Category Archives: Info

Ustream Producer Pro vs. Livestream Producer



I recently compared Ustream Watershed to Livestream Producer. In addition to Watershed, Ustream also has an offer called Ustream Producer Pro. How does it compare to Livestream Producer? Here is the information you will need to see the similarities, and the differences, between the two.

Price:

Ustream Producer Pro : There are three different prices, depending on which plan you want.

The Starter is $99/month. This gives you 100 viewer hours. If you go over, you will be charged $0.50 per additional viewer hour.

The Standard is $499/month. This gives you 4,000 viewer hours. If you go over, you will be charged $0.25 per additional viewer hour.

The Enterprise is $999/month. This gives you 9,000 viewer hours. If you go over, you will be charged $0.20 per additional viewer hour.

A viewer hour is the cumulative amount of time an audience watches your stream. The example they give is if 10 people watch your stream for 1/2 hour, that would be 5 hours of cumulative view-time. It would equal 5 viewer hours.

Livestream Producer: $45.00/month – unlimited bandwith. No overages, ever.

Is it embeddable?

Ustream Producer Pro: The Starter does not include embedding. Both the Standard and the Enterprise allow for embedding. Broadcasters who purchase the Enterprise package will be able to remove their content from the Ustream site by hiding their live channel pages.

Livestream Producer: Not currently available

Analytics and APIs?

Ustream Producer Pro: As far as I can tell, it is not currently available.

Livestream Producer: Not currently available

Storing Recorded Video on their site

Ustream Producer Pro: The Starter has 50 GB of storage. If you want more, it will cost $0.50/GB.
The Standard has 500 GB. If you want more, it will cost $0.20/GB.
The Enterprise has 1,000 GB. If you want more, it will cost $0.12/GB.

Livestream Producer: Bandwith and video storage on the New Livestream platform is unlimited for the life of your plan.

Is it ad free?Ustream Producer Pro: All Ustream Pro Broadcasting packages remove all in-video ads, as well as display ads on your channel page. Ads are even removed from embedded players and recorded content.

Livestream Producer: Yes. You can do live streaming without any advertising.

Integration with social media

Ustream Producer Pro: It has a “widget” framework that will allow you to integrate with outside services. Current extensions include: Facebook Fan Page “Like” Button, Twitter Follow Button, iTunes Promotion, Amazon Promotion, Thumbplay Ring Tones, and Custom Uploaded Banners. New services will be added in the coming months.

Livestream Producer: There is a New Livestream for Producers iPhone app which can be used for live encoding and real-time posting from your iPhone. Livestream Producer does integrate with Facebook. Users can “like” posts, comment on posts, and receive notifications of upcoming events.


$3 Dollar Tablet Stand



Ever wander into the iPad/tablet accessory isle at your local big box electronics store looking for an inexpensive stand for your iPad, Nook, Kindle, or other tablet/reader device? If so, you know these things have a tendency to be rather pricey and may not even do what you want them to.

I’ve got an inexpensive, very effective solution you may not have thought about. Make a trip to your local hobby store, a dollar store, or any store that sells nick-nack type items. What you are looking for are small easels either made of metal wire or even wooden ones with folding hinges. These can sell for as little as a $1 and up.

I purchased the pictured wire metal easel from my local Hobby Lobby store for $2.99 plus tax to hold my Barnes & Noble Nook – about $60 dollars or so less than I would have paid for a specialty tablet stand.

Save your money and have an effective solution all in one fell swoop.


Garmin DEZL 560LT Trucker’s GPS



GPS units have been around for several years and have made quite a heavy penetration into the automotive marketplace. It would be logical to assume a degree of maturity when it comes to GPS maps and operating system software on the units themselves. However, there is still quite a bit of room left for improvement.

GPS market saturation, combined with the sales of millions of Android and other smartphones that contain sophisticated GPS functionality have conspired to bite into the growth of stand-alone GPS unit sales, forcing a reduction in price along with a search for ways of adding value in order to justify and/or maintain higher price points. Thus, GPS manufacturers have created a market segment of specialty GPS units aimed specifically at truck drivers and the recreational vehicle market segments.

After trying and returning two faulty TomTom GO 2535M Live units, as well as trying and returning a Cobra 7750 Platinum trucker GPS unit, I’ve settled on a Garmin DEZL 560LT trucker GPS. The Garmin 560LT has a 5” pressure sensitive widescreen LCD display along with a number of features that attempt to tailor it toward commercial drivers.

From an operating system/software standpoint, the Garmin is solid. Also, the Garmin hardware build quality is quite good. The unit seems very solid and the pressure sensitive touchscreen works extremely well. The 5” widescreen LCD display is bright and colorful, remaining quite visible in bright daylight. It includes Bluetooth speaker/microphone functionality, along with the ability to display photos as well as function as a video display for a composite backup video camera.

Most of the trucker-specific features revolve around map and point-of-interest databases. As always, these databases continue to have holes in them. Although you can program in large/heavy vehicle types and sizes, the Garmin mapping software does not necessarily follow only truck routes when calculating routes. Garmin’s “out” on this point seems to be the fact that it makes a chime sound and pops up a specific on-screen icon when on a route that “truck accessibility information” is not known. When on secondary roads, this icon pops up a surprising amount of the time. It even pops up when driving on a fair number of freeway access ramps. This lack of “truck accessibility information” is quite perplexing, since the vast majority of these roads have been around for many, many years and therefore HAVE to be clearly well-known. The surprising thing is that these same roads that “truck accessibility information” isn’t available for have extensive speed limit information available. The Garmin unit is highly accurate in displaying the vast majority of speed limits on federal, state, and even on many county roads.

The other problem has to do with truck-specific point-of-interest databases that are included in the unit. These include truck stops, truck washes, truck repair shops, etc. Some of these facilities show up in the database, and some don’t. It can be quite maddening. Also another problem that has long plagued point-of-interest databases is inconsistent naming conventions. “T/A Truck Stop” may sometimes be entered into the database that way, or it might be “TA Truck Stop” or “TA Truckstop” or “TA Travel Plaza” or “Travel Centers of America”, etc., etc., etc. – you get the picture. When one tries to do a text search for the name of any business this inconsistency will almost immediately rear its ugly head.

Although the GPS certainly makes many things easier to find, it is not anywhere near a 100% foolproof solution. I frequently find myself having to search Google on my Android phone, which carries with it its own set of problems. Search Google for “truck wash” along with the name of a city and state and you are almost certainly going to come up with a bunch of listings for local car washes that have nothing whatsoever to do with offering washing services (specifically, refrigerated trailer wash-out services) for large commercial vehicles.

I like the Garmin DEZL 560LT and plan on keeping it. It’s a good hardware/software platform, and hopefully Garmin will continue to develop the updatable databases so that future updates contain more complete information.

My idea of the ideal trucker GPS would include the full-time data connection and “HD Traffic” of the TomTom GO Live, the solid, easy-to-use design of the Garmin, much more accurate truck-specific information concerning secondary roads, along with much better, more consistent point-of-interest information.


ArtRage Painting Programs For Touchscreen Computers & iPad



ArtRage is a series of painting program for touchscreen computers, albeit with a twist. You can paint with actual paintbrushes! ArtRage 2 sells for $20 for Windows and Mac OS/X. ArtRage 3 Studio sells for $40 for Windows and Mac OS/X. ArtRage 3 Studio Pro, which contains additional features, sells for $80 for Windows and Mac OS/X. ArtRage is also available for the iPad.

Interview by Jeffrey Powers of Geekazine.Com.

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MiSee TX Computer In A Box



Scott Elliot talks with Charlie of CTX Technologies. Charlie demonstrates a prototype concept computer that has a functional projected virtual laser keyboard and a pico projected screen.

The technology will be shrunk down for use in smart phones and tablets.

Interview by Scott Elliot of Geek News Central.

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GE Healthcare Reader, Capture Station, Quietcare, Intel Healthguide



Carissa O’Brien interviews Scott from Intel GE Care Innovations. Scott demonstrates the GE Healthcare text-to-speech reader in conjunction with the Capture Station.

Quietcare is a monitoring system for those living in assisted living facilities.

The Intel Healthguide is a remote monitoring unit that enables medical staff to do remote monitoring and interaction with patients in their own homes via the Internet, including video calling.

Interview by Carissa O’Brien of Geek News Central.

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Sonomax Self Mold Earphones



Don’t you just hate earbuds? They are often uncomfortable and randomly fall out of the average ear. Up until now, you could pay $2,000 to have custom-molded earphones. Well, all that is about to change.

Nick from Sonomax Technologies uses Geekazine host Jeffrey Powers as a guinea pig to demonstrate “sculpted eers” custom molded earphones. The kit, expected to become available in Spring 2011, enables consumers to create their own custom-molded earphones exactly shaped to their ears using a four-minute-long silicone process. The price point is expected to be $199 for the basic one driver per ear model and $299 for the premium two-driver per ear model. I can’t wait!

Interview by Jeffrey Powers of Geekazine and Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central .

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