evatt.com

Shared by Jeff
This looks like a very cool alternative to the $1000+ Sonos music system.

For a cool $1000, you can buy the Sonos Bundle 150 and wirelessly play music from a single remote control in two separate rooms in your house. On the other hand, for about $100 or less if you've already got the right equipment, you can get the same functionality from your iPhone or iPod touch. Let's take a closer look at how to use the iTunes Remote application for the iPhone 2.0 with inexpensive equipment you may already have to remote control music playback wirelessly in any room in your home.

The Sonos homepage describes its popular but expensive product thusly:

To start playing music, just grab the full-color wireless Controller and simply pick a room, pick a song and hit play. With the Controller in hand you'll have instant access to your entire music collection....
When you're done here, any iPhone or iPod touch will do exactly the same thing, in addition to all that email, calendar, internet, and mapping functionality that's made them so popular already—and for hundreds of dollars less. You can play music in any room individually, or in several rooms with the music playback synced between rooms.

The special sauce in this setup is a feature of Apple's AirPort Express wireless routers called AirTunes, which streams iTunes music wirelessly over your home network to any room in your house. AirTunes isn't new by any means, but with the advent of the new Remote app for the iPhone and iPod touch running 2.0 software, its usefulness has increased dramatically; it's become a Sonos killer.

What You'll Need I'm going to price out the cheapest (or nearly cheapest) version of this setup, including the price of the iPhone or iPod touch. If you already have any of the necessary equipment, the price drops significantly.

1. iPhone or iPod touch: $199 (8GB iPhone minus wireless costs) or $299 (8GB touch)
2. Linksys WRT54GL Wireless Router: $50 (not the only supported router; see below)
3. Headphone-to-RCA Cable: $2 (I'm estimating, but you can get these things cheap at your local RadioShack.)
4. Apple AirPort Express: $100

Grand Total: $351 (iPhone) or $451 (iPod touch) Cutting Costs I actually had all of these things on hand, so it didn't cost me a dime. If you've already got an iPhone or iPod touch, the price drops to a meager $151 for the router, headphone-to-RCA cord, and AirPort Express router.

The Linksys WRT54GL router is not required, but it's inexpensive and it's what I'm using. It's likely you've already got a basic wireless router on your home network, and as long as you can set it up as a Wireless Distribution System (WDS), you probably won't need to buy a new router. The Apple AirPort Extreme ($180) is the easiest to set up with an AirPort Express, naturally. In my setup below, I used the much cheaper, much cooler WRT54GL running the free, open-source Tomato router firmware (which I showed you how to install here). The previously mentioned DD-WRT firmware supports WDS as well. If your current router supports WDS, you can shave an extra $50 off the setup price.

Because it's made specifically to extend iTunes wirelessly, the $100 AirPort Express wireless router is the one must-have piece of equipment—no substitutions here. You'll need one for every additional set of speakers you want to add to your set wireless remote control setup. (Of course you can find them cheaper on Craigslist or eBay.)

The added bonus to all of this is that we're setting up the AirPort Express as a wireless network bridge. That means that not only will it give you the very cool music functionality—it'll also extend the range of your wireless network by boosting your signal in the room you've got it installed. It'll still show up as one Wi-Fi network to all of your wireless devices, so you don't have to do anything special to take advantage of it once you've set it up.

Gather Your Setup InformationBefore you get started tweaking settings, let's write down a few important bits of information to make things easier on us down the road. You may find this information in varying places depending on your base router, but the information you need to gather is the same.

First, head to the Basic Network settings page (Tomato link) on your router and find the section Wireless section. Copy your Wireless MAC address, which should look something like XX:00:X0:0X:00:XX. Also write down your SSID and Channel, and take note of your B/G mode.

Next, plug your AirPort Express into a power outlet and connect it to your router with an ethernet cable. (I'm setting up the AirPort Express on a Mac, but it should work similarly on a Windows PC.) Open the AirPort Utility, and after a few seconds it should scan and recognize your AirPort Express on your network. Once it does, click on the Express in the AirPort Utility sidebar and write down the AirPort ID (which is really just the MAC address).

Now that you've got all that, you're ready for the heavy lifting.

Set Up Your Base Router This setup should work with any router that supports WDS—check your router's manual and/or administration interface to find out if it does. If you want to follow along exactly with me, I'm using the open-source Tomato firmware (if you don't have it installed on a supported device, here's how).

Return to the Basic Network settings page (Tomato link). The first thing you need to do is change your Wireless Mode to Access Point + WDS.

Next head down to the Security section and change your wireless security type to WEP if it's not what you're using already. Set a passphrase and generate your keys (or just let Tomato randomly choose a secure option for you). Copy down your first key—you'll need it later to set up the AirPort Express and to connect other devices to your wireless network (including your iPhone or iPod touch).

(NOTE: WEP security was an unfortunate concession; I normally recommend the more secure WPA2 Personal, but I had trouble getting the AirPort Express to connect correctly as a wireless bridge using WPA2 security. WEP 128, on the other hand, worked fine.)

Finally, move down the the WDS section and enter the MAC address of your Aiport Express (the AirPort ID we wrote down earlier). Make sure the drop down is set to Link With. Once you've finished all these steps, hit Save at the bottom of the page. Your router will update your settings, and you're ready to set up the AirPort Express.

Set Up Your AirPort Express Router Start up the AirPort Utility, again with the AirPort Express plugged into your main router with an Ethernet cord. Click the AirPort Express name in the sidebar. This time, click the Manual Setup button. We'll be making a lot of changes in the AirPort Express setup to get it working as a wireless bridge (and iTunes extender), so make sure you've got the information we gathered above on hand.

First, click the Base Station tab and give your AirPort Express a name (this is the name that will show up in iTunes and on your iPhone remote). I chose Living Room, because that's where my AirPort Express will be. Next, set a password for the AirPort Express. This password isn't actually important for our setup as far as I can tell, but it's unavoidable. Make it anything you want.

Now head to the Wireless tab and change the Wireless Mode dropdown to Participate in a WDS network. Set the network name to the SSID, the Radio Mode to the wireless B/G mode, and the channel to match the broadcast channel of your base router as you wrote them down above. Set your wireless security to WEP 128 bit, and enter the key you generated above.

Now click on the WDS tab, where you should select WDS remote in the WDS Mode drop-down and paste your base router's MAC address (the one we wrote down above) in the text box labeled WDS Main.

Next click on the Internet tab at the top of the AirPort Utility. You shouldn't have to do much here, but make sure that you're connecting using WDS (you shouldn't have a choice at this point), set Configure IPv4 to "Using DHCP," and set Connection Sharing to Off (Bridge Mode).

At this point, you've got just one more thing left to do. Go to the Music tab and tick the checkbox next to Enable AirTunes. If you want to, set a speaker password (I wouldn't unless you've got a good reason to).

Once you've done all that, click the Update button. The AirPort Utility will update your AirPort Express with all your new settings and your AirPort Express will restart. If everything went as planned, your AirPort Express is now set up as a wireless bridge for your base router, and you're ready to stream your music wirelessly to any room in your house. (Hint: Your router will glow amber until it's working, at which point it'll glow green. If it's flashing amber, that means there was a problem.)

Hook Up the Airport Express to Your StereoUnplug your AirPort Express from the router and the power outlet and move it to wherever you plan on setting it up (mine's behind my TV). Plug it in, and plug the headphone-to-RCA converter into it and your stereo. If you have a fancier stereo than I do, the AirPort Express supports digital signals, so the right kind of S/PDIF cord would work as well.

Enable AirTunes in iTunes The next to last thing you need to do is open up the iTunes preferences and tell your computer to look for remote speakers with iTunes. You'll find this checkbox in the Advanced tab of the iTunes preferences.

Once this is done, you've already got wireless streaming set up in iTunes. When it's working, you should see a drop-down in the bottom right corner of iTunes where you can choose which speaker set you want playing or choose multiple speakers.

Finally, it's time to set up our iPhone or iPod touch as remotes.

Install and Set Up Remote on Your iPhone or iPod touch After all the sweat you've put in so far, this step is dead simple. We've already covered how to set up the Remote App on your iPhone, so I won't go into all the details here.

Once Remote is set up and running on your iPhone or iPod touch, you can play back and remotely control your entire iTunes library from anywhere in your house you've got an AirPort Express set up. To toggle your speakers, just hit Settings in the Remote app and toggle the speakers on or off.

How Does It Work? After a short time, I can tell you nothing feels better on an afternoon of household chores than walking around your home to a unified soundtrack in every room. I've only got one AirPort Express with AirTunes set up on my network, but you could easily add more rooms and speakers at just $100 or so a pop. If I'm just going to be hanging out in the living room, I'll turn off the computer speakers and just play from there. Likewise, the music stays at my computer when that's where I am.

The iPhone Remote app also works with the Apple TV, but I haven't tried it with this setup. If you have—or you've done multi-room remote control with your iPhone or iPod touch and AirTunes—share your experience in the comments. If you're looking for a similarly cheap wireless solution, check out Gizmodo's review of the EOS Wireless iPod Dock and Speaker System.

Now if only the music followed me based on proximity to wireless nodes and transferred to my iPod headphones when I left my wireless network. A boy can dream, can't he?

Adam Pash is a senior editor for Lifehacker who wants nothing more than to be bathed uniformly in music no matter what room of his apartment he's in. His special feature Hack Attack appears every Tuesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Hack Attack RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

This looks like a very cool alternative to the $1000+ Sonos music system.

Filed under: Wearables

If you hadn't heard by now, Speedo's new LZR Racer swimsuit has caused a respectable amount of controversy for itself in the run-up to the Olympics. The innovative, NASA-aided design cinches up on a swimmer and reduces drag by as much as 10 percent, and detractors claim Speedo has thrown a bit of buoyancy in there for good measure. FINA, who has the last word on such matters, has approved the suit, says that buoyancy claims are unproven, and has pointed out that all major manufacturers have suits available to all athletes free of charge, removing any concerns that the $500 suits -- which only last for 10 uses -- will pose an obstacle to poorer countries. Unsurprisingly, some of the biggest criticism of the suit has come from countries tied up in sponsorships with other suit manufacturers, while a good many countries and athletes have broken from lucrative deals to swim Speedo. So, what's the actual damage? 48 world records were set this year before the olympics, 44 of those wearing the suit. Since the olympics have started, 8 records have fallen, and that number is certain to grow. A large number, to be sure, but we'd say the time for crying over Speedo's awesmazingness is over, and the time to watch really muscular people with large feet break world records is upon us.

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Paul Miller

Shared by Jeff
One of my friends (ahem) likes to play with his iPhone during meetings. I was at the fantastic Start Conference yesterday. I noticed something; for the first time, as many people were using iPhones when ignoring talks as were using laptops.

At tech conferences the geeks have their laptops open and are paying more attention to web surfing than to the speakers. At Start08, half those geeks (me included) were looking at their iPhones instead. In part that's because the Wifi didn't work very well. But also the iPhone is capable and more convenient than a big ol' computer.

One of the best uses of a laptop at a conference is participating in the IRC backchannel chat. iPhones don't do IRC (or do they now?) but we have an alternative: Twitter. Specifically, a Twitter search for a conference specific tag. I really enjoyed refreshing that page on my phone during a talk and seeing the commentary. It's also nice that the Twitter backchannel is persistent, non-anonymous, and archived.

I've always hated how many people at conferences (or in meetings) ignore the speaker and focus on their computers. Isn't the whole point to be together in person, to communicate face to face? But I get bored during talks too. The iPhone is a nice compromise; small enough to be discrete, limited enough capability to capture a bit of partial attention without drawing you in entirely.

One of my friends (ahem) likes to play with his iPhone during meetings.

quack1701 posted a photo:

After much hassle, I now have an iPhone 3G. It's my first "smart phone" and I love it. One word of warning... It's battery is way undersized, and you can't swap out batteries.

nobody@flickr.com (quack1701)

After much hassle, I finally have an iPhone 3G. It's my first "smart phone" and I love it.

My biggest complaint with the iPhone is it's battery life. After setting up the iPhone to sync both my gmail and exchange mail, I was lucky if the battery would last until I got home from work.

Turning off the Wi-Fi helped a lot. Over the weekend I turned off the auto syncing of mail and all of a sudden, the battery seemed to last forever.

Thus far, I have found two "killer apps" that are really making me love the iPhone.

The first is Shazam. Ever heard a song in the background and wonder, what song that is? Well, you don't have to wonder any more. Shazam has the ability to pick out songs in loud places and determine what is playing. It then provides links to iTunes and YouTube for the song.

The second apps is Pandora Radio. You tell Pandora a song you like, then it starts streaming songs similar to it over the iPhone. A few votes up or down on what it selects, then you have a stream full of songs you like. Now I have the ability to stream internet music in my car. Sweet! Best part, it doesn't seem to kill the battery (that fast).

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steven

I spent today at BarcampHouston3. I had a fantastic time. It was the best Barcamp yet.

I enjoyed the panels on Mobile technologies (David Herrold), Public Relations (Ed Schipul), Creative Thinking (Kelsey Ruger), and Using Flickr Professionally (TheFuzzball). Houston is full of talented, intelligent, and motivated people.

I can't wait until the next barcamp.

My photos of Barcamp Houston 3 are on flickr.

steven

Employees in the US' most populous state will have greater mobility when it comes to employment, as the California Supreme Court rules that, with very narrow exceptions, noncompete clauses are invalid.

Read More...

jtimmer@arstechnica.com (John Timmer)

This just in: Local Idiot To Post Comment On Internet

In a statement made to reporters earlier this afternoon, local idiot Brandon Mylenek, 26, announced that at approximately 2:30 a.m. tonight, he plans to post an idiotic comment beneath a video on an Internet website.

photo of local idiot via The Onion

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This is a blog post from Laughing Squid For more content like this, subscribe to the RSS feed, Twitter & FriendFeed.

Breaking: Local Idiot Plans To Post Comment On Internet

quack1701 posted a photo:

You can't leave ice cream unattended in this house. You turn your head for 5 seconds and a cat sticks her head in it.

For Flickr Group Roulette -- Beautiful Mistakes

nobody@flickr.com (quack1701)

Filed under: Cellphones

Well, finally. iPhone firmware 2.0.1 has just been released by Apple, and we're hoping it solves the myriad problems introduced by 2.0: crashing apps, interminable keyboard delays, choppy scrolling -- you know what we're talking about. We're pulling down the 250MB file now, we'll let you know how things turn out -- won't you do the same?

Update: Well, it took its sweet time to install, but things seem a little tighter and snappier all around. We'll give it a day or so of actual usage before we pronounce things A-OK, though -- how's it going for you?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]Permalink | Email this | Comments

Nilay Patel

quack1701 posted a photo:

Today's theme - Guilty Pleasures. Stuffing my face with popcorn!

For Flickr Group Roulette -- Guilty Pleasures

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quack1701 posted a photo:

My darned pager would not stop going off tonight. Every time I'd start to play with the camera I was interrupted by the pager. Tonight in the life of Steven, the pager was the most significant (annoying) thing.

For Flickr Group Roulette -- Mono Photography

nobody@flickr.com (quack1701)

A California Superior Court judge has ruled that cellphone early termination fees are ILLEGAL and that Sprint must pay $18.2 M as part of a class action lawsuit. Of course, the decision could be appealed, but in the meantime.... (drum roll, please) the judge ordered Sprint to stop trying to collect the fees from customers in California who were refusing to pay them!

According to the lawsuit, this ruling will affect about 2 million Californians, and may affect other, similar lawsuits that are pending in other states, says the San Jose Mercury News.

"We are disappointed," Sprint Nextel spokesman Matthew Sullivan told the paper.

Consumer's Union (you know them as the publisher of Consumer Reports) were pleased with the ruling.

“This is a huge victory for consumers,” Chris Murray, senior legal counsel for Consumers Union said in a press release, but expressed concern that the FCC might step in and start regulating the fees.

“Not only did this case generate an extensive record showing that these fees are not really used to subsidize wireless phones, but are instead simply used to lock consumers into contracts. Contract law says that's illegal. Let's hope the FCC doesn't turn around and give the wireless industry a get out of court free card.”

We're looking forward to seeing how this affects our readers in California, so if you're battling Sprint over an ETF and you live in CA, send your story to tips@consumerist.com. Let us know how they're reacting to this ruling!

Sprint loses early termination fee case in California [Consumers Union]
Sprint early termination fees are illegal, judge rules [Mercury News] (Thanks, Gilbert!)
(Photo: smcgee )

Meg Marco

Shared by Steven
I too am having problems getting an iPhone because I have a company discount on my account. Why doesn't Apple want my money?

So there appears to be something of a shortage of iPhones this time around, and while it's probably good for "creating buzz" it's not so great for wooing busy business customers away from their Blackberries, according to reader James. You see, only the Apple store has iPhones, but only the AT&T store can activate them for James.

James writes (to Steve Jobs):

...Since opening day, I have been tracking stores in my travels in Virginia, North Carolina and New York, since I have been traveling through all those states in the last few weeks. Last night, the Richmond Short Pump Apple store again had stock. I had a flight at 10am the next morning and figured I could leave my house at 630, get there at 730, hopefully have the phone by 8:30 and be at the airport by 9. When I arrived I was third in line and all went smoothly. I had all of my information and was on my way, until the Apple store employee got an error.

'Are you a corporate customer with ATT?', he asked.

I answered yes, at which point they told me they could not activate the phone this morning, therefor could not sell me an iphone. They tried to call ATT but to no avail and I was not allowed to purchase.

'There is an ATT store across the street, you should try them'. I talked to the ATT store, and they in fact did not have any.

'Can I buy a phone, take it over there and activate it?', I asked.

'No. Sorry.', said the employees.

At this point i started to express just how lame this policy is (all in good taste), all the while making it known that it wasn't their fault directly, but Apple should know better than this.

I see this as a very broken customer experience, as ATT has no stock compared to Apple stores, but I cannot buy one from an Apple store since I must activate before leaving. So as a 'business customer', I have to jump through extra flaming hoops for this? As I understand it, the iPhone is a direct competitor with other business solutions such as the Blackberry Bold.

This is not a very good start to my first experience with an iPhone. Something that is supposed to make my life easier and more convenient has already wasted more time and frustrated me quite a bit. If anything, business users usually get leverage, not the run around.

By making it that you cannot purchase a phone without activation in store, the equivalent of DRM (which lets not kid ourselves, people will break it) has caused a horrible experience to me and probably many others. In my head a solution would be to let mainstream consumers buy and activate at apple stores, business users only at the att stores.

I understand the wish to build hype with a product (like the Wii), however there is a very fine line between hype and frustration and a real difference between a personal/business communications product and a home entertainment system. In part of building an experience you must plot the various customer journeys and scenarios, the one of the business customer was certainly not overlooked, but it seemed that in the end, no one cared that it is fractured, time-wasting and detrimental to the experiences that Apple is known for building.

As unfortunate as it is, I must say I am truly annoyed at this point in time and would have expected more from a company that is such an innovator in this industry. I am truly done trying to buy an iPhone, it has already wasted more of my time and resources than the cost of the iPhone itself and will be spending no more time on this task.

James says that after not being able to get an iPhone on "opening day" he was told that business customers would have no problem activating their iPhones at the Apple store, so we understand his frustration. People are going to unlock the phones anyway, why make your customers miserable?

(Photo: Todd Kravos )

I too am having problems getting an iPhone because I have a company discount on my account. Why doesn't Apple want my money?

quack1701 posted a photo:

Immortality through photography.

For Flickr Group Roulette -- Immortality

nobody@flickr.com (quack1701)

The secret of great real estate photography is making a place look bigger, while dispelling the sense that you are about to be swallowed whole by a huge animal.

Thanks to Sara at lovelylisting (a blog you will enjoy). Original is here.

quack1701 posted a photo:

Today's theme was "hot or not". What do you think?

For Flickr Group Roulette -- Hot or Not

nobody@flickr.com (quack1701)

BikeForums member ReachHigher stripped down to her sports bra and spandex after Walmart refused to let her enter the store with her $600 bike. A manager explained that since Walmart sold bikes, bringing in an outside bike would obviously be too confusing to handle. ReachHigher asked if they also sold shirts. "She said yes so I took off my jersey and said well then I'd better not bring this in either..."

...She got kind of flustered and said that it was a different situation but couldn't explain why. So I said that if they also sold shorts in the store that I'd better not wear those in either and I took off my shorts. Same goes for the shoes and sunglasses. Now I'm standing there in my spandex and a sports bra and I ask here if I can leave my things behind the customer service counter where they will be safe until I finish making my purchases and she said that I couldn't come into the store without shoes on, to which i responded "but I certainly can't wear shoes into the store because you sell those here and someone might think I've stolen them." She threatened to call security if I didn't leave so I told her that I would never be coming back to that store again and that I was glad I hadn't driven there since the gas to go four miles was probably more expensive than what her underpaid employees make in an hour.

Her expression when the shirt came off was absolutely priceless...I was pretty tempted to take off the spandex too but I wasn't sure what constitutes indecent exposure in Virginia so I figured I'd err on the side of caution. Still I had a decent sized crowd gathered before the end of the discussion.

Wal Mart is Evil so I took off my clothes [Bike Forums]
(Photo: Getty)

Carey

quack1701 posted a photo:

Cleaning up my networks cabling.

Inspiration for this is a photo I love by Cybergabi, Cyberg.

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nobody@flickr.com (quack1701)

quack1701 posted a photo:

I'm in the mood for a good pizza. This one contains onions, garlic, jalapeños, bell peppers, and turkey pepperoni.

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nobody@flickr.com (quack1701)