Virtualizing Media Center on Windows Home Server

Posted on December 17, 2008 by agrant

image Like everyone with both Windows Home Server and Windows Media Center boxes I’d pay a good chunk of cash to have both in a single box featuring shared storage, cablecard support, and a small and eco-friendly footprint. A very good chunk.

A few people have (somewhat) successfully virtualized Windows Home Server on their Windows Media Center box but while I admire their cunning there’s potentially a rather ugly problem. If the OS drive for WMC should ever fail you have a chicken-and-egg situation. No WMC = No WHS = No restore from backup.

I think a better scenario then is to have Windows Media Center running as a service on the Home Server box with all output being through one or more extenders. With a few constraints I couldn’t think of any reason why this wouldn’t work so I decided to give it a go :)

Note the following were required;

  1. A VM package that supports USB devices and can be run as a service.
  2. USB Tuners
  3. Acceptance of being limited to extenders, and not being able to record protected digital content (for the same reasons you can’t record digital content with a custom-built box).

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A Fun screenshot

Posted on December 12, 2008 by agrant

This is a screenshot of using Live Mesh on my work machine to login to Vista (running under VMWare fusion) on my MacBook at home, which is logged into my Windows Home Server development box, which is installing a copy of Vista Home Premium under VMWare Server.

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It looked neat and kind of trippy so I thought I’d post. Everything is fairly responsive too which is nice.

And yes, there is a reason for this hall-of-mirrors type madness. More later :)

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How much is being featured on the App Store worth?

Posted on December 7, 2008 by agrant

Last week my latest iPhone App, Better Christmas List, was picked to be one of the featured staff favorites on the App Store. Huzzah!

The kudos of being selected gets your app a place in the “Staff Favorites” on iTunes, and the “What’s Hot” section of the iPhone App Store. This is prime billing, and almost as good as being in the top 10 list.

But what effect does this have on sales? Well so far it seems like a 2x effect :)

Pinch

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I’m on the iTunes front page – twice!

Posted on December 2, 2008 by agrant

This rocks – my latest iPhone app, Better Christmas List, just became a staff favorite on the iTunes store which is hugely flattering.

Along with the honor of being chosen comes a small slot on both the front page of the iTunes App store and the iPhone. And since the iTunes store currently features a “Holiday Apps” link which includes Better Christmas List at the top, I have a double mention!

Now if only I could get on the top 10 list for a hat-trick… :)

 

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Oh, so close! (& a hidden 2.2 feature?)

Posted on November 21, 2008 by agrant

The ability to download podcasts directly with the new iPhone firmware is very very cool. However there are a few problems that seem to have gone mostly unnoticed;

  1. Over the air downloads via 3G (and Edge) are limited to 10MB
  2. Not only does the mobile iTunes store lack the ability to filter larger podcasts, but nowhere is the size of a podcast shown!

I can kind-of-sort-of-perhaps see the rationale behind limiting download sizes, both to alleviate strain on the AT&T network and preserve battery life (more the former than the latter I suspect), but not being able to filter non-eligible podcasts (manually or visually) is a big usability issue if you’re on 3G.

But wait! In 2.2 there’s another podcast option that I don’t believe has had much press:

Tapping the name of a podcast will cause it to stream instead of download, with no 10MB limit involved (so much for the battery life theory).  At first I thought this was only a preview, but you can listen to entire shows and even watch video podcasts – which are full quality and not lower-resolution as Youtube videos on 3G are.

This would be super cool except for one thing – this mode almost seems a little unfinished for a couple of reasons.

  1. It’s practically hidden – no music-store-like play buttons. I only found it by looking to see if there was more info for shows (like size!)
  2. Playback doesn’t occur in the iPod App, and while you can return to the home screen without stopping playback headphone controls do not work (instead they start the iPod playing!).
  3. Only certain podcasts appear to work with others returning errors about invalid formats. (This could be a network issue though – my 3G fluctuates a lot at work).
  4. Unlike the iPod App, video is only supported in landscape mode. A minor niggle but there’s a podcasts with video or graphics that I like to play at work and glance at on my docked iPhone.
  5. Videos remain in high-quality on 3G, whereas Youtube intentionally delivers lower quality versions even on 3G.

Very interesting!

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Microsoft Bluetooth Mouse 5000

Posted on November 17, 2008 by agrant

image If there’s one brand where I have complete loyalty it’s Microsoft Mice. I can’t remember the last time I used a non-MS mouse for my home or work machines.

For my new MacBook I’d planned to pick up a member of the notebook Microsoft Mouse family similar to the Wireless Optical Mouse 4000 which I use for Media Center tasks from the couch.

Then I realized that Bluetooth MacBook = Bluetooth Mouse = No USB Dongles! 

Looking around I found the Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000. It’s basically the classic Microsoft Notebook mouse but using Bluetooth instead of IR. It’s a little more costly (though not as costly as losing the dongle for a traditional wireless mouse) but at least comes with a nice little soft case that will prevent it from scratching my MacBook while in a bag.

Using the mouse the only difference I’ve noticed is that it takes a little bit longer to be detected when first switched on, a result of the Bluetooth negotiation. The drivers have the same System Preferences panel that allow you to bind the button to different roles (hint – change ‘Zoom’ to ‘Forward’) and same sensitivity options.

All in all a very nice little mouse.

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My new Macbook!

Posted on November 12, 2008 by agrant

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So I have the new MacBook and after a week or so I’ve got to say love it.

It’s easily the best machine I’ve ever had and the specs are better than my old desktop system that’s now been consigned to the bin (or at least eBay).

For quite a while I was torn about whether to get the 2.4Ghz MacBook or the MacBook Pro. The cheapest Pro is about $400 more and with the base model you’re basically paying for a bigger and slightly better quality screen (1440×900 as opposed to 1280×800). In the end I figured that at home it’d mostly be plugged into an external display, and for portability the MacBook is a better choice (smaller, lighter, and marginally better battery life). This was definitely the right decision, the Pro is nice but I’m very happy with the more compact MacBook.

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New iPhone App – Better Christmas List

Posted on November 7, 2008 by agrant

Image1My second iPhone app went live on the App Store last night. Interestingly it was approved in under 48 hours, but took two days to appear in the store. I assume this is because Apple only add so many applications a day and there’s now a waiting list – Pinch Media have an RSS feed of new applications and the number each day is staggering.

I’m pretty pleased with this application. My first app (Photo Speed Dial) was really an exercise in learning Cocoa/Objective-C and the iPhone SDK and tools. Everything took time and there were several things that I basically did wrong, things that made certain aspects harder than they needed to be or fought against Cocoa’s MVC pattern.

Lessons learned. This time around I was able to focus entirely on the design of the application and it really showed both in development time and the end product. Inspired by the FriendFeed 24 hour app challenge my aim was to try and put together an attractive and useful app over the weekend. I didn’t quite manage that but came in at around 72 hours total.

During the development process I kept a log and screenshots. When I get time I plan to write them up as a post, mostly for my own edification and a self-reminder how useful design and planning can be even for personal projects.

Until then… Buy my app!

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Vista 64-bit on the Macbook 2008 – Solution!

Posted on November 4, 2008 by agrant

Two of the things I dislike about Apple are their strong attempts to “upsell”, and their at-times blatant nickel and diming of customers.

Examples?

  • The 802.11n firmware update that cost $3 for “accounting reasons”.
  • The intentionally crippled calendar app on the original iPod Touch.
  • The iPod Touch firmware updates. (Yes, $20 for five apps that took more time and effort to disable than to leave alone – “accounting reasons” again).
  • The removal of boxed add-ins with later product revisions to increase margins – E.g. Apple Remote, The lack of a dock in the new iPhone, or how the iPod now comes with little more than a cable and a sticker.

One particularly close to home example is the new MacBooks. These are the first MacBooks with custom display ports that don’t come with an adapter – so after spending $2000 on a laptop you have to pay another $30 for a part that costs $2 to manufacture. Joy!

But I digress :)

After running Bootcamp setup and installing Vista 64-bit I pop in my OSX DVD to install the drivers for Vista 64-bit, only to see a message stating "Boot Camp x64 is unsupported on this computer".

Wha!?

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I work in the giant Taco building

Posted on October 31, 2008 by agrant

There’s a trend in LA of plastering some of the bigger buildings with huge posters so they act as giant tacky billboards. Actually it’s not just LA – one time in San Francisco the window of my hotel room was somewhere in the middle of a giant Giselle’s left boob.

Sometimes you’ll see brilliant advertisements, like this one for Resistance 2 on a Wilshire Blvd office block.

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On the other side of the coin, this is the advert that appeared on the side of my office this week;

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My window is right above the cheese topping :(

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