Live555 Compilation on Linux

$ wget http://www.live555.com/liveMedia/public/live555-latest.tar.gz
$ tar xvf live555-latest.tar.gz
$ cd live
$ ./genMakefiles linux
$ make

Wireless Connection After Installing OpenSUSE 12.3

Since OpenSUSE 12.3

got serveral decent reviews, I tried it with Gnome. Just like many complaints in OpenSUSE forum, there was no wireless connections. Fortunately after I restart right after the first Gnome, the wireless icon magically appeared along with battery icon. The wireless connection works.

How Google Glass Works

Current Android and iOS Device Usages/App Launching Per Day

According to "Flurry Five-Year Report: It’s an App World. The Web Just Lives in It",  currently the U.S. consumer spends an average of 2 hours and 38 minutes per day on smartphones and tablets. 80% of that time (2 hours and 7 minutes) is spent inside apps and 20% (31 minutes) is spent on the mobile web. 

All mobile browsers combined control 20% of consumers' time. Gaming apps remain the largest category of all apps with 32% of time spent. Facebook is second with 18%, and Safari is 3rd with 12% Worth noting is that a lot of people are consuming web content from inside the Facebook app. For example, when a Facebook user clicks on a friend’s link or article, that content is shown inside its web view without launching a native web browser (e.g., Safari, Android or Chrome), which keeps the user in the app. 

The app economy is thriving, with The Wall Street Journal recently estimating annual revenue of $25 billion.

From left to right, we see that the average number of apps launched per day by consumers climbs from 7.2 in 2010 to 7.5 in 2011 and finally to 7.9 in 2012. 

The following chart shows that, on average, only 17% of the apps used in Q4 2010 were in use earlier in the year on a device compared to 37% in Q4 2012. 

That means that 63% of the apps used in Q4 2012 were new, and most likely not even developed in 2011 (or possibly poorly adopted). Flurry believe that with consumers continuing to try so many new apps, the app market is still in early stages and there remains room for innovation as well as breakthrough new applications.

HD HEVC/H.265 Software Encoders

Today two h.264 veterans, Allegro DVT and Ittiam Systems announced their HEVC/H.265 Software Encoder.

According to their press release, Allegro DVT presented Genova HEVC/H.265 Software Encoder for VOD. This new software based encoder permits HD 1080p60 encoding with 30% bitrate savings compared to best in class H.264 encoding. It is aligned with the final draft of the new compression standard HEVC/H.265, and is interoperable with a variety of software HEVC/H.265 decoders.

IN 2013 NAB Show, Ittiam Systems will show its HEVC Encoder which a software implementation on Intel x86 based platforms, capable of High Definition (HD) broadcast quality video encoding with up to 50% compression gains over H.264 based encoders. Its HEVC Decoder software is implemented for ARM CortexTM-A9 and CortexTM-A15 based SoCs to take advantage of ARMv7 Instruction Set Architecture, NEONTM engine and multi core processors, also according to Ittiam press release.

Garmin HD Mobile Drive Recorder

Garmin high definition mobile driving recorder (MDR), GDR 35, integrates GPS,

display and gravity sensor into one device and features exclusive optional secondary camera. It comes with a PC Tool software provides significant information such as images, maps, tracks, coordinates, time and speed. The recorded data provide the best reference back to accident scene.

The video recorder supports 1080p, 720p, WVGA, 720p Dual (1280x1440) at 30 fps. Regarding 720P Dual Cameras HD Recording,  with Optional Secondary Camera GBC30, once enable dual cameras recording, the system supports 720P high definition front and rear image recording. GDR 35 adopts F2.0 fast aperture. The high resolution camera lens improves night photosensitive. With low illumination and low noise image processing technology, users don't need to worry about overexposure, afterimage or noise when shooting at night. Driving recording image at night is clearer than ever. 110 degree wide angle from GDR 35 camera lens records every angle from front view even blind sides. Vehicles from right side and left side can be clearly recorded. GDR 35 also supports automatic file protection with built in gravity sensor triggers automatically for collison event prompts. The system protects the file to prevent images overwritten and the loss of important supporting information.

Some YouTube video clips showed very good video quality in nigh time recording, for example,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70mjAEP4hOg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByeCuHuWmYo

Convert MP3 to Wav then to PCM

PCM (pulse control modulation) is a raw (uncompressed) audio file format. It is is a digital representation of that audio wave at a specified sample rate. Its data is usually signed stereo or mono, 16-bit seems to be the most common sample size, byte ordering often is little endian. For example, signed 16-bit little-endian stereo @ 44.1kHz.

A PCM test data can be generated from a Wav file, which has some header on the top of PCM file. ffmpeg can be used for the conversion:

ffmpeg -i test.wav -f s16le -acodec pcm_s16le test.pcm

A MP3 file can be converted to a Wav file using Ogg Converter.