moshjahan

10/GUI

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:33:00 GMT

Never beem impressed with display mounted touch surfaces, always seemed unnatural to me, but this could be the way forward:

Sold on the multitouch, we're on a path to that anyway. They should also have highlighted the fact that separating the touch surface from the display keeps the display free of smudges :)

I'm not so sold on the horizontal stacking of application workspaces. I quite like the way in Windows 7 where you can Alt-Tab and then simply click on the thumbnail. I'd prefer a multitouch implementation of that.

Would be even better if they could combine this with eye tracking, i.e. if your eye is looking at the app's menu icon and you then tap the surface the app open's the menu - one less touch gesture that way.

PS3 Firmware 3.0 F**ks Up XMB

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:43:00 GMT

Sony, what the hell?!

THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH THE XMB!

What's with the super large font and icons now? Judging by the number of similar comments on vairous forums, I'm not alone in being aggravated by this change. The XMB now looks like it's running at 480p resolution on my 1080p display. It looks ugly. Sony, focus your efforts on more worthwhile enhancements, like adding support for Matroska audio/video containers - y'know, things that people have been crying out for. I don't recall ever seeing a request on a forum, blog or web site asking for extra large icons and fonts.

Fix it (please)!

SlingPlayer 2.0 Tips

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 20:19:00 GMT

The irritating "upgrade available" reminder in SlingPlayer 1.5 eventually led me to download version 2.0. Now, I had already tried 2.0 beta and wasn't impressed. I'm still not impressed; version 2.0 is a huge step backwards if you ask me. However, SlingPlayer 2.0 does have one feature I'd like to use, instant rewind, a feature common on hardware PVRs. I don't need instant rewind all the time, just now and then.

So, I plan to carry on using SlingPlayer 1.5 because it's so much better, but I'd also like to use SlingPlayer 2.0 for those times when I know instant rewind will be useful. Here's how to use SlingPlayer 2.0 from a USB drive:

Install SlingPlayer 2.0 onto a virtual machine or other spare computer
(Makes no difference whether you upgrade firmware or not, will not affect 1.5)
Make a copy of the SlingPlayer 2.0 folder onto a USB drive
Copy the SBProfile.xml file from SlingPlayer 1.5 folder to the SlingPlayer 2.0 folder on your USB drive

Now it should be possible to run the SlingPlayer.exe from the USB drive on any computer. By copying the SBProfile.xml file it will not be necessary to have a Sling online account either.

In addition to being able to run SlingPlayer 2.0 from a USB drive, this method also means an extra Windows service (Sling Agent) is not consuming memory. Sling are proving to be as bad as Apple at quietly installing resource hogging services that do not need to be running all the time.

Opt out of 118 800

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:47:00 GMT

I didn't ask to be opted into a mobile phone directory but with all the information sharing that goes on between websites and social networks, chances are I was opted in without being aware of it.

To opt out of the UK's first mobile directory service (that is become ex-directoy) go here 118 800 Ex-directory.

Facebook Application Privacy

Mon, 18 May 2009 12:12:00 GMT

I'm guessing a lot of people are not aware of this URL. It doesn't help that Facebook does not make it very obvious to everyone how to get to it. (Call me paranoid, but I've long suspected Facebook's real business is profiling and personal data!)

To control which elements of your Facebook profile can be accessed by Facebook applications used by your Facebook friends, use this URL:

http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=platform#/privacy/?view=platform&tab=other

The settings on this page control what profile data can be seen by applications that your friends use, not you. By default if your friends add an application to their Facebook profile, that application can see your profile data without your consent.

More about Facebook malware threats, Sohpos.

Google Safe Browsing Diagnostic

Sat, 16 May 2009 18:45:00 GMT

Google hosts this handy, although far from thorough, utility for checking a website's safety record. Change the site= parameter in the query string to the URL of the site to check:

http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=thepiratebay.org

Google Webmaster Tools

Facebook for Windows Mobile

Sat, 09 May 2009 12:00:00 GMT

Better late than never. I’m one of those people that checks in on my Facebook account haphazardly. I’m also a devout Windows Mobile user (nine years!) so this application is a welcome addition. Finally I might just be able to keep up with my friends and associates. Seriously! How do you all find the time to keep Facebook updated???

Microsoft has clearly given some thought to mobile display ergonomics. The 480×640 pixel real estate of my Acer DX900 is compact and yet the application works to good effect. I also like that they have not tried to directly mimic the Facebook web layout, that would have failed big time. The Windows Mobile layout neatly brings together all the essential updates with easy to use navigation between profiles, messages and photos. Right click actions are also logically associated with the information being displayed. As you would expect from Microsoft, photos and videos can be uploaded directly from the phone's local storage or captured directly using the phone's camera.

Must have for all Facebookaholics using Windows Mobiles.

Download Facebook for Windows Mobile

Windows Virtual PC Beta

Fri, 01 May 2009 11:57:00 GMT

Installed Windows Virtual PC Beta for Windows 7 but wasn't very impressed with it. It appears to be optimized for Windows XP SP3 and Vista SP1 or better. The performance of my Windows XP SP2 virtual machine was very poor as was a virtual machine with Windows Server 2003 R2 SP1. It allowed me to install the new Virtual PC Integration Components for the Windows Server 2003 virtual machine but, if aything, it made performance even worse!

Fortunately Windows Virtual PC Beta can be uninstalled and Virtual PC 2007 SP1 re-installed with no fuss. (Both cannot be installed together.)

However, after re-installing Virtual PC 2007 my virtual machines kept causing Virtual PC 2007 to crash! Soon worked out that this was because the virtual machines still had the new integration components installed. To remove them you have to start Virtual PC 2007 in compatibility mode so that it stays stable long enough to uninstall the new integration components from the virtual machines and re-install the original Virtual PC 2007 Virtual Machine Additions.

Hopefully the final product will have better support for older versions of Windows XP and Windows Server.

<sigh>

Windows 7 Release Candidate

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:11:00 GMT

I installed the 32bit Ultimate Edition on my main everyday computer, a Dell XPS M1330 laptop with 4Gb RAM. Install went flawlessly and took about 45 minutes (I did a fresh install and blew away my Vista install). All hardware correctly identified and configured. Only the nVidia display driver was not installed, but not for long as the initial Windows Update downloaded the new nVidia drivers for Windows 7.

Likes:

The new smoother and faster desktop manager
Faster startup and shutdown times
New Windows Media Player user interface & configuration
New Windows Media Center (iTunes never again!)
New taskbar and taskbar previews
Full screen preview from taskbar
Desktop wallpaper slideshow
All the many new keyboard shortcuts
Power management features like display dimming
Cleaner system tray
Aero transparancy effect retained for maximized windows
Wordpad now reading and writing OOXML format
Ribbons for Wordpad and Paint
Show desktop strip in task bar
Native support for XviD, DivX and x264 in Media Player
Dolby Digital Plus support in Media Player
Windows Explorer Libraries
Windows Explorer now remembers which navigation categories were expanded or collapsed, so now Network will be expanded if it was left expanded previously
Removal of optical drives from the Windwos Explorer navigation tree, which makes sense, why have infrequently used items there
Faster network discovery
UPnP device discovery at network level
Home groups and automatic printer selection based on network
Fewer processes in memory atfer initial logon than Vista or XP
Memory utilization lower after initial logon than Vista or XP

Of course there are all the performance improvements under the skin as well that aren't seen but can be felt in everyday use. In general, everything appears to be now better organized around user workflow rather than product features for the sake of features. I guess twenty plus years of user feedback is starting to really affect user experience design. It's clear a lot of thought has gone into user experience, more so than ever before I'd say. It's the little touches that make the difference; like how the consolidated taskbar icon for Internet Explorer 8 shows download progress:

Most of my applications are portable versions so I didn't have to do much in the way of re-installing applications, just re-pinned their shortcuts to the Start menu. I had no problems re-installing Virtual PC 2007 which I use to virtualize Microsoft Office and other environments. The virtual machines worked just as before.

Didn't like so much:

Not being able to tile Control Panel icons as before
Losing the little globe on the network icon to indicate internet connectiviy (you can still hover over it and get a tooltip)
x264 transcoding* in Media Player not quite as good as PS3MS
Having to download Windows Live Essentials, should be included by default!
Windows 7 Virtual PC (application virtualization is welcome but prefer the OS support of standalone Virtual PC 2007)

Initial impression? Best version of Windows yet. The Linux hippies can shout "free" all they want and Apple can add as much gloss to MaxOS as it wants, I'm a PC.

*I was able to stream a x264 video in a Matroska container simply by installing the Haalia Matroska Splitter and a registry tweak to enable Media Player to recognize and add MKV files to the media library.

Useful tweaking tools, such as fixing TCP half open limits and removing watermark, found here deepxw.

PS3 Media Server

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:27:00 GMT

How I missed this for so long is beyond me, though I'll put it down to not being very active recently on this topic. PS3 Media Server is a god send to us Playstation 3 owners. It's a killer app as far as media servers go for the simple reason that it will stream just about any audio or video file format.

Until now the only way for me to watch videos in Matroska (MKV) containers was to connect a laptop directly to the home theater system. No need for that now! PS3 Media Server will transcode MKV files in real-time. It'll even transcode DTS to Dolby Digital (AC3).

Anyway, I could go on praising its abilities but it does lack a few features for those of us that are never content with using what's given to us. These aren't a big deal and it's understandable why such things are not priority.

First, the default icon sent to the PS3 when then media server registers is a simple "green arrow". Would be nice to be able to choose a custom icon. Second, the default caption for the media server as it appears on the XMB cannot be changed either. However, here's a workaround for both of these; made possible because PS3 Media Server is written in Java (well, the UI and controller rather; the underlying engines are binaries native to which ever operating system is in use).

To change the caption:

First make a backup of pms.jar
Rename original pms.jar to pms.zip
Explore the zip file and navigate to the resouces folder
Extract the file PMS.xml
Edit PMS.xml using Notepad
You should easily spot the text that is displayed in the XMB
Change the text
Save the file
Copy the PMS.xml back into the zip archive
Rename pms.zip back to pms.jar and relaunch the application

To change the icon (or any other graphic elements):

First make a backup of pms.jar
Rename original pms.jar to pms.zip
Explore the zip file and navigate to the resouces/images folder
Extract the image you want to customize or create your own from scratch first
Make sure that the image is saved in PNG format with 24 bit color depth and is also the same dimensions as the original
Place your modified image back into the zip archive
Rename pms.zip back to pms.jar and relaunch the application

One other thing worth mentioning since it's not stated anywhere is that PS3 Media Server can trick the PS3 into playing H.264 movies encoded at profiles higher than 4.1; saving yet another demuxing/remuxing task :)