Up to 76Mb download speed
Up to 19Mb upload speed

I’m pretty chuffed with that. Compared to my broadband speeds this time last year that’s approximately 70 times faster on the download end of things.

I’m also pretty happy about my “truly unlimited” connection. Below is my usage for the past month.

I have been uploading all of my music collection to Google Play Music, which explains the massive upload usage. Sadly Google Play Music is limited to 20,000 tracks so I’m stuck with under half my music collection uploaded and they don’t appear to be offering any option for increasing your allowance.

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The process went something like this:

1. Register new Skype In number based in the states.
2. Set up US proxy to login to Google Voice
3. Apply for new Google Voice number using my US Skype In number as verification
4. Cancel US Skype In number
5. Setup Skype to redirect calls to Google Voice number

What was the purpose of this? It meant that if I didn’t have Skype on (which, due to the unreliability of their Android app, I often didn’t), any missed calls would be routed to Google Voice at no cost and I’d at least get a notification via Gmail of the missed call, or at best a free transcript of the message. Considering that I was 7 hours ahead of most of my clients, this was handy for keeping track of any potential emergencies. Yes I could have just re-routed my calls directly to my Cambodian mobile, but at a cost, and at the danger of being woken up at 2am by a client who just wanted to check in on progress or something mundane that didn’t require immediate attention.

So what’s the problem?

Well, the problem is that Google Voice does a horrendous job of guessing what people are saying. I don’t know whether this is a more generic issue, or whether its exaggerated by the fact that I’m getting it to transcribe Irish accented voice mails.

Check this most recent transcription out:

Dallas teaching here. Just wanted to web page town and Yeah, Monday, at the sorry it’s Tuesday noon today night i can assure that kind of [phone number redacted], Latrice okay. No one quotes at the moment coming through tomorrow. Yeah but I will talk tonight and content. All of the website, so all the time. If you have a good online presence. Let’s just got back at the topic of the here and community back punk rock. Bye bye.

“… and community back punk rock. Bye bye.” What an awesome way to finish your voice mail.

Ultimately the message turned out to be from a client who thought their website might be down (if it was, this particular client should be calling their hosting company not me as we don’t handle their hosting anymore). I’m quite sure that there is no realistic way you could gather that from the above transcription.

It looks like voice transcription has a long way to go..

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There’s a few small glitches that I’ve noticed, but overall the new look is a definite improvement, and, based on some quick testing this morning, I think it will result in a more fluid user-experience and faster note browsing and creation.

Glitches

1. For the life of me I cannot find options for premium offline notebooks. I’m quite certain it used to be an option in main settings, but I’ve gone through each screen there and can’t see it. This is a little unfortunate as I was meaning to set one of my notebooks up for offline use before I go abroad.
2. The hardware menu button no longer functions at all (I think). I’ve checked it pretty much everywhere in the app and it does nothing. Obviously for devices without a dedicated menu button this isn’t an issue, but it should still get a response for those phones that do still have dedicated menu buttons.
3. Long press actions only work on individual notes, not notebooks or tags. Feels like there should be some options on long-pressing a notebook (move, make available offline, rename).

Quick video overview

Gallery

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There’s a video they recorded comparing the stock keyboard with Swift Key and whilst it’s a little cheesy it does give you an idea how useful it is in speeding up your touch screen typing.

I’ve just downloaded the beta so will be testing it out over the next few days.

What’s your preferred Android keyboard?

Links

• Announcement: http://www.swiftkey.net/swiftkey-3-beta-smart-space-ui-themes
• Download: http://vip.swiftkey.net/sk3beta
• Tablet Download: http://vip.swiftkey.net/sk3tabletbeta

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Dropbox pricing hugely undercut

Well Google have flexed their muscles here and have hammered Dropbox on cloud storage pricing. Please note I’m rounding up from the stupid 99c pricing..

So, as you can see Google Drive is undercutting Dropbox by 1/4 of the price.

Google Drive pricing has gone up

Whilst their pricing is much cheaper than Dropbox, it’s actually quite a big raise in price. I’m currently grandfathered on a plan that gave me 80GB for $20 a year. The nearest plan to that now is 100GB for $5 a month, so that’s $60 a year.

Now I feel stupid for not having predicted this and upgraded my storage plan before the announcement.. just check the comparison:

I’d have quite happily paid $100 a year for 400GB! Now I’m not so sure – it’d cost me $240 a year instead.

Anyway, more to come on this announcement soon – including how to create symbolic links to work within the Google Drive fixed folder structure.

Below is the announcement video for your viewing pleasure, and you can read more on the Official Google Blog.

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This doesn’t sound like much, but, especially for multi-screen users, it’s a boon.

Here’s a very simple example.

• You’re writing a word document whilst referencing a PDF in another window.
• You leave the word document active so you can continue to type, but you move your mouse to hover over the PDF. You don’t click on the PDF as if you did your keyboard typing would be sent to the PDF application not the word document.
• You can type away, then scroll the PDF, type some more, scroll the PDF more, etc. But you don’t have to keep switching the active window.

Perhaps it’s a little hard to describe until you use it. It works, it’s very useful. Need I say more!

Download it from Antibody Software now. It’s donation-ware, so it’s free unless you decide it’s so useful that you want to throw a few quid to the developer.

Application description from Antibody software

WizMouse is a mouse enhancement utility that makes your mouse wheel work on the window currently under the mouse pointer, instead of the currently focused window. This means you no longer have to click on a window before being able to scroll it with the mouse wheel. This is a far more comfortable and practical way to make use of the mouse wheel.

WizMouse can also optionally enable the mouse wheel in applications that don’t support it. It does this by translating mouse wheel commands into scroll bar commands that all applications can understand and process.

Photo Credit: Nick Humphries on Flickr

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One of the most common complaints I’ve heard from people is that Reason lacks VST integration. This seems to partially quash that complaint by allowing external plugin integration, but, naturally, in a uniquely Propellerhead style.

Essentially Rack Extensions allows developers to port their plug-ins into the Reason Rack. The important thing is that the plug-ins function in the same manner as all Reason rack devices. You can undo changes, load patches, wire things to your liking in exactly the same manner as any normal Reason rack device. The other important factor is that if the plugin crashes out, it doesn’t affect the overall Reason programme – essentially we get the same solid never crashing performance from Reason that we’re used to (this was one of the main concerns about utilisation of VSTs within Reason.

It’s a big step forward for Reason, and it will be very interesting to see how much more power it gives to compose music with this excellent tool.

Video Presentation

Below is the entire presentation which Propellerhead made at Musikmesse, where they also announce “Figure”, a new iOS app for mobile Reason production. The Rack Extensions announcement starts from 14:00 onwards.

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It’s a fairly handy script, but ever since the implementation of WordPress custom image sizes I haven’t really had need for this sort of thing. Still, I knew it was advisable to check our server and see what sites might have the TimThumb in use.

First up I just handled it through scanning from the command line on our server.

find /path/to/server/www/folder/ -name timthumb.php

This gave me a list of any instances of this script on our server. In most cases the scripts were actually not in use at all, and could just be deleted. However a couple of client websites had the script in place through a plugin (such as Awesome Flickr Gallery, or Event Manager).

Fortunately there’s an easy fix! Just install the TimThumb Vulnerability Scanner on your WordPress site and follow the steps. This plugin will update any instances of the TimThumb script in your /wp-content/ folder to a secure version.

More information about the plugin available at the CodeGarage blog.

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I’ve used it a lot when driving and travelling. Even now that I’ve got a reasonably large collection of music on my phone, this blocky little media player still has a place – especially when it comes to longer trips away, giving me an extra 10 hours of playing time.

Last month I plugged it in to charge and there was a tiny popping sound and the screen went blank. The device would no longer charge. At first I investigated and thought a loose battery wire was causing the issue, but a quick solder proved that thought incorrect.

A quick search of the battery part number resulted in a replacement being ordered from fusionbattery.co.uk. Once this arrived it was just a matter of installing it.

Replacing the iAudio X5 battery

Step 1: Removing the back cover

Step 1: Remove the back cover

The screws are small, but they’re a standard Philips head, so it’s easy to get sorted.

Step 2: Removing the hard drive

Step 2: Removing the hard drive

Next up you need to take the hard drive out. There’s a small piece of tape at the top of the drive which you need to peel off, then you can pull up the top of the drive and slide it out from the base of the unit. There’s no need to unplug the drive cable.

Step 3: Reveal the battery

Step 3: Reveal the battery

Underneath the hard drive there’s a small rubbery moulded plastic separator. This is fairly easy to remove and you’ll see the battery with cables soldered to the motherboard.

Step 4: Un-solder the old battery

Step 4: Un-solder the old battery

Now you can just un-solder the old battery, re-solder the new battery (red wire bottom, black wire top), and put the device back together.

Step 5: Et voilà

Step 5: Et voilà

Once putting it all back together, I plugged it back into its charging dock and lo and behold she happily started charging again.

It might be old, somewhat clunky and not exactly head turning, but it works, and it continues just working. I’ve got Rockbox installed on it and lots of good music. It plays FLAC, OGG and other files types often not played by other digital media players. And it’s still going strong!

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I knew that if I went with a system where I had to crop, export and upload each different image size, well, I’d never do it. So I decided to take advantage of the built-in featured image functions in WordPress. I have a feeling, looking back on this, that I could have done this a slightly simpler way (using the option to define image sizes on the fly, and not on export – but perhaps this is a slightly less intensive method as regards server load).

Set your image sizes

First up I’ve defined all the image sizes I want to offer for download. It’s important here to use a standard prefix on the wallpaper sizes if you’re using other pre-defined featured image sizes.

if ( function_exists( 'add_image_size' ) ) {
	add_image_size( 'wallpaper-1920x1200', 1920, 1200, true );
	add_image_size( 'wallpaper-1920x1080', 1920, 1080, true );
	add_image_size( 'wallpaper-1680x1050', 1680, 1050, true );
	add_image_size( 'wallpaper-1440x900', 1440, 900, true );
	add_image_size( 'wallpaper-1366x768', 1368, 768, true );
	add_image_size( 'wallpaper-1280x1024', 1280, 1024, true );
	add_image_size( 'wallpaper-1280x800', 1280, 800, true );
}

As you can see here, I’ve covered the most common desktop wallpaper sizes. I’m not covering things like smart phone screen sizes, and I’ve obviously had to set the crop setting to true on each of them. I have to make sure when I’m uploading a photo blog post that I’m uploading a larger size than my greatest desktop background size.

One other proviso: this is only going to really work on landscape aspect images. I’d have to do some extra work to make this system work for portrait aspect images – but portrait aspect doesn’t really work for desktop backgrounds. Potentially the easiest thing would be to have a custom field specifying that the image uploaded is portrait aspect; if that field is ticked, I would entirely skip the desktop background download option in the code.

Create the function

Next up we have our function, which you should add to functions.php in your WordPress template.

/**
 * Create an unordered list containing links to wallpaper sizes of featured image
 *
 * @param	string		optional $post ID
 * @return 	echo unordered link list
 */
function pa_the_post_thumbnail_wallpapers($postID = NULL) {
	// if $postID not specified, then get global post and assign ID
	if (!$postID) {
		global $post;
		$postID = $post->ID;
	}
	if (has_post_thumbnail()) {
		// get the meta data from the featured image
		$postThumbnailID = get_post_thumbnail_id( $postID );
		$photoMeta = wp_get_attachment_metadata( $postThumbnailID );
		// prepare our download links
		// if the sizes key is an array
		if (is_array($photoMeta['sizes'])) {
			// assign the sizes array to a variable
			$photoSizes = $photoMeta['sizes'];
			// loop through our photosizes array
			foreach ($photoSizes as $key => $value) {
				// if the key starts with wallpaper assign the key name to an array
				if ( substr($key, 0, 9) == 'wallpaper' ) {
					$downloadableWallpapers[] = $key;
				}
			}
		}
		// if there are any downloadable wallpapers
		if ($downloadableWallpapers) {
			// start our ul
			echo  '<ul>' . "\r\n\t";
			// loop through available wallpapers
			foreach ($downloadableWallpapers as $downloadableWallpaperSize) {
				// get the image source and assign to variable
				$dwInfo = wp_get_attachment_image_src( $postThumbnailID, $downloadableWallpaperSize );
				// create the title by removing the prefix
				$sizeTitle = str_replace('wallpaper-', '', $downloadableWallpaperSize);
				// expand SIZExSIZE to SIZE x SIZE
				$sizeTitle = str_replace('x', ' x ', $sizeTitle);
				// echo our download link
echo '
<ul>
	<li><a href="' . $dwInfo[0] . '">Wallpaper: ' . $sizeTitle . ' px</a></li>
</ul>
' . "\r\n";
			}
			// close our ul
			echo  '</ul>' . "\r\n";
			// echo some advice on how to download
echo '<p class="wallpaper-download-advice"><em>Right-click/Cmd-click and select "Save link as" to download</em></p>';
		// if no downloadable wallpapers, then echo error message
		} else {
			echo '<p>Wallpaper downloads not found.</p>';
		}
	// if no featured image, echo error message
	} else {
		echo '<p>Featured image not found, no downloads available.</p>';
	}
}

What’s happening here?

Essentially we’re grabbing our featured image sizes array and looking through it. If any of the array keys start with ‘wallpaper’ then we place that key into another array. This array will only contain our wallpaper sizes.

From there we start an unordered list and output the download link. I’m parsing out the image size for each one so I can use that as the link text, and grabbing the URL for the specific image by using wp_get_attachment_image_src().

Usage

In my case I will only be using this option on single posts in my photo blog category. So I’ve edited my single.php template file to include the following:

<?php if ( in_category( 'cat-slug-or-id' ) ) { ?>
	<h4>Download as wallpaper</h4>
	<?php pa_the_post_thumbnail_wallpapers(); ?>
<?php } ?>

That’s it! You will now have a nice outputted list of wallpaper sizes. If you’re doing this retrospectively, you might want to alter the function to generate the different sizes on the fly, or you can use a Thumbnail Regenerator plugin to recreate all your featured image sizes. There are a few available, but most recently I’ve used AJAX Thumbnail Rebuild.

Any questions or suggestions, please let me know in the comments.

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