Ripping a Wii Disc with a Mac

Like Chris says, "This will only work with backup copies of Wii Games, there is currently no support for the internal DVD drives that come standard in any Mac for reading original Wii discs."

How does Google Voice Work?

when people dials GVoice > Caller ID gets forwarded to Tracfone (?) > Tracfone can answer... if Tracfone doesn't pickup, GVoicemail picks up and records a message > GVoicemail then transcribes the message > GVoice then sends the transcription to Tracfone via SMS (longer messages are truncated into multiple SMS messages) & emails the message to kmatsueda@gmail.com

when people dial Tracfone > Caller ID is displayed > Tracfone can answer... if Tracfone doesn't pickup, Tracfone Voicemail picks up and records a message > Tracfone then displays a notice that a call was missed and that a voicemail was left... there is a charge to listen to the voicemail

when people SMS GVoice > SMS gets logged in GVoice & is forwarded to kmatsueda@gmail.com & is forwarded to Tracfone... replies from Tracfone are displayed as GVoice

when people SMS Tracfone > SMS notification appears on Tracfone... there is a charge to view the SMS message

AirStash: Wireless Flash Drive + Media Server

AirStash stores your movies, music, photos, and documents and wirelessly shares them with your phone, media player, netbook, tablet, computer, and more. Use AirStash like a USB flash drive to drag & drop the files you want to your SD card while charging the built-in lithium polymer battery, then unplug & play on all of your browser-enabled WiFi devices*.

If you know how to use a USB drive and a web browser, you know how to use AirStash. Once you own AirStash, every other USB flash drive will seem less evolved. (continues)

Encoding DVD's for the Digital Blue 664 Disney Mix Max Personal Tinkerbell Media Player (White)

Our neighbor recently bought a digital player for their 4-year old daughter and they wanted me to help them put a movie they have on her player for an upcoming trip.

1. Rip the DVD - I used RipIt since I've been having good luck with that application recently. I used to use MacTheRipper, but a number of recently released DVD's don't rip well with MTR.
2. Transcode the VOB's - I'm using Handbrake to make a near-DVD quality MP4 video file: H.264 encoder, original framerate, 2500 kbps, two-pass encoding w/ turbo first pass, AAC audio@48khz, 128 kbps, no subtitles (since they'll get burned on the final video), loose anamorphic output
3. Flip4Mac Studio Pro HD - this is a must using Mac OS 10.5.x, I tried ffmpegX, Handbrake, and VisualHub with no success: export using WMV 9 Standard, one pass (I wouldn't waste the time on two pass since the final image is too small to notice a difference) CBR, 384 kbits/sec, 220x124, 30 fps, from the advanced button: profile must be simple, audio must also be one pass CBR, 128 kbps, 48 khz, stereo, I ended up saving a custom profile in case I ever need to do this again
4. You can find instructions on the web to use Windows Media Encoder if you're using that OS, but it looked like a pain in the butt to get it to work. Good luck there.
5. Save to the Mix Max via USB - the final file weighted in at 319.2 MB

The player works well enough and the movie plays fine, but the image is really small at 220 px wide! Other than that, this was the quickest way to handle the movie.

What's on MY iPhone?

Lower Bar

• Phone
• Mail
• Calendar
• Safari
  

Page 1 - Utilities

• Messages
• Contacts
• Calculator
• Units
• iPod
• Notes
• 1Password
• Settings
• FAC
• App Store
• Clock
• Night Stand

Page 2 - Projects, File Managment, Databases, IM

• TSheets
• Toodledo
• Recorder
• Voice Memos
• Air Sharing
• Dropbox
• Bento
• iOwn
• Skype
• Echofon
• AIM
• Y! Messenger
• IM+ Lite
• Dictation
• VNC

Page 3 - Photography, TV, Music and Sound

• Camera
• Photos
• Picoli
• Darkslide
• 12seconds
• Sketches
• YouTube
• TiVo Mobile
• i.TV
• Now Playing
• PhoneFlicks
• iTunes
• Pandora
• Shazam
• WhiteNoise
• Effector

Page 4 - Mapping, Reading, Weather

• Maps
• Google Earth
• Locator
• Stocks
• StarmapPro
• MoonMapLite
• On the Grill
• SportsTap
• Instapaper
• NYTimes
• Stanza
• Kindle
• TWC
• State College Weather
• Weather
• eTextbooks

Page 5 - Entertainment

• Sudoku
• FlightControl
• Civ Rev
• Enigmo
• Hero of Sparta
• Monopoly Worldwide
• StoneLoops!
• Ocarina
• Flick Fishing
• Air Hockey
• Sol Free
• Tap Tap Revenge
• Moonlight lite
• Wild West
  

Using Toast and Viddler

I've got a number of TiVo recordings that I want to archive. Right now they are in the .tivo file format and I've used Toast to edit the recordings. I'm experimenting with exporting those files now and I'm using Toast to encode the videos for Apple TV. Toast will only allow for a max resolution of 480 which is fine with me. I selected "high" quality, but I don't know if that'll make a difference. I notice that the estimated file size is over 1 GB with a playback at over 2 Mbps (I think). I'm curious if the file will really be that big. Does the bitrate increase as the resolution decreases? I kind of doubt it. I need the files under 500 MB because they'll just take up too much storage space. So, that's what I'm testing and will just have to see how this ends up. I'll probably re-encode in Toast if the file is too large.

DYI 3-D Video

I saw an interesting episode of "Science of the Movies" on the making of 3-D movies. It got me to thinking about making my own movies. I was thinking of taking two flip cameras (I only have one FlipUltra HD) and mounting them so that their lenses are 2.5 inches apart to replicate the average occular distance. I was wondering if there was a way to create my own anaglyph movies. The part that is really holding me up is how to "publish the video." I'd probably need Final Cut Pro so that I could work with two video tracks (one red and one cyan). After that, I'm not sure. Would I be able to watch that on the iPhone, on my HDTV, on my computer? I'm just going to have to see :-)