Cheap Tech

Is Facebook turning your brain to mush?

A University of Oxford neuroscientist says social networking sites such as Facebook might be altering your brain.

From the Chicago Tribune:

This is your brain.

This is your brain on Facebook.

It's an advertisement you might see someday, if testimony given to the British House of Lords this month is to be believed. In remarks that have stirred up a tempest in the British media and on the Internet, Baroness Susan Greenfield, a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford, warned that the instant feedback and impersonal communication offered by social networking sites could drive human brains and behavior in negative directions.

"As a consequence, the mid-21st Century mind might almost be infantilized, characterized by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathize and a shaky sense of identity," Greenfield said Feb. 12.

So, we might all become blubbering idiots, but at least we'll have friends!

The Hulu hullaballoo

In my last post, I wrote about turning an old Xbox into a media center for my living room. And trust me, it is sweet!

But one of the main reasons for the project was to be able to watch Hulu on my television without having to lug a laptop into the living room and plug in a couple of cables.

Hulu, for those select few who haven't seen their creepy commercials with Alec Baldwin, is the hottest streaming video site on the Internet. It combines legal video content from multiple sources, ranging from current TV programming such as "24" and "Life" to archive episodes of series such as "Airwolf" and "Charlie's Angels."

But apparently Hulu's content providers had no intention of Hulu's users ever watching streaming video in their living rooms. TV? That is the province of the networks and cable.

So, bending to the threat of losing valuable content, Hulu began encrypting their video feeds, rendering their streams unviewable to those using XBMC, Boxee, MythTV and other media center devices.

It took XBMC's volunteer developers two days to sidestep Hulu's encryption scheme, but then Hulu changed it again. Volunteers hacked it once again, but the new hack won't work on XBMC for the Xbox (those on Linux, Mac and Windows can still get Hulu hotness).

I personally don't understand the business sense of excluding thousands of viewers based simply on the device they use, but Hulu's content providers must have some logical explanation for their disdain. How can they allow me to embed their video here, yet keep it off my TV?

So, I abandoned Hulu on the Xbox and replaced it with a Fancast plugin. Fancast also serves "The Adventures of Brisco County Junior" and the "A-Team," so I'm set ... at least for now.

Don't let that old Xbox gather dust!

My wife and I broke down and bought an original Xbox for our two sons several years ago.

The boys were ecstatic when they unwrapped their prize and saw the neon green X that promised worlds of adventure and teenage RSI.

But alas, like all technology, the Xbox was soon usurped. Microsoft molded a new, translucent object of desire, and the black plastic box was shoved into the corner, crowned with a tangle of old-school corded controllers encrusted with dust.

That's when I claimed it, dusted off its crown and once again made it king of our family room.

Using some straightforward soft-mod instructions from the ever-resourceful Gina Trapani at Lifehacker, I transformed the old Xbox into a Linux computer and loaded it with XBMC (Xbox Media Center) software. Instead of Splinter Cell and Halo, I was going to use the Xbox and my Internet connection to get "Family Guy" and "Battlestar Galactica."

While there's no sense recreating Gina's instructions (I'd never do it as well), I did stumble on a few things:

-- Getting the hack through IRC was an incredible hassle. My FTP client (FileZilla) kept getting booted when I navigated to the proper directory for the download. Since the "super-secret" FTP username and password work only once, I couldn't log back in. After hours of frustration, I learned that if I left FileZilla pointed to the proper directory, then asked again via IRC for a password (using the same name), I could start the download without getting kicked off. This took me hours to noodle out.

-- The latest build of the most popular XBMC distro is freely available at T3CH. You want to grab the "bleeding edge" version. (I started with the "stable" version, but soon updated it).

-- The Action Replay software that I received was buggy. The software presents you with three panels, which represent the three locations (memory card, PC and online) available for game saves or exploits. The Lifehacker instructions say to drop the exploit on the PC panel, then drag it to the memory card. I got the exploit into the PC panel by dragging if from my Windows desktop, but the software would not allow me to drag it from one panel to another. After considerable frustration, I simply dragged the exploit from my desktop onto the memory card panel and it worked!

-- The Lifehacker instructions say to "install the softmod" but they don't say where. The Xbox hard drive is partitioned into several drives. I guessed C:/ and it worked.

Once the installation was done, I went in search of scripts and plugins to extend the capabilities of my reborn wonder. I started with a plugin to stream video from the popular Web site Hulu, which hosts thousands of TV shows and movies.

I was disappointed when the plugin didn't work. I could navigate the directories, but the videos wouldn't play. I spent hours online looking for answers (documentation for this stuff is sparse to non-existent). I eventually just updated the XBMC software. Once the new "bleeding edge" software was installed, the Hulu plugin worked like a charm. I spent the next 90 minutes watching "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels."

Spurred on by my success, I downloaded the Navi-X Media Browser, which essentially puts another media player inside XBMC. The Navi-X package includes scripts for dozens of online media sources, including YouTube, Adult Swim, Flickr and others. In my experience, some worked and others didn't, but there are more than enough to keep you busy for weeks.

Next up, I'm going to custom keymap my universal remote (I already have an IR adapter) so that I can shed the old-school controller.

All this for less than $30. W00t!

For this weekend's project....

For this weekend's project. I'll be modding my son's Xbox so that I can stream video from the Internet unto my television in the living room. Powered by

Dial2Do

. Mp3

Weekend Project: Lighting up Linux

I grew up GUI, so I've always been shy of the Linux distributions available online, even if they were free and full of promise.

A couple of years ago, I downloaded a Knoppix disc image and burned a bootable CD that let me get an idea of what Linux could do. It was slow running it off the CD, but I didn't have the disk space on my old Windows ME box (you can stop chuckling now) for a new partition and a full Knoppix install. So once the newness wore off, the CD went in the drawer, where it keeps company with a tangle of cables and a bubble-wrapped graphics card from 1999.

But now that Wal-Mart and Dell are selling Linux boxes to consumers, I decided to take a second look. And this time, I vowed to go whole hog (or at least a couple of big hams).

For Linux, I chose Ubuntu, the most popular free Linux distribution. And, since I didn't have a box I could dedicate to my Linux experiment, I decided to set up a virtual machine on my Intel Mac. If you're running Windows XP, you might want to try these instructions, though the process is nearly identical.

Step One: Go to the Ubuntu home page and check the system requirements. I had to remember that I was going to be running Ubuntu in a virtual machine, which means I could allocate only a portion of my hardware (most notably RAM) to Linux. I figured I could spare 512MB of RAM to the virtual machine, so I forged ahead.

Step Two: Download the Ubuntu disc image. Find the proper disc image and download to your desktop. The file is nearly 700MB, so it's going to take a while. When it's done, you'd normally use the ISO file to make a CD, but in this case that isn't necessary (though I did it anyway). The virtual machine software can install Ubuntu straight from the iso file.

Step Three: Download the virtual machine software. There are a number of virtual machine options, but I went with VirtualBox, since some of my co-workers use it to run Windows on Intel Macs and I'd seen it in action.

Step Four: Install the VirtualBox software and create a new virtual machine profile There are tons of options, so you can drill through the documentation if you like. I figured my biggest decisions were RAM and hard disk space, so I allocated 512MB of RAM and 40GB of hard disk (actually an image file on your hard drive that pretends to be a physical drive)  to the virtual machine. I also went with VirtualBox's dynamically expanding drive option and stuck with the defaults on everything else.

Step Five: In VirtualBox, click on the CD/DVD-ROM settings and add a CD to mount. Select the Ubuntu ISO image you downloaded. Now select the virtual machine profile you've created and click start.

Step Six: Once the Ubuntu screen appears, select the "Start or Install Ubuntu" option and then select the install icon on the desktop. Follow the prompts to install.

I had a moment of trepidation when Ubuntu asked to partition my drive, but then I realized it was looking at the 40GB virtual drive and wasn't going to wipe out my Mac.

Step Seven: If all goes well, you are now running Linux in a window, but you might see some issues. At this stage, my guest OS window wouldn't resize, and the bottom of the window wouldn't consistently render. To fix this, you need to install the VirtualBox Guest Additions in Ubuntu. Being a Linux n00b, this step proved the most frustrating aspect of the project.

To prepare your machine for Guest Additions, VirtualBox recommends installing DKMS. In Ubuntu, go to Applications/Accessories and select Terminal. Once loaded, type:

sudo apt-get install dkms

After DKMS installs, exit Terminal.

Now go to the VirtualBox menu item "Devices" and select "Install Guest Additions." This will place a disk image on your Ubuntu desktop. Again in the VirtualBox menu, select "Devices" and Mount CD/DVD-ROM then CD/DVD-ROM image. Select VBoxGuestAdditions.iso.

Switch back to Ubuntu and launch Terminal (Applications/Accessories/Terminal) again. Once loaded, execute:

sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run

The command line will advise you to restart Ubuntu. Once you do, the Guest Additions will add some dandy features like mouse pointer integration, shared folders and other goodies.

Now remember, I'm a command-line n00b, and there are likely better ways to do this, but it worked for me. Your mileage may vary.

 And if you're new to Ubuntu, be sure to download the Ubuntu Pocket Guide and Reference. The 170-page godsend is $10 in print, but the PDF is free.

The Linux philosophy is that free is good. That's right up Cheap Tech's alley.

Where's Waldo? Google knows

They have your e-mail.

They have your documents.

They know where you live (they even put photos of your house on the Internet).

Now, they'll know where you are!

They, of course, is Google, and their latest "beta" application kinda freaks me out.

Latitude launches today, and it essentially turns your mobile phone into a tracking device. Install Latitude, accept an invitation from a friend, and that friend can track your movements either from their own cell phone or a laptop.

As a parent of a teenager about to get his driver's license, I can see Latitude's potential. It's a doting parent's dream.

But the idea of anyone (even my friends and family) knowing where I am at all times is just plain creepy. Google claims lots of privacy options (you can, of course, turn it off).

But still.

Google Earth adds ocean discovery

Google Earth, the super-cool way to go where you can't afford, has just released version 5.0, which now allows users to dive beneath the surface of the ocean.

Google teamed with marine experts from National Geographic and the BBC to offer people underwater topography, points of interest and marine biology.

Version 5.0 also includes historical photos and imagery, so you can see how a place looked over time.

It's pretty cool stuff. And best of all, it's free!