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The best way to contact me is thought the contact form at the top of this page (or just click here).

Some of the photos from Respect 2008 can be found at MRDJ’s MySpace site, as I was there doing the photography for him.

Notice: If you crash your car/injure yourself/land in a lake/etc because you were trying the idea below out, it’s not my fault.

The last couple times I drove down from Everett to Tacoma, I broadcast the drive from my car. There was really no point to this except to see if I could do it. I am going to share with you today the secrets on how to run live video stream on the go!

Hardware Basics: Needs

Before we get into the details, let me list some of the must have items you’ll need to pull this off:

• A laptop or carputer with a decent amount of power (depending on how interactive you want to be)
• An external webcam (I like the Xbox Live camera for this)
• Mobile internet (Anything but EDGE)
• Power inverter (trust me, you’ll need it)

The above four items are the bare minimum you’ll need in order to stream video on the go. Before my recent laptop upgrade, I used an Inspiron 600m (old) which allowed me to stream basic video. Anything more caused the system to crawl. Here is my hardware setup:

You can start streaming the basic raw feed right from your webcam with the above hardware and an account with a video streaming service like uStream or Mogulus (note: Mogulus is not very friendly with low end hardware). But basics is boring, and this article would already be over.

Hardware Basics: Internet

To actually stream your video, you’ll need an internet service that works on the road. No you can’t hack your wireless router to give you a signal on the road.

All the big mobile internet services offered by cell phone providers are going to offer you around 5GB of bandwidth a month. While the cap is small, it is highly unlikely you are going to hit the cap while streaming video — unless you decide to stream every day from your mobile internet connection and not jump over to WiFi when it is an option.

For my mobile internet, I chose Sprint (5GB/mo data cap — $60/mo). The broadband card is small, has a built in GPS chip, has a spot for an external antenna, and doubles as a memory stick when you insert a Micro-SD card in it.

The GPS in this chip is nearly flawless outdoors in my car. In my apartment, not so much. As I write this, the GPS just told me (via Google Earth) that I somehow jumped from my apartment, past work (I live right across the street from work), and landed over near Interstate 5. It’s not like I really need to know the GPS coordinates for my apartment, though.

Software Selections: Text/Effects/Other

Once you have your hardware figured out, it’s time to move on to software selections. If you’re interested in adding special effects, text, or other data into your video stream, you’ll need an extra program to help manage your video.

There are various applications out there to handle the video coming from your webcam and you are welcome to test run them all. If you want a program that is guaranteed to give you results, I recommend trying WebcamMax (Win 2000/XP/Vista 32bit - $29.95). This program pretty much has everything - Picture in Picture, text, special effects, and doodling (do not doodle and drive!). You could easily overlay your own custom logo, greeting text, video clip, or another application with the features built into WebcamMax.

Software Selections: GPS

If you want to add an extra level of data to your live video stream, why not go with a live view of your location in Google Earth? It looks neat and gives people an idea (keep the Google Earth window small so it stays an idea and not an exact point) of where you’re at.

So what is needed to pull this off? Well you already have your GPS built into the mobile broadband card and WebcamMax. The only two missing items are Google Earth and Earth Bridge.

You hopefully have an idea of what Google Earth is and maybe even have it installed on your computer. It is highly likely that the version of Google Earth you downloaded does not support GPS out of the box (the free version doesn’t). And even if it does, the implementation is limited. This is where Earth Bridge steps in.

Earth Bridge (free) is an application “designed to bridge the gap between Google Earth and your GPS receiver”. With this tool you have the ability to “see your location on Google Earth in real-time and easily control your view”.

Integration between your GPS and Google Earth is really a snap with Earth Bridge. All you have to do is plug your GPS/mobile broadband card in, activate the GPS feature (if using mobile broadband card), and tell Earth Bridge where to look for the GPS data (if using Sprint, it will tell you the COM port to look at). All you have to do from there is tell Earth Bridge to start sending the data over to Google Earth. Within seconds you will see Google Earth begin its desent on the Earth as it zooms in on your location in the map.

With Earth Bridge and Google Earth setup, you can stream that data as a Picture in Picture window via WebcamMax. Just enable PnP, change the mode to “Specific Area”, and move/adjust the selection box around your Google Earth window (but make sure to get the window borders outside the selection area). I would also recommend keeping your Google Earth window small (maybe 400px X 200px) so that your exact location isn’t clear as day. Unless you prefer that, of course.

Video Streaming

As mentioned earlier, there are a couple of options for streaming your video on the internet. Feel free to try some of the various services out there, but make sure you try uStream. Why? The window that opens up to stream video is nice and compact, it supports IRC chat, and can handle large amounts of viewers. I am in no way saying other video services don’t support these, only that I have tried only a few services and decided to settle with uStream at this time.

There really isn’t much to getting this going (create account, open up stream window, select webcam, start stream), so I’m not doing to go into extreme detail. uStream does allow you to chat with those who are watching your feed, but I wouldn’t suggest reaching over to your laptop to type while you’re on the freeway going 70+ MPH. If you do decide to be negligent in driving, please record your stream (there is an option in uStream) so the internet can remind you how dumb that was.

Suggestions and the Future

If you decide to try this out and want people to watch your stream, remember that there are now other eyes on the road in your car. If you do something stupid, they will see it. If you’re speeding and have Earth Bridge setup with the default settings, it will broadcast your speed (with a -/+ 5MPH variance I have found).

I am also looking into a way for you to safely communicate to your video viewers as if they were passengers in the car. uStream supports IRC chat, so all it should require is a plugin for one of the various IRC clients that can perform text to speech. I’ll be sure to update this post if I find a solid way of performing that.

Update: Looks like mIRC has text to speech built right into the application. Neat!

Stay safe on the road!

TechCrunch recently wrote about a site called Skydeck, calling it “a very basic service that marries your address book to your cell phone bill so you can see your real social network based on who you call the most”.

Their article goes into other topics such as APIs, but I was mainly interested in the core service itself (for now - I always seem to get occupied by APIs). As it was a closed beta, I had to sign up and wait for an invite code. Thankfully they seem eager to get more people using it, as I had one the next day.

Once I was registered on their site and provided the details on how to access my cell phone’s online account (that data is stored in your browser and never given to Skydeck directly), the service began importing all of my wireless phone bills through a add-on I had to install in Firefox. Due to a glitch with the add-on, I was able to watch it go to each wireless bill and open it for reading and importing. While that was not their intention, it was interesting to see.

The add-on Skydeck installs is a toolbar. I was initially not happy about having another toolbar thrown in my face, but the data it provides could be potentially useful for the heavy cell phone users. I’ll never have a use for it since my cell phone tends to see more data useage, but here is a screenshot of my toolbar:

Skydeck's Firefox Addon Toolbar

After all my wireless data was loaded, I was presented with a screen listing nearly every phone call I’ve ever made with my cell phone provider. According to them, I’ve spent a total of 8,192 minutes talking on the phone. I’m sure that’s a small number compared to cell phone addicts (like my sister).

I was also presented with a really nice search feature — something you don’t get from your wireless provider. Using their advanced search, I am able to query my call logs in a very precise manner ranging from name, incoming/outgoing call, call/sms, number dialed, date range, what bill it was on, call duration, and call charge. Doesn’t sound like they missed a thing.

Another extremely useful feature is the Address Book. If you don’t have one already on your computer or at another website (such as Plaxo), this will take time to build up. Thankfully I have the Address Book that my iPhone syncs to the OS X Address Book, so I just had to export that data as a vCard and import it directly into Skydeck. Their system automatically linked my incoming/outgoing calls with data from the address book I provided them and gave me additional data such as call volume to a specific number, whether you or your contact calls more often, and who you call the most often. Now I am not a heavy user of my cell phone, so my records indicate that I tend to call family most often, followed by my close friends. Below is a screenshot of call statistics for one of my contacts:

Sample Skydeck Stats

With all of the features that Skydeck provides, I can’t see this not taking off. There are other aspects to it that I haven’t had a chance to use yet such as the social networking portion, but I’m honestly content with what they have provided me so far!

By the way: I am interested in finding some people to test out the social network portion of Skydeck with. I appear to have the ability to send out invites to friends and family, so e-mail me: skyinvites at bradbutner dot net

Today, May 13th, my Comcast Cares Day video was published to YouTube after winning a video contest. It’s quite neat to have my video selected, as I had not expected to actually win.

The best part of having my video selected and published was that more people will get the chance to see the hard work that was done by the volunteers at our Cares Day site. Based on feedback we got from the tenants, it was well worth it.

While you can visit YouTube to see the video that PR posted, I’ve got a higher quality version hosted on my site that you can watch right here:

The past 30 days are going to go down as some of the best days this year. In the past 30 days I have:

• Been to the Microsoft Visitor’s Center and Employee Store
• Visited the headquarters for Valve Software
• Played a new Team Fortress 2 map before the public was able to (It’s out now)
• Got my hands on Team Fortress 2 trading cards before publicly released
• Went on the Northwestern and chatted with Captain Sig Hansen
• Played the new Deadliest Catch Alaskan Storm game
• Got a signed copy of the game’s jewel case
• Went up to the Space Needle (nothing special, but it’s been a while)
• Helped plan Comcast Cares Day for Everett Engineering
• Spent nine hours taking ~450 photos + video for Engineering’s Comcast Cares Day

If you want to view some of my photos and videos, here are my Neowin (one, two) and Comcast Cares Day photo sets.

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to do something this year that can beat all that. I’ve decided to postpone my usual vacation until further notice (don’t think I want to visit California again this year) so I can plan something different and have also begun considering about getting a new car.

I haven’t really had time to keep my blog up to date on a level that I intended, so I am going to restructure this site into three sections:

• Flickr - My flickr photos and videos will be displayed in a more prominent manner. I’ve purchased a Digital Rebel XTi, so I have been working on flexing my “photography muscles”
• Twitter - I’ve started to use twitter to publish thoughts, actions, and ideas that I have throughout the day. I find that it can work well to get something off my mind and share a bit of my life that I’d never normally write a whole blog post about.
• Blog - I will use the blog to discuss larger topics or articles that I feel writing in length about. The topic will vary from post to post, but likely still be related to something technical.

I am going to start on these changes tonight and hopefully have them published by next week. If I put it off any longer than that, it will be into May before I get a chance to do it as next week is my last peaceful week for a while. More on that at a later time.

Edit: And we’re done. Upgraded to Wordpress 2.5, installed new theme, and customized it.

Until recently I have had a switch feeding my Windows computer and Aastra VoIP phone into the back of my iMac, which would then send the data to my router over the 802.11n connection. This was a really bad way of doing things, since my Trixbox server (running on the Windows computer) lost all connections when my iMac went to sleep.

Why was I doing it this way? Because my router is on the other side of the apartment by my cable modem, and there is no cable connection in my office area. I could have run an ugly wire over to the router, but I wasn’t really interested in a blue wire going across the apartment.

Now I have had other choices to create an 802.11g connection using what companies call a “Gaming Bridge” which allows you to link two ethernet ports over a wireless connection, but I have had bad luck with those in the past and I really wanted to stay on my primary 802.11n connection.

A few days ago Apple answered my request. They have released an 802.11n version of the AirPort Express and it works just like their original 802.11g device did (before it burnt out on me in a puff of smoke). All I had to do was tell the device to connect to my .11n network and allow computers to use the connection over the built in ethernet port. I then hooked that ethernet port into a switch that feeds my Windows box and Aastra phone. That’s all it took to get them on the network!

So if you’re running an 802.11n network in the 5GHz range and want to provide network access to a room without running a bunch of wires through walls (or can’t because you’re in an apartment like me), this is a logical choice at a price of $99.

However if you are not keen on Apple products, Netgear also has a product that can perform similar actions for a slightly higher cost. The one drawback with the Netgear product is that you won’t get the same additional features (like AirTunes and USB Printer Sharing) as you will get with the AirPort Express.

I just got back from a nice vacation from work where I did nothing but relax. Now I am in for a 10-day work week until my next day off (helping to cover some days we’re short) and am not sure what my mental status will be by my next day off.

Also I am working on a new lab addition and hope to announce it soon. It’s a little different than I have done before, but is a simple project that should take no more than a day or two.

Today I looked at the new iPhone features built into Dashcode, Apple’s development environment that was originally created for Dashboard Widgets. Upon loading the application, I was presented with three new iPhone development options: Custom, Browser, and RSS.

Development

While Custom is going to give you a blank template to work with and Browser gives you a basic list view for you to fill in with your own content, the RSS template provides you a pre-coded environment to add your RSS feed and publish to your website. Today I decided to make my own iPhone version of this website.

Just like creating a Dashboard widget, you have the ability to change fonts, colors, image, and much more. Using the predefined template, I modifed the colors and background to match the look and feel of the full site you’re probably viewing this on right now. Having only used Dashcode once before to create a Podcast widget for OS X, I found no issues creating a mobile website for the iPhone. All the menus and toolbars are the same, though the library of items you can add to your mobile site are different (for good reason, of course).

As you develop your iPhone mobile RSS page, you can test it inside of the Aspen Simulator — an iPhone running on your computer (I mentioned this in the last entry). Each time I made a major change to the operation of the mobile page, I would click on the Run button, view it inside the Simulator, and operate it just like it’s on my mobile phone.

Deployment

Once I was satisfied with my changes, I went to the file menu inside Dashcode and clicked on the Deploy option. I then chose to save it to my desktop where I would be able to take it and upload it to my website.

After upload it to the labs.blackice912.net site, I decided to launch it on my actual iPhone to see the results. It turns out the results were pretty bad. No news loaded at all. I then tested it inside the Simulator and got the same results. Why was it working on my computer but not once I published it to the internet?

Well after activating the debug mode inside of Mobile Safari, I found out why. As I should have remembered, you cannot have JavaScript on one site grab data from another site. It is cross site scripting and can be considered dangerous. Realizing this, I moved the code over to blackice912.net and launched it with success.

So are there ways to use a RSS feed that is hosted on another site and use it? With the addition of PHP, yes you could do this and not run into that issue.

Conclusion

Apple has really done a lot of things right with this new SDK. While I still need to do some more investigation into the native application side of it, I am impressed with what I have seen today. You can really create a powerful web application with the SDK today and an even better one once the 2.0 firmware hits phones in June.

If you’re interested in seeing the mobile site I created, visit blackice912.net/mobile on your iPhone/iTouch or in Safari. It will not load properly in any other browser!

Today Apple released the iPhone SDK, which will allow developers such as myself to program native applications for the iPhone. What wasn’t given a lot of attention during the keynote held this morning was all the new opportunities for web developers.

I’ve only had the chance to watch a 20 minute video on the subject, but the new iPhone firmware upgrade coming in July will bring support for additional WebKit features like animation and iPhone specific functions like gestures

I hope on doing some more research into this tomorrow using the published SDK’s Simulator and publishing sample projects to the labs site.