Day: September 14, 2011

A little over a year ago I joined a growing group of people that are eschewing the cable monopoly for their viewing entertainment. After many years of being a faithful, if sometimes unwilling, cable subscriber, I realized that there was no financial sense to subscribe to a channel lineup consisting of roughly 80 stations simply to enable my self to obtain the content from 8-10 of those stations.

Over the years I had slowly upgraded one piece at a time so that I had gone from a simple cable box to a home-built MythTV setup to a Tivo HD.  Yet after all of these upgrades, I still felt that it was silly to be paying so much money to my local cable provider for so many stations that I never watched.

It was, then, with no small amount of interest that I watched the procession of the Family and Consumer Choice Act of 2007, which was supposed to allow families to choose and pay only for the stations that they wanted.  While this grew out of the fervor over the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show where Janet Jackson’s experienced a “wardrobe malfunction”, I was still happy to see that I might finally get a la carte cable.  Unfortunately, this bill never made it out of committee, and as of 2008 had not yet made it to the floor for a vote.

It seems that with all of this that my best option for both saving money overall and controlling what my money went too, was to drop the big cable provider and start using DVD rentals, NetFlix and the internet to obtain the programming I wanted to see.

My first step was to procure an easy-to-use method of playing video on the TV screen.  While I already had a relatively decent DVD player, I had begun to transfer a large portion of my DVD collection to a hard drive connected to my Mac laptop so that I could switch movies more easily.  Thus, in November of 2008 I purchased an AppleTV at the Apple Store in Lenox Square Mall while on holiday to visit my friends in Atlanta.

After setting up the AppleTV and connecting it to my iTunes library, I embarked on a long journey towards completely digitizing my music and movie collection.  This combined with the ability to buy or rent movies and television shows from Apple, went a long way towards my goal of being able to get the majority of the content I wanted without a monthly fee to Mediacom Cable.

Still there was a large chunk missing: live television broadcasts of both dramatic content and live events.  My next post in this series will detail the steps I took to alleviate those holes using the AppleTV as a basis for some ingenious hacking.

Finding the right case for you iPhone can be a challenging and somewhat frustrating process.  Not only do you have to contend with the sheer number of case types, but you also have to balance the needs of your particular listening and working environments.  If you are like me you may have found that you actually need more than one type of case.  While it would be nice to have the ultimate iPhone case that I could comfortably and easily use in any situation, I have yet to discover it.

Recently I purchased an Otterbox iPhone 3G Defender case for use with my iPhone 3GS.  The main motivation behind this particular purchase was the ruggedness of the case.  Next summer I am going to be riding a self-supported bike tour with a couple of friends in Pittsburgh, so I was in the market for a case that could handle the shocks, drops and dust that I would encounter both on the tour and while training for it (man, do I ever need to start the training).

My daily driver of a case to this point has been a red and black (Goooo Dawgs!) iFrogz Luxe.  This is a very nice case that adds minimal bulk to the iPhone design while providing a basic level of protection from scuffs and bumps that can occur during average daily use.

While the iFrogz Luxe turned out to be great for a daily case, it became rapidly apparent that it was not going to withstand the rigors of an extended bike tour and training process.  After determining this, I turned to the Otterbox.  Otterbox is known for making very rugged cases, waterproof cases, and water proof equipment boxes.

Otterbox states that the iPhone 3G Defender is not intended for protection against water intrusion, due to it’s openings for the microphones and speakers of the iPhone 3G design.  This being said a friend that also has one said that it will protect your phone from an occasional spill, like when someone knocks over a coke on the table at a meeting.  I can personally attest to the drop and bump protection, having purposefully dropped my phone while incased onto a concrete sidewalk from a height of three feet.  (Not recommended for the faint of heart!)

I really liked the additional grip that the case provides.  Sometimes the slick plastic back of the iPhone 3G and 3GS can be a little hazardous.  The buttons are fairly easy to operate even while incased in the poly-carbonate shell and silicon rubber cushioning.  All of the ports with the exception of the speakers and microphone are firmly covered with silicon rubber flaps that interlock into the plastic shell when not in use.  This is great, since the water sensors on the 3G and 3GS are located in the headphone jack and inside the dock connecter port.  With the openings firmly covered and protected it is possible to fudge a little on reporting water damage when attempting to get a warranty or AppleCare replacement.

If you want to dock your phone while in the 3G Defender, however, you maybe out of luck depending on the dock connector design.  Due to the nature of the case design, there is a fairly deep recession that has to be navigated in order to connect anything to the dock connector.  A cable or two won’t be a problem, but if you use a device like the iHome or a car mount then you will most likely be out of luck, unless you buy something like the iStubz from CableJive.

Another problem you may run into has to do with the sheer extra bulk added by the case.  I frequently use my iPhone while in my 2007 Toyota Tundra, both for music and for navigation.  I mounted my iPhone on the console in place of the ashtray using a mount and device holder combination from ProClip.  While the combination is a bit pricey, I like their product choices.  Fortunately my device holder is adjustable enough to hold the 3G Defender case, but unfortunately the dock connector plug does not extend high enough to connect with the iPhone while in the case.

Beyond those two issues, which are fairly easy to overcome, I am still having trouble getting used to the confinement of the screen itself.  The 3G Defender enclosure leaves all of the screen itself usable, but some functionality is tricky when using the onscreen keyboard and sliders.  This will be especially noticeable by those of us that don’t trim our fingernails all the way to the quick.  I know that many of my female friends, as well as some males, will find the edges of the case get in the way.  The one application feature I am having the most trouble with is the address bar in mobile Safari.  When using Safari and trying to get the browser to re-display the address bar, I find myself having to use the side of my finger tips instead of end of the finger.

I would judge that the 3G Defender is a great case for use in a physically demanding environment.  I am not completely sold on its use in an average daily environment that doesn’t involve lots of physical abuse.

Pros

• shock protection
• dust protection
• better overall grip (especially for individuals with larger hands)

Cons

• dock connector recessed farther than desired
• added bulk may make accessories unusable without additional cabling
• some on-screen functionality can be impaired due to the side of the case surrounding the screen

Overall I would say this is an excellent case and well worth the price being charged for it.  Paying $50 to protect your $400 investment is a no-brainer.

For those of you who are in the iPhone developer community or just are just geeky enough to pay for the developer program in order to get a sneak peek on your friends, I thought I would let you in on some information I received from Pandora concerning problems with the Pandora Radio application and the 3.1 beta.

I noticed that after updating to 3.1 Beta I was no longer able to access my Pandora Radio application.  The application would run, but eventually I would get an error screen that told me it couldn’t connect.

After trying various troubleshooting techniques on my own I e-mail Pandora support.  Mike at Pandora gave me an extended set of instructions to follow:

In particularly stubborn cases, in addition to deleting Pandora from your iPhone, you may also have to:

1. delete Pandora from the iTunes list of Applications on your computer (it’s an option in iTunes from the list on the left, below Music)
2. sign out of the iTunes Store (click your iTunes Store sign-in information, usually an email address, in the upper right of the screen and select ‘sign out’)
3. re-sync your iPhone within iTunes
4. then sign back in to the iTunes Store (again, in the upper right)
5. re-sync your iPhone one last time

Then re-install Pandora, either via the App Store on your iPhone, or via iTunes on your computer.

After trying all of that, the application would still not talk to Pandora’s system.  I then tried the drastic step of doing a factory restore on the iPhone using the 3.1 Beta download as the firmware.  This still didn’t help much.

After reporting all of this back to Mike at Pandora, I received the following reply via e-mail:

Hi Andy,

Sorry about that. We’re aware of this issue with the app not working with the 3.1 OS and we’re hoping this is solved in our next release. Thanks so much for your patience in the meantime!

Best,
Mike @ Pandora

While this was not unexpected, given that I am running a non-production release of the OS, I was quite gratified to find out that they were aware of the issue and working on it.  There have been other times where support personnel have told users “Sorry, we can’t help you because you are running our software in a non-standard environment.” Kudos to Pandora for not reacting that way and for giving a meaningful response.

Update (2009-07-14 11:52PM EDT):

After updating to Beta 2 of OS 3.1 tonight Pandora Radio is now working again.

Over Thanksgiving break I bought an Apple TV.  Like any good geek I wanted to expand the capability of the unit beyond the default setup.

After installing Firefox and getting USB keyboard and mouse support going, I realized that it would be tremendously cool if I could control it from my iPhone instead of using a wired keyboard.

To begin with I installed OSXvnc.  The only problem was that I needed to store a password.  After reading a the VNC post on the aTV Flash forum, I successfully conquered that.  However, I had the same problem that iMattUK had: you had to use an ssh connection to start it.

To conquer this I wrote a launchd plist to launch OSXvnc for me at system startup.  Read on for the process I used to get it all working.

Continue reading

This is the first post using the WordPress app for the iPhone.

It’s a pretty nice application, but it would be better if it supported the rotation feature to get the horizontal keyboard.

I do like the fact that you can add photos.

As I keep browsing the App Store to find more interesting applications, I find my self wondering exactly what criteria Apple is using to place the various applications in each category.

It’s not the actual application category or sub-category that I find strange, but the generic categories:

1. All iPhone Applications
2. All iPod Touch Applications
3. All Free Applications
4. New

Continue reading

During the 2010 Tour de France in July, the Lance Armstrong Foundation and Nike worked together to print inspirational messages on the road along the route.  This was done using the Livestrong/Nike Chalkbot.

The messages were printed each morning before the stage was to start and they were washed off the road after the stage was completed.  The messages were printed using a soy-based material, which was very environmentally friendly.

In the early stages of the race I submitted a small message through the Livestrong website.  I imagine that there was a huge response and I have to wonder how many people thought their messages were going to be printed.

On August 10, 2010, 16 days after the race was over I received an e-mail from Nike stating that my message had indeed been printed during the race.  The GPS coordinates for my message are: 0.067164,42.950947 and it was printed on July 19, 2010.  According to Find Latitude and Longitude website, this is Bageneres-de-Bigorre, France.  This would have during stage 15 which ran from Pamiers to Bagnères-de-Luchon.

This is the third in a series of articles on my trials and travails about living the cable-free life. The first part dealt with moving to Apple’s AppleTV platform by way of MythTV and Tivo.  In part two talked about the reasons why I moved from an AppleTV to a Mac Mini-based HTCP setup. This article will focus on the software I am running to make all of this palatable along with a few hardware and OS tips thrown in for good measure.

I am going to start out with a few hardware and OS items, because these will be important in deciding where to go with the software.

Video Output

As I noted in part two, I purchased an Apple Mac Mini 2.26GHz (Late 2009) to replace the 40GB AppleTV. This particular model has two video output options:

• Mini-DVI
• Mini DisplayPort

This allows for easy conversion to S-Video, DVI, or VGA.  In the box you receive an adapter that will allow you to connect directly to a DVI-D (dual link or single link) cable or port.  Unfortunately the adapter does not allow you to connect a DVI-D cable.  If you want to use the Mini DisplayPort output (instead of or in addition to the Mini-DVI port) you will need to buy an additional adapter.  Apple sells several different ones to accomplish different goals:

For some reason, while Apple sells an adapter to allow for conversion to VGA from Mini DisplayPort they do not sell one to convert to S-VIDEO or composite video, in fact it doesn’t appear that anyone does.  If that is your goal, then you will need to daisy chain the Apple Mini-DVI to Video Adapter adapter to the included Mini-DVI adapter.

If you want to connect the Mac Mini directly to an HDMI component then you will need to buy either a Mini-DVI to HDMI adapter, Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter, or add a DVI-D to HDMI adapter to the included Mini-DVI to DVI adapter.  Initially I was using a Belkin DVI-D to HDMI adapter, however I have since moved to using a single piece Mini DisplayPort to HDMI cable from monoprice.

Audio Output

When it comes to audio output from the Mini, your choices are a lot simpler, at least in the beginning.  The Mac Mini supports two audio output options from a combined port:

• standard stereo analog via a 1/8″ inch (3.5mm) cable
• S/PDIF format optical via a mini-toslink adapter or cable to a toslink input

Most people won’t have any issues, however in my case I had a problem where my receiver disabled the digital input jack when I connected the Mini to HDMI on the receiver (either by using a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI cable, or when running through the Mini-DVI/DVI-D HDMI adapter/HDMI cable combo).  Here’s what I got from Sony on this one:

This issue can occur with an Audio/Video (A/V) receiver that has HDMI® Active Intelligence. HDMI communicates with all of the HDMI-connected devices and requires authentication (a.k.a. handshake) from each device. Since the DVI jack on the TV is not HDMI, authentication cannot occur and may cause the A/V receiver to not produce any audio.

In my case I ended up connecting the digital audio to the receiver and the video to the second HDMI input on my television.

One possible solution to this would be to purchase an adapter that will take the Mini DisplayPort video signal and combine it with the digital audio signal to a single HDMI output.  Both monoprice and Kanex make an adapter to accomplish this.  Kanex also makes an adapter that will take analog audio and add it into a combined signal.  I have yet to actually purchase either and test it, however I will be doing so in the future.

Software Choices

Back in the good old days I was using a MythTV setup and I really liked the interface (up to a point anyway, it wasn’t near as polished as some of the commercial options, but at that point I was gung-ho on opensource movement).  After moving to the AppleTV, I became spoiled by the polish that I was seeing with the Apple interface as well as the Boxee project.  After settling on the hardware choice of the Mac Mini, I then began looking for a suitable software product.  Now I know several folks that use iTunes, Safari and FrontRow to handle most of this, however I wanted an all-in-one solution as much as possible.  I settled on using Plex.  This is a Mac OS centric fork of the XBMC project, so it may look familiar to some of you out there (Hey Joe Newton!).

The Plex application is quite similar to Boxee in that it maintains the XBMC application structure.  There is a developer SDK available and you can easily write small apps to fill the holes in the ether.  For instance, there is a rather nice application for viewing the TED Talks.

Unfortunately there are still somethings that a standalone application does better.  I prefer the Hulu Desktop application, especially since Hulu goes out of their way to shun all third-party integration into their ecosystem.  I also prefer using the NetFlix web interface over the Plex app.  There are just some pieces to the integration that doesn’t function to my satisfaction.  Also, to listen to my SACD and Digital Audio content, I am forced to use iTunes.  This is due to a bug in the way that audio content is handled with respect to the frequency settings for digital audio in Plex.  According to the developers this will be fixed in the release of version 0.9.

Getting Your Content

Here is one area where we are still at the mercy of the content creators and providers.  If all the content you watch is ripped from legally purchased dvds and cds then you should have no problems, since Plex has been able to handle every format I have thrown at it.  If you buy or rent video content from the iTunes store, then you are going to have to use FrontRow or iTunes, since the video content (unlike the music) is still encapsulated with DRM encryption.  If you are in search of current tv show episodes, then your best bet is going to be to use Safari and watch the shows through the browser or to use Hulu (which is even better now that Hulu Plus has come into being).

Controlling the HTPC

When it comes to controlling your media center, most people expect that they will be able to use the ubiquitous remote control that we all seem to have so many of these days.  Some of use still remember when you had to get up and physically change the channel on the television (seems like a quaint notion nowadays).  Then we progressed to having wired remote controls, then on to infrared remotes, then to RF remotes that can work through walls!  Well, I have a Logitech Harmony 550 remote that is programmable and can control all of my components.  I can setup macros (or activities, as Logitech calls them) to do certain things, like go from tv watching mode into listening to the turntable mode (yeah, I still own a turntable and LPs).  One of the nice things about the Mac Mini (like the AppleTV) is that it has a built-in infrared port, so that I can control Plex using my Harmony.  Plex comes with built-in support for either the Apple Remote or the Logitech Harmony.

As for browsing the web, I still use a keyboard and mouse.  Thankfully Apple makes this easy with their built-in bluetooth support.  Currently I am using the new Apple wireless keyboard and a Might Mouse.  At some point I plan on trying out the Logitech PS3 keyboard, since it has a built-in trackpad for cursor control.

Final Thoughts

Having been cable free for almost two years now, I can definitely say that it was a journey worth taking.  Not only have a I reduced the financial costs associated with watching media, I also pay more attention to exactly what I am watching.  Since my media storage is not infinite, I have to care more about what I keep and what I don’t.  With the advent of NetFlix instant streaming, Hulu, and the prevalence of companies like ESPN, CBS and others that allow you to watch current content over the web, the storage burden has been lessened, but it is still something to keep in mind.

The main problem with this solution is for content that hasn’t made it to the new media generation.  Many of the media providers still have the idea that cable is king and that they need to charge outrageous prices in order to maintain the monopoly.  What they should be doing is allowing us access to the content, no matter how we want to watch it.  One example of the bone-headed thinking out there is the way that Hulu has handled the interaction with systems like Plex and Boxee.  The claim is that the content owners (NBC, ABC, CBS, etc.) have directed them to attempt to block usage that will conflict with standard transmission methods, such as cable and satellite.  What they don’t seem to understand is that the way in which I watch the content is less important than if I watch it at all.  On Hulu the content is ad-supported.  On the ABC website, the content is ad-supported.  I don’t think that it should really matter where the ads are seen, as long as they are, but apparently this is not the belief of the big-wigs in the boardrooms.

References

In Outlook Live browser cookie issues, I discussed the issues surrounding cookie usage and the Outlook Live service.  As you may remember, one of the problems surrounding turning off the blind support of third-party cookies is the check that is performed at logout.  If the check doesn’t pass then you will get a warning message.

The fix for this from the MS perspective is to enable third-party cookies.  One of the main reasons to not follow this is for better privacy while browsing the Internet.  As with most computer security, web browser security is often a trade-off between usability and security.  You have to know what to set things to to achieve a balance between good security and acceptable annoyance.  Many users install ad-blockers, flash blockers, disable Javascript, etc.  These are good tactics, but they also introduce browsing annoyances since the very technologies these plug-ins disable are what makes the web experience interesting and fun.  For more on browser security check out Securing Your Web Browser at CERT.

Fortunately, in this particular case the solution is relatively easy.  Since Mozilla gives us the ability to configure the browser directly, we can change how Firefox handles cookies.

First you will need to open Firefox and go to the site about:config to edit the settings.  This is not really a website, but a method provided to directly configure some browser settings.  You will be presented with a warning box, just click the button.

Next, in the filter box type network.cookie, this will narrow the list displayed down to only the ones dealing with cookies.  One of the settings to be changed already exists, the other will have to be added.

The setting that you want to change is:

• network.cookie.cookieBehavior

Change network.cookie.cookieBehavior to have a setting of 3, enabling the change, by double clicking on the number in the Value column and entering the new value in the dialog box.

To add the new preference, right click in the window and select Integer from the New submenu.

Enter network.cookie.p3plevel in the dialog box that appears. Set the value to be 3 in the second dialog box.  There is no save function, the changes take effect immediately, just close you browser tab/window.

After making these changes you will now be able to successfully navigate the Outlook Live site and logout without getting the warning message.  You will also be better protected from nefarious third-party cookies.

If you want to change the preferences back to the defaults, simply open the preferences for Firefox and click the checkbox next to Accept third-party cookies.

Apparently this functionality was part of Firefox 2 but was subsequently removed after someone complained about the size of the code required to implement it (a total of 60k in what is now a 56.9MB, at least that’s the size of the application on Mac OS X).  In reading through the comments in the Bugzilla post, I fail to see where anyone makes a decent argument for reducing end-user security.  For more on all of this, check out the references section of this post.

These changes were implemented on Mac OS X 10.6.4 using Firefox 3.6.11, but it should be pertinent to Windows and Linux as well.

References

While working on a method to allow the VSU Communications Unit to add or change the stories in the rotation on the main VSU webpage, I ran into a problem that involved a known Safari issue involving file uploads.

I don’t regularly create forms that allow for an upload of a file, however I don’t like to store binary data in the MySQL database either. Allowing the files to be uploaded makes creating pages that use them a whole lot easier, since I don’t have to “create” the image from the binary data, just pass off a file location and let the browser do the rest.

The symptoms exhibited were that when submitting the form, Safari would hang about 30-40% of the time. No error messages or timeout messages were displayed. Zip, zilch, nada!

After doing a little fiddling I determined that it was only happening in Safari on Mac OS X, as the form worked splendidly in Firefox (both Windows and Mac OS X), Internet Explorer and Safari on Windows. After a little more searching, I ran across quite a few posts on this problem going back as far as 2006.

The problem seems to center around the use of HTTP Persistent Connections in conjunction with a form using multipart data. The solution is to ensure that connection is closed after the submission.

There are multiple ways to handle this situation depending on the language being used, however the one I implemented came from a blog post at AirBlade Software.

It is simple enough.  Just create a Javascript function to implement a “ping close” by a new Ajax request when the form is submitted.  Here’s the code for the Javascript that is called with the onsubmit:

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/* A pretty little hack to make uploads not hang in Safari. Just call this
 
* immediately before the upload is submitted. This does an Ajax call to
 
* the server, which returns an empty document with the "Connection: close"
 
* header, telling Safari to close the active connection. A hack, but
 
* effective. */
 
function closeKeepAlive() {
 
if (/AppleWebKit|MSIE/.test(navigator.userAgent)) {
 
new Ajax.Request("/ping/close", { asynchronous:false });
 
}
 
}
 

The explanation behind the workings of the function are contained in the comment preceding the function.

Thanks to Andy Steward for posting on this.

References: