It’s not really fair. My TV (and every other piece of home electronics) is a slave to a remote. But because the remote only barks out orders and never asks questions, or listens, it’s a cause for frustration.

We have a Logitech Harmony remote, and it’s a great thing. But because the communication is one-way it’s often as frustrating an experience using it as trying to find the right one of the half dozen remotes scattered around the living room.

Now, imagine a world where every TV, Xbox, Squeezebox, and amplifier had a Bluetooth (BT) or other wireless chip in and as well as listening for orders they can communicate their status both between devices and to their controller.

Couple that with a smartphone (or a dedicated smart remote control) and you have a real universal remote that can be task driven (I want to watch Cable or play a DVD on the Xbox or listen to music), query the relevant devices (to confirm what state it thinks they are in) and then make intelligent decisions about they need to do (on or off, change source, adjust volume levels) – including powering on or off devices in the correct sequence.

Today’s IrDA based devices don’t offer that sort of flexibility or control – the communication isn’t two way, the protocols defined in the 1970’s don’t really have the flexibility or richness and the limitation of line of sight control starts to interfere with talking to multiple devices concurrently anyway.

In this solution there would be no more line of sight problems (can even talk to equipment in a cabinet). No more getting out of sync with the source channel on the TV (because it's cyclical rather than direct access). No more pop from the speakers when the TV turns off before the amplifier (they can communicate... if the TV "knows" it's using the speakers - or the remote does - part of the shut-down process could be to mute the speakers, shut them off and then shut down the TV, or if changing over to the Squeezebox then mute them, change source, start Squeezebox, turn off TV, un-mute speakers returning them to the default volume and EQ for listening to music as opposed to for TV)

The problem today is that while BT to IrDA devices exist that's only half the solution... The back channel to the remote doesn't exist. For this to work the Bluetooth, ZigBee or WiFi SIGs would need to be more aggressive in promoting the value of something like this to the hardware manufacturers. Bluetooth and WiFi are already supported in most smartphones, but ZigBee with its lower power requirements would be an interesting solution if it has the living room range.

For it to work there needs to be one standard that can be rolled out cost effectively. Who is going to step up and lead the charge from the three incumbent wireless technologies (or will we see a new player emerge to eclipse them?)

After my initial playing with a webcam and weather related time lapse I got a second hand wireless webcam (a Linksys WVC54GC) to play with. As a package it's really easy to set up and connect to the camera and stream video either using their supplied app or Windows Media player. But no use for getting snapshots as user controlled intervals and putting timestamp overlays on them etc.

That left me with a couple of choices:

• Buy an application to do it (but frankly after looking at some of the options I decided they didn't offer much value - when the software costs more than the camera I expect more from them!)
• Build my own.

Now, a few years ago when I was developing code on a daily basis that would possibly have been the easiest.... whip up something to connect to the stream, grab a frame, overlay the timestamp and FTP it to the destination.

Today I'm lazier, and anyway the bits I need to do this are all available for free - I just need to tie them together with the command line and they set up a scheduled task to make them run.

Grabbing the stream

The first challenge was connecting to the stream and grabbing a jpg snapshot that I could work with.

Using MPlayer grabbing the frame didn't turn out to be too much of a challenge. It allows you to attach to a streaming video and pull a number of frame to save as a JPEG

mplayer.exe http://{userid}:{password}@{camera_ip}/img/video.asf -frames 1 -vo jpeg:quality=100:maxfiles=1

Every time this runs it connects to the WiFi Camera video stream and grabs a single, high quality, jpg image (by default saved as 00000001.jpg each time - thanks to the maxfiles parameter)

I used this version of MPlayer built for Windows as it installs and updates easily.

Annotating the image

The next challenge was adding the timestamp to the image to give it some context. This actually gave me two challenges - adding the timestamp and formatting the date correctly from a command line script.

The first was solved with the RunNow.vbs script which allows you to define a number of environment variables for a command line script. I needed to add my own additional environment variable so don't forget to add this to the script

'MonthName
objEnv("MN") = MonthName(Month(dNow))

Next of course was the challenge of actually updating the image itself. For that I turned to ImageMagick a tool I've used before to add text and effects to images. This gives you a number of options for adding a caption to an image.

convert -background "#00000080" -fill white label:"%DOWN% %MN% %Day%, %Year% @ %Hour%:%Minute%:%Second%" miff:- | composite -gravity south -geometry +0+3 - 00000001.jpg image.jpg

This rather scary line takes the source image 00000001.jpg (created from Mplayer) and adds a label using the parameters to position where I want it. The variables %DOWN% etc are all supplied by running this via the RunNow script.

Uploading the image

When the image was composited I wanted to upload it to the Weather Underground site.

Windows comes with a built in command line FTP client, but the Weather Underground server wanted a passive connection which the supplied client doesn't support so I used the free version of MoveIt from Ipswitch - a secure FTP command line client that is a 'drop in' replacement for the existing client.

All I needed to do was create a parameter file to control the FTP script (I saved the script as wificam.ftp)

open webcam.wunderground.com
{username}
{password}
passive
type binary
put image.jpg image.jpg
bye

and call that from the command line

ftps -s:wificam.ftp

Automating execution

Now I had the pieces it was simple enough to create a Scheduled Task that runs every 10 minutes and executes

RunNow.vbs wificam.cmd

the wificam.cmd script contains the call to Mplayer to grab the frame, the call to ImageMagick to add the caption and the call to MoveIt to use FTP to upload the new image.

The results

Every ten minutes the webcam should upload a new image to Weather Underground here, and they create a stop motion view (last 24 hours below).

A quick note on the WVC54GC: While it's an okay camera for the job I can't recommend it. The Linksys software is pretty horrible and the specs on the camera are at the lower end of the spectrum - small image size/resolution and really bad low light performance. I know they have better cameras now so look to spend a few extra bucks.

I’m a big fan of the 3.0 release of the Zune software, and the new 120 GB device. But the best thing about them is that today I can use them in public without having to make sure no-one is watching ;)

For the last couple of months I’ve been dogfooding both the new Zune 120 (great screen, great battery life and, in case you missed it, 120GB of storage!) and various iterations of the new new desktop app and device firmware.

Rather than list all the features head over to Zune.Net and check out the update – it’s free for any Zune device. The official feature list is here.

My personal favorites though are over-the-air access to the Marketplace at Macdonald's (it even works in the drive-through queue!), Purchase from FM (hear a song you like… don’t need to remember it, just add it to your cart) and the games :) The feature that’s been there since day #1 that I still love – WiFi sync… let’s me plug the Zune into my car and update music from the driveway.

I usually use a bluetooth connection to my WiFi phone from my laptop when I’m out of range of a WiFi hotspot and need to get online but I do have one laptop that doesn’t have bluetooth (it’s an oldie but really portable) and it doesn’t really help when there’s two of you trying to connect.

The last few days I’ve been playing with WMWiFiRouter – a Windows Mobile app that allows you to set your phone up as a WiFi hotspot (supports WEP) and use your laptop to connect to it just like any other hotspot… and the WMWiFiRouter app routes the connection over your cellular data connection – be it GPRS, EDGE or 3G.

There are similar hardware solutions you can carry around with you (or mount in your car) but they mean you have to carry something extra – this solution uses something you probably already have with you!

The only downside is that it can chew through the phone battery fairly quickly but in an emergency it’s a great solution.

If you try it while it’s still in beta they’re even offering a discount on the final price when it’s released ;)

So I made my choice.

I got a Black Zune 8GB rather than an iPod Nano.

There were a lot of factors in the decision (I probably spent way too many cycles thinking about this purchase!)

Initial impression out of the box is good. Nice packaging and the battery had enough charge to play while the software was installing and configuring.

It feels nice in the hand, though (like my Shadow which is bears a resemblance to) it does show fingerprints - the black gloss and the glass screen need some texture! Given the shiny nature I'd expected to find a cloth case in the box but it's pretty minimal - and the official case was brown!

Build quality seems pretty high on the unit. It feels quite solid, especially compared to the rather plastic nano. There's one seam (the small silver insert at the top) that's not quite flush but I don't think that'll be a problem.

I've had a lot of problems getting it to do a WiFi sync. I was impressed that it was able to connect to my protected network, but it's proven to be a little unreliable staying connected - I've yet to manage a sync unless it's cabled.

Sound quality is great. Even on the pretty nasty earbuds in comes with it's clear and crisp. Certainly better than the iPod I had before. The earbuds themselves are a let down - pretty cheap feel (though I like the magnetic attraction to reduce tangle.. though could be stronger). I hate having to wrestle those stupid foam covers onto them though.

I'm not sure I'm sold on the ZunePass. $15/mo for unlimited tunes sounds good, but I've not had much luck browsing round the selection yet. It'll be interesting to see how that market evolves over time. It would be nice if the device came with a months access out of the box as a taster.

I like the fact that the Social tracks what I listened to on the Zune as well as the desktop client but I hate the face I can't scrobble that data (rather anti-social!) and I'm really annoyed that we couldn't sort out my account nickname to move it from AU to US so I've had to create a new identity for Zune and Xbox (to which I have little or no emotional connection).

There's lots of little things I dislike about the desktop app and the device UI but a lot of that may be lack of familiarity. We'll see in a week. I'm hoping Microsoft continue to evolve (in a good way) and keep upgrading the firmware...

Now off to load up some music and videos and have a play!

Windows Zero Configuration is a real boon to the world of WiFi connectivity. I let WinXP and Vista take care of connecting to the right router and managing all that "stuff" for me and I've never given it a thought.

However, I've started using a different VoIP solution at home and for various reasons it's not plugged into a wired machine but living off a WiFi connected box (if I can work out the audio driver issues on the server it's going back to there, but I might end up having to wire the machine it's on at the moment)

So... what's the problem?

It was a tricky one to find... Every minute or so on a call I'd get a moment of total silence. I couldn't hear anyone, and no-one could hear me. Weird huh? That's what I thought.

So I started investigating. Lots of diligent diagnostics and pleas to the internet search gods and eventually I got a pointer in the right direction.... every 60 seconds Windows ZeroConf checks the health of the connection... sadly that has an impact on the communications to the router:

Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=944ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64

So what's the answer?

Well... in WinXP you need to kill the ZeroConf service (hit "Start", then "run" and type "Services.msc" and hit enter. Search for "Windows Zero Configuration...." and hit the "stop service" button) - or if you have a driver/management program for your WiFi card use that instead.

In Vista it's a little tricker

• Open a command prompt using run as administrator.
• Make sure the WLAN service must be running first. If it isn't type net start wlansvc.
• Type in netsh wlan set autoconfig enabled=no interface="name of your wireless network here" (with the quotes)
• If you need to see the name of your wireless network first, type in netsh wlan show settings

or (and if you have a group policy set that won't let you run that command) you can try this WLANOptimizer utility.

However there is a downside of turning off ZeroConf.... in my case when the machine that's running as the VoIP host loses the WiFi connection for any reason you have to restart the service, let it reestablish the connection and then shut it down again!

Hopefully, as this impacts both VoIP users and gamers (who need good ping times) we'll see a hotfix for Vista or someone will write a cool utility that softphones can trigger when in a call to stop ZeroConf doing it's check (perhaps extend the refresh interval to an hour from start of call or only if the connection drops or some other rule)

Oh, the VoIP solution I'm using is MagicJack. It's early days yet, but the quality blows Skype out of the water. If you're thinking about getting one check out the unofficial forum for some really good advice.

As a T-Mobile customer I wasn't impressed to read this morning that Starbucks was going to swap over to AT&T as their WiFi Hotspot provider.

One of the reasons for me choosing T-Mo over, say, Verizon or AT&T was the relative ubiquity of their hotspots thanks to the Starbucks deal, but now apart from one borders store and a hotspot in one terminal at SeaTac I can't think where I last encountered a T-Mo Hotspot in the US (and they're pretty few and far between in the UK as well).

I like their GPRS/Edge data service. It works well enough and has great coverage (I've not been without a signal anywhere I've traveled in the US) but it looks like their plans are currently all you can eat internet (over the air data and WiFi) or very limited WAP... and I resent paying for a service that pretty soon I might not be able to use.

Why might? Because the small print in the Starbucks release indicates that T-Mobile customers will continue to be able to use the hotspots after the transition.

The deal actually looks pretty good for Starbucks customers

I did drop T-Mobiles customer support a mail to see if they've anything to say by way of clarification.... hopefully it'll be good news. Meantime I'll be pricing up AT&T data services just in case...

One of the things I wanted in my perfect phone was GPS, but sadly my new Shadow doesn't have it built in.

The reason was simple. I'm new to the US and even still get lost in Redmond. Also after living in Australia for a decade I find my internal sense of direction is out of whack (it took me about 2 years to trust it after I moved to Aus)

Luckily there is a solution. Navizon have a small app you can download to your phone that uses cell towers, wifi access points and, if you have it, GPS to triangulate your location. Once it has that information it lets you navigate and record your trail (including options to export to Google Earth or as a CSV). You can geotag where you've been and share the information with buddies (or see where they are right now).

As it happens I also have a Bluetooth GPS device so I can pair that with the phone when I really want accuracy but it's good enough to locate the hotel I was in based on the 13 WiFi access points and 7 Cell Phone towers it could locate just from my room!

The application is available as a native Windows Mobile application and they also support iPhone, Blackberry and Nokia S60 devices. They even have a desktop app if you don't have WiFi or GPS on your phone.

This software relies on a community of users who contribute data to the system (WiFi and Cellular towers) when they have a GPS device. Not only do non GPS phone users get the benefit of that data but users who have a GPS device get to take part in the Navizon rewards program - each cell tower or access point you provide GPS coordinates for earns you points and those points translate (once you've got enough) into dollars via PayPal. You can even refer folks and earn a percentage of their points (they don't lose out, your bonus is in addition to their credit!)

One thing it doesn't do it let me post my location to Twitter (nice to do when I get off a plane - helps me remember where I am when I wake up in a strange hotel!) but I've send them a feature request for that ;)