Okay. Good news on the horizon. All videos are collected, a naming scheme is defined and we have sorted out our formats. The encoding machines are ready to run. And will be started any moment.

To give you the chance for some final checking, we have put up some samples for the various formats for you to test. So if you are technically inclined you might want to check them out in terms of quality and compatibility. The sample is always the same two minute clip.

• MPEG-4 H.264 320×240 iPod Video compatible (MPEG-4 H.264 Baseline Profile Video, MPEG-4 AAC Audio, MP4 Container, 0,23 MBit/s)
• MPEG-4 720×576 (MPEG-4 Video, MPEG-4 AAC Audio, MP4 Container, 1.2 MBit/s)
• Windows Media 9 Standard 720×576 (WMV9 Audio/Video, WMV Container, 1.9 MBit/s)
• MPEG-2 720×576 (MPEG-2 Muxed Audio/Video, VOB Container, 6 MBit/s)

Take your pick and feel free to comment here.

“…it’ll probably be only days away.”

More info from the people working on them here.

Dear English-speaking readers of this blog: The remainder of this post is in German. Sorry for that, but the podcast featured is in German as well.

Aus unerfindlichen Gründen haben wir den Podcast Chaosradio Express hier noch nie erwähnt. Vor dem 22c3 gab es einige Sendungen, die sich mit dem Congress und seinen Vorbereitungen beschäftigt haben. Letzte Woche gab es dann den Chaosradio Express 014 (mp3, website), der auf den vergangenen 22. Chaos Communication Congress zurückblickt. Im Gespräch lassen Tim Pritlove und Jens Ohlig ausgewählte Vorträge und Präsentationen des Congress Revue passieren. Im Anschluss werden zahlreiche interessante Konferenzen und Workshop-Treffen im kommenden Jahr vorgestellt. Vergessen wurden im CRE014 leider die Datenspuren im Mai 2006.

CRE014: 22C3 Rückblick, Veranstaltungen in 2006 (mp3)

There has been some confusion regarding the AV recordings and slides of the 22C3 lectures. So let us explain what is coming and that everything will be fine.

The good news is: everything has been recorded! Yes, we have had our accidents but the fallback systems have worked so nothing is lost. As quite a few recordings have to be recovered from tape, the whole process will take a while but we are confident that we can deliver what everybody wants by the end of January.

More confusion has been generated as a couple of recordings have been available in WMV format up front which made many people believe it is our intention to provide everything in WMV only. This is not the case. The truth is that this has been just an additional service that was not related to the main documentation process.

So everything will be cool. Every single lecture will be available in the following video formats:

• MPEG-2 (5 MBit/s)
• MPEG-4 (1.2 MBit/s Simple Profile)
• WMV (250 KBit/s)

In addition, all lectures will come in audio-only versions also in MP3 and OGG format in reasonable bit rates. All video and audio recordings will be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Germany license.

And yes: we’ll make sure the MPEG-4 version will run on the iPod. There might be a iPod-compatible MPEG-4 H.264 768 KBit/s version as well in the near future. We’ll see what we can do.

Another idea is to provide the lectures in original order in a podcast that releases a lecture a day (or so). If you think this is a good idea voice your support by dropping a comment here.

The slides will be available on the event description pages in our Fahrplan as soon as they are available. Most of the stuff is already there and as long as all speakers will send us their slides, we will publish it. If you are a speaker and you haven’t sent us the slides, please do so.

This is going to be the best documented C3 ever. We are very happy about this.

Some people still get it wrong but I’d like to clarify it here one more time: it’s neither the “Chaos Computer Conference” nor the “Chaos Computer Congress”. It’s the “Chaos Communication Congress“. Not that it is too important but in the end we would be happy if you would just get it right ;)

In case you’re still confused, just stick to the “xxC3” moniker we have established in the recent years. It’s our primary choice for tagging as well.

Thanks for listening. This was a recording.

If you have recommendations for the upcoming Congress, drop a note in our wiki.

The BlinkenArea considers positive results of the 22C3, too. Although our ISDN card broke for the 520 pixel projects at the third day, we received 613 calls to play Pong, Tetris, Retris, Snake, XXO, Pacman and Breakout. Some used other functions like displaying the time or sending love letters. 69024 times a movie was shown from our playlists.

bug fixed in Pong and Snake

If a second player calls, the ball will sometimes disappear. This bug in Pong we already fixed before the 22C3. At the congress we had no troubles with that one anymore. Some attentive gamers discovered a new “security hole” in Snake. If someone plays Snake, another person will get into the game by calling again. This person gained access to the snake, too. So you could drive the first player mad by navigating his snake in a different direction. This “feature” was turned off on day two. Thanks for the hint!

BlinkenBluetooth

It worked! As soon as a switched-on bluetooth device was getting close to the BlinkenArea the bluetooth logo and the device name were shown at our projects. 371 different devices were recognized in the BlinkenArea during the congress.

UNICEF donation

As previously announced we donated 100% of the proceeds of selling Troia books and CD’s as well as BlinkenLEDs constructions kits to Unicef. Over all we collected 410 €. That is enough to provide 160 children in trouble areas with school kits or to reach 205 children with emergency vaccination programmes. Many thanks to all, who contributed to this.

BlinkenArea – Unicef donation certificate (pdf – 49kb)

Auch die BlinkenArea kann ein positives Fazit ziehen. Trotz Ausfall unserer ISDN Karte für die 520 Pixel Projekte am Tag 3 hatten wir insgesamt 613 Anrufer die Pong, Tetris, Retris, Snake, XXO, Pacman und Breakout spielten oder andere Funktionen wie z. B. Uhrzeit oder Liebesbriefe in Anspruch nahmen. Aus den Playlisten wurde 69024 mal ein Film abgespielt.

Fehler in Pong und Snake behoben

Schon vor dem 22C3 haben wir in Pong den Fehler beseitigt, dass manchmal der Ball verschwindet wenn ein zweiter Spieler hinzukommt. Auf dem Kongress gab es damit keine Probleme mehr. Aufmerksame Gamer haben aber in Snake eine “Sicherheitslücke” entdeckt. Wenn jemand Snake spielte, konnte sich eine andere Person durch erneutes Anrufen in das Spiel einklinken und hatte ebenfalls Zugriff auf die Schlange. So konnte der Snakespieler leicht an die Grenze der nervlichen Belastbarkeit getrieben werden. Dieses “Feature” wurde am Tag 2 abgeschaltet. Danke für den Hinweis an dieser Stelle.

BlinkenBluetooth

Es hat funktioniert! Sobald ein eingeschaltetes Bluetooth Gerät in die Nähe der BlinkenArea kam, blinkte das Bluetooth-Logo und der Gerätename wurde angezeigt. 371 unterschiedliche Geräte wurden während des Kongresses erkannt.

UNICEF Spende

Wie im Vorfeld angesagt, haben wir den Erlös aus Troia Büchern und CD’s sowie den BlinkenLEDs Bausätzen zu 100% an Unicef gespendet. Es sind 410 € zusammen gekommen. Das reicht z .B., um 160 Kinder in Krisengebieten mit den wichtigsten Schulsachen auszustatten oder um 205 Kinder mit lebensnotwendigen Impfungen zu versorgen. Großen Dank an alle, die sich beteiligt haben.

BlinkenArea – Unicef Spendenurkunde (pdf – 49kb)