You are viewing [info]isurje's journal

Surje O'Leone
16 June 2008 @ 11:29 pm
I've been playing with apps that allow you to control iTunes from a different mac (presumably then with the intention of streaming the music via airTunes). The requirement is to be able to play a chosen album in track order.

  • netTunes This claims to not support Leopard on their home page, and they are not joking. Basically it seems to do some kind of remote VNC type of solution, so you might as well just use Leopard screen sharing.
  • TuneConnect  - This one looks really nice, and you get a nice full interactive view of available playlists. There is a search feature... however when you double click on a song it plays that song... but doesn't continue playing all songs in the playlist. You can "add to party shuffle", which is useless as it them automatically gets shuffled. So no use whatsoever.
  • iTRC - This one is very simple and cut down, and in fact in an effort to keep the app from using up too much screen space, they made it so that you can't resize which is a pain. You need to make sure that you get the more recent 1.4 release. Don't get it confused with "Remote Itunes" from "Delicious". This has a search facility, which actually works, and remotely generates a new playlist on your real library. This is then automatically played, and it also plays more than one track. However... note that the new playlist will have some kind of ordering in your main iTunes library. Go to that machine, and ensure that the playlist is sorted by the "track number" column. That will ensure that the tracks of an album are played in the correct order. And even when a new list is generated the next time you search, it will retain this sort criteria. This means of course that if you want a different ordering, you have to go to the other machine again (defeating the point somewhat). However... and here's the real gotcha. Every time you launch it, it forgets the user name and password for logging into the server. That is a showstopper. All it needs is this little fix...
  • Remotes iTunes - looks just like itrc (they even reverse their own application name between the menu and the title bar), but is actually different, and doesn't have the remote search playlist feature. The search that it does provide suffers from the same problem as TubeConnect, in that it only allows you to play one track at a time.
  • Signal - Not actually a native app this time, but it's the only one that actually works! It provides a simulated iPhone web app interface on a desktop browser (and presumably an actual iPhone web app experience on an iPhone / iPod touch). It connects quickly and seamlessly, and provides all the native features as found on the iPhone music player app. $25.
Tags:
 
 
Surje O'Leone
17 May 2008 @ 04:47 pm
Multitouch Goodness: Full-Screen Multitouch Mac OS X Is Here (But Not from Apple):
Lux free open framework enables true multitouch interaction in Mac OS X. In fact, he says it can work under any platform and even a web browser, enabling complex user interfaces and object manipulation...
This is running in flash on a macbook, so doing things natively, as he describes, shouldn't be too much of a challenge for performance.
Tags:
 
 
Surje O'Leone
15 May 2008 @ 02:31 pm
If you like the idea of multiple monitors, check out this image. Hover over the image for notes explaining what is what.
 
 
Surje O'Leone
28 March 2008 @ 10:54 pm
Denmark signs up for wind powered electric car switch | The Register:
...the battery swap should take no longer than it would to fill a tank of petrol - but he claims 20 seconds is do-able. Drivers won't own the batteries, and will pay based on miles driven rather directly for electricity used, so the age of the battery installed shouldn't be a major issue so long as it's good for the specified mileage, nor will drivers lose money by trading in batteries before they're fully run down.

How come I've never heard of this idea before - you basically rent the car battery and pay by the mile, and swap it for a fresh one at a service station. It's funny how the best innovations are the ones that seem the most obvious after you've heard them for the first time.
 
 
Surje O'Leone
24 February 2008 @ 08:00 pm
+ simplified views and easy to change between them, speeds workflow
+ simplified keyboard shortcuts corresponding to new views
- not convinced about film strip view
+++ very significant general speed enhancements worth the price of entry alone
++ specific speed enhancements in patch, straighten, grid view, and many of the adjustments
+ fast preview mode very helpful,
- but in fast preview mode it would be handy if it would also do the real rendering in the background if you stop navigating
++ multiple boolean keyword search terms in smart albums absolutely essential and brilliant
- wish you could "reduce size of" each keyword search term in a smart album
- wish you could just type in keywords into a smart album search term rather than wading through an un-structured alphabetical list
+ recover highlight and black point are fantastic additions to shadow and highlight
- however, now a bit confusing which of those to use
- clone brush not responsive enough and not effective, but heading in the right direction to avoid need for photoshop
--- extremely annoying behaviour where clicking with wacom pen tablet seems to often perform a drag for a few milliseconds on images in grid view, which then triggers a change from automatic sort to custom sort
-- still no HDR support
+ web gallery integration essential and welcome
+ new book formats and dust jackets welcome
Tags:
 
 
Surje O'Leone
06 February 2008 @ 12:55 pm
Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection: What a Microsoft Acquisition of Yahoo Would Mean For Photos:
Microsoft could use Flickr's library of images, perhaps the largest library or organized and categorized imagery in the world, to advance their research with their HD View research. HD View is emerging technology being worked on at Microsoft that allows impressive panoramas to be created by stitching photos together. By combining mapping and geotagging, Microsoft could look to create new ways for collaboration to take place by merging Flickr photos together.

Despite frightening for what it might mean for flickr users, microsoft could take advantage of synergy with some of its other technologies. But I'd rather it was a mashup with Google.

However, I'd like to see Apple .mac photo galleries gain pretty much all the features of flickr, and for OpenSocial to allow all of your photo repositories to be stitched together into one comment / favourites / geo stream.
 
 
Surje O'Leone
19 January 2008 @ 11:43 pm
  • the 10-foot menus are now shown over the top of the playing program now, so you can navigate around without missing the action
  • you can't invoke the 10-foot menus using the mouse now, you have to right click or press Option-Escape.
  • the channel list that shows now/next seems handy
  • smart playlists are very handy, for example to make genre playlists or films by searching for duration over an hour, for example
  • smart guides are excellent as you have full control of adding boolean search terms, you can auto-add to playlists, and you can keep up to a certain number of episodes (i.e. the only way to do an auto-delete type operation)
  • there would be one additional feature that would make it complete... you need to be able to say "please don't record two programmes in this smart guide that both happen to have the same episode id"
  • let's hope it's more stable!
Tags:
 
 
Surje O'Leone
16 January 2008 @ 12:20 pm
You can upgrade to EyeTV 3 here. It seems to have at last gained features that TiVo had about ten years ago. I will be interested to see what the stability is like, whether improved or not!
Tags:
 
 
Surje O'Leone
12 January 2008 @ 08:48 pm
Mac Predictions: MacBook Air - sub-notebook with no cables:
Imagine if it charged the MacBook wirelessly as well, using inductive coupling like an electric toothbrush. Cables and sockets could be eliminated altogether.

Intriguing idea, would be interesting to see a completely cut-down chassis with clean lines all around. I guess you could use airport to play music, bluetooth mouse, backup over wifi... no external screen though, unless wimax.
Tags:
 
 
Surje O'Leone
31 December 2007 @ 06:03 pm
  • installation (upgrade in place) was smooth and flawless. i took care to disconnect my bootable backup disk, but had no need for it.
  • partitioned my backup disk into two halves, one for timemachine and one for aperture vaults. this seems to work fine.
  • app startup does feel quite snappy, overall performance not convinced that i can tell any differences.
  • spaces are more stable than virtue desktops, but the animation between spaces stalls horribly every time - when virtue was smooth as silk. however, one difference is that virtue used to slide the whole desktop including the background, whilst spaces moves the apps leaving the background stationary.
  • finder highlights first app matching the search string, so no need for quicksilver any more
  • i like the organisational panes in the finder, but i'd still like a tabbed finder (as pathfinder is hopeless at creating folders in the right place).
  • quick look seems pretty handy, but why doesn't it work from dock stacks?
  • aperture is working ok in general, except one problem with the filmstrip HUD which sometimes re-appears when not in full-screen mode, perhaps relating to spaces?
  • oh, and ctrl+s doesn't work in aperture any more (should add a sharpening control to the adjustments pipeline), maybe something else is hogging the key combo?
Tags: