• update, 2010-02-03 – Tried it again this morning and had the same results. CPU spikes well over 100% and the UI is unusable.

John Gruber writes,

Seriously, this is the real deal — full-screen H.264 playback with no Flash, no browser plugins, full iPhone OS support, and sane CPU usage, better in every single regard than any video player ever made with Flash.

Have a look for yourself.

What I experienced is nothing like Gruber describes. I saw my browser lock up and my CPU usage spike and stay spiked while the video played. I sent it to Matthew and he experienced the same performance issues.

I look forward to better implementations and support from browsers. Better performance, real full screen, sharable implementations.

Fact. iMovie 09 will not recognize the original Flip video camera’s AVI files. For awhile I was doing a complicated conversion using QuickTime Pro that converted the files to DV files which caused some quality degradation. Not happy with that solution anymore I did some more Google searching and came across this thread. As it turns out Flip released a new version of their FlipShare software which allows you to export an exact copy of your videos in a format that iMovie can recognize!

Recently I have had some issues with some older files having a lock that couldn’t be removed using the info panel.

The issue was two fold, first I had to remove the lock. After searching around I found this command, “chflags -R nouchg.” I typed that into Terminal and dragged the file into the window which removed the lock so I could now at least open the file again.

The next issue was the fact that I was no longer the user allowed to edit the file. Using the info panel I had to add myself as a user and add the permissions “Read and Write.”

I had to do this for about 40 files one by one but at least I could edit the files again.

I own a Flip video camera and for what it is meant to do I like it. However once I get my videos off the camera I can not hear the audio anymore. I still haven’t found a solution on the internets and even their own website admits the problem, but their solution of “update your software” does not work for me nor does it seem to work for a number of others. The odd thing is, if I upload the video to YouTube or Flickr the audio track comes back.

What a pain!

update, after some more searching around I found this solution, which if you read the comments the author recommends removing old QuickTime video codecs and only leaving Perian installed. Worked for me!

After trying to rent two movies I realized there was trouble in paradise. When I try to sync via iTunes I get the following error.

The Apple TV “Apple TV” is not responding. Check that any firewall software running on this computer has been set to allow communication on port 3689.

A quick Google search reveals I am not the only one and there is no known solution. Thanks Apple!

Except its only for jail broken phones only… Here is another case where Apple is getting in the way of developers. See also: GPS, updates, demos. Why won’t they allow someone to write a video app?

Qik Launches Support For iPhones Running Old Firmware

I recently bought an iPhone, so recent that it was just three days before Apple released the 16 gb version.

When I first approached AT&T about exchanging it for the new version they they told me there was a 10% restocking fee. I waited so long to buy it…more on that some other day. Well I took it back today, ready to pay the 10% and the luck of the draw gave me a salesperson who did not charge me the fee! I don’t know if she just didn’t know any better or if she felt my pain. Regardless, I am a happy customer.

I love my iPhone, in fact this was posted from it… While I was pooping. Sweet.

I have never done much backing up, and I have never had any major failure of a critical drive. A good backup plan seems like a good thing for me to have. It seems as though I must be due for one.

Here is my plan, based on the advice found here.

A good backup plan must be redundant and automatic, therefore I am purchasing two hard drives, and two external enclosures. One 250gb which will back up my iMac’s internal drive, and one 500gb, which will back up my external media drive that holds my music and photo collection. I will do a SuperDuper backup each night of each drive, which will essentially mirror the drives. The idea being, that if my iMac’s drive fails on me, I can just add in the drive in the enclosure and pick up right where I left off.

This is in addition to backing up off site to Mozy and Time Machine.

Next month I will buy two more of the exact same two drives so I can do the exact same thing, only I will take them to work every month and switch. That way I always have a drive off site in case of a fire.

Again, this is addition to my off site backup to Mozy. Like I said, I am due for a major failure.