Robot.Floss

I love Google and am always excited by the products they release, but I am never impressed with what they release. You can tell they’re a covey of engineers in dire need of UI/UX help, and often they overlook obvious features.

Currently I’m thrilled to be beta testing the Super GNES application for Android.The developers are putting in a lot of time and it shows. But here is an interesting limitation the team has run in to that seems to be just piss-poor planning by Google:

You can play Super GNES in portrait mode or in landscape. Landscape mode is good, and it puts the trackball, which serves as the direction pad, under your right thumb. This isn’t a problem, but we all grew up with the direction pad under our left hand. And trying to control all of the A,B,X,Y, left shoulder, and right shoulder buttons from the keypad or the on-screen controls doesn’t create the strongest experience.

A more natural setup would be a landscape mode that places the trackball on the left side of the screen. And even better, the volume buttons along the left hand-side of the phone would now become the left and right shoulder buttons.

But Google presumed this…
“If someone has their phone in portrait mode, they will only ever place it in landscape mode by turning it 90-degrees counter-clockwise.”

That is right. Android, for all intents and purposes, can only be rotated one direction. There is no excuse for this kind of incompetence, especially if they’re hoping to ever challenge more dominant platforms such as the iPhone.

Here is a quote from the SuperGNES thread on exploring this orientation:

There doesn’t appear to be a good way to orient the screen landscape
with the track ball on the left. I even took a tour through the
android framework source code to see if I could hack something
together but wasn’t able to find anything. I can manually orient the
screen but stuff like the menu and settings have the wrong orientation
which is frustrating to use.

Popularity: 10% [?]

When you build iMovie projects, the program copies all of the assets (sounds, images, video clips) in to a directory specifically for that project. However, it doesn’t always re-import files with the same name properly.

Example:

1. You have a video and add a narrative called “My Narration.mp3″ that is 1:00 long.
2. Later, you edit the MP3 and add 15 seconds to it bringing the length to 1:15.
3. If you delete the narration from the timeline, and re-import it, you’ll end up with the old copy that is 1:00 long, not the 1:15 version.

In other words, the file audio isn’t getting replaced, because the import seems to be based on file name. The fix is easy: give the new version of the mp3 a different name.

Popularity: 8% [?]

First, All credit goes to VacantSouls. Here is how you can embed your GrooveShark playlists in Facebook.
Note: This will not cause music to automatically start playing. That would be irritating and stupid. This is Facebook, not MySpace.

1. From your GrooveShark account create and save a playlist. I called mine “Facebook Share”.
2. Then select the playlist, click the information icon for the list, and choose “Embed”.
3. You’ll be taken to a new page and presented with a choice of creating a static playlist or a dynamic. If you choose dynamic any updates you make to the list will show up in Facebook. Otherwise you’re going to have to repeat this process each time you make a change to the playlist. In otherwords choose dynamic.
4. Customize the look and feel and then click “Next Step” at the bottom of the page.
5. On the following page you can edit the playlist, add additional songs, and even upload your own songs.
6. Once finished, click the “Finish” button.
7. The final page is going to give you a chunk of code.Be careful with your selection, basically you’re going from “hostname=” until the first encounter of “></param>”. From this code we need the part the looks like this:
   

   hostname=cowbell.grooveshark.com&widgetID=15466059&style=metal&bbg=5e5757&bfg=D6D6D6&bt=000847&bth=000000&pbg=0c0847&pbgh=D6D6D6&pfg=FFFFFF&pfgh=000847&si=7A7A7A&lbg=000847&lbgh=5e5e57&lfg=FFFFFF&lfgh=000847&sb=000847&sbh=D6D6D6&p=0

   Your code will be different. If you copy and paste that exact line, you’re going to end up embedding my playlist.

8. Log in to Facebook and add the “HTML Profile” application to your account.
9. Now you’ll be given the option to insert your own HTML. Copy and paste this code:
   

   <fb:fbjs-bridge/>
   <script> <!– –> </script>
   <fb:swf
   swfbgcolor=”000000″
   imgstyle=”border-width:0px; border-color:white;”
   imgsrc=’YOUR_OWN_IMG_SRC‘
   align=’left’
   salign=’l’
   swfsrc=’http://listen.grooveshark.com/widget.swf’
   waitforclick=’false’
   wmode=’window’
   quality=’best’
   allowScriptAccess=’always’
   flashvars=’INSERT_ YOUR_CODE_FROM_STEP_7‘
   width=’184′ height=’290′ />

10. You need to make two changes though.
    1. Replace the phrase YOUR_OWN_IMG_SRC with a link to your own skin for GrooveShark to use. (Replace it with a URL, such as http://www.example.com/someImage.jpg)
    2. And you need to replace INSERT_YOUR_CODE_FROM_STEP_7 with the line you copied from earlier.

If you need a sample cover image, here is one that will fit the default width and height of the GrooveShark widget you’ve just created

For example, my finished code looks like this:

<fb:fbjs-bridge/>
<script> <!– –> </script>
<fb:swf
swfbgcolor=”000000″
imgstyle=”border-width:0px; border-color:white;”
imgsrc=’http://www.robotfloss.com/img/poabGroove.png’
align=’left’
salign=’l’
swfsrc=’http://listen.grooveshark.com/widget.swf’
waitforclick=’false’
wmode=’window’
quality=’best’
allowScriptAccess=’always’
flashvars=’hostname=cowbell.grooveshark.com&widgetID=15466059&style=metal&bbg=5e5757&bfg=D6D6D6&bt=000847&bth=000000&pbg=0c0847&pbgh=D6D6D6&pfg=FFFFFF&pfgh=000847&si=7A7A7A&lbg=000847&lbgh=5e5e57&lfg=FFFFFF&lfgh=000847&sb=000847&sbh=D6D6D6&p=0′
width=’184′ height=’290′ />

Submit the code, and it should appear on the side of your profile page. Hit the play button, the list should load, and the music will start streaming.

Note: This will not cause music to automatically start playing. That would be irritating and stupid. This is Facebook, not MySpace.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Update (Sept 25th, 2009):

The problem with Mozy having difficulty restoring large files with lengthy revision histories still exists. In the end, Mozy did restore the file for me, but only after the ticket was escalated to level 2 support and finally to level 3 – at which point the tech had to manually restore the file. This took about 7 days. The file I needed restored was an Entourage database file which had initially been backed up about 14 months prior. That meant there were hundreds, if not thousands, of revisions to make. Every time anything happened in the database (an e-mail was sent, received, deleted, drafted, moved, etc) a change was eventually logged by Mozy’s servers. When I would request a backup, the machines that process the backups go back to the original and then walk forward through the revision histories. This caused the process to time out, and the restoration would fail.

Update (Sept 3rd, 2009 @ 1:51pm):

As you see in the comments, this posting grabbed the attention of the Dan from Mozy.com. The problem isn’t with large files, but rather larges files that have had many changes. For example, a 2.7gb file that changes multiple times a day has a lot of revision history. And this can cause a timeout problem when restoring the file. Dan  looked in to the support ticket for me, and here was his response:

“I’ve looked into this more, and it looks like the issue surrounding restoration of long files is that if the file is changing often, then it can take a long time for Mozy to reconstruct the “current” version of the file. We start from the “original” version and then apply each change in sequential order. The restore may timeout before the reconstruction process is complete.

I hadn’t heard of this issue before and am still looking into it. I will forward your comments on to our Support team too.

Thanks,
Dan”

Why no one from Mozy took the time to explain this from the start, I’m not sure. But in the end: there is a problem, and it is being worked on. I’m not sure by who, but I’m assured it is by top men. Top men.

Original Posting:

I’m a big advocate of Mozy and Mozy Pro. I use the Mozy backup solution at home for 3 machines, and I’ve implemented Mozy Pro across all of the laptops I support at work. I’ve beta tested the product quite a bit for the company, and I even use it as a very last resort backup for our Xserve (this is not the main server backup though – I would not recommend that).

A few days ago, one of my users lost a critical file. I requested the file to be restored, but the restore request  never completed. I called Mozy and spoke to a tech only to learn that it is a known issue – “Mozy has difficulty restoring files over 1gb.”

How much of a problem? Well, they’ve had an engineer working on the problem for over 2 days, and still the issue hasn’t been resolved. I’d love to know more about the back-end situation creating this problem, but for now I’m content to let the level 2 techs work on a solution.

I’m not sure what Mozy is thinking and why they’ve not addressed the problem sooner, but having multiple gigabyte files is not uncommon. Microsoft Entourage databases can easily get the large (even ones that are well maintained and archived), video projects I work on are often much larger than this, and some design files reach this size as well.

So for this issue to exist with Mozy is unacceptable. Until they problem is resolved, I’m going to downgrade my rating of Mozy and Mozy Pro from an A to a D+. The problem is that significant.

Popularity: 36% [?]

While reorganizing my MP3 collection, a large number of files were incorrectly renamed. Instead of having an extension of mp3, such as “SomeSong.mp3″, they’re now “SomesongMp3.mp3.” I decided to correct the problem. First, I needed a list of all files with the phrase “mp3″ before the extension in the filename. So I fired up search and looked for: “*mp3.*”

That should result in a list of all files with the phrase “mp3″ in the filename before the extension to be displayed. However, in Windows 7 it now means “Show me everything with the phrase ‘mp3′ anywhere in the filename.” Also, the asterisk and question mark now mean the same thing – this is most likely a side effect of the new, crappy implementation.

The asterisk should mean “any number of characters”, and the question mark should mean “a single character”. For example, “*.mp3″ should show list all files with an mp3 extension. And “?.mp3″ should only show all mp3 files that have a filename that is 1 character in length. Its always worked this way, and it should stay this way. Otherwise it is too hard to limit the search results to a more specific range.

I thought that it might be a UI option for ease of use, so I dropped to the command line. The result was the same. I’m not sure why Microsoft, in blissful idiocracy, has changed the way the wildcards work when searching in Windows 7, but it is a massive inconvneince, especially if you’re working with files in the command line.

You can still do it from the command prompt, but now you have to do something along the lines of this – which still isn’t a perfect cure:

for %a in (*.*) do @echo %~na

Popularity: 19% [?]

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is decent, but it presents too many security problems. If you love Firefox, and you should, then I recommend eliminating the threat of IE. Whether it is the built in Windows firewall or from another vendor, block all of IEs access to the internet and don’t let up.

I’ve made this a standard practice for years. And when I really need to use IE, I’ll tweak the firewall, take care of business, and then return everything back to its locked down state. A few months back I let the rule slide. Like clockwork, a few days later my girlfriend was surfing around on IE, hit a malicious website, and my computer went to shit. I then spent the rest of the weekend formatting and reinstalling.

Be smart. Stop IE.

Don’t chance it. Ban IE. I promise your life will be happier and your computer safer.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Do you want the US version of Cupcake and you want it now? Mine got pushed to me on the 23rd, and here it is for you.

Crown me a saint.

WARNING: Make sure your phone has a full battery or is charged. You don’t want it to die during this process.

Instructions

1. Download the US Cupcake 1.5 (this is hosted here, not elsewhere, so it will work)
2. Rename the file “update.zip”
3. Copy update.zip to the root of your SD card
4. Turn off your phone
5. Turn it on while holding the home key
6. When you see the triangle + exclamation mark icon, press alt + L
7. Then press alt + s
8. The update will apply
9. Then press home + back to reset at which point the radio update will be applied
10. Viola! Cupcake!

Popularity: 14% [?]

There isn’t a dire need for me to post blogs from my G1. On the other hand, the geek in my requires it. This morning I downloaded wpToGo and PostBot from the Android market to do a comparison.

Screen shots would do a better job at justifying my final choice, but this is a Saturday morning, and I’m too lazy for that at the moment.

Setup – Winner: wpToGo
Both programs are easy to setup and support multiple accounts. This is great because you can log in as different users (ex: admin vs your normal account) on the same blog or log in to different blogs completely. Excellent.

wpToGo has a cleaner user interface in general, and for that it wins the setup round. Although, I think the publisher could do well by removing the post options that are not related to setting up the blog. When you setup a blog you’ll be asked to choose how to place images, what size images should be, how they should be aligned, and what resolution they will be displayed. This should be removed from the setup screen and accessed elsewhere instead.

Posting – Winner: wpToGo
Once again the wpToGo UI dominates PostBot. Not only that, but when you first log in wpToGo pulls a list of the most recent posts. In my case it pulled every post back to the start of the blog. PostBot failed to do this. From this screen you can long press on a post to preview, edit the post, or edit the comments. That is the sole reason PostBot lost this round.

Both editors give you the options to add pictures, categories, and publish or save as a draft. wpToGo goes an extra step and gives buttons for bold, italics, links, block quotes, and for tags. And wpToGo could do well by removing some of the options, such as adding a picture, from the main layout and moving them to under the menu button.

wpToGo also has UI buttons for bold, italics, links, block quotes, add pictures, tags, categories, publish vs draft while PostBot does not. You should know that both editors are pure HTML, so if you’re wanting to use tags just go for it. My only criticism with wpToGo is that they could have a cleaner editing interface if they followed the PostBot route and moved some of the options, such as publish or attaching a picture, under the menu button.

Final verdict: wpToGo wins by a long shot, but its editing screen can take some lessons from PostBot.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Engadget is reporting that the US version of Cupcake is being rolled out OTA. However, it is only hitting those of us who applied the UK version of Cupcake.

I can confirm this. My UK-cupcaked phone received the US Cupcake last night, but something went haywire and the update was a fail. I had to revert back to RC29 and move myself all the way backup again.

Also, on this round, I found that after getting back to RC33 for some reason I can no longer install my favorite application, which is the Advanced Application Manager.

Ho-hum. I’ll just sit pretty at RC33 and wait for the push.

Popularity: 6% [?]

I love my G1 and I abuse it to no end. For instance, I’ve easily tried 250+ (if not 350+) apps on it. That much installing and uninstalling can lead to problems. And I finally decided I needed to hard reset my phone, because it would easily become sluggish and unresponsive during simple tasks.

Before I did the hard reset, I downloaded the UK version of Cupcake, because I have no patience and the US version has not been pushed out OTA (over the air) yet. I’ve used it for a few days, and I think it is finally pointing Android in the correct direction. But when the US version rolls out (the UK Cupcake is missing Amazon MP3, IMing aside from gChat, no voice search, and a few other things), I’ll need to downgrade and upgrade back to RC33 and then grab the US Cupcake OTA.

I hard reset my phone, and then it took me a frustrating amount of time to find the proper downgrade and upgrade files. To save other people some time and frustration here are the files – these are the official, OTA, and properly signed files. Also, if you’re not aware each update to Android has a radio update too. Radio updates are included in the update packages, so there is no need to go hunting for those.

Warnings:

1. Do not trust your battery during an downgrade or upgrade. Plug in to a wall.
2. Do not interupt your phone during these procedures – let the G1 finish its business. It will often reset, then continue the update, or will apply the radio update on reboot – so follow the on-screen prompts carefully and be patient.
3. I will help to a degree with questions pertaining to this. Anything else should be directed to a G1 forum.
4. I am not responsible if you fuck up your phone.

DO NOT DIRECT LINK TO THESE DOWNLOADS OR I WILL TAKE THEM OFFLINE IMMEDIATELY. BE KIND TO MY BANDWIDTH!

Note: These are the OTA, signed files. You cannot use these to root your phone.

G1 – RC29

1. Download and unzip the RC29 file
2. Format your SD card to FAT32 and place
3. Place the DREAIMG.NBH file on the SD card (do not place it in a subfolder)
4. Turn on the phone while while holding the home key
5. When you see the triangle icon, hit ALT+L
6. Now press ALT+W to wipe the phone
7. Turn the phone off
8. Power the phone in to bootloader (power it on while holding the camera key)
9. The G1 will detect the RC29 image and it will proceed from there
10. Follow any on-screen prompts

G1 – RC30

1. Download and unzip the RC30 file – what you want is to have a file that is called “update.zip”
2. DO NOT unzip “update.zip” – leave it the way it is
3. Copy update.zip to the root of your SD card
4. Turn on the while while holding the home key
5. When you see the triangle icon, hit ALT+L
6. Press ALT+S at the menu
7. When prompted, press the home and back buttons
8. It should reboot and now update the radio
9. Finally it will reboot to the normal Android screen
10. Viola, you’re done.

G1 – RC30 to RC33

1. Download and unzip the RC30 to RC33 file – what you want is to have a file that is called “update.zip”
2. DO NOT unzip “update.zip” – leave it the way it is
3. Copy update.zip to the root of your SD card
4. Turn on the while while holding the home key
5. When you see the triangle icon, hit ALT+L
6. Press ALT+S at the menu
7. When prompted, press the home and back buttons
8. It should reboot and now update the radio
9. Finally it will reboot to the normal Android screen
10. Viola, you’re done.

G1 – RC33 to UK Cupcake

1. Download and unzip the UK Cupcake file – what you want is to have a file that is called “update.zip”
2. DO NOT unzip “update.zip” – leave it the way it is
3. Copy update.zip to the root of your SD card
4. Turn on the while while holding the home key
5. When you see the triangle icon, hit ALT+L
6. Press ALT+S at the menu
7. When prompted, press the home and back buttons
8. It should reboot and now update the radio
9. It may reboot a time or two, and then it should go to the classic “Android” boot screen.
10. Viola, you’re done.

Popularity: 30% [?]