GenuineJD

Google Voice 0.2.8 for Android 1.5 on HTC Droid Eris

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:49:00 -0500

After having a BlackBerry for about three years and loving it for work email, calendar, contacts, etc, I recently decided to make a switch and picked up the HTC DROID Eris for Verizon. I'm a big fan of most things Google, so I knew I would love this device. I won't go into the details of why or give my own review, but I did want to touch on one thing that really frustrated me.

I have a Google Voice account, which I also love. It no longer matters if I switch phones or don't get service. I have one number, and I can set it up to ring anywhere. Plain and simple. The downside was not having my Google Voice number show up on peoples' caller ids. Not a big deal, but irritating. Enter the Google Voice app (available on many platforms).

When I first installed the app (version 0.2.7) it worked great. I could make calls from my Eris and people would see my GV number instead of my Verizon number. After an updated 0.2.8 was released, suddenly, I was receiving, "network busy" or "network unavailable" messages and I couldn't make any calls.

Sure I could browse to the GV webpage and initiate calls from there, have GV call me on my device, then connect the call, but what a huge pain. After no responses from a Google rep on a thread in the GV help forum, someone figured out that the app was putting a + in front of the bridge number, which was causing the call to fail.

With no way to configure this and still no response, it seemed unlikely that I'd be able to use GV on my device any time soon. Someone else finally mentioned that there is a way to remove the extra + in front of the number: clear the dialer app data.

Menu -> Settings -> Applications -> Dialer -> Clear Data

Simple as that. Periodically, I find the app resorts to adding the + in front of the number, but clearing the dialer app data seems to fix it each time. While this is only a workaround, and hopefully Google will fix this in a near-future release, I am able to use my Google Voice number again, and it works great!

Adding Windows 7 64-bit PDF Indexing

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:04:00 -0500

I have been using Windows 7 64-bit since its official release in October and have loved everything about it so far. I was surprised at first when my PDFs weren't getting indexed, but was happy to know that it took very little work to get it to index them in just a few easy steps.

Verify that PDF files are selected for indexing
- Open the Indexing Options by clicking Start and typing, "indexing options" (without the quotes) and hitting enter
- Click the Advanced button
- Select the File Types tab
- Scroll down to .pdf, which should already be selected, but probably says, "Registered IFilter not found"
Download and install the Adobe PDF iFilter 9 for 64-bit platforms

That's it! You may need to rebuild the index (click click the Rebuild button in the Indexing Options), but afterwards, you should be able to search on PDF content. 32-bit users should be able to index PDFs out of the box.

Reading Embedded XMP Packets using ColdFusion

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:29:00 -0500

In working more and more on our Digital Asset Management initiatives, I've become more involved in working with XMP. Mostly as an experiment, I wanted to see if I could read and write this embedded metadata from and to a file. The Adobe XMP Toolkit indicates how this can be done based on the structure of specific types of files. It also indicates that packet scanning techniques can be used when file structure is unknown, however, is not encouraged.

I recognize it might not be the BEST way to read the XMP packet, however, all is fair in love and ColdFusion experimentation :) It's important to note that this code looks only for the FIRST instance of the string <x:xmpmeta and if there are multiple instances of XMP packets, subsequent instances are ignored. Adobe also indicates that if there are multiple packets, there is no way to know which packet is the correct one.

Needless to say, using the code below, I was able to read and parse XMP packets from all the Adobe sample files included in their toolkit. It may not be the end-all solution, and may not work for writing back to the file, but it's a start!

<cfparam name="URL.source" default="xmp-asset.jpg">
<cffile action="readbinary" file="#ExpandPath(URL.source)#" variable="data">

<cfset hex_data = BinaryEncode(data,"hex") />

<cfset xmp_string_begin = "3C783A786D706D657461" />

<cfset xmp_string_end = "3C2F783A786D706D6574613E" />

<cfset idx_start = FindNoCase(xmp_string_begin,hex_data) />

<cfset idx_end = FindNoCase(xmp_string_end,hex_data,idx_start) + Len(xmp_string_end) />

<cfset xmp_hex = Mid(hex_data,idx_start,Evaluate(idx_end-idx_start)) />

<cfset xmp_string = ToString(BinaryDecode(xmp_hex,"hex")) />

<cfset xmp_xml = XmlParse(xmp_string) />
<cfcontent type="text/xml">
<cfoutput>#xmp_string#</cfoutput>

Be sure to check out the Adobe XMP Developer Center for more information.

Wiimote Whiteboard Lab

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 10:37:00 -0500

Having been very intrigued by the experiments of Johnny Lee using the Nintendo Wii remote, I decided to give one of them a try. I decided the experiment that would be most useful to me was the interactive whiteboard.

Following several instructions by different people online to build an infrared LED pen, I went to Radio Shack, spent about $10, and had a (somewhat) working version after about 5 hours worth of work. Had I known what I was doing, it should have only taken me about an hour, if that.

The first problems I ran into were due to a lack of understanding of some fundamental principles of electricity. Initially, I was using a battery housing that holds 3 AAA batteries (thinking that much power was needed) end-to-end outputting 4.5 volts (1.5 volts each). Each IR LED I used to complete the circuit ended up overloaded and burned out. Finally, with some advice from my father with a background in electricity, I learned that keeping the positive and negative ends of the batteries separated (laying them side-by-side instead of end-to-end), I could increase the output without increasing the voltage. Thereby powering the IR LED without burning it out.

That hurdle overcome, I started discovering that sometimes the IR LED was getting power, and sometimes it wasn't. Had I done some more research online, I could have saved myself a couple hours. I finally learned that with LEDs, polarity matters. In other words, the positive and negative charges had to be correctly paired with the tips of the LED. So, the cathode tip of the LED must be matched up with the positive charge of the battery. After discovering this, I learned that one AAA battery provided sufficient power for the LED, which made construction of my circuit much easier.

Finally, the last major problem I had was reading. Yes, reading the packaging on wire I bought to connect the components in the circuit. Had I read the package, I would have seen that the wire I bought was covered in a protective coating. So in order for it to conduct the electricity of the circuit, I had to scrape the coating off the tips to make a good contact with the battery and LED and other components.

Back to one of my earlier statements; I had it (somewhat) working. Was my IR LED pen able to "transmit" data to my Wiimote? Yes. Was it consistent? Somewhat. Was it as easy to use as a real whiteboard? No. It was quite difficult for me to find a position for my Wiimote where it could "see" the IR beam or reflection. This led me to believe that either the IR LED I purchased wasn't providing sufficient light to be seen by the Wiimote or that something about the circuit I constructed wasn't optimal. Either way, not being knowledgeable enough about the Wiimote's capabilities, the electrical circuit I was attempting to construct, or the properties and capabilities of the IR LED with which I was working, I just wasn't getting the expected results.

I decided that for my experiment I was at least successful even if my construction was not optimal. In the end I decided to purchase an inexpensive IR LED pen online that used the same brand and model of IR LED as originally recommended by Johnny Lee (NOT available at my local Radio Shack). It worked like a charm! I also found that using the Wiimote with the IR LED pen worked the best with a projector instead of on a computer monitor.

So, if you consider yourself anything of a hobbyist with some basic electrical knowledge, you should give this a shot yourself. If you just want to see and use a virtual whiteboard with a Nintendo Wiimote and infrared LED pen, save yourself some time and frustration, and buy one online!

Ubuntu 8.10 and Microsoft Virtual PC 2007

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 13:06:00 -0500

After finally getting Cygwin installed on my Windows XP Pro SP 2 laptop, I discovered how difficult it can be to get large open-source projects to correctly compile under Cygwin. This was exteremely irritating for obvious reasons.

So I decided to try and install Ubuntu 8.10 under Microsoft Virtual PC 2007. I had previously installed older versions of Ubuntu this way, but was having some trouble getting 8.10 installed. After some searching, I found this wonderful post and comment thread.

The short story is, I had to add vga=791 noreplace-paravirt to the grub command line for the initial boot. Then noreplace-paravirt to /boot/grub/menu.lst after installation and any subsequent updates that modify this file.

Cygwin Setup Finally Working

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:19:00 -0500

I had been trying to get my environment set up to play with Adobe Alchemy, but kept running into problems with my Cygwin setup. After several frustrating hours of installs, re-installs, uninstalls and some out-of-control Perl threads, I think I've got it ready to go.

The problems I was running into were largely due to two things: 1) The path of my home directory containing spaces ("C:\Documents and Settings\...") and 2) my inexperience with Cygwin.

In regards to #1 above, I think this was causing my home directory (/home/username) to not get created properly. That meant additional difficulties in customing my environment by editing my .bashrc file. After the initial learning curve and interpreting the less than specific Adobe Getting Started on Windows instructions for Alchemy, I was able to get the sample library compiled and working correctly.

I did run into a few other problems, but I was able to get through them. I'll be doing a write up for getting started with Alchemy and Cygwin for Windows users with very little Unix experience when I get some more time. Of course, now that I've got Cygwin running, I'm hoping to do try out something more significant than Hello World :)

Adobe Alchemy: Initial Setup Impressions

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 16:02:00 -0500

My first thoughts on the Alchemy project were of doubt. What would be the benefit of running C/C++ code on the AVM2? It seemed more like a novelty, like running old school NES games on the Wii. The more I started to think about it (and get past my bad memories of Computer Science C/C++ classes in college), the more I started to realize just how powerful this could be. There are so many open source C/C++ libraries for a wide variety of applications that, when paired with Flash, could have an amazing impact on Flash and AIR.

I thought I would tinker with it a bit. Of course, coming to the realization that Alchemy is still limited by the Flash player sandbox was a little disheartening, but I suppose understandable. I found the initial download and setup quite cumbersome. One of my biggest roadblocks was working with Cygwin. I admit, that using Cygwin has its advantages, but configuration thus far has been a beast. Additionally, the getting started section for Windows section left something to be desired in terms of details. I'm the first to admit I'm no UNIX or Linux expert, but I'd like to think I know my way around a bit.

After a few hours of trying to just get my environment set up, something more important required my attention, so I have yet to get the provided examples working. I hope to get back to this more in the next couple of weeks. I've got a few open source C++ libraries I'd love to test out. I'm extremely intrigued, but until I get my environment set up, I'm still skeptical.

Branden Hall has written a good overview of Alchemy.

Mango Blog Skin: Lotus Flower

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 18:39:00 -0500

I've ported a few free css templates to Mango Blog skins, but this is the first one I'm posting for public consumption :) I used lotus flower from Free CSS Templates for my personal blog/website (picked by my wife, I have to add) and just swapped out the header image.

Download the skin and extract it to the "skins" directory in your Mango Blog installation. Then just select it in the Mango Blog administration. That's it!

Adobe Media Orchestrator: Video Asset Management?

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:02:00 -0500

One of my colleagues at Adobe MAX in San Francisco sent me a text message last night. He was at the sneaks session and indicated that there was a preview of an Adobe product called Media Orchestrator. This AIR application, in conjunction with existing products like Premiere and LiveCycle, will facilitate video production workflow, from production to review, feedback and rights application.

Considering that we have been spending most of our time lately at work trying to write a custom video asset management solution using Adobe products, this announcement is really bittersweet. It's fantastic that Adobe is (or considering) releasing this as a product, however, it most likely won't be available any time soon and we need it right now.

More information and pictures on Serge Jespers and Andrew Shorten's blogs where they were live blogging the sneaks event.

can it be?

Carbon Coder at the Core of Adobe Flash Media Encoding Server

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:59:00 -0500

Ever since September 10, I've been quite excited about the announcment that Adobe was finally releasing an encoding server solution called Flash Media Encoding Server. I was able to secure a pre-release version through work to take it for a test drive.

Initial results were great. Of course, being a pre-release, there were several challenges. The first being that the software required a USB drive for a USB key. In a time when virtualization is sweeping the corporate world in an effort to reduce costs, the requirement for something as simple as a physical USB port was very irritating. We overcame that with a hardware/software solution, not the most desirable (spending money just for trial software), but oh well.

The next challenage was the documentation, or rather, the lack thereof. Yes, the basic steps for installing the software were included, as well as the basic steps for setting up watch folders. One of the big features I was anxious to test, though, was the SDK. Surprise, surprise. No SDK documentation. We're hoping to put FMES (or some transcoding agent) in the front of our video asset management workflow to generate proxies of video assets for review within out applications. Most of our applications are homegrown and based on Adobe technologies (ColdFusion, Flash/Flex, AIR, etc). So the ability to leverage a transcoding solution via SDK is a vital element.

Aside from the lack of documenation with the pre-release trial, I did find that several of the source files I tried to run through FMES couldn't be encoded. Ok so they were odd codecs (WMV3, muxed mpeg, etc), but still. The error messages gave me little to go on besides the error message, "There is a video decoding error." Using some other transcoding tools, I was able to encode the problem files, however, so why couldn't FMES process them?

Finally, my biggest surprise is that in testing FMES, I discovered that at its core, it's really a product by Rhozet called Carbon Coder. After a little quick digging, I discovered this press release indicating Adobe's intentions. It seems to me that, basically, Adobe has taken Rhozet's product, swapped out the words "Rhozet Carbon Coder" with "Adobe Flash Media Encoding Server" and limited the outputs to only those that are compatible with Flash. The licensing model is slightly different than Rhozet's, however, it is more or less the same product.

At this point, I'm trying to decide why we would want to go with FMES over Carbon Coder. If we're going to spend several thousand dollars to a transcoding solution, why not spend a few more and not be limited to only Flash-enabled media outputs?

Now that FMES is available for purchase, Adobe will have more documentation or white papers available that can make a good argument, in addition to not choking on certain input formats. Granted, video transcoding experts can probably explain why some of these problems exist and how to solve or get around them, but for a product that seems as if it should be a turnkey solution from Adobe, I would have hoped my intermediate skills in working with video transcoding should be more than enough to work with FMES.

More to follow in the coming weeks, I'm sure...

Washington State Pictures June 2008

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 05:14:00 -0500

I added a few pictures from my Washington vacation with my fiancee to my photos page. Photos are of Arbor Crest Winery, Spokane Falls, St. Aloysius at Gonzaga, Wanapum Lake, mountain ranges, and Snoqualmie Falls.

gpuds framework: reflections on my software developer life cycle

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 04:12:00 -0500

On my last trip out to LA for work, I spent some time on the plane brainstorming on the data model and abstraction for gpuds. I basically want to take the core feature set in the current incarnation of gpuds and abstract it into a "real" ColdFusion application.

I'm starting to realize that most of the ColdFusion development I've done in my career, starting back with CF 4.5 (I think), hasn't really evolved with the evolution of ColdFusion itself. I'm still writing html/page based apps that require a lot of tedious maintenance and aren't very scalable. In working more and more with BlogCFC and Mango Blog, I'm realizing some of benefits of CF 7 and 8.

I think that I knew all along, in theory, how great CFMX was, but never from a practical perspective until I started working on the gpuds framework. I can't even remember when CFCs were introduced, but aside from facilitating communication from the Flash player to the server, I think I've really been ignorant on why they are so important.

I don't think my applications were ever bad, but they could have been better. The nature of ColdFusion as a Rapid Application Development platform is what perpetuated my continual use of less-than-efficient application design. My applications worked and I could crank them out quickly, so why would I bother with any other approach or even framework?

I also think the fact that I'm doing much less development now and more project management is why I'm able to see these things. I always had a deadline or projects piling up, leaving little time for analysis or post-mortem. Now that I see these things from a different perspective, I can see all the shortcomings of my approach.

It's amazing to me that I've "discovered" all this in just the scope of working on my gpuds framework, especially considering that I've only just begun!

CFML: Moving ColdFusion Forward

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:11:00 -0500

Ben Forta wrote a very interesting blog the other day about the newly created CFML Language Advisory Committee. This post is great for two reasons. One, it outlines how this new committee will hopefully benefit CFML in and amongst the ColdFusion community in the long run. Two, he comments on how and why opening a language up to a community can impact that community in both positive and negative ways, not just on CFML.

A great read for any developer.

Adobe SwitchBoard

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 12:50:00 -0500

Although I was excited each time a new version of Flex and AIR were available on the Adobe Labs site, I am really excited about Adobe's new AIR/Create Suite project, SwitchBoard.

At work, I'm involved a lot with our Digital Asset Management projects. Our company deals a lot with high-volume photo shoots. In almost every aspect of the creative workflow in regards to digital photography, our employees use Adobe products to manage, manipulate and edit our assets.

While we do have a large and expensive Digital Asset Management system in place, we constantly find ourselves writing custom applications to better facilitate the workflow amongst our photographers, image techs, photo editors and our legal staff.

I think there is a lot of great potential with the announcement of SwitchBoard to really take our DAM applications to the next level! I'm hoping to do some testing with it in the next couple of weeks to see how we can leverage SwitchBoard's features in our workflows.

gpuds framework: planning stages

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:11:00 -0500

Lately I've been thinking about taking my personal photo sharing website and creating a open-source framework version of it. Why would I bother wasting time on this when sites like Flickr, Snapfish and Photobucket exist? I feel as if they are still lacking many features that photo sites should include, like original high-resolution file downloads and group file uploading into the same album. To me it only makes sense. Say you're at a family reunion and everyone is taking pictures. What sense does it make for everyone to have their own photo albums on different sites, with pictures of the same thing?

Additionally, I've had a couple people ask me if they can have their own version of gpuds to put on a site for themselves. I've spent a decent amount of time lately looking at open-source blogging software like Mango Blog and BlogCFC, I thought I'd take a shot at developing something myself for photo sharing since I already have done a lot of the work in the form of gpuds.