Android’s Jelly Bean 4.1.1. user guide

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Marco Barnig

The main Android’s buttons are :

: Home
: Back
: Recent
: Menu

A running app is minimized by tapping the Home icon. A recently used app is revealed by tapping the Recent icon. To see more recent apps, slide down. To switch to an app, tap a screenshot from the Recent apps list. To clear a recent app from the list, swipe it sideways. You don’t need to close a running app for every instance on the Android system. If you want however to stop an app, run the Settings app, tap Applications under DEVICE, select the app you want to close, tap the Force stop button and tap OK to confirm. At the same settings you can uninstall the app. To rearrange icons on the screen, touch and hold any icon for a second and drag the icon to a different spot on the screen. You can also drag an icon to the left or right edge of the screen until it starts sliding to drop the icon to another screen. To remove an icon, touch and hold it until the Remove icon appears on the top, the drag and drop the icon over the Remove icon.

To group similar apps together, you can create a folder by holding an icon for a second to reveal a create folder button at the top of the screen. Give it a name and drag the wanted icons into this folder. You can rename a folder at any time by tapping its name to rename. To turn off Auto-Correction, open the app Settings and select Language & input under PERSONAL and enter the keyboard tab to change the options.

The following list provides links to additional informations about this topic :

The Best Android Tips and Tricks, by Jojoyee
6 Ways To Take Screenshots On Android, by Chris Hoffman

UPnP Technology and Test Tools

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Marco Barnig

Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a set of networking protocols that permits networked devices, such as personal computers, printers, gateways, servers and mobile devices to seamlessly discover each other’s presence on the network and establish functional network services for data sharing, communications, and entertainment. UPnP is intended primarily for residential networks. No special device driver support is necessary, common network protocols are used (TCP/IP, HTTP, XML, SOAP). UPnP uses UDP port 1900 and TCP port 2869.

The UPnP technology is promoted by the UPnP Forum. Formed in October 1999, the UPnP Forum is an industry initiative of more than 1000 leading companies in computing, printing, networking, consumer electronics and home appliances. A huge library of UPnP resources is available at the website of the UPnP Forum.

UPnP was published as an international standard, ISO/IEC 29341, in December 2008.

The foundation for UPnP networking is IP addressing, either by DHCP or by AutoIP (zero configuration networking). The next step in UPnP networking is discovery, based on the Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP). SSDP allows a device to advertise its services to control points, for example to media servers (Serviio) on the network. The next step is to learn more about the discovered device and its capabilities by retrieving the device’s XML description from the URL provided by the device in the discovery message. Now the control point can send actions to a device’s service using the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP).

An additional capability of UPnP networking is event notification, or eventing. The event notification protocol defined in the UPnP Device Architecture is known as General Event Notification Architecture (GENA). The final step in UPnP networking is presentation, usually by providing an URL of a webpage loaded in a browser.

UPnP AV is an audio and video extension of UPnP, referenced in specifications published by other organizations, including the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA).

Problems with UPnP are lack of authentication and vulnerabilities with the risk that UPnP devices can be accessed and/or manipulated by malicious web sites.

A complete set of open source tools for creating and testing UPnP solutions is provided by Intel. They include Device Spy, a generic control point, and Device Builder, a code generation tool. In all, there are 11 tools in this package that range from low-level debugging to full reference tools :

Device Spy
Device Sniffer
Network Light
Device Builder
Device Relay
Device Validator
Service Author
AV Media Controller
AV Media Server
AV Media Renderer
AV Wizard

Network Light is a software model of an UPnP device to show the basic functions of the UPnP protocol. The light can be switched on/off or dimmed. The following snaps show how

UPnP Network Light OFF / ON / DIMMED

UPnP Device Spy Tool

UPnP Device Spy Tool : Invoke action DIM 50%

UPnP Device Spy Tool : Invoke action ON

UPnP Device Sniffer Tool

Another UPnP test tool, called UPnP Inspector, has been developed by Coherence. The Inspector is an UPnP Device and Service analyzer, and a debugging tool, based on the Coherence DLNA/UPnP framework. It is loosely modeled after the Intel UPnP Device Spy and Device Validator.

UPnP Inspector

UPnP Inspector logs

UPnP Inspector action

UPnP Inspector details

The american Human Brain Activity Map Project

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Marco Barnig

Last update : August 10, 2013

Cartoon by Jordan Adwan, The New Yorker, 2013

Several weeks after the public announcement of the Human Brain Project as a european research FET Flagship by the European Commission, the US administration unveiled the planning of a decade-long scientific effort to examine the workings of the human brain and build a comprehensive map of its activity, seeking to do for the brain what the Human Genome Project did for genetics. The project called Brain Activity Map (BAM) will include federal agencies, private foundations and teams of neuroscientists and nanoscientists in a concerted effort to advance the knowledge of the brain’s billions of neurons and gain greater insights into perception, actions and, ultimately, consciousness. Moreover, the project holds the potential of paving the way for advances in artificial intelligence.

The Human Brain Activity Map initiative will be organized by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Partners will be the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in Chevy Chase, the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle and other big actors as Google and Microsoft.

Gary Marcus, a professor at New York University (N.Y.U.), recommends to endow five separate projects rather than putting a huge amount of money into a single project. He proposes to address the most fundamental unsolved questions in neuroscience :

Decipher the basic language of the brain : What is the basic element of neural computation ? What is the basic scheme by which symbolic information (like sentences) are stored ?
Understand the rules governing how neurons organize into circuits
Determine which circuits to use in a given situation and understanding how the brain communicates information from one region to another (neural plasticity and neural development)
Find the relation between brain circuits, genes, and behavior
Develop new techniques for analyzing and observing brain function

The following list provides some links to additional informations about the Human Brain Activity Map Project :

Brain Initiative, Wikipedia
Obamas Brain, by Gary Marcus in The New Yorker, February 18, 2013

Online music : Last.fm, Deezer and Spotify

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Marco Barnig

A renowned online music service is iTunes, based on SoundJam MP and launched by Apple in 2001. Jeff Robbin and Bill Kincaid developed SoundJam MP in 1998 with assistance from Dave Heller. They chose Casady & Greene to publish SoundJam MP. Jeff Robbin is now the vice president of consumer applications at Apple Inc and he remains the lead software designer for iTunes.

Other online music services are less known, among them Last.fm, Deezer and Spotify.

Last.fm is a music website, founded in the United Kingdom in 2002, acquired by CBS Interactive in May 2007. Using a music recommender system called Audioscrobbler, Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user’s musical taste by recording details of the songs the user listens to. Audioscrobbler began as a computer science project of Richard Jones. Last.fm was founded in 2002 by Felix Miller, Martin Stiksel, Michael Breidenbruecker and Thomas Willomitzer as an internet radio station and music community site. Last.fm won the Europrix 2002 and was nominated for the Prix Ars Electronica in 2003. Last.fm and Audioscrobbler were merged in 2005 and are still active today. A new desktop player was released on January 15, 2013.

Deezer is a French web-based music streaming service. It allows users to listen to music on various devices. It currently has more than 20 million licensed tracks and over 30,000 radio channels. The first version of Deezer, called Blogmusik, has been developed by Daniel Marhely in Paris in 2006. The company became succesful in 2010 when they entered a partnership with Orange. Deezer has three account types : discovery (free), premium and premium-plus. Deezer was launched in Luxembourg in March 2012 in partnership with Tango.

Spotify is a commercial music streaming service providing DRM-protected content from a range of major and independent record labels, including Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group and Universal. The service was launched in October 2008 by Swedish startup Spotify AB. The company was founded by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. Since November 2012 the service is also available in Luxembourg.

The system is currently accessible using Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone, S60 (Symbian), Sonos, and other devices. Music can be browsed by artist, album, record label, genre, playlist, radio channels, as well as by direct searches. About 20 million songs are available since December 2012. Some artists are missing because of licensing restrictions imposed by the record labels or by the artists. The Beatles, for example, are not available because of a digital distribution agreement that is exclusive to iTunes.

Three subscriptions, with trials, are available : open, unlimited, premium. A free service is only available upon invitation. Spotify operates under a so-called ‘Freemium’ model, which is offering simple and basic services free for the user to try and more advanced or additional features at a premium price based ont the Open Music Model (OMM). The incorporation of DRM diverges however from the OMM.

In 2011 Spotify was announced as a technology pioneer by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

FFmpeg formats and codecs

Posted on March 3, 2013 by Marco Barnig

Last update : September 16, 2013

By typing ffmpeg -formats in the command prompt window, a list of all supported media formats by FFmpeg is returned. The same is true for ffmpeg -codecs to get the list of all supported video- and audio-codecs.

I am particularly interested in the following FFmpeg formats and codecs :

File formats :
D. = Demuxing supported
.E = Muxing supported

D aac raw ADTS AAC (Advanced Audio Coding)
DE ac3 raw AC-3
DE amr 3GPP AMR
DE asf ASF (Advanced / Active Streaming Format)
DE avi AVI (Audio Video Interleaved)
DE dv DV (Digital Video)
E dvd MPEG-2 PS (DVD VOB)
DE flv FLV (Flash Video)
DE h264 raw H.264 video
E ismv ISMV/ISMA (Smooth Streaming)
DE m4v raw MPEG-4 video
DE mjpeg raw MJPEG video
E mov QuickTime / MOV
D mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 QuickTime / MOV
E mp4 MP4 (MPEG-4 Part 14)
DE mpeg MPEG-1 Systems / MPEG program stream
E mpeg2video raw MPEG-2 video
DE mpegts MPEG-TS (MPEG-2 Transport Stream)
D mpegvideo raw MPEG video
DE u8 PCM unsigned 8-bit
E psp PSP MP4 (MPEG-4 Part 14)
E vob MPEG-2 PS (VOB)
D webvtt WebVTT subtitle

Codecs:
D….. = Decoding supported
.E…. = Encoding supported
..V… = Video codec
..A… = Audio codec
..S… = Subtitle codec
…I.. = Intra frame-only codec
….L. = Lossy compression
…..S = Lossless compression

D.V..S fraps Fraps
DEV.LS h264 H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10
DEVIL. mjpeg Motion JPEG
DEV.L. mpeg1video MPEG-1 video
DEV.L. mpeg2video MPEG-2 video (decoders: mpeg2video mpegvideo )
DEA..S pcm_u8 PCM unsigned 8-bit
D.S… webvtt WebVTT subtitle

Save Contents of Command Prompt to Text File

Posted on March 2, 2013 by Marco Barnig

Command Prompt is a feature of Windows that provides an entry point for typing MS‑DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) commands and other computer commands.

To get a command prompt, click the Start button, click All Programs, click Accessories, and then click Command Prompt. To view a list of common commands, type help, and then press ENTER. To view more information about each of these commands, type help‌ command name and then press ENTER.

To save the content of the Command Prompt Window to a text file, add > name.txt after the command and then press ENTER.

Metadata handled by Synology Photostation

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Marco Barnig

Last update : September 17, 2013

The following metadata for images are handled by the Photostation application of the Synology Diskstation :

—- EXIF —-

Make (IFD0)
Camera Model Name (IFD0)
Exposure Time (ExifIFD)
F Number (ExifIFD)
ISO (ExifIFD)
Exif Version (ExifIFD)
Date/Time Original (ExifIFD) : yyyy:mm:dd hh:mm:ss
GPS Version ID (GPS)
GPS Latitude Ref (GPS)
GPS Latitude (GPS)
GPS Longitude Ref (GPS)
GPS Longitude (GPS)

—- XMP —-

XMP Toolkit (XMP-x)
Region Person Display Name (XMP-MP)
Region Rectangle (XMP-MP) : x1, y1, x2, y2
Description (XMP-dc)
Subject (XMP-dc) : keywords

XMP-exif metadata tags are not recognised.

Responsive video

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Marco Barnig

Last update : June 27, 2014

Responsive webdesign needs not only adaptive images, but also fluid videos. The pioneers in emdedding responsive videos in webpages are Chris Coyier and Dave Rupert. They created in 2011 FitVids, a lightweight, easy-to-use jQuery plugin for reactive width video embeds. FitVids automates the Intrinsic Ratio Method by Thierry Koblentz to achieve fluid width videos in your responsive web design. The source code is available at Github.

Here is a list of more useful links to contributions about responsive video :

Complete Breakdown of Responsive Video, by Ulrich Pogson
Rundown of Handling Flexible Media, by Chris Coyier
Responsive Video Shortcode, by Michael N
CSS: Elastic Videos, by Nick La
Fluid and responsive YouTube and Vimeo videos with fluidvids.js, by Todd Motto

MPEG-4 Tools

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Marco Barnig

Last update : September 16, 2013

To create and modify MPEG-4 Multimedia files, you need different MPEG-4 tools, e.g. an encoder, a multiplexer and a packager :

MPEG-4 Tools : Video encoder

x264 (Wikipedia) is a free software library (libx264) and application (x264.exe) for encoding video streams into the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC format, and is released under the terms of the GNU GPL. X264 provides best-in-class performance, compression, and features, gives the best quality and has the most advanced psychovisual optimizations. A comparison with other H264 codecs is available at the MSU Graphics & Media Lab (Video Group) of Lomonosov Moscow State University. The leader in this comparison for software encoders is x264, followed by MainConcept, DivX H.264 and Elecard.

X264.exe is a command line tool. A typical command to enter in the Command Prompt Window looks as follows :
x264.exe --crf 18 --ref 3 --bframes 2 --subme 3 --keyint 100 --sar 1:1 --output %1.mkv %1 pause

All available parameters can be listed with the command x264 –fullhelp. The purpose and use of all x264 settings is also explained on the MeWiki website.

The fourcc code of the X264 codec is X264.

MPEG-4 Tools : Multiplexer

To encode videos, x264 is not sufficient. Audio, subtitles and metadata should be added, and all these data need to be multiplexed. Therefore other tools are needed. FFmpeg is one of these tools. FFmpeg is a free software project that produces libraries and programs for handling multimedia data. It includes libavcodec, the leading audio/video codec library and libavformat, an audio/video container mux and demux library. FFmpeg is published under the GNU Lesser General Public License 2.1+ or GNU General Public License 2+, depending on which options are enabled. The ffmpeg component is a command-line tool to convert one video file format to another. X264 is added as an external library to FFmpeg. Zeranoe has great static builds of FFmpeg for Windows with libx264 included. Other useful external libraries are the Fraunhofer AAC library for AAC encoding and the LAME library for MP3 encoding.

A very comprehensive documentation about ffmpeg , the libraries, utilities and tools is available at the FFmpeg website.

MPEG-4 Tools : Packager

A third command-line tool performing some manipulations on ISO media files like mp4 is MP4Box, the multimedia packager from GPAC (Project on Advanced Content). Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) is one example. GPAC officially started as an open-source project in 2003 with the initial goal to develop from scratch, in ANSI C, clean software compliant to the MPEG-4 Systems standard, a small and flexible alternative to the MPEG-4 reference software. The GPAC framework is being developed at École nationale supérieure des télécommunications (ENST) as part of research work on digital media. A general documentation about MP4Box is available at the GPAC website.

MP4Box is a command-line tool, the following GUI’s are available :

MeGUI, by several authors (version 2356, released on June 8, 2013)
My MP4Box GUI, by Matthew Bodin (version 0.6.0.6, released on January 4, 2013)
Java MP4Box Gui, by Rune André Liland (version 1.7, released on May 18, 2013)
Yamb, by kurtnoise version 2.1.0.0 beta 2, released on June 29, 2009)

The following list provides links to additional posts about MPEG-4 tools :

Internet with a Brain

Your browser becomes your personal assistant and Internet gets a synthetic consciousness