by jonathan | Jul 29, 2009 at 8:51 am |
technology
Late last night Palm released two new apps for their catalog. Nothing earth shattering but could this be the beginning of the flood? Palm released their SDK to the public not to long ago and we have endured weeks of no new application additions. The WebOS homebrew community has been hard at work developing a bunch of new apps. These apps give a good look into what developers are working on for the official catalog. You can find out more about homebrew apps on the PreCentral.net forums.
The two new apps are called OpenTable and Fliq Bookmarks. OpenTable allows you to book reservations at popular restaurants close to your location. Fliq Bookmarks works in conjunction with The Missing Sync and moves your Safari bookmarks from you Mac to your Pre. Available now and on the App Catalog.
I have noticed that when I open the App Catalog on the Pre it takes a minute or two to load up and fill in the apps. I would hope that Palm is trying to beef up their back-end network before they release the flood gates. When you have more apps in the catalog, more people will be hitting their network and the longer it will take for people to load the App Catalog.
I recently have switched from normal phone / DSL to Cable Internet / VOIP. The VOIP solution I choose was ooma (or Ooma I am not really sure). Ooma is a free VOIP phone service provider. You only pay for the initial hardware and as long as you have an internet connection you will have phone service. I have to say that I was very surprised with this product. My first reaction to unboxing the devices was the build quality of the product. The design of the product and the box it came in has a very Apple like feel. It was very easy to setup and sits between my router and cable modem. More of a review coming after I get some time with the devices. For now here is the unboxing photo set. Enjoy.
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Microsoft announced today that they will be releasing the latest Xbox 360 dashboard update on August 11th. If you follow Major Nelson from the xbox live community you may have heard that Microsoft is looking to making the dashboard run quicker with less lag. Sometimes when viewing my friends list or when trying to add someone to a party there is a long wait time while the console “thinks”. There are no release notes about the speed up of the dashboard it self so I do not know if it will be included in this update or in the next update slated for later in the fall.
There is another thing I would really like to see update on the Xbox and that is how it handles music. I listen to music streamed from a different computer on my network and the way you navigate and select songs feels like it is from Window 3.1. My biggest problem with it is when you select a song or album to play and when you want to select a new song the system does not remember where you were in your library. You must navigate back from the beginning of the menus making song choosing a hassle. When I first got my Xbox I thought the ability to play my own music while I play or while the game is loading was one of the best features. It is to bad it has not received any attention in the NXE or recent updates.
Back on topic now. The update coming will include several great new features like better Netfllix integration, an Avatar props and awardables, Games on demand (why has this taken so long) and an improved party interface. If you didn’t know you can sign up to beta test the update much the same way you can beta test the new Power Pack 3 for WHS. Hit up the link here and sign in with your Windows Live account. Microsoft will get back with you later this week to let you know if you made it in.
A list of what is included in the update after the break.
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by jonathan | Jul 20, 2009 at 9:00 am |
technology
Microsoft released the first beta of the WHS Power Pack 3 last Thursday. The beta is pretty much wide open and available to everyone that signs up. I had no problem getting to the download page. You will need a Windows Live account and navigate to this page. Read the paragraphs for the join link and then continue to the download link on the left of the page.
The third power pack will bring several updates to integrate Windows 7 with WHS. Now the Home Server folders will be integrated into Windows 7 library. Enabling backup through Home Server will suppress the warning found in Windows 7. You can archive recorded TV shows straight to your Home Server in several different formats, including ones specifically for small devices. There are several other enhancements and bug fixes as well. If you have installed Windows 7 (I don’t know why you would not have) and you have a Home Server then definitely jump on the power pack 3 beta.
The install goes pretty quickly but does require one restart. There are three items to install. Windows Search 4, a hotfix for Search 4 and the PP3 beta.
Document info after the break.
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This idea of collapsing tables came to me while trying to retrofit a Lotus Domino web application with better usability. The main principal is to use Jquery to hide part of the table when a specific cell or row is clicked.
Peek at the final product.
There are several really great Jquery html integration tutorials on the web. In fact this is a really great one. The previously linked page details how to setup Jquery to easily create zebra rows, row hover effect and row filtering. I will be showing you something a little different but equally easy to setup.
I will be setting up a table so that when you click on the head row the body will collapse or hide. This sounds pretty easy if you have a little Jquery knowledge but I am going to show you a few things that make the effect easy to reproduce when you do not know how many tables you will end up with. The main problem that I was having with the Lotus web application was that the tables was being created dynamically. Some times there might be 3 tables and sometimes there might be 10. Also I had nested tables which complicates things a little. I will explain more as we get into it. So lets start.
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After doing some redesigning on this site I noticed that my NextGen gallery effects (ie. thickbox, lightbox) stopped working. When you clicked on an image it would link you directly to the jpeg image. I was getting very frustrated but after some research it turns out I was missing a very important line of code in my footer. I needed to add the php line “wp_footer();” to my footer file.
From WordPress Theme Development Page:
Goes in the “footer” of a theme; footer.php template. Example plugin use: insert PHP code that needs to run after everything else, at the bottom of the footer.
- Usage: <?php do_action('wp_footer'); ?>
- -or- <?php wp_footer(); ?>
This creates a space for wordpress to add code into your footer. NextGen gallery adds the thickbox javascript links in the footer so they are called at the end of a page load. If you are having the same problem try added the footer code to your theme.
I spent the fourth in Springfield with some good friends of mine. They live outside of the city limits and around Independence Day their neighborhood turns into a bomb range. You should not plan on trying to sleep that night because mortar shells or bottle rocks will be going off at all hours. Of course you eventually wake up to a yard full of sticks and burnt paper. This year I did not get to take as many photos and we had a brief rain delay but I still had a good time. Check out the moments I was able to capture. I love shooting fireworks with long exposures.
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I was unable to get a Palm Pre on launch day for reasons that are out of my control. Apparently Sprint as a very strict upgrade policy with new phones of this caliber. Even a long time subscriber like myself was unable to sway them into upgrading me early. Needless to say I still got my hands on a Palm Pre today and took some photos of the unboxing. Please check out the gallery after the break .
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by jonathan | May 28, 2009 at 10:47 pm |
technology
With Windows 7 RC1 released recently I thought it would be a great time to upgrade. If I am going to be on the bleeding edge I might as well go all out with the 64bit version. I played around with the Windows 7 beta and loved the new look and feel. The new task bar took some time to get use too but overall I felt like it was a nice update. Microsoft will tell you that a bunch of code has been changed under the hood but it really goes unnoticed because the RC1 runs without a hitch. After installing on my main desktop machine I only had one crash for an unknown reason but what mac or pc has not had at least one kernel panic.
I did run into a few things I wanted to mention. I thought that everything I use daily had been released in a 64bit version. In reality only a few very specific programs are 64bit right now.
- IE 8 is 64bit but no flash support just yet.
- Firefox is 64bit in beta, also no flash.
- JAVA is now 64bit.
- Photoshop CS4 is 64bit but I don’t believe any of the other Adobe apps are.
- None of the Office apps are 64bit.
It seems like we are one generation away from the majority of developers having 64bit version of everyday software. This really doesn’t matter because Windows will run 32bit application just fine. With some help of out-of-sight visualization things run smoothly. These 32bit application will still be confined to normal 32bit rules such as only being able to access 2GBs of ram (without some help from the developer).
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by jonathan | May 19, 2009 at 12:45 pm |
technology
Looks like Palm is going to meet their first half of 2009 promise for releasing the Pre. Sprint just announced that the Pre will be release on June 6th, 2009.
I consider this to be the phone with the most potential to compete with Apple’s iPhone. When the iPhone was first release several companies were caught off guard. They pushed out their competing product to just have something in the same marketplace as Apple but frankly nothing has even come close to the popularity of the iPhone. If more time was spent looking at what makes the iPhone a massive hit those companies would realize that the software is where it’s at. Creating elegant phone shapes, adding a gps module or wifi capability means nothing if the user experience sucks. Palm has taken what it has learned from those companies before it and taken the interface to a new level. Will Palms WebOS be the next great phone operating system? I think the more important question is not what WebOS will bring or whether the Pre is going to be an iPhone killer but what does Palm have up it’s sleeve next. Rumors of the Palm Eos, a smaller more Centro style phone, have already be around the internet. We all know that Palm is struggling and really needs a boost. Maybe Palm took the financial hit knowing they were developing the next great cellular device.
I will be in line at my local Sprint Store to pick one up on June 6th. Come back then to see unboxing photos and notes.
