Category: news

Posted on

Slideshare WordPress Plugin Issue

I do like Slideshare, a great service that allows you to upload presentations and then either view them easily on the web, or embed them into webpages. Thought I don’t do that much on this blog, I do use it a fair bit on my e-Learning Stuff blog where I embed presentations I have given at conferences and events.

Before I went self-hosted, Slideshare had a simple embed code for WordPress.com blogs, which when I went self-hosted didn’t work. I did a search and found a plugin that allowed me to continue to use the simple embed code.

When it was recently updated to version 1.8 I was disappointed to find that on my blog it stopped working. I did a fair few things to try and fix it, but in the end I downgraded the plugin from a backup. Always useful to retain a backup of your plugins in case something like this happens. I had done a thorough search and hadn’t found a solution, and even a posting on the WordPress.org support forums failed to get any response.

You can imagine my disappointment when the plugin failed again, even more annoyed as I hadn’t done anything. It appeared the simple embed code was working, but the Flash movie that Slideshare use had failed to load. My initial thought it was a Flash player problem, but after checking multiple browsers on different OSs and even doing a check using the “normal” embed code from Slideshare, it still came down to a problem with the plugin.

So, after more fruitless searching, I decided to deactivate the plugin and revert to using the “normal” Slideshare embed code. I had to go through a fair few blog posts and edit them and change the code from the simple embed code to the normal one. I guess there are probably still a fair few archived posts I need to edit, but should have them all done soon.

So what was causing the plugin to fail?

Well to be honest I have no idea, but as I failed to find the issue through searching the web, my suspicion is that it is an issue with the web server, but no real idea what the issue is, how it could be resolved and what I would need to say to the web hosts. Maybe it is just one of those things.

Posted on

Android Desserts

Now I didn’t know this, but I guess it was obvious.

Firstly though I will admit when I heard the name Froyo I was a bit bemused, wasn’t sure what it was, thought it might be some character out of Lord of the Rings. It turned out that the name of the Android software update was in fact what they call Frozen Yoghurt.

I was well pleased when they upgraded my Nexus One to Froyo and quite liked the Gingerbread update when it eventually arrived.

However what I have only recently found out, is that there is a pattern to the android version names

Cupcake
Donut
Eclair
Froyo
Gingerbread
Honeycomb
Ice Cream Sandwich

Not it’s not that are all desserts, think that’s pretty obvious, but they’re also in alphabetical order.

Now I didn’t know this, but I guess it was obvious.

In case you were wondering there were no A or B desserts, but they probably had Alpha and Beta.

Posted on

Airsync Androidness

I have had a Google Nexus One for a while now, but though I have downloaded many different apps, they’ve all had one thing in common, they were free. I realised that I had never bought an Android App for the Nexus One. This is very unlike my iPhone experience where I have bought quite a few apps.

So when it came to buying my first Android App, I was a little apprehensive. To be honest the experience was not very positive and could have been better.

So what was the app?

Well it was doubleTwist AirSync.

As well as letting me sync the Nexus One with my Mac over wifi using doubleTwist, there were two other features that made me think that this was going to be a worthwhile purchase.

doubleTwist now supports AirPlay for users who have upgraded to AirSync. Stream to Apple TV (music, videos and photos) and DLNA devices (music and videos). Beta support for Sonos.

When a supported device such as the Apple TV is recognized on the same WiFi network as your Android device, you can start streaming to it from the doubleTwist playback controls if you are an AirSync user.

So what went wrong, why was the process not very positive?

Well… after finding the app in the Android Market Place (which was easy), I tentatively clicked the purchase link.

It took me to a purchase screen and as I had used Google Checkout before it remembered my details. I paid for the purchase, I fully expected the app to download and then I could start using it. Well that’s what I expected, but that’s not what happened.

It didn’t download, all I got was a message that I was awaiting for the purchase to be authorised.

Initially I thought it was broken or had failed. However an e-mail from Google said that my purchase had gone through and I was charged for the App. Still the phone was saying that it was waiting for the purchase to be authorised…

It did this for a few hours before finally the app installed, I could use it, pair it and sync it with doubleTwist. No idea if that delay is normal and certainly I had not warning that this would happen. If I knew it was going to take hours then fair enough, however there was no warning or explanation.

So what of the app? I do like it and the ability to stream video, audio and photos from the Nexus One to my Apple TV is a real plus. Most of the videos I tried worked fine, but then they were encoded for the iPhone and I would expect them to work through the Apple TV. I was disappointed though that native videos i recorded on my Nexus One didn’t work. Well one did, but the rest didn’t. The one that did was a recent video, older ones failed to stream.

So I am pleased with the app, however less happy with the purchasing experience. Hopefully next time (and yes there will be a next time) it will be a more positive experience.

Posted on

Tethering Widget

Even though I have been using my Google Nexus One for tethering (portable wifi hotspot) for a while now, one of the annoyances was having to go into the menu structure to turn it on.

Menu -> Settings -> Wireless -> Portable Hotspot -> Turn it on….

There didn’t seem to be a quick way to add menu items to the screen. You couldn’t add it as a shortcut either.

After doing some of the Google stuff, I found that there was a free widget I could download that would then give me a widget on the home screen to turn the portable wifi hotspot on and off with a single click. Result!

Find it here.

Posted on

Still Kindling

I’ve had my Kindle for over eight months now and I am still using it on a regular basis for reading. I will say that the Kindle App on my iPad probably gets heavier use, but only because with a “back light” the iPad is easier to read in the evening. For daylight and bright sun though, the Kindle does win out. I was on a train recently and the sun was streaming in through the window. The iPad was very difficult if not impossible to read from, whilst the Kindle was a dream. If you read outside a lot or on trains, then the Kindle is certainly a much better option than the iPad. The battery life on the Kindle is incredible, we’re talking weeks between charges, rather than the day for the iPad.

I have found with the Kindle App on the iPad, means I don’t use iBooks at all, though I do have a few books on my shelf to read.

I do find that I have quite enjoyed reading a magazine on the Kindle, and unlike magazines on the iPad the lack of adverts certainly makes up for the lack of colour and interactive content. Downside is that he magazines can only be read ON the Kindle and can not be read in the Kindle App on the iPad. Why? Well it can’t just be to annoy me, can it?

What I am finding is that I am reading more now than before. Of course there are still quite a few books that I would like to read that aren’t in Kindle format, so have had to resort to paper. To be honest I have even bought some paper books too, which were available in Kindle format. For me the Kindle doesn’t replace paper books it complements them, giving me opportunities and more choice about what I can read, where and when I want to.

Posted on

Nexus to Nothing

One of the things I have noticed about using the Google Nexus One for more stuff is how awful the battery life is! I can barely get it to last the day, especially if I am using applications. As a phone and a portable wifi hotspot, it seems to be okay, but as soon as I start using Twitter or Foursquare then this seems to kill the battery life.

Yes if I turn off wifi, 3G and GPS then the phone battery does last a fair bit of time, but if I do that I might as well get a cheap Nokia phone which is just a phone!

My iPhone 3GS to be honest also has a pretty poor battery and as it gets close to its second birthday, the battery life appears to be getting worse! What is different though with the 3GS is that I have an external case which includes a battery, so I can usually ensure (even with heavy usage) that the 3GS lasts all day.

However the Nexus One has trouble doing even that!

My solution would be to buy a battery case as I have for my iPhone, but buying accessories for the Nexus One is not easy. Another option would be a spare battery, and I have considered that. I use to do that with an older phone I had a few years back.

My current solution is to carry the charger with me and I also have a car charger in the car too. As the Nexus One has a mini-USB port that does make life a little easier.

Posted on

Where am I?

One thing I have realised is that location services work better on my Nexus One when the GPS is switched on!

Well I didn’t realise it was switched off.

My first indication that something was amiss was when using the Foursquare app which didn’t appear to be as accurate than using my iPhone in the same location. I just put it down to the iPhone been “better” and I was inside.

After this happened outside, I thought I better check the settings, and yes the GPS was turned off! Turning it back on and Foursquare was spot on to where I was.

Posted on

Dropping the box

Are you using Dropbox?

Dropbox is the easiest way to store, sync, and, share files online. There’s no complicated interface to learn. Dropbox works seamlessly with your operating system and automatically makes sure your files are up-to-date. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

The more I use Dropbox the more useful I find it.

For me what makes Dropbox work for me is the integration with OSX and syncing across multiple machines, and I can access it through a web browser at work.

If I was a Windows user, then Skydrive would probably be a similar alternative, though of course Dropbox does work on Windows. Skydrive does have 25GB of storage compared to Dropbox’s 2GB. But for $10 a month I can upgrade Dropbox to 50GB, which is a fair bit of online storage.

Another way of thinking about Dropbox is as an USB stick that doesn’t require removing, ejecting or holding onto, so difficult to lose your Dropbox, unlike an USB stick.

So what about losing the cloud? Well you never know one day Dropbox may stop working, other web services and tools have done so, but until then it works.

Posted on

Firefox 4 Beta

Having had a few issues with my main installation of Firefox I decided that I would upgrade the beat version of Firefox 4.

So far so good and a few of the issues I was having with Firefox seem to have been resolved with version 4. For example I was having issues with text entry in text fields. It was often very slow for no apparent reason, even resetting Firefox and emptying all temporary internet files and the cache wouldn’t resolve it. This now seems to be working fine with version 4.

There is a new look to the user interface and a new style that I quite like.

Overall it’s working for me, but it is beta and as with any beta software I am expecting possible problems in the future, and it would appear that Flash may be the main cause of those problems.