Inky

Bookeen has just released a new version of the firmware of their CyBook device (v1.1). Check out http://www.bookeen.com/support/ebook-support.aspx for more information (requires login).

There was a recent fall-out over the blocking of *youtube.com on the Messenger service. I doubt this was ultimately the result of Microsoft wanting to promot it's MessengerTV service, though, as some conspiracy theorists may have you believe.

 

Although I've worked at the Messenger Server team (I'll use that name for simplicity reasons) before, I have never heard of a so called partner handling the blocked URLs. Things change, of course, so they might have changed this over the past year. I can also think of valid business reasons for this move: there are companies out there who simply have more knowledge about these nasty URLs, quick-spreading trojans, virusses, and such, and the team in question may simply want to shift its focus back to developing new features for Messenger instead of putting considerable man-power into a single feature which consists (mostly) of adding new URLs and removing some out-dated ones.

 

It does make me doubt the reliability and quality control of said partner. Such f-ups definitely make the Messenger service as a whole look bad, especially when communities like Slashdot get wind of it ... of course, Microsoft bashing is the #1 favorite past-time over there, but still. Other valid URLs like ebuddy.com are also still blocked, despite questions from the public and eBuddy themselves to unblock the domain. This is where another question kicks in: if YouTube can be unblocked in a few hours, then why is there (presumably) so much red tape and beaurocracy surrounding other domains for it take weeks instead?

 

Of course, this all assumes the "SPIM Filter" has a legimate reason for existance in the first place. I think it's a good first step, but it definitely needs work.. starting a year ago (remember, the "feature" has been active for a few years now).

 

What do you think? Should Microsoft remove the filter completely? Or should it be replaced with a different way of blocking malicious URLs? Do you think it should be intergrated with the Phising filter used by Internet Explorer?

Don't get me wrong, I'm still extremely happy with my Zune, and the software it comes with. Heck, the XNA 3.0 CTP was released this week, and now I have games on my Zune. Yay! (Although most games I tried still crash.. I guess that's what you get for using experimental software).

 

There's just one minor detail about the recently released version 2.5 of the Zune software... it includes the "Now Playing" feature for Messenger. Yeah, great work boys! Obviously my whole Zune project has suffered a bit of a setback, and to be honest, now that they added the feature, it has obviously become less of a priority for me to finish my own stuff... I do have other stuff to do!

 

Ah well, it was great while it lasted. I might release it some day, or I might release the source in a few days. We'll see.

 

(Appologies for the lack of links to the CTP, previous blog posts and what not, but I'm too lazy right now to add them.)

1. A programmer with a soldering iron;

2. A manager who codes;

3. A user who gets "ideas".

 

The last few weeks I have noticed I have signed up for a few additional Web 2.0 services, such as Digg, Last.fm, Live Mesh, and stuff. Not that I really use them, or want to use them.. But most sites require their visitors to sign up in order to post comments (whatever happened to post as an anonymous coward?)

 

I still vehemently refuse to use Twitter though. I'm afraid the world might end up a little less sane if I do.

 

The Zune stuff is coming along nicely. I'm adding Last.fm support today, which should be a cool addition. I'll add some more options for the Now Playing add-in, and then I'm ready to build the actual installer. It should be interesting to try and build it using Zune's own UI framework, which might result in a purdy application!

The Zune software is cool. It looks sleak, works great. There is just one drawback: It doesn't implement the Now Playing feature for Windows Live Messenger. Of course, a well-motivated geek doesn't just give up. Instead, I've created what I call "Zune Add-Ins". A few lines of magic in the Zune resources has allowed me to pretty much implement, touch, iterate over, and what not, every object in the Zune software.

 

Très cool. So how does this all work you ask? The Zune software implements what is called Iris -- A UI framework based on MCML. Iris adds several improvements over MCML, including the ability to run scripts.. And the best thing is, Iris is written entirely in .NET! So, the first step was to let the Zune software load my own DLL. This was reasonably straightforward by adding a new Script tag, and adding a reference to the DLL as a namespace. The second part was adding a small "Add-Ins" link next to the settings link/button in the top-right corner. When clicked, it launches a new dialog.. And this is where the real magic kicks in.

 

Intead of putting the whole dialog in the ZuneResources DLL, isntead I opted to one-time import my own XML file containing IML (Iris Markup Language). From this XML file I can create, manage, etc., the settings dialogs for Add-Ins, by letting Add-Ins give me the path to their own XML file. This way, you can actually create neat little Zune dialogs for your Add-In settings.

 

The Add-Ins themselves simply reference a special .NET library which contains an IZuneAddIn interface, and are stored in the /AddIns/ folder. My code simply walks over all the DLL files in that folder, dynamically loads them and checks if there are any classes implementing the special interface. If so.. Voila! Your Add-In has been sucked into the Zune software. Cool!

 

Either way, here is the result so far:

 

I'll work on it a bit more, and then release it for BETA. This will probably be sometime next week.

... and still no way to filter on drafts -- posted december 2006!

It's not big secret that we use Google Apps (GMail, etc.) for our bot2k3.net domain. Nick once set it up, and it works fine, so I'm hesitant to move over to a different solution (such as Windows Live Domains.. does that even still exist?), or running our own mail server (we did that for a few years, and it was a pain to maintain properly). Seeing as I always access my e-mail via Outlook (POP3), I never really checked out the web front-end.

 

So, today I had to log in from work, and not wanting to set up Outlook I figured I'd give the web front-end a go. I finished what I had set out to do, but then my eye caught the spam count.. 3,500 (and then some)! Wow. I never got all those spam e-mails via POP3, so Gmail is doing a pretty decent job with it. I still can't believe I'm receiving that much spam, though, but by the looks of it they are pouring in (2 or 3 every 10 minutes or so.. Yikes!).

 

My e-mail address must be sitting on a fair number of web pages. Including my blog. Shit.

 

Good thing that my primary e-mail address (my ISPs) doesn't receive that much spam (maybe only one or two a day), and isn't listed anywhere un-obfuscated.

Hmm. As you can see, I have an XBOX Gamercard thingamajig on my blog. Seeing as I also own a Wii, I wondered if there was something similar for that console. After some searching there doesn't appear to be, and it looks like Club Nintendo also does not expose the data via an API of sorts (which sucks!). Does anybody know of any alternatives?

I've been tagged by Embee. Now, supposely, I need to write 10 random things about myself, and I need to tag someone else, and I can't tag back. Or something along those lines. I don't react too well to "tags" however. I've done it once, in a distant past (or was it just over a year ago? oh well), and now I consider it to be a form of spam -- Something along the lines of "Send this to 10 people or you'll never find the love of your life". Yeah, right. 

 

She (Embee) did finally add Windows Live Alerts to her blog, though, which is super cool stuff. Everyone who has a blog should offer the alerts: I love getting these alerts on Messenger, instead of having to deal with ten different applications to track my communications. E-mail and IM (+ Alerts) is pretty much all I need and want. And if I ever decide I want to know about new blog post on the go (i.e. via mobile), Windows Live Alerts let's me do that as well!

 

(Yes, I know Outlook and IE now offer RSS support, but I don't like the interfaces).