New premium HD satellite tuner from Elgato

Now this is really big news. Elgato has just released an updated version of its obsolete Elgato EyeTV 310 model. It’s simply called “EyeTV sat” and comes with support for Windows Vista as well as Dolby Digital sound and DVB-S2. Its design has been freshed up a lot: it now looks more like the optional DVD drive for the MacBook Air. Compared to the old model it’s got one FireWire connection less, which makes it look nifty and minimal.

Elgato now publicly promotes its DVB-S feature, which was long concealed for newer EyeTV 310 models as the feature was not part of Elgato’s marketing.

Get a look at the device here:

http://www.elgato.com/elgato/int/mainmenu/products/tuner/EyeTV-Sat/product2.en.html

A note to all American readers: Unfortunately, the device is not yet available for North America.

Thank you for being a friend, Bea Arthur!

It’s been a long time since I’ve written a new article on my blog. This time, I would like to honour a special person. With her sarcastic jokes as Dorothy in “Golden Girls,” she brought a ray of sunshine into our grey everyday lives; her coolness in even the worst situations served us as an example not to worry too much. Her tenor voice will haunt us forever and make us remember a person that was not only a famous TV character, but also a good friend to us. 

Yesterday, Bea Arthur passed away at the age of 86 in her family circle. The reason for her death is a cancer disease.

To revive some moments with her, I now want to show you some “Golden Girls” clips from Youtube:

 

The opening credits…

 

…some bloopers to warm up…

 

…the Miami Jingle …

 

…and the final scene of Golden Girls (Season 7, “One Flew Out of the Cuckoo’s Nest Part 2″)…

 

R.I.P. Beatrice Arthur!

HowTo: If Apple TV refuses to play sound of HD movies

Symptom: After having updated to the new firmware 2.3 for Apple TV, self-made HD movies including 5.1 Surround Sound will play but no sound can be heard.

Solution: This problem has been discussed much in Apple forums. The solution is very simple. Apple has even stated the solution in a support document, which can be accessed via this link: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1755. What it tells you is that all video content containing an AC-3 sound track MUST contain another AAC stereo track for the same film, otherwise no sound will play.

Now, as videos containing an AC-3 track have to be in .mov format for the Apple TV to be recognized, another AAC track (even if it’s “fake”) can be easily added. 

1. Open the affected movie in Quicktime Pro (or another app of your choice). Additionally, open a random AAC file.

2. In the Edit menu, choose Select All as well as Copy. Then go back to your movie. Now, again in the Edit menu, choose Add to Movie. If you open the Movie Properties via the Window menu, you should see that a new AAC file has been added to the film. Please deselect the tick on the left so that the sound of this track can’t be heard when playing the film on your computer.

3. As a last step, save your film. Now, the sound should play again on Apple TV.

Note: Apple intended to have a stereo and a Dolby track for reasons of compatibility. Next time, when you author or convert a movie with an AC-3 track, you may prefer to add a real stereo track for the movie instead of just a fake track.

Please note: You take full responsibility for your actions on your computer. I can never be held responsible for any damages caused by my tutorials. Errors excepted!

HowTo: Resolve error -3256 in iTunes

I have good news for all the annoyed iTunes users out there with error -3256 popping up all the time. Do you also belong to the people being prevented from streaming music over the network to your AirPort Express while maybe syncing with other devices like Apple TV?

For all the ones who are fed up with it I have a solution that might work (specifically for Mac OS X Leopard):

1. Go to System Preferences. Choose Network, then Advanced…

2. Click on the menu tab TCP/IP.

3. In the drop down list Configure ipv6 choose Off.

Also, make sure that your firewall does not block any incoming connections. If the error persists, turn it off, i.e. activate Allow all incoming connections.

Please feel free to report back here to share your success with us. Maybe you can deliver other good solutions not mentioned here.

Please note: You take full responsibility for your actions on your computer. I can never be held responsible for any damages caused by my tutorials. Errors excepted!

HowTo: Make screenshots on the iPhone 3G

Have you ever wondered whether you would be able to take screenshots with your new iPhone 3G or the early iPhone updated to firmware 2.0? Well, here you go with a simple solution:

Press the sleep/wake and the home button at the same time for about a second. The screen shortly flashes, this is the sign that the screenshot has been created. It now lies in your camera roll folder in the Photos app. 

Happy shooting!

HowTo: If Visual Voicemail doesn’t work out of the box

Here is a very simple solution to a problem I’ve recently had with my brand new iPhone 3G. I tried to use Visual Voicemail but nothing seemed to really work. Even important services like declining a call and sending it to Voicemail weren’t enabled. 

I began doing some research on the internet, called a service hotline but nothing helped. I reset the iPhone to exclude every trouble caused by a non-standard setting but even this didn’t solve the problem. Then I visited the carrier’s support page and was helped by a friendly forum user who said that it could be just the network settings, which might be corrupted. I would have to reset them. This I did and – surprise – it finally worked!

So before you restore your iPhone or ANYTHING, just try this solution, it worked for me:

Go to Settings (on your home screen) -> General -> Reset and push the button Reset Network Settings, then confirm. Done.

Please note: You take full responsibility for your actions on your iPhone. I can never be held responsible for any damages caused by my tutorials. Errors excepted!

Waiting for the iPhone… – A report

0:00 p.m. This is the time when the first iPhones will be sold in a Swisscom store in Zurich. I did not want to get in queue so early as there are plenty of other opportunities to buy one of the brand-new 3G iPhones in Switzerland. But I will certainly arrive punctual at one of the many Swisscom stores at 6:30 a.m. to belong to the first ones possessing this new device. I am very excited because I think that this is going to be a great phone with so many new features compared to the first version of the iPhone that I already bought last year. 

I hope there won’t be too many people around so that I can get one before sun sets again. I guess that here in Switzerland many people are really looking forward to buying it. I have just watched a TV report about the iPhone sale and they showed a huge crowd of people waiting in front of the only Swisscom store that will sell it at midnight.

Furthermore, there is much news around on Swiss Apple sites, as on macprime.ch They have changed their normal interface to a special iPhone report page where people can send in texts and photos about their experiences. 

I think I should turn in soon in order to be fully awake next morning and to enjoy the shiny new iPhone without the wish to sleep. Wish me luck…

See this Flickr group with photos of the crowd waiting in Zurich: http://www.flickr.com/groups/iphone-day/pool/

 

UPDATE:

There was really a huge crowd waiting in front of the store. And the worst was that they had very few iPhones in stock. For example, there were only 8 (!) black 16 gig iPhones around. I had to wait about less than 2 hours after they opened the store for the first customers. The activation, which had be done in-store prolonged time for shoppers waiting. I was very lucky to belong to one of the first standing in queue because when I left the shop again there were about a hundred people waiting!

Bedankt, Oranjes!

In the last two weeks, the Swiss capital Berne, dived into an orange sea of colors with the fanciest and funniest fans I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, for the Oranjes, it was already over after the quarter finals of the EURO.

I know this has already been done officially, but now it’s about time for us bloggers to thank you, Nederlanders, for this great party and the football fever you brought to our country! You have certainly been the friendliest fan base of all teams playing…

BEDANKT EN TOT ZIENS!

Oh, yes, before I forget: There is an official page by the city of Berne: http://www.oranjebern.ch where you can upload your photos and revive emotions!

Copyright note (image): Some rights reserved by Flickr user kaspar.loosli

HowTo: Get PowerPC apps working again (on Intel mac)

This tutorial* explains a method that helped me get my PowerPC apps running again after they have started crashing immediately at launch (I am running the latest Leopard upgrade Mac OS X 10.5.2). I thought I’d share it with you to save you from all the trouble I went through lately.

Symptom:

You are on an Intel Mac. PowerPC (that means non-native) apps are always crashing immediately when you try to open one.

Before you proceed, you might want to have a look at the log file of the specific app after the crash. In the crash dialog, click on Report… and then on Problem details above to see what was put into the file. If you see a process called translated you have good chances to get it working again with my method.

If there is nothing like “translated”, please scroll down and try a simpler method from Apple’s support website first (although that didn’t solve my problem).

Solution:

The problem lies behind the Rosetta application, more precisely, a process called translated. This process is also a file in the system responsible for PowerPC apps to run properly. Somehow, this file must have gotten corrupted. But don’t ask me how, I am not an expert. 

1st step: Look for your Leopard Installation DVD (the disc that was delivered with your Mac or the one you bought in-store for upgrade).

2nd step: First finish your work and save it. Then restart your computer. Now put the DVD into the computer.

3rd step: Now, in Finder, click on Go to… and then Go to folder… In the new window type in (case sensitive!): 

/Volumes/[OS X disk image name]/usr/libexec/oah/

where OS X disk name stands for the name of the DVD you’ve just inserted (you can see its name on the desktop). Now you should see two files. One should be a folder with the name Shims and the other one our wanted file translate. Now copy ONLY the translate file.

4th step: Open again the Go to folder… dialog. Now type in:

 /usr/libexec/oah/

Again, you should be able to see the folder and the file translate. Before you paste the copied file here and replace the other file you may want to backup the existing translate file from here. Do this first if you want to play it safe! (Maybe you have to type in your user password once; this is nothing special for important system files as these)

5th step: Now close all open windows and do not touch any files in the system anymore! Afterwards, restart your computer.

Now everything should be working again as usual. Congrats!

CRASHING OFFICE APPS (PARTIAL SOLUTION): Visit the following Apple support page to see another solution for crashing PPC apps (especially Microsoft Office) but with a different cause: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303677 

Additional advice: Please see comments below!

If everything suggested didn’t work, search Google or Apple discussions.

*Please note: You take full responsibility for your actions on your computer. I can never be held responsible for any damages caused by my tutorials. Errors excepted!

Free Tibet – Boycott the olympics! (blog action)

Information about the blog action and how you can take part, please scroll down!!!

It’s certainly not what the Chinese government wanted, a protest in their most hated province Tibet in the year of the Beijing Olympics. Now it has happened: Tibetians went on streets to protest against their oppressing and cruel government. China, which is known for its human rights violations, has now again proved what everyone knew: They silenced a helpless crowd that wanted to show the whole world its desperate situation.
Journalists who wanted to report (what should be legal according to the olympic rules) were constrained much. Although in the times of the internet, some information found its way through to the western hemisphere. One of these pieces of evidence is a frightening YouTube video of these protests:

Another one shows a reporter, being intimidated by local policemen:

I really want to ask you: Do you want to support such a country? Everyone who wants to do something: PLEASE BOYCOTT THE 2008 OLYMPIC GAMES!!! The only way to do something against it.

If you’re not sure whether you should or not, here another video, which is not as funny as it may look like as we all know that over a million people were forced to leave their homes for stadiums and other olympic preparations:

Further information about the displacements: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7009364949

This blog takes part in the Free Tibet! blog action of Rainbow-Net: http://blog.rainbownet.ch/uncategorized/blog-action-free-tibet-now Please consider a visit there as well!!!