Over the last couple months I’ve been developing some digital signage kiosk software for shopping malls in Southern California. One requirement of this software is that it should cycle content (advertisements, coupons, videos, etc) and provide touchscreen features (print coupons, signup for mall events) on-demand without ever being interrupted.
The kiosks should NEVER be instructed to navigate to an external website or URL because this would break the automated content cycle.
As we progressed through several development phases, what initially seemed easy – keeping the kiosk cycle running 24/7 – soon became a difficult task. We also had the problem of getting people to actually use the kiosks. Who wants to be sucked into an advertising loop anyhow? So we started adding more features in order to bring awareness and attention to the usefulness of the kiosks.
One statement that is constantly thrown out there to make Carrier IQ’s software seem legitimate is this:
“Three of the main complaints we hear from mobile device users are (1) dropped calls, (2) poor customer service, and (3) having to constantly recharge the device. Our software allows Operators to figure out why problems are occurring, why calls are dropped, and how to extend the life of the battery. When a user calls to complain about a problem, our software helps Operators’ customer service more quickly identify the specific issue with the phone.”
If it sounds useful to you, that’s because it is! Every device should have self check and correction mechanisms in place. We have these in software programming, they’re called error handlers. In other applications, we may just have to log some data to visualize trends over time for an accurate diagnosis of existing problems or potential points of optimization.
My problem is not whether Carrier IQ may be “snooping” on people. As with any communications/telephony issue, these are the real security implications that I can see: Continue reading
Over the past three days, millions of Blackberry users have been unable to send/receive email and surf the web. Now it’s a global problem with every major news channel and radio station touting the severity.
RIM has posted an official response which is being updated regularly, summing up the problem to an oversight with their email backup system.
Businesses who host their own Blackberry services using Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) usually get by unscathed, since global outages like this rarely affect the synchronization infrastructure between a Blackberry employee and the company’s BES server.
However, today I can confirm that our BES system is being affected by this outage.
UPDATE: Service has been restored!!! Some time in the afternoon yesterday (~3:00 PM PST), all of the emails which had been held up on our BES system finally synced up with our handhelds.
Why does it take SIX police officers to apprehend ONE 160 lb. schizophrenic homeless man, and WHY DON’T THEY PROCEED TO CUFF HIM AT ANY POINT?
Kelly was brutally murdered while terrified and crying for help.
On July 5, 2011 six police were caught on tape beating Kelly Thomas, a “peaceful homeless man” into a coma while he was screaming “Dad! Dad! Dad!” for help.
I’d like to know what procedure it was that instructed Police Officers to bash Kelly’s head in and tazer him repeatedly while more cops show up to participate, NOT ONCE PUTTING CUFFS ON HIM, until the still, lifeless body of a brain damaged man lay there on the concrete?
Turns out Kelly’s dad is an ex-police officer of the Fullerton Police Department and teaches police procedures. When he was interviewed about the killing he stated that police procedures were certainly not followed. Apparently, the Fullerton Police Department and the Orange County District Attorney are close friends. The city of Fullerton already tried to pay off Kelly’s family with $900,000. Because of this, the FBI is now involved.
I recently landed some freelance work doing websites for people, and after fulfilling their wishes I’ve been able to expand my business in this area through more work and new opportunities recommended to me by happy customers.
I am excited to begin offering Web Design Services!
As a promo deal, I’m giving 20% off my regular price until the end of July 2011.
DAL released his first DUBSTEP/ELECTRO album for free last week. Simply titled “Music” the EP, I think it’s accurate to say that this album is inspired by cutting edge dubstep and electro producers. It blurs the line between house, glitch, funk, dance, and psychedelic.
And I can attest to his production skills as I have seen them first hand; he is highly talented! If you’re a fan of electronic music in any way, you definitely don’t want to miss this one…head on over to his official website and and snatch up your free album before it goes retail. Or become a follower and stay up to date on news and releases at one of the many DAL Music fan pages.
For his debut, I posted a small press release on Reddit.com where his album has received excellent feedback and thousands of listens so far. It even got re-posted by someone else on Reddit.com to the dubstep channel, where it gained more momentum. Join the discussion on Reddit!
If you’re like most people who have accumulated a large collection of personal photos, music, and videos on your computer at home, but wish you had access to everything whenever and wherever you are, then Nest might be for you!
Or maybe you’re a business owner who’s frequently out of the office. Install Nest on your workstation. Leave town. Open Nest on your smartphone. Start browsing your files!
Your computer + Nest = Your computer on the internet
Or to put it another way, Nest turns your computer into a “Personal Cloud“where you can access your files remotely via a web browser from almost any device, much like the new cloud music players, only you host all of your own files.
In a nutshell, Nest is…
A remote file browser
A remote music streamer with playlist support
A remote image viewer with slideshow support
A remote document viewer
Don’t allow big corporations to store and own your intellectual property!
My software of choice for composing music, FL Studio 10 has just been released! Previously known as FruityLoops, it started out as a sound looping program for creating grooves and patterns, but earned a poor reputation from critics and elitists for its amateur “toy-like” interface and capabilities, which is probably why those misinformed ignorants still consider the software to be of questionable quality, claiming it does not compare to a professional DAW used in a real studio. Are we still living in 1992?
The very passionate development team at Image-Line continually expanded upon FruityLoops until it became the fully fledged digital audio workstation behemoth that it is today, far more capable than FruityLoops ever was. It rivals even the best DAW software around (ProTools, Logic, I’m lookin’ at you!) and it does so at a very cut-throat price. If you’re looking for the most affordable DAW that will do practically everything, FL Studio is choice.
FL Studio has played a key role in my own music productions throughout the years, and I personally can’t wait to try out the exciting new features. Auto-tune (Newtone), here I come!
Perry’s ID3 Tag Library is a free ID3v1 and ID3v2 tag parsing utility that has been tested to work with Visual Studio, VB.NET, ASP.NET, Visual Basic for Applications and VBScript. Use the library as a reference in your own Visual Studio project to parse ID3 tag data embedded in MP3 files. This library is useful for anyone looking to implement ID3 tag capabilities in their own custom solutions and applications. The ability to write tag data will be supported in a future release.
The ID3TagLibrary is pretty simple to use:
Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
' create an mp3 object from a file on the hard drive
Dim mp3 As New ID3TagLibrary.MP3File("C:\song.mp3")
' put the mp3's title into a label control
Label1.Text = mp3.Title
' put the mp3's artwork (if any!) into a picturebox control
PictureBox1.Picture = mp3.Tag2.Artwork
End Sub
What if I told you that to craft your own guitar, all you need is a shovel, a drill, a few bits of guitar hardware, and some patience!? I wasn’t able to find out the original crafter’s name because the source is in Russian, but the series of pictures and accompanying Youtube video were straightforward enough. Here’s the final result:
The article where I found this only had a series of pictures and I’m by no means a skilled guitar crafter, so I’ve added descriptions where I could.
Big news the other day, AT&T is about to acquire T-Mobile. Internet rage ensues. It was only a matter of time before someone started a petition, one of which made it to the front page on reddit.com:
Short history debrief: First AT&T was Ma Bell, then the Federal government broke that up into several companies which created fierce competition in the market. Many of those companies grouped together again under the same umbrella, in one legal way or another. Several years later and the Ma Bell antics are in full swing once again; in 2005 it was announced that Cingular Wireless, a joint venture between AT&T and BellSouth, would be sold under the AT&T name. And now AT&T is after T-Mobile.
If history taught us anything, wasn’t it that we can’t allow corporations to monopolize an entire industry?
A long time ago, I created this idea called Verbal Reckoning where I would collect the most absurd claims and arguments from the web and comment on them myself in a thorough, very critical, insulting and sarcastic way…like policing internet trolls (a contradiction in itself). But mostly it was for humor’s sake, entertainment for the soul. This project idea faded quickly as I took interest in other things, but there was one relic from this ancient endeavor which I recently found on my FTP server and still hold close to my heart…
“A well-designed program uses classes and design patterns; it has high cohesion, low coupling, and limited cyclomatic complexity.” -Riyad Mammadov BEEP BEEP BEEP BULLSHIT DETECTED
Any programmer worth his intellect would be cautious of statements such as this one. I’m surprised to see this advice come from an Enterprise Architect with 16 years of experience. Come on man, put away that skunk! Commenting source code is a tool like any other, including unit tests. Some people prefer different tools or a combination of them all. Design practices such as unit testing and commenting source code should yield positive results when used correctly. Why else would these tools exist?
To make an outrageous claim that one should not use a fundamental tool such as commenting source code would be akin to me saying unit tests are a waste of time because they introduce an extra layer of design and complexity that is probably not necessary or useful at all, causing more dependency and a longer development period, not to mention costing the client more money in the end. While my statement is correct in some context or another, there are aspects of unit testing which I cannot deny the plausibility of, such as NASA using their own method of unit testing during the development of Project Mercury in the 1960′s. And I bet my butt that they also had documentation in the form of written English, which is precisely why commenting source code is a solid practice!
Classic sensational headline with a follow up clarification to keep oneself in good standing? In response to his original article, which received a flurry of negative feedback from Reddit.com users, he goes on to clarify that “one often-repeated mistake was that I am advocating against ALL source code comments. This is simply not true, and if you read the blog post through the end, you will see a pretty funny example of a very legitimate comment one programmer left in his code.”
What the hell? How did this \\heaven\HP4650 printer get added to my system at login!?
Enter Google Cloud Print.
“By connecting your printer with the Google Cloud you will be able to print to your printer from any computer or smart phone, regardless of where you are. Just activate the Google Cloud Print connector in Google Chrome and your printer will automatically be available to you from Google Cloud Print enabled web and mobile apps.”
The Google Cloud? The Cloud? Cloud Computing? In the Cloud? Google Computing? In the Google!? AAAGGGHHH SHORT CIRCUIT….
Utterly confusing. This is simply the American way, re-branding old $hit for profit. So Google has their own Cloud in the sky. I guess the way they see it, different Cloud-based providers will have their own “Clouds” (read: data centers) where they host and provision internet based services and resources.
But how is Google Cloud Print any different than setting up Internet Printing Protocol on your HP Color LaserJet 4650 or Canon iR5000 printer? I’ll tell you the glaring differences:
Requires Google Chrome on the computer that will be sharing the printer.
Requires Google Cloud Print-enabled apps to print from, such as Gmail, Google Docs, and Chrome OS. There aren’t many alternatives at this point.
Works with just about any printer attached to your computer.
You now rely on Google as a middle man between your internet device and your printer at home.
Perry’s Reverb Rhythm Calculator is a utility for musicians (as well as mixing and mastering engineers) that will compute reverb pre-delay and decay values (in milliseconds) for you to use with your reverb plugins. These values are specifically synchronized to the rhythm of a chosen Tempo (BPM), and an offset slider allows for slight adjustments to the output.
Big news for old gaming junkies! GameInformer reports today that Duke Nukem Forever is set to be released on May 3, 2011 after 14 years of development and delays. GearBox Software unveiled the game in playable form at PAX a few months ago. GearBox has put out some very polished stuff in the past, so we might actually see Duke hit the shelves once again, with infinitely more anger and firepower for those alien bastards who shot up his ride.
To celebrate this news, I will be personally releasing a never before seen episode pack for Duke Nukem 3D that I developed many many years ago titled Deth. Stay tuned…
Check out the new official trailer, which speaks for itself…
Sometimes I need to migrate a large amount of shared files on a network from one drive or system to another for better organization, more space, security concerns, or whatever the reason might be. However, a migration like this can interrupt network users who need access to those files. In this post I’ll show you a better method for file migration, which is now a staple in my IT arsenal, as it has proven useful many times.
Contrary to what RIM and other people might have you believe, it is very possible to install and run Blackberry Enterprise Server (including BES Express) on a Windows XP Professional computer. To further complicate the problem, these same folks will also tell you that there is no way to install the Exchange System Manager using the Small Business Server 2003 CD’s.
Of course, all of this is simply not true, and the setup is smooth as long as you know what to do. RIM won’t provide technical support for this configuration, but we don’t really care, now do we?
At the company where I work, we use a software program called MaxView to perform bid take-offs for large construction projects. We have configured several custom symbols in MaxView which we use to count items in large mechanical prints, and it takes about an hour to configure these symbols. Rather than configure these symbols individually for each new user, or an existing user who lost his settings, we needed a simple way to export the settings from one computer/user to another.
There’s a problem with Bank of the West’s EDS Pro software: it doesn’t assign the necessary permissions to the registry keys it creates for the OCR plug-in component during installation, effectively locking out any user from running the software except for the user who originally installed the software.
If you find what I've provided on Glass Ocean useful, feel free to donate a few bucks to help keep it going. Your contributions are greatly appreciated!
Kelly was brutally murdered while terrified and crying for help.
I recently landed some freelance work doing websites for people, and after fulfilling their wishes I’ve been able to expand my business in this area through more work and new opportunities recommended to me by happy customers.
My software of choice for composing music, 
Perry’s ID3 Tag Library is a free ID3v1 and ID3v2 tag parsing utility that has been tested to work with Visual Studio, VB.NET, ASP.NET, Visual Basic for Applications and VBScript. Use the library as a reference in your own Visual Studio project to parse ID3 tag data embedded in MP3 files. This library is useful for anyone looking to implement ID3 tag capabilities in their own custom solutions and applications. The ability to write tag data will be supported in a future release.
Big news the other day, AT&T is about to acquire T-Mobile. Internet rage ensues. It was only a matter of time before someone started a petition, one of which made it to the front page on reddit.com:
A long time ago, I created this idea called Verbal Reckoning where I would collect the most absurd claims and arguments from the web and comment on them myself in a thorough, very critical, insulting and sarcastic way…like policing internet trolls (a contradiction in itself). But mostly it was for humor’s sake, entertainment for the soul. This project idea faded quickly as I took interest in other things, but there was one relic from this ancient endeavor which I recently found on my FTP server and still hold close to my heart…
What the hell? How did this \\heaven\HP4650 printer get added to my system at login!?
Big news for old gaming junkies! GameInformer reports today that Duke Nukem Forever is set to be released on May 3, 2011 after 14 years of development and delays. GearBox Software unveiled the game in playable form 
Sometimes I need to migrate a large amount of shared files on a network from one drive or system to another for better organization, more space, security concerns, or whatever the reason might be. However, a migration like this can interrupt network users who need access to those files. In this post I’ll show you a better method for file migration, which is now a staple in my IT arsenal, as it has proven useful many times.
Glass Ocean is Perry Butler's Blog, Music Productions, Services, and Software Development.