Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
No seriously do I have to say anything at all? I mean if you want to actually play all your content without the limitations of itunes or apple telling you what you can or can not play.
Jailbreak your iOS device (ipad, iphone or appletv) and get XBMC on it!
I just started using Astrid on my HTC Desire (Running android 2.2) and I’m very impressed. The thing which amazes me is the integration with Locale.
Yes it a task app but the difference is with Locale, you can set conditions. Conditions like show me this task when I’m in certain location. Show me this task when you walk into a wifi signal with a certain SSID. Show me a task when blah blah blah…
Unfortunately it seems I’m behind the curve on this one. The locale team blogged about this last year.
I put on my todo list all sorts of tasks. Sometimes they are work tasks like “fill out my expense report.” Occasionally, I add random ideas like “ask the dentist about electric toothbrushes.” More frequently I add personal tasks like “get bananas.” With Locale + Astrid, I get reminders for these tasks when I can do something about them. By tagging tasks as “groceries” and connecting the tag to a situation in Locale (for example when I am near my local Trader Joe’s), Astrid will remind me to get bananas the next time I’m near the store. In the same way I can limit Astrid’s pestering me about my expense report to times I am in the office. And the next time I am sitting in the dentist chair, Astrid can alert me to get his take on the latest teeth-cleaning gadget.
While there are many tools that provide a place to save information you want to remember, most of them lack reminders when you need them. Locale gives Astrid the power to do this in an amazingly simple way, making Astrid less annoying and much more useful.
Exactly!
So theres a interesting trend of apps building on other apps. I noticed this with Dropbox. I got a feeling that because Dropbox has been out for the iPhone for longer, there might be more tightly integration that on android at the moment. But I noticed quite a few apps are using dropbox as there syncing method instead of creating there own. Its not just syncing there’s a lot more that comes with using dropbox as the storage method.
Whats also weird is I’m now expecting dropbox syncing as standard in a lot of the apps I download. After that I’m also expecting some kind of locale ability.
In actual fact, if I was to improve Astrid, I would indeed the ability to use dropbox and create tasks using a very simple XML format. It currently syncs with Google Tasks but I’ve not really got that syncing with Evolution or anything else yet, so something else would be great.
I’ll be watching this trend of apps working off the back of other apps more closely.
I was talking to Si Lumb on one of our short get togethers (really need to get together more with him, as we always cover so much)
We got talking about many things including… [1][2][3][4]
ideas on how virtual wardrobes, bookshelves and DVD racks are an area ripe for a startup UIs for filtering, sorting and organising are in massive need of a makeover, as digital browsing is awful. where are the "experience" adventures, like the film "The Game"? Surely there’s a market? Why can’t movies make more of the "trial" approach – give away the opening scene instead of trailer lies
How conditioning to multitask/multiscreen makes watching passively feel antiquated. Why Red Dead Redemption is an amazing achievement yet inaccessible to girls because of gunplay & controls. On game completion: why Portal is something you have to play the whole way through and deserves the time. TV box sets and why 6 seasons of 25 episodes is a real commitment – and is it really worth it?
In short we covered a lot including some of the thoughts we had on Digitalization of the DVD rack.
The problem is when you have mainly digital or virtual goods, how do you show and share your collection with friends and family?
I’ve been thinking about how to show my media collections in the real world. On XBMC, there is a great screensaver which shows all the fan art/backdrops on your machine as a slow slideshow. Great but I don’t always have my TV on and energy wise its hardly very efficient. So I’ve been thinking, since I learned about sharethe.tv. It might be possible to push this information to a digital photoframe.
In actual fact, I had planned to buy a special wifi connected photoframe today at the local currys/pcworld clearance centre to do the task. But forgot after my scooter ride turned very cold out near Huddersfield.
The thinking is I can create a feed (some how) which the photoframe will accept. In actual fact with a bit of XSL knowhow, it should be possible to create a combination of the information of the movie from IMDB with the fan art of TMDB.
Ultimately I’d like to experiment with a Android Tablet like the Samsung Galaxy Tab running a cut-down/custom Android XBMC remote. Of course I’m not the only one who is thinking this, other hackers have tried the XBMC remote on a android tablet. But no ones really developed a photoframe interface optimized for showing your collection.
In a surprise (surprising to me at least) move to XBMC there is now a couple of services which allow you to show off your collection to the awaiting public. Something a little like Boxee does but much more like Last.FM (or rather Audioscrobbler) does.
Trakt.TV
The first one is Trakt.TV which simply tracks what you watch, just like last.FM/Audioscrobbler but for TV and Film. Of course its still early days, so theres not a lot of data right now but the database is powered by other open source projects the movie database and the TV database. Of course the scobbler plugin is built directly into the new Dharma XBMC, but you can force it into Camelot too if you don’t want to upgrade quite yet. One of the nice settings in the plugin is the ability to only send a update when you watch a certain percentage of the film/TV show. And of course you can blacklist certain directorys if you want to protect your p0rn for example. You can imagine the Lol’s when someone finds your secret stash of p0rn on the site. Credit is certainly due to trakt.tv for the global stats and chart pages, alas OKtrends.
Oh by the way my profile is here but its quite empty right now because I’ve not been watching anything from my xbmc library today.
Share the TV
Share the TV is the next one which aims to be less like Trakt.TV and more like a place to just dump your whole movie collection. Like Trakt.TV theres a plugin directly in the new XBMC and its just a matter of enabling it. Also like Trakt theres a load of options you can configure so its only uploading you collection every once in a while. Unlike Trakt, share the TV uploads the whole of your current movie and TV database to the site. So ideally you can show your friends what you got. Its also powered by the movie database which is a nice touch.
The crux of the issue
I like both of them but its very handy being able to see the whole collection with sharetheTV. I do worry somewhat that someone will look at my collection and decide that a film which isn’t out yet is obviously pirated (Grow up people!) (I tend to download a lot of trailers of course and XBMC picks up the metadata for them). I would really like to see trakt.tv and sharethetv come together to form a much stronger single site really.
Nothings perfect but theres room for change in both. Being able to change the update perious is useful in sharethetv because for example, Notorious auto scans as the 1946 film with the same name. So I need to change it before it syncs up the cloud.
Its great they both use the open movie/tv sites but it would be great if in turn they would also provide a export option for your own data collected. I’m sure there both working on it but sooner rather that later. I’d also like to see the ability to embed your collection elsewhere (actually trakt does support basic embeding). I’ve been burned on this front before with myfilmz.net.
Finally it would be great if either site could solve the problem which was highlighted by tape it off the internet (or tioti.com which is now findmetv.com) When your watching a TV series such as for example The Event. Some friends are following the UK Channel4 series, some are downloading it and some are waiting for the boxset. It would be fantastic to be able to track all that in a simple web/gui.
Once Microsoft released a open source driver for the Kinect it made sense someone would release a hack/fix to support XBMC, Boxee and even Plex. Well of course it happened…of course there’s lots more on Kinect Hacks
Almost missed this one.
Unfortunately I’ve not had a chance to play with it on my home cinema setup because I switched off the machine just before I went away for the holiday season. But reading through the list of changes and finally having a little dabble on my laptop confirms this will be the first thing I’ll do when I get home.
XBMC 10.0 “Dharma” is ready for consumption. Those who have been following development know that add-ons are the main focus of this release. In the past, in order to find a new skin, you would have to dig through the forums, find a link, and hope it worked. Ditto for plugins, scrapers, etc.
Those days are over. All of these things are now available within XBMC, no need to put down the remote to find new content or change the look of your HTPC. Just head to the “add-ons” section in the system menu. At the time of this writing, there are 11 different skins available, all with distinct looks and personalities. But we didn’t stop there. Want to watch your favourite youtube videos? Listen to some web radio or podcasts? Install a web interface to control your living-room experience, or even one to manage your media? It’s all available in the new add-ons system. Even before the final release, we have seen an average of 50,000 add-on downloads per day. It’s time for you to see what many others have discovered! And remember, the best part is that the add-ons are very much alive. New ones are being added every day, and current ones are continuously updated.
So finally XBMC has caught up with Plex in regards to plugins and scrapers. The full change log is here.
When I first sat down and thought seriously about going up north to Manchester, I kind of dismissed the idea thinking well its not really for me but after a few visits to Manchester I got a real sense of the excitement and passion which surrounds the North. I couldn’t help but sign up and be one of the first to go.
Anyway 2.5 years later (yeah I can’t believe it myself either) happily shacked up in my new flat and on the verge of moving into Media City mid next year. I can’t shout loudly enough that we’re looking for talented and creative people to join us on our quest into the unknown future.
Everything you think you know about the BBC, you should forget. This is the time to frame the BBC as you want it to be.
As Sean Parker played by Justin Timberlake (of all the people) says in the film the social network,
It’s OUR time…
The economic climate means things are very tight and we will have to take more risks that in previous years/decades. The only way to do this is hiring the right type of people who are willing to try new things and calculate the risks.
As you’d expect there is a bbc website for people to learn more and hopefully apply. I’ll see you at the interviews
Hacked kinect brings futuristic user interface Found via Tdobson on twitter,
Microsoft’s Kinect is a marvelous piece of technology. However with Microsoft trying to lock it with only the Xbox while there could be several amazing uses for it, Adafruit announced a bounty for anyone who develop an opensource driver for it.
Hector Martin developed the driver and won the bounty. He also released the driver as libfreenect. Now we have the first application which use libfreenect to use Kinect as an input device.
Interesting stuffs await!
Amazing!!! Kudos to the hackers, I can’t wait to hear what’s next…
In a recent Techgrumps podcast we ripped into the notion of Apple including an App Store in the next release of OSX Lion. This is from the Apple…
We took our best thinking from Mac OS X and brought it to the iPhone. Then we took our best thinking from the iPhone and brought it to iPad. And now we’re bringing it all back to the Mac with our eighth major release of the world’s most advanced operating system.
When I first heard about the App store I laughed it off thinking well you know what Ubuntu has a app store as such (repository) but the major difference is in the way they are run.
Ubuntu’s repository is a pretty straight forward open democratic place and if you don’t like it, you can remove there repository and put in your own. I have for example in my app store (as such) ubuntu’s ppa, canonical partners, covergloobus, gloobuspreview, handbreak snapshots, jessyink, ubuntu desktop, gwibber daily, xbmc, dropbox, getdeb and opera ppa’s. This is very similar to the approach Boxee has done with its own repository. So ultimately I choose what I want and where I get it from. However, the question is, will the Apple OSX app store also follow this route or will the paranoid Apple force developers to go through Apple’s own process to get apps into the app store?
Something tells me the answer is very obvious…
App referrer sends app links to your friends via qr codes via Lifehacker
We’ve all been in that situation: you’re sitting next to your friend, with both your phones out, and you tell them about this "awesome new app you found". Then he or she has to pull up the Market and manually search for the app ("What’s it called?" "Space or no space?" "It’s spelled with leet speak?"). There are a number of ways to share files and apps between phones, but App Referrer keeps it simple—you don’t need to set up any kind of connection between the phones, just open it up, tap the app you want to send, and it’ll generate a Market QR code that they can scan right then and there.
I stood up at Mix 2009 (the Microsoft developer conference in Las Vegas) and said to the Windows mobile team,
One of the benefits you have with Windows Mobile is the CAB format (Cabinet). You can share the CABs with friends over email, email, bluetooth, etc… Yes its not as sexy as the apple store but when you want to share an app it just works and you don’t want to give directions on how to download it on the app store. Microsoft should keep that format and allow people to share apps if there free on the app store.
Did they listen to me? No… They followed the Apple model and forced people to download from the app store. I told them they were crazy, people were using bluetooth to share apps and media. Anyway, I’m happy that I wasn’t the only one thinking this.
App referrer is interesting but one thing I noticed on my Android phone was an app (HTC or Orange) called App sharing. You can share via,
I guess when you do any of these it sends a APK file, just like I suggested to Microsoft back in Las Vegas…!
Fact is App sharing makes sense (specially when the app is free), why force people to the app store to get the same app as there friends…? Crazy! I swear theres some lessons which can be learned from the pirates dilemma.