Nonsense In Basic

Objective C - NSUserDefaults - add in support for default values

2011-06-06T23:38:00.003+01:00

There may be times when coding in Objective C, for iOS, that you wish to retrieve user settings values, but also specify a default value to return if the setting is not found.

This approach is particularly useful when a user may have upgraded your app, so settings that were previously undefined are now attempted to be retrieved.

A few carefully written methods should get you on track. The fiddly bit is the lack of support for a [[NSUserDefault standardUserDefaults] keyExistsWithName:...] function, but this can be worked around using the objectForKey method, which returns nil if a key is not found:

// Default handling

- (BOOL) boolOrDefaultForKey:(NSString *)keyName withDefault:(BOOL)defaultValue

{

if ([self keyExists:keyName])

return [[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] boolForKey:keyName];

else

return defaultValue;

}

- (BOOL) integerOrDefaultForKey:(NSString *)keyName withDefault:(BOOL)defaultValue

{

if ([self keyExists:keyName])

return [[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] integerForKey:keyName];

else

return defaultValue;

}

- (BOOL) keyExists:(NSString *) keyName

{

return ([[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] objectForKey:keyName] != nil);

}

More tips on using a MediaStreamSource with H264 video

2011-06-04T16:54:00.002+01:00

I've recently blogged a little about parsing H264/AAC video and audio streams and passsing the individual samples to Silverlight's native decoder. (using MediaStreamSource class)

Here are some more observations:

Silverlight expects frames in Dts (decoding) order, not presentation order.
If using HE-AAC audio, you must set the number of channels to 1. Two or more channels are not suported; thanks to anonymous commenter for this information.
Access unit delimiters seem to be optional; they are stripped out by the decoder. I send them anyway, but it doesn't seem to make a difference.
Your stream will probably contain 'Emulation prevention three byte' codes. I don't think you need to strip these out; it seems to make no difference if you pass them to the Silverlight decoder; my guess is that it searches for, and strips out the codes.

You can see the parsing working successfully in SilverLive, my HTTP Live Streaming client for Silverlight.

How to obtain timestamp information from your H264 stream (inside an Mpeg1 transport stream)

2011-06-04T16:43:00.006+01:00

Some more information on parsing an H264 video stream to pass the individual NAL units to Silverlight's in-built decoder:

In my last blog post, I suggested incrementing the timestamp for each NAL picture frame. However, this technique isn't reliable since it relies on knowing the frame rate in advance and this isn't always available within an H264 stream. (H264 has no knowledge of frame rate as standard, although this info can be optionally included in Sequence Parameter Set units)

Therefore, I would suggest a better technique for obtaining timestamp information when decoding H264 video frames: Simply get your timestamps from the PES headers of the transport stream itself.

Apple's documentation relating to HTTP Live Streaming suggests that NAL picture frames (i.e. NAL units types 1-5) should be in 'unique PES packets'. This makes a lot of sense, since it means that the Transport Stream can then be used as a single reliable source of timestamps.

Use a decoding loop as follows when parsing an H264 byte stream: (assuming you already have code in place to demux the transport stream container)

PES header encountered.
Store the PTS/DTS from the PES header.
Parse the PES stream for NAL units.
Generate a MediaStreamSample correponding to each NAL unit encountered within the stream, timestamping it with the stored Dts (if available, or use Pts) values.
If you encounter more than one NAL picture frame within the PES, it is an invalid stream. (you could try to guess the timestamp)
PES header encountered; update your stored timestamp.
Continue in this fashion until you reach the end of the stream

The curious case of the P8P67 Pro and resuming from sleep

2011-05-30T15:33:00.002+01:00

I recently upgraded my development PC to an i7-2600k based setup, based on an Asus P8P67 Pro motherboard. Throw in a new OCZ Vertex 3 SSD, overclock to 4.3GHz and it's blazingly fast.

However, whenever the system awoke from sleep, there would be no video output - frustrating to say the least. The only way to resume was a hard reset of the entire system.

I eventually tracked this problem down to an obscure setting in the BIOS related to the overclocking - 'Internal PLL Overvoltage'. Not exactly something you would imagine would be related to ACPI or sleep settings.

Disabled this setting fixed the problem for me - thanks to the overclockers forum for the tip-off.

Silverlight's MediaStreamSource - Some Initial Thoughts

2011-05-01T13:20:00.005+01:00

I've recently had cause to begin working with the MediaStreamSource element in Silverlight, in order to create an HTTP Live Streaming client.

Unfortunately, while there is some documentation on the matter, the actual quirks and details of the implementation are very poorly documented, leaving many developers resorting to trial and error to get things working.

My main goal was to demux MPEG-2 transport streams into H264/MP3 A/V streams, and then feed the frames/samples from these back to a MediaElement.

It's been frustrating to say the least, but I'm 90% of the way there now. If I get some more time, I'd really love to blog about the experience to help other developers. Some very initial observations:

When you send H264 video from a MediaStreamSource, you should send one NAL unit back to the MediaElement for each GetSampleAsync() request.
This includes non-picture NAL units, e.g. SPS / PPS units.
When you send your NAL units, ensure there are 3-byte start codes (0x00 0x00 0x01) at the beginning of each one. (This is similar to 'Annex B' format, but not quite the same thing)
In ReportOpenMediaCompleted(), when setting up your video stream description, you can ignore the CodecPrivateData attribute string, despite what the documentation says. It's not required. (assuming your stream of NAL units includes SPS and PPS units)
In ReportGetSampleCompleted(), set the value of 'Offset' equal to the beginning of the NAL start code, not the actual data. (in most cases this will be zero, assuming you use a fresh stream per NAL unit)
Remember to increase the time stamp when sending each NAL unit that represents a frame.

That's all I have time for right now - one final caveat; if you're feeding audio data back too, I had problems using a 48kbps sample rate; the MediaElement asked for one audio sample, then never asked for any more! I eventually found that using a 44.1khz rate produced better results.

Carlos

Why I Will Never Need Amazon Cloud Player

2011-04-01T11:53:00.002+01:00

Amazon launched its Cloud Player music service this week, to much fanfare.

But it's not something that I need, nor will I ever need a cloud-based music player. I already have a music library sitting on the Internet, accessible from every computer in the World - it's called my home PC. Not only can I get to my music, I can play my songs, stream my videos and pictures to any browser and any mobile phone, completely free-of-charge.

You can do exactly the same too - I've even written the software and iOS app to get you started; it's called Remote Potato; follow the link for more info.

We all have a piece of the Internet that we already own. Why pay twice?

GMail - Rich Text Signatures for different accounts

2011-02-06T16:31:00.001Z

How did I miss this?!

Around 8 months ago, it seems that GMail finally added the ability to set up multiple signatures for all your various email addresses, within one GMail account.

To get started, just visit 'Settings' -> Signatures and take it from there.

Time to finally ditch all those various Browser Extensions...

C

Finally - a Freeview HD (DVB-T2) card for Media Center

2010-12-03T13:12:00.002Z

Christmas has come early for Media Center users in the UK who, until now, have been stranded when it comes to a neat, non-USB solution for watching and recording Freeview HD.

BlackGold have now announced the release of the BGT3620 - an internal (PCI-e) card with two tuners that both support DVB-T2. In other words, if you're a Windows Media Center user, you can now record up to two Freeview HD channels simultaneously.

Really great news, it retails at £89 + VAT, although with delivery on top you're looking at nearly £115 to get your hands on one.

I've ordered mine so I will post a view. There's an early review of the card here, and the link to read more and buy one (on pre-order) is here: BGT3620 - BlackGold

Cross-compiling ffmpeg for windows

2010-11-05T20:05:00.002Z

I recently had to cross-compile ffmpeg for windows, which is a fairly length process, detailed at this site.

However, upon trying to download the key from the keyserver, it seems that keyserver.net is down. A check of the forum showed that others were having the same problem:

gpg --keyserver www.keyserver.net --recv-key 0x25E635F9

gpg: cannot connect to keyserver

To make matters worse, a bug in Ubuntu means that apt cannot be told to allow unauthenticated connections, so you're stuffed.

If you're coming across this issue, the author has now uploaded the key to a few other servers, so you can get the key with this command:

gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-key 0x25E635F9

Weird Spam-with-no-links clogging my GMail

2010-09-23T14:41:00.006+01:00

This week, I seem to have fallen victim to the most bizarre kind of spam.. ..spam that isn't. In other words, nonsensical emails that don't actually contain any attachments or links to websites.

Examples:

I'm getting dozens of these every day; the sender and body seem to be chosen at random from an English dictionary each time. The worst thing about them is that they pass right through GMail's spam filters without being stopped. Presumably because the email doesn't contain any links or attachments - so it's technically not spam.

I'm at a loss to explain what's caused this; perhaps a rogue spambot somewhere that's forgotten to actually include the crucial link or attachment? Or some sort of guerilla spamming exercise?

Frustratingly, there is no easy way to filter them out.

Twitter Error Fail

2010-09-15T18:38:00.001+01:00

This is what Twitter for iPhone says if there's no net connection available.

Come on people, fire the QA team!

AVRCP finally comes to iPhone with iOS 4.1 - FFW/REW Music over Bluetooth

2010-09-09T21:15:00.004+01:00

iPhone with Bluetooth stereo headphones finally get one of their most-requested features today, namely AVRCP. In other words, with the advent of iOS 4.1 you can finally skip forward and back through your now playing songs.

"But hasn't this been possible with other mobile devices since the dark ages?" you ask. Yes, it has. Heck, I could even skip tracks on my old WinMobile 6 device long before the very first iPhone came into the world. But curiously it was something Apple iOS chose to leave out; in fact, only with iOS 3 did we get stereo over Bluetooth in the first place! Apple's reasons for not including this functionality in that OS or later revisions are unclear, and something I've blogged about before.

But, the issue of its tardiness aside, this is a fantastic addition that will save me fumbling in my pocket on the train to get my phone out when I need to skip a track I don't like.

I shall be running off excitedly to test it with my Sennheiser MM450 headphones.

Freeview HD comes to your PC (but not Windows Media Center yet)

2010-09-08T13:26:00.002+01:00

Ah, after much waiting (and a HD-less world cup) there's finally some movement in the arena of DVB-T2 cards (Freeview HD to the average Joe)

Due for release "in October", Hauppauge has announced the Nanostick T2 (see link below). It's USB-only (no PCI-based cards available yet) and only a single tuner..:

IFA 2010: PCTV nanoStick T2 290e Freeview HD Tuner - Full Specs and Data Sheet | We Got Served

Sadly, looking at the data-sheet, the device does not support HD within Windows Media Center:

Other features include extra-fast Teletext and support for Windows Media Center (DVB-T only).

This is a real disappointment as I suspect many buyers in the current market will be hoping for a device that they can use with their existing Media Center setup, myself included. Heaven knows why it's incompatible, given that almost all of Hauppauge's existing product line works with Media Center.

Also, it only decodes at 720p rather than full 1080p HD - I assume that most of the decoding is done in software rather than hardware, hence this limitation which avoids the need for a high-spec machine.

Hopefully, we should start seeing more PCI-based cards soon with hardware decoding and multiple tuners. I'll let you know when I hear anything!

Watch YouTube videos within Safari on your iPad (HTML5)

2010-05-29T13:54:00.002+01:00

So, I queued up and got an iPad. (as regular readers of this blog will be delighted to hear)

Of course, Safari on the iPad doesn't support Flash as just a small number of people have recently noted. For this reason, there's a separate YouTube application which deals with viewing YouTube video content.

But, in fact, you don't have to use this. YouTube are now re-encoding their videos to HTML5, which mobile Safari does support. So, by signing up for YouTube's HTML5 beta programme (a simple matter of clicking a link for existing users) you can then view YouTube videos within web pages themselves.

I've found it to be fairly stable, with the occasional crash - but a far more immersive experience than having to switch out of your browser to a separate app each time.

Carlos

Get yourself a free iPad - go work for Parcelforce

2010-05-27T14:09:00.010+01:00

As a rampant gadget-o-phile, I've been like Pavlov's dog in a bell tower this week, eagerly awaiting the arrival of my new iPad. (a friend in the US kindly bought it and mailed it over)

So imagine my reaction when, on arriving at the Parcelforce depot this morning, I found that the box had been ripped open and my iPad had been stolen. Before I'd even laid eyes on it.

For two weeks I've been tracking my 'magical revolutionary' booty; it's travelled through China, Hong Kong, Alaska, Philadelphia and New York, fully intact, diligently passed from person to person. Then it arrives in England and within a day somebody thinks they can help themselves to it. How depressing.

I'd like to put in a word for Parcelforce about how well they handled the situation. Unfortunately I can't because they were nothing short of a disgrace. No apology, a shambolic tracking process, a manager who acted as though I was an inconvenience and actually went as far as to point out that "technically it wasn't mine" yet because I hadn't signed for it! For his encore, I believe he sets fire to the remains of the parcel while a grotesque chorus of laughing baggage handlers dance around the flames.

What's particularly galling is that they won't give me any further details on the 'internal investigation' they've launched. So I'll never know whether the thief was caught or whether somebody else will go through all this ball-ache. As the manager happily pointed out, it's the sender who has to claim for the 'lost' parcel. (I implored him to stop referring to it as lost - we could perhaps hazard an educated guess at 'stolen'.) As the sender lives in America, I doubt he's going to be able to do much in terms of leaning on Parcelforce to account for themselves.

So, as for getting my hands on an iPad, it looks like I'm back to queuing up with all the other punters at the Apple store in the morning. Or I could always apply for a job as a parcel handler.

Goodbye webhost4life - I deserved better

2010-05-23T18:47:00.005+01:00

I'm pleased to report that my recent troubles with host webhost4life (see previous blog post) are now resolved. By which I mean I have migrated all my sites across to use a new host (GoDaddy) and am happy to see the back of that awful company.

Webhost4life, it would seem, were bought by a new company, whose treatment of the existing customers was (and is) absolutely shocking: they basically moved everyone over to new servers, without properly testing, and broke people's websites. It's worth bearing in mind that for many people these issues aren't just minor inconveniences too; in some cases, if your site breaks, it can mean a loss of income until it's back up again.

In my case, the main issues were:

.NET site navigation wasn't working (so my sites looked dreadful and half the links didn't work)
Sporadic 403 - Forbidden errors were being sent to clients.
Automated (computerised) response to support request, promising assistance in 24-48 hours that never arrived.
I was billed more than 150 dollars for a 'migration' that I never asked for!

On this third point, I still can't believe I have received a bill from webhost4life for migrating my data over to new servers when (1) I didn't ask them to do this, and (2) the very fact they did this actually broke my sites.

I look forward to now letting them know that (1) I shall not be paying their ridiculous invoice and (2) I have left them for pastures new... Interesting to see that there's enough people as annoyed as me to be considering a class action lawsuit against them.

Oh, and check out GoDaddy if you get a chance - I've been mightily impressed... New website running about 5 times faster than before!

Webhost4Life - serious issues

2010-05-18T17:32:00.004+01:00

For several years (yes, years) I have been using a host called webhost4life.

I chose them after some disastrous trials with other hosts - they were good value, fast, and had excellent tech support. I happily recommended them to anyone.

That was then.

Now, in the last 7 days, something dreadful has happened. They have migrated my site onto a new platform, and broken huge chunks of it in the process. Without telling me. I host around ten sites, and most are now broken, damaged, or limited in some way. Forums fall over, scripts don't work, links seem to have been automatically changed by a script to point to (incorrect) pages!

This is my data. These are my live sites that they have taken it upon themselves to alter and break without notifying me.

I'll post again soon when I am confident of doing so without saying too many rude things. Angry? Don't even start...

Initial research shows that I'm not alone. This is huge:

Fishwise site broken by webhost4life
Webhost 4 life - down the pan
Goodbye webhost4life

I shall be moving as fast as I can to a new host. Suggestions?

Eek! Remember the Milk (RTM) and Appigo ToDo Fall Out

2010-05-18T10:29:00.002+01:00

For a couple of years now, I've been a paid-up user of Remember The Milk (Pro), which I've used to manage my 'to do' list and share with colleagues, via the web, via GMail plugins and all sorts of handy interfaces.

I've also been using, on my iPhone, Appigo's excellent ToDo software, which syncs with Remember The Milk, meaning I have seamless access to my task list wherever I go.

Until now.

Unfortunately, the two companies have now parted ways in a rather bitter dispute. The end result is that ToDo no longer syncs with RTM, and has no plans to ever do so again.

My choices are to use the (less good) RTM iPhone app, or take advantage of Appigo's offer to move to a 6 month free trial of ToodleDo. I suspect I'll do the latter as it is cheaper, but it would be much easier for everyone if this could have been resolved by the companies without the losers in all this being the end users.

The whole thing is summarised in this excellent blog post by Rob Warner.

iPhone OS 4.0 supports note syncing over IMAP

2010-04-10T00:45:00.005+01:00

I've been playing with the beta of iPhone OS 4.0 and can confirm that it supports note syncing over IMAP. Just add a normal IMAP account, such as GMail, and you'll get the option (within settings => Mail => Account) to sync notes. Once this is set up, an extra folder is created within your IMAP folders called notes, which is kept in sync with your iPhone.

Within the Notes app, A new root-level screen is added to the Notes application to allow you to view either your sync'd notes, your local iPhone notes, or both combined:

Unfortunately, note syncing over an Exchange account isn't yet supported, so if you have a GMail account and want to sync:

- Mail
- Calendar
- Contacts and
- Notes

....you'll need to add two Google accounts; an exchange one as described here for your calendar, contacts and mail, and then an IMAP one just for your note sync. The settings screen will look a little like this when correctly configured:

Hope this helps

Carlos

iPhone 4.0 - Wifi Connection Fix

2010-04-10T00:25:00.002+01:00

I've been testing out a build of iPhone OS 4.0 Beta in preparation for some future development work, and it seems there's an error connecting to some mixed Wifi networks.

While my iPhone used to connect with no problems running OS 3.1, once updated it refused to connect to my router, which was running in mixed 802.11 b / g / n mode.

If you're experiencing this problem, the current workaround (that did the trick for me) is to revert your router to mixed 802.11g / b mode.

C

Silverlight 3 Scrollviewer Mouse Wheel - Gotcha

2010-03-27T13:55:00.007Z

While coding Remote Potato I recently had cause to add Mouse Wheel support for the ScrollViewer control; something users had been asking for.

In Silverlight 3, this is made fairly easy by the Extension Methods that come with the Silverlight Toolkit dll. You just have to add (in code behind):

svMyScrollViewer.SetIsMouseWheelScrollingEnabled(true);

However, one gotcha I found is that, if your scrollviewer has no background, the MouseWheel event will not be fired when the mouse is hovered over the transparent parts of the scrollviewer.

To fix this, just insert a 'fake' background that's virtually invisible, i.e. has an opacity of 1%. You would use code such as this:

<ScrollViewer x:Name="svMyScrollViewer" >

<ScrollViewer.Background>
<SolidColorBrush Color="#000000" Opacity="0.01"></SolidColorBrush>
</ScrollViewer.Background>
...

This fixes the issue and the ScrollViewer now works as expected with MouseWheel events.

Schedule Recordings over the Internet for Windows 7 Media Center

2010-01-06T23:33:00.001Z

A remote record facility for Windows 7 Media Center is something that, until now, has been sadly lacking.

I've written a small app that runs on your home PC and acts as a small webserver, allowing you to connect via the Internet and schedule recordings to be made within Windows 7 Media Center.

It's available for download here:
www.fatattitude.com/software

Hope this helps some people!

Google Nexus One - surely tomorrow heralds a bigger surprise?

2010-01-04T19:55:00.004Z

And so the world speculates, possibly a little over-fervently, on what Google are to unveil in tomorrow's uber press conference. We're told that organisations are only allowed to send one representative each, we're told that a 'significant' announcement will be made.. ..and yet, everyone seems to have already pre-empted what that announcement will be, namely that Google will announce they're selling the Nexus One phone. Heck, there are even online reviews of the phone up by now, including shots of the packaging, inserts, etc, etc.

I'm beginning to wonder if there might, perhaps be slightly more to all this. If tomorrow's announcement really were merely "hey look at our new phone", surely Google might have toned down their hype, given that this is practically old news by now.

So I'd like to predict there'll be a little something extra bolted on, something that has a real 'wow' factor to it. Anyone's guess what this is, but my best guess would be free VOIP calls to other Nexus One phones for life... ...this would be a real killer, in the same way that Skype still hooks users in by offering free Skype-to-Skype calls.

If not this, then something else to make people go 'goodness me!'.. ..failure to deliver on this could lead to the whole conference suffering from a distinct whiff of anti-climax after so much hype these last few months.

Squarepeg, the hit puzzle game, now live on the App Store!

2009-12-07T23:19:00.000Z

Hey all

So, 24 hours later and... it's alive! My puzzle game, Squarepeg, hit the App Store at midnight on 7th December, and has been gradually coming online in App Stores around the world ever since.

It's been an utterly mad day, to be honest. While all this was going on, I also had a piece about the App published in the Media Guardian - a fairly promiment technology newspaper supplement here in the UK. The piece essentially detailed the struggles of marketing the App, some of which are outlined in a post below.

The response has been crazy. Website hits went through the roof, I've had lots of supportive emails - and the App seems to be going down very well.

I'll post more thoughts and reflections when it all calms down.

Carl

Squarepeg is to go live in a few hours...

2009-12-06T19:19:00.002Z

Just a few notes to say that Squarepeg, my puzzle game for the iPhone and Browsers, will be live in the App Store over the next few hours.

For those interested, you can play it online, or download it for free from the App Store.

There's a press release with more information here.

It feels like the end of a long journey! ...until the first update, of course...

Silverlight Streaming : Important News for Users of the Microsoft� Silverlight(TM) Streaming by Windows Live(TM) Beta October 2009

2009-12-03T23:58:00.000Z

Oh dear. For the past year, I've been using Microsoft's Silverlight Streaming hosting to keep my (rather large) XAP files on, to avoid unnecessary strain on my usual hosting provider.

Unfortunately, it seems the service is soon to close:

Silverlight Streaming : Important News for Users of the Microsoft� Silverlight(TM) Streaming by Windows Live(TM) Beta October 2009

Hmm, I think perhaps I've been spoiled, you do tend to get used to being given things for free. The problem is, these files are so large, I'd rather not put them on my Google App Engine account as they could easily max out the bandwidth. And I'm not convinced that my (cheap) shared hosting provider's site is reliable enough! Hmmm.

Squarepeg got Approved!

2009-12-02T20:50:00.003Z

Following on from my previous post about submitting my puzzle game to the App Store, just a quick follow up to say that it has been approved!

And, hats off to Apple in this case, they may be genuinely listening to some of their developers' grievances, as the process really was quick and painless. 7 days 'Waiting for Review', then just 2 days in review before being accepted.

I do know, however that others have not been so lucky, and continue to experience terrible delays with little feedback as to the reasons. When you've sweated blood for something, this can be soul-destroying so my heart does go out to those who weren't so lucky - I hope you get it sorted out. Next time that could be me.

And, from Monday 7th December, you'll be able to download Squarepeg - for free - from the App Store!

I sincerely hope you do.

Squarepeg is submitted to the App Store

2009-11-29T16:59:00.003Z

So I finally got there this week and have submitted my puzzle game, Squarepeg, to the App Store.

It's been a long time coming - I spent about 2 months learning Objective C, then 4 months on the actual game. Not to mention the 12 months before that designing the game, coding it in Silverlight, building the online level designer and so on.

Unfortunately, this may all be too late. I now sit back, wondering if, in all likelihood, it will sink without trace.

The first hurdle will be getting onto the App Store itself - Apple's review process is notoriously difficult to navigate. There are indeed many guidelines to follow and several published lists of things you're supposed to avoid. I've done my very best to try and make sure the App doesn't fall foul of any of these, but some say the App Store is now fundamentally broken. I'm not sure about that, but there are certainly some horror stories of apps going into 'infinite review' for many months.

If I do manage to get the App approved this side of the 3rd millenium, then there's the fact that the store itself is now saturated. When I began the project, in July 2008, there were a little over 500 applications in the store. This month, there are more than 100,000.

Anyhow, I've done what I can - there are certainly some great marketing guides out there that I have tried to follow. I've set up my company twitter account (do please follow if you'd like to help out!) and submitted as many 'preview request' emails to various review sites as my poor little fingers will allow.

All I can do now is wait... I'll keep you posted.

Live Mesh - a tale of unresolved conflicts

2009-11-01T21:03:00.004Z

Gah. It's happened again.

My workmate and I run a small writing business and we use Live Mesh to sync all our company documents, scripts that we write, and so on.

Normally it works excellently, but every now and then it seems to get confused... ...badly. For some reason, it decides that there conflicting versions of files which must be manually resolved, when in fact the files are identical. Unfortunately, it normally does this, in batches of 50, with all 4000 of our files. It takes approximately 5 seconds to resolve each conflict, and I don't have a spare 20,000 seconds right now to sit clicking the left mouse button so it looks like we're going to manually re-sync all our folders from scratch. Again.

Here is the dialog that appears when I get a file conflict. Remember, this appears for every single conflicting file, folks:

Now forgive the bitter tone, but is it really necessary to insist on user input to resolve the conflict above? Both files have the same name, both files are the same size, and both files were modified on exactly the same date at exactly the same time, to the nearest second. I wouldn't mind betting, Watson, that we're dealing with the same file here?

It's a real shame that this happens, as Mesh has been around in one form or another for more than a year now and the problem of multiple conflicts is well-documented. As a temporary workaround, perhaps the Mesh team ought to consider a feature whereby users can 'batch resolve' conflicts. Or, even better, automatic conflict resolution in the situation above where the file sizes and modification dates match exactly. For safety, the program could quarantine the alternate versions, alert me and then I could click one button to delete them en-masse. Anything would be better than clicking that 'Keep Item' button 4000 times!

So why has this feature not been implemented? Perhaps the team feels that it smacks of defeatism in terms of not addressing why so many files are being incorrectly conflicted in the first place? In other words, it would be a feature to fix a bug. But, let's be honest, it would take a few hours to add the feature. It may take several weeks more to nail down the actual bug.

Until that time, I'm surprised this glaring usability issue with Live Mesh remains.......... unresolved.

Windows 7 is coming.. ..just not via the Microsoft site!

2009-10-21T22:03:00.004+01:00

I'm quite excited, perhaps more than a grown man ought to be about a piece of software, really.

You see, Windows 7 comes out in a couple of hours - and it's the first MS operating system that I've not felt the need to fling through a patio door every few hours. To the point where I'm going to buy three, legitimate copies of it - one for each PC in my house. And will do so happily.

Unfortunately, just hours before release, the Microsoft UK site doesn't quite seem as aware of how important this launch is as I am...

Clicking the required link...

...leads to this (in IE and Firefox, and probably all other browsers too):

Teething problems, I'm sure - they're probably just readying for launch. In spite of this, were it me in charge on such an important day, I think I would be fairly likely to fire someone...

EDIT: A few hours later, I try again and - huzzah, it now works!

Goodbye Internet TV Beta 2... ...for now

2009-10-18T18:11:00.004+01:00

A week ago, I blogged about the sudden, unexpected appearance of 'Internet TV Beta 2' on my Windows 7 Media Center (7MC) system here in the UK. The unpublicised update, downloaded automatically by the system allowed me to view top-quality streaming Internet content from providers such as the BBC.

Briefly.

First, it seemed to have been remotely disabled, crashing out with an 'Application Error'.

Now, it seems that as silently as it arrived, it has departed. The icon has now disappeared from 7MC altogether, presumably instigated by a recent, overnight Automatic Update. (I have them set to install automatically)

I'll be interested to see if this appears again on, or shortly after, the official release of Windows 7, backed up presumably by a much larger publicity fanfare. For the short time that it worked, it was actually pretty good.

Google Docs - Folder Sharing Now Added

2009-10-14T23:46:00.002+01:00

Huzzah

An oft-requested feature of Google Docs has now been added, namely the ability to share entire folders of documents with others. It had been bugging me for a while that I had to manually share each document, so this is a great step up.

Word 2007 - Changing the Default Line Spacing

2009-10-11T14:52:00.006+01:00

As an early adopter of Office 2007, I frequently encounter friends and family getting flustered by one of the more obvious changes from its predecessor - namely the default line spacing between paragraphs.

"It's spaced it all out weirdly - how do I get it to go back to single line spacing?" "It's done that line spacing thing AGAIN!" (credit to girlfriend and work colleague)

I quite like this feature of Word 2007; in fact, it draws attention to the elephant that's been in the room for years: the difference in paragraph breaks and line breaks. This, and the correct use of styles is something poorly understood by many casual users of Office . I think that's a shame as if they're used correctly, styles can be extremely powerful.

However, it can be frustrating to have to remember to hold down SHIFT while pressing RETURN each time (to do a manual, i.e. single line break) if you're just trying to knock up a quick shopping list or note to self.

So, if you'd like to change the default paragraph spacing back to the more familiar single line spacing, here's how:

Open a new document.
Type some text, right click and choose 'Paragraph...'
In the 'Spacing' section, change 'After:' to 0pt.
In the 'Line Spacing' section, change it to 'Single'.
Click 'Default...' at the bottom, and answer 'Yes' at the prompt.

Done. From now, all new documents will have single line spacing and no white space between paragraphs as the default.

But, if you're not already familiar with the use of styles, do consider reading up, as they can make life much easier when used correctly.

Internet TV Workaround

2009-10-09T09:54:00.002+01:00

Following on from my post about the 'Internet TV Beta 2' appearing on Windows 7 Media Center, a guy on 'The Green Button' forums got it to work by pressing OK on his remote control really quickly just before the application error. I haven't tried this yet, but he says the streaming is still down in spite of this ('codec error') so it's fairly pointless.

I'm now wondering if the sudden appearance of this excellent feature was an unintentional leak by Microsoft that's been hastily plugged!

If so, look out for an official announcement when it's properly launched, perhaps to co-incide with the official launch of Windows 7...

Media Center Internet TV comes to UK.. ..sort of

2009-10-08T18:19:00.004+01:00

Exciting moment this week when a new icon randomly appeared on my Media Center PC, which we use in the lounge for all our Live TV / DVR stuff / etc, so it gets a good workout most nights of the week.
Selecting it took me to a screen with a wide selection of shows, categorised under genres such as Comedy, Drama, Documentary, etc... Rather than the expected lame selection of music vids, promotional kak and so on, there were actually some really good programs! Big Train, Peep Show and so on - all decent UK comedy shows that I would certainly watch.

I tried one out - quick to start streaming, and the quality of the video was acceptable, even on my 32" LCD telly, this is definitely a good service, a real step in the right direction for Microsoft!

EDIT: Unfortunately after just a couple of days, it now crashes out with an 'application error' when I try to run it. As usual, this was perfectly timed for when I came to demonstrate it to my girlfriend for the first time. Also, the icon doesn't appear on my Extender either, which is a let-down. It seems that I'm not the only one with this problem - looks like it's down for everybody. Will post back when it's working...

A2DP in iPhone OS 3.0

2009-06-16T22:34:00.007+01:00

I finally got a chance to try out A2DP (Stereo Bluetooth) on my iPhone 3G today with the arrival of the new OS 3.0, and I have to say I'm really impressed with the implementation.

No complicated pairing codes were required; to set it up, I just put my headset (a motorola HT820S) into discovery mode, then went to Settings -> General -> to activate Bluetooth. Upon doing this, the headset appeared. Upon clicking, the iPhone then automatically paired the two together and no further action was required.

The start / stop button on the headset seems to play / pause the music okay; and a new strip appear within iPod, at the bottom of the screen, clicking on which brings up a selection box that allows you to route the audio either to your bluetooth headphones or to the speaker:

The in-call headset features of the Motorola were also automatically activated; when making a call, the 'Speaker' toggle is now replaced with a new 'Audio Sources' selection box that includes all three sources where you might want to listen to the call:

There's no support for AVRCP yet (FFW/REW) but hopefully this should arrive in a future update; no actual citation for this claim but it would seem to make sense.

Using cross-domain resources in Silverlight

2009-06-03T19:43:00.006+01:00

I've been using the excellent Microsoft Azure Tech Preview to host the site for the forthcoming Squarepeg game, written in Silverlight.

One of my only beefs with the system is that re-publishing your site, even if its only to correct a typo in one webpage, can take upwards of ten minutes. Your site has to be re-packaged and uploaded to the staging server, the existing site swapped out, and so on. To be honest, the lesson here is to thoroughly test and check your site before uploading, so it's not a showstopper, but time-consuming nevertheless.

The upshot of all this has been that I moved the actual Silverlight .XAP files, for ease of updating, to Azure's Blob Storage service. Thus, the code to link to them begins something like:

<div id="silverlightControlHost">
<object data="data:application/x-silverlight-2," type="application/x-silverlight-2" width="100%" height="100%">
<param name="source" value="http://yourdomain.blob.core.windows.net/TheGame.xap">
...

However, I ran into a cross-domain issue; the loaded Silverlight application was unable to access resources stored on the webserver and vice versa. The solution was twofold; firstly, to change the calling page to add the final line shown below:

<param name="enableHtmlAccess" value="true">

Secondly, and more importantly, within the actual Silverlight application, a modification was required to the application manifest AppManifest.xml. The attribute ExternalCallersFromCrossDomain needed to be added, meaning that the entire file now reads as follows:

<Deployment xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007/deployment"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" ExternalCallersFromCrossDomain="ScriptableOnly"
>
<Deployment.Parts>
</Deployment.Parts>
</Deployment>

(the official documentation on this parameter can be found here.)

The combined result of these changes is that my XAP file from windows.net now happily talks to the webpage from cloudapp.net. Huzzah. Simple changes but was a hard one to track down.

Incidentally, there's no need to unpack your XAP file and change AppManifest.xml manually each time, simply alter it within Visual Studio 2008 and the changes will be templated out into your manifest each time you rebuild.

Many thanks to Yi-Lun Luo MSFT for solving this one for me over in the Silverlight forums.

Integrating GMail with Windows Explorer to email files with one click

2009-05-28T17:20:00.000+01:00

I used to use Outlook a lot, these days it's almost entirely GMail. I've been looking for a way to integrate GMail with my Windows Explorer in the same way that Outlook used to be fully integrated.

Today I found that, for free, in the form of Affixa.

When I want to email a file to somebody, I no longer have to open a new email within GMail, I can just right click on the file and choose 'Send To -> Mail Recipient'. Affixa opens up, creates a new draft GMail message, attaches the file and then all I have to do is edit the message body and send it!

Bloomin' marvelous.

Using Windows 7 with Multiple Monitors

2009-05-28T00:32:00.002+01:00

I've been frustrated with some of the implementation of multiple monitors on Windows 7. On XP and Vista, I had been spoiled by a great program called Ultramon which dealt effortlessly with all the multi-monitor needs I could ever dream up (and more besides) It doesn't currently work on Win7 and I feel lost without it. Here's why:

Launching programs from additional monitors
A common task for me is that I may wish to launch a program with one mouse click from my additional monitor. Unfortunately the Windows 7 taskbar / launcher doesn't span monitors, so you're stuck with it solely on your primary display. This wasn't a problem in earlier versions of windows, if you wanted to launch programs from extra desktops (without having to minimise all your open windows to see the shortcuts on the desktop itself) there were a number of options. Ultramon, as mentioned above, allows additional taskbars and launchers. Or, if you didn't want to buy 3rd party software, you could create a Toolbar, undock it from the main taskbar and then position it wherever you wanted, even docked at the side of your additional desktop. For reasons I can't fathom, this functionality has now been removed from Windows 7; toolbars cannot be undocked from the taskbar.

My first thought was that maybe I could use the Vista-style Sidebar and then put some sort of 'launcher' gadget in it? Nope, no sidebar with Win7 either; gadgets reside on the desktop.

Eventually I solved this one using an excellent free piece of software called Rocketdock that I've been using for years. I tentatively installed it, assuming the worst but - whaddayouknow it works effortlessly on Windows 7! Rocketdock simulates an OSX-style launcher at the bottom of your screen; it's skinnable, customisable, fast and low on system resources. I can't recommend it enough - and it's free! I set mine to autohide so now, whenever I want to launch one of my less frequently-used programs (ie the ones that aren't on the windows 7 taskbar) I just move the mouse over to the bottom of my secondary monitor, the dock pops up and it's just a click away*.

Setting a Default Monitor for an application
Ultramon made this so simple - it would remember on which monitor you liked a program, then ensure it launched on this monitor every time. However many times I would move Firefox onto my secondary monitor, Windows 7 seemed to keep forgetting this and would launch it back on the primary monitor again next time.

I finally figured out that the following steps would get Windows to remember my default choice of monitor:

Launch the application, ensuring it's not maximised.
Manually drag it to the monitor I want it on.
Close the application by clicking the X in the top-right of the window, but hold down SHIFT while doing this.

And - lo and behold - the next time I launched my app, it was now on the preferred monitor by default. Cracking stuff!

Shortcut keys to move windows between monitors
On this, I commend Microsoft who've introduced a whole raft of useful shortcut keys to move windows between monitors, the most useful of which is Windows + Shift + Arrow Left / Right, to move a window to the display on the left or right of where it currently sits. Other great new shortcut keys are listed here.

I hope these tips are useful - happy multi monitoring!

* - Note that by default, in Rocketdock if you auto-hide the dock, it won't popup when a window is maximised on your display. To enable this functionality, you'll need to tick an option marked 'Popup on mouseover' in the Rocketdock settings.

Windows 7 - Span a wallpaper across multiple monitors

2009-05-27T00:27:00.004+01:00

I've been testing Windows 7 RC1 this week and I'm very impressed so far.

One bugbear; I have a dual monitor display and it bugs me that there's no easy way to span a wallpaper across both monitors. It can be very boring having the same wallpaper duplicated and in fact is counter-intuitive at times; two identical images can feel a mirrored desktop rather than one integrated space.

Turns out there IS an easy, undocumented way to get your wallpaper to span across both monitors; you simply have to select 'Tile' mode for your desktop wallpaper. In steps:

You'll need a suitably large picture; in my case I resized one of the included JPGs to 2048x800, which is the dimensions of my two monitors combined.
From the control panel, select 'Change Desktop Background', and locate your new wallpaper using the Browse button.
Finally, under 'Picture Position' in the bottom left of the window, choose 'Tile'. You shoudl see your new wallaper, stretched across both monitors!

Now if only I could get Windows 7 to remember which monitor an App should open on by default...

eFrame 1000 and Picasaweb - Now Working

2009-04-08T15:29:00.004+01:00

After some more investigation I now have my eFrame 1000 streaming pictures from my Picasaweb account.

As previously blogged, the eFrame can be made to accept non-Flickr RSS feeds with a little tinkering. However, it doesn't seem to like the Picasaweb RSS feed, I'm still not sure exactly why - possibly some custom xml attributes within the feed.

The solution is to stream the pictures via Framechannel. Framechannel allows you to link to your Picasaweb account, so once you've got that set up, you simply point the eFrame to your framechannel RSS feed and all works well.

Here are the exact steps needed to get it up and working:

Set yourself up an account at Framechannel.com and follow the site instructions to link your Framechannel to your Picasaweb account. Within the 'My Account' page (hidden away near the top right) you'll see an RSS icon and, to the right of it, the URL of your RSS feed.
Copy and paste this URL into your browser address bar and load the feed.
Open the PC software for the eFrame, and navigate to the page to set up your RSS feeds. Drag the URL from the browser's address bar into the space as indicated within the software. After a moment the new entry should appear in the software.
Click 'Update' which will send the RSS file to your eFrame. You shoud now be able to view your pictures on the eFrame by going to Photos -> Flickr TM ...

Tom D'Roza has documented this in even more detail on his blog, go there if you're having problems - he also explains how to extend this approach to stream weather, news updates, etc from Framechannel and other websites.

I hope this works for you - happy viewing! Here are some more interesting links for the eFrame 1000:

eFrame disassembled; a bored geek takes his eFrame apart.
eFrame protocols: the attempt to reverse engineer the eFrame software begins.

iPhone Push Sync Calendar/Contacts without MobileMe

2009-04-07T10:50:00.005+01:00

If you haven't got free over-the-air push sync on your iPhone yet, just a heads-up on Google's new mobile sync; essentially a licensing of the Exchange Activesync protocols.

It takes a couple of minutes to set up, then you're up and running with 2-way sync of contacts (including pictures) and calendar items. You can even sync (up to 5) multiple calendars.

I've had complete success with this solution; it seems to be both speedy and stable. The colour of the calendars can be a little confusing; I suspect this will be ironed out with iPhone 3.0 and until then there are some good workarounds. If your iPhone is jailbroken you can manually edit /var/mobile/Library/Calendar/Calendar.sqlitedb to get whatever colours you want.

Note the current limitations which include:

Attendee Status for Calendar Events
Modified Instances of Recurring Events Not Always Deleted
Limited Contact Information

Until this was released, I was using Nuevasync, another free service with excellent support. As loath as I was to leave, it just makes more sense from a stability point of view to eliminate a3rd party from the sync solution. But a big mention to the friendly tech team; they say it was never their intention to depend solely on iphone/google sync, so I hope that they can change their business model accordingly.

eFrame 1000 - some thoughts and early hacking

2009-04-06T12:42:00.007+01:00

Thanks to a tip off from a friend, I just took delivery (in a ridiculous oversize box) of a shiny new wireless photo frame; branded here in the UK by BT as an 'eFrame 1000'.

An 8 inch wireless photo frame for £39 is incredible value by anyone's standards, and said friend has posted an excellent review of it here - I suggest you grab one while they're still available!

My main goal is to get it streaming pictures directly off the web. It supports Flickr out-of-the-box, but I have recently moved to Picasaweb (despite my reservations about Google taking over the entire world) and it looks like it might take a little more work to achieve.

Tom D'Roza has reported success in getting the frame to work with RSS feeds from other services and will soon be posting more info. It seems that the RSS feeds are located in a file named PF110.RSS. (found in the 'database' subfolder of wherever you installed the bundled software). Opening this in a hex editor shows it to be a fairly simple affair, with the RSS URLs stored in plain text at set positions within the file, along with a description field and the original web URL.

However, changing the URL from a Flickr RSS feed to a Picasaweb RSS feed didn't work for me. The new data file was successfully recognised by the software, but upon transferring it to the eFrame, then browsing to it, I get the error dialog 'No files detected on media'. I suspect that differences in the format of the RSS feed are to blame, but this will need more investigation. Do shout if you have any success! In theory one could always write a web script to translate the feed format, but hopefully I've just missed something simpler here.

There are plenty of opportunities for anyone inclined to dig further into hacking this device. For example, coding up an app to do a better job of photo sharing and managing the device; the protocols are being documented here. In theory it would even be possible to write an app to automatically monitor and share folders, etc.

Will post more when I can.

Final Note
I could give up and simply stream the photos over my own intranet. It's true that I have a mediacentre PC running 24/7, so this would be a good option. However I don't like the idea of yet more 3rd party apps running in the background on it, and involving a 2nd machine seems contrary to the point of an Internet-connected photo frame!

Google Earth Installation - Error 0x80040905

2009-04-06T10:19:00.003+01:00

I recently tried to install Google Earth on my Vista X64 setup, so I could play with Geotagging photos - unfortunately Google Updater kept failing the installation. On an attempt to manually install, the installer bombed out with the mysterious error 0x80040905. Helpful stuff.

On my machine the problem was to do with mapped network drives.

First I checked this webpage for advice - it might help some of you, but it wasn't relevant to my problem as I don't have any existing versions of Google Earth installed. Then I remember an issue with some Adobe installations which had given me a weird 'Invalid Drive' error in the past.

The solution proved to be the same one:

Run CMD as Administrator. (type CMD into the start menu, then right click on the CMD icon in the start menu and choose 'Run as Administrator')
Type NET USE - you should see a list of any mapped network drives, but they will probably be listed as Unavailable.
For each network drive, type the command NET USE M: \\SERVER\SHARE replacing the server and share as appropriate.
Just for kicks, type NET USE again to check that your network shares are now up and running.
Don't close the command prompt just yet, install Google Earth and everything should go OK.

The reason for this is that in Vista network shares are set up on a per user basis, and the installer is running as Administrator. For more info do some sort of google search like this one.

If you use mapped network drives and are getting the same error message, it might be worth trying this solution.

Hope this helps,

Carlos

Resources in Silverlight

2009-04-03T19:00:00.000+01:00

It can be slightly tricky keeping track of where your resources are coming from in a Silverlight app and how to access each one, whether it be stored within the XAP itself, on the server of the hosted webpage or elsewhere, perhaps even at a cross-domain Uri. Here's a quick guide to how to load resources in each of those scenarios:

To access a file stored inside the XAP itself

StreamResourceInfo sr = Application.GetResourceStream(new Uri("AppName;component/Sounds/file.mp3", UriKind.Relative));
meMusic.SetSource(sr.Stream);

To access a file from within the XAP, then if not found look within the same domain that the XAP came from. (e.g. an Azure Blob Storage location)

meMusic.Source = new Uri("Sounds/file.mp3", UriKind.Relative);

To access a file from the domain of the hosting page (requires cross-domain permission)

newMediaElement.Source = new Uri(System.Windows.Browser.HtmlPage.Document.DocumentUri, FN);