So, I’m not sure how many of you have iPhones, I’m sure a lot of you have Mac’s and out of those of you that have Mac’s I’m not sure how many of you have had a chance to check out my Binary Watch Widget for Mac OS X.

Well, I recently started developing apps for the iPhone, so my first app that I submitted to the App Store for approval was a port of my Binary Watch Widget to the iPhone, which got approved about a week later and you can download that for free from the App Store. From your iPhone you just go to the App Store and search for Binary Watch.

The Binary Watch was my very first iPhone App and is pretty basic in design and functionality but it does as its title implies, it displays the current time in binary format. I wrote a tutorial here a few months ago on how to read a Binary Watch as well.

Given the basic design and lack of functionality of the Binary Watch iPhone App, I was inspired to develop a more robust Binary Watch App and so A Geek Clock was born. A Geek Clock displays binary time in a beautiful array of brightly colored LED’s taking up most of the iPhones screen real estate. A Geek Clock also has a few settings to choose from to allow for a more customized experience. For instance, you can select a color for the LED lights and you can also choose between a 12 and 24 hour time format.

A Geek Clock also allows you to enable or disable a learning mode feature which basically displays the current time on the screen and describes what the LED’s represent in a 10 base counting system. You also have the option to override the iPhones Auto Lock feature so that you can keep the clock on at all times.

You can check out more information and some screen shots of A Geek Clock on my new website Empoc Media. If you haven’t read about my new company yet, you can read about it in this blog post My New Company.

Also, for anyone willing to write a fair and honest review of A Geek Clock on the App Store, I will give a promotional code to, to download A Geek Clock for free, otherwise its $ .99 and I’m only charging so that I can further my development and come up with better applications that everyone will enjoy.

Just to keep all the readers informed, I thought I’d share with you that I’ve now started a software development company. The companies name is Empoc Media and will be primarily used to develop applications for Apple devices such as the Apple iPhone, iPod Touch, the upcoming iPad, Mac OS X, etc…

When I started developing applications and scripts, I would normally just post them on my blog here.  Lately, I’ve been moving more and more towards application development and I don’t want this blog to turn into a site to download apps, and therefore I decided to start a completely separate company that will be responsible for hosting applications.

The applications that are currently listed on the blog will remain on the blog, primarily because there are so many back links from numerous websites and it just wouldn’t be good practice to pull all the apps from the blog and let the back links go down the path towards a black hole. Instead, for each application that is listed on my blog, when the application is updated, I will have a link to the updated application from the original applications blog listing to the location of where the updated application is hosted.

One more thing I’d like to share. What I’m about to say was not an easy decision to make but was one that needed to be made. All of the applications I have developed to date have been available as freeware but because of the amount of effort and time that goes into each application and the limited amount of time that is available to me, I will have to charge for any new releases of current software as well as new applications that are developed, however, I will not be charging some ridiculous price of $39.95. Instead my applications will be priced within the $4.99 – $14.99 price range.

If you’d like to take some time and check out Empoc Media, here is a link that will get you there http://empoc.com

Well, I’m at it again, after developing the ISOx360 and Wii Tools, I thought about what else might be a useful tool for all of the fellow Mac OS X users out there. One thing that came to mind was that most of the HD content that can be found on the internet is usually in MKV format.

I wont cover the MKV format in-depth, just know that it is a container and not a codec, similar to how an AVI can be encoded as a divx or an xvid, an MKV file can use many different codecs. Most commonly MKV files contain the H.264 / X.264 codec for Video and the DTS / AC3 codec for audio.

The other thing you need to know about MKV files and HD content is that a typical 720P MKV file using an H.264 codec has a max bit-rate of about 9000, currently the AppleTV can only support 720P content with a Video bit-rate of up to 5000. If this limitation didn’t exist we could easily transcode the file to an MP4 / M4V container, but because of the Video limitation, we need to re-encode the file at a lower bit-rate. Don’t worry about quality, I haven’t seen any noticeable decrease in quality when re-encoding.

So, enough with the tech talk, you’re probably wondering, the title of the post is Convert MKV to MP4 on a Mac, so I’ll get on with it. The application that I’ve developed makes this an easy 1 step process. You load the MKV file, choose a save location for the new MP4 file, pick a few options and click convert. When its done, you can copy the MP4 file to your AppleTV / iTunes and enjoy great quality HD content.

Note: My application will also remove subtitles and convert any DTS audio track to AC3 so that you can keep all the surround sound. The thing is, to enjoy the surround sound, you’ll have to use the optical output on your AppleTV and have a receiver that can correctly decode the audio, along with a nice set of surround sound speakers.

You can download a trial of the application below, it will work exactly 10 times before it is rendered useless at which point you will have to purchase it, but don’t worry I kept the price cheap, only $14.95.

Download :

  Click to Download the MKV2AppleTV Trial (9.4 MiB, 98 hits)

Purchase:
Click to Purchase an MKV2AppleTV License

So, I went to the Apple website to check out new products, and the first thing that caught my attention after the big picture of the new 27″ iMac that is. I clicked on store and noticed something called the Nike+ iPod sensor, being the curious person that I am, I clicked on it just to find out what exactly a Nike + iPod sensor is.

I noticed after clicking on the Nike+ iPod sensor that on the left pane was a link for a Nike + iPod Sport Kit. What followed after the click on the Sport Kit was pure amazement.

It seems that Nike has developed a pair of Sneakers called “Nike+”. These special shoes come equipped with a built in pocket that will house a special sensor that Apple sells. This sensor will track your movement during your workout routine and communicate wirelessly with your iPod Touch, iPod Nano, iPhone, etc…

The information that is tracked is stored on your iPod and when you sync your iPod with your iTunes is uploaded to Nike which will track your workout routine, goals, etc…

According to the description you can share your results with other members and even challenge other members to a virtual race. I don’t know how much Nike charges for the shoes but Apple only charges $29.00 for the kit. I’m thinking about buying this kit to try it out.

Has anyone had the opportunity to try this yet? How well would you rate the product? Does it help keep you in shape?

A few of you might have noticed that the amount of posts have decreased drastically and may have wondered if I left my blog for dead.

Well I thought that I might owe an explanation for my lack of posts. Up until recently I’ve been working from home running my own business which fortunately left a lot of time for blogging. I recently took a position as an IT Manager and it is taking a lot of my personal time.

The job is great, I love it, it truly is rewarding to have a job to go to everyday that you enjoy, it doesn’t feel like work. Starting now I will try to have at least 3 to 4 new posts per week. I will also do my best in keeping up with responding to comments. If you leave a comment in the form of a question please be patient for an answer, I will try to get to it as quickly as I can.

Aside from all that, life is great, couldn’t be better, I hope that everyone has had safe and wonderful holiday’s and has had a great start in the new year.

Google just announced that they have released a beta version of Google Chrome for download for Mac OS X. Along with the announcement they have listed some fun facts:

• 73,804 lines of Mac-specific code written
• 29 developer builds
• 1,177 Mac-specific bugs fixed
• 12 external committers and bug editors to the Google Chrome for Mac code base, 48 external code contributors
• 64 Mac Minis doing continuous builds and tests
• 8,760 cups of soft drinks and coffee consumed
• 4,380 frosted mini-wheats eaten

From the sound of it, it appears that a lot of time and effort has been put into Google Chrome for Mac since its Alpha release about 6 months ago. I haven’t downloaded the beta release to test it yet, so I’ll leave that up to you guys. If anyone has had a chance to test Chrome yet please post your comments.

You can download the new beta release here http://www.google.com/chrome

… Wireless is faster than Wired, or at least this guy thinks so.

At the request of one of my readers, I am making a short tutorial on how to burn activate.iso on Mac OS X. This is a fairly simple process, however I will cover it in as much detail as possible.

Tools Needed:

The activate.iso file ( Download )
Disk Utility (  Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility )
A Blank Dual Layer DVD

The Tutorial:

Download the activate.iso file from the above list of tools. Once downloaded, you need to extract it, since it will be in a compressed zip format.

Open Disk Utility ( Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility ) – you should see a screen similar to the below

Click on Burn, you will see a browse window similar to the image below, browse to the location where you downloaded and extracted the activate.iso file. Highlight activate.iso, then click on Burn.

After clicking on Burn, the browse dialog will disappear and you will see a new window, similar to the following image. At this point you will need to insert your disk. When Disk Utility recognizes that a blank dual layer disk has been inserted, it will enable the Burn button. All you need to do now is click Burn.

After the burn has completed you will most likely need to reboot your Mac to remove the disk since for me anyway OS X did not recognize that there was a disk in the drive after the burn completed and therefore did not let me eject the disk while I was in the operating system. So what you need to do is reboot your Mac and eject the disk using the eject button before your Mac boots back up completely.

So that’s it for the tutorial, nothing special, just use good old Disk Utility to burn and you’re all set.

So apparently there are some tutorials floating around that show you how to convert wave 4 games to wave 3 games. What most of them don’t tell you is that by doing this, you are setting yourself up to get banned from Xbox Live.

Patience truly is a virtue here. I know everyone is eager to play Tekken 6 and a few of the other wave 4 releases. I honestly don’t see problem with it as long as you play those games offline. Is it really worth the risk of getting banned ?

For those of you that absolutely must play wave 4 games, I have listed the tutorial for you below on how to convert wave 4 games to wave 3 games, but again please don’t play on Live with these games because there is a very good chance that you will get banned. What this hack does is it uses a wave 3 video file and since the sizes between the wave 4 and wave 3 video files differ, you will receive CRC errors in abgx360.

Here’s the tutorial:

You’ll need the following software:

• Xbox Backup Creator 2.9 ( Download Windows )
• abgx360 ( Download Mac | Download Windows )
• The wave 3 to wave 4 pack ( Download )

NOTE: You can use either Xbox Backup Creator or abgx360 to patch the wave 4 game to a wave 3 game. I’ve put together 2 tutorials. One using Xbox Backup Creator to patch and then abgx360 for verification. The other one is at the bottom and uses abgx360 for both patching and verification.

Using Xbox Backup Creator

1. Under Action, change it from extract to inject
2. Click on PFI Sector and choose the ISO of the game and then choose the PFI file provided with the wave 4 to wave 3 packs.
3. Click on Video Section and choose your game ISO and then choose the provided video file
4. That’s it for Xbox Backup Creator

Using abgx360

1. Open your ISO
2. Put check marks in the following on the Options Tab
   Check/Create .dvd file
   Check Stealth
   Verify is Stealth Passes
   Check/Fix Video padding
   Use Colors
   Check for updates
   Check Game Partition CRC when needed
3. On the Manually Patch or Extract Files Tab make sure nothing is selected.
4. On the AutoFix Tab Check Mark the following
   Adjust angle 359 for iXtreme < v1.4
   Fix C/R Table if data is invalid
   Adjust angles that deviate more than 3 degrees from their CCRT targets
   AutoFix Threshold – Level 3
5. On the Misc Tab
   SplitVid: Add it if it doesn’t exist or isn’t valid
   Images: Extract images when using HTML output
6. Click on Launch
7. abgx360 will most definitely present you with CRC errors because the game is no longer stock.
8. When abgx360 has completed you can go ahead and burn your game using the regular burning method

Using Only abgx360 to perform the hack and verify

1. Open your ISO
2. Put check marks in the following on the Options Tab
   Check/Create .dvd file
   Check Stealth
   Verify is Stealth Passes
   Check/Fix Video padding
   Use Colors
   Check for updates
   Check Game Partition CRC when needed
3. On the Manually Patch or Extract Files Tab do the following
   Check Patch even if stealth passes
   Check Patch even if these files are invalid
   Check Patch Video
   Check Patch PFI
4. Still on the Manually Patch or Extract Files Tab, next to Patch Video you should see an empty text box and a gray button with 3 dots, click on that button and choose the Video File from the pack. Do the same thing for Patch PFI and choose the PFI file from the pack
5. On the AutoFix Tab Check Mark the following
   Adjust angle 359 for iXtreme < v1.4
   Fix C/R Table if data is invalid
   Adjust angles that deviate more than 3 degrees from their CCRT targets
   AutoFix Threshold – Level 3
6. On the Misc Tab
   SplitVid: Add it if it doesn’t exist or isn’t valid
   Images: Extract images when using HTML output
7. Click on Launch and wait for abgx360 to finish patching the ISO when abgx360 reads Press any key to exit … then it has completed patching.
8. You can now close abgx360 and re-open it to verify that the ISO is indeed a wave 3 now.

I myself haven’t tried this particular tutorial, I just placed it here from gathering bits and pieces online. I would urge you to do this as a last resort and remember not to play these modified / downgraded to wave 3 games on Live.

So… Microsoft just recently went through a wave of banning a small percentage of modded Xbox 360’s from Xbox Live. After receiving feedback from several of my readers, whose consoles have been banned recently, I thought I would share some valuable information with the rest of my readers.

Here is some information about the XBox 360’s from the feedback I received:

Lite-On Drives A0A1
iXtreme 1.51

To the best of my knowledge, the games that were played were correctly stealth patched and not pre-releases of any major game titles.

So, my suggestion is, DO NOT play any backups on XBox Live. If you absolutely must play a game on Xbox Live, make sure that it is an original game. That is the best advice I can offer in regards to not being banned from Xbox Live. If anyone is questioning if it is possible to reverse the ban of a banned Xbox 360, I am here to inform you that as of today there is no way to reverse a ban.

The following information is for informational purposes only and may be considered illegal in some states or countries. Please use this information at your own risk and do not ask me for any help or further information.

A few friends of mine have successfully been able to obtain a new XBox 360 after theirs has been banned. What they did is go to K-Mart or Wal-Mart and purchased a new XBox 360. They then opened the box, took out the new 360 and replaced it with their banned one and then took it back to the store for a refund. The only thing that MUST be done to do this successfully is switch the serial numbers of the 2 XBox 360’s so that the banned one matches the serial number on the box and sometimes on the receipt as well.

Like I said above, I do not encourage this method, I do not endorse this method, I have never used this method but know that it works. Do this at your own risk, I will not be held responsible in case something bad happens to you for doing anything mentioned above.

Hopefully this post has been educational and I wish you all the best of luck with not getting banned from Xbox Live. Have a good weekend everyone.