Category: Geeky/Programming

Categories
Geeky/Programming

Firefox Support

Most of my web developing has been for a corporate environment, where every browser was IE (or we could say – install IE!), but now I have to develop for the internet in general. Today I found that more Firefox issues are handled if you set your browserCaps in your web.config so that ASP.NET sees FF as a “Up Level” browser (and not something like Netscape 2.0!!). Granted that there are other CSS issues and formatting issues, but I found that the majority of issues clear up once ASP.net knows about Firefox (and Opera, et al)

Good browserCaps reference

Categories
Geeky/Programming

Music API

I wish there was some kind of Music API out there that you could pass in Artist name and Album Name and get the album art. There doesn’t really seem to be a good solution to this. CDDB SDK is a joke, MusicBrainz isn’t much better. Some people say use Amazon.com API, but that is also sketchy – It wasn’t built for looking up music, just products.

With all the music services out there, you would think there would be an easier way to get this meta info on artists/albums/tracks.

I was thinking – I could just screen scrape MSN Music – oh but wait, they don’t have all artists, just ones they sell (Try searching for “The Beatles” – it comes up with cover songs because they don’t sell any Beatles tracks).

Maybe I just don’t know if what I am looking for is out there, but it would sure make it easier to develop applications around your music library if there was.

Update: I decided to use the Amazon Web Service…It seems to work in the trials I am doing, we will see when I run over a music library.

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Geeky/Programming

Orb

So in my last post, I mentioned that I was working on my music library. Well, I have it pretty much clean (as clean as you can get a 10 year old mp3 library). I decided to check out Orb (http://www.orb.com/) which lets me steam out my library so I can listen anywhere with a web connection. What is really cool as I can listen to my library as a 3GP stream on my phone. Right now I am streaming 311 from my computer to my phone and listening to it with headphones, how cool is that! The quality isn’t cd quality or anything, more like internet radio.

I tested just from a pc and it streams at 128kbs which isn’t bad at all. For sure you want shuffle on as it is just live stream. There can be a little skippage as well, like a song will just skip 50% in and goto the next, I don’t know why…maybe I will look at the support forum.

Anyway, something cool to play with at least 😉

Update: I tried this out at work and it worked very well, no skipping at all. I am liking it

Categories
Geeky/Programming

Media Center Edition

I am liking Windows Media Center Edition 2005. I watched a divx TV show and I read some RSS feeds through Newsgator MCE plugin. I need to get a tuner card and a longer s-video cable to get the setup correct with my TV, but so far it is pretty sweet. I hear there is a hotmail add-in coming this week or next so I will have to try that out too. I think I want an Xbox 360 as it is a MCE Extender. 🙂

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Geeky/Programming

ChangeIE

Working on a BHO for IE to mimic the functionality of Greasemonkey in Firefox. I created a GotDotNet workspace here if anyone is intrested. Right now it pretty much is just a BHO , and I have it working with one UserScript, possibilites are endless..

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Geeky/Programming

Free Ringtones

I know how to get free ringtones from 3gupload.com if anyone is intrested. I really don’t want to post it up here but I can let someone know if they really want. You can get music tones and polyphonic tones, its pretty easy, especially if you are a little techie.

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Geeky/Programming

Linspire

Well, Linspire has made their OS avail for free, for the last 5 days, and it ends tomorrow. I downloaded the ISO and I am actually running it right now. I kind of like it. I will see how long I use it.

Check it out – expires tomorrow so hurry Linspire/Freespire Deal

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Geeky/Programming

IE7 – Wish List

I have been using IE7 lately, and here is what I wish it had.

1) Warning on closing browser with more than one tab open.
2) Option to open every link in any program into a new tab

Not much – but big things.

One thing I wish IE had in general was an easier to use API to add extensions and add ons.

To make BHO’s, you need to hook onto IE and all that. I wish there was a more “managed” way to do it.

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Geeky/Programming

Hacking IE7 Feed Discovery – More than RSS!

Well, I am looking at the registry. Right now in IE7 the feed finder will only find RSS. To add more types, goto

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftInternet ExplorerFeed Discovery

you can add other types there

like application/atom+xml

Close all IE windows, and then goto a site with an atom feed. The feed discovery button will light up!

Categories
Geeky/Programming

Moving and Microsoft Betas

i am moving to a new apt tomorrow, so things have been kind of hectic lately. Cancelled my internet and phone, and right now i am “borrowing” a clearwire modem for the weekend, so limited connectivity. I have been using IE7 Beta1 for the latter part of this week and I think it is good, but still has a ways to go. MSN Messenger Beta 7.5 is sweet, voice clips are fun. The Hotmail Beta – needs alot of work! But I have subscribed to a few devs on the team and posted to their blogs with some things I am seeing. Installed Vista on seperate computer and have been playing with that.

Today I got the OneCare Live CD in the mail, haven’t had a chance to test it yet though.

And finally, I have been playing with doing a MSN Virtual Earth mashup, which is pretty intresting.

Microsoft is just coming out with new stuff so fast, it is hard to keep it all straight!