liking for open Source.
