Chris Lanier's Blog : Other

Yes, The Green Button is Having Issues

chrisl — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:44:00 GMT

Microsoft appeared to have fixed one of the issues I was having on the backend, but that fix has caused the entire site to come to its knees with wonderful message like "Value cannot be null. Parameter name: relativeUrl" when attempting to make a new post or reply. Unfortunantly, since I don't have direct access to the server there is nothing I can personally do about it.

Sadly since you can’t make a new post or reply, The Green Button will effectively be down until Microsoft can fix the issue. Ian’s forums on The Digital Lifestyle might be a good overflow forum until Microsoft fixes The Green Button.

Update: Looks like some are having luck posting (I'm not one of them). Try signing out and then back in.

Short Bits: Debug Menus, TV Pack OEMs, Hurricane

chrisl — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 01:34:00 GMT

I survived Ike without any damage here in Katy, sadly that can’t be said for the rest of the Houston and Galveston areas.

Ever wonder which of your dozen TV tuners is being used to tune the program you are watching? If you have the TV Pack there is a bit of a hack that you can do in order to find out. First spotted by Dave at The Green Button, type 411 and then press More Info in order to access Microsoft’s debug menu.

A lot of people have been asking about the TV Pack on CableCARD PCs from Dell and HP. While I have no inside information on the subject, I have doubts that either will be shipping the TV Pack at all. Media Center is not HP or Dells business, and as it involves creating a new image for their machines I fall to understand why either would bother. I might be wrong, but I wouldn’t hold out for a Dell or HP with the TV Pack. If a TV Pack machine is what you are after, you are most likely going to want one of these OEMs.

Microsoft Takes Over The Green Button

chrisl — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:52:00 GMT

Today is a big day for the Media Center community, and as speculated upon way too much The Green Button has become an official Microsoft web property!

So what does this mean? A few things, starting with increased Microsoft interaction that nearly everyone told us was so important. When Jessica Zahn left to join the Zune team, she collectively broke the hearts of all TGB members who lost the opportunity to get direct Microsoft feedback, but fear not increased Microsoft presence will come with the acquisition of The Green Button.

Next up on the list, ads are gone! Google AdWords and all pop-up text ads are gone (Plug: advertisers looking to target the Media Center community should consider advertising here), so everyone can enjoy the perks of a community built on members and not non-Media Center related pop-ups.

Other changes will be coming, but as the official announcement states Microsoft is not looking to shut down or limit your freedom of speech on The Green Button. I will still be a moderator as will Mike and the rest of the gang, so nothing will change in your ability to criticize Microsoft for poor decisions and have your voice heard (and as always, attacks directed at members or Microsoft employees will not be allowed).

Please let me know what you think of the change, but I think the increased funding and potential for direct communication will benefit all!

Community Server 2008 SP1 Upgrade

chrisl — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 21:56:00 GMT

This site now runs on Community Server 2008 SP1!

Win an HP HDX Dragon PC at The Green Button

chrisl — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:45:00 GMT

We are taking our turn at The Green Button to give away an HP HDX Dragon PC ($5,000+ value), so everyone should make sure to enter. Entering to win is easy, just tell us (at The Green Button, not here) what our next site upgrade should focus on and look like. What are we doing wrong now, what could be do better, what type of format should the upgrade be, etc.

That’s all you have to do to enter. To enter you must have registered an account at The Green Button before 4/28/08. Check out the rest of the rules here, and remember you only have until Friday 5:00pm PST, May 30, 2008 to enter. The winner will be posted on Saturday, May 31, 2008.

I’ve put a few buttons in the sidebar to remind you to enter, so I expect everyone to give us something we can do better (and I know there is a lot we could do better).

Update: So of course as soon as we start something like this the site craps out. Admin's have been notified, clearly everyones top suggestion for The Green Button should just be a site that works. I think we will work on that first. Other suggestions welcome as a part of the contest or outside of it.

Update 2: Back up and working.

Advertise Here

chrisl — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 22:49:00 GMT

Are you interested in reaching over 90,000 unique visitors a month generating over 130,000 page views? Stop spending top dollar advertising on non-targeted websites, reach your audience with low CPM based advertising here. You will be able to reach digital home and media enthusiasts at a CPM under $2.

Graphical Banners
Graphical banners are offered in a verity of formats including 160x600, 468x60, and 200x200.

160x600 (Wide Skyscraper) - $200 (<1.5CPM)
468x60 (Top Banner) - $200 (<1.5CPM)
200x200 (Small Square) - $150 (<1.2CPM)

Graphical banners are shown site wide on all pages. Wide Skyscraper and Small Square are shown in the left sidebar, Top Banners displays at the top of all pages site wide. Images are limited to 45kb. Animation is allowed, but no Flash.

Google AdWords
Google AdWords is the primary source of advertising offering text links on the left-side navigation bar and the top header. These ads appear site wide on all pages. If you are interested in creating a campaign using AdWords please see here.

For more general information on Google AdWords, please click here.

Questions? Please contact me for more information.

The Media Center Show Awards 2008

chrisl — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:52:00 GMT

Ian’s yearly Media Center Show Awards podcast has been posted, and while I wasn’t able to attend I want to thank everyone for voting for me for best enthusiast blog. Did I win? Download the show and fast forward to 52:37 to find out.

If the suspense is killing you and you must know now, I won again this year!! Thank you to everyone who voted and everyone else out their blogging.

Every year I say it wouldn’t be possible without all the other bloggers and readers and that stays true. Even more so, the Media Center community and awareness of Media Center has continued to grow over the past year. I’m interested to see what the landscape will look like next year.

Thanks to Ian for doing the show and everyone who voted. A little bit later this year I’m finally going to be back on The Media Center Show with Ian, so stay tuned.

Short Bits: Hulu Invites, Netflix BD, USB Card Reader

chrisl — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:57:00 GMT

I’ve got five (5) Hulu invites that I’m giving out. If you want one, reply to this post saying that you would like an invite and put your e-mail address as your URL. I will randomly select five people tonight and send you an invite.

It look like Netflix is dropping HD DVD and going with Blu-ray only. It’s amazing how things can turn in just a matter of weeks. Once again, HD DVD support in Media Center would be pretty pointless at this stage and native Blu-ray in Media Center is far away.

I’m looking to buy an internal (front panel) USB card reader for my desktop, but just based on reviews there isn’t nessarcly such thing as a good one. I’m looking for one with a black faceplate, LEDs that don’t stay on 24/7, and that can accept Compact Flash and SD cards. Based on reviews at Newegg there are also problems with read/write speed with a lot of them (deal breaker). Does anyone have an opinion on a good front panel USB 2.0 card reader?

Update: Invites will be sent out today to the winners.

You Know a Tech Acquisition Is Big When….

chrisl — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:33:00 GMT

ESPN has their Bottom Line showing “NEWS ALERT: Microsoft makes unsolicited bid to take over Yahoo…..would be the largest acquitision ever in the technology industry”

Microsoft Proposes Acquisition of Yahoo! for $31 per Share

Random Vista Thoughts: Part 1

chrisl — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 01:05:00 GMT

I’ve been using Vista for the past month, my first attempt to move away from Windows XP. I’ve noted a lot of things about Vista in this time, some that I like and some that I don’t. Just some random thoughts...

MCML applications make it worth the upgrade to Vista. Period.
For all Microsoft’s time spent on UI design, why the hell is the volume and network icon in the System Tray 2d crap?
Same topic, why is there a gap in between the volume/network/etc icon and the first program running on the System Tray?
Flip3D is neat, I don’t see any point of using it though.
Same applies to the live window previews, my mouse is already down there and I end up clicking it anywhere.
Aero is interesting, looks more professional than Luna did on Windows XP. Classic sucks now though, especially the Start Menu. I’m a fan of Classic so that sucks.
I think I’ve used the new and improved search features twice. Nice, but I generally know where my stuff is or browse to find it. Need to learn to search first.
~~I noticed when you delete from removable media the files go into the Recycle Bin. Finally, I’ve been so many people lose documents because of that.~~
Yet to open Windows Contacts, Windows Calendar, Windows DVD Maker, Windows Meeting Spaces, etc. Nice additions, they should have been there since Windows 2000 though.
Turned off Windows Defender, but I’m badass that way. I don’t run virus or spyware junk of any of my PCs, now the families and girlfriends are a different story.
I hate that I can’t double click on the clock in the System Tray and get the calendar. Single clicks drive me nuts.
Time synchronization still seems to not work. Hardly ever worked in Windows XP too.
I wouldn’t run a Media Center machine off of anything less than a Pentium D with 1GB of RAM. P4 and below are just horrible.
Sidebar is nice, but I need to upgrade my monitor to a widescreen for it to seem more useful.
I like that Windows Update is more integrated to the OS.
The Control Panel sucks. It (Classic View) loads slow and I click too fast for that, so I end up selecting the wrong icons because they seem to load from the middle out (huh?)
Shadow Copies is a nice feature, love it in Server but I don’t know when the last time was I needed to use it.
Not sure there are any video/audio drivers that don’t suck on Vista.
There is no easy link to the “Network and Sharing Center” from the “Network” located in the Start Menu. Have to right click that and go to Properties or go through the Control Panel. Why?
Office 2007 is great, expect when I’m going to have to teach the parents everything over again because it has been redesigned to put things were you think they should be. Tech support nightmare.
I’ve just added a Skype phone, and now it says I need to redo my Experience Index. So many things wrong with that.
Games folder and integration is nice, but I’m not a gamer.
Home Premium should be what Ultimate is. Too many editions. Lets restrict good backup from home users. Sounds like a plan to me.
My Thinkpad keeps dropping the wireless connection while connected via RDP. Then it locks me out saying something about a network connection that does not exist. Worse part, it does the same when I try and log in locally!
Sports Lounge is sweet!
Too bad Internet Explorer didn’t get any better with the upgrade.
That’s all for now.

Short Bits: Random Stuff Edition

chrisl — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 03:01:00 GMT

This is one of the best things I’ve read on the Internet in a long time. While it might have involved some illegal activities it is funny to see a company’s attempts to con everyone into uploading/downloading pirating content.

Apparently the Product Manager for Zune quit a few weeks ago, doesn’t sound like a good thing to me. In related news, the new iPod touch get a great review at PC Mag. “No portable media player has ever done this much so easily, or looked so good doing it.”

For anyone who don't watch SportsCenter, you surely want to check out our beloved Houston Cougar (aka Shasta) get beat down by Oregon’s Duck last week. I guess we showed them....or not. We lost 48-27.

Issues with ContentLink

chrisl — Wed, 23 May 2007 17:23:00 GMT

I’m having some issues with my ContentLink code, so it’s currently being displayed on the frontpage. I’m trying to figure out exactly what the problem is but so far I’m not having much luck.

For frequent visitors who don’t wish to view them, please hoover over one of the links and then click on the question mark (“?”) in the top right. Scroll to the bottom of that page, and it says “…if for any reason you would like to disable ContentLink.”

I’ve been playing with various things to tweak them on the site, and for whatever reason they basically broke two days ago. I then changed the way the code is applied to the site and added the correct tags so that it shouldn’t be displayed on any of the frontpage content. However, as you might be able to tell it’s not working right.

I’m trying my best to get it fixed, sorry for it being displayed I'm hoping I can figure out what's wrong.

Update: I've e-mail Kontera's support to see if they can help me figure some things out.

Joost Winners Posted and E-mailed

chrisl — Mon, 07 May 2007 16:10:00 GMT

Joost invites have been sent out to the following people. Sadly, the Joost software is horrible at actually getting them out the door. I only got five conformations from Joost out of the ten invites I sent. If you are on the list below and didn’t get your invite, please e-mail me with a second e-mail account (include your name and first e-mail). The Joost software will not allow you to resend invites to the same e-mail address, so I have to have a second e-mail for it to work.

mikentmp [at] hotmail [dot] com
ananiou(at)hotmail(dot)com
jcarpent at gmail dot com
gashead at gmail dot com
rustytulk+msmvps@gmail.com
michaeltrouten at gmail dot com
joost [at] samuraipanda [dot] com
molt82 (at) gmail dot com
ananiou(at)hotmail(dot)com
mikhail [dot] klassen [at] gmail [dot] com

Congrats too all the winners!

Temporary Skin Change

chrisl — Wed, 02 May 2007 00:21:00 GMT

There are some problems with my skin displaying comments in CS 2007, so I've made a temporary change so they are not nested. I hope I will be able to go back soon, but if not I'll try and redesign everything to look right.

Joost Invite Give-a-Away Round Two

chrisl — Tue, 01 May 2007 20:16:00 GMT

Seeing as my last Joost Invite post got quite a few replies, it’s time for round two. Joost has reportedly opened up unlimited invites to current testers, so it’s time for another round of random drawings. While I’m not technically limited in terms of the number of invites I can give (according to the press, no ones invites have showed up yet), I am limited in that I have no plans to send everyone an invite that asks for one. I really don’t have time to send 25-100 invites a day.

With that said, here is how it is going to work this time.

Starting today you can reply to this post with your e-mail address and you will have a chance to win (Note: user [at] domain [dot] com preferred to stop spamming by bots). One entry per person please. I will be giving away 10 invites this week.

I also wanted to add a twist to this round that will double your chances of winning. If you have a blog, create a post like this one on your blog.

Chris Lanier is giving away Joost invites on his blog. All you have to do is reply to his post and/or blog about it and you have a chance to win an invite. This is my entry, but you can click here to find out more and enter for yourself.

Once you post about it on your blog, reply to this post with a link to your blog post. People who blog and reply with the link to their post will get two entries into the drawing automatically!

Have fun! This contest is open until Friday and the winners will be posted over the weekend.

Edit: Looks like the recent Community Server 2007 upgrade is having some issues with comment display. Please let me know if it doesn't accept your comments.

Upgraded to Community Server 2007

chrisl — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 00:46:00 GMT

Susan and the gang just updated msmvps.com to Community Server 3.0 (2007). Still a few things to work out (right now part of my AdSense is broken), but this should help with the slowness that I'm sure most of you noticed over the past few months.

Any problems, please let me know.

Edit: Got AdSense working (Thanks Susan!)

Joost Invite Winners Posted!

chrisl — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 22:09:00 GMT

If you replied to my post about Joost Invites last week, today is the day you know if you were selected at random! First, a background on the process. I deleted a few posts from people who had already got invites from other sources and a few posts on people offering invites to me (keep reading for more on that). This left a bank of 76 people, and random numbers were drawn out of this 76. So, without further ado, here are the first three winners.

Post # 14 – eufreka
Post # 18 - Adam
Post # 65 - Frank

Congrats to all above. I sent out your invites a little bit ago through Joost. Now, thanks to a few other generous readers I have an additional 6 invites to give out! The follow people have also won a Joost invite from David Case. Your invites will be sent by David to your e-mails used in the replies.

Post # 31 - Arvid Palsson
Post # 1 - Mariano
Post # 4 - Anders

The follow people have also won a Joost invite from Dale (dnr). Your invites will be sent by Dale to your e-mails used in the replies.

Post # 26 - Rasmus
Post # 32 - Noah
Post # 9 - dthigpen

Thanks to all who replied and a special thanks to David and Dale for supplying the extra invites! If I get any more invites through Joost (or donations) I will do another post and you will need to reply again for another chance to win. Keep a watch out here for any more chances to win and congrats to those who have already won!

Need Your Opinions on ContentLink

chrisl — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 03:38:00 GMT

I’ve had ContentLink running on the site since last week, and most of you have likely have not noticed it. I’ve only put it on archived help articles and such, but not much on my blog postings.

I know that most of you are not fans of ContentLink, as I have seen your reactions at The Green Button between ContentLink and IntelliTXT. As I don’t need the revenue to keep this blog going, I wanted to ask people’s opinions before I go any further with it.

Since most people don’t like ContentLink, I’m not planning on enabling it site wide or for that matter, on the front page. When you come here, my main goal is for you to be interested in the content. Content always comes first, and when ads interferer with content that’s a problem for me. I do however have a small interest in advertising, so I would like to explore that here.

ContentLink Example

My thoughts for ContentLink on this site including keeping it off of the front page, always keeping RSS ad free, and providing a way for you to disable it if/when enabled.

What I was thinking is that I can use ContentLink to better monetize my traffic coming from Google, so starting this month as posts get knocked off the front page, I would edit them to add the ContentLink code. You would only see the ContentLink pop-ups when you click back to the old stories, or who I’m really gunning after, when Google searchers find results on my blog.

I’d like to get your opinions on this. I feel that keeping it off the front page is the best bet for general acceptance. For those who are not fans at all, I noticed that you can selectively disable ContentLink on a site-to-site basis. To do this, click the link below to go to an example of what ContentLink looks like enabled. Hoover over one of the links and then click on the question mark (“?”) in the top right. Scroll to the bottom of that page, and it says “…if for any reason you would like to disable ContentLink.” Done, you will never see them again (until you delete your cookies).

So, what do people think? I’d like everyone’s opinion on this before I do anything else. You can click here for an example of what a post looks like with ContentLink enabled.

Update on Stolen Images from WebGuide4 Used In MediaPortal

chrisl — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 22:02:00 GMT

Should it be any shock they never released this application? Your probably right though, nothing to hide on their part and clearly nothing was stolen in this coverup which resulted in no application being released.

Update 3: Before commenting, remember that no one from MediaPortal has contacted Doug or replied to his e-mails as of 04/04/2007 at 1 pm CST

Despite MediaPortal's "mistake" saying they only “borrowed” the graphics, Doug has posted more code samples in the comments of my other post. You can compare the code of WebGuide to the code of MediaPortal and see the similarities. As I have said, I’m not a programmer but I do understand a few of the basics and I do see similarities in the two. Feel free to compare. It’s hard to not think that the code was lifted from WebGuide4 when you consider what else they have admitted to already “borrowing.”

Doug also posted a follow-up to the reply by Frodo from MediaPortal with a post in his support forums

Doug: “I'm mystified as to why I was not contacted by MediaPortal in the first place when they wanted to "borrow" my work, and I'm having difficulty reconciling Frodo's explanation with the extent of the "borrowing" that took place. My entire library of images (more than 120 and the WebGuide logo) were included in the MediaPortal site, my stylesheets are being used, and the source-code is strewn with hardcoded pieces from my HTML/ASPX pages. There's also some awfully familiar logic flows to the layout. And the site was even called WebGuide! That's an awful lot of "borrowing!" I am reassured that Frodo has stated that any references to or infringements upon WebGuide's copyrighted material will be removed from MediaPortal's site.

I've spent thousands of hours over the past four years turning WebGuide into what it is today, and it is discouraging and even a little mind-boggling to find that someone has "borrowed" my work to jump start their own product. I appreciate the Media Center communities' overwhelming support and help in solving this issue. Developing for such an engaged and loyal community is extremely satisfying, and I look forward to focusing on making WebGuide an even better product.”

So, you can judge for yourself based on everything that has happened today. I see it as a huge problem, and MediaPortal's cover-up of the issue is an even bigger one.

Of course, Media Center users (MCE 2005/Vista) should check out WebGuide4. Download it here.

Update:

And so in contiues….The MediaPortal Admin’s edited my post in their forums to point to Doug’s forums instead of my blog. Not that I have a problem with people going to Doug’s forums (I’ve linked to them several times today and have been communicating with Doug too) but MediaPortal is now trying to cover up this even more by forcing users to only see the information they want them to see.

Yeah, they have nothing to hide.

If they didn't want users to see their "mistake," the frist step would have been not to steal someone else's work. Be it a single image, line of code, or whole program.

Stop trying to cover it up MediaPortal guys, it ain't going to work.

Updated: Did MediaPortal Just Rip-Off WebGuide4?

Update 3: Before commenting, remember that no one from MediaPortal has contacted Doug or replied to his e-mails as of 04/04/2007 at 1 pm CST.

Note: Original title read “Update on Stolen Code from WebGuide4 Used In MediaPortal”. Changed to reflect known facts and too try and get MediaPortal supporters to answer my questions, instead of avoid and ignore them. I’ll digress on the code for now.

MediaPortal Steals Images from WebGuide4 Developer (Rips Off Program)

chrisl — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 15:34:00 GMT

Update: MediaPortal Responds! According to them: “To be clear, these parts are gfx only and NOT code. The reason this happened is because during development we borrowed the gfx layout of webguide4 with the intention to replace all the gfx with MP's own ones before releasing.” You can be your own judge based on the code below.

Update 3: Before commenting, remember that no one from MediaPortal has contacted Doug or replied to his e-mails as of 04/04/2007 at 1 pm CST.

Yesterday I posted about the possibility that MediaPortal might have just ripped off WebGuide4 by Doug Berrett. Today, thanks to everyone we find out that this looks like it's sadly true. From the looks of things MediaPortal’s code looks very much like Doug’s from WebGuide4, a non-open source product.

It started out noticing how similar the graphics were, and in fact the exact same UI design is in both products. Both are said to use the same web server components, Cassini or IIS. Interesting thing about that is that Cassini does not yet work with MediaPortal’s stolen version, where it is the default with WebGuide4 (according to forum posts). Not sure what happened there, but Cassini and IIS are pretty major web servers for ASP.NET so it’s hard to claim it was stolen based on that alone.

Attack of the Clones!

Then last night, MediaPortal strangely took down there post about “Webinterface for tvserver3” as well as the Wiki docs (Google Cache) on their website. The post can now be found via Google's Cache, and the original story now says “You are not authorized to view this resource.”

Thanks to Mashman for doing the basic research and finding the SVN link at SourceForge. Here we can even see that the MediaPortal guys left the WebGuide4 images in the directories! What better way to get caught then to have images of the original work in your stolen copy. wg4-logo-silver.png and wg4-logo-silver-big.png are just two of the exact images stolen from WebGuide4 but it doesn’t stop with images.

One of the great things about open source is that you can download the code and take a look at it. Doug has both copies of the code (his WebGuide4 and MediaPortal’s stolen) and had compared the two.

The results are not good so far. According to Berrett, the “coincidences in the code… make me suspicious.”

Here are some samples before, in my non-programmer opinion I can still see the similarities very well.

Doug’s WebGuide3/4:*

If pt.Text.Length > len(cell_width) + 3 Then pt.Text = pt.Text.Substring(0, len(cell_width) - 3).Trim & "…"

MediaPortal’s “Version”:

if (length != program.Title.Length) title = program.Title.Substring(0, length - 3) + "...";

Doug’s WebGuide3/4:*

tooltip = Me.Attributes("title") & " " & start_time.ToLocalTime.ToShortTimeString & " - " & end_time.ToLocalTime.ToShortTimeString & IIf(Me.Attributes("description") <> "", vbCrLf, "") & Me.Attributes("description")

MediaPortal’s “Version”:

cellBase.Attributes.Add("title", String.Format("{0} {1}-{2}\r\n{3}", program.Title, program.StartTime.ToShortTimeString(), program.EndTime.ToShortTimeString(), program.Description));

This is a sad day for MediaPortal. Such a great project and stealing code directly from other developers without any notice or question. Taking the same concept and building your own version is fine, using the exact same code as another developer without permission is not.

We get questions all the time at The Green Button on what other products can be used instead of Media Center, so much for ever suggesting MediaPortal again.

On the plus side, it look like the claimed author of the infringing code (“yamp”), is not an official MediaPortal Team Member. Hopefully this incident will teach the official members to double check code before making public statements on new features and releases.

Hopefully the MediaPortal Team will respond to this issue as soon as possible.

*Code posted with permission of Doug Berrett.

Digg it!

Updates: They deleted all the images from /trunk/TvEngine3/MPWebGuide/MPGuide/images/. Click here for an image of what it looked like before they deleted them. The two noted files are of the WebGuide4 logo.

MediaPortal Responds! According to them: “To be clear, these parts are gfx only and NOT code. The reason this happened is because during development we borrowed the gfx layout of webguide4 with the intention to replace all the gfx with MP's own ones before releasing.”

You can be your own judge based on the code above.

Update 3: Before commenting, remember that no one from MediaPortal has contacted Doug or replied to his e-mails as of 04/04/2007 at 1 pm CST.

Note: Original title read “MediaPortal Steals Code from WebGuide4 Developer”. Changed to reflect known facts and too try and get MediaPortal supporters to answer my questions, instead of avoid and ignore them. I’ll digress on the code for now.