Archive

Posts Tagged ‘Antenna’

More On The iPhone GPS. WOW!

March 7th, 2008 Greg Smith No comments

Since the bluetooth on iPhone is reserved for only wireless headset they actually used WiFi to transmit data between the GPS receiver and iPhone. To make this possible the GPS receiver integrates a processor, Wi-Fi antenna, and even a microSD card slot to store the maps. The navigation software itself will also be accesssed via the WiFi GPS receiver using a web interface. The navigation software used and customized for LocoGPS is iGO 8.

Impressive young Skywalker, Hopefully they will ditch the web interface now that the SDK is available. Hopefully Apple opens up the bluetooth interface so this sort of overdone interface isn’t needed.

Categories: iPhone Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

HD Antennas

April 29th, 2007 Greg Smith Comments off

hdantennaAn AP article talks about the rise of the antenna with HD TVs. I’ve set up several HD TVs for people and have been impressed with how well normal rabbit ears work to get a HD signal where it did such a crappy job getting a analog signal.

The article also has a quote from a DirecTV persons stating that their signal is better than anything else even though they compress the signals. I have Dish Network (which does similar things). I’m not complaining about their video quality, it’s very good. Sometimes you can tell that the video quality is different. Compression artifacts in fast movement for example, where you dont normally see that on the over the air signals.

Even if you have cable or satellite, I always recommend getting a over the air antenna to receive local channels. Over the air digital TV is that good.

Categories: Home Improvement And Automation Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

iPod, iPod, iPod

June 17th, 2004 Greg Smith 2 comments

Steve jobs has spoken about the future of the iPod. There is an article by David Pogue from January ‘04 and one more recent with Walt Mossberg in which he talks about the future of the iPod.

Per Steve Jobs: there will not be an video iPod because no one wants to watch a video on a little screen. I largely agree with that. There also a lot of difference between how the RIAA works and how the MPAA works in distributions, you can get your movies a half dozen different ways. Music has really only had 2 ways, radio and CDs. The iPod and ITMS are just adding a badly needed distribution method whereas there’s not much demand for that on the movie size. OK, I can agree with all of that.

It looks like the iPod is Apple’s PDA, which is disappointing. Though I wasn’t really ever expecting a real PDA (I’d sure like to get my hands on the prototype). Steve says that 90% of the people who do use them only use them for getting information out them and not putting it in. I guess I’m part of the minority because I use mine for data input as much as anything else. He also says that the cell phone and PDA are going to merge, and they already are doing that. But they have a ways to go before I’m interested in such a device.

One thing he didn’t talk about is what is shaping up to be the next trend for the iPod: Pirate Radio. There’s a hack for the Griffin iTrip to add an amplified antenna so you can broadcast your tunes at a much farther distance (against FCC rules of course). Now they just need to add a microphone to the iTrip and you have your own mobile radio station.

I’m looking forward to the next version, this 5GB is getting old. 

Categories: Albuquerque, iPod + iTunes Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,