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What’s the difference between the Sanyo Eneloop Rechargeable Batteries  and regular rechargeable batteries, you ask? They retain their charge longer. Bet you didn’t know that when you charge a rechargeable battery, and you don’t use it, the charge drains?

I’ve had it happen one too many times. Of course, after charging regular non-Eneloop rechargeable batteries and storing it for the next time I need to use it, and then needing to use it, they held no charge. But of course, I said, these batteries were probably never charged. Which of course was not true, I just forgot that I did charge them!

This is especially handy if you need to store extra batteries for your digital camera or flash in your photo bag, and knowing that it will reliably hold a charge when you need it.

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Now, if you are a photographer like me, you will love this gadget. When looking for my first DSLR, I was looking at the features, and I thought, GPS capability would be really cool. Wherever I travelled, after uploading my photos to Flickr for example, they could all be laid out on a map to show where I took a photo. I mean precisely where I took the photo!

I know that the Nikon D200 has this capability (with GPS add-on) but it was out of my price range. Sony also has its own doohickey (the Sony GPS-CS1 GPS) but that came with a limitation, that you needed a computer to further “tag” your photo files. This is where the ATP GPS device comes in, you don’t need a computer to geo-tag your photo files! You just insert your memory card into it (and it supports several: SD, Memory Stick, MMC). The marketing brochure says that it supports all the major camera manufacturers — but I don’t know for sure if it supports the JPEG output of the cameras, or whether the device supports tagging the RAW files also (and of course there are lots of RAW formats out there!)

All you need to do to enable geo-tagging of your photos:

1. Make sure your camera’s time is synced with the GPS device’s time
2. Turn on the GPS device before taking your photos
3. After taking your photos, take out your memory card and put it in the GPS device

Later on when you are at your computer, your already geo-tagged photo files will “automatically” be discovered by any of the photo services that supports geo data in photo files (I know Flickr does), and that will automatically plot the location of your photos onto a map.

Technorati Tags: atp gps photo finder, atp gps, gps

When I first purchased the Playstation 3, I had an old Apple Wireless Pro Keyboard (the all white one, not the new aluminum thin ones) that I thought I could put to good use during Internet browsing sessions. At first, I thought that maybe my batteries were weak when pairing with the Playstation 3, as it kept coming up with errors. Frustrated, I abandoned all hope of using the keyboard with the Playstation 3, and hooked up a USB one instead. It was quite annoying, being tethered by the USB cable a few feet from my TV instead of sitting further away relaxed on the sofa.

Lo and behold, with the Playstation 3 firmware update 2.00, my prayers were answered! The Apple Wireless Pro Keyboard works great now. Of course if I was to buy one now, I would get the updated version (Apple Wireless Keyboard Kit) of it.

Technorati Tags: apple bluetooth keyboard, playstation 3, ps3

Ok, so you have a computer with all your photos, videos, and audio that sits in your computer room. You have a Playstation 3 in your living room hooked up to your gorgeous 1080p LCD TV. How do you enable all this content to be played from your computer in the back room all the way in your living room? Through streaming of course.

If you have a Windows PC (I don’t anymore), you can just use Windows Media Player 11, it will be recognized by the Playstation 3 as a (DLNA) Media Server, and you can stream your photos, videos and audio easily. For the Mac, you will have to purchase or find a DLNA compatible server. I chose TwonkyVision’s TwonkyMedia. As of version 4.4.3.1, TwonkyMedia can serve DivX / Xvid files to the Playstation 3. Previously I will have had to convert my DivX files to h.264 using VisualHub (using the AppleTV profile), which took a long time. Note that to get DivX support, you will have to update your Playstation 3 to firmware version 2.10.

Technorati Tags: twonkyvision, twonkymedia, ps3, playstation 3, divx, xvid, streaming media to ps3, visualhub

Everyone remembers VHS don’t they? Remember when the video stores were all VHS? You know, the format before DVD? Also, quite a few people have home videos recorded into VHS-C (compact VHS) tapes or 8mm. You can of course go to a video transfer service that can do it for you, but it would not be cost effective if you have a lot of video tape. Note that it wouldn’t be cost effective to transfer VHS feature films, it would be actually cheaper if you consider your time to actually buy the DVD — not only is it easier, the quality is way better. Unless of course if you have a favourite movie (starring a young Virginia Madsen 24 years ago!) that is never coming to DVD (apparently).

As a side note: The VCD format (popular in Asia, never really took off here) is easier — you only need to rename the .dat files in the MPEGAV folder to .mpeg, and convert them using your favourite video converter, I use VisualHub. Roxio Toast 8 Titanium and even iDVD can convert these MPEG1 video files as well.

Firstly you need these pieces of equipment (my setup, anyway):

• A VHS player with RCA out (the red, white and yellow ports)
• A Mini-DV video camera with Analog to Digital conversion (I have a 6 year old Sony TRV22)
• A computer with a Firewire 400 port (I have a MacBook Pro) and a digital video editor (I use iMovie HD 6)

Here’s the procedure:

1. Connect the video output cable from the Mini-DV video camera to the RCA out of the VHS player
2. Connect the Firewire 400 cable from the Mini-DV video camera to your computer
3. Turn on the MacBook Pro, launch iMovie HD 6, and create a New Project.
4. Turn on the VHS player, put in the VHS tape.
5. Turn on the Mini-DV camera.
6. Switch iMovie HD to Capture mode.
7. Press “Play” on the VHS player
8. Press “Import” in iMovie HD 6

So that’s it. One thing though, you will have to manually stop the import because it cannot detect when the video is over. Of course the picture will not look so hot, since VHS is low resolution.

That’s the analog to digital part, what next to author that DVD? You could use iDVD, with its fancy menus, or Toast. Here’s my flowchart on the right.

iDVD will not allow you to pack more than 2 or 4 hours of video on a DVD (depending if it is a single layer or dual layer). Toast does, by doing an analysis and it will try to compress the picture down as much as it can, at a reduced quality. You can drag and drop your multiple titles of iMovie Projects into both iDVD and Toast instead of exporting them first (encoded on demand, and the best way to preserve quality).

Technorati Tags: vhs, dvd, imovie, idvd, toast titanium, convert vhs to dvd