Logitech Ulitmate Ears 200vi and Android

After about a year of daily use on my bicycle ride to work the loose connection close to the jack began to really bother me. The jittering sound drove me nuts.
Eventually I decided to get a new pair of Ultimate Ears ... and they had to be cheap too [digitec.ch]



Ulitmate Ears 200vi - quick summary:
+  good overall build quality
+  soft and comfortable ear plugs
+  good price while providing mic
+  rigid cables,  means no cable tangle
+  button to pick and end calls (htc desire)
0  Sound quality is not splendid but acceptable, I miss some clearness.
0  Bass is unspectacular also.
-  cheap looking too (nooo really)
-  yup, I said so already: I'd love more bass

full specifications see Logitech site

>> I wanted cheap and got cheap, with acceptable sound quality. Solid, not more, not less
On 2nd thought I might opt for the 350vi instead.

The compatibility list on the ultimate ears website is completely useless. I'll test them for you on some Android devices and report here over time. (These headphones are wired in the CTIA standard.)

HTC Desire
sound works, mic works, only the remote's middle button is usable > one click for play/pause and to pick and end a call, long press the middle button to fast forward to the next song.

Google Nexus S
sound works, mic works, only the remote's middle button is usable

Google Nexus Galaxy
sound works, mic works, only the remote's middle button is usable

Google Nexus 4 lg
sound works, mic works, only the remote's middle button is usable


Sony Ericsson Arc 
completely not compatible with this phone, but that's bearable since Sony Ericsson offers a very good earphone collection themselves. Sony Ericsson Arc headphone jack is using the OMTP standard that isn't compatible to the CTIA wiring standard.

Sony Xperia S
hmmm - I first thought they are most likely to work since Sony promotes in their spec sheets that the new Sony phones will support CTIA wiring standard. Bought the phone, turns out that my ultimate ears totally don't work on Xperia S. No sound, no mic, no nothing.
Doesn't matter much because the earphones that came in the box have better sound quality.


HTC Wildfire S
(follows)

Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II
sound works, mic works, only the remote's middle button is usable

check out CompHelperKid's review vid for some more details

YouTube Original resolution HQ38

While searching for a special soundtrack I stumbled accross a youtube video promoting the use of the "original quality" - these vids are still rare but make sense if the audio source was excellent and you're into great sound quality.

The original setting features either a 2k or a 4k video feed and cristal clear audio. Here are some example stats of what the stream packs in for you:

Name: Original  also HQ38
aka: 4k  or  4096p  or  2k, 2048p

Container: MP4
Video Codec: H.264(mpeg4 part 10)
Resolution: 4k - 4096x2304 (~xxxx kbps)  or  2k - 2048x1152 (min. 1570 kbps)
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Audio Codec: AAC 151+ kbps VBR, 44.1kHz stereo 

So far I only saw 2 channel audio feeds, what is actually fine with me, because I mainly feed the earphones only. The rest of the youtube codecs and how to record videos and extract audio is described here.

(interesting: transcoding with lame.exe delivers catastrophic results for the first 10s)

Winamp Green Color Tweaks

This is simply a repost of my old entry to test the visibility in the google index when it comes to searching for "Winamp Green" - last week I was surprised, that my pictures didn't show up in google's image index at all. (maybe because they're crap, but that's another story...)
Also tweaked some other SEO factors, like the image titles, the blog title, leaving out the deviantart sharing code and so forth. But most of all I think the difference will be whether the image is hosted at deviantart or at picasa (blogger's default).

[Update 23 January 2012: four months went by, exactly as expected both pictures are now in the top 10 when image-searching for Winamp Green. SEO is not so difficult after all - one just has to understand a few main principles. Number one to me?? ...post your content on sites that are owned by google like youtube, blogger, picasa. Keep your content clean and authentic.]

btw: Winamp Green Modern is still the color scheme I use all and every days :-)
Cheers.

 

head over to deviantart to learn, how to activate

the green color in your winamp

and the same for BigBento

Kanye West - Love Lockdown

totally off topic, totally old      ... I'm really wondering - how the heck can one not consider this video a real blast! I'm not asking - get out of here if you don't consider it a total blast hehe. Enjoy the performance.



Youtube is cool, you can't buy this song as is. Save the 720p video and extract the audio yourself. It's easy. Also check out these two cool remixes:

• xXMorshuXx's Love Lockdown (Dubstep Remix) - Crosby
• NicolasLettow's Love Lockdown dubstep remix

(while he doesn't behave weird during awards we might consider kanyewestfoundation.org - because just like him ... we all mature.)

rotten Amazon App Store

I often state that I don't like to read books, they are generally out dated and so forth. But I do read a lot - just everything that doesn't come in the form of books. Bro reads around 8 hours a day and makes a fortune from the gathered knowledge.

For real: this was today's best read, comes in two URLs - a company mainly developing for iOS, later also for Android and then checking on Amazon App Store. Well written and amazing: Amazon App Store Rotten To The Core. Then we have to read through this comment to get a more complete view.

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Android 4 - Nexus Rumors

[Update 19.10.11 Been really busy from 0600 through 2300 and ... missed all the great news of course. But then again, Android 4 seems to be even better than expected, so I'm happily looking forward to the upcoming hardware greatness, which will be announced in the coming weeks. What really bothers me, is that wife and kids are angry because of the long away time /]

(btw: i made above's pic - how about backlinking?)

Coming to you October 11th October 19th
livestream on youtube.com/android @ 10:00 HTK

Since the announcement we often get to read that the next Android release will be merging together the Android 2.x and tablet Android 3 branches to one release, handling all display resolutions with a Honeycomb style user interface (Update 19.09.11: YES it will - read through this dev post.)  . There's no official word on the naming of that next release - call it Android 4 - Android 2.4 with 2.6.35.7 Kernel - Ice Cream Sandwich - Android 3.4 - whatever. The next release is being told to bring new

• face recognition features
• better multitasking
• better video conferencing
• USB hosting
• new launcher / new UI
• a lot of goodies for developers!

Reading about all the next Nexus phone rumors? Man they are insane to say the least. I don't even want to name the sources, other than "the net"  ... it just doesn't make all to much sense at the moment. Altogether I belief that we're dealing with Android 2.4 rather than Android 4, we'll just have to wait and see.
Read for your amusement only and drool on. Android 4 stuff will be added here once the news condense in a more rational context.

Nexus 3 aka Nexus Prime promoting Android 4 - rumor summary as of june 2011

• display 720p - 4 inch  (1280*720)
• cpu Snapdragon 'krait' dual core, 1.2 to 1.5 GHz (or TI OMAP 4460)
• gpu? (integrated into OMAP is the PowerVR SGX540)
• 1 GB memory
• of course with NFC and the whole rest
• Hardware might come from LG > nexus 3 teasers like this one are wide spread
• if the hardware comes from Samsung then we might face a 4.65 inch Amoled display in a device called GT-i9250. 1280x720 | 5MP cam 

What does that mean to me?

• Wife's Arc is close to perfect. Great camera, perfect hdmi out, good design
• Samsung? I don't like how they clone the iphone over and over, hardware is superb though
• HTC Sensation reviews don't make me fully happy - camera and product design not adequate
• LG firmware still featuring some weird bugs, bad launcher
• Sony Ericsson and HTC released commitments to unlocked bootloaders
• ...still being very happy with my HTC Desire?
• hardly ever missing any Android functionality other than a really good camera?
• not being an OS Upgrade Junkie?

I would like to see a Sony Ericsson Arc successor, with dual core to support vast media options, front facing camera, edge to edge display and the next Android release in Q1 2012. (Nope I'm not talking about the ST18i). So I guess that I won't buy the next Nexus.
[Update 13.07.] I just checked for news about the Sony Ericsson Duo. Head over to IBT Tech section for a good roundup. In Japan it might be released as the Nozomi ...
[Update 31.08.] today Sony Ericsson announced the "Arc S" single core CPU with 1.4 GHz. I guess that's not the successor I'm wating for but certainly a great device.

announced 09. January 2012: the Xperia S. Quite neat. Probably my next phone. click here for an overview of the phone's specs. (yup, fm radio with rds is included)

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Samsung S24A450BW and S22A450BW

We are using Samsung Monitors for quite a while now. The overall experience we got for the money was always excellent. In June 2011 Samsung announced a new generation of monitors  > Series 4 business TFTs with LED backlight and 16:10 aspect ratio, models S24A450BW and S22A450BW.

images source: samsung.de

TFT/TN-Panel
1980*1200 S24A450BW
1680*1050 S22A450BW
very low switching times
matte panel, matte frame
 TCO5 certified | high adjustment flexibility
tilt -5° to +20° |  29W power usage
DVI-D, 15pin D-Sub (no hdmi, no display port)
full fact sheet (not yet avail in english)

The TN panel technology in use is very cheap because it's dominating the consumer market. IPS panels, S-PVA panels and so on offer better quality but usually lack fast response time. Lower production numbers and more sophisticated technology doubles prices in most cases.
So for most of us TN panels suffice. To avoid frustration, you should be aware of the downsides before ordering such a cheap monitor:

• colour mixing happens with only 6bit per RGB channel, resulting in less available colours. TN panel builders use "dithering" to reduce the noticeability of the resulting effects. Often people only notice the lack of colors when being told. See here for more information.
  
• limited viewing angles | but then again 97% of the time I sit in front of my comp alone - so I don't care about it. The colors remain enough stable to notice only very little color bleeding towards the edges.
• Samsung suckz when it comes to older products. After a year they often switch from the good initial panel to cheaper AU Optronics panels - without changing the product name! So don't wait to long a time once the product has been announced.
  

BTW: Personally I would opt for 16:10 aspect ratio - because you get some extra height for  the task bar and menus. Movies aren't released in 16:9 either! wut? you didn't know?  2.39:1 and 1.85:1

If you want to buy a bigger 27" monitor with higher resolution, then I suggest having a look at the Samsung SyncMaster S27A850D. see pictures below.
Specs: 2560 * 1440 (16:9), PLS Panel (similar to IPS), LED, no hdmi, cheap!

more pictures here

8 light minutes away

a star 8 light minutes away - huge erruption on june 7 2011
(explanation and zoomed in, see here )

also check: http://youtu.be/_N2PXdq_bWE?hd=1