Nook video conversion

ipod guide

ffmpeg 264 guide

The Nook Color will only play h.264 video with stereo.

ffmpeg -i INPUT -ab 128k -vcodec libx264 -s 640x360 -ac 2 -vpre lossless_slow -vpre ipod640 -f ipod -crf 22 -vol 4086 -threads 0 OUTPUT.m4v

Windows Phone 7

I've been trying to get a handle on the WP7 OS, I have yet to see a developers review of the system. There are lots of C# developers excited to have a mobile outlet for their talents, but no one publishing a critical comparison of the OS and it's development environment.

At best I've seen a handful of tweets pointing out what one would expect from MicroSoft - a heavy, monolithic OS that handicaps users and developers. The biggest red flag is that the framework only allows communication on port 80, eliminating WP7 as an Internet aware device in any meaningful sense.

Oracle Java and Apple

Java's slide, touched off by Oracle's patent suit against Android, is accelerating.

Brian Krebs has been raising the alarm as Java JVM security holes outpaced Flash as the primary browser hacking vector. As Oracle released a major security update he pointed out that Apple typically follows with updates a number of months later, leaving the OS exposed to known exploits for long periods. Apple has now deprecated Java, and will no longer provide those updates.

This makes a lot of sense for Apple. Oracle's agressive stance against outside development of Java, the significant cost of maintaining a forked version of the JVM, the inherent insecurity of Java's design, and Java's steady retreat to 'Enterprise' only development make continuing support economically irrational.

Java developers, who found a refuge in the Mac's native Java support, are outraged and wonder if Apple has considered the loss of that market. Their arguments prove the point, they chose Mac because Apple made the considerable investment to make Java (the "platform independent" language) usable on Mac OS. Java has never been platform independent. It failed on the desktop, then failed in the browser, and has finally withdrawn to server-only applications where it's platform independence is largely irrelevant. There are no remaining markets where Java provides a competitive advantage, and it now only survives because of a large pool of mediocre developers who learned it to get a job. Apple's future is not in the hands of mediocre developers, so that community's complaints do not affect it's decisions.