I love my Popcorn Hour PCH-A110 media player and I use it all the time to watch TV Shows and Movies. This is just one of a class of devices known as a Networked Media Tank, or NMT. I can save my shows on a hard drive or USB device that I’ve installed in or connected to the player, or watch content from any of my other computers that are connected via my home network.

If you want to learn more about this kind of device, I’ve reviewed my PCH-A110 previously on this site.

This is an incredibly useful device, and recently I found a couple of tricks to make the user experience even better!

• MediatankController 1.0 for Adobe AIR – browse and control your NMT from your PC. This is a remote control application for your that runs on any PC desktop. This is actually a cross platform App (built using Adobe Air) that can be installed on almost any computer. It provides a fully functional remote control that sits on your computer. You can also browse the media files available to your Popcorn Hour from a slick window on the desktop. Better yet, the popcorn hour responds faster to the controls on your desktop than it does using the remote, and the app provides keyboard support as well, which is far better than trying to type using the numeric keypad on the remote. This is a must have tool for any NMT owner. Although the app was built and tested on the PCH-A110, it should work on any NMT device.
• MediatankController 1.0 for iPhone – browse and control your NMT from your phone (or your iPod Touch). I actually haven’t been able to get this one to work yet, but many other people have, so I’m sure I just didn’t configure it properly. It promises essentially the same functionality as the the similarly named PC desktop app, but built as web based app formatted for the iPhone. This app has also been tested on the iPod Touch and the Android phone, so any web enabled gadget or computer with a web browser should also work just as well.
• Pure Web Remote Control. This one is a little bit less functional than the others, and a whole lot less pretty. It is a web based app that provides some of the same functionality as the two apps above. The main difference is that its design goal was to provide access to content on the NMT, via a browser based remote control, so that the user could listen to audio with TV switched off. This app also works on any web enabled phone, computer, or other gadget, and I had no problem accessing it with my iPod Touch. I have to say that it’s really ugly, but it works very well. When you consider it within the context that it was designed, it’s actually a pretty cool little app.

This is just one more way to make my life faster and easier. If you know of any other great improvements to make your Popcorn Hour media player (or any other NMT for that matter) even better, please drop me a comment and let me know about it!

Dropbox announced today that they now have a free dedicated iPhone App to allow you to access your files at Dropbox directly instead of requiring you to go through the web interface. I’ve only recently started to use Dropbox, but this is definitely one feature that will make the service a whole lot more useful for me.

Instant access to my important files from anywhere is very cool. Of course there are already several other ways to use the iPod Touch or iPhone as a filing cabinet for key documents, but none of them are very convenient to access or to update. Because of that I simply haven’t used it for that purpose. But now I will!

If you’re not familiar with Dropbox, here’s a brief introduction:

Dropbox is software that syncs your files online and across your computers.
Put your files into your Dropbox on one computer, and they’ll be instantly available on any of your other computers that you’ve installed Dropbox on (Windows, Mac, and Linux too!) Because a copy of your files are stored on Dropbox’s secure servers, you can also access them from any computer or mobile device using the Dropbox website.

With Dropbox, your files are always in sync.
Let’s say you’re editing a document at home. As soon as you click ‘Save’, Dropbox will sync this same file to all your other computers (and now your iPhone!) instantly and automatically. It’s as if you saved the document to all of your computers. This gives you the freedom to work on any of your computers and always have the files you need.

Dropbox lets you share files easily.
You can easily share entire folders or photo albums with Dropbox. Simply put the folders you want to share in your Dropbox, and invite people to them. You can also send people links to specific files within your Dropbox. This makes Dropbox perfect for team projects.

With Dropbox, online backup is automatic.
Every time you put a file in your Dropbox folder it is automatically backed up to our secure servers. If your computer has a melt-down your files are safe on Dropbox and can be restored at any time. Our free 2GB account is perfect for backing up your documents. We offer larger accounts (up to 100GB) for backing up your music and video collections.

Dropbox lets you go back in time to undelete or undo changes to files.
Every time you save a file in Dropbox, Dropbox syncs it to our secure servers. Dropbox keeps a history of every change made so that you can undo any mistakes and even undelete files. By default, we keep the last 30 days of undo history for all your files. We also have an unlimited undo option called “Pack-rat”.

Every Dropbox user automatically gets 2 GB of storage for free. You can pay for extra storage, but you can also earn credits to increase your free allotment by referring other new users (up to a max of 3 GB). In fact if you use the following link, you can help me increase my free space… Thanks!

https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTI4MjQ1MzI5

In an interesting twist that I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere else, the free Skype App for the iPhone is now available to Canadian users of the iPhone and iPod Touch. For reasons that nobody could adequately explain to me, the app was initially only available for US based users. I was therefore very surprised when I came across it in the app store on iTunes yesterday. I wonder if this has anything to do with the recent purchase of Skype by a conglomerate that includes the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board??

Skype is a very cool app that allows iPhone and iPod users to make voice calls over the internet, using either the 3G network (iPhone only) or a WiFi connection. Calls are free to other Skype users and inexpensive to landlines and mobile phones. The Skype service also includes additional features such as instant messaging, file transfer and video conferencing; however, only some of these features are currently available with the app.

This is very exciting because the iPod Touch can now be used as a phone (if you have an add-on microphone) anywhere that a wireless internet connection is available. For many users that will be all day long in their home and office locations, or even at McDonalds and Starbucks locations that off WiFi service to their customers.

How long will it be before WiFi is available everywhere? That would eliminate the need to carry a mobile phone and/or to pay for an expensive data plan.

I love my iPod Touch and I use it all the time. Before I actually got one I had been coveting it for a long time.

Without doing all that much research on it I naturally assumed that it would consist of the exact same hardware as the iPhone, and would be missing only the ability to make and receive phone calls. I was quite surprised to discover that the hardware was actually quite different; the Touch was smaller and lighter, and, most significantly, did not have a built-in camera.

Fast forward about 18 months to the launch of the iPhone 3Gs which included not only an improved still camera, but also video camera functionality. It also received a wide variety of software upgrades in the form of the iPhone OS 3.0. At that time there was no corresponding launch of new hardware for the iPod Touch, but the existing device got a de-facto upgrade since it was compatible with the OS 3.0 upgrade. Everyone naturally assumed that Apple was simply stalling in order to ensure high demand for the upgraded phone, and that new hardware for the Touch would follow a few weeks of months later.

This finally happened this week when Apple released a whole new lineup of iPods.  This release also came with a major update to iTunes 9.0 and also to the iPhone OS 3.1.  Some of the highlights of the release include:

• new colors and lower prices for the iPod Shuffle
• a massive 160 GB hard drive in the iPod Classic
• a faster processer in the iPod Touch (the same as in the iPhone 3Gs) and a new 64 GB model
• a video camera (with microphone and built-in speaker) and FM tuner in the iPod Nano

What?  The Nano gets a video camera, but the Touch doesn’t? 

Video is king right now and I can see why apple would want to shove a camera into all of their iPods.  But never in a million years did I expect to see it in the Nano before it was in the Touch.  The iPhone already has it so it seemed like a lock that the Touch would get it next.  My 32GB 2nd gen iPod Touch is plenty fast enough and without a camera in the new generation I’m really not sure why any existing iPod Touch owner would upgrade to the new model.  Even new iPod buyers should be able to pick up some great deals on the 2nd Generation devices.  For me this announcement is just plain odd.

Oh well, maybe bext time.

The music player for the iPhone and iPod touch has been dramatically improved since the iPhone OS 3.0 Software Update with a couple of simple but dramatic changes.  The simplest change was the addition of three new icons on the “Now Playing” screen, including an option to send a link by email to anyone that might be interested in the file you are playing, a playback speed control that gives the option to play the current file at 1/2x, 1x, or 2x the normal playback speed.  I’m not sure about the usefulness of the email link, but the option to change the playback speed is pretty cool and could be very useful to help find your place in a song  or podcast that was forced to restart, or even to play a boring podcast a little faster in order to get it finished! They also added an icon to skip back wards by 30 seconds.  This is also very cool in case you missed something and want to hear it again.  I used this today while listening to a podcast.  I was very surprised to hear what one of the announcers said, and I had to jump back to make sure I had heard it correctly. (I had)

But wait, there’s more!

The absolute best new feature in the new iPhone software is variable precision scrubbing!  This now feature allows the user to quickly and easily navigate through a media file by changing the scrubbing rate depending on where you finger is on the screen.  If you swipe your finger across the media bar it will be the same old high speed scrubbing we were used to hating.  There are now three additional  scrub rates (Half, Quarter, and Fine speeds). The more precise the scrubbing gets, the easier it is to navigate to a specific spot in the track.

I used to complain about how fast and imprecise the scrubbing was before.  It seemed that every time I lost my place in my playlist I simply couldn’t get back to the exact spot I had been at in the media file that I was listening to.  This will help with that problem in a big way!