Gadget Wisdom

• Major League Baseball claims that Slingbox, the device that allows people to watch their home TV feed remotely over the internet, is illegal. Legal experts say users are not breaking any laws by using the device. The Slingbox, essentially…allows people to watch cable they’ve already paid for from another location. Cable or satellite prices can be high enough, especially when we have to buy 800 channels to get the three we actually want…now we have to pay because we want to see it when we aren’t at home?
• This spring, the XPower Powerpack Solar, a 10-amp battery with a 5-watt solar panel will hit shelves. The $169 device can run a laptop for 3 hours and a TV for 45 minutes. It takes 40 hours of sunshine to charge it…so it may not take off as much as the company hopes…although they expect people will charge it at home and top it off on the road…Green is in…is that green?
• Scientists at the University of Utah have succeeded in building small devices to turn heat into sound and then electricity. The devices could be used to produce electricity from waste heat in various industries. For the home, it could cool electronics, specifically the cooling of computers…it would also make them more energy efficient. A thermo-acoustic cooling device could cost about $100-200.
• The Free Software foundation has launched Playogg.com to promote awareness of the open-source multimedia format OGG as an alternative to MP3 and AAC, which are proprietary. Support for OGG on desktops is fully mature, with a variety of programs….hardware players are limited, although various ones do and several others can be hacked. We use OGG on some of our systems…

We recently started experimenting with QEMU. QEMU is a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer.

As an emulator, it can run operating systems and programs made for one machine on another. It currently can emulate the ARM processor(used in routers and other embedded network hardware), SPARC, PowerPC, MIPS, and more are coming.

As a virtualizer, it can create a virtual computer than can run a complete operating system on it. There is an optional drive available to enhance speed.

QEMU runs on the command-line under Windows and Linux-based computers, but pops up a window or a full-screen display for the operating system it is virtualizing. We have used QEMU to experiment and test bootable CDs. These CDs boot a complete operating system and are often used for diagnostic testing on computers.

You can find the latest version of QEMU for Windows here.

To try QEMU out, get a CD image of a bootable CD in iso format, and run the following command:

qemu -cdrom [iso filename] -boot d

That will boot whatever iso you want in a virtualized window.

We’ll have more on QEMU in the future, but it is a great way to experiment with Linux and other operating systems, if you want to try them without major alterations to your system. For more information, try the QEMU on Windows wiki.

We recently pulled out the Linksys Network Storage Link USB 2.0, aka the NSLU2, affectionately nicknamed the SLUG by enthusiasts. The NSLU2 is actually a Linux-based device, which runs SAMBA, a version of Windows file sharing and has been hacked to run other things.

The NSLU2 is not your only choice for hacking in this manner. You can use the Synology DS101, the Iomega NAS100D, the D-Link DSMG600, or any device that uses the ixp4xxx chipset with attached storage. However, the NSLU2 has the most following, having had an established community for a long time.

There are several options for replacement firmware for the NSLU2. There is Unslung, which allows you to expand the ffunctionality of the NSLU2 without using the original product functionality and compatibility with the original Linksys firmware. However, unlike the stock firmware, Unslung contains support for NTFS(The formatting used for Windows drives), card readers, USB hubs to add extra devices, and other enhancements. Other packages can be installed to a drive hooked into the Slug as it has limited memory and run, for example, a streaming media server.

Alternatives to Unslung include OpenSlug and Debian for the NSLU2, which remove the Linksys functionality in favor of a complete Linux system, and thus are not for the neophyte.

For more information on the various aspects of the NSLU2, visit its unofficial homepage/wiki. We just set one up as a file server at a remote location. It will, as soon as we finish setting up the software, not only backup files from the main server, but allow users at the second site to access local copies of their documents.

Lifehacker has a great feature on how to encrypt your web browsing with an SSH Socks Proxy.

1. You’ll need an SSH server. If you don’t have access or can’t get access through a web host, many of which allow this access, you can always run your own.
2. You’ll also need a client. The most popular one for Windows computer is Putty. It is simple to use.
3. Set up your SSH client to establish a tunnel between a local port and a port on the server.
4. Set up your Internet browser to use a Socks proxy.

Now, that seems a bit hard for some people. There are alternatives.

• Tor - Tor is a toolset for those who want to anonymize their internet usage.
• Routers - Various routers can run SSH and even a SOCKS proxy. Most of these are Linux-based routers running custom firmware. More information…

This question was put to us recently by an educator who wants to show certain Youtube videos in her classes but cannot rely on a working internet connection. These simple instructions are courtesy of Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Try vixy.net - it will allow you to download Youtube videos directly as a standard video file or even audio-only. It is somewhat limited in the formats though. We’d prefer an Xvid option. Xvid is an open-source alternative to DivX. 

For a free program you can install on a computer and run…try Super…

Finally, if you want to put them on a DVD, Amit offers a bit more advice(Although we generally go the Linux route) and instruction.

Ask Meta Filter provided some advice on legitimate ways to boost cellphone reception indoors. We thought we’d expound on it.

• The first and easiest solution is…if your cell phone doesn’t work where you want it to…perhaps a new provider is in order.
• Second of course is a passive antenna and some low-loss antenna cable. Of course, it does limit your mobility, as you want the antenna to not move and you want to move. You can also tie two antennas together via a low-loss antenna cable…which is a passive repeater
• Slate.com covered amplified repeaters, which can be prohibitively expensive for the frugal techie, costing several hundred dollars at least. However, if your cell phone is your primary phone, you might think it worth it.

With the recent decision stating that cell phone companies have to provide unlock codes for their phones, allowing all the functionality they’ve restricted to be restored, as well as transfer to another network, we thought it would be a good idea to give people a place to start.

PC Magazine presented this article on How to Unlock Your Phone. This includes a series of unlocking services, sites, etc. For free options, try Howardforums.com, a good forum for all things mobile phone…including hacks, reviews, advice, etc.

Of course, most of the unlocking services mentioned only work for GSM phone…the ones used on networks such as Cingular and T-Mobile. CDMA Phones, used by Sprint, Verizon, Alltel, etc, have to be individually authenticated by their networks. So, even if your existing provider lets you unlock the phone, your new provider will not add it to the list of approved phones on its network.

Most providers sell different versions of the same phones, using their own custom firmware(the software that operates the phone) which could be changed to the specific firmware for a different carrier. The carriers refuse to cooperate.

For those of you who use GSM phones, check out this ABC News article on the Best Unlocked Phones. Just bear in mind that without contract you will be paying more to secure them. Of course, that means no contract, which may be to your advantage.

The people at Crunchgear have a simple way of downloading YouTube videos for an Ipod or other non-internet connected device. Here is their advice.

As CNN reports, new copyright rules announced Wednesday allow cell phone owners to break software locks in order to use them with competing carriers.

The U.S. Copyright Office determined that consumers cannot enjoy full legal use of their cell phones because of software locks added by the providers block access to the phones’ programs. Since ownership of the cell phone is technically that of the customer, restricting the software means that they are putting an artificial limit on the hardware.

For those of you choosing to stay with your provider, the advantages come with features that are locked out. For example, many providers lock out the feature allowing you to transfer ringtones or pictures taken with a camera phone to a computer using a data cable so that they can charge you for transfer over the network. Ringtones and such are big business.

Knoppix is a distribution of Linux developed by Klaus Knopper. It is designed to be booted off of a CD or DVD. There are many customized versions of Knoppix designed for various different functions. It is useful to users not only for those who wish to run their system off of read-only media, but as part of an arsenal of tools for computer diagnostics.

Damn Small Linux is an even smaller distribution based on Knoppix. It is a 50MB mini desktop designed to be booted from a Mini-CD, a USB drive, or even within Windows. There is a larger variant available that is currently around 85mb for those who wish to take advantage of certain technologies that the smaller footprint does not allow.

KnoppMyth is the Linux equivalent of Windows Media Center Edition. It is a Knoppix distribution that attempts to automate the setup and usage of the MythTV DVR package. It can be used in a variety of ways. We’ll have more about MythTV in the future.

There are numerous other variants. But a plain vanilla Knoppix CD or DVD can mount Windows drives when the Windows OS is corrupted, resize partitions, and thus is a valuable tool. The graphical tools included as well as the standard command-line Linux tools can be a lifesaver.

Recently, a Windows XP computer failed to boot. We could not, no matter how we tried, get it to boot even to Windows XP Safe Mode. We booted the system with Knoppix, backed up the data over a network, then did a wipe, reinstall, and copied the data back.