evan k. stone's blog

HippoRemote: Remote Control for iPhone/iPod Touch

2009-10-06T09:43:00.000-07:00

This looks like a pretty useful application if you have a computer (Mac/Win/Linux) hooked up to your TV and you want to control it remotely with your iPhone or iPod Touch:

HippoRemote — A remote control for your computer

Why I hate doing business on eBay

2009-10-05T12:50:00.000-07:00

ARRRGGGHHH!!!! Fie on UPS and idiot eBay buyers!

OK... so I put up some DVDs on eBay for a pretty decent deal, bundled in the shipping price, and someone bought the item. Great.

Pack. Ship. Bye!

Time passes....

Hey, why is this package on my doorstep???

Crap.

UPS tried three times to deliver it, and then sent it back to me.

Thanks, Guys!!!!

Email customer... nothing for several days.

Then... email:

"Hey where's my package? I moved and tried to pick it up..."

Give me a break!!! Who buys something on eBay right before moving?????

So I respond with... it's gonna cost another $XX to ship it out again (duh.).

Response:

"Nevermind...I dont want the movies now since i have to pay extra. How do i get my money back?"

OK... so now, I'm faced with a dilemma. Her move cost me approximately $22 in shipping ($16), eBay ($4), and PayPal ($2) fees.

Unfortunately my inclination was to refund the entire amount, even though it pains me and cost me to do so.

I'd rather have a happy customer than a ding on my eBay rating, but it really torques me and makes me think twice about doing any more eBaying...

Grrrrrr....

Odd IE7 Message

2009-08-12T09:25:00.001-07:00

here’s an odd error message I’ve never seen before:

weird, huh?

…it should be said, however, that this was on startup of the browser, and I had instructed it to open the previously opened tabs (my default in firefox, but I don’t know if I’ve ever worried about it in IE since I generally don’t use it), then BLAM!

anyway, I just thought it was kind of funny and wanted to share it, FWIW.

Notepad++: How to Associate Syntax Coloring for a File Extension

2009-06-17T12:29:00.001-07:00

For the life of me, I could not figure out how to permanently associate the XML syntax coloring for files with a .config extension in Notepad++.

The help did not help, nor did the FAQs.

At any rate, this is how you do it:

Settings Menu --> "Styler Configurator" (which then displays the "Style Configurator" window (note the discrepancy)).
Click on "XML" in the Language list on the far left.
Notice at the bottom there are two text boxes: Default ext and User ext.
Enter config in the User ext text box.
Click Save & Close.
Open a file with .config extension - file should be automatically highlighted.

Here's a suggestion for Notepad++ developers (since it doesn't seem as if they have UX or Interaction Designers on the team)...

Help the user out by doing one of the following:

When an unrecognized file is opened ask what kind of file it is, or
When the user clicks on an entry in the Language menu, save it as the default for files with that extension.

Thanks!

iPhone Conspicuously Missing from ASP.NET Mobile Controls Tested Devices

2009-05-22T11:34:00.000-07:00

Interestingly, the iPhone is conspicuously missing from ASP.NET Mobile Controls Tested Devices:

ASP.NET Mobile Controls Tested Devices : The Official Microsoft ASP.NET Site

...reminds me of ballmer's comments on the iphone: http://tinyurl.com/ok8qcu

My favorite quote: "now, it may sell very well..."

LOL.

Ultralingua: o meu amigo!

2009-01-23T10:45:00.000-08:00

In my recent learning of the Portuguese language, I have found the Ultralingua dictionary to be very helpful!

Ultralingua.com

It has iPhone, Mac and Windows versions and I've found the iPhone and Mac versions to be excellent. Windows, while functional, feels a bit like a red-headed stepchild. However it's still an excellent tool no matter which flavor you download it.

It's not free (it has a free trial), but it is definitely worth the very affordable price tag - especially the iPhone version!!!

Free Wireless at Peet's

2008-09-26T11:17:00.000-07:00

Finally! Wireless at Peet's Coffee & Tea and it's FREE!!!

Peet's Coffee & Tea

Looks like they one-upped their main competitor again. Now awesome coffee and free wireless!

Now if we could just get them to also offer non-baked-goods for food.. hmmm...

twitterfeed

2008-09-22T09:59:00.000-07:00

OK... as usual, I'm a little slow finding out and signing up for the latest social productivity tools, and this time I recently discovered twitterfeed from seeing it being used by some folks who I'm following on Twitter:

twitterfeed.com : feed your blog to twitter - post RSS to twitter automatically

...it's very handy and simple to use.

WPF Window Events - Loaded or Initialized?

2008-08-28T14:27:00.000-07:00

So I was trying to determine which event to use for handling window initialization in WPF, since there seems to be a couple of options that are a little different from Windows Forms: Initialized and Loaded.

Thankfully MSDN came to the rescue and clarified things a bit in the documentation for the Initialized event:

[Initialized] will be raised whenever the EndInit or OnVisualParentChanged methods are called. Calls to either method could have come from application code, or through the Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) processor behavior when a XAML page is processed.

Whether you choose to handle Loaded or Initialized depends on your requirements. If you do not need to read element properties, intend to reset properties, and do not need any layout information, Initialized might be the better event to act upon. If you need all properties of the element to be available, and you will be setting properties that are likely to reset the layout, Loaded might be the better event to act upon. Be careful of reentrancy if your handler resets any properties that are interpreted by the layout system to mean that a new layout pass is required. (You might need to check the FrameworkPropertyMetadata values on the property if you are unsure of which properties can require a new layout pass if they are changed.)

Disabling Windows Desktop Search Explorer Integration

2008-08-05T10:39:00.000-07:00

If anyone hates the steaming turd that is Windows Desktop Search's Explorer Integration as much as I do (i.e. the search utility that can't find anything), please read Scott Hanselman's blog article outlining the very simple fix to disable this piece of total crap software:

Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - How to disable Windows Desktop Search explorer integration after installing Office 2007

I feel much better now.

Hope this helps!

Visual Studio Tip: "You Are Here"

2008-07-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

This is a tip that I got from a colleague several years ago when I was developing in VB 6, but I've kept doing it in Visual Studio and C# and it still works great...

At the beginning of the day I like to know exactly where I left off, so one way of accomplishing that is to just insert "you are here..." in the body of your code where you left off. This accomplishes two things:

it prevents compilation since "you are here..." is not valid code
the IntelliSense picks up the self-inflicted bug in the code and insterts red squigglies to show you the exact location where you left off...

Here's an example:

Hope this helps!

Rumor: 3G iPhone to sell for US$199 | The Apple Core | ZDNet.com

2008-05-18T08:47:00.000-07:00

If this rumor doesn't end up being even remotely close to reality I'm going to be totally bummed...

Rumor: 3G iPhone to sell for US$199 | The Apple Core | ZDNet.com

we'll see, but if it's at that price point, I'm buying TWO!

Livescribe Smartpen

2008-05-14T13:43:00.000-07:00

This just popped up on the radar on the IxDA List:

Livescribe - Pulse Smartpen

It looks pretty awesome, and almost magical if it lives up to its marketing description...

echominder: a home run from Intuit (and it's free!)

2008-05-07T13:43:00.001-07:00

Being an ex-Intuit employee, I always like to keep tabs on stuff that they've been researching.

One of the coolest services that has come out of their research group is Echominder:

echominder

Here's a[n edited] description from the echominder site of how the service works:

scenario

you've got a flight tomorrow and just remembered you need to pick up your dry cleaning and set your out of office message. you're driving to work and can't stop to write it down, but echominder is in your speed dial:

as you're driving home, call echominder and instruct it to have your cell phone ring at 4:30pm with a reminder to pick-up the dry cleaning.
leave another message to call you at 8:00am tomorrow morning to remind you to turn on your out of office message on your computer before you shut down and leave for the airport.
your phone rings right on time and you get the important things done.

I had actually been using a similar system before signing up for echominder: I'd call my voice mail at work to remind me to do certain things, but I would have to actually be in the office and then log into my voice mail to get the message.

Now that I've used echominder a few times, I've found it to be invaluable since it takes out the variables that caused my older methodology to break down:

Location: I don't have to be in the office, because echominder calls me wherever I am.
Timing: echominder calls me at the time I specify; I don't have to get a message and then remember to act on it at a particular time, or enter it into Outlook to remind me.

Great service. I just hope it doesn't get Zipingoed.

DomQuery for Windows Forms in .NET

2008-04-07T12:20:00.000-07:00

Seems like it would be useful to be able to say, "Give me all the controls on this Windows Form that are check boxes," or add other critera and have the system return a collection of those objects that one could act upon.

Anyone know if such functionality exists?

Once again the last person on earth to hear about a cool application

2008-01-25T16:55:00.000-08:00

How did Apple's Quartz Composer never come up on my radar? I had to find out about it from this post on CreateDigitalMusic.com:

Lily: Browser Beatboxes and the Rebirth of Max-Like Patching

...and that was posted in August of last year.

Anyway, here's the official Apple intro page for it, and QC looks very interesting.

Working with Quartz Composer

Additionally, it comes free with Apple's development tools on Mac OS X, so that makes it even better!

Here's a quote from CDM that I particularly liked:

First, Apple quietly acquired the developer of a little-known live visual/VJ app called Pixelshox, transformed it into a new app called Quartz Composer, made it part of the Mac OS X developer tools, and made it central to their UI efforts. One day, a tiny VJ app with a cult following, the next, central to Cupertino’s OS strategy? Interesting.

Mac OS X - Keyboard Shortcuts for Screen Captures

2007-12-19T15:57:00.000-08:00

I had recalled that there were keyboard shortcuts for doing screen captures (instead of always using Grab). The following is from the Apple Help that describes how to do it. The important part is holding down the Control key so that the image goes to the clipboard instead of as a file on the desktop...

Shortcuts for taking pictures of the screen

Use these shortcuts to take pictures of the screen in Mac OS X.
{Command}-Shift-3
Take a picture of part of the screen
{Command}-Shift-4, then drag to select the area you want in the picture.
To cancel, press Escape.

To Take a picture of a window, a menu, the menu bar, or the Dock.
Press {Command}-Shift-4, then press the Space bar. Move the pointer over the area you want so that it's highlighted, then click.

To drag to select the area instead, press the Space bar again.

To cancel, press Escape.
Screen shots are saved as files on the desktop. If you want to put the screen shot in the Clipboard, rather than create a file, hold down the Control key when you press the other keys. You can then paste the picture into a document.

I just needed this in a convenient spot that I could reference later (i.e. here).

Dilbert goes Agile!

2007-12-17T12:13:00.000-08:00

Dilbert - November 26, 2007

Skype for iPhone

2007-12-12T09:13:00.000-08:00

Shape Services has created a Skype client for iPhone:

IM for Skype :: Products

...and it apparently enables IM and voice!

XNJB - Use your Creative MP3 player on Mac OS X

2007-10-23T11:45:00.000-07:00

While considering purchasing a Creative Zen Micro MP3 player, I found that they do not (unbelievably!) list Mac OS X compatibility on their system requirements.

Be that as it may, all hope is not lost. Thanks to the guys on the XNJB OpenSource project, Mac compatibility is a reality with most Creative devices (like the Zen Micro & various Nomad models):

XNJB

So it may not be a really interesting name, but this is just another case where intelligent, benevolent developers saw a need and filled it.

Thanks, guys!

Third Party Applications on the iPhone! Yay!

2007-10-17T12:25:00.000-07:00

This just in from the Apple Hot News page:

Third Party Applications on the iPhone

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.

Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,” we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.

We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.

Steve

P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch. [Oct 17, 2007]

"Flying Toasters" Lives!

2007-10-04T13:29:00.000-07:00

For any lovers of Berkeley Systems' Flying Toasters screen saver, it's been resurrected for Mac OS X (and a limited version for Windows):

Retro Toast Lives!

I had a strange sense of nostalgia on seeing it (plus, I was getting bored with the default "Flurry" screen saver...).

Running OS9 on an Intel Mac

2007-10-04T13:24:00.000-07:00

I wasn't even sure if this was possible, but from the looks of things it is:

Run MacOS 9 on an Intel Mac

glad it's possible, even if it's a little difficult to get it set up...

Inhibiting AutoCompletion of contact names in Word for Mac OS X

2007-10-04T12:54:00.000-07:00

One of the most annoying features to me in Word (in this case, for Mac OS) is that it is always trying to insert contact names while typing a document. Dates don't bug me so much, but contact names??? That can get really annoying if you've got a lot of contacts in your Entourage address list! Grrrr...

Thankfully it turns out you can turn off that "feature" - here's how:

1. On the Insert menu, point to AutoText, and then click AutoText.
2. Leave the Show AutoComplete tip for AutoText, Contacts, and dates check box selected (the important step is the next one...)
3. Select the Exclude contacts check box.
4. Click OK.

When you begin typing again, the engine will keep suggesting dates, etc., but will not suggest contacts.

Saving PDF versions of web pages on Mac OS X

2007-10-03T11:30:00.000-07:00

I'm sure most seasoned users of Mac OS X probably already know this, but I've been creating PDF versions of web pages (and any document, really) by just doing the following:

Select the File > Print... menu (or Command-P)
Click the "PDF" button
Click "Save as PDF..." menu item

Sometimes I prefer to see the output first, so then the procedure is:

Select the File > Print... menu (or Command-P)
Click the "Preview" button
Click "File" >> "Save as..." menu item and save the file.

Kind of a no brainer, but I thought I'd just share it.

Apple - iPod touch

2007-09-05T12:16:00.000-07:00

Looks like Apple has hit another one out of the ballpark...

Apple - iPod touch

...my one complaint about this device and the iPhone is storage. Even at 16 GB, it's still a little cramped. I'll probably have to wait until they get up to 32GB at least, since my current 30GB video iPod is jam-packed.

Keeping The Menu Simple

2007-09-04T14:20:00.000-07:00

I always like Coding Horror, but this particular article was really interesting, since it uses the In-N-Out metaphor of usability... simplicity is key - not a feature list.

Coding Horror: Keeping The Menu Simple

iController - iTunes status indicator for Mac OS X menu bar

2007-08-07T15:07:00.000-07:00

Found this very cool plugin for iTunes & Mac OS X:

iController is an iTunes controller for the status bar. iController also flashes the current artist and track name in the center of the screen when iTunes changes tracks. During playback the artist and track name are also scrolled over the controls in the status bar.

A full featured preferences panel is included. It allows you to change fonts, sizes, colors and scroll speeds.

http://people.dsv.su.se/~joha-ost/icontroller/

The best part is its simplicity.... it just runs and monitors iTunes and scrolls the title and artist in the menu bar. Not much more to it, but that's exactly what I was looking for.