May 2nd, 2008

Collection of open source P2P video software

The following is a directory of open source software that can be used for P2P video streaming.

Tribler

  • License – GPL (Open Source)
  • Language – Python
  • Operating systems – Any platform that supports Python
  • Supported multimedia – Windows Media video, NullSoft video, Theora video and Dirac video

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April 6th, 2008

Being in the IDF 2008 Shanghai

I was invited, among thousands of developers, to participate in the Intel Developers Forum this year held in Shanghai. Intel has proved us that he is very rich by holding a really big event in the whole building of the top conference center of Shanghai. Besides the extravagance I experienced, there were several lectures given by Intel fellows and scientists somehow rewarding to me I think. Here are a few pictures taken in the event.


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February 28th, 2008

Sony announces PS-LX300USB USB turntable, ready to fight next format war against 8-track

Apparently Sony found out they just don’t make ‘em like they used to and whipped up a belt-driven USB turntable: the PS-LX300USB. It’ll export your 33s and 45s through Sound Forge Audio Studio (bundled) and has its own pre-amp, but Sony, you’re living in the past, man. It’ll go for $150 next month — just sell off a Northern soul single or two to cover costs.

Origin: http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/26/sony-announces-ps-lx300usb-usb-turntable-ready-to-fight-next-fo/

July 1st, 2007

Gold price watcher extension for Firefox

For those who do online gold trading (like me), I made a tiny gold price watcher extension for Firefox, which displays current gold price (and the change) and USD to RMB exchange rate (useful to me ;-) )

The data is retrieved from Kitco.com and Bank of China and is refreshed every 3 minutes. Single clicking the status bar area will refresh the data. Double clicking will display the chart.

Click here to install it. If you have problem installing it directly, please right click the link and download the xpi file and drag-n-drop the file into your Firefox to get it installed.

June 4th, 2007

The User Interface of the upcoming Firefox 3

Firefox 3 is going to provide a wide range of improvements to performance, stability, and security, and it’s also going to present several new user facing features. Here is a quick recap of design work that’s been going on in the Mozilla community over the past few weeks for Firefox 3, along with information about how you can help contribute, by providing feedback on these designs, or creating your own UI mockups.

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June 2nd, 2007

YouTube for Apple TV uses H.264, not Flash

Earlier this week, Apple announced that YouTube.com videos would become available on the Apple TV after a software update that will be made available in June.

iLounge spoke with Apple’s Vice President of Worldwide Mac Hardware Marketing, David Moody, who provided more details about this upgrade.

According to Moody, not all of the Youtube catalog will be available on day one. Instead, “thousands of videos designed for Apple TV” will be available at launch, but that the remainder will become available by the fall. The reason for the delay is that Youtube will be encoding all of their videos into a “H.264 streaming-efficient compression format” specifically for the Apple TV. All of Youtube’s videos are currently encoded in Flash Video (FLV) format.

While no official reason is given for the mass transcoding of Youtube’s entire catalog, Macformat.co.uk believes it has to do with the iPhone.

As far as I know even now, Flash content per se might not play on the iPhone from day one. But Apple clearly doesn’t – indeed, shouldn’t – care, as YouTube is for many people the most critical site that uses Flash.

Indeed, both the iPod and iPhone can play H.264 encoded video, and so it seems the entire Youtube catalog may also become available to those devices later this year.

In an early iPhone FAQ, Jobs described this exact scenario:
Markoff: “Flash?”
Jobs: “Well, you might see that.”
Markoff: “What about YouTube–”
Jobs: “Yeah, YouTube—of course. But you don’t need to have Flash to show YouTube. All you need to do is deal with YouTube. And plus, we could get ‘em to up their video resolution at the same time, by using h.264 instead of the old codec.”