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WD TV HD Media Player With Modified Linux Firmware

Written by Adam Barlam on April 24th, 2009 to Uncategorized

If you aren’t familiar with Western Digital’s new WD TV, get acclimated. This little unit (and by little I do mean little, it’s not much larger than my 5 port gigabit switch ) is one killer device! It runs $99 and can play every type of media you throw at it from x264 mkv files to divx to mp3s. All available and output to your TV via HDMI in full 1080P HD resolution (the one main feature the AppleTV is missing, not to mention it is more than double the price) .

Anyways, I recently took the plunge and purchased one of these (Thanks NewEgg!) after reading about how they run Linux and seeing the many modified firmware projects that are out there to further enhance the functionality. Now out of the box this thing is still pretty sweet. It has HDMI out, TOSLink (optical audio) out, and RCA out. It also comes with 2 internal USB ports for local media attachment that can be expanded with a USB hub. I tested this out of the box, and copied two test 1080P mkv files and they played flawlessly! The one thing i know many of you are saying to yourself is… “Where is the nic? No network port?”. And this is where out of the box this media player fails. However, enter the modified firmware projects!

Since this unit is built on Linux, a slew of modified firmware(s) that are available for the WD TV have surfaced. They offer expanded functionality allowing you to add that network port you so desperately want so you can stream your huge media library! Luckily that is the case, and with a simple $10 USB nic you can turn this player into one killer networked HD Media player! I immediately got started and flashed my unit.
The flashing process to change your firmware is simple:

Use USB FLASH KEY from 64mb up to 2GB. I recommend up to 2GB but you could also use bigger ones but they could be using different addressing which could be issue for some models.
Format the USB FLASH key to FAT16 or FAT32 filesystem don’t be lazy and DON’T use NFTS for this case
Go to WDTV menu System→About - There is version notice it you will need this number later.
Unpack firmware package to USB FLASH KEY to root directory there have to be 2 files WDTV.BIN and WDTV.VER.
Open with notepad or any plaintext editor and change version in WDTV.VER to something higher than what your WDTV is now. If you don’t change this, it will not detect a new firmware. Save the file.
Detach all USB devices from WDTV and unplug power supply. Wait 5-10sec, plug-in USB prepared USB FLASH KEY and plug-in power supply.
Wait and don’t reboot WDTV during flashing process

Congratulations, you now have a modified WD TV with an enhanced Linux firmware! Hopefully you also have a USB nic attached now too, so you can mount your NFS/CFIS/Samba shares to stream media! Well go get started and check out the WDTV Cross Compiled Software Repository for a plethora of applications such as asterisk (turn your WDTV into a full fledged PBX!), torrent-client, wget, mysql, php, ssh, screen, icq, perl, python, x11 and more! I can see a lot of new uses for this little device, and the small footprint makes it great to take with me anywhere!

I’m sure it is only a matter of time before we starting seeing even more great hacks and apps coming out for this platform because of its open sourced nature. I can see it now, asterisk running on the WD TV and I am watching a movie, which pauses, and a visual caller id pops up letting me know I have an incoming call and shows the caller id! The possibilities are endless!

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The Future of Web Development and Transparent PNG Files

Written by Adam Barlam on April 24th, 2009 to Web Design

Is anyone out there really still using Internet Explorer 6 and other ancient browsers that don’t render alpha channel transparencies properly? I sure hope not because today’s web designers use them readily, and they look far superior in quality to transparent gifs and other images. In fact, our new site that is about to launch is heavily composed of transparent pngs. This poses an problem for companies such as ourself, that offer high end web design services and users who are still stuck on antiquated systems running IE6. Where do you draw the line? At what point do you ditch the minority of users that can’t properly render your site and move on to the bigger and better technology? This is also very related to the problem of creating web sites that display properly at certain resolutions. At what point do you break the line and start integrating newer innovations and features that are supported on higher end systems?

Thankfully Firefox, IE7, Safari and other modern day browsers tackle this transparency issue and display them to perfection allowing web designers to fully utilize them. The addition of such transparencies really can make your site stand out and give it that extra appeal!

I for one embrace web 2.0 and all that comes with it. I hope the casual end users will too, and upgrade from their 1024×768 monitor and IE6 and take advantage of the new technology that is out there!

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Intel Cache Poisoning Bug Could Be Troublesome for Linux Xen Environments

Written by Adam Barlam on April 23rd, 2009 to IT News

Slashdot recently reporting that “A researcher recently released proof-of-concept code for an exploit that allows a hacker to overrun an Intel CPU cache and plant a rootkit. A second, independent researcher has examined the exploit and noted that it is so simple and so stealthy that it is likely out in the wild now, unbeknownst to its victims. The attack works best on a Linux system with an Intel DQ35 motherboard with 2GB of memory. It turns out that Linux allows the root user to access MTR registers incredibly easily. With Windows this exploit can be used, but requires much more work and skill and so while the Linux exploit code is readily available now, no Windows exploit code has, so far, been released or seen. This attack is hardware specific, but unfortunately, it is specific to Intel’s popular DQ35 motherboards.”

This news could be troublesome for web hosting environments where virtual machine technology is often employed. A VPS “root” user could exploit the system and obtain root access over many systems and compromise them all. We will have to keep a close eye on this one!

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Google Bringing 3D to the Web

Written by Adam Barlam on April 22nd, 2009 to IT News, Web Design

Google has released an open source browser plugin that provides a JavaScript API for displaying 3D graphics in web content. Google hopes that the project will promote experimentation and help advance a collaborative effort with the Khronos Group and Mozilla to create open standards for 3D on the web. Google’s plugin offers its own retained-mode graphics API, called O3D, which takes a different approach from a similar browser plugin created by Mozilla. Google’s plugin is cross-platform compatible and works with several browsers. In an interview with Ars Technica, Google product manager Henry Bridge and engineering director Matt Papakipos say that Google’s API will eventually converge with Mozilla’s as the technology matures. The search giant hopes to bring programs like SketchUp and Google Earth to the browser space.

O3d Info

O3D is an open-source web API for creating rich, interactive 3D applications in the browser. This API is shared at an early stage as part of a conversation with the broader developer community about establishing an open web standard for 3D graphics.

SAMPLES:

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Search Engine Optimization and More…

Written by Adam Barlam on March 19th, 2009 to Uncategorized

Welp it is that time of the year again, and we here at Barlam Enterprises finally took the plunge and are launching our brand new search engine optimized site here very shortly. We will be targeting brand new competitive terms, and feature a more complete site layout with lots of useful information for web designers, search engine optimization and internet marketing. Stay tuned for this major structural, graphical and informational update!

OH IT’S BIG BABY!!

-BE

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Essentials to E-Commerce: 5 Ways to Earn More

Written by Jason Brockway on January 6th, 2009 to Uncategorized

5 Ways that you can increase your revenue:

1) Increase your web traffic

The best way to increase your revenue is to increase your customer traffic. Now your thinking to yourself “Ok, I already knew that. But How?”. When we are looking to increase traffic for our website we don’t look at the main keywords that are targeted by our competitors. Instead we look at variations of the keyword or even product specific keywords which will bring in more customers.

For example say we sell Band T-Shirts which is currently searched over 165,000 times per month. If we were number one for that keyword you would be getting the quality traffic we needed. Not everyone though can afford to compete with the companies that show up on the first page. Instead of spending your entire internet marketing budget going after a keyword that you will show up on page 2-3 for why not target a product specific keyword that you offer or what is called a keyword phrase. For example say you sold the band name “XYZ” on your site. Why not target “XYZ Band Shirts”, or “XYZ T-Shirts”. The traffic may be less for this term but you will be able to compete and at the same time convert more traffic.

2) Install tacking mechanisms

If you don’t know why customers aren’t committing on a sale how can you convert the valuable traffic. Google offers a free tool called Google Analytics that can track very detailed information about your visitors. This will help you to see if there are any dead ends or confusion with your shopping cart. We found by using this tracking device that some of our customers would bounce off (Bounce Rate) of a specific page at almost 89%. After further research we found that the products on that page were showing as out of stock when they shouldn’t have been.

3) Test Test Test

One major issue we see with most E-Commerce websites is that the webmaster, owner, or company is so familiar with the website that they become blind to the process. Have fresh eyes make a purchase from your website and ask them afterwards:

What was confusing?
Did you have trouble finding a product?
If you needed to contact us would you know how?

This will help your end users with their overall shopping experience which in turn will increase your sales.

4) Include Mod Rewrite/PHP Meta Tags

What??? Seriously! Have you ever wondered how some E-commerce sites especially the large ones include their product names in the Title tags, keywords and descriptions of every page on their website. They use a Mod Rewrite or PHP script to auto generate this data. If you were to do this by hand it would take you months. The benefit is to generate even more traffic, and will help you with your internet marketing campaign. If you searched for XYZ Band Shirts and the following results cam up which one would you choose?

Company Name Band Shirts or XYZ Band Shirts

5) Blog about your industry

Everyone has a blog discussing anything and everything. Why not discuss what is going on in your industry? There are many free blogging programs out there that can get you started. The reason many companies have blogs isn’t only to get their amazing ideas out onto the internet But to increase the amount of pages on their website, generate traffic, and develop a community that can respond back to the author.

Additionally you can include coupons for new members, discuss how a sale you are having next week relates to the current industry struggle, or just keep the customers on your site longer.

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Tags: ecommerce, SEO Conversion
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Dance Google Dance!

Written by Jason Brockway on January 4th, 2009 to SEO

There are all kinds of dances out there, but one dance that relates to the SEO world which can make you happy in the morning and make you pull your hair out by night is the Google Dance.

What is the Google Dance?

When SEO companies start a new campaign on a relatively new website Google has trouble placing the website among the current positions. This placement issue causes the site to “dance” around various positions leading to confusion and frustration if you aren’t aware of it. Google also has multiple data centers across the country which can lead to a “dance” effect where different results are displayed depending on which data center you hit.

This can be a frustrating time in the SEO campaign. This also leads some SEO’s to question their practices leading to impulsive decisions. Don’t stray from what you know for the “Google Dance” typically lasts for 2-3 weeks for all data centers to sync.

Examples of Google Dance:
Site ranked for a targeted keyword within the first three pages early one morning. Later that same day the site was nowhere to be found within the top 100 sites.

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Tags: Google Dance, search results change daily, SEO Campaigns, SEO practices
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Arizona Printing

Written by Jason Brockway on December 8th, 2008 to Off Topic

Barlam Enterprises has teamed up with a number of Arizona Printers to offer discounts on business cards, letterhead and envelopes. The Arizona Printing industry has been hit hard during these tough economic times like many other industries. To help small businesses during these tough times we have decided to offer free business cards for any client who has a 5 page web site developed by Barlam Enterprises up until January 1st.

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Tags: Arizona Printing
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Footer Links Possibly Devalued By Search Engines Claims SEOmoz

Written by Adam Barlam on November 29th, 2008 to Internet Marketing, SEO, Web Design

I read an interesting article over today at SEOmoz where randfish claims that footer links may be “devalued by search engines automatically” and furthermore that “Yahoo! says they may devalue footer links” and suggests that “Google might do this (or go further) as well.”

This is very alarming and can effect the rankings of many websites who rely on footer links to improve their rankings as well as webmasters who use footer links as a means of navigation (like we do in this site). Footer text links serve an important role in web design and lots of times will give a website that rounded out feel. Also, footer links are very helpful and beneficial for navigation with pda/phone/handheld devices that cannot render a full size page correctly, or pages that are specifically made for these devices. Furthermore, people who are using text based browsers on terminals such as lynx or links also rely on such links for navigation purposes.

The ramifications of such a strategy is sure to shake up the SEO world and we here at Barlam Enterprises will definitely be evaluating our current link structure for our sites as well as our clients such as Alaskan Northern Lights, distributor of light therapy products.

While Yahoo only claims a small share of the search engine market place, only time will tell if and when the big G will implement these ideas. However, when or if they do, you can be assured many more will take notice than currently are.

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