T. Longren

How-To: Watch H.264 Encoded MP4 Videos on Xbox 360

Tyler — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 18:40:13 +0000

I use some software called ushare to stream video from my pc to my Xbox 360. I won't go into the details on how to set that up, it's pretty straight forward. Chances are good that your linux distribution already has a package for ushare built. If you find yourself with a video encoded in H.264/x264 (it'll probably have a .mp4 file extension) you will be frustrated to find out that the Xbox 360 won't play it. There is an incredibly easy workaround to this. Just change the .mp4 filename extension to .avi. [ad] Not sure exactly why this works, but I have a feeling it's simply due to the .mp4 filename extension. The Xbox 360 must assume it doesn't know how to play mp4 files, without actually checking to see what codec the video file needs. But that's total speculation on my part.

Motorola Defy Camera is Working on Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0)

Tyler — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 15:50:13 +0000

Quarx released a new build for Defy and Defy+ yesterday. I am now running on his Defy+ build because camera in it works with regular Motorola Defy's with a red camera lens. Now that everyone has a partially working camera, all Defy/Defy+ users should be quite happy. If you've got a Red lens Defy, and want to run Ice Cream Sandwich and have a working camera, follow the steps below. First, you'll need some files.

[ad] Once you have those files, follow the steps below.

Clear data/factory reset.
Flash CM9 kernel.
Flash Defy+ ICS zip.
Flash Gapps.
Flash battery charge fix.
Wipe cache.
Wipe dalvik cache.
Done, reboot.

Some things to keep in mind:

No Hardware Acceleration (HWA).
Video playback is extremely slow (unusable really), probably due to no HWA yet.
Chrome Beta doesn't work, also due to no HWA.

[gallery]

Dropbox: Get 5GB of Extra Storage for Free

Tyler — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 15:58:43 +0000

I've been using Dropbox for a very long time. I would totally replace Dropbox with Minus if Minus supported adding a "local" folder to your system like Dropbox does. Unfortunately Minus does not offer that yet, but I hear they're working on it. Dropbox has released new beta versions of the Dropbox client. This beta client adds a new feature for auto-uploading photos and videos from your phone to Dropbox. For every 500MB you upload through this auto-upload feature, Dropbox will give you an additional 500MB of storage, for up to 5GB of additional storage. I had a few GB worth of photos and videos on my phone to upload, so getting that extra 5GB was really easy for me. If you don't have enough photos or videos to upload, just grab some online and put them into your phone's picture/video folder. When I started, I had 2.5GB of free storage, I now have 7.5GB. If you have yet to get a Dropbox account, you can get one here. You can find the beta Android client at this post on the Dropbox forum. You can also get this 5GB of additional storage with the beta Windows client. You can download the beta Windows client from this post on the Dropbox forum. There's builds for OS X and Linux as well, but the auto upload feature only works in Windows currently.

How-To: Use Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) On Linux

Tyler — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 18:01:14 +0000

This will help you get Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) running on Linux. A lot of the how-to's out there for this are outdated and aren't entirely relevant any longer. I recently installed Linux Mint 12 so I could run Gnome 3 easily, but this should apply to most Debian based distributions (ie: Ubuntu and Mint, and Debian, obviously). I know for a fact this will work with Linux Mint 12 and Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot). First, you'll need to install mono-gmcs, mono-mcs, monodevelop, and liblog4net-cil-dev. You can install them like so:

sudo apt-get install monodevelop mono-gmcs mono-mcs liblog4net-cil-dev

Running that will install all the packages you need to compile LOIC with Mono. Those 4 packages have other dependencies, so you'll actually end up installing many more packages, but it'll be done automatically. After you've got that installed, download the Low Orbit Ion Cannon from Github. You can download it in .zip or .tar.gz format, whichever you're most comfortable with. Extract the folder to your desktop or wherever you like. Open a terminal and go into the folder you extracted from the .zip or .tar.gz. For me, this folder is called NewEraCracker-LOIC-c847036. The string at the end may be different for you, depending on if the source has been updated since I wrote this. Once you're in the folder (for me it's /home/tyler/Desktop/NewEraCracker-LOIC-c847036), type the following:

mdtool build

That will compile LOIC, the executable will be in bin/Debug. After compiling is done, launch LOIC like so:

mono /path/to/NewEraCracker-LOIC-c847036/bin/Debug/LOIC.exe

That's it, have fun! And don't get in trouble.

Unlocked Bootloader for Motorola Defy

Tyler — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 22:59:47 +0000

No, the Motorola Defy bootloader hasn't been unlocked (yet). Rumor has it that a few individuals do have Defy's with unlocked bootloaders though. Why is having an unlocked bootloader important you ask? Have a look at this article from AddictiveTips for a good summary of what a bootloader is, and why they are often locked. The OP in a thread on XDA that I came across earlier today claimed to have found a method to unlock the Motorola Defy bootloader. The OP said he would be posting a video with proof of the bootloader unlock, which I don't think ever came. I checked the thread again later and was disappointed to see that it had been removed from XDA. So, it was likely someone taking Defy owners for a ride, getting our hopes up without actually having a method to unlock. This doesn't mean it won't happen. Epsylon3 is believed to be working on this, and if anyone can do this, it's him. He recently managed to brick his original Defy, but received enough donations so that he could buy a new one. So, it sounds like he will continue working on the bootloader unlock. There's two threads on XDA that you should follow if you're interested in keeping up with the status of unlocking the Motorola Defy bootloader. 1. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1443678 2. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1169557 Or, you could subscribe here (on the right) to keep up to date. If anything new develops on the Defy bootloader unlock front, I'll be sure to post.

Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4) Themes for Cyanogenmod

Tyler — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:40:20 +0000

My post about making Cyanogenmod look like Ice Cream Sandwich has been pretty popular. There are a lot of folks out there wanting to make their Cyanogenmod 7 phone look like it's running Ice Cream Sandwich, and for good reason. The Ice Cream Sandwich style is very nice to look at. Sonny Sekhon, the author of the original Ice Cream Sandwich theme for Cyanogenmod's theme chooser, has released a number of other Ice Cream Sandwich based themes, in colors other than blue! [ad] Sonny has added Ice Cream Sandwich themes in the following colors: green, red, purple, gingerbread color, orange, dark blue, cyan and pink. All of those are free and can be installed right from the Android Market. Sonny has a donate version available as well, if you like his work and would like to support him, buying that theme would probably make him a very happy dude. If you're looking for Ice Cream Sandwich themes for ADW or other launchers, you'll definitely want to have a look at this post. That post contains a lot more than just Ice Cream Sandwich Cyanogenmod themes. You can have a quick look at each of the new Ice Cream Sandwich theme colors in the gallery below (after the break). If I missed a theme from another developer, leave a comment and I'll add it to this post. [gallery link="file"]

Cyanogenmod 9 Is Really, Really Here

Tyler — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 15:56:30 +0000

Well lookie here! Epsylon3 has released the first Cyanogenmod 9 nightly build for the Motorola Defy. There's still a pretty hefty list of things that are broken, but it's way smaller than it was last week. Download links for the Cyanognemod 9 (CM9) nightlies can be found at http://tanguy.forumdoandroid.com/. That site contains links to various downloads. If you want to run Cyanogenmod 9, you'll want this link http://defy-cm.net/ics-test0/. [ad] As expected, some things are still broken:

Fix orientation sensor
Fix Google maps
Fix 3D
Fix camera (will be hard)

Don't think I'm quite ready to try this out yet. I'll give it a shot on my Defy once the orientation sensor is working properly. Might wait for the camera to be 100% functional too, I use my phone camera often for taking pictures and video of my daughter. Here are some screenshots: [gallery link="file"] You can find a video after the break.

HTML5Press 2.2

Tyler — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 01:45:22 +0000

HTML5Press 2.2 is available for download. You can grab it from the HTML5Press page. A detailed list of changes can be found at Github. Probably the most notable change in 2.2 is the addition of a "follow me" button to the Twitter widget, which you can see in the featured image attached to this post. It's enabled by default, but can be turned off from the widget options. Hashtags in the Twitter widget are now clickable, just like links and @names. I committed this change to the original Simple Twitter Widget, created by Matthias Siegel. I also fixed an issue where small fonts were being applied to any label element, even when label wasn't being used in a form. This made the title for the new "subscribe widget" from JetPack 1.2 be really small. So those of you using that widget should see an improvement. Other notable changes:

Field for Custom CSS on HTML5Press options page
More accurate fuzzy timestamps
More accurate fuzzy timestamps in comments
Use get_template_directory_uri() instead of get_stylesheet_directory_url()
Allow use of "All Categories" for the featured post slider.

You can see all the changes at Github. You can download version 2.2 from the HTML5Press page. Report any issues in the comments on the HTML5Press page or open up an issue at Github.

First Cyanogenmod 9 Test Builds

Tyler — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 20:50:35 +0000

A thread at the XDA Developers forum has been discussing progress on Cyanogenmod 9 (CM9) for the Motorola Defy. The first post includes a video of a Motorola Bravo running Cyanogenmod 9 with Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0). The Motorola Bravo is running Cyanogenmod 9 for the Defy, but it seems to work. You can see the video here at the end of this post. In the most recent post in the thread, josuearisty provides a link to http://defy-cm.net/ics-test0/. There you'll find two builds of Cyanogenmod 9 for the Motorola Defy. UPDATE 11/29/2011: Epsylon3 has updated his original thread, his first post now links to http://defy-cm.net/ics-test0/ as well. There's also a new nightly, 111129. I'm not even going to install it, it probably has a lot of the issues the ROM from Epsylon3 has. It's still encouraging to see nightly CM9 builds for the Defy popping up though. [ad] I was a little worried about Cyanongemod 9 even being released for the Defy, but the Defy is one of the most popular devices for the Cyanogenmod team, according to the Cyanogenmod stats site anyway. According to the Cyanogenmod stats site, there's nearly 50,000 Defy's running Cyanogenmod. The Motorola Defy is the umts_jordan device. If you've got a Motorola Defy and are really, really anxious to run Ice Cream Sandwich, you now have two options. The AOSP ROM from Epsylon3, or a Cyanogenmod 9 nightly from http://defy-cm.net/ics-test0/. I'll be holding off on Ice Cream Sandwich for at least another month, probably more. I need to have a very stable phone, and can't afford to run bleeding edge software on it. If you've tried Ice Cream Sandwich in AOSP or Cyanongemod form, let me know, I'd love to hear what you think of it. You can see the video of Cyanogenmod 9 on the Defy after the break!

Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) Keyboard

Tyler — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 04:06:53 +0000

Meant to post about this a bit sooner, lots of folks have written about it already, like Tony at OMG!Droid. Originally, this Ice Cream Sandwich Keyboard was available as an apk from mediafire or some other file sharing site. Now though, the Ice Cream Sandwich keyboard is available in the Android Market. Looks pretty nifty, but not nifty enough for me to ditch SwiftkeyX. On a somewhat related note, I'm disappointed SwiftkeyX hasn't been updated with an Ice Cream Sandwich theme. Some features, from the Android Market page:

Multitouch keyboard
User dictionary, built-in dictionary
Configurable auto correction
Redesigned and optimized keyboard layout and style
Speech to text (select languages only)
Custom vibration intensity (haptic feedback)
Long press "Enter" key to bring up smiley alternatives (Only on Im mode, for example in Gtalk)
Long press on "/" key in URL mode to bring up domains

[ad] This was built by AstronautMillionaire and is in a beta status, but seems to work fine for most folks. This is in no way an official, Google build of the Ice Cream Sandwich keyboard, but it's the best choice most of us have now. Not too many phones have Ice Cream Sandwich ROMs available yet. Defy has an Ice Cream Sandwich ROM, but it needs quite a bit of work before I'll try it out. If you're looking to make your device look as close to Ice Cream Sandwich as possible, you'll be interested in this post I made a few weeks ago, its titled Make Cyanogenmod 7.1 Look Like Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (Kinda). A video of the Ice Cream Sandwich Keyboard in action is available after the break, as well as some photos. [gallery link="file"]