Turning a Mac into a Media Center

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Like many other people, when I first saw the Mac mini one of my immediate thoughts was, "I bet that would make a great media center system."

However, while the Mac had great hardware for a media center, the software was pretty much lacking, especially when compared to the more robust media center and PVR software applications available for Windows and Linux systems.

But with the release of SageTV Media Center 6 for the Mac, things are finally looking up for the Mac when it comes to watching and recording TV.

For the last few weeks I've been testing out this release of SageTV and for the most part I like what I see. SageTV, which works on Mac OSX Tiger or later, is an excellent system for watching and recording television programs and dealing with video and digital media in general.

However, getting SageTV Media Center up and running on my Mac was not the easiest task. Currently on the Mac SageTV only supports two external TV tuner hardware systems, the Hauppauge EskapeLabs myTV.PVR and the Hauppauge WinTV PVR USB2, which is what I used for my testing.

Getting the WinTV PVR to work on my Mac required using the myTV.PVR drivers. After multiple tries without any luck my contacts at SageTV informed me that I needed to use older versions of the myTV.PVR drivers. Once I had this set the hardware was recognized by SageTV Media Center.

Once this hardware problem was overcome, everything worked very well. SageTV connects online to access a television-programming guide and was able to quickly pull all the channels for my cable system. After this SageTV Media Center works much as one would expect any Tivo or DVR to work, letting me record and watch television shows when and how I chose.

However, since this is a computer based systems, it provides some benefits over standard hardware DVRs, such as ability to easily port video to other systems, or if your Mac is a laptop, take your shows on the road.

Also, with the option SageTV Placeshifter, I could turn my Mac into a video server and remotely watch my recorded programs over the internet on any Mac, Windows or Linux system, working similarly to the popular Slingbox system.

Pricing for SageTV Media Center for the Mac starts at $79.95 and when combined with Placeshifter is priced at $99.95.

Making a Connection with Oracle Database 11g

Handling the introduction at today's launch of Oracle Database 11g was famed science historian James Burke, founder of the Knowledge Web Project and probably best known for his old television mini-series "Connections".

Burke didn't spend much of his introduction speaking about Oracle and relational databases, instead he delved into issues of scientific discovery, mentioning breakthroughs like the printing press, and discussing the abilities of the human mind.

Of course the fact that he didn't mention databases much was likely OK with the Oracle gang, since they probably liked simply being associated with a breakthrough like the printing press.

But really the main issue at hand was the fact that Oracle was finally, after four years, releasing a new version of their flagship database platform. And while the Oracle Database 11g doesn't look right now to be as revolutionary a change as the 10g was, it is a pretty big upgrade, with hundreds of new features and lots of added functionality. Customers will have to evaluate and test in order to decide how (or if) the new Oracle upgrade will fit into their enterprise infrastructure.

We here at eWEEK Labs will also soon be beginning our testing and evaluation of the Oracle Database 11g and, if it is anything like the 10g, it will definitely take some time to get a full and comprehensive review completed.

Beta Not for Business

There are a lot of things that are true about businesses but probably the truest is that businesses love to use things that aren't considered fully ready for use.

For example, companies love to hire people who admit that they aren't ready to do their jobs effectively. And they also love to locate themselves in buildings that are not yet completely built. And most of all, businesses love run their vital business processes on products that haven't been officially released and are still considered incomplete.

OK, I know what some of you are thinking. Are you nuts Jim? Companies don't want to hire people who aren't ready to do their jobs. And no company would take the risk to move into a building that isn't considered ready for occupation.

All right, I'll give you those two. But I've been seeing more and more companies willing to use products that are officially marked as unready, and more and more vendors willing to sell them these unready products.

What are these incomplete products? They are of course betas of applications and products.

More Web 2.0 fun?

Finished editing really long podcast file, need to take a break. About 17 hours ago.

Drove to band practice, listened to Minutemen CD in the car. "Tour spiel!" About 14 hours ago.

Gotta write my column. But what to write about? Wait, I know! Less than 20 seconds ago.

Well that's enough Twittering for now. Oh, you don't know what Twittering is? It's the latest in utterly self-indulgent Web 2.0 fun.

At Twitter.com, millions of people are constantly answering one question: What are you doing right now? It's sort of like a blog but without all of that, you know, actual content.

As I look at Twitter.com right now, some of the fascinating content includes a person going to get Indian food, someone waiting to get into a breakfast joint and a guy who has just signed up for DirecTV. Wow! What will happen next?

I have to admit that Twitter is one of those things that makes me feel like an old fogy. Even though I'm a cutting-edge, tech kinda guy, the whole constant-connection thing is one that just doesn't connect with me.

But I can definitely understand why this is a hit with the younger crowd. Every sub-25-year-old that I know is constantly on his or her cell phone, and the subject of 99 percent of the calls is similar to Twitter's content: "Hey, whatcha doin?" "Nothing, what are you doing?" "Watching Futurama." "Cool, talk to you later."

Heck, if Twitter cuts down on even half of the calls like that, it's doing society a great service.

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Opening the Door to Emerging Technology

When it comes to information technology workers, there's one thing we definitely need to survive. And that's new emerging technologies.

For IT, emerging technologies are our food, our Sun, air, water, you name it. Without new and disruptive technologies we would truly have the boring, never changing jobs that the "IT doesn't matter" types have been predicting for years.

To me, that's the greatest thing about working in information technology. Just when everyone thinks that they have the whole thing figured out, some new, unexpected and disruptive technology comes around that changes the rules of the game and makes things interesting for those of us who like the challenge of something new.

It is because of the importance of emerging technologies that we here are at eWEEK have decided to launch a new site called eWEEK's Emerging Technology. I'll be running that site and I hope that you my readers will check it out. We'll be doing everything from reviews to analysis to commentary to deep dives into what specific emerging technologies are about and how they'll effect your business and your job.

Of course I'll still be writing regularly in this blog, as well as in the pages of eWEEK. But when you want my take on a new emerging technology, head on over to etech.eweek.com. I'll see you there.

Big Win in the War Against Patents

When it comes to technology patents and the effect they have on innovation and the ability to use and create technology, the news is usually on the bad side (for example some company crushing a competitor using a patent, or a troll attacking real innovators with a questionable patent). But finally the news is good, possibly even very good. Today the U.S. Supreme Court made a ruling (PDF) that will make it much harder to get iffy patents and even harder to attack real innovators with these iffy patents. In this case, which had some of largest technology companies in the world arguing on both sides, the Supreme Court has removed a very weak test for whether an invention is obvious, making it much harder to get a patent on an obvious technique, such as one that merely combines several other inventions in an obvious way. This is huge news....

What Makes a Security Idiot?

I recently posted a list of my 12 Ways to Be A Security Idiot. This list was inspired by an older column (OK, rant) of mine where I bemoaned the stupid things that people do that cause most of the security problems that companies have to deal with. When I wrote that old column I got some great suggestions and comments both on stupid things that people had seen users do and also some creative methods that IT departments used to expose the worst offenders at their company. So now I'm asking you my readers. How do you deal with the security idiots at your company? And are there stupid things that I should add to my list? Comment Here and let me know....

Verizon-Vonage Patent Fight Hits Home

While I always follow the big patent battles, the recent ugly fight between Verizon and Vonage has been of interest to me for more than just its implications in the broader patent fight. That's because for a while now I've been a very happy customer of Vonage's VOIP service. I use its lower-tier basic service, which for under $20 a month provides 500 minutes of calls (which I've never come even close to reaching) along with multiple features such as caller-ID and three-way calling that POTS providers like Verizon all charge extra for. So besides my normal position against companies that use patents to stifle innovation and crush pesky competitors (which is definitely the case in this fight), I'm following this patent battle because I don't want to lose a service that I like. For the record, I don't believe that Vonage will get shut down completely. No judge...

Firefox Gets Social

Recently, I've been playing around with a new extension to Firefox called The Coop. Scratch that. I can't really call it a new extension. I can't even call it beta or alpha. What I have on my Firefox browser is a prototype of Coop that I loaded from the bleeding-edge sandbox area of Mozilla add-ons. Click the thumbnails for full-sized screens What Coop does for Firefox, or at least what it aims to do, is integrate social networking directly into the browser experience. Friends and connections in your social network appear in the Firefox sidebar and users of Coop can easily share Web pages, images and video with their friends. In my tests of the prototype I found Coop to be very easy to use, and for a prototype it has proven to be very stable. Right now the only social network that it integrates with is Facebook. When...

Connecting with IBM Labs

I recently attended a special media day at the IBM Research Labs. The point of the day was to showcase some of the new technologies being worked on at their labs both in products that are nearing releases and in new technologies that aren't that close to showing up in products. Along with researchers from the Labs, presentations were made by IBM bigwigs such as Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive of the IBM Software group. Click the thumbnails for full-sized screens Since this Labs day took place in Cambridge, Mass., at what is essentially Lotus headquarters, the day had a very distinct Lotus focus. Among the products and technologies displayed were well-known brands such as Lotus Sametime and Lotus Notes and Domino 8. One of the newer products that I found interesting was Lotus Connections. This has been covered as sort of IBM's entry into Web 2.0...