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April 11, 2007

Skitch Screencast

A couple months ago, I mentioned the new (Mac-only) Skitch screen-capture and annotation app from Plasq. At the time, I wasn't able to register for their mailing list (the captcha issue is fixed now, so do head over to sign up), but I just got a sneak peak at the private beta, and it's everything I'd hoped it would be. Check out the screencast for a quick walkthrough and my initial impressions. In brief, I can think of many productive uses for it, but the time I waste playing with it will likely negate all of them.- Link to video download.

March 8, 2007

HOWTO: Tether Your Mac and T-Mobile Dash with Parallels

Click To Play

I have almost no complaints about the T-Mobile Dash. It's small, it's fun to use, and T-Mobile's data plans are cheap ($30 for unlimited EDGE+T-Mobile Hotspot). But it's got one annoying flaw: instead of Bluetooth Dialup Networking (DUN), the Dash uses Bluetooth LAN Access (kind of like a Wi-Fi access point, but for Bluetooth). For some reason, Mac OS X Tiger doesn't support this part of the Bluetooth standard (there are reports that earlier versions of Mac OS X could support this through the Bluetooth Serial Utility, but that's no longer part of Mac OS X, and I had no luck running the Panther version of the Bluetooth Serial Utility on my Intel Mac).

Sharing the Internet connection over USB is out of the question too. As best I can tell, the Mac expects USB networking devices to use something called CDC, but the Dash uses a Microsoft-specific protocol called RNDIS (I'm pretty sure I fumbled that explanation, so feel free to add more information in the comments). People who have gotten their hands on the unreleased updated to Windows Mobile 5 (called AKU 3.3) have reported that the devices work correctly with Mac OS X. But until that's released, you'll need a tricky hack to get this to work.

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March 6, 2007

Teach via IM with One-Way Video Chat

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Over at O'Reilly's Mac DevCenter, Erica Sadun points out a little-known (at least to me) feature in the current version of iChat:

By control-clicking (right-clicking) a buddy's name, a contextual menu pops up offering the option to invite that person to a one-way video chat. This means that they can watch your video but will not send video back to you in return.

How have I missed this option for so long? Though Erica wants to use this feature to iPodcast (stream via IM) movies and TV shows to her friends, I see this as a great opportunity for "hands-on" instruction you normally don't have access to when you're not physically in the same room with someone.

For example, crafts like knitting are notoriously hard to teach without visual cues, and even the most detailed books often suffer from their lack of moving pictures. When I learned to knit, I used books as a crutch, but actually learning required sitting next to my mother-in-law to see how it was done. Even now, when I hit a roadblock with a new technique, I need to wait till the next time we're together. But if we had a feature like this, we likely wouldn't have to wait. I could just "look over her shoulder" as she described what she was doing.

The most obvious benefit of one-way video is that it doesn't require the recipient to have a video camera on their end, but as Erica notes, for instructional content as with streaming movies, one-way video has another notable advantage over two-way video conferencing:

you don't have to watch the other person watching your video. You don't have to see them adjusting their hair, performing nasal maintenance, or any of the other unconscious things people do when they get involved in watching TV as opposed to engaging actively in a social situation.

The pedagogical opportunities for this feature are virtually limitless, and it will add a whole new dimension to tech support with the release of Mac OS X Leopard, when we finally get iChat Screen Sharing. - Link to video download.

February 28, 2007

Run Windows Apps Within Your Mac Desktop

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Since its beta release, Parallels has let Mac users run Windows simultaneously with Mac OS X on any Intel Mac, which is a real boon whenever you need that one Windows-specific program you just can't avoid. But the recent Official Update (free for all registered users of Parallels Desktop) offers the ability to bypass Windows altogether and get right to the apps you need. With Coherence mode, you can now launch and run Windows applications directly within your Mac desktop, just as you would any Mac app.

Even though the windows for your Windows applications are now divorced from the virtual Windows desktop in Coherence mode under Parallels, you'll still want to have your Windows virtual machine running before you launch any programs under Parallels. Otherwise, launching the application will take as long as launching Windows. But as long as Windows is running, launching a specific application is pretty snappy. Just click on its icon in the Dock, as you would any other program, and up it comes.

I've been testing out Word 2007 lately, which now lives right next to Word 2004 in my Dock. As you can see, opening it and getting straight to a new document takes no time at all, and I get my own Word 2007 window, making it look (almost) like a native Mac app. You can also access Windows applications that don't live in your dock by just clicking the Windows Start menu in what now effectively becomes a Windows-specific Dock just above your real Dock. - Link to video download.

February 23, 2007

Play Atari 2600 Games on Your Pocket PC or Smartphone

Stella for Windows CE recently added support for some of the newer Windows Mobile smartphones, including QVGA devices like the T-Mobile Dash. This screencast shows how to set it up. - Link to video download.

Related:

Stella: "A multi-platform Atari 2600 VCS emulator" - Link
Buy the Rainbow Invaders Cartridge - Link
Rainbow Invaders - Link
Retro Gaming Hacks - Link

February 13, 2007

Hear with Your Eyes: The McGurk Effect

In Hack #59 of their book Mind Hacks, Tom Stafford and Matt Webb use a classic illusion known as the McGurk Effect to show how our senses combine to completely change our ultimate experience of perception. Knowing what's going to happen doesn't even keep you from experiencing the illusion. It just weakens the effect a bit.

Let's try it out. Watch my lips as I make a few sounds:

[[McGurk Effect clip]]

Now, listen to just the audio portion from that clip:

[[audio clip]]

Besides perhaps being a little bit creepy, when you watched the video, I should have appeared to be saying "da da," but when you listen to the audio without the video, it's clear I'm saying "ba ba."

This illusion can't happen in real life. Like McGurk, I made it by splicing the audio of me saying "ba ba" over a video of me making a different sound: "ga ga." When you're not watching the video, you hear what I'm actually saying. But when you see my lips moving, the two bits of information clash. The position of a person's mouth is key in telling what sound someone is making, especially for distinguishing between speech sounds, called phonemes, like "ba," "ga," "pa," and "da," which are all made by popping air out.

Beyond a neat mind trick, the McGurk Effect has some practical uses as well. In Hack #57 of his book Digital Video Hacks, Josh Paul shows how to create the effect yourself, as I've done in this video, and use it in your own movies to fool your audience.

Here's an example of an applying the effect. Watch my lips as I mouth a couple words, while dubbing over a completely different phrase:

[[olive juice effect]]

What did I say? Could you tell that I was saying "olive juice" in the video, before editing it with a different audio track? Does it even matter?

This type of editing occurs frequently when feature films are shown shown on TV. Some words obviously are frowned upon by the FCC, and when movie houses edit them out, they generally try to fool you into believing the audio is original to the movie, or at least keep you from noticing the difference too much.

A common example is when someone shouts "Forget you!" onscreen. Though you know a different phrase was used in the original, the illusion is convincing enough to keep you from being distracted by the dubbing. But when the illusion is used with words that don't quite fit the context of the movie, the effect tends to break down. For example, when I hear John Goodman shout, "This is what happens when you meet a stranger in the Alps," I know the attempt has failed miserably. - Link to video download.

Resources:
Mind Hacks, by Tom Stafford and Matt Webb

Digital Video Hacks, by Josh Paul

Arnt Masso's McGurk Effect Video

Hearing with Your Eyes collection of McGurk Effect movies

February 10, 2007

Hackszine Screencast: Infect Your Computer on Purpose

Last week, Hackszine fielded a reader request to come up with a way to infect a computer without letting too much heck break loose. This procedure was so much fun that we decided to use it for our first Hackszine screencast. Check it out for a little surprise near the end: I managed to sneak the test malware past the virus protection, but it kicked in as soon as I tried to actually run it.