iTunes Extras

I bought Night at the Museum 2 last night purely to test iTunes Extras.

Naturally, since we’ve had these special features on DVD’s since, well, forever, it wasn’t the most mind blowing experience in the world.

I have to say I have seen some DVD menu’s that look, frankly, a lot better.  But I suspect that it will improve as publishers get to grips with the full capability of the format.

It’s worth noting that iTunes Extras is actually 2 files. The movie itself and the Extras. For a moment I’d though I bought the movie twice. But rest easy.

Here are pictures from my Apple TV.

As you can see, its not strikingly different from a DVD menu.

 

Again, not a new feature. Nothing noteworthy here, move along.

 

One nice feature is the above menu, allowing you to go to the extra Screen instead of playing the movie.

 

I must say, it is nice to have special features without having to get the DVD. I hope more and more movie get this, and not just the new releases (Though I did notice that the original The Wizard of Oz movie has Extras – see last picture). I suppose that this is one area where Apple’s grab for the living room puts it in sharp contrast to Windows Media Centre. I don’t think WMC will do the special features if you copy and paste the Video_Ts folder.

This is also interesting: a shameless attempt to sell us more stuff. A link to iTunes movie trailers and a link to Twentieth Century Fox. It would be cool if this were updated on a regular basis with other stuff. It would be a good place to put special offers. Such as 50% off the soundtrack because you bought the movie (so you have you buy the movie and get the soundtrack from this screen).

The movies with Extra have this little icon next to them to distinguish them from the rest of the “ordinary” movies:

 

Finally, here are the available movies with iTunes Extras:

 

I have two of those movies: Walle-e and Iron Man, both bought from iTunes when they were released. But iTunes Extras weren’t available then. A Endgaget post seemed to suggest that only if you already bought these with Extras could you re-download them to work with Apple Tv 3.0.2. So I’m not sure hat the deal is. It would be very sad if i could not get Extras for them.

Finally, it would be interesting if someone figured out how to translate from DVD menus to iTunes Extras.

PS And yes, some pictures are not properly centred and are thus utter crap. Sue me.

Apple’s App Store ( or NoStore, the way things are going)

Apple’s draconian App store approval process (more like rejection process, currently) needs a share up. Here are a few suggestions to stream line the process.

1. Reviewers need to have accountability. We have heard of one reviewer accepting and app, but another reviewer rejecting it. Reviewers need to manage an account made up of a number of apps, ensuring that one reviewer handles an app throughout its lifecycle on the store.
2. There should be two kinds of updates – bug fixes that need to be pushed out STAT and upgrades that add features. Splitting updates up like this is the equivalent of adding a car pool lane. Bug fixes go out immediately, but new features are still reviewed.
3. This has been suggested before, but I’ll say it again: trusted developers should be given carte blanche.

Managing 100k apps on the store is NOT easy. Apple’s tenacious grip on every single app is unsustainable. It has to give up some of that top make the app store work.

To be clear, I love the app store. I trust Apple that the apps I install aren’t going to brick my phone. Or that hidden features are going to leave me embarrassed when others borrow the phone. That Apps will be well designed and though out.

Apple is trying to preserve the design aesthetic and vision that Steve Jobs had. That is why originally Apple pushed developers to build web apps. And indeed, there are still some web apps around that I use frequently. The Google Reader iPhone page, the Friendfeed iPhone page, etc. Apple never intended that this be the case. The App store mess marrs the otherwise pristine reputation of the iPhone. It is a perpetual thorn in Steve Jobs’ side.

I hope it gets sorted, soon.

Announcing RSSCloud Notify for Windows Live Writer

I’m developing a project this year around the RSS Cloud protocol.

As a starting point, I’ve written a a short and sweet WLW plugin.

I’ve got it installed locally (eating my own dogfood), mainly cause useful in testing my system once its written.

This may be a bit of a contradiction in terms since wordpress.com already supports RSSCloud (you’ll see a RSSCloud tag in my feed if you view source. It gives the details of the wordpress.com aggregator).

By default it will use Dave Winer’s test server as an endpoint so make sure you change your settings before use.

Its available at codeplex here: http://rsscloudnotify.codeplex.com/

The source is in the repository if anyone wants to look at it.  Its not quite ready for prime time yet.

The Kindle as a digital textbook (in reply to @joshchandler)

Now that the kindle is finally coming to the UK, my opinions of it are a bit more pointed.

First, I have a huge library of books The one drawback of this is that it takes up large volumes of space. So the kindle does have one major advantage for me personally. And i don’t have any problem with dead-tree printing. The downside is that none of those books are going to be on my new kindle.

Second, Josh Chandler’s post specifically highlights the use of the Kindle in collage and universities. This was a major selling point of the Kindle, and later of the Kindle DX. Being a programmer, the DX is my only option if i want it for textbooks. And the DX is expensive (if I’m only buying a few textbooks, I’m better of buying the dead-tree versions). Aside: a Zune-like subscription service would be much better.

Third, the kindle has Newspapers and blogs, plus any PDF you care to email to it. This has obvious advantages. I enjoy reading the paper every now and again. And i have a few e-books that i could see myself emailing to the kindle. Nasa, for example has a great library of Histories that are available on the web for free. Those that aren’t in PDF, I point acrobat at the address and acrobat downloads them. There’s my e-book. So again, another use I have for the kindle.

Forth. How does the Kindle handle PDF DRM on my existing e-books?? I already have a few technical books in PDF that I bought. Will i be able to use them on a Kindle??

Now the PDF standard is actually capable of far more that most people actually use it for. PDF is built for this kind of digital textbook use case. Its annotation tools, for example are second to none.

Does the kindle use this format?? No. Does it use the openPub standard that Google’s e-books are available in?? No. (as a programmer this offends me greatly). As a result, all the hype about the DX being used at Princeton etc actually has come to nought. Students rarely use it. Why?? Annotation. Remember I can WRITE, CIRCLE, HIGHLIGHT, DOODLE (and so on) on a dead-tree book.

The Kindle could do much more as a digital text book. Remember the Apple iTablet is a-coming and ,as things stand right now, given the choice between a dedicated dead-tree replacement, and a fully fledged computer/personal media player that also is a dead tree replacement and does everything the Kindle does, better, you know where I’d be going.

Coincidentally, me and my fellow students are picking honours year projects. One suggestion I made was to take the diagrams and so on from the smartBoards (they must have an API, surely), and merge them with the PDF version of the notes. (PDF has an API). Seriously, how great would that be?? Currently I draw all that stuff on my laptop (Kudos to which ever genius laid out the Ribbon in Word 2007, BTW). So what my lecturer is doing on the board magically appears on my PDF. Tie that with a kindle and you have instant student heaven/nirvana. 

If Amazon is serious about the ability of the Kindle to make a splash in the student market, these are the kinds of things it needs to be thinking about. Apple is so successful with its products because they make them indispensible. Amazon needs to do stuff like that to make the kindle indispensible for the serious student.

So it has the POTENTIAL to be the perfect digital textbook.

Will Amazon see that???

Why I said that.

(me being modest as ever )

Those of you who follow my twitter stream would have seen the above tweet a few hours back.

I’ve been finalizing what I’ll be doing for my honours year project (Computer Science) and that’s what the tweet is referring to.

I’m penning this post because it comes down to one thing: knowledge.

I took up RSS reading about 5 years ago and never looked back. Over that time I’ve spent countless hours read blogs covering every corner of the tech world. If i hadn’t spend that time, I would not have the foggiest idea what to do for my project.

While all my fellow students are sitting there going “aw shucks” (or, in the funnier version “eh, whats up doc??” ), I’m planning in detail.

So I’d like to thank everyone of the authors of the blogs I follow for their time, dedication and inspiration. It would be impossible to name them all here.

More recently, twitter has become a valuable resource in connecting with other devs and getting questions answered. Those devs I correspond with regularly, you know who you are. And I thank you.

As academic restrictions permit, I may or may not be able to share project details.

In the mean time, back to work.

PS. For those of you following my work on whs2smugmug, I will do what I can in between. Note I have set up a twitter feed (whs2smugmug) and a friendfeed stream (here)

Update on WHS2SmugMug

Back in January i said I’d get back to writing this Windows Home Server Add-In.

Its now June, 6 months later.  For 3 of those months my camera was back at Nikon being repaired. So I took exactly zero pictures during that time. Its now back and I’m bracing myself for the flood of pictures. I carry 26Gb’s worth of memory cards with me, so I nearly always end up over doing it.

Which brings me to the Add-In. I’ve set up a Codeplex page here. And I’ve made a few check-ins. This is not even pre-alpha code. Let me explain.

A few weeks ago, I asked, via Twitter,  Omar Shahine if I could use his Smugmug Uploader code. now I’m a great fan of the Uploader. I’ve used it for every single uploaded to SmugMug.

So Omar kindly emailed me his code.

So what you will find in the Check-ins, should you be brave enough to take look is Omar’s back-end code sans any UI as part of a WCF service. The WCF service is hosted by a Windows Service (imaginatively called “UploadService”). My plan ( cunning or not) is to have the UI in the Console communicate with the uploader process via WCF. There are other methods, but WCF gives me incredible latitude when it comes to moving data back and forth.

So the Home Server Console tab will simply be a UI for uploading stuff. Instead of Remoting in and using Omar’s uploader. This is an intermediate goal.

My ultimate goal is actually to have a “Smugmug” folder and under it a folder for every Smugmug Album in your account. the above mentioned service will monitor those folders for changes and replicate those changes to Smugmug.

So I’m building now with such a convoluted architecture with a view to where i want to get this Add-in to.

So hopefully I can get the Add-in working soon.

I’m a pretty good test case for this, but I will need testers for it.

Watch my twitter account or my FriendFeed account for updates

PS If you’re asking why I’ve not moved blogs yet, I’m waiting for the next Oxite Release first.

Designing a new Blog Header

So I’m designing a new blog, as per my previous post.

I’m NOT a graphic designer. But I am a photographer.  And I get the fact that the design of the blog has got be linked to the content.  My point being that a landscape or a nature scène looks out of place when you’re discussing the finer points of programming languages or social networks.

On the other hand, you can’t always predict what you’re going to blog about ( at least in my case), so you want to be general in some way.

If you’re following me on Twitter or Friendfeed, you’ll see that I’ve been posting alot of the stuff I’ve found on web design in general.

So, brimming with inspiration, I’ve gone off and trawled through my photo archives for something relevant.

So here are a few that I’m thinking of using in a big way,  as the header, footer, or both (i.e. cutting the picture in half):

Engineering:

 

Nasa:

Bright Spark:

All the images you see here are on Smugmug.

Let me know what you think.

Blogging: I need my Mojo back

 

Blogs still have a very important place in the on going conversation. There is no medium quite like it, not even Friendfeed. Like books, blogs are the long form, the canvas on which we write our longer thoughts. Whether we use it for venting or ranting, commenting or telling or just plain writing, blogs are the corner stone of the online presence.

The one blogging tip I’ve consistently found is the “stick to it” rule: find your subject and stick to it. Which, in all honesty is not something I’ve done very well with this blog. There is so much to talk about and comment on and just plain only chat about that it can be easy to lose your focus .

This is partly due to the fact that I only joined Twitter and Friendfeed recently, both of which are better for the kind of wide ranging discussion i enjoy.

And its also to do with the fact that, originally, this blog was set up at the drop of a hat, without any thought as to where it would go and what I would be doing online. It was almost an experiment with this newfangled thing that had come along. The whole idea was to witness the internet from the driving seat, rather than from the RSS feeds. This was at the dawn the of the social networking age, before Twitter and Facebook. Before a lot of stuff.

But I digress.

So what is my focus?? All things technology related. But as you can see, everyone else covers this far better than I ever could. Politics is too much of a heated subject for me blog about. Photography, one of my new passions in life, and programming (the passion), and music (the classical kind) and books (I joined Goodreads the other day).

My online presence at the moment is spread throughout Twitter, Freindfeed, Delicious and Smugmug. I’m seeing more and more people moving to bring these strands together in one site. This is perfectly logical and its the right thing to do.

A new site, a new blog, a new platform seems to be what I need. Sometimes I think setting up a WordPress blog is a little too easy. When you put the time and effort into the creation of something, you regard it totally differently.

So that what I’m going to do – set up a new site, part of which will include my blog.  And it’ll be me on the web, a personal presence tying together all of these desperate strands. Kind of like Austin’s Jet:

So I’m on the lookout for a new platform on which to run it. .Net is the preferred option, mainly because I can code it. I’ve looked at Oxite closely and the more I play with it the more I like it.

Why the effort?? You see, I enjoy writing. I really do. I don’t have English teachers after me for essays, or books to write. So writing a blog is the next best thing (maybe THE best). There really isn’t any other medium like it.

Now this particular blog will remain. No doubt I will find some use for it, but all that info is staying on line

I will continue posting here till things are sorted out, its probably some time away in any case.

Tweets of the Week

Here they are. Hope you like them.

shanselman RT @carlosfigueroa: #MIX09 MVC actually stands for Model-View-ChuckNorris. Controller is just one of his nicknames. about 16 hours ago from TweetDeck

shanselman RT @blowdart: #mix09 List<ScottGu> throws an exception – there is only one ScottGu. about 18 hours ago from TwitterFon

yuvipanda RT @codinghorror (Twitter): "Klingon programs don’t do accountancy. For that, you need a Ferengi programmer." about 19 hours ago from TweetDeck

wilw Things I didn’t expect to see when I woke up today: 4714 people have looked at a picture of my socks. 51000 people are reading this. Um. 5:13 PM Feb 2nd from twitterrific

loic No, I won’t publish any seesmic videos of Bill Gates in #davos bathrooms, I promise 11:04 AM Jan 30th from TwitterBerry

ScottBourne RT from @guykawasaki – If you have money and power, you choose Macintosh If you’re oppressed, you use Windows. 11:16 PM Jan 28th from web

Mona I think Napolean Dynamite smells like bacon. 7:54 PM Jan 26th from web

BrentSpiner Ah, home again. Phoenix was very nice. Gee, Wil Wheaton. What a nice young man. What was I thinking…heh,heh,heh. 6:12 PM Jan 26th from web

davewiner Facing facts: I am one of the most hated people on the Internet. 7:31 PM Jan 24th from web

OdeToCode 5 minutes of blinding snow followed by 5 minutes of blinding sunlight. I feel like I’m in mother nature’s test suite. 3:17 PM Jan 24th from Witty

There you are.  Some are funny. Some are true. It just my sense of humor.

Tweets of the Week

This weeks round up of  my favourite tweets:

r Night has fallen on DC, but inauguration parade route is being lit by Joe Biden’s teeth. 10:57 PM Jan 20th from twhirl

shanselman RT @SeanAlex: http://www.whitehouse.gov has relaunched, the executive branch has been rebooted. 5:41 PM Jan 20th from TwitterFon

Rafe My son the train nut: "Obama and Mama and Dada and me are all going to ride in the caboose!" 3:35 PM Jan 20th from twhirl

Wossy @rickwray Just got text back from Thom – " No sir I don’t twitter." 12:46 PM Jan 20th from web in reply to rickwray

(Classic British stiff upper lip, no??)

eclipse115 David Bowie is kicking muppets. Ahhhh life is good 10:35 PM Jan 19th from digsby

benjaminspector Anne Coulter and Rush Limbaugh just attacked the Democratic Party as the party of immigrants. I wonder what Indian Tribe they come from. 7:40 PM Jan 19th from web

MarsRovers Miles: "You are big gamblers. You risk a whole career on a 6 minute plunge in the atmosphere. That’s ALL IN baby." 11:54 PM Jan 15th from twhirl

codinghorror you haven’t truly lived until you’ve plugged 24 GB of memory into a server. I got chills. And this will be *peanuts* in 3 years. 11:42 PM Jan 14th from web

Scobleizer Hah, yeah @Carnage4Life my yogurt guy wasn’t right. I was wrong to get involved in Steve Jobs’ private life by reporting that. 10:39 PM Jan 14th from web

davewiner steve jobs steve jobs steve jobs steve jobs steve jobs steve jobs steve jobs steve jobs steve jobs steve jobs steve jobs steve jobs 9:56 PM Jan 14th from web

shanselman RT @mhumphrey: Had to stop following Hanselman. Great guy, but blabs like a woman 8:56 PM Jan 14th from TweetDeck

Remember I’m http://twitter.com/rbonini