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Top Stories from the Category5.TV Newsroom

Video game ratings are being made “Simpler and stronger” according to UK government.
May 15, 2012 7:17pm
The system by which video games are rated in the UK is to be made “simpler and stronger”, the government has said. Games will now be rated by the Video Standards Council in line with Europe-wide guidelines. Previously, additional ratings were decided upon by the British Board of Film Classification. The new system means for [...]

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Scott Thompson lied on his resumé to become the CEO of Yahoo! and it got him fired.
May 15, 2012 6:30pm
In January, Yahoo named Scott Thompson, the president of PayPal, as its new head. But investment firm Third Point discovered that Mr Thompson did not hold a degree in computer science as had been claimed. Thompson apologised to staff in a memo on Monday, but made no mention of why his biography had listed the [...]

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Facebook is launching its own app store.
May 15, 2012 6:08pm
Facebook has launched its own app store to promote mobile programs that operate using the social network. The company said the App Center will become the “new, central place to find great apps like Draw Something” and other titles. Developers will have the ability to charge a fee for apps sold in the store in [...]

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New software is designed to disrupt torrent peer-to-peer networks in an effort to stop piracy.
May 15, 2012 6:06pm
A Russian company has developed software it says can disrupt and prevent people from downloading pirated content. Pirate Pay has been backed by Microsoft and has so far worked with Walt Disney Studios and Sony Pictures to stop “thousands” of downloads. The tool poses as real bit torrent users but then “confuses” peer-to-peer networks, causing [...]

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A new retinal implant could help blind patients see, without batteries.
May 15, 2012 10:16am
A retinal implant – or bionic eye – which is powered by light has been invented by scientists at Stanford University in California. Implants currently used in patients need to be powered by a battery. The new device, described in the journal Nature Photonics, uses a special pair of glasses to beam near infrared light into [...]

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Google has received approval to start driving self-controlled cars in Nevada.
May 8, 2012 6:05pm
Having trouble getting your driver’s license?  No problem!  Just get your car to take the test. No joke, Nevada has become the first state in America to allow vehicles to apply for their own driving licences. Car manufacturers have been working on taking human error out of driving for more than a decade with innovations such [...]

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BBC News – Descriptive camera developed by student Matt Richardson
May 1, 2012 6:27pm
A camera which produces written descriptions of scenes rather than photographs has been invented by a student in the US. The device uploads pictures to the web which are described within minutes by users on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service. The short description is then sent back to the camera and printed. It was developed by [...]

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The Pirate Bay must be blocked by UK ISPs.
May 1, 2012 2:26pm
File-sharing site The Pirate Bay must be blocked by UK internet service providers, the High Court has ruled. The Swedish website hosts links to download mostly pirated free music and video. Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media must all prevent their users from accessing the site. via BBC News – The Pirate Bay [...]

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Microsoft has pushed out a fix for a serious Hotmail password bug.
April 30, 2012 5:25pm
Microsoft has rushed out a fix for a serious bug in its Hotmail webmail services. The bug allowed a hacker to reset the password for a Hotmail account, locking out its owner and giving the attacker access to the inbox. The fix was put together because the bug was starting to be actively exploited online. [...]

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China has launchee two more Beidou navigation satellites.
April 30, 2012 10:18am
China has moved a step closer to completing its own navigation and positioning satellite network with the launch of two more navigation satellites. It brings the Beidou system, which became operational with coverage of China last December, to 13 satellites. To have global coverage, the country eventually aims to have 35 satellites in orbit by [...]

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Robbie's Blog

A new web site on the horizon
February 27, 2012 11:09am
Well, there has been a lot of talk lately about a new web site coming to Category5.TV viewers (codenamed "V3"), and those who follow the wiki know there are a lot of exciting things going on.

What has me so excited? Well, we're coming up on our 5th anniversary show faster than I'd like to think, and in all this time of doing Category5 TV, we've always had to fall back on existing web site solutions (Joomla CMS). And the fact is, while that saves us time in the short term, it makes for a nasty mess when we grow. But with V3, I get to code this bad-boy from the ground up. I get to design and create it from scratch, and make it do exactly what we want it to do. Just means a huge amount of work, and possibly a step-by-step integration of features that are readily available in a CMS framework.

Our viewership is up. That means we get a lot of traffic on our web site—more than 1/4 million viewers per month, and due to the nature of what we're doing, much of those hits happen simultaneously. It's a dreadful mess when you're on something like Joomla and taking 90 MB of server memory per user. Simple math will tell you that at that load level, a 7pm Tuesday night hit of 10,000 simultaneous users is more than our sad little server can handle. After all, what server has 878 GB of RAM? ;)

So, we've done our best... we've created (with Rachel Xu's hilarious help) an incredible custom error page, but the time has come when the bloat of Joomla (it has a few serious issues with large databases) is more than we can reasonably expect our servers to handle.

I've been developing the new site on a cloud-based architecture, and developing the code from scratch and making it extremely well-optimized for speedy site delivery and low system resource usage.

By being smart about my database queries alone, I've been able to lower the memory usage to under 1MB per connection. That's a substantial difference to Joomla's 90+MB, and it shows me clearly that I'm making a wise decision.

The first phase of our V3 Beta program starts this coming weekend, and I'm thrilled that we have a great team of beta testers from the Category5 TV community. I can't wait to show you all what I'm working on in my evenings and weekends, and inevitably the launch when we feel it's ready for public consumption.

My biggest challenge at the moment comes from the presentation of episodes... how to make it easy for you to find both new and old episodes. I also hope to bring every single episode to the web site—yes, all 231 episodes (and then some) will be available. But right now I'm still figuring out how to best present this to you.

I'll be placing more strategic ads on the site to help us with the bills, but as always, I will do my best to make sure these are visible enough to be valuable to the advertiser, yet non-intrusive enough that you can click them if you like, but aren't pushed to do so. We'll also be adding some video ads to the popup players and so-on, and this is part of the natural evolution of the show as you can expect. With more viewers, we have higher costs. So we're going to have to offset those carefully and in a non-annoying way. I welcome your feedback.

Big things on the horizon. Thanks for coming along for this crazy ride!

- Robbie

My Debian Installation - Goodbye For Now, Ubuntu
January 20, 2012 3:05pm
Hello my dear blog reader. Been a while, I know. You can virtually slap me with a large trout next time you see me in IRC.

Since I know you follow me on twitter, you already know that yesterday the second hard drive in my main work computer up and died on me. It hosts all my virtual machines, which I use for some important work stuff like quoting, invoicing, looking up stock and pricing, using Photoshop and our internal communication system which is unfortunately Windows only.

In checking the failed disk, I ran some smart monitor tools and found that my main OS drive is also on its way out. Just the nature of using the same drives for more than 2 years straight, in a pretty fast-paced programming environment.

So, with one drive crashed and another on its way out, I contemplated just cloning everything onto a new drive, but it's been nearly a year (11.04) since I installed a fresh OS, and I've never really liked Ubuntu 11.04. It's just too buggy. So I opted to reinstall.

I can't bring myself to install Ubuntu at this point due to Unity. My real love isn't Ubuntu, but "Debian-based distros". So I decided to take my experience from Episode 223 and go straight to the source of Ubuntu and so many other great distros: Debian.

I love that I work in a place where I can go back to the shop and say "Do we have a Squeeze CD laying around?" and sure enough, we already have the latest image on CD. That makes me feel like I'm in the right place. :) So I grabbed the Squeeze CD (the business card installer), installed a new 500 GB hard drive in my system and began the process.

I announced my decision to install Debian and "install it to my liking" and immediately began receiving responses on Twitter, like this one from @Angeldav12:

So here goes... I'll give you exactly what you ask for (I'm all about pleasing my loyal Cat5 fans! haha!)

Here's what my system looks like in the end:

[View Full Size]

So, Robbie... does this mean you hate Ubuntu now? Why are you switching to Debian?

I'm so glad you asked. Do I hate Ubuntu? No way! What a great distro backed by a great team! But they're at a transitional period right now: they're changing the way users interact with their computer by modifying the desktop paradigm. This is not a bad thing. In fact, it's a very good thing. It needs to be done. We're still using a desktop based on pre-Windows 3.1 systems. But it's young, buggy, and a little ahead of its time. I want to extend the life of the Gnome 2.3, give Unity and/or Gnome 3 a chance to grow and become more usable, and make the switch when I feel they feel "ready". Right now, Gnome 2.3 is still the stable choice. It's the tried and true, tested and improved. Is it that I'm not ready for Unity, or that Unity isn't ready for me?

I've been running 11.04 with XFCE since April, and I like it fine, but it has quirks. I remember the way Ubuntu used to feel (6.04, 7.10, etc) and I want that back. Debian is at the heart of Ubuntu, and making that switch will feel a little like going back in time&mbash;but to a time when the desktop was better than it is now.

So without further adieu let's dive into my Debian Squeeze installation!

Here is a step-by-step recount of what I did, and my thoughts as it was happening:

• Installed Debian as Desktop, Web Server and the standard tools.
• Changed Desktop Wallpaper to http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/The+Arrival?content=147606 by Richard Helmes.
• In Monitor preferences, disable "Same image in all monitors" and configure second display. Yay; Debian allows for one monitor to be rotated (not just both monitors like Ubuntu 11.04+)
• Install (via Synaptic):
  • compiz
  • compizconfig-settings-manager
  • compiz-fusion-plugins-main
  • compiz-fusion-plugins-extra
  • avant-window-navigator
  • awn-applets-c-extras
  • pidgin
  • pidgin-microblog (never tried it, thought I'd give it a go)
  • gwibber (is only 1.2 in the repository, but I'll install it this way and see if it's useable or if I should manually compile 3.0).
  • filezilla
• Set top panel to be roughly 55% opacity.
• Setup my Instant Messaging accounts in Pidgin. Add Twitter to that list Hey; that's cool--twitter comes up like a chat!
• Added this to sources.list:{code}deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian squeeze contrib non-free{/code}
• Adding GPG key slightly different in Debian since my user is not a sudoer. So I went to terminal and typed su to become root for a moment, long enough to add the GPG key with:{code}wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/oracle_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -{/code}
• Install VirtualBox (non-ose): virtualbox-4.1

Note: About 30 minutes in. While I do love the Twitter functionality of Pidgin as outlined above, I'm finding it annoying that when any of the ~800 people I follow tweet, I get a notification as if it were directed to me. IMO, this should only happen for @ replies. Unfortunately I don't see a setting to change this so I'll likely end up disabling it, or maybe I'll just set the refresh time to something absurd, like 4,000,000,000 hours.

• Install prism from their web site http://prism.mozillalabs.com/ (I use this to wrap Zimbra's web interface rather than using Zimbra Desktop.)
  
  ./prism is giving this error: prism: error while loading shared libraries: libasound.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
  
  To resolve, I'm starting by installing ia32-libs from Synaptic, which is only required because I'm using the 64-bit OS.

Okay; Twitter is getting really annoying now. I changed the setting for "Message refresh rate" to 36000 seconds (10 hours).

• Now that I have the 32-bit libraries installed, Prism gives a new message: Couldn't load XPCOM.
  
  So, let's install ia32-libs-gtk
  
  Yep; that was it. Prism working now. I created a Prism link for my Zimbra server on my desktop.
• Copied my virtual machine backups to ~/VirtualBox VMs
• Twitter is still hounding me on Pidgin. Trying disconnecting and reconnecting the Twitter account to see if the changes take effect. - Update: seems to have worked! No more Twitter messages.
• Load CompizConfig Settings Manager and activate the following plugins:
  • Window Decoration
  • Enhanced Zoom Desktop
  • Desktop Cube
  • Rotate Cube
  • 3D Windows
  • Gnome Compatibility
  • Animations
  • Animations Add-On
  • Shift Switcher (change Next Window option to ALT-Tab, Previous Window to Shift+Alt-tab)
  • Set Horizontal Virtual Desktop Size (General Options) to 4
• Run (via ALT-F2): compiz --replace


Doesn't appear compositing is working. Installed fusion-icon to see and it says it is, but I'm not getting compositing. Not going to waste time on it just now since I have work to do.

5 minutes later... Ha, just realized (duh!) I didn't install the nVidia drivers... so obviously compositing won't work. I'll do that next, but right now I'm transferring my backup onto my drive.
• Went to install hamster-applet and find it's already installed out of the box. Wicked awesome.
• Installed iotop from apt-get (su first,then apt-get install iotop) so I can keep an eye on my IO load (as it's really high transferring my backup over).
• Install from apt: command-not-found - this is just one of those features I love in Ubuntu but it's not installed out of the box in Debian.

Note to self: Way to MURDER your productivity for an hour: create a 120 GB fixed VDI in VirtualBox.

• Checked if linux-headers are installed for my kernel; yes.
• Enable non-free & contrib repositories
• Install: nvidia-kernel-dkms
• Install pulseaudio (Alsa is just not cool anymore... plus no sound indicator on tray, and no audio devices detected by VirtualBox for my VMs.)
• Reboot
• nvidia-kernel-dkms failed to initiate the nvidia drivers automatically (they're not loaded). I can't be bothered to figure it out since I don't mind recompiling when I get kernel updates, and it's preventing my virtual machines from running right now (no accelleration so they won't even boot), so I'll instead install with the nvidia-kernel${VERSION}-$(uname -r) and nvidia-glx${VERSION} packages and then build a small xorg.conf from the instructions found at http://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers#Libraries

NOTE: Audio is working now that I've got pulseaudio installed, and I have a volume icon in my tray. Virtual Machines are now seeing an audio device.

• Reboot again (to test the nVidia changes).
• Yep; I see the nVidia logo on boot now.
• Add the /mnt/mountpoint mountpoint and edit fstab to include a mountpoint for my network drive with the following line:{code}//serverip/sharename /mnt/mountpoint cifs nounix,rw,username=XXXXX,password=XXXXX,uid=robbie 0 0{/code} mount -a works fine with that.
• Restore all my user configuration backups (eg., settings for ~/.filezilla, my ~/.mozilla/firefox profile—which I put in ~/.mozilla/iceweasel—and so on)
• Run compiz --replace and it runs perfectly now. I lost the ability (by way of the GUI) to rotate a single monitor. I will play with this with xorg.conf another time. So this is an nVidia driver issue, not specific to Ubuntu 11.04+.
• Add hamster-applet to gnome panel. Oh, Gnome... how I've missed you!

Done.

So I got to enjoy about 5 hours with this finished setup this afternoon before heading home, and I must say the performance is exceptional. Now, that said, I'm not sure about running my virtual machines off the same hard drive as my /home and /. I'll probably have to install a second drive and at least move those off and use ~/VirtualBox VMs as a mountpoint. But for now, the single-drive installation is a stop-gap that is extremely easy to scale to more hard drives.

The system looks great, is much more responsive than the 11.04 installation I was previously running, and the feeling of a Gnome 2.32 desktop with Compiz effects is just unmatched.

You'll notice I also installed Avant Window Navigator, but didn't set it up yet. That's a dockbar kinda like Mac OS. I'll likely end up using it in place of the lower Gnome panel, but it wasn't a priority today during the build since really I was just trying to get back up and running, and back to work.

Because I had trouble with one of my virtual machine backups, the recovery took a little longer than it should have... probably about 4 hours total. I've every confidence that you could be up and running much quicker than that (as you don't have the virtual machine to deal with) if you want to try a similar setup.

Don't forget, I visually demonstrated a majority of this process on Episode 223, so if you're keen on giving Debian a try with Compiz, couple that episode with this blog entry and I'm confident you'll be happy with the result! If you do, please make sure you post a comment. And if you like this post, please tweet it, retweet it and otherwise share it to all your friends who might be considering which Linux desktop is for them.

Get the Debian Net Install / Business Card ISO from http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/

-Robbie

Microsoft Lifecam Studio works fine at 1080p 30 FPS
November 25, 2011 7:06pm
Hey friends!

When I come across a great piece of gear for a great price, I get a little offended when rookie reviewers who don't know how to work that gear post false reviews. And you know me, I'm not a Microsoft fanboy by any means (ha! quite the contrary), so this is legit!

The Microsoft Lifecam Studio promises to be a 1080p 30fps webcam for under $100, yet all the reviews anyone can find out there say it can only achieve 720p, if that. It's not true! The fact is, it's simply not to be considered a "basic user" camera. I mean, we're talking true HD here. You have to assume, even with the name "studio", we're talking a bit more "professional" here. You have to know a little bit about what you're doing, and you have to have appropriate hardware and software to make it happen. You have to have good "studio" lighting, and a killer system to run it.

Here, I demonstrate the Microsoft Lifecam Studio in 1080p ~30fps. Imagine being able to broadcast video live or on YouTube in exceptional 1080p for under $100. Crazy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBrs_tDtzyM
If you're unsure how to set the embedded player to HD and run as fullscreen, feel free to jump directly to the YouTube page here: http://youtu.be/YBrs_tDtzyM?hd=1

I mean, C'mon! You can see the veins in my eyes! That has to be a good thing!

For detailed information about our server specs, visit cat5.tv/server.

BUY THIS CAMERA HERE: cat5.tv/bh

Get a free trial of Telestream Wirecast here: cat5.tv/wirecast

This document will be a work in progress for a while. As Wirecast extends their support for the Lifecam Studio 1080p webcam, we will include information about it here. Please comment, post your experiences, and be sure to notify Telestream that you want support for the Microsoft Lifecam Studio in 1080p!

My hope is that this video will demonstrate to Telestream that Wirecast needs to support this webcam.

I bought these cameras for $48 each, so you can't tell me it's not worth supporting at this level of quality for so cheap!

Saving Money Using Technology - Part 1: Never Pay a Phone Bill Again

Have you ever been skeptical of the magicJack? Robbie is. So he set out to do a little myth-busting and gets to the bottom of whether we can really save $1000 on our phone bill. Per year.

GIMP 2.8 - Free Image Editing

Robbie and Eric show you how to install GIMP 2.8 on Ubuntu 12.04, and introduce you to an assortment of the new features.

Ubuntu 12.04 - Linux for Human Beings

Robbie and Erika take a look at Ubuntu 12.04, the latest long term support release of the Ubuntu Linux operating system.

Instagram. Love it or leave it.

Robbie and Rachel show you how to download all your Instagram pictures so you can close your account, or just to back them up.

Pump Up The Volume

Robbie and Hillary look at the iFrogz BOOST Near-Field Audio speaker and answer a slew of viewer questions.

Viewer Question Extravaganza - Overdrive Edition

Robbie and Eric attack a full inbox with the first ever "Overdrive" edition of Viewer Question Extravaganza, answering a non-stop array of your questions.

Viewer Question Extravaganza

Robbie and Eric work through a slew of viewer questions, give away a copy of Telestream Wirecast and announce our Earth Day giveaway contest. Eric also plays a live set of original songs.

Telestream Wirecast and 1080p

Robbie and Erika take you for the first-ever on-air tour of the Category5 TV studio, and introduce you to the powerful broadcast software Telestream Wirecast.

Beginner-to-Intermediate PHP Part 2: Counting with PHP

We're learning to program web applications on Category5 TV, and this week Robbie and Hillary take you through a while() statement in PHP to count up from zero.

Beginner-to-Intermediate PHP Part 1: The Magic of the PHP Array

Robbie and Rachel teach you how to create a PHP array and use foreach() to loop through the array and output images to the browser window.

Easy game installation on Linux using DJL

Robbie and Eric demonstrate DJL, a Linux alternative to Valve's "Steam" software to make video game installation a breeze on Linux.

Free software alternatives

Robbie and Christa demonstrate the GNU Image Manipulation Program and LibreOffice as viable alternatives to their expensive counterparts, available for Windows, Linux or Mac computers.

Monitoring your web sites and servers for free

Robbie and Hillary demonstrate how to setup service monitoring using the free Uptime Robot service, allowing you to see when your web site, server or service is up or down.

Creating a headless VirtualBox server

Robbie and Rachel demonstrate how to create a headless virtualization platform using free software, and test the Microsoft Lifecam Studio 1080p webcam in Telestream Wirecast.

Controlling Your Computer with an iDevice

Robbie and Eric show you how to control your computer with an iDevice and freely available VNC software.

Controlling Your Computer with Your Head

Robbie and Hillary demonstrate an amazing piece of technology for ergonomic or accessible use which allows you to control your computer's mouse by simply moving your head.

Freeplay Human Powered Devices

Robbie and Eric take a look at a handful of the awesome flashlights in the Freeplay product catalogue. Never change a light bulb or battery again!

Creating a Desktop Wallpaper for Linux with GIMP

Robbie and Rachel demonstrate how to create a simple desktop wallpaper for your Linux machine.

Changing photo backgrounds using the GIMP

Robbie and Hillary show you how to use the free GNU Image Manipulation Program to remove and replace the background in a photograph to make a Christmas photo usable throughout the year.

Linux for little ones

Robbie and Christa show you how to setup Qimo as a session so when your young children login to your computer they are presented with a "made for kids" desktop experience.

Customizing Debian for the best Linux desktop

Robbie and Eric demonstrate how to use Compiz to spice up the default Debian installation, allowing for a very fast and customizable Linux desktop.

Tiling your Linux applications

Robbie and Christa introduce you to a Python script which lets you tile the windows on your Linux desktop, helping you organize your running applications and improve ergonomics.

Making the Internet faster ... for free.

Robbie and Rachel demonstrate how to make your Internet service faster by using different DNS servers than those supplied by your Internet Service Provider. And best of all, it's a free upgrade, and you can change it at any time if you're not satisfied.

HD Video, Web Streaming and Shopping for HD

Robbie and Eric show you the difference between four different grades of consumer video camera, and explain what each is capable of.

Be a smart kid - Understand and stand up against cyber bullying

Sharron-Ann Reynolds from iamaSMARTkid.org joins Robbie and Hillary to discuss how technology has changed the bully and created the cyber bully. Important information for parents, and young people alike.