Hosting my pictures in the cloud: Google Storage

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

I finally did it: ordered 20 gigabyte of Google Storage to store my pictures in the cloud. I need to pay 5 dollar every year. A real bargain if you ask me. I wished to upgrade my quota because the free gigabyte everybody gets on Picasa Web was getting full. My pictures are stored on my mac and are backuped by Time Machine. So a solution to safeguard my pictures in case of a real catastrophy that destroys both the mac and the backup was not in place yet. With the extra gigabytes on Google storage, I now can store an extra copy in the cloud. It's not only an extra safety for the storage but comes in very handy because of the convience of the Picasa tool and Picasaweb website for sharing pictures.

My workflow is now as follows:

• Copy the pictures from my digital camera (currently a Canon Ixus 300 HS) to my mac with Iphoto. Iphoto puts the pictures into new events (= pictures taken at the same time of the day)
• Then I select the pictures I like and put them into an album of Iphoto.
• Next I export the album on Picasa Web using Picasa Web Albums Uploader, selecting "Actual Size" so that it archives the original files in the cloud. This may take a bit longer for uploading but will save the day when all my pictures disappear from my mac and backup.

If I manage to fill up the 20 Gigabyte, it can upgrade to 80 GByte/ year for 20 dollar/year. So that's save for the future ;-)

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Wifi on steriods in the USA

While all news is currently alloted to the presidential campaign and the election of Barack Obama, on Tuesday 4 November another important vote was casted. The American regulator of the airwaves, FCC (Federal Communications Commission), voted 5-0 for the use of the white spaces between the television channels. Current wifi equipment makes use of the 2,4 GHz band (or the 5GHz band for more modern equipment supporting 802.11a/n, for example Apple Airport Basestation Extreme). The new vote of the FCC means that new wifi equipment will be able to use the unused white space between the channels alloted to TV. Why is this important ? The reason is that the TV spectrum has better characteristics for in home use. The UHF band, used for televison distribution, spans from 300MHz upto 3GHz. Lower frequencies have larger wavelength. Therefore they propagate better trough walls and other obstacles typically encountered in urban environments. It boils down that using the white space frequencies will lower the cost for providing ubiquitous wireless networks. Hopefully we will see more wide area wifi networks that provide free or cheap internet access in the near future.

More info:

• A vote for broadband in the "white spaces", Official Google Blog


• Open skies for white space broadband as FCC gives thumbs up, Ars technica


• Google’s Election-Day Victory: FCC Approves Unlicensed Use Of “White Spaces” Spectrum, Techcrunch


• Simply Explained, Cartoon by Geek and Poke


• FCC okays white space spectrum for wireless service, Telecom Magazine (thx, Kris for the tip)

QR codes for mobile tagging

A "Quick Response" or QR code is an image that can be decoded into an text. It's like a two-dimensional barcode. Here's an example:

Scanning this picture resolves into the URL of this blog: http://castfortwo.blogspot.com .

This kind of pictures are typically used for tagging. Add the QR code picture to a thing, take a picture of the thing, decode the picture on the thing and there's the text. For example, a link to a website with product information.
You can make your QR code yourself here : http://qrcode.kaywa.com/

Using the Google Chart API, you can also generate QR codes. The URL

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=300x300&alt;cht=qr&alt;chl=Hello|World

generates a QR code for "Hello World":


Changing the parameter chl to the URL of this blog:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=300x300&alt;cht=qr&alt;chl=http://castfortwo.blogspot.com/

gives:


Every BBC programme has also an QR code. Just add /qrcode to the URL.
For example, the URL of the Top Gear programme is:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mj59
Adding /qrcode gives:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mj59/qrcode

which render to:


There are several free applications on the iphone that can decode QR codes:

• Barcode


• NeoReader


• iDecode


• 2D Sense

Several other mobile phones have such application to.

The BBC has even succeeded in tampering the QR code for the bbb.co.uk/programes URL such that the BBC text is clearly readable: