Swiftcurrent Reflections

Logitech is getting out of the USB speakerphone game and there currently is quite the fire-sale on them. Amazon is currently selling them for only $10! We got one at work, and once we got it working (the reason for this post), found it to have exceptional call quality. Our Skype calls using this sounded much better on both sides than our Pollycom speakerphone on a land line.

However, this is an EOL (End Of Life) product for Logitech, so they do not actively support it. The last time they did, Windows 7 was not yet out, so they have no Winodws 7-specific drivers available. They do have 64-bit drivers for Vista, but their heavy install program doesn’t even want to run on Win7. There is a way to get around this, and I posted the full details on the Logitech help forums. However, I found there is a much easier way to it (Note: This is for Windows 7 64-bit only):

1. Download the driver. Logitech wants to give you a 30MB install app, but all you really need is the drivers out of them, which are in this 214KB zip file: voip64.zip
2. Unzip the contents. You will get a folder named voip64. Remember where it is.
3. Plug in the QuickCall to a USB port. You will notice Win7 try and install drivers, but the speakerphone will just blink green and red lights…
4. Open the device manager.
5. Expand the “Sound, video and game controllers” section
6. I don’t remember exactly what Win7 will call it, but look for a device that says something like “Speakerphone (disabled)” and right-click on it.
7. Choose Update Driver Software
8. Choose Browse my computer for driver software
9. Now browse to the voip64 folder you extracted and use that
10. You now have working drivers!

While the speaker and mic work great, there are limitations:

• The answer call, hang-up, and mute buttons don’t work. Workaround: Use the on-screen controls of Skype or other audio software.
• The volume knob doesn’t work. Workaround: The volume slider in Windows will control volume, as will the control in Skype and keyboard volume buttons.
• The LEDs don’t work. Well, it’s a lot better than them flashing red and green!
• Remember, it’s only $10!

Just over a week ago, Meg and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary. As it is the “paper” anniversary, I wanted to do something cool to celebrate that. With that in mind, I decided to create a photo book of our first year as a married couple. I hadn’t created any photo books up to this point, so I hit Google and did some searching. My requirements were:

• No minimum order (I only wanted to print one for now)
• Great photo reproduction
• Not too expensive

After looking at the options, I decided to go with the Photo Book from Adorama. They basically print everything out on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, just like getting prints from Costco, then bind it. Their binding is pretty neat, as each page will open flat, so you can have an image cross the page fold. Great for panoramas.

Their creation tool is flash based and completely online. It was great and not-so-great. The tool itself worked well. I was able to upload over 350 full-res photos with no problem, then place them on the page, scale, position, and add type without many limits. The only issue was that being web-based, there was always just a little delay in things. Also, to get things lined up exactly at the pixel level took a bit of time. If I were to do this again (and I do think I’ll make a year two book next year), I think I would create large images in Photoshop for each page correctly sized for the book size I’m using, edit things in Lightroom, then place the Lightroom images onto the page in Photoshop. Then just upload the 50 (or whatever) pages and be done. That would give more flexibility, but wouldn’t allow me to do changes from any browser.

The quality is great. Adorama has a color profile for their process, and that was used. Cost really isn’t that bad. The 50-page 8×12 album I got was (don’t look Meg) $77.88. That works out to a per 8×12 cost of $1.56. The Costco (my go-to place for almost all printing) is only $1.49 for a single 8×12. That means for $0.07 a page, Adorama is binding it into a book. I’d call that a steal.

The only other bad thing is shipping. When you go to check out, selecting 2-day or next-day shipping says “in before 1:30PM M-F shipped the same day”. Great, I said, and ordered the 2-day shipping. After a couple days, my order still said processing, so I contacted their support. They said, “Your photobook order is in processing at the moment. Please note that it is a 5 – 7 business day turn around for books no matter what shipping option is chosen.” Keep that in mind…

Here are a couple pictures of the book I made. I just got a bevy of LED key chain lights, so you also to see some of my first “Painting with Light” pictures:

This post is basically for Josh. For those of you who don’t care about the behind-the-scenes details of blogs, maybe go and check this out. OK, for the rest of you….

Swiftcurrent Reflections was started using Blogger. It was quick and easy. Now you can have blogger host your blog, like Meg does (anyone with a name.blogspot.com address does this), they can host your blog with a domain name you purchased (so you could have everything on their server, but instead of using crazyblog.blogspot.com, you could just use crazyblog.com; that URL would just point to their server), or you can do what I did and have your own server, and Blogger would FTP all the files to it. Now, “my own” server is a bit misleading. I bought hosting capability through 1&1. I have been using them for over four years now and am happy with their service. I acutally only have one server space through them, but swiftcurrentphoto.com, billanderson.name, and andersonupshaw.com all point to the same server, they just have thier root in different directories. Sneaky, huh?

OK, so now what about Wordpress? It is designed to run on a web server that has PHP scripting ability and MySQL installed. Almost any web server has this, as does 1&1. Setting it up was easy. Just download the .zip file from Wordpress, un-zip it, use the web-based control panel at 1&1 to setup the MySQL server, update just one test config file from the Wordpress download with the MySQL info, then upload that batch of files to server. Done. Blog is running.

While I did this at a remote server, the process would be the same if you had a server in your house. While I leave a couple of my computers on 24/7, I really don’t want to be worried about uptime. I don’t have a static IP address either. While I use dyndns.com, that’s not the best for a server. And then there is bandwidth. I don’t want to be streaming a movie and then have a number of people hitting my blog at the same time (I doubt that would happen in my case, but still…) and killing my movie. Plus, Comcast has usage caps… I’ll stick with 1&1.

More questions? Comment away!