Eric'o'theque!

Blu-ray Wins, Everyone Loses?

2008-03-12T19:32:00.001-07:00

Don't go buying a Blu-ray player anytime soon:

Ironically, although Blu-ray has been declared the winner, it is right now about the worst time to invest in a standalone Blu-ray player, because of the high prices and looming obsolescence.

Source: TG Daily - Blu-ray player prices hit 2008 highs as competition dwindles .

I'll probably end-up with a Blu-ray player of somesort by years end during the far more competitive holiday season, unless I can download via NetFlix and watch movies via my Xbox by then (or Xbox introduces a similar n-downloads per month plan like NetFlix has, with a comparable catalog).

I guess Java skills will continue for sometime to be useful, even if in a niche area like Blu-ray feature programming...

Technorati tags: Blu-ray, NetFlix, Xbox, Java

Windows Live Photo Gallery and Ed Bott's 10 favorite Windows programs of all time

2008-03-03T18:14:00.001-08:00

Congratulations to everyone who has ever worked on the Photo Gallery for achieving this remark about Windows Live Photo Gallery:

All in all, this free download is one of the best programs Microsoft has developed in ages.

Source: My 10 favorite Windows programs of all time | Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report | ZDNet.com

Technorati tags: Windows Live Photo Gallery, Windows Live

10 tips on fixing common AT&T Tilt problems

2008-02-07T14:35:00.001-08:00

A nice collection of Tilt re-configurations and extensions: 10 tips on fixing common AT&T Tilt problems .

(found via the Tilt Site.)

AT&T Tilt Slow Video - HTC further responds to video driver issue

2008-01-25T16:27:00.001-08:00

Engadget finally picked up the video issue with the HTC Kaiser / AT&T Tilt, and this got HTC around to answering questions about it vs. blowing off the situation: HTC further responds to video driver issue, will improve future products - Engadget.

Well, http://www.htcclassaction.org/ probably helped a lot, too.

The CorePlayer guys have done some coding so that their upcoming product will work more natively with the hardware on the device, so it's a "for pay" solution for watching videos at a more natural flow. Unfortunately, all remaining video heavy applications (like a graphical GPS program) suffer without a driver to do all this acceleration naturally.

My old Axim v51 kicks butt compared to the out-of-the-box HTC Kaiser / AT&T Tilt. And that's too bad.

In this day and age, Windows Mobile devices need to compete directly against the iPhone, and this is a case of a hardware provider falling down and not doing the right thing for their customers.

Technorati Tags: HTC Kaiser, AT&T Tilt, Video, Customer Service

Long Zheng on Creating Photo Panoramas

2008-01-10T11:33:00.001-08:00

Long has a pretty intensive work-out of two photo-stitching solutions in this post: Windows Live Photo Gallery gives leading commercial panoramic stitching software run for its money - istartedsomething . Thanks for the post, Long!

The ability to create a panorama out of a set of photos was released in Windows Live Photo Gallery and - looking at most of the blogging around the WLPG - has been one of the more enjoyed fun-features to the Gallery.

It can result in some delightful (and really, really big) photos along the way. Looks like the feature does reasonably well for Long, though the occasional seam-mismatch or drop happens. I personally haven't tried stitching a seam of the same photo over and over again to see what happens, though I know former DMX'er Jordan did it as a way to make a stiched photo and appear in two places at the same time.

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Photo Gallery,Windows Live

How do you get a real video driver for the AT&T Tilt / HTC Kaiser?

2007-12-16T19:09:00.001-08:00

You freakin' build it yourself.

Or, at least start a bounty to create a proper video driver: D3D Driver Bounty - $770+ Raised So Far! - xda-developers.

It will be interesting to see how this goes. HTC is silent on the lack of a proper video driver for the HTC Kaiser / AT&T Tilt. The community, frustrated at the lack of engagement and filled with love for their device, is going to try to build a driver on their own.

It's a good thing that this might work. It's a bad thing that this has to be attempted.

Technorati tags: AT&T Tilt, HTC Kaiser

Work Around - AT&T Tilt / HTC Kaiser: Poor video performance

2007-12-10T20:15:00.001-08:00

I just discovered one work around for TCPMP playing video on the Tilt / HTC Kaiser to make it less of a jumbled mess:

(1) Options -> Video -> Video Driver: GDI (or Raw Framebuffer); not DirectDraw.

(2) Options -> Video -> Quality -> Low

Since the ROM video drivers are crap, this avoids the frame drop. The video I watched didn't get out of sync with the audio anymore (good) but hit occasional fuzziness due to the lower quality setting.

So that works for TCPMP. I didn't see anything off-hand for Windows Media Player.

Source: AT&T Tilt: Poor video performance - AT&T/Cingular (HTC) - Wireless Forums from AT&T.

Oh, and if you're a Tilt / HTC Kaiser owner and not happy about the choppy video and want a small moment of relief: HTC TyTN II Video Driver Petition. And seek solace on the XDA thread: Petition opened for HTC - 2481 signatures - spread the word - xda-developers.

Technorati tags: AT&T Tilt, HTC Kaiser, Video

Loading Up the AT&T Tilt (HTC Kaiser)

2007-12-09T19:13:00.001-08:00

What's on your AT&T Tilt (aka HTC Kaiser aka HTC TyTN II)? What I've loaded so far:

HTC Home Today Plug-In: I really like this. I was expecting it when I read the HTC Kaiser manual off of the HTC site. But it's not standard for AT&T Tilt, so like many people I went onto the net to find a version. It consolidates a lot of information (time, weather, favorite people to call, app launcher) into one plug in that is finger friendly.

Connected Applications:

Windows Live Search: my favorite map viewing application, along with traffic. It even has voice recognition for search.
Google Maps: always have a Plan B.
Yahoo! 2 Go: (Yahoo! 2 Go Windows Mobile Phone Selection). This was a surprise. Plan C? I hadn't really heard much about it but this is a pretty rich connected application. I just installed it and I really like the design of it. I'm (slowly) beginning to sense that folks have awoken to new design principles for mobile software. This does a pretty good job implementing those principles.

Media:

TCPMP: video / media player. It's hard to find given that it's been discontinued. Consult the Wikipedia page: The Core Pocket Media Player - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
- Ends up this is kind of useless.... because the AT&T Tilt / HTC Kaiser does not have a good video driver, videos are just awful and you might as well forget about video playback / animation until the issue is fixed.
locr for Windows Mobile: locr - locate your photos.

Device Tweaking:

Kaiser Tweak: via: KaiserTweak (Nov 5, 2007) - xda-developers. This is to fine tune some of the registry options and such directly related to the HTC Kaiser, along with doing the essential tweak of turning ClearType on for Pocket Internet Explorer (geez! every device, every time...). You can also slap GPS location info into the EXIF metadata your pictures.
PTT_Fix_4Tilt: I'm not going to use the PTT (push-to-talk) extra service, but here I have got a button that's dedicated to it and non-assignable. Well, had. Now I can map it to two different actions (one for push, one for push-and-hold). Sweet!

Resources for getting up to speed that I used:

ATT TILT - htc and HTC TyTN II - wikis for HTC's Kaiser / AT&T Tilt.
What programs do you have on your tilt - thread on suggested programs for the Tilt.
What, in your opinion, are must-have apps for the Tilt - another thread on suggested programs.
AT&T-Cingular (HTC) - Wireless Forums from AT&T - main AT&T support discussion forum for HTC devices including the Tilt.
Collection of the Latest Cabs for kaisers [updating 05.12.07] - xda-developers - repository of many CABs often discussed for the Tilt / HTC Kaiser.
Kaiser - xda-developers - Kaiser forum.

Technorati tags: HTC Kaiser, AT&T Tilt

Bloglines Is Broken - Is Anyone Home? FIXED.

2007-12-03T23:17:00.001-08:00

Update: this is now fixed. Thanks to buzzby and blowery over on the Bloglines crew. They engaged with customers in their support forum having the problem and by now should have rolled out the fix for everyone. Thank goodness. I really haven't found anything better than Bloglines for the way I read blogs so I'm happy.

I first started reading RSS feeds with Dave Winer's system (oh, RSS, I get it now). Then I paid for Newsgator to read in Outlook. I tried a lot of other little programs here and there. And then I discovered Bloglines. A website that I can access my feed state from various computers (I use up to five computers during the day).

Fantastic!

But now it's busted. All your feeds report the max number of unread items being available as new posts. For most active blogs, that means 200. You read your favorite blog (like, say, Cute Overload) and for a while it's cleared to zero. Then you update and *bang* it's back up to 200.

Which is a really busted experience. I know, I'm getting what I paid for. It happens in the Beta version of Bloglines, too, and clearing your Internet cache and stuff like that doesn't help. And right now, Bloglines is totally mum on the issue. I sent a couple of emails to support, and then I participated in the thread with other hapless Bloglines fans: Bloglines Forums :: Support :: Why do some posts on some feeds ALWAYS show as updated. No response. Who do they think they are, Facebook?

I'd like to know that they acknowledge there's a problem. Then I'd love a fix. I like Bloglines. Better than Google Reader. But eventually I'm going to have to throw in the towel and start using Google Reader instead...

Technorati tags: Bloglines

Congratulations, Adriana!

2007-11-19T18:22:00.001-08:00

Wow, what a delightful surprise to see former InfoPath'er (and NetDocser) Adriana winning this award in her post-Microsoft life:

That would be Adriana Neagu, co-founder and CTO at Formotus, who was named "Technology Innovator of the Year" in the Stevie Awards for Women in Business.
She's one of several winners in the region.
Neagu was called out for inventing FormoPublish services, a simplified system for non-technical business users to deploy custom mobile applications.

From: "Stevie" tech innovator of the year: She's in Bellevue (The Seattle Times: Brier Dudley's blog)

Microsoft decides not to go it alone - International Herald Tribune

2007-11-09T15:46:00.001-08:00

Nice recognition of what Windows Live does to hook-up to Microsoft and non-Microsoft services:

[...] if you are a newcomer to Windows Live and check out the applications, either as an all-in-one download or piece by piece, you will discover one very un-Microsoft feature: They are not designed to work only with Microsoft products.
Take Windows Live Mail, for instance. The e-mail program can download Web mail from Google's Gmail and from AOL, as well as Microsoft's own Hotmail.
Or the new Photo Gallery: You can also upload your Windows Live-enhanced photos to Flickr, the picture-sharing Web site run by Yahoo.

Full article: Microsoft decides not to go it alone - International Herald Tribune

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Photo Gallery, Windows Live

Video of Photo Gallery and flickr on Channel 10

2007-10-20T12:02:00.001-07:00

Nick Hodge went through the effort to record a screencast video of using the latest Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta to publish to Yahoo!'s flickr: Flickr, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Tags! | The Geek Stories | Channel 10 .

If a picture's worth a thousand-words, a video is worth... lots more? Nick also demonstrates using the photo-stitching feature to merge together a series of shots. This, along with grouped photo-acquisition and the recent flickr addition, has been a very popular feature.

Thanks, Nick!

Technorati tags: Windows Live Photo Gallery, Windows Live, flickr, on10

Roll-up of Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta 2.2 Links

2007-10-18T14:16:00.001-07:00

Early reactions to the Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta 2.2 release:

As Michael points out in the PIX blog posting, we've also made some important changes that will be more apparent in the final release:

As of Beta 2.2, we do not require XP users to be running Windows Desktop Search. For right now, you'll have to install it if you don't already have WLPG, get the Beta 2.2 updated, and then remove WDS if you don't want it. For the final release you won't have to go through this cha-cha-cha.
We ask to ensure you want us to be associated with your graphic files and be the application opening them.

A lot of clarity came about thanks to early beta users blogging their impressions and using the Microsoft Connect customer site. We had the opportunity to turn around the changes and fixes time allowed.

Technorati Tags: Windows Live, Windows Live Photo Gallery, flickr

A Big Double THANK YOU to Long Zheng

2007-10-18T11:02:00.001-07:00

I love Long's post today: The future of Windows Photo Gallery - istartedsomething .

One, he has some nice things to say about the team I joined earlier in the year, Windows Live Photo Gallery, part of the Digital Memories Team in Windows Live:

Before today, Photo Gallery satisfied most of my post-processing needs through the basic but effective adjustment tools. All that was missing was the link between editing my photos and archiving and sharing the photos on Flickr. However in the latest Live Photo Gallery update delivered just today, Flickr uploading has been integrated right into the application so it’s literally become the tool in my workflow.

And then... what does Long do but point-out we are hiring! Yes! We are! And once again, some of those words in the job req look awfully familiar (gazing down at my keyboard). I didn't incorporate "intuitive cinch" this time, though.

Here is a query I hope that works for you to see all of the DMX job openings.

If you're interested, please go to a job req and post your resume directly there. That's the best way to get you directly hooked up with our team.

On a side note, I'm really excited to have worked with the highly motivated individuals who stepped up and delivered flickr integration in the Windows Live Photo Gallery. I'm grateful, too, to all the early Beta users who - by blogging and requesting flickr be added - validated that this was going to be a great feature to add. And the Yahoo! flickr team? They rock.

Everything just clicked together.

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Photo Gallery, Windows Live, flickr, DMX, Digital Memories Experience

Funtastic - Live Search Maps v2 is out! Gemini Launches.

2007-10-16T16:56:00.001-07:00

This is just nothing short of exciting fun for me: Virtual Earth / Live Maps: Live Search Maps v2 is out! Gemini Launches.

I immediately launched my FolderShare at work to grab some GPX files off of my home computer and load them into some new collections off of maps.live.com - nice! I don't have to write JavaScript to turn GPX into polylines now! Happy days, happy days.

And the other features are great. I can now use Birds Eye view to took at my neighborhood from four different angles. If I want, I can go to our King County web site and load up their parcel viewer to create my own GPX description of my neighboring parcels and see how things look from above from all sorts of angles.

Funtastic!

Ooo, ooo, there goes a bunch of hours now.

And there's a 3D modeler in there, too? Ooo!

Technorati Tags: GPX

Mark's Blog : The Case of the Frozen Clock Gadget

2007-10-16T15:50:00.001-07:00

A very nice, end-to-end investigation by Mark regarding a crash, the reason the crash occurred, and the culprit code behind the crash: Mark's Blog : The Case of the Frozen Clock Gadget .

High Dynamic Range Editing - JPEG vs HD Photo

2007-10-12T10:33:00.001-07:00

An interesting example of what's in a photo's content that enables you to fix, demonstrated via Windows Live Photo Gallery: eidos | High Dynamic Range Editing.

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Photo Gallery

myvu: one of these days...

2007-10-10T12:55:00.001-07:00

...I'll get something like this: myvu: Award-winning video eyewear for virtual big screen viewing: Product Overview .

If I was on the plane a lot (or a train / bus everyday) I'd get one now.

For me, the end-to-end scenario would be for my phone to be able to output a large-screen image into this device and then I'd be able to view my calendar, email, web browse, watch videos, etc, and not be restricted by the functional screen that comes with the phone. I don't want that little screen outputting to the visor; I want a much bigger resolution in a secondary screen for the video out.

If reviewing photos on my camera was a lot faster, it would also be nice to triage pictures by just whipping on the visor and going through the snaps of the day, discarding what wasn't needed.

And I'm sure there are plenty of amazing other things that can be done.

One of these days.

Bellevue Real-Time Traffic Map

2007-10-09T10:46:00.001-07:00

For those moments where you just have to go into Bellevue: Bellevue Real-Time Traffic Map .

Nice. For some reason, I always seem to have an urge to hit Bellevue Square during some of the absolute worse times of the year.

I'll have to visit this later this evening to see how it's doing tracking rush-hour traffic. One magical day, stuff like this will feed proactively to your navigation system.

Windows Live Translator Beta

2007-09-24T13:21:00.001-07:00

I just ran into Andrea while grabbing a quick lunch in #117 and she asked me if I'd tried the Windows Live Translator yet. I had! Then I see LiveSide had already linked to her post about it: Microsoft Research Machine Translation (MSR-MT) Team Blog : Introducing: Windows Live Translator Beta.

I really like the side-by-side and sentence highlighting between the two views as you hover over text.

Between a tool like this (and the classic Babel Fish) and French dubbed DVDs, I wonder how High School French would have gone for me...

Technorati Tags: Windows Live, Windows Live Translator

Windows Live Photo Gallery on Lifehacker

2007-09-20T13:16:00.001-07:00

I point to a lot of things off of Lifehacker, and it's a delight when it's a product that your own team is working on: Featured Windows Download: Manage Your Digital Pics with Windows Live Photo Gallery - Lifehacker.

Technorati Tags: Windows Live , Windows Live Photo Gallery

Google, PostSecret, and Spam Blogs

2007-09-16T10:31:00.001-07:00

So I read PostSecret as a guilty indulgence. Right now, it is locked down due to a programmatic sweep profiling it as a Spam blog:

Your blog is disabled

Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What's a spam blog?) Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive.

We received your unlock request on September 16, 2007. On behalf of the robots, we apologize for locking your non-spam blog. Please be patient while we take a look at your blog and verify that it is not spam.

(From: PostSecret: Blogger has locked PostSecret )

First of all, given how many blog search queries I run from day to day (either tracking InfoPath back in my Office days or now the Windows Live Photo Gallery) I have deep appreciation of getting rid of Spam blogs. Most of which seem to pop-up on blogspot. In fact, if I see a link to a blogspot.com blog, I'm highly likely to skip looking at it because usually it's a modern day textual mash-up of reposted text from popular blog feeds and Spam links. Tracking InfoPath discussion became near impossible.

But you've got to have a better pattern than what happened to PostSecret to detect if something is a Spam blog. PostSecret should have lots of incoming links from high-quality sources. Well, maybe that's not apparent scanning at the first of 28,000 incoming links, but let's see... being a finalist in the 2005 Weblog Awards (and being around so long) probably breaks any Spam metric.

This seems like a sloppy shotgun approach (yes, indeed, "inherently fuzzy")... like a 20% project gone horribly wrong and that should be suspended. Probably more important than this is a Spam blog scanner is something else like this is a cherished content blog scanner to ensure quality blogs never get blacklisted.

Technorati tags: Google, Blogger, Spam, PostSecret

Publishing Videos to Soapbox Quick and Easy

2007-09-13T11:24:00.001-07:00

In addition to photos, Windows Live Photo Gallery also supports organization and sharing of videos. Soapbox is the Microsoft video sharing site (yeah, not as big as YouTube). But I like the quality a bit more than YouTube.

Have a video you want to publish and try out? Read through Michael's blog entry on it: Microsoft Photography & Video Blog : We make it easy to share on your Soapbox.

One thing that's interesting to me: while I have a digital video camera, I've actually taken more impromptu videos as of late with our Canon point-and-shoot. Sure, it doesn't do zoom and all that, but it sure is convenient for small memories... or the case where a fellow was discussing some local history while I was taking sunset pictures. I asked, "Can I record this? It sounds interesting."

Technorati Tags: Windows Live, Windows Live Photo Gallery

Seamlessly publish your precious photos on Spaces

2007-09-12T15:14:00.001-07:00

A very nice walk through by Michael Palermiti of how Windows Live Photo Gallery's photo publishing feature works: Microsoft Photography & Video Blog : Seamlessly publish your precious photos on Spaces .

Technorati Tags: Windows Live, Windows Live Photo Gallery

Google Picasa or Windows Live Photo Gallery - Which is Better?

2007-09-10T16:59:00.001-07:00

An interesting round-by-round comparison of Picasa and WLPG, including this observation:

When it comes to speed, Windows Photo Gallery wins over Picasa by a huge margin. Picasa, in the last few months, has become extremely slow - the software sometimes even freezes while importing new media content into the library. Windows Live Photo Gallery is lightning fast when you compare the start-up speed or when it process new photographs.

Full post: Google Picasa or Windows Live Photo Gallery - Which is Better? at Digital Inspiration - Software Reviews, Internet and Technology Guide.

Technorati Tags: Windows Live, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Picasa