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Artist's Videos - Campus Challenge

Bloc Party and DJ Mehdi — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 13:36:12 -0600

DJ Mehdi

I Am Somebody (Featuring Chromeo)

Bloc Party

The Prayer

Connect Your Mac to Devices Meant for Windows PCs

John Brandon — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 13:37:58 -0500

You may have thought that the strangest connection you’d ever make on your Mac would be a seamless connection to a Windows PC over your home network. But what about devices specifically engineered and/or marketed to Windows users? You can often get those to work just fine on your Mac too.

Take Your Video With You

The Archos 504 160GB ($599.99) is a portable media player intended to work with a Windows PC: There’s a PC-only installer, and it works with Windows Media Player 11. When you connect the device to your Mac, you’ll be prompted to use it in USB mode or as a Windows Media device. Select USB, and the Archos hard drive will appear on your Mac desktop. Just drag all of your media files to the correct folder in the Archos volume to copy them to the player for viewing on the go. You’ll need a patch to view iPod-formatted videos, available at www.archos.com.

Store up to 200 movies on this portable entertainment box.

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Give Life to Framed Photos

Kodak makes big claims about how well its EasyShare EX811 Wi-Fi Picture Frame ($229.95) works for adding photos over a wireless connection - from a Windows PC. But, as with the Archos 504, you can connect the digital frame to your Mac via USB, and it should show up on your desktop. At that point you can just drag and drop photos onto the frame’s internal hard drive. There’s also another way: If you use the included EasyShare software, you can upload images to the online Gallery (select your photos, then select Gallery > Upload Photos), and then download them to the frame from the Internet via your Wi-Fi network.

Talk about living color.

More...

Remotely Control the Lamp in Your Den

Perceptive Automation’s Indigo ($179.95) is an amazing Mac app that puts the “auto” into home automation.

Like a dashboard for your home, the Indigo home automation system helps you connect to just about any electrical appliance.

Using an Insteon PowerLinc V2 power module ($69.99), which connects to your Mac over USB and then with other modules over the powerline home electrical wiring system, you can quickly configure Indigo to turn lights on and off. Plug the Insteon PowerLinc V2 module into a wall socket, and plug the lamp’s cord into that. Plug the USB cable into the PowerLinc V2 and your Mac. Indigo will locate the PowerLinc automatically and allow you to control the lamp using your Mac. Of course, you can use multiple devices (some RF-based) as well, and even control lights from a remote Internet connection with Indigo.

Your can make home-automation hardware work seamlessly with your Mac.

HV10

Helmut Kobler — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 18:55:54 -0600

The Canon HV10 measures 2.2 by 4.1 by 4.2 inches and weighs less than a pound.

Canon's HV10 camcorder is a true breakthrough in size and performance. It shoots widescreen high-definition video at a resolution of 1,920 by 1,080 pixels, which gives even the most pedestrian video footage an unmistakable wow factor. But while other HDV cameras typically run a bit on the bulky side, the HV10's thin, lightweight body lets you tote it around like an afterthought.

Supersharp resolution aside, the HV10 does two other things to make your videos look like they belong on the Discovery Channel. A secret-sauce autofocus technology lets the HV10 almost instantly refocus on subjects as you point the camera around or quickly zoom in and out, and an optical image stabilizer removes mild to moderate camera shake in handheld shots. These features aren't absolutely foolproof, but they nonetheless give your video's production values a huge boost.

The camera also doesn't add much noise or lose a lot of detail when shooting under dimly lit conditions, so it's a decent option for low-light scenarios. And in case you like to tinker, it has manual controls for white balance, iris, and shutter.

Of course, the HV10's pint size and relatively low price do require some compromises. One example is the camera's so-so microphone quality (even by mini camcorder standards), which stems from the mic's placement on top of the unit, aimed up instead of forward. There's also no support for add-ons: no audio-in jack for connecting an external microphone and no hot-shoe adapter to add a bigger light. Finally, battery life isn't great, either—we got a little more than 60 minutes on a standard battery (though you can buy a bigger battery to roughly double that).

To edit your footage, buy a FireWire 400 cable, attach the HV10 to your Mac, and use a video-editing application (such as Apple's iMovie HD or Final Cut Pro) to capture and edit your footage. When finished, you can export your movie at full or reduced size and play it back on any computer with QuickTime installed. Or you can record the movie back to the HV10's tape, hook the camera to an HDTV (using the included component cables), and play the movie from there. Sadly, there's no way to author true high-definition DVDs (in case you're one of the few folks with an HD-DVD player), but you can convert movies to standard definition and encode them on standard DVDs.

The bottom line. We love shooting gorgeous HD video with a camera that we can stuff into our shorts pocket. And at a list price of $1,299, the HV10 also happens to be the most affordable HDV camera around.

COMPANY: Canon
CONTACT: www.canon.com
PRICE: $1,299
REQUIREMENTS: Mac with FireWire 400 port. Video editing software capable of editing HD video.
Gorgeous video quality. Small, lightweight body. Shoots on MiniDV tapes. Relatively low price.
No jack for an external mic. No hot shoe. Short battery life. FireWire 400 cable not included.

another test

test — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 11:52:14 -0600

When using SSH on my remote server, it says "bad host" or something - what gives?

Niko Coucouvanis — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 01:32:29 -0600

You've just met the security behind the SSH, or Secure (Socket) Shell protocol: matched-key RSA encryption. When you log into a server via SSH, the server identifies itself to your system and establishes matching encryption algorithms on both ends of the conduit-or the SSH tunnel, as the hipster system administrators call it. If either end of the tunnel gets messed up or updated, the next time you try connecting to the server it'll warn you that it's an unknown server, and if you're using Mac OS 10.3.x, it'll leave you hanging, which sounds like your situation; Mac OS 10.4 smartened up the SSH tunneling to accept a new identifier from a formerly known server.

BONUS TIP: A TLA (three-letter acronym) Explained

Since this month's lesson is pretty easy, we'll give you some bonus knowledge: RSA isn't an acronym; the protocol is named for its inventors, Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman.

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Image testing

byline — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 18:45:30 -0600

This is some content. And a HUGE image.Â