Duane Newman

So, I finally bought an iPhone since the 3GS has come out.  I’ve began to notice some missing features I really wish it had–some that I miss from my Windows Mobile phone.  I must preface this list though with the fact that in general I love the iPhone and would still get it even after this list.

• Add a USB accessible unified file storage location
  This is my number 1 complaint with the iPhone. I used my old windows mobile phone to carry around lots of important files and I could easily access them over USB and ON THE PHONE by any app or EMAIL. This is a huge deficiency in the iPhone and I know there are “apps for that too” but they are all clunky and feel after thoughts (because they are). I would like to see Apple add a USB accessible storage location where I can add/edit/delete files over USB, save files from emails, include files in emails, and access as needed through other applications. This API could work just like the location services and push do now where you have to authorize a requesting applications access to the file store and all listing/access would be through the API to keep security and privacy intact.
• Seperate brightness settings for on/off charger
  It would be nice to be able to set the brightness seperately, so if I am at the office or somewhere else where I have the phone on a charger it automatically can go to a brighter, more user friendly setting and then return to a dimmer, more power friendly setting when it is taken off of the charger.
• Support Flagging emails for followup
  This may not seem like a big deal to some but having the ability to read an email while I’m out so I know what is happening and then flag it for followup so that when I get back into the office I can still easily find/remember the important emails and address them.
• Support for moving files between IMAP accounts
  I have four email accounts I track on my iPhone (and one or two more I will probably be adding soon). On my desktop email clients I can move an email from one IMAP account to another. As life goes I have friends that have several of my email accounts and I happen to know them through both personal and business. So I sometimes get business related email in my personal account and the other way around. I would love to be able to move that email to the right account so I can track it better.
• Add a plugin framework and support into Safari (and get flash)
  Okay, Flash is not as huge a deal-but come on, is it that hard? Also, how many apps have built in browsers now because you can’t create a plugin for Safari?  I would love to see plugins that are accessible from inside Safari (like delicious, password managers, etc).  This could also allow for some apps (like password managers) to still run as an application but have an extension that is accessible through Safari to make the whole experience much richer.
• Custom Alert Tones
  Here is one that is just annoying (because about every other phone out there supports it). Why can’t I upload custom alert sounds? Seriously I only have a couple sounds that are usable as alarms and I don’t like them.  And why can’t I select different sounds for events like email, voicemail, and calendar alerts?  At the very least I should be able to select from my ringtones for these items.
• Wake to iPod alarm
  I have lots of music on my iPhone and some of it is great for waking to in the morning. I know I can use a ringtone for my alarm but as far as I can tell they can only be 30 seconds long.  What if I would like to wake to a specific song, or artist, or album, or play list? You could make the list short and manageable and just do play list and album.
• WiFi auto on/off with configured apps or “as needed”
  I would like a feature that made it easier to manage when my WiFi is on or off rather than having to manually switch it all the time.  I keep hearing solutions to battery longevity problems that include only having it on when you need it.. but it is a minimum 3 steps to get to (and that is only if you keep your settings button on your home page, which I do-only for this reason).  I don’t have a good solution to this one yet but am sure there is something that can be done so it doesn’t stay on all the time.
• Sub Pages or better app management
  This is more of a preference thing.. I like the pages concept and how it works-but I would like to either be able to create page groups or sub pages.  Take for instance that I try to keep my pages organized-my front page is all my commonly used every day apps, next page is all my standard productivity apps, then all my games, then all the stuff I use sometimes or just have for novelty (like the app store, or the lightsaber app.  When I add a new item and it suddenly extends a “section” to a new page I have to go to a lot of effort to move all of them over one page to keep it all consistent. It would be nice if either 1) pages where easier to insert or shift as a whole, or 2) I was able to create sub pages that only had the apps in them I want in that category (like a link on the main page that says “games” and it takes me to a set of pages that are only my games). I think something like this would make app management a lot easier.

I’m sure there are more things I will think of as time goes by but this is my initial list of observations and wishes after two weeks of usage.

I was recently tasked with getting our new build server running with automated builds.

This included a number of tasks, but the biggest one was getting cc.net running.  While it did not take much to get CruiseControl.net configured to actually check svn and run my NAnt script-it did take a while for it to succeed.  We use a number of third party tools that require the use of a license.licx file (Divelements SandDock and Actipro WPF Studio).  My NAnt script would compile run and compile everything fine if I ran it from the console or a bat file, but would fail if I ran it through cc.net.  I would get the following error:

licenses.licx(1): error LC0004: Exception occurred creating type ‘Divelements.SandDock.DockSite, Divelements.SandDock, Version=1.4.2.2, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=75b7ec17dd7c14c3′ System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0×80070018): The program issued a command but the command length is incorrect. (Exception from HRESULT: 0×80070018)

I did massive searching on ‘LC0004’ and cc.net and found a lot of people having weird issues with the licensing but with a different error message.  I tried several of the solutions including running the service as my user and none of them worked.  I finally searched on the specific error code (0×80070018) and found a couple of hits that were promising (http://davidgardiner.blogspot.com/2008/08/installing-cruisecontrolnet-on-windows.html) but still didn’t work.  However, it led to this MS connect feedback (https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=361469) which led to the following updates:

The package containing fixes for NET3.5sp1 for Windows Vista, Windows 2008 Server are now available here:

x86: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=b9de7937-2c12-4f16-ad66-a31b83931953
x64: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=98e83614-c30a-4b75-9e05-0a9c3fbdd20d
IA64: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=c6adc586-2518-404b-8973-e1e22c556af4

Installing the packages listed here allowed my build to begin working.

I’ve use a dual monitor layout on my work computer and quite often I will have one monitor that has virtual machines or remote desktop sessions running and often have my other windows maximized on the other monitor.  I’ve found it kind of annoying to have to click in the different windows as I move back and forth between the two monitors and so I did a little digging and found that Vista has the “Ease of Access Center” that allows you to easily (read: no registry hacks) set the focus follows mouse feature.  Now when I move my mouse back and forth between the monitors I can start typing right away.

Here is what I did:

• Press the Windows key and type “ease of access”
• Select “Ease of Access Center”
• Scroll to the bottom of this screen.
• Click “Make the mouse easier to use”
• Check “Activate a window by hovering over it with the mouse”
• Click “Save” and you are done.

This is the first in what will probably end up being a series on InstallShield and the little things that are insanely painful in an otherwise very useful tool.

I had to add a screen to an installer I’m working on that had a notice regarding this versions compatibility with other versions on our hardware and software.  This screen has a rich text area with the notice and then a checkbox to indicate that you have read the message.  When the checkbox is checked by the user the next button is enabled.

Seems simple enough.  However, I soon discovered that when you add a new checkbox and give it a property that InstallShield creates the property in the property table and enter “0″ (zero) for the value.  Seems correct, right?  Well, the problem I encountered was that the checkbox was always checked when the screen was first loaded.  Turns out that the checkbox is checked if the property is anything other than an empty string.  Changing the default value in the property table from “0″ to “” made everything work as desired.

Sam Johnson has a quick post on installing the VMWare tools on Ubuntu 8.04 (sometimes not a totally straightforward process).

Here are some slightly modified version of the instructions:

• Virtual Machine->Install VMware Tools (that’s the easy part)
• apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-$(uname -r)
• mount /cdrom
• cd /cdrom
• cp VMwareTools*.tar.gz /tmp
• cd /tmp
• tar xzf VMwareTools*
• cd vmware-tools-distrib
• ./vmware-install.pl
• Press enter for everything until it won’t go any further because it wants the real location of your kernel headers. For me, with the desktop install, it correctly listed it.  If it doesn’t have the right location supply it ‘/lib/modules/2.6.24-19-generic/build/include’ (replacing ‘2.6.24-19-generic’ with the correct directory for your install) and then keep pressing enter again until you get back to your prompt.

I’m working on a small project developed using MaxStream’s XBee-Pro USB module.  To save development time and costs we are using the eval board to send commands from the computer.  The drivers on MaxStream’s website are pretty old and are only 32-bit, no help for Vista 64-bit.

MaxStream is using an FTDI USB to serial port adapter on this board, but have changed the vendor information slightly for their application.  I was able to find FTDI’s usb drivers for 64-bit Vista (and 64-bit XP), but because of the changes to the USB device string it wouldn’t install the drivers. 

After a little digging I was able to add the needed modifications to the driver information files.  After making the modifications windows recognized the drivers from FTDI as also being for MaxStream’s hardware (however, I had to try to install the drivers twice in a row for it to take-not sure why, but it worked on the second try and I didn’t care after that).

Here are the modifications I made (add the lines to the specified sections in each file):

ftdibus.inf

[FtdiHw]

%USB\VID_0403&PID_EE18.DeviceDesc%=FtdiBus.NT,USB\VID_0403&PID_EE18
%USB\VID_0403&PID_EE19.DeviceDesc%=FtdiBus.NT,USB\VID_0403&PID_EE19

[FtdiHw.NTamd64]

%USB\VID_0403&PID_EE18.DeviceDesc%=FtdiBus.NTamd64,USB\VID_0403&PID_EE18
%USB\VID_0403&PID_EE19.DeviceDesc%=FtdiBus.NTamd64,USB\VID_0403&PID_EE19

[Strings]

USB\VID_0403&PID_EE18.DeviceDesc=”Digi PKG-U USB Wireless Module”
USB\VID_0403&PID_EE19.DeviceDesc=”MaxStream XBee XTender Port”

ftdiport.inf

[FtdiHw]

%VID_0403&PID_EE18.DeviceDesc%=FtdiPort232.NT,FTDIBUS\COMPORT&VID_0403&PID_EE18
%VID_0403&PID_EE19.DeviceDesc%=FtdiPort232.NT,FTDIBUS\COMPORT&VID_0403&PID_EE19

[FtdiHw.NTamd64]

%VID_0403&PID_EE18.DeviceDesc%=FtdiPort232.NTamd64,FTDIBUS\COMPORT&VID_0403&PID_EE18
%VID_0403&PID_EE19.DeviceDesc%=FtdiPort232.NTamd64,FTDIBUS\COMPORT&VID_0403&PID_EE19

[Strings]

VID_0403&PID_EE18.DeviceDesc=”Digi PKG-U Serial Port Adapter”
VID_0403&PID_EE19.DeviceDesc=”MaxStream XBee XTender”

Wes has a nice blog post about customizing the prop code snippet from VS2005 to use “_PropertyName” for the private field. While I like to use propertyName for my private fields this did get me to thinking and spurred me on to action over something that has annoyed me since I started using VS2008. Read the rest of this entry »

I finally installed GForge on a new CentOS 5 server. It went pretty smooth (there where a couple hiccups) and now I have a project management system in place for all my projects. Read the rest of this entry »

A reminder to myself on how to delete a windows service

If you are using Visual Studio 2008 and blend together you have likely ran into the problem with loading a VS2008 created WPF project into Blend. It throws up an error about an invalid project file and probably complains about the following line:

<Import Project=”$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets” />

Fortunately there is a service pack out for Blend that fixes this problem (and some other odd issues with Blend). You can download it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=A07196D1-971B-4710-99C8-D3D9603CCFCB&displaylang=en