Today Google announced that they are opening the flood gates and opening the code up for download today.
If you are interested in helping the community or just want to have fun and see if you can not load the code on phones or gadgets that it was never meant to run on just head over the site.

Android is the first free, open source, and fully customizable mobile platform. Android offers a full stack: an operating system, middleware, and key mobile applications. It also contains a rich set of APIs that allows third-party developers to develop great applications.

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Apple is reporting that they have sold 6.9 million 3G iphones during it’s financial fourth quarter. It looks like apple has hit their goal of selling 10 million in 2008. Apple is also claiming to be 21% up on Mac sales from over a year ago putting them at 2.6 million sold in the fourth financial quarter.

Apple has also stated that 11 million Ipods sold. Do you think the economic slow down will hurt Apple? I guess we will just have to wait an see. Maybe it will help lower the Apple tax for all of us fans.

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There sure has been a lot of talk about the first Android phone on the market. I have to say from what i have seen of the G1 i personally am not impressed by the overall looks of the phone. I like the concept of Android but i am still just unsure if it will be able to really compete with my Iphone.

I was curious to know how all of you feel about Android and the G1 from T-Mobil. Would you be willing to replace your Iphone for one?

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According to reports from Gizmondo they claim that they are hearing that Apple is saying no more shipments to the Apple retail stores. Still unknown is if Apple is completely removing the mini or if they are in the works of an updated version of the mini. You can still currently purchase the mini from the online apple store.

I have to say i love my mini. It has been a great machine and i know it has done wonderful things for many others. What will we use for media PC or Carputers?

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I have owned an Apple Tv for about a year now and i have not done a whole lot with it. My wife and I have used it a few times to rent movies which is nice and convenient especially with HD movie rentals. I have used it a few times to watch my Diggnation HD podcast but i have not used it as much as i would have liked to. I know that there are a lot of posts on the web related to hacking the apple TV but i had just not paid much attention. I had started a while back saving all of my movies to .iso files on my server for playback on a windows media center PC using My Movies plugin. It worked great but i never really followed through and built a media center for my living room television. So the concept just diminished.

As all of you know i am in the consumer control system industry and we are constantly selling a product called Kaleidescape. Kaleidescape is an amazing product that is a movie server. You essentially have a main frame server for storage and then you have what are called movie players. The movie players have a DVD drive in them and an ethernet connection along with the typical A/V connections. You insert a DVD into the drive and the system will import a full disc image to the server. Once the movie is on the server the user has a great interface to search, view, sort etc… their entire movie collection. One of the great things about Kaleidescape is the fact that it is one of the few systems that actually has all of the proper licensing to allow a user to do this. The unfortunate part about the system is the cost. The system is extremely expensive to purchase. So as i am sure you can imagine this is one of those systems that i wish i could personally own but i can not afford to, so i am always looking for an alternative.

This is where once i started reading and playing around with my apple TV more it hit me one day. I can have the same thing as a Kaleidescape by using my apple TV. I had an older PC laying around that had a Pentium 4 3.2GHZ processor, 3GB of Ram, a DVD burner and a few 500 GB SATA hardrives installed. So i decided to make this my movie server. I reinstalled a fresh copy of windows XP on the unit along with Itunes. Itunes is what allows me to make this machine a movie server. Itunes is the central database for my movie collection since i can allow my apple TV to connect to the Itunes installed on this machine.

Before i continue to explain the next part i want to make sure that i let everyone know that i am not condoning piracy. All of the movies that i have put on this server i have purchased and own. This is where the Kaleidescape system has the proper licensing to allow the end user to import owned movies on to the system. I know that if we own the movie that it would seem under the fair use act that we can make backups of movies that we own for personal use. This is a question that could be debatable, so please use this information as educational and at your own risk.

Now that i have installed Itunes i need to begin to add my movies to Itunes. The only problem with the apple TV is that it only supports H.264 and protected H.264 (from iTunes Store): Up to 5 Mbps, Progressive Main Profile (CAVLC) with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps (maximum resolution: 1280 by 720 pixels at 24 fps, 960 by 540 pixels at 30 fps) in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats
or high-definition 720p MPEG-4: Up to 3 Mbps, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps (maximum resolution: 720 by 432 pixels at 30 fps) in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats. The H.264 format is actually a great video format as it can produce a great picture in a smaller file format. I went ahead and download the free open source software called Handbrake. Handbrake is available both for Windows and Mac and the newer version also has a preset for apple TV video conversion. You will have to make sure that the movie is not encrypted for Handbrake to be able to convert the movie to a H.264 format.There are plenty of tutorials on the web on how to do this just use google to search.

Once i have all of my movies converted to the H.264 format which i have been saving as .M4V files to the hard drives on my computer you then drag the movie from the hard drive and drop into Itunes. Once the movie is in Itunes you can edit the movie information and add movie cover art by right clicking the movie and choosing “Get Info”. There is another way which i personally prefer to tag my movies before adding to my Itunes. You can use a program called Meta X which is only available for Mac. The program is an .MP4 tagging software. The software has alot of great features and you can learn more by going to here. The great thing about using Meta X is that even if you were to lose your Itunes information all of your movies are permantly tagged with the information that you input into Meta X.

Once all of my movies have been tagged then added to my Itunes you now go to your apple TV and select computers from the settings tab and authorize your apple TV to work on that computers Itunes installation. Once you have done this you can go into the Movies tab on the apple TV and choose Shared Movies and you will see all of your movies with the movie information along with the movies cover art. When you select the movie it will play across the network. The apple TV will stream this movie both over hard wired or wireless G or N ethernet.

Now that i have done this i went out and purchased a used 40GB apple TV from ebay so that i could have an apple TV both in my living room and media room. Now that i have an apple TV unit at both of my televisions i always have access to all of my movies all the time. I no longer need to grab a DVD and insert it into my DVD player. For the most part now i do not even use my DVD player. The interface is simple enough that even my wife loves using it to watch movies. The other great aspect of this system is any movie or television shows purchased through Itunes from the apple TV’s is automatically synced with the movie servers Itunes so the purchased content is available on both apple TV’s and i no longer need to maintain multiple content in multiple locations. The other great aspect is the fact that now that my movie collection is all converted to H.264 i can also easily just add any of my movies to my Iphone for viewing as well.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me through my about page.

Pictures Below:

Apple Tv main screen

Movie Screen 1

Movie Screen 2

Movie Screen 3

Tv Shows Screen 1

Tv Shows Screen 2

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pleasefixtheiphone.com is a new site for Iphone users or anyone else to list and vote on the features that most need fixing on the iPhone. The features that get the most votes will rise up in the ranks. This is an interesting new way for users to let Apple know what are the most desired bugs and features from their users to be fixed or added. Even though we all love our Iphone’s we also know that nothing is perfect.

Please Fix the Iphone is a product of FullSIX Marketing Firm. The site is fully optimized for use on the iphone so you can add your wishes and grips on the go.

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Video 1:

Video 2:

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Imagine using your iPhone as a remote for your Adagio® home entertainment system, or to control all the lights in your home. The Crestron Control App for iPhone puts a professional-looking Crestron touchpanel user interface right on the popular Apple® iPhone or iPod touch, enabling all kinds of customizable control capability.

More information coming soon!

Key Features

* Free application download from iTunes® App Store
* Communicates with 2-Series control system via WiFi and cellular network
* Control multiple homes from one iPhone
* Full integration with Crestron programming software
* Compatible with the original iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPod® touch

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What is BrightKite?

Brightkite is a location-based social network. In real time you can see where your friends are and what they’re up to. Depending on your privacy settings you can also meet others nearby.

Brightkite has released an iphone version as well, you can just go to i.brightkite.com. Brightkite has announced that they are also working on a native iphone app. The great thing about using brightkite as a native iphone app is that it will be able to use the iphones GPS to determine your location.

Here is a short video of the iphone version in use:

Brightkite for the iPhone from Brightkite on Vimeo.

Currently BrightKite is only available by invitation. If you know someone using BrightKite, ask them to invite you.

If you are interested in an invite please post a comment including your email address and i will send an invite.

I currently have two invites left if anyone is interested.

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Yesterday Apple released a software update that now allows Time Machine to backup over Wi-Fi to an External drive connected to an airport express base station over USB. So if you were one of the many that went out and purchased both Leopard and an airport express base station to do your backups over wi-fi before apple pulled the plug on this feature in it’s original release, hurry up and update your Mac.

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