Spaced-OoooO-Out

Remote sensing for monitoring EU farmland

Nice article over at the BBC today commenting on the use of remote sensing to monitor farmland across the EU. Those taking my remote sensing classes will know Churn Farm - painfully well. We do a similar classification exercise using NERC ATM data. its an interesting exercise and shows a good application for an operational task. The article also highlights the impact of false positives (so accuracy assessment is important) and the increasing use of drones for smaller scale work.

NPP Hemisphere

Great complete Earth hemisphere over at NASA Earth Observatory Image of the Day, explaining how it was made and the strips of sunglint visible in each strip of imagery.

Powers of Ten

I recently came across the Powers of Ten Flipbook, a wonderful odyssey in to the world of remote sensing. I can't say it better than the product description;

"Based on the best-selling classic Powers of Ten, this magnificent journey begins one billion light years away, with every two pages representing a view ten times larger than the view two pages earlier. As readers flip through the pages, they will descend the dimensions of the the universe, through our solar system down to a park on earth, then into the human body, its cells, DNA and finally a single proton. A fun and compact visual odyssey, The Powers of Ten flipbook shows us not only the relative size of things in the known universe, but also our place in it."

Really puts a new perspective on things!! And, of course, what I didn't realise when I saw this was that this was based on the original 1971 movie (and by the looks of things an earlier B&W version). Play it below.... well worth the watch.

Journal M3trics

I wrote a while back about Researcher ID and the notion of flipping the standard journal performance to look at researcher performance. In that post I listed the two main sources of citation information, namely Web of Knowledge and Scopus. Well I'm used to the former (compiled by Thomson Reuters) through their Citation Database and very useful it is too. I'm far less familiar with the latter with their Journal M3trics. Scopus is compiled by Elsevier, however (unlike Thomson Reuters) they make their metrics data freely available through Journal M3trics and currently this is calculated as the Source-Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) and SCImago Journal Rank (SJR): its worth reading the FAQ to see how these metrics perform. They are more complex and are contexualised for subject area and "quality" of citing source. Something metrics like Impact Factor don't do.

This market place is only going to get busier and more competitive. With pressure on institutions and individuals to demonstrate "value" and "worth", how you measure this is important.

Windows Sort Order

Came across a very strange problem recently..... all files in any Windows Explorer or Open/Save dialog were sorted by reverse order. I could go back in to Explorer, get up the "Details" view and then resort it. However it would default back to reverse order. Very strange and frustrating!!!

A quick Google brought up this article. In short, if you hold Ctrl and click the close window "X" it remembers the last sort order.... permanently. So the solution is to re-sort (as you want it) and then Ctrl-"X".

Simple solution to a very frustrating problem!

Pleiades First Images

Some really nice sample images from Pleiades.

WebDAV for Blackboard

Quite a few years back I blogged about using the CMS on Blackboard to store learning materials for students. A much more flexible system that uses WebDAV for drag and drop file management. Well, yes, there are a few Android WebDAV clients around, my favourite of which is WebDAV File Manager. Log in to BlackBoard merrily and modify your files....

TanDEM Update

Jonathan Amos gives a good overview of the TanDEM mission to date - well worth a read for those new-ish to DEMs and this particular mission. Makes good reading!

Digital Globe Image of the Year 2011

Nice catch from GoGeo..... Digital Globe best image 2011. Well worth a look!

New release: GDAL/OGR

A new year and a new release of GDAL/OGR (1.9). It's been a while since I last covered this, but there continue to be significant improvements with the big news being the support for ESRI File Geodatabases and Google Fusion tables (see James Fee's blog). However CounchDB, Idrisi, GRASS, ARCGEN are all worthy additions. Keep it in the toolbox.... because most of us do, and that includes ESRI.

Humax PVR Update

After the best part of a year since I reported on my new Humax PVR, I thought I'd give an update as the firmware has been upgraded a few times and I've finally gotten around to playing a little more with it.

First up, a reminder that it's a Humax HDR-FOX T2 with HDMI output, twin tuners and a capacious 500Gb HDD. It supports plugging in USB media and plays a large range of formats (although its not entirely complete, FLV missing for instance). It comes with a LAN port and you can plug in Ethernet over powerline or go for a wifi dongle. The former is much faster and more reliable. And FTP server is built-in for uploading/downloading content, but as I noted before all content stored on the box is encrypted. It is also able to play media files on uPnP servers (for instance my Synology Diskstation) and act as a uPnP server as well.

I won't go in to detail about the software, but suffice to say (and read the many reviews) it is well written and intuitive. Series recording is a breeze and there is a more sensible folders method of storing files which makes finding recordings easier. The integration of internet TV is generally good (and improves with each version of the firmware) although not all channels are supported. iPlayer is the big one though and works well as long as your broadband connection is fast enough (although it does optimised for screen and connection I gather). The one slight pain is automatic tuning.... yes it works well, but where you are in an area with overlapping transmissions it often ends up storing channels from many of them which can cause dropped recordings. use this advice to manually retune your receiver... works well.

OK, so what about some of the "extra" things you can do? First up their's a very useful summary FAQ of all the things you could possibly want to know about the T2. Secondly, there is now a well established updated firmware (actually firmware patch) that removes many of the restrictions of the T2 and adds other extra features.

I haven't patched my box (yet!) but that's simply because I'm happy with what I've got for the moment. So... I can play content off my Synology uPnP server. That works well. I can also directly play stuff off the T2 using it as a uPnP server. This is actually more fiddly than it needs to be (for the moment anyway).... you need a uPnP browser and video player. Portable VLC is more than happy streaming video content, but (for the moment) doesn't have a browser so you need to provide it with a URL. I have been using the mp3 player Foobar2000 with the uPnP browser plugin. This allows you to get the filename and paste it into VLC. There are other players around (e.g. XMBC) which also work: the above are portable and small. And, by way of experimentation, I used uPnPlay on Andoird to browse to the T2 over wifi and then play back the video using BSPlayer. It works.... but the video files are a little big for the wifi so its not smooth. It does work fine from the Synology though.

The other thing to remember is that the T2 stores it's files as .TS; this is how they are broadcast and are essentially the same encoding as DVD (MPEG-2). The files are quite big (upto 1Gb for 30 mins) but fairly easy to work with. So I said above that there is encryption on the box to stop you copying files.... how do you work around that? Well if you login to the ftp server and copy files off the stay encrypted. However if you use the remote to copy the file to an attached USB stick on the T2 it removes the encryption. You can then copy it back on to the box and FTP it off. OK, so it works but is a little bit of a faff. Well it turns out that there is another workaround given that the T2 is a uPnP server. To stream video it needs to be unencrypted for the client to play it. So if you know the URL (use Foobar above!) you can simply paste this in to your browser address bar and it will download the entire .TS file. How easy is that?! Note, it doesn't work for HD recordings; the T2 keeps them encrypted regardless, so what can you do about that?? Well, you can use Foxy to remove the encryption from the recording by FTPing off the header file (HMT), reprocess it and copy it back. You still can't access it using uPnP, but you can copy it off on to a USB stick where it is decrypted and then copy it back on to the T2 unencrypted. Neat.

Finally then.... .TS recordings. Well VLC plays them off-the-bat no problems, but if you want to archive them then you really need an MP4 type codec. Whilst H264 is "de rigeur" I still tend to prefer to encode to XVID because its open source and remains reliable; expect a compression ration compared to .TS of about 5:1. I use Mencoder for this.

There's plenty more things in the offing for the T2, but all-in-all it's a great bit of kit and is firmly placing itself as a media centre. And a rather elegant one at that. Just ordered one of these to experiment with streaming stuff around the house. See how it goes.

SMS Backup

Got lots of SMS on your Android phone? Want to backup or delete some?? SMS to Text is a simple app to do just that.... export to your SD card, filtering by your contact list or simply all of them and press go. Output formats are TXT or CSV. Simple, useful, does the job.

ArcGIS for Android

Well anfter the initial fuss that ESRI had actually released the ArcGIS for Android (AA) app, I realised that it wasn't compiled for ARMv6 deviecs, which includes my cheap and cheerful San Fran. So I put it to the back of my mind. I happened to be browsing the Market this week and realised that the latest update had provided support in this area and so I took the plunge and installed it. And in ESRI fashion, its not a lightweight app.... 17.83 Mb my phone reports which is by some margin the biggest app I have installed. And for those with not too much memory its a real space hog so just as well they provide support for moving it to SD.

Probably best to see what ESRI have to say on the topic.... and if you read this it's pretty clear that AA is an ArcGIS Online viewer, and a pretty big and bloated one at that. Yes it allows you to zoom in and out, search using a gazeteer and add and remove layers. Its "strength" is the tie in to ArcGIS Online... if you use it. It also allows you to add bespoke layers from ArcGIS Server as well. What it doesn't do is anything related to data collection, working with feature classes, editing or any other mobile GIS type activities. For that you'll need (a license for) ArcPad. In fact it's no where near as usable as Google Maps which has a very simple, but elegant, interface, that works fast and does what it says on the tin. For example, I wanted to send my brother a location to meet up... fire up Google Maps, identify your location, long press and then select "Share". Messaging (amongst others) others you to txt a shortened URL. Nice. That said, ArcGIS isn't competing with Google: it's in a different marketplace.

So, AA (obviously!) is an ArcGIS tie in and supports reasonably tightly the ArcGIS product line (and don't forget ArcGIS for iPhone). And perhaps this reflects the strength of ArcGIS more generally.... (on Windows) it may not be the fastest, most reliable or most user-friendly interface, but you can almost guarantee that it'll be able to anything you could possibly want done (perhaps with a little coding). Hence the expansion to Android and iPhone. In this sense the application itself is relatively unimportant and that the key aspect is actually the SDK. The application is the exemplar, but it is corporates demanding iOS and Android platforms to roll their own apps out on to. As long as the SDK has the functionality built, who cares how big and bloated it is as long as it supports the full workflow. So AA is not the one to watch, but the apps that follow-on from it... it'll be interesting if a whole new industry grows up around this in the same way it did for ArcGIS on Windows (e.g. XTools Pro, ET GeoWizard, GME, Jenness).

New US Army Drones

Nice article over at the BBC on new US Army drones. Helicopter based for VTOL, they sport a 1.8GP (yes, thats gigapixel) video camera capable of real time video feed at 10 frames per second, allowing multiple target tracking up to altitudes of 6000m. Nice.

Beidou is here

Well just about.... Beidou is the Chinese GPS equivalent and is now "operational". Well its got 10 operational satellites and these will provide coverage for China and near-surrounds. Expect global coverage by 2020. Whilst perhaps uptake won't be quick, it is designed to be inter-operable and expect to see handsets starting to take advantage of US, Russian, European and Chinese satellites for positioning. An exciting marketplace at the moment....

BBC Year in satellite imagery

Really nice set of images over at the BBC highlighting aspects of 2011 using satellite imagery. Shame there isn't more detail on the sensor etc, but a powerful reminder of events.

Kindle Book Prices

I've moaned before about the price of Kindle books and that they are often pennies cheaper than the printed version.... and you can't lend them! Anyway, part of the reason is that VAT is charged on ebooks, but not on paper books. As PCPro explain, a cut in VAT on ebooks in Luxembourg may well see some sort of parity across Europe and we deserved dropped in prices.

First imagery returned from Pleiades

Nice articles by Jonathon Amos on the release of first imagery by Pleiades and the critical role played by British CCD manufacturer e2v. Some sample imagery at Astrium for the moment.

KAP Camera Settings

Capturing aerial imagery from KAP can be a hit and miss affair (although far less so with digital cameras) and therefore setting the camera up carefully prior to imaging is essential. For oblique images there are fewer problems because there is a lot of light coming in to the camera and you can utilise whatever shutter speed/aperture you want. That's not to say its not without problems, but that automatic camera settings can often get great shots.

When you're trying to obtain straight verticals from KAP in order to generate DEMs (see my paper) then things become more difficult. It reminds me of a more general quote from my undergraduate days (thanks Lindsay):

"In aerial survey we have to take a large number of photographs to a set plan, from a moving platform, at a great height and at a low temperature. Alone or collectively these conditions are foreign to most photography. Despite this the photogrammetrist requires excellent definition of a low contrast object, further reduced by poor atmospheric conditions."

Which about sums things up..... OK, its not quite as severe from a kite, but the requirements for high definition photos of a low contrast object remain the same. This is even more so when we consider that we want to collect stereo imagery: the photos need to be good. So when it comes to the camera how do we actually set it up?? My paper linked above has the following paragraph in it:

"The photogrammetric use of aerial imagery requires sharp definition and this is controlled on the camera by focus, shutter speed, aperture and ISO settings. With flying heights in excess of 50m, a focus setting of infinity is used. The focus ring is normally taped and auto-focus setting switched off, this eradicates changes to the focal length during the flight. As the kite is usually moving during image capture, fast shutter speeds are needed. Field tests suggest speeds in excess of 1/500 s are required. In addition an aperture of at least F8 (for a wide angle DSLR) is preferable, to allow sufficient light to enter the camera system whilst minimizing lens distortions. In most field situations an ISO setting of at least 400 is necessary for normal UK daylight conditions. With automatic digital cameras, these stipulations mean that the ISO is set prior to image capture with the camera in 'aperture priority' mode. Prior testing may be required in order to ensure shutter speeds are fast enough."

So there we have it: tape the focal ring at infinity, put the camera in aperture priority and maintain an aperture of at least F8. The camera will auto-set the shutter speed but we actually need speeds in excess of 1/500s. This can be problematic as the only light entering the camera is reflected off the Earth's surface and for low reflectance features (e.g. vegetation) this can be quite low. One thing I didn't explore in the original paper was the AutoISO feature that is available on the D70 and pretty much every Nikon DSLR since. Yes, it automatically sets the ISO for you and there is a nice layman's article here. Nikon Support also offer some sage advice. In short though, AutoISO increases the ISO speed (aka sensitivity) of the sensor in order to expose the photo correctly. The brilliant aspect when shooting in aperture priority is that you can set the threshold shutter speed at which it should kick in. So in our case we could specify 1/500s to always make sure photos are sharp.

This is no panacea though... yes it effectively adds 3 or so f-stops but you increase the noise in the image, particularly once you get over 1000. And whilst we want sharp photos for photogrammetry, noise won't help things. Clearly some more experimentation needed here, but AutoISO is well worth enabling.

We also mustn't forget the ambient atmospheric conditions at the time of image capture. We want sun... yes, but more than that we want texture in the image. If we are interested in enhancing topography then shadows are helpful. A low angled sun can significantly improve texture but again you lose sunlight which affects exposure. Its a careful balance which you rarely get right all the time!

P.S. And don't forget to turn the auto-shut off to the longest possible time. You don't want the camera to power down after 30 s!!

Pleiades 1 Launched

Pleiades 1 has now been launched and give Europe similar commercial imaging capabilities as the US. Slightly more detail (but older) here showing the 50cm coverage over four bands. Also confirms the future launch of SPOT 6 and 7 to provide a high resolution constellation family. The BBC also provided good coverage as this was somewhat of an unusual launch as it came from a Russian Soyuz rocket launched from French Guiana. See the launch in all its glory!

First global image from NPP VIIRS

NASAs Earth Observatory have posted the first global image from VIIRS on NPP. This is a great start to demonstrate the capabilities of VIIRS; and for those doing introductory courses in remote sensing the accompanying notes nicely explain why we have sun-synchronous orbits and why there is variation in the imaging of the global composite.

Open Access Publishing Model

Just as the Journal of Maps is transitioning over to a subscription based model we see the government increasingly becoming interested in open access publishing. The lead in The Guardian is:

"The government has signalled a revolution in scientific publishing by throwing its weight behind the idea that all publicly funded scientific research must be published in open-access journals."

which is verging on the side of sensationalist, but does reflect a genuine interest by government to become more transparent and make outputs of funded research more widely available. I am a big supporter of open-access as it allows all to access research work, but as The Guardian notes, journals add significant value through peer-review and the actual publication. Someone as to do this and it has to be funded. They note the physics research community moving funding from subscription to author-pays (something we used at JoM), but consensus varies by discipline. The actual cost of publishing a journal article is quite high (somewhere over $1000) and for many disciplines with very low amounts of research funding this is not sustainable. And it begs the question about where to publish non-funded research (again, varying by discipline, and often in very significant quantities).

So if the author doesn't pay and the library doesn't pay, who does? Well that's a good question and why the subscription model remains the most popular as it is the closest solution. Many open access journals are directly funded by learned societies who also have subscription based journals, whilst learned societies also rely upon journal subscriptions to fund research activities. I don't know what the mix between commercial and learned societies is, but it would be interesting to investigate. I don't think anyone would argue with reducing excessive profits by some publishers, but there has to be a publishing solution in place that is fit-for-purpose.

Carbonite on your smartphone

Some of you may know that I'm a big fan of Carbonite, the online backup facility. Yes it charges, but for unlimited storage and a real no-hassle backup it is a bargain at $59. Which in my book is pretty good for the 85Gb I've got stored there. Whilst it's really billed as online backup, it is a "webdrive" and the web interface to access files is pretty reasonable. Of course, there is also now an Android app to do this which is simple, small and fully functional. Very handy to be able to grab a file whilst out and about.

Calls on a data contract??

Nice article at The Guardian on using a data contract on your mobile to route all your comms traffic. The introduction fails miserably in what is mean to be a newspaper article... you know what they say, don't bury the lead! Well they have here. Anyway, given everything is digital, all the mobile operators essentially provide is a data pipe, quite what you put through it is irrelevant and the fairest option is to charge by the Mb. Of course many of the profits come from calls and roaming, so operators are keen to keep this nice top slice.

But the market is changing and what Skype/IM did on the PC is now happening on the mobile through apps like WhatsApp which is available across all smartphone OSes. This is the way the market is headed, although the gotcha is that to use such a service your friends need to be on it as well, although they can also operate as gateways to traditional voice and txt services (for a price!). Skype succeeded by being first to market so its an area to watch closely (and, worth noting it might well be against your contract T&Cs).

PDF Printing

Loads of stuff is sent, received and archived as PDF. Its a great format originally derived from postscript (by Adobe) designed for bridging the gap between designing a print job on a PC and delivering it to a printer for output. Since then it has evolved considerably to include audio, video, 3D, layers, meta-data, digital signing and form filling to name a few. And since Adobe opened the format up there have been many vendors providing PDF readers, writers and editors. Obviously Adobe has its flagship product Acrobat, but Foxit remains my favourite for small footprint, rapid rendering.

In terms of writing files there are a few open variants that are worth considering:

FreePDF-XP: if you can get past the impenetrable German download page, this is a very capable and useful product.
DoPDF: nicely configurable PDF printer driver. Plenty of options, way over and above the simplistic PDF export in MS Office.

If you fancy a nice combination then FinePrint allows you to accumulate and edit print jobs, whilst PDF Factory produces the output. Paid for, but excellent apps.

Map Makers Crib Sheet

Good set of info in the carto crib sheet from Alex Tait. Useful stuff.

Netherlands KAPping

I'm currently involved in a project led by Paolo Paron (UNESCO-IHE) looking at beach development in the Netherlands. This is really a proof-of-concept project and follows on from the earlier training day back in October where we ran through a full kite aerial photography setup. During that day we had temperatures that peaked at 20oC.... amazing for October!

Anyway, the return trip to the Netherlands was to see the full kit that Paolo had assembled and take it to the field site for full testing/tweaking. The Netherlands is renowned for its flatness and by that I mean: bikes and wind. There were plenty of the former in evidence..... and none of the latter!!! Well, almost. It was the week of dense fog which virtually shut Amsterdam airport, however EasyJet flights in to Schiphol were almost unaffected. A remarkable effort. It was my first visit to the Netherlands and I must say, yes, it's flat but also that the public transport system is regular, reliable and well used. Bikes are everywhere and it's clearly a mode of transit favoured by all ages and types. Streets are wide and there are many segregated bike ways, in addition to the onus being on the driver. All in all very civilized.

Paolo (and Niels Anders, a PhD student at Amsterdam who has spent time at Kingston, and a "sixth form" student on work experience) met me at Den Haag HS railway station and from there we went out to the coast. The pictures say it all really: incredibly dense fog and winds <3 kph. Yes, that is a kite flying but t was hard enough to just get the thing off the ground let alone fly anything from it. Paolo did fully assemble the rig and camera, even though we couldn't fly it. He has bought most of the bits from the highly recommended KAPshop and is testing one of their self-levelling rigs. He also has a Nikon D7000 which is the successor to the D70s, 80s and 90s I have used. At the moment he has a manual 20mm lens which will be interesting to see the results of the test field imagery from (in comparison to our auto-24mm).

So all in all it was disappointing not to have a full flight test, but immensely useful in fully ground testing the kit and ironing out some niggles that needed fixing in the setup. Watch this space for further results.

More open data....

This is nothing but great news..... more open data! There is some genuinely useful stuff here: Met Office Public Weather Service, train/bus real time running and Land Registry. All valuable/useful stuff in and of itself that should already be public. In addition to last weeks criminal court sentencing records, there will also be personal health records. These will (anonymously) tell a very detailed story about the UK and provide invaluable data for further analysis by academics and companies.

Raspberry Pi

If you haven't seen the fuss over Raspberry Pi then head on over and take a look at their website. And if you don't want to invest too much time then read the excellent summary over at The Register. In short (and to quote):

"The most remarkable thing about this low-power credit card-sized computer is its price tag: little more than �20 for a fully functional system capable of, among many things, 1080p video playback and hardware-accelerated graphics.

The British-designed Pi is being heralded as the saviour of modern IT education in UK classrooms, one that will raise a new generation of young bedroom hackers - in the old sense of the word 'hacking', that is, to ingeniously cobble stuff together to make cool new things."

Open Source Roundup

A useful open source roundup with a slight focus upon geo-stuff.

NPP Launch

NPP launched a few weeks back and has just sent back its first imagery. Jonathon Amos (over at the BBC) has an interesting article discussing the importance of weather satellites to remote sensing and society more widely. NPP is designed to fit the gap in polar orbiting meteorological data collection, although with a remit for land data collection (but bear in mind its a research satellite and designed as a pre-cursor for the future operational-grade JPSS).

Land data collection has been been achieved in the past with AVHRR, SeaWiFS and (more recently) MODIS. These have increasingly become super-spectral sensors with wide swaths and functional spatial resolutions. NPP is a 5-instrument mission, but the biggest and most important is VIIRS. This has 22-bands in visible and near/mid/far infra-red, 3000 km swath and something approaching 650 m spatial resolution. Radiometric resolution with be 12-14-bit. Anyway, it'll be very interesting to see how data delivery and use goes.

Open Source GIS Intro

Nice article over at Directions on Open Source GIS.... a reasonable primer on the topic.

Landsat 5 Anomaly

Not a healthy outlook for Landsat 5 27 years after launch. Mind you, its not bad for a 3 year life expectancy!!

NERC Knowledge Exchange Grant

For those interested, I am currently a Co-Investigator on a NERC Knowledge Exchange grant titled "The Physical Landscape of Britain and Northern Ireland." Under the auspices of the British Society for Geomorphology, this will be putting together a fully functional spatial bibliographic database for two locations in the UK and integrating references for all published and unpublished material that relate to the geomorphology. We successfully developed (through some of the hard work of Claudio Piccinini) a demonstrator webmap and this now moves on to a full prototype with our partners Mouchel, Halcrow, National Trust, Environment Agency and Natural England.

It's a great knowledge exchange project and comes out of a BSG Steering Group which is looking far beyond the prototype envisaged here. There is some visionary thinking going on and big aims for the future utilisation of geomorphological expertise in the UK and maximising its benefit for all. Professor Janet Hooke is leading the project and has experience of similar knowledge exchange work before. Kingston's expertise in GIS adds strength to the project. Layman's press release is here.

One Story

One Story is a great subscription for your Kindle. Each month you get one new short story and they never use an author twice. The variety, breadth and freshness is revitalising. At at �0.99 its a bargain. Subscribe... today.

"One Story magazine features one great story every month. Because One Story never publishes an author more than once, you'll discover a great new writer in every issue."

"Launched in 2002, One Story has quickly become one of the top American venues for short fiction. Of the 115 issues published between 2002 and 2008, almost half were selected as among the year's best by various anthologies and prizes, including Best American Short Stories, Best American Non-Required Reading, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. As The New York Times noted: "At a time when literary writing seems like a dying art, when little magazines are folding left and right, when publishers bemoan the sinking bottom line, here lies a spot of hope...It is called One Story.""

Kindle Daily Deal

Amazon UK offering a "daily deal" each day for a heavily discounted book. See the blog post for further details. It'll be interesting to see how these deals develop.... equivalent price in the US at the moment. Will have to see if it goes up tomorrow as well or whether its the usual "Brits can pay more"

Ball camera

How cool is this ball camera?? Love the application.... our Leica laser scanner grabs similar imagery and splices them together but this is so elegant and you get a whole sphere of imagery. The alternative would be to fish-eye images but not as easy to do. Great!

Eject USB

Safely ejecting USB devices is a perennial gotcha for those not in the know, recently brought home to me by a friend who copied some audio books to her Kindle and couldn't find them to play them. What had happened was that she had "copied them" over to the Kindle and then unplugged it. In reality the files had been cached by Windows and were still there when she pulled the plug. The "Safe Eject" feature in Windows flushes the cache, completes writing the file and then ejects the drive. Except it can't do all that if there are files open/running on the device.

EjectUSB is one (of many) solutions to this problem. Running the app will close all apps running on the drive, flush the cache (and a few other things) and then attempt to eject the drive, all automatically. It works very well and even if you can't eject the drive, at least you will know that any incomplete file copies have been finished. Essential for people with portable apps.

Kindle loses audio.....

PCPro had a good review of current ebook readers this month. And yes the new Kindle came out on top, but as they say, its all about content! The Kindle has that in bucket loads and the compact size, fast page turns and low price make it a winner. In comparison to the previous version (now branded the Kindle Keyboard) the screen is improved and page turns are faster. Things have been removed.... the keyboard (doh!), 3G (useful for those travelling alot) and 2Gb of storage. However the big gotcha is the *removal* of the audio jack/speakers. This means no music, no audiobooks and no text-to-speech. Surely it can't have added that much to the price?? Audio is a must-have for me, although I know plenty of people will be happy without it. Anyway, that makes the touch sensitive Sony Reader Wifi at �108+VAT all the more tempting. And there is also an alternative to the larger Kindle DX which are available in the UK; the PocketBook Pro 902 has a 9.7" screened device, although not (apparently) without its problems. A good round up and well worth the read.

"Couldn�t install on USB storage or SD card� error on�Android

Finally got around to sorting out a niggling bug on my San Fran phone. For *one* application only, I kept getting the following error when I tried to install it:

"Couldn�t install on USB storage or SD card"

I couldnt be bothered to do anything about it, but when it then occurred for another app I thought I'd better do some digging. Turns out that Android appears to created the file smdl2tmp1.asec when it installs an app. This is a temporary file and for some reason caused the failure to install this particular app. The solution is simple: just delete it! smdl2tmp1.asec resides in one of two directories:

/sdcard/.android_secure � this is an invisible folder on your SD card, but you can access with any file manager
/mnt/secure/asec/ � access to this folder requires root access (and a file explorer such as Android Mate)

Looks like this has been a known bug for some time.... which isn't good because the last thing you want numpties doing is rooting their file and randomly deleting files on the phone!