Info on the new iPhone has leaked

I have been keeping my ears open for rumors about the new iPhone. Earlier this week, the above image was leaked onto a mac rumors website from a chinese source.

The image above shows a new iPhone model number “MB717LL” with 32GB of Storage. If the poster’s claims are to be believed, the new iPhone will contain the following features:

• 600MHz CPU Speed (up from 400MHz)
• 256MB RAM (up from 128MB)
• Digital Compass and FM
• 3.2 megapixel camera with auto focus
• 32GB size
• No major changes in battery, screen and external casing.

There is no way of telling if this information is correct, but the leaked photos and  information on the unibody MacBook and MacBook Pro also came from the same Chinese website, to they have some merit in my mind.

It’s no suprise that the screen and the physical shape of the device hasnt changed, if it did, us iPhone application developers would be screwed. I think its going to be nice to have a better camera and an FM tuner.

If this is all true, its not a major leap ahead, but I will still be inline to get one. I am guessing that the device will be announced and possibly released at the WWDC (Apple Worldwide Developers Conference) in June.

How the notPopular.com podcast is made

Some of you blog reading people might know that I have a fairly well known podcast called the “notPop podcast”, that centers around music news and the activities of my site, notPopular.com. for almost 2 years now @xFLORIDAx and I have been churning these podcasts out and having a lot of fun doing it.

From time to time I get people emailing me asking how we record and put the podcast out onto the web. I’m going to be honest, it wasn’t easy to figure out, but we made it through. I’m going to tell you how we record our podcast, so that it might help you figure out how to do yours.

If you are un-familiar with my podcast, There is a minimum of 2 mics, but up to 8. We also play music and take listener calls.

The notPop podcast format is as follows:

• intro music
• welcome / introduction / catch up
• featured band
• news stories
• throwback band
• feedback from callers
• ending statements
• outro music
• outro bonus clip

That might look like a lot of stuff to take on if you are un-familiar with recording audio on a computer. Don’t worry, I will walk you through it. (Disclaimer: I use Windows Vista for podcasting, but this will also work on Windows XP)

First off since we do have so many mics running at once, we need to capture all that audio at once. One solution is to just have one mic that everyone talks into. You can do that if you want your podcast to sound like crap. I don’t suggest it. Another way is to use a sound mixer board, and professional mics. That’s pricey and requires a lot of know how and fancy audio cards installed in your computer. I don’t suggest this method either. The best way I have found to get multiple mics working at the same time is USB headsets.

USB headsets are cheap and offer great sound quality. The real advantage is that each USB headset will act as their own sound input to the system so you have will have sound control over each device. I personally like to use the “Logitech Premium USB Headset 350″, you can get them cheap online, about $25 each.

Once you have them hooked up, windows will see them. Go to the control panel and go to recording devices. I like to set each mic to 30%. I have found that this is the best setting to prevent clipping. Clipping happens when a sound input is higher then can be recorded. when clipping occures, you lose out on the data trying to be recorded and you end up sounding like crap.

For recording software, I use Adobe Audition. It’s super powerful. Inside the application, you will see multiple time lines. I assign each time line to a input (remember that each USB mic is its own input!). I leave an open time line for sound clips and songs. Arm the tracks to record, press the record button and start talking into the mics. You should see the sound coming in.

Once in a while we press the stop button and drag in an mp3 or wav file to be played. Once its in place, we set the timeline right after the clip and start recording again. We do this for the intro and exit music, along with the songs and listener calls we take.

For listener calls, I use skype with the skypeIn option. With sypeIn you get a phone number and a voicemail box. By default, you cant save the voicemails that people leave you in skype. I use a software package called PrettyMay to save the voice mails and calls as mp3 files. I use the PrettyMay Call Recorder for Skype, it costs $24 for a license with free upgrades for lifetime. After I save all the calls to mp3s, I can drag them into the time line in Adobe Audition, just like the songs we play.

Once all the audio is finished and complete in Adobe Audition, I export the raw WAV file by going to file->export audio. The export takes a while to complete.

After the WAV is exported, I import it into Audacity, and export it out as a 128kbps mp3 file. You need the LAME MP3 Encoder to export mp3s from audacity

Once you have the mp3 exported, listen to it (or atleast spot check it)! You want to make sure your rad new podcast sounds good. This is the final product, the rest of the post will be on how to deliver it to the listeners.

A podcast is simple an entry in an RSS feed with a media file enclosures. I’m not going to go into details on how to do this, but Apple has a great page on how to get your podcast into iTunes.

notPopular.com is powered by WordPress and I use a wordpress plugin called BlubrryPowerPress to syndicate the podcast to the site and to iTunes.

That’s basically it! I love podcasting and have been doing it for several years now. If you have some questions, leave them in the comments below..

no place like home (and end keys) on a mac

I never noticed how often I use the “home” and “end” keys when I type until they were taken away from me. I am a programmer by trade, and as a result, I type code all day long. On a PC the end key will take you to the end of a line, and the home key will bring you to the beginning of a line. On a mac, this functionality doesn’t exist. It’s simple missing! It just makes a “ding” at me

Maybe it would be different if I was using a mac keyboard with my mac mini. Right now I am using a KVM switch to share my microsoft mouse and keyboard with my PC and my Mini. As a result, My mind and hands continue to type and work just like I was coding using a PC. “DING DING DING” damn its annoying. I had no idea i hit those keys so often, but the mini does a good job at reminding me

I tried to live with it but it got old fast. I decided to do a google search for “home end keys mac” to see if there was a fix for this. The first result was a God send. keyfixer is a tiny application for pc-to-mac switchers like me, that remaps your keyboard and adds back the functionality of the home and end keys.

It’s amazing how much more productive I feel just by having those 2 keys back. I guess after 15+ years of typing/programing for a living, the home and end keys are a perminiate part of my arsenal and I will never underestimate their power ever again.

I got a mac

As part of my 2009 new years resolutions, I’m going to write an iPhone application and launch it this year. I realized that the first quarter of the year is almost over and I haven’t made any progress on this. The biggest hurdle was the development platform. I’ve tried to install Mac OS X onto my PC several times but it never worked right, so I decided to bite the bullet and get the ball rolling, I spend my hard earned american cash dollars and bought a mac.

I weighted out all my options and decided that the lowest barrier to entry would be the mac mini. I’m not looking to completely switch to mac (yet), I’m planning on keeping my PC going strong and using the mac mini as a development platform.

I was really impressed with the packaging of the mac mini, and the form factor of the actual machine, it’s well…. mini.

It’s going to take a bit if time for me to get the full swing of OS X. I’ve been using windows and ubuntu for so long now that I have an expectation for application behavior, and OS X is throwing some curve balls at me  that I need to get used to. The good thing is that most of my friends, and google are helping me cope and deal with it.

I think it would help if I actually got an apply keyboard to go with it. instead of using my PC keyboard. Too bad that apple doesnt make an ergonomic keyboard like the one I use.

I’m going keep this blog updated with my switching experiance as I slowly easy into the fan boy soaked world that is Apple. iPhone app development, here I come!

back in my day…

In this post I am going to sound like an old man, so be prepared…

Over the weekend, I bought some new hard drives for my computer. They weren’t just any drives, they were the golden fleece of computer storage, TERABYTE DRIVES! My grand total at the check out stand was about $200. $100 per drive, on sale. You might be thinking, “big deal, who care, you can get those any where. whats so special?”. Let me take you on a short journey down my memory lane.

I really got into computers in 1993 (despite the fact that I wrote my first program in 1986). I started to tinker on a pre-built compaq presario that my grandpa had bought me for school. By 1996 I had started to build my own computers, and decided I was going to major in computer science. My physics teacher, Bruce Downey, was some what of a mentor to me in the field of computers. I worked for him as a teachers assistant my senior year. Instead of grading papers, many class periods were spent talking about the latest and greatest computer parts and what we would build if we had enough money. I can clearly remember looking at the back of computer magazines and saying,

I would build a computer that had a terabyte of drive space!

A terabyte was the holy grail of storage. In 1997, a terabyte looked like  a refrigerator, was about 6 feet tall, and required a server room environment to operate in. Not to mention the price tag of over $10,000 dollars. Definitely not for home use, and not something that a 15 year old could afford.

Fast forward to last weekend. It’s early 2009, 14 years after I was drooling over a massive (in size and price) piece of equipment that cost 10x my first car, and there I was, holding not one but 2 of the modern equivalents in my hand, and its common place. Today’s price and weight are a fraction of what a terabyte was in 1997.

The terabyte drive is the first piece of equipment that I can clearly remembering using the phrase, “one day I will own one of them”, with. The impressive part is that a terabyte for $100 is not impressive! The tech industry doesn’t slow down. I’m excited for the future, it’s going to be a whole new game.

So there it is. I am officially old now. I am blogging about the good ‘ol days when hard drives took up rooms, 56k was a “fast” connection, and the portable media was floppy!

I suppose I should shift my dreams to the monster petabyte drives that dominate the server rooms today