Tech, Gaming and Bile!
Archive for December, 2008
iphone app review: iPiMP – updated!
Dec 22nd
At the start of the month I gave a review of the iPiMP app here and came up with 2 things that would not only turn this into a must have bit of software; but strengthen mediaportal’s position as one of the best media centre applications available for windows users as well.
The first was the ability to stream live tv to the iphone – However, a bit more thought into that and I have come to the conclusion that it’s not such a hot feature after all. Too limiting and would depend on some structural changes to the mediaportal software itself.
The second one is the truly killer feature though… Remote control of a client.
Well, it turns out that I didn’t have to wait long at all after a comment popped up from the developer informing me that version 3.0.0 (latest version is now 3.0.1) now includes that very feature!
The installer now comes with a “client plugin” option that is required on every client you wish to remotely control.
Just remember to untick the server and transcoder options, this could be made a little easier for some people by having a menu before the component selections with 3 radio buttons offering “server and client”, “server only” and “client only” options to auto choose these; but then it isn’t really hard to untick the boxes.
Once installed, remember to enable the plugin from within the mediaportal client settings dialogue and add the port it runs on (55667 tcp) to your firewall.
After you have your server running and all your clients set up and enabled it’s time to fire up the iphone.
Oh, small change – the username field is no longer case sensitive so it doesn’t matter anymore about the recent auto caps’ing Apple included in the latest firmware.
And there we have the addition of “Remote control” to the home menu.
Before you can start controlling any of your clients, you’ll need to add them by tapping onto “administration”.
Tap through to the “MediaPortal clients” and you’ll see a very simple add, delete and edit screen. Tapping onto add will give you the following screen.
Here you can give it a friendly name that can be its location in your house, the name of the PC it is running on and the port the service communicates on.
Unless you changed this within the plugin options in the mediaportal config, you can leave the port setting blank and it will use the default setting; which is a nice bit of design by the developer – fewer settings for users to remember and fiddle with usually results fewer things to break. 
Once you have configured your clients and saved the settings tap on the home button and go into the Remote control option.
Select your client and you’ll be greated with a two page interface (transitioned by tapping on the little guy holding a number) that is simple, if busy looking at first.
The little guys on the second page represent the different categories such as music, games, videos, pictures and live tv.
The first page is a simple navigation layout, not a bad first config but one I’m sure will be refined over time as people begin using it – the first suggestion that springs to my mind is having the tv guide button on the same page as the navigation buttons.
It is very intuative when moving around mediaportal with the iphone and this app, I can already see my logitech mx air getting even less use now!
As it is, the only fault I have picked up on so far while testing the remote control isn’t overly the fault of the app, instead it’s more to do with the responsiveness of the touch screen on my iphone – it has never been quick enough to keep up with the speed at which I can attempt to use it, causing many of my taps to not register.
The result, browsing a long list of video files can take a lot longer than a mouse to navigate around leaving you to tap, tap, tap, tap your way around. As I said tho, this is more a failing of the iphone than the app.
I wonder how difficult it would be to implement a slide scroll to it.
Anyway, time to navigate aside, this little applet just joined my list of must have apps where-ever I deploy a copy of mediaportal as it finally begins to make PC based TV’s a real and friendly replacement to a traditional TV and seperates solution without having to own expensive remote controls that are pretty much useless beyond the application they were designed for.
Convergence is always a good thing and if you ever lose this TV remote, you can always just call it and discover where they have been vanishing to all these years!
Verdict: If you’re running mediaportal and own an iphone, this just became a part of your standard install!
How to spot a scam email.
Dec 11th
With the amount of scam emails that pepper our inboxes every so often, you’d have thought most people would be able to identify them. Sadly, they are getting harder to pick out with a casual glance and there are quite a few people – judging by the users I support – that still can’t identify them.
In order to help remedy this, I decided to give a quick dissection of an email I got today.
Exhibit A
At first glance, it might seem legit – it is in the style of some older emails – but a quick look at the first port of call brings up the first doubts. Who is it from?
Would they use an obscure address like that? If an email is coming from a company they’re unlikely to use addresses like "squiffymonkey269" or, in this case "edr_nick". It’s just unprofessional.
*bzzzt* Strike one.
Bad grammar tends to be the hallmark of scam emails, look out for Over Capitalising Words They Want To Emphasise and missed capital letters not to mention sentences that make zero sense! If it reads like a perfect example of Engrish then chances are it’s fake.
If they show a grasp of the English language then read what it is telling you.
Here it’s informing us that they have too many accounts and need to clear them away, but hang on a second the first line states "we’re sending it to everyone" then the end of the sentence claims to be singling out me.. So they’re deleting every account then? Are they trying to drive up Gmail users?
*bzzzzt* Strike two!
And on it continues…
Stunted English and a sudden call for personal details, why not throw in a request for your mothers maiden name (I still can’t believe some web services continue to ask for this!) and your inside leg measurement while you’re at it?!
So you can detect unused accounts? Why the general mailshot then? Also, why isn’t this an automated webpage on the net instead of using an unreliable system like SMTP?
If the scammer is a little smarter than this turd and supplies a web link to enter your details, hover over the link for a few seconds and check out the address it is really sending you to. If it’s an obscure address or ends with an obscure domain tag (.ir instead of .com for example) you can bet it’s either going to be a fake site that will post your details to the scammer or infested with spyware that will attempt to spunk itself all over your system.
Try it out on this example: http://www.hotmail.com/confirm
If it doesn’t provide a little popup telling you the address, check out the bottom of your browser window as it should tell you I’m really sending you to http://all.your.bank.details.are.all.ours .
*bzzzzzzzzzzt* Strike 3, you’re out!
Just remember the following steps:
- Be skeptical of these emails
- Check out who it’s from
- What do they want
- Does any of it makes logical and grammatical sense.
- Keep an eye out for dodgy links
If it smells like BS, it prolly is!
We’re not alone, pt 9
Dec 7th
With squad morale at quite a low following Stuart’s death and visible signs of fatigue setting in, we’re told they’re giving us a couple of weeks off – unless a terror mission turns up – to relax, catch up on sleep and generally take our minds off the battlefield while they leave downed subs and prep the B team.
A few days pass by when tension increases following confirmation of an alien base location and get our own buzzed by quite a large craft. Thankfully it buggers off without attacking, we certainly can’t defend against them right now and we’re not ready for them knowing our location just yet.
About a week and a half into the much needed break it predictably gets cut short by a shipping attack.
No rest for the wicked. It’s only a week and I feel so rusty getting combat ready.
The Triton lands on the ship decking and we send the tank out – this is our first time battling them on a ship.
This is taking ages to track down the enemy, thankfully it’s our old friends the gillmen as I don’t think we could take hunting down lobsters in this tin can, full of twisting corridors and dark corners it’s paranoia inducing – Doesn’t help when one of the guys throws a corpse from an upper floor onto the path of some poor sod below. A few rounds and some choice words quickly follow, the radios crackle with giggles and suggestions of a “fresh pants” request. Cruel bastards at times, I just hope he was in view of some CCTV as that footage would be pure gold.
After snuffing out the last one and securing the top decks I’m told we have to make sure the lower decks are secure too – the guys aren’t pleased.
At least these are somewhat open compared to the maze updeck. One is spotted on a gantry above, it takes a few zinging shots before one lands and drops it.
Doesn’t take much longer for us to discover what seems like a party on the lift, must have been about 5 of them just hanging around talking about Zooblarts latest centre fold or whatever passes for their conversation pieces. Of course we spoil the get together by blasting the shit out of them.
It takes a couple of hours until we track down the final one hiding in a cupboard; I hope we don’t have many more of those missions.
Time to get back to the barn and finish off our break.
Slumping onto my bunk, I crack open the latest news from RnD – the folder is kinda thick this time.
Propulsion news
Interrogation results
Then my jaw hits the floor and a swift streak, stark bollock naked across the base ensues with plenty of whooping and hollering.
Bemused by my response Melanie picks up the papers and lets out a blast of joy too – sadly not followed by joining me in a naturists jaunt around the base.
PHN episode 68 – the one time forgot
Dec 5th
Oops, recorded on Monday and forgotten about until today >.<
Stream it here – podshow
Show notes
song: Weird Al – The night santa went crazy
Got me an iphone so I babble on about that
song: Paul and Storm – the godfather (25 days of newman)
Got left4dead, dribble on about that too
song: Run DMC – Christmas in Hollis
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iphone app review: iPiMP
Dec 1st
Iphone app review: iPiMP.
If you’ve ever spoken to me recently, you’ll know that I am espousing MediaPortal to as many people as possible and one of the first things I did after getting my shiney new iphone was to download the iPiMP (iphone interface for MediaPortal) app from their site.
For those who don’t know what mediaportal is, shame on you!
I… er.. mean, it’s an opensource PVR solution for windows XP machines and in direct competition with others such as BeyondTV, MythTV and Microsofts own Media Centre. While not as feature rich as BeyondTV it does get the streaming of live TV across your network very well and all for the price of zero. Definately in my top 5 apps you must download if you run windows.
The iPiMP app has been designed by one of the community to provide you with a portable interface for recording shows and playing them back.
It’s not strictly an app that you install onto your iphone, you install it onto the PC running the TV server and it will serve webpages using the built-in apache server, saving you from jailbreaking it – which is nice. Just remember to change the port to something like 81 because it’ll fail to start it’s service due to the TV server already using this port.
When it asks where you store the logos for the channels you need to point it towards here
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Team MediaPortal\MediaPortal\thumbs\tv\logos
Sadly it doesn’t seem to pick mine up, so I need to spend a little bit of time troubleshooting this.
Once everything is installed without error, connect to your wifi network, open safari on your iphone and point it to the following
http://yourpcip:portnumber
When you reach the logon window to enter the default details, the lack of screen space gives you the only real annoyance when the keyboard covers the text input boxes until you enter something (and I’ve found the auto caps’ing of the first letter to be a pain too, since the default admin account is lower case).
Once logged in you’ll be greeted by a very clean interface with simple tasks allowing you to see what is currently on, schedule recordings and watch recorded TV (as long as you set it up to transcode them to the supported format).
Sadly you can’t stream the live TV feed to your iphone, which would have been the truly killer part of the app but it does turn your iphone into a handy mini EPG and recording unit.
The TV guide is split into days, a now and next lineup (which is a bit confusing when tv logos aren’t working) and a very handy search feature.
Clicking on an entry will bring up some show info and a record button, clicking onto it brings up the various recording options.
As you can see, the record buttons get skewed out of alignment, but it doesn’t stop you from following it.
Returning back to home and then onto the recorded TV section, you can choose what time frame the shows were recorded in and browse the list of shows.
Just remember, if you haven’t set it up to transcode the recordings you won’t be able to watch them. This section also allows you to delete recordings – sadly it doesn’t delete the transcoded files, you’ll need to do that manually on your server – which gives you a small degree of remote management over your burgeoning collection.
Conclusion
Overall, the app is very well put together and would be a very handy compliment to anyone who has implemented mediaportal and also happens to own an iphone. Sadly it is missing a few features such as live tv viewing and remote control of a client, add them and that would turn it into a truly killer app.
As it is, iPiMP functions as a very handy EPG and recording scheduler with the ability to watch your recorded shows if you make use of the supplied transcoder.
Verdict: Worth running if you have mediaportal.
Catch an update to this review here.
Taking friendfeed beyond the cloud – Revenue making 101
Dec 15th
Posted by alphaxion in commentary
2 comments
Every so often you’ll see the question “How will [insert current web 2.0 darling here] make money?” and almost always people will resort to “by placing adverts!”.
Lets get this out into the open now, advertising is not and never will be a realistic business model on the internet – For a laundry list of reasons such as:
Now, to the real meat of this article. Current interwebnet 2.0-ified favourites du jour are the micro blogging sites like twitter, friendfeed, pownce (RIP) et al. They’ve grabbed our attention, got us hooked and now people are starting to ask just how they intend on financing such a lovely system so we can continue our crack like addictions.
I know many of you out there still follow the decades old belief that we shall all migrate to network resident apps and anything not in the cloud will fall away like the death of VHS when DVD came along and gave it a bloody nose and bruised it’s ego.
If you believe this then you’re missing out on a tried and tested means of making money – the inhouse solution and the juicey support contracts that go with them. Real revenue that isn’t reliant upon flakey ad providers that can change your income at a whim. If you have made a product you don’t put it into a public place and slap adverts all over it, you sell the damn product.
In order to explain this, let me pick on my favourite micro-blogging sensation – Friendfeed.
I love the ability for this system to pull in RSS feeds, mainly because this one feature alone can transform friendfeed from a public social time sink into a powerfull private system monitoring tool (among many possible uses).
It can’t really be plumbed into the public friendfeed ’cause the data is of no interest to anyone unless you were seeking vectors of attack or trying to dent the company value. Inhouse is the only place for this and it means deploying the system outside of the cloud and in the murky backwaters of the server room.
Sorry cloud utopians.
But how would it make for a great monitoring tool? Surely there’s no space for yet another competitor when you have systems like Solarwind’s NCM that trawl SNMP and WMI?
Well, pretty much all monitoring tools will fire off alerts via email and as any network admin will tell you this can get pretty annoying if it is a little too eager to inform and is quite difficult to derive any meaningful “big picture” stats from since most will either have their own (non-sharing) reporting module or don’t have one and rely on emails only.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a way of picking up alerts (either from RSS or redirecting the email alerts to the inhouse solution instead of you) from various systems that ordinarily can’t talk to each other. You could even create RSS feeds out of your server event logs using Greg Reinackers little applet and watch failures in real time.
Now imagine this info accessible from a desktop widget or via an API so you can integrate it with the corporate intranet instead of cluttering up your inbox every time a grunt trips over something?
Combine this with analysis modules that do things similar to ffholic and friendfeeds power to entertain morphs into the power to knit all of your monitoring systems together and open up avenues for datamining them.
A system that compliments and sits on top of your more expensive or built-in monitoring apps rather than replacing them and provides an interface for a plethora of plugins and ways to share the data across the business.
Surely that would be a far better thing to sell than pithy advertising space?