MCML Snippits : Vista MC Style Pivot Items/Buttons

 

 

<SNIP>

 

Unfortunately this post has been removed due to substantial and blatant abuses of copyright by other members of the community – and a complete unwillingness of those people to ‘pay it forward’. (including but not limited to ‘claiming of ownership/copyright by other prominent members of the community’).

 

As per before – the code/sample previously found in this blog post / development article is (C)mobilewares.net and is strictly not to be directly used/stolen by other 3rd parties (commercial or not) – and was only ever made available for the purpose of teaching other developers how to better use/develop the platform. (and if you still have access to this code – this copyright is still in full force).

 

Note that freeware/shareware/donationware/prototypes and other distribution models (or ‘usages’) are not exempt from this copyright either (IP theft still equals IP theft – regardless of the ‘price tag’ attatched or ‘availability’).

 

If you have misused this original blog post/materials contained within – and are unsure how to rectify this situation – please contact me to discuss via the messaging system provided by this blog. (ie. honesty is the best policy – and I’m not planning to throw the book at someone who is reaching out and trying to do the right thing.)

 

New Vista Media Center HTML Addins/SDK from mcesoft

 

Danee de Kruyff at mcesoft has updated some of his MCE2005 Addins for Vista Media Center. Some of these have been out for a few weeks – but thought it was worth a mention here since Vista is landing shortly.

 

The products are as follows :

 

• System Monitor for Vista MediaCenter: This HTML Addin collects and displays data from SpeedFan (including System/CPU Temperature info) and displays it in TV + Remote friendly format.
• RocketBoom for Vista MediaCenter : This HTML Addin displays the latest list of VideoBlogs from Rocketboom and allows you to stream them to Vista Media Center.
• WebMedia for Vista MediaCenter : This HTML Addin allows you browse and watch/listen to your favorite Internet based Radio Stations and TV stations.

Danee has also just released the Vista HTML SDK for developers wishing to make HTML addins for Vista (or upgrade their existing MCE2005 HTML addins) - which retains the visual look of the new Vista UI. This SDK goes well beyond the HTML Templates offered by the MCE SDK – and saves you the effort of re-inventing the wheel for HTML Addins (a common complaint from developers).  Great work Danee!.

Please visit the mcesoft website to download these free addins.

Hopefully Danee will also look at using MCPL or WPF for his future addins. (and if his SDK was upgraded for MCML – this would also be welcomed by many developers too)..

 

Updated: Big Screen Contacts v0.9.1

 

An updated version of Big Screen Contacts (for Vista Media Center) has just been made available.  v0.9.1.7 (Previous version was v0.9.0.6 – released on Nov 30 last year).  If you are currently using Big Screen Contacts – your existing version is due to expire sometime in the next 24-48 hours (depending on what time zone you are located in).

For those who haven’t tried this application before - Big Screen Contacts allows you to browse, view and search your Contacts via your TV (via 10′ MediaCenter interface) – and integrates with Windows Contacts provided by Windows Vista. Via Windows Contacts - you can also import contacts from Microsoft Office 2003/2007, Windows Mail and other supported programs.  Please visit the mobilewares Big Screen Contacts website for more info/screenshots. Here’s a couple of screenshots below (taken from the earlier release) -

 

    
   

Enhancements/Changes for v0.9.1.7

 

As with my Big Screen Headlines update earlier this month – this is a minor update - and released mainly to allow beta users to keep using this product after tonight. A more significant update is planned for the next release (ie. Including Edit/Create/Delete functionality for contacts – rather than ‘Read Only’ access as per current version).

Changes are as follows :

- Extended Trial Period : The new trial expiry date has been set to 15-March-2007. (Extended from Jan 30 in previous beta)

- Embedded Photos Support : This version now supports/extracts photo thumbnails which have been embedded into the Contact Card (.contact file) – as opposed to the thumbnail being linked to (via file path). Previously only linked photo’s were supported.

- Added Online Version Check Function :  As per other Big Screen Products – this release now has a "Version Checker" to allow you to check for new updates (from mobilewares site) – from within the Media Center UI. This new function is located in the ‘About’ screen.

- Added Online Showcase Link :  Also as per other recent Big Screen Products – a link is now provided to the Mobilewares Online Showcase (an ‘Online’ MCPL Web Application which allows you to view information about other mobilewares products).

 

- Minor Layout Enhancements :  Some small (subtle) layout issues were fixed in the Main Menu.

There was also a few other small changes/fixes with parsing of Contacts – but not worth the mention here.

 

Download + Update Notes

 

To download this release – please visit the Big Screen Contacts Website for the new installer. 

 

Note that if you have a previous version – please uninstall it first - and then install this new update. As Contact data is accessed from the common Windows Contacts store (and not part of this application) – you will not lose any data inbetween versions.

Enjoy!

 

 

iJustRegurgitateAppleHype at Fairfax Digital..

 

FairFax Digital (ie. The Age and Sydney Morning Herald websites) has run a story this morning in the technology section "LG’s iPhone look-alike" - which was initially first published a couple of hours earlier with the title "LG’s iPhone Copycat" (well something like this – the word ‘copycat’ was definitely used – and I suspect they may have gotten a very nasty call from LG marketing department this morning).

 

From viewing this article – unsuspecting readers would be led to believe that Apple was the first company to introduce :

 

- a device that is Black.

- a device that is Slimline.

- a device that has a Touchscreen.

- a device that can play music/video and surf the net.

- a device that is an ‘innovation that is due to shake up the industry’..

- the device ‘only’ costs US$599.

 

Hmm… and of course the general gist of their article is LG copied them.

 

Luckily for this ‘journalist’ – they remain anonymous (and the source AP is credited).

 

Obviously this journalist missed the whole ‘pda’ thing, never used XDA’s (and other Windows Mobile Devices), Palm Pilots, Symbian devices or any of the other plethora of devices available for some time that offer superior features (and oh not to mention most early PDA’s were black and slimline). This journalist probably also believes the mobile phones advertised as **$0 are actually free. (if you dig a little deeper you’ll find that the US$599 price is conditional on you signing up for a 12-24 month US$100/month plan) – and that Apple invented Portable Music Players, MP3′s and Podcasts.

 

It’s one thing for Apple to generate Hype and get mainstream products out to the general public with clever advertising (full points to them for this if they can pull it off – which they do) – but when IT journalists fall hook line and sinker for this crap - you start to wonder about the credability of the publication and everything else they publish.

 

I begin to wonder if there’s any actual journalism going on in the other sections at Fairfax – ie are all their news stories just regurgitated press releases from the Australian and US governments? Is the majority of content there purely produced to gratify existing and potential advertisers?

 

I used to honestly believe in their ‘The Age‘ newspaper – and once believed it to be a good/valid source of news – but poor journalism and obvious product placement like this – puts it right in the class of the TV tabloids like ‘A Current Affair’ and ‘Today Tonight’.

 

The only small glimmer of hope for Fairfax Digital is that the ‘Mash-Up’ section has good blog post debunking some of the iPhone Hype/Myths – Bursting the iPhone hype bubble (published about 1 week ago on Jan 10).

 

 

 

New Online Spotlight for Vista Media Center

 

A number of Media Center users have reported over the past few days that the new Online Spotlight menu items are now appearing in their Start Menu – and these options finally appeared for me sometime last night. (I now get an ‘Explore’ icon under Online Media strip – and the other strips  such as TV+Movies now have ‘More..’ items appearing).

 

When I click on one of these items – the ’Explore’ section is displayed – which is very similar in look/feel to the Program Library section (except that the icons are a much larger size) - and is written with MCPL (so it feels like the rest of the Media Center UX instead of being a clunky HTML experience).

 

Unfortunately the actual content in here is quite disappointing at the moment. I’m pretty sure (well hopeful at least) – that these will replaced with proper MCML + WPF based addins by the time the Consumer Launch at the end of this month. Currently only 3 unique addins appear in here for me - NPR (News/Radio etc), MSN TV (VOD News etc) and TVTonic (appears to provide links to install the MCE2005 version – even though Vista version was announced at CES).  All of these current offerings a HTML based – so a pretty nasty ‘legacy’ experience is provided – and you lose the slick look/feel that Media Center offers.

 

I really hope that for Consumer Launch – all the HTML (and Flash) based addins are permanently ditched/banned in favour of ones using the new Vista MC technologies (and that these current offerings are just ‘placeholders’ for the new addins). Currently though – these addins really degrade the overall Vista Experience.

 

I won’t bother to post any screenshots (nothing to see here folks!). However – please go check out some of the CES coverage for some of the new ‘good’ stuff coming for Vista’s Online Spotlight.

 

 

 

 

Vista MC Hardware Compatibility at Media Center Show Forums

 

Ian Dixon has just set up a new discussion forum (at the Media Center Show Forums) – which invites users to share experiences of what hardware works and doesn’t work with Vista MediaCenter.

 

If you are currently making the migration from MCE2005 to Vista Media Center (or planning to in the future) – it’s important to know what hardware is ‘cactus’ - as unfortunately many vendors are still selling products/peripherals which will NEVER be supported properly under Vista. (and completely concealing this fact from buyers). 

 

One the of the worst ‘offenders’ seems to be Creative Labs – who have pretty much dumped support for Vista on a whole stack of their popular products. For the ones they do support – they only seem to have flakey beta drivers (and most either don’t support 64bit or have issues with anything thats not basic audio out – ie no sp-dif) – and they keep missing their intended ’release’ dates for drivers (ie quite a few drivers that were supposed to be out in mid December never appeared and now have been slated for ‘end of January’).

 

Although I realize these topics/issues are discussed in great length on some of the other Media Center + Vista forums around the world – it’s great to have all this in one spot – and the posting format that is starting to take shape (where a thread is opened for each device) – is a quick way to find out what you need to know. Also – there’s generally a few specific features users need for MediaCenter (which may not be an issue to general Vista users) – such as having sp-dif audio passthrough for DVD’s/HDTV.

 

So if you head on over to these new forums – there’s a TV Tuners subforum (mainly aimed at DVB-T compatibility) – and just added is a Soundcard/Audio forum (where hopefully people can share their SP-DIF experiences)..

 

Anyhow – if you have some hardware compatibility advice to share – please head on over to this forum and post your experience – and you might just save yourself /or/ someone else a whole ton of grief and wasted expense.

 

 

Off-Topic: ‘Common Sense’ Outage at Energy Australia

 

Today we had a statewide power outage (accross Victoria/Australia – the state that Melbourne is located in) – that started at about 3:45pm for me. It wasn’t nearly anything as bad as what the guys in US have experienced (and in fact only ended up lasting 3 hours wheras up to 15 hours was predicted by my power company) – but the opposite extremes of temperature we are getting over here made it a little more challenging.

Its summer in Australia – and we have had quite a few pretty hot days – today being 40 degrees Celcius (104 Fahrenheit) – and some really intense bushfires has made life hell for a lot of people (well over 1 million hectares of land has been destroyed in Victoria alone over the past couple of weeks). Sadly – many of those directly being effected by the bushfires are farmers – and have also been enduring a crippling drought over the past few years (with a few extreme weather events destroying what crops they have grown).

So anyhow the reason for writing this post (other then to talk about the weather) – was to have a bit of a whinge about my electricity company (Energy Australia) and their (lack therof) common sense in dealing with the power outage.

Here goes….

When the power went out – first thing I did was check the fusebox outside – all good. Being unsure if it was an isolated problem (that needed to be reported) – or something affecting everyone  - I decided to give them a call. I was unable to get through on my mobile (possibly due to power outage?) – and managed to dig up an old ‘powerless’ phone from the garage so I could use the land line.

When the phone is answered (busy on first 4 attempts) – I get the usual automated system – ‘please enter the dept you want to speak to etc etc’ – and it also gets me to type in a number to indicate where I am located. I’m put on hold I get a couple of messages telling me that the ‘next available operator will be with me’ – and weirdly, apart from that there is dead silence on the line (no hold music or advertisements about their business).

While I’m waiting – there’s no message/announcement whatsoever indicating any power outage is occuring - so I am beginning to think its just my local area.

 

25 minutes later I am finally put through. I should mention that I’m also in the front room of the house (sort of like a sunroom) as I need power to use a phone anywhere else – and the temperature inside has climbed well into the mid 30′s – with no ventilation. So this environment isn’t helping my mood.

Operator answers – and makes me go the full 9 yards on verification (asks for my life history – dob, address,account etc etc)..

Me :  (Frustrated – its now 30 minutes into the call). Hi - There’s a power outage at this location. Is there any known issues in my area. (she has my full address by now)..

Operator : Oh… are you in Melbourne… Yes there’s a statewide outage - I can see it on my screen.. The power will be out at least until 9pm (5 hours away) – although probably won’t be back on until tomorrow morning.

Me: (dawns on me that I’ve been on the phone for no reason). Oh – is there some reason why Energy Australia couldn’t just have put a general recorded announcement rather then me having to wait 30 minutes to find this out? And why did you have to go through the entire verification when you knew I was in Melbourne already (I entered this at the start of the call)– wasn’t it obvious what I was calling about?

Operator : (Puzzled as to why I would even say this) Umm No…. There’s no recorded announcement..

Me: So this outage is effecting everyone in Victoria?

Operator : Yes..

Me: Ok – so you have 2 million operators standing by to take each call individually and explain to everyone what is going on?

(I should note that this figure is probably an exaggeration – but they are one of the main power providers – and there’s I think 4-5 million people living in Victoria)

Operator : err. No… (still doesn’t get it)..

Me : Don’t you think it would make sense to have an announcement.. You think you are busy now – wait until everyone gets home from work and wants to cook dinner – your systems will be completely overloaded. Do you think you guys might save everyone a lot of pain and just put an announcement on there so they don’t have to wait on hold?

Operator : Err.. Yes that’s a good idea…

Me : So you are going to make this happen..

Operator : (Non committal / vague response) – Umm I’ll put in a request..

(I realize at this point that nothings going to happen and quickly finish the call)

And just to point out too – this operator is Australian (not located in India – which may have been an acceptable excuse).

So anyhow - I simply can’t understand why a company like that doesn’t realize the win-win situation all around is to just put a recorded announcement indicating there’s a mass outage. That way everyone can find out what they need to know quickly (and make appropriate plans) – and operators can be left alone to deal with more serious/urgent issues. However – with no recorded announcement – each and every customer has to wait on hold for ages (and the phones probably would have got jammed as people started to arrive home from work or cook dinner) – all so the operator could repeatedly tell customers the same thing. 

At least they could have some override in the Operators autocue/script (for these situations) – so they don’t waste your time with a full verification check just to see whats going on. They are after all a power company – and outages are not some totally ‘rare’ event – so you would think they had better measures/processes in place to deal with it.

Its just plain dumb. And totally frustrating for the consumer (and a waste of time when the issue at hand is already causing headaches).

Interestingly enough – I’ve experienced this exact same issue with both my ISP and my Webhost/Email provider. That is, they refuse to post any information on their ‘status’ pages of mass outages - and force you to wait ages to speak/chat with a live operator just so you can find out the same problem is being experienced by everyone.

I’ve pulled each of them up on it quite a few times and they simply won’t change their ways, nor offer any explanation why it hasn’t been done. Both these companies have status reporting online (both of which are also generally unaffected by outages) – so it’s not like they need to do some additional coding/deployment before it can be seen. The systems are in there and working – they just need to use them…

<phew> ok – got that out of my system…. now it’s back to enjoying air conditioning, electricity and all the wonders of the modern world. (how on earth did they manage hundreds of years ago!)..
 

 

Updated: Big Screen Headlines v0.8.4

 

I’ve just posted an update to Big Screen Headlines (for Vista Media Center)  on the mobilewares site – v0.8.4 (Previous version was v0.8.3 – released on Nov 30 last year). 

If you are currently using Big Screen Headlines – your existing version is due to expire sometime in the next 24-48 hours (depending on what time zone you are located in).

If you haven’t seen Big Screen Headlines before or don’t know what it is – in brief – this product allows you to browse, view and read RSS based feeds via your TV (via 10′ MediaCenter interface) – and integrates with the Subscribed Feed system provided by Vista/IE7. Please visit the mobilewares Big Screen Headlines website for more info/screenshots. Here’s a couple of screenshots below (taken from the earlier release) -

 

    
  
       

 

Whats New/Changed in v0.8.4

 

This is a minor update – not too much changed, and mainly to allow beta users to keep using this product after tonight.

Here’s a quick summary of what was changed :

- Extended Trial Period : The new trial expiry date has been set to 1-March-2007 - which will give me a chance to make any changes required for compatibility with the upcoming Consumer release of Vista (January 30). Additionally – there was some more significant architectural changes I wanted to make to this product (to fully enable all Subscribed Feed functionality on Xbox360′s) – but due to being a little busy with other work of late – I’m yet to do this.

 

- Playback/Status for Auto Downloaded Enclosures  :  With the new version you can now playback auto-downloaded enclosures from your local harddrive (which includes video/audio/images). This was the most frequently requested feature from end users (thanks!) – so I made sure it was included for this release. This functionality is enabled if you configure the feed (in IE7) to ‘auto download attached enclosures’. When viewing the list of articles for a feed which has this option enabled – additional icons are now displayed next to the enclosure icons which indicate the download status (complete/pending/in-progress). If you go to playback an enclosed file – it will first try to play a local version (if it has been completed) – otherwise it will revert back to using the original internet location (and will stream the content if it’s audio/video).

 

- Fixed Image Aspect Ratio Bugs : When viewing enclosed Images in the previous version – the aspect ratio would be screwed in some cases. The new version fixes this problem (thanks to someone on Media Center Sandbox pointing out that the issue didn’t exist inside the ColorFill MCML element – can’t remember who it was sorry).

 

There was also a few other small changes/fixes – but didn’t bother to keep track of these.

 

Anyhow please head over to the Big Screen Headlines website for the new installer. If you are upgrading from a previous version – and want to retain your existing OPML files - please read the enclosed ReadMe.TXT file for more instructions. (nb: your ‘favorites’ are stored in your registry – so these will not be lost during the upgrade). 

 

Enjoy!

 

 

My Outlook 2003 is suffering Digitial Amnesia

 

My Outlook 2003 has been suffering from a severe case of Digitial Amnesia (or is that Digital Dementia) over the past few weeks. (thanks to some alleged ‘enhanced junk mail filters’ delivered over Windows update).

 

For some odd reason – a number of people (that I’ve regularly been in email contact with over past 12 months) have suddenly been classed as ‘junk mail’ senders. (and to alleviate any conspiracy theories – even emails from Microsoft folk like Charlie Owen were classed as junk).. I’ve had to now manually add each person to the ‘safe senders list’.

 

Unfortunately it took me a couple of weeks to realize what was going on – as previously I would just go into my junk email folder – select everything – and hit permenant delete. (and hence I’m positive I’ve deleted a number of real emails from people without knowing about it). I now have to wade through all the Junk mail and try to spot real messages – which totally devalues the usefulness of having junkmail filtering in the first place.

 

I’m hoping this is fixed (or at least not duplicated) in Office 2007 – which I’ve been trying to scrounge up some money to buy (as my current MSDN Pro subscription doesn’t entitle me to get this for free).

 

So if you are running Outlook 2003 – beware of this potential issue if you’ve been getting the latest updates – and check twice before you permenantly delete the contents of your junk mail folder.

 

 

 

60 days of blogging…

 

I’ve just been o/s on business for a couple of days – so I’m now in the process of catching up on the email, blogsphere and news that I’ve missed.

 

One thing I realized this morning - was that I’ve now been blogging for exactly 60 days – and took a little bit of time out to evaluate where I’m at with this – and how the stats are going. Some interesting stats are :-

 

- 38 blog entries have now been posted.

- 52 ‘public’ comments have been made by readers  (I’ve also had maybe 100+ private emails from people who read my blog).

- There was 41152 ‘page views’ recorded on my blog stats (as of a few minutes ago). On this – I’m pretty confused on the reporting available on Live Spaces – and I’m not clear how this works with aggregate views etc – and how # article views are resolved when users goto the home page and get the latest 5 articles coming up.

- My Technorati rating for my blog is 290,098 (24 links from 13 blogs – the links being the way the blog gets rated) – out of a ‘alleged’ 60 million blogs. I imagine this rating will continue to rise – as in the past – most people would link to my website as opposed to my blog. (Technorati says I have 333 blog links going to mobilewares.net for example – so this would have given me a substantially higher rating if I had initially sent people via my blog).

 

As you may have noticed – I’ve had a little less time to blog over the past few weeks (and have been allocating almost 100% of my brain to doing commercial projects) – so this has reduced the stats somewhat (I think I received my first 25-30 thousand views in the first 30 days of blogging). The days when I do post – I noticed around 1000-2500 page views in the 24 hours immediately following – wheras if I don’t put a new entry up – this can drop to 250-500 views per day.

 

I’m really enjoying the social networking aspects of Blogging – such as making a lot of new contacts+friends in the MediaCenter ‘scene’.  (and also a huge win for coming into contact with paying clients – the thing that keeps me afloat).

 

The transparency that also comes about from blogging, has I think helped people understand me (and my company) a lot better – so this is great win too. (for some reason many people thought mobilewares was a large company – a ‘them’ – not a one man show). Also it allows me to better communicate where I am at with the various products I work on – without having to email out announcements – or post everything to forums. The user comments as well are great and helps me better understand what end users want – and what they like/dislike about my products.

 

I know my topics have fluctuated between dev advice, product news, ‘Niall’ news and other things (I’m still not sure which direction I want to be going in there – but I’m feeling more comfortable with the current mix of complementary topics). I still have a million and one things I want to blog about (and providing more developer specific info is a high priority) – but of course just need to find the time to do this.

 

Anyhow – hope you all like what you have experienced so far with my blog – and hope to continue on in much the same direction over the next few months/years.

 

And a big THANKS to all of you out there for taking the time to read my blog and the amazing contribution in return – it’s been an absolute pleasure.. (and not sure why I didn’t start blogging much earlier).