GeekBrief.TV Formats
Small | Medium | Extra Large
Windows Media | Audio
Nokia N95 | Nokia N800 (Upload in progress)
In the early days of GBTV, we shot the show in front of a green screen. When we upgraded to pro equipment, we had to abandon chroma keying. Rob Thomas from Igniter Media invited us to shoot a show in his green screen studio, so did. We really miss the green screen!
Brief #275 is my Christmas Wishlist, but not for this Christmas. I already have everything I want this Christmas. This is my wishlist for 2008. From Apple, I wish for an Apple TV with a built-in DVD player. I also wish Steve Jobs would go to war against the media giants that have it out for him, but I’m not expecting much to come of that one. From Amazon.com, I wish for a second generation Kindle in time for next Christmas. From Drobo, I wish for a Drobo Pro so can I can have the same data protection at work that I have for my personal media. I also wish for a Drobo mini for travel. From G-Tech, I wish for a USB and Firewire hub in the same form factor as the G-Drive Mini. From Google, I wish for affordable and secure online storage, ASAP.
What are your wishes for 2008? Leave a comment.
Use promo code “CALI” at drobostore.com to get $50 off your Drobo order.
The Nokia 5300 Music Phone also sponsored this show. Tmobile.com, search for Nokia 5300
« GBTV #0274 | GeekBrief.TV
GBTV #0276 | GeekBrief.TV »
December 15th, 2007 at 12:40 am
Hey, Cali, loved the episode but I wanted to suggest something concerning the Kindle. I agree about wanting a second gen. Kindle, but I recently bought the Sony Digital Reader, and the design is beautiful. It looks and feels like a real book–enough that I accidentally try to turn a physical page. Maybe Leo and you can swap readers, and see how the SDR feels to you? It sadly still lacks a wifi connection, and I'm sure the SDR v.3 will include that. I also can confirm that after the Kindle was released, the Sony ebook store dropped prices to match and compete with Amazon's store. We should definately encourage the competition of these two machines to create the ultimate ebook gadget. What do you think? PS: I despise Sony (as a company), so admitting to liking one of their products is unorthodox for me. I was one of the unlucky customers who's Sony Viao exploded on.
December 15th, 2007 at 1:50 am
Great show Cali gracias (lol), I would like Apple to give the iphone more functionality on the lines of a blackberry, and more memory comparable to the ipod. User replaceable batteries for the iphone and ipod would be nice too. The ultimate iphone would be able to function as a phone, blackberry, tv remote, garage door opener, laser pointer basically a Swiss Army type iphone. Considering Apple charges for .MAC they could at least offer more storage then say hotmail or gmail.
December 15th, 2007 at 4:31 am
I have to add to your drobo wishlist… knock down the price :) And at least throw firewire on it. eSATA would be cool, but I have an iMac.. so I'm kind of screwed there. I don't really agree on a 2 drive drobo mini though. It would defeat a lot of the benefits of the drobo itself I think, mainly because you need two drives just to start any redundancy backup.. and physically, it's not very portable anyway. Google storage I would like to see, but I'm still very weary of online storage, mainly with the whole privacy concern. But what I want to see is google buy up the 700mhz spectrum and really push for an open access wifi solution that is affordable. I'd like to replace my cell phone and broadband connection with wifi+voip :)
December 15th, 2007 at 8:05 am
I agree with everything you said you want for the Drobo, but the thing I think that would be the best is if it would have an ethernet port to work as a network attached storage. I know I'd love it because it'd let me backup all my computers to one location without having to detatch and reattach it to everything I want to backup. The ideal combo for a "drobo NAS" would be Gig Ethernet, eSATA, Firewire, and USB, but if we had only 2, GigE and eSATA would be the best. Now if Apple would only make .Mac free…
December 15th, 2007 at 9:12 am
I agree with these comments, and would add wishes for (1.) bluetooth for ipods/iphones, (2.) Canadian iphones (still waiting…) and (3.) tablet macbook.
December 15th, 2007 at 9:37 am
Cali, Great show as always!! My wife wants to know where you got that Great Italian Girl t-shirt? Let us know :) Thanks and Happy Holidays! Tom
December 15th, 2007 at 10:54 am
My wish is simple, but maybe still too ambitious. I want 32 GB on the next iPhone. Maximum storage of 8 GB was really the deal killer for me when the first gen came out. Right now I’m maxing out my 16 GB Touch with just my music and a single iYule file. I’d really like to have more room for video, and I want to consolidate my iPod and phone into one unit. More storage is obviously going to happen, but I hope they go farther than just equaling what the Touch has today.
December 15th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
My understanding is that the company that created the Kindle has a new product already: http://www.polymervision.com/ProductsApplications... While it looks interesting, I think it still has a way to go to beat PDA/Cell phone combos for reading e-books.
December 15th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Hahaha Cali loved the Grassy Ass!! :D :D :D
December 15th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Your Drobo idea won't work the way drobo currently works. I am a SAN (Storage Area Network) admin, and can tell you that the redundancy drobo uses is most likely done with striping. All the information on the disks is written across a single drive, or across all drives equally, it costs you the space of one drive but makes for great redundancy. Now drobo says you can just plug in another drive of a larger size and instantly have more storage, which goes against normal raid features, but even though its quirky, its still probably a minimum of 3 drive setup. Just a last note. I have long been a windows user. Switched to Linux for the free and rode the wave all the way to a fortune 500 linux admin job. That being said, I am typing this on my Macbook Pro which I have owned for 5 days. I have to say, that this plus vmware fusion has to be the nisest system setup I have used in years, and for me thats saying something. Love the show keep up the good work.
December 15th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Actually the reason the drobo doesn't include 1394/eSATA is because of the read times involved. Having the faster firewire interface literally wouldn't increase speeds at all, so instead of adding the extra cost (to an already, frankly overpriced unit) they just stuck with usb 2.0 for maximum compatibility. I do think adding ethernet for the drobo to function as NAS would be a nice touch tho. Here's an excerpt from a review I found on newegg: "For all you guys there complaining that there is only USB read this. The reason there is no e-sata or fire wire is cause there is no point. Drobo does not transmit data fast enough where the bandwidth is a limiting factor. Drobos max read/write speed is about 30MB/s The theoretical max transfer rate for USB 2.0 is 60 MB/s If it had firewire or e-sata out there would be no speed increase."
December 15th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
LOL – don't be embarrassed. I have a friend who bastardizes gracias into grassy ass on a regular basis—and she's even latino herself!
December 16th, 2007 at 12:34 am
While I'm waiting on Kindle v2 _and_ the iPhone v2, it occurs to me that a Kindle-sized iPhone/Touch dock with a nice e-ink screen would function quite nicely as an e-book reader AND a cell phone and iPod without any of the redundancy of the Kindle (if you already have an iPhone). Which _might_ make the price under $150. I haven't looked at the iPhone specs to see if it can support video out (like the iPod). Better yet would be a dedicated interface that lets the phone push screen updates to the eInk screen. Of course, then Apple would need to partner with Amazon for the Kindle format books, or just go to war with them. And what would you call it? iBook's out, I suppose… I'd bet the aTV v2 will be here by Feb, but that's just the grapevine and my gut.
December 16th, 2007 at 5:18 am
There's still overhead on USB though. Even if Drobo was too slow to max out FW/eSATA, I would want it over (or a Network connection, I can't believe I forgot that) on it anyway just so I don't have yet another USB device.
December 16th, 2007 at 5:30 am
Seriously.. where do you get those cool t-shirts I would love to get some for my girlfriend~ =) Anyways, my wish is for Apple to open an Apple Store in China!! Keekeeekeekee Oh well, waiting for #276 to come =) Cali's so cool by the way~
December 16th, 2007 at 6:25 am
The ultimate wish: an OS that will run everyone's software. You know: games from Windows, graphics utilities from Mac, network apps from Linux. Regarding the green screen: it kind of looks like you were feather selected. There's a blurry transition between you and the screened area. The whites(?) are coming through inverted; they look solarised. If you think the Kindle is too much trouble, I'll gladly take it off your hands for free. :)
December 16th, 2007 at 11:36 am
my wish is that drobo would build a box that can hold six to eight sata drives and that it can stand alone on a home network
December 16th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Interesting wishes – I agree that the AppleTV needs more than just media extender features. It wouldbe nice if Amazon could say you are beta-testing the Kindle, but they can't, since they most likely sold it to you. The green screen system made the Kindle and G-Drive devices look red when you held them at certain angles.
December 17th, 2007 at 5:29 am
Hi Cali, I just had a few suggestions about green-screen work. I've worked in broadcast and web video for 16 years and I've done a lot of green-screen work in that time. 1. Don't bother using FCP's keyer. Try dvMatte Blast. We use it and it almost always looks great. It's pretty smart at picking up even fairly small bits of green – so no more blurred edges on the matte to try and keep it looking nice! The guy who created it is working on a new version shortly, which also will handle transparency (like glasses, etc). 2. Also, lighting is key (pardon the pun). Light the greenscreen skye as evenly as possible and expose it somewhere between 50 and 75% (if you're still using a Canon A1, turn on the exposure meter and get it to hit the middle). Make sure you use a back-light as it really helps to define your "outline" and separate the subject (you) from the background, and goes much further than you'd think in creating a pro look. We use a pop-up screen for most of our work, but at home we use some cotton chromkey fabric, and 4 x 5600Kelvin fluorescent tubes fixtures (two on the floor, two up top) that we got from a hardware store for about $150. Good luck!
December 17th, 2007 at 7:34 am
Ixnay ay eengray eenscray. Your home set is oh so much better – do you use your projector for that lighted background? (red lines) – great look – don't go so George Lucas on us! Otherwise – Yes, please go for dvMatte Blast! For those looking for cool t-shirts – OMG you can have those actual one's she's wearing from her ebay sales – I am glad I got out bid – I couldn't help myself, but don't think the wife would approve of my infatuation!
December 17th, 2007 at 8:11 am
"In the early days…" ha! You've been podcasting for what, 2 years now? Time flies when you're having fun. We watch a random old episode just for kicks every now and then. You guys have come a long way but sticking to your roots (fast talking, lots of info, short segments, and the bloopers) make for a great show! Taxes suck.
December 17th, 2007 at 10:22 am
Cali, did your N810 survive the fall? I have a friend who dropped his N800 and it apparently damaged the charging circuit.