Sway, Microsoft Office’s Newest Application

 

I as luck enough to receive an invite to “preview” this really new and cool application called Sway. You can read about it at http://www.sway.com. Sway is basically a jquery driven web tool to quickly build out high quality presentations from data and content sourced from a variety of sources (with more coming soon) like .docx, .html, .pptx, images, and video files from YouTube. Sway creates a folder on OneDrive and stores much of the content there (good thing storage is now unlimited for Office 365 users). Here’s my first attempt at building a “Sway”. Just scroll to view and be sure to click on the stacks to view more images.

https://sway.com/s/Z5cuxwVmJ3Bu_HQJ/embed

 

I built this out in about half an hour.

Windows 8 on my iPad

Sort of. Thanks to Splashtop streamer and the iPad mobile client.

I was a little frustrated as all my existing RDP clients on my iPad (Logmein, VNC RDP, etc. would only show me a black desktop). I ask the Splashtop folks via Twitter if their product ($4.99 in the app store, at least for now) would work with Windows 8 and received a “yes”.

So, now I am up and running with Windows 8 on an iPad. Still experimenting, but at least I can see the Metro desktop and navigate.

Windows 8 Consumer Preview Installed on Eee PC Netbook

My old ASUS Eee 1000HEB PC had been running the Windows 8 Developer Preview and I decided to see if I could "upgrade" it to the Windows 8 Consumer Preview via the web installer. I had previously performed some hacks to fix the problem of only 1000 x 600 screen resolution in order to get Metro Apps to work. I used an Intel video driver that I downloaded from Samsung:

http://bit.ly/aaM1Tt

I also used a registry hack on the Developer Preview:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ialm\Device0]
"Display1_DownScalingEnabled"=hex:01,00,00,00

The above gave me full functionality but a slightly skewed screen resolution. Nevertheless, the EeePC happily, albeit slowly, ran the W8 Developer Preview.

I decided to try the web installer from http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/download

The installer told me my devices were ok and I was able to get completely through setup using the Express route. Note that I did have a failure and a roll back when I tried the Customized route. Not sure why, but the end result was that I was able to install the Consumer Preview of Windows 8 on my old and dusty ASUS EeePC for testing purposes. After Windows 8 came up for the first time, I immediately installed the video drivers, then ran the reg file (not sure if this is actually needed, but…). Then I rebooted, and then changed the desktop screen resolution to 1152 x 864 which gave me full Metro functionality including apps. Images below illustrate this success story:

 

 

Fixed: IE9 “Only Secure Content is Displayed” warning

For a very long time, it seemed as through every site I visited with IE9 created an annoying prompt about secure content and encourage me to show all content. I’ve seen fixes that involve lowering your security etc., but never thought THAT was worth the risk. I had an “Ah HA!” moment while troubleshooting a similar annoyance with a wordpress plugin. It turns out that this issue occurs if you are logged into Facebook using https (and you should be using https) and have elected to always stay logged in that since nearly every site in the world has a Facebook Like button or some tie in to Facebook.

My solution? (Edited 8/9/2011) Stay logged into Facebook with Firefox, but NOT with IE. And strictly use Firefox for Facebook. (And note that this warning does not happen when I use Firefox to browse other sites while still logged into Facebook because Firefox is displaying mixed content by default.). Microsoft has other solutions posted, but they involve allowing mixed content to kill the prompt, or not allowing it ever (which kills the prompt) and even adding Facebook’s https site to the trusted zone. I prefer to use IE for financial sites and keep prompts and elect to only display secure content. And I am not by any means advocating dumping IE9.

I’m almost always running at least two browsers, but I just had not figured out what was causing OE to behave this way. There may be similar situations with other Facebook type sites or plugins, but with Facebook being by far the most widespread, my solution solves 99% of the problem for me. Now I know, and if you didn’t know this before, I hope this is helpful.

Microsoft RAW Codec and Windows Media Center

Yesterday (see previous post) I wrote a little about the newly released Microsoft RAW Codec. One of the first things I did was try my latest batch of Nikon RAW NEF files from a balloon festival earlier this month. I had so-so results, especially inside Windows Media Center, where thumbnails appeared, but after selecting an individual image file, WMC could not display it. This set of images was shot with a D7000 DX camera, in order to take advantage of the longer reach of FX lenses used with it. I normally carry both a D700 and a D7000.

As it turns out, for whatever reason, the Microsoft RAW Codec does not support the D7000. I’m not sure why, since Adobe and others now support it, and the D7000 has been available since mid October 2010.

Anyway, if you have a supported camera, the new codec most definitely is supported inside Windows Media Center if you want to view your RAW images there. You won’t get detailed EXIF info in View Details, but you certainly can display your images on a large screen. The screen capture below shows one of the folders (highlighted) from an Orchid Show I attended in 2009 where I shot with my D700 and the Nikon 105mm Macro lens. Thumbnails appear as expected.

Microsoft Now Offers limited RAW Camera Support

Today Microsoft released a Codec Camera Pack which brings (long overdue) limited support for various RAW formats from the major camera vendors. While most RAW shooters use more substantial tools (Lightroom, Photoshop, etc.) for manipulating images, Microsoft has provided a download for both 32 and 64 bit Windows that allows viewing RAW formats in Windows Live Photo Gallery and some basic image manipulation, mostly rotate and resize. You can, however, copy a NEF to JPG format and edit it inside WLPG, but that is not the same as editing a native NEF (or other RAW format file) inside Lightroom, Photoshop, etc. This may be good enough for casual photographers.

Below is a screen shot in Windows Explorer Tile view of some Nikon NEF RAW images which is where I looked first. Note the generic Windows Live Photo Gallery icons, but please read further

iOS 5 Notifications

I really like that Apple has changed the notification model. It kinda/sorta works in this first beta. Facebook and Twitter seem to be real slow in even native notifications, which may be part of the problem. I have seen mail on the unified list a few times. I wish the iPad had built in weather and stocks apps like the smaller iPhone/iPod, as that would be really handy.

Hopefully there will be abundant updates from third party vendors that will enabled visibility in the new unified app.

World IPv6 Day June 8, 2011–I’m Ready!

Looks like I’m completely ready, how about you?

 

I’m currently using Comcast’s 6to4 gateway.

 

http://www.worldipv6day.org/

http://test-ipv6.com/ipv6day.html

Windows 8 Interface Looks Slick,but Where is Multimedia Functionality?

Yesterday Microsoft finally pulled back the curtain just a little to give the world a peek at the touch interface for Windows V.Next.

 

The “Start” Screen is “swipable” and apparently every app on your system will appear as a tile. I like this concept a lot (and hope that there is an easy way to search for apps if there are hundred’s installed to avoid scrolling through an ungainly number of pages (thinking of my iPad…). The “snap” feature appears to allow two apps to switch focus (but only two) which is cool for a tablet interface, but I am not sure if that works for me on a desktop/laptop used for mainstream work with multiple apps open all the time. I guess we will find out in time. But for a tablet format, I vote YES.

 

In some ways, the interface reminds me of Windows Media Center. But speaking of WMC, while this first demo touched on Pictures and Videos, I didn’t see any TV functionality in the screens that quickly scrolled by in the presentation. There are a lot of missing pieces, and I hope Microsoft reveals info soon.

Airplay for Windows Media Center

It had to happen, and I’m glad it did. Thomas Pleasance has produced a nifty add-on for Windows Media Center that allows AirPlay from an iPad to Windows Media Center. It is currently at beta 1 stage and is documented to work only with videos (and YouTube) on the IOS device.

You’ll need to install Dot NET 3.5 if it isn’t already present, Bonjour from http://support.apple.com/kb/DL999 and finally the app from his home page.

After running the install (it is a little quirky, see the comments posted on his page), I was indeed able to stream from my iPad to Windows Media Center. I fired up Videos on my iPad and selected Avatar (which I ripped from my owned BD Ray movie).

I touched the AirPlay icon to display AirPlay enabled devices

and sure enough, I could select Windows Media Center!

 

Both the iPad and the WMC machine were on 802.11n 5GHz wireless and it didn’t take long at all for the movie to start to stream on WMC.

Interestingly enough, I could drag the timeline with a mouse and playback started instantly from that point. I didn’t have any video or audio issues at all.

 

Even though the app is not currently supposed to work with Photos on the iPad, I tried a slide show, as I see that as a more important application for me than videos. I was able to manually move between 5 or 6 photos before WMC froze, but the potential is there.

 

I’m all for a universal ecosystem of smart, connected devices, and I love seeing apps like this one. I’m not seeing the app show up in the Extra Libraries (it IS registered) so I don’t know if the app can send content FROM MCE to an iPad (but I would really like to see that since that would have more real world use for me).

 

Kudos to Thomas Pleasance for these first steps!