Disqus - Latest Comments for Sean McLeod

Re: Vista RTM is fine on the Mac Mini

Sean McLeod — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 06:13:47 -0000

Hi

I'd really like to know what your experience is with the Mac Mini's video playback performance using Vista's Media Center. In particular can you playback high-def content (720p at least) without any performance hiccups?

Cheers

Re: Vista RTM is fine on the Mac Mini

Sean McLeod — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 10:16:11 -0000

I'd be interested to know if there are any performance issues playing back high-def (720p at least) video via Vista's Media Center when you get a chance.

Cheers

Re: Yahoo’s new pretty maps are doomed (and so are Microsoft’s)

Sean McLeod — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 14:53:56 -0000

Robert are you sure you read the VirtualEarth and Google API terms properly that you linked to?

According to my reading you *can't* use Google's Map on a commercial site at all - "The API may be used only for services that are generally accessible to consumers without charge."

Also note section 1.5 on advertising where Google are free to add advertising to the map at anytime. What happens if Google decides to start adding adverts to competitors of mine? You don't a choice.

Now VirtualEarth offers:

- Free for non-commercial sites.

2 Options for commercial sites (remember Google doesn't offer you the ability to use their maps on a commercial site):

1. Free use of VirtualEarth as long as you display the What/Where search boxes on the map.

2. If you don't want to display the What/Where search boxes OR enter into a revenue-sharing advertising contract then you can pay MS via a service agreement to make use of Virtual Earth. This option kicks in Jan 2006.

And the Virtual Earth terms you link to make no mention of not allowing you to have a Google adsense link(s) on the same page.

So how is Google's map API terms easier and better than Virtual Earths for a website developer? By my reading it's exactly the opposite. So either I've misunderstood your comments on the map API terms, or misread the terms or you need to rtfm.

Cheers

Re: Zvents CEO says Yahoo to open up its map API

Sean McLeod — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 04:16:11 -0000

But you can use VirtualEarth on a commercial site with 3 options:

No cost option -

1. Place the What/Where search boxes over part of the map.

Cost option -

2 + 3: If you prefer not to utilize the What/Where search boxes on your site or participate in revenue-sharing advertising, you can use the Virtual Earth API under a MapPoint Web Service contract.

http://www.viavirtualearth.com/VVE/Resources/Co...

Re: Tim Hibbard lets us track his every move

Sean McLeod — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 07:27:14 -0000

Did you see he has a "View with MS Virtual Earth" button on the right hand side. So not the latest Virtual Earth V2 (local.live.com) but Virtual Earth V1.

Cheers

Re: Geoff wants Microsoft to get its Digital Photo act together

Sean McLeod — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 05:51:08 -0000

Does Vista store the metadata in EXIF format instead of IPTC/XMP or in some other format? AFAIK IPTC/XMP is only supported in JPEG and TIFF images, so if you add metadata to any other formats, e.g. BMP, PNG etc. Vista would more than likely have to create a secondary NTFS stream to store the metadata with the image.

Re: Geoff wants Microsoft to get its Digital Photo act together

Sean McLeod — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 09:37:35 -0000

Hubert there is overlap between EXIF and IPTC in terms of metadata relating to keywords, subject etc. EXIF doesn't only support the technical info like shutter speed etc.

See my comments on Geoff's blog for more details.
http://spaces.msn.com/members/gcoupe/Blog/cns!1...

Re: Geoff wants Microsoft to get its Digital Photo act together

Sean McLeod — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 07:24:01 -0000

John, if you check Peggy's reply (same reply as here) on Geoff's blog you'll see her email address listed.

It's not clear that they have created a propiertary metadata format. They could be storing keyword metadata etc. in standard EXIF format.

And if Vista doesn't ship with IPTC/XMP support in the OS the platform allows any third party to write a property handler for this type of metadata. The Vista shell will then provide the UI for viewing and editing this metadata and will use the property handler for reading and persisting the metadata.

The metadata will then also be indexed so users can perform queries against the metadata.

So yes it would be useful to have the OS ship with a default IPTC/XMP handler, but you're not totally out of luck if it doesn't since they provide an extensibility framework.

Re: Geoff wants Microsoft to get its Digital Photo act together

Sean McLeod — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 07:39:58 -0000

By the way, for some background info on the new property handlers API, some examples on their usage and support for 'Open MetaData' take a look at the following blog posting by one of the MS developers.

http://blogs.gotdotnet.com/marcmill/archive/200...

Re: Vista underrated

Sean McLeod — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 15:27:58 -0000

So Joel slips back into a Microsoft Program Management (PM) role and decides to write a spec for the power button on the Vista Start menu. The reason he spent the time doing this is because he felt the number of options provided, 9 were excessive and confusing to most users. His spec comes down to:

"So now we've got exactly one log off button left. Call it "b'bye". When you click b'bye, the screen is locked and any RAM that hasn't already been copied out to flash is written. You can log back on, or anyone else can log on and get their own session, or you can unplug the whole computer."

Now if Joel actually clicked on the Vista Start button and then looked at the options presented before expanding the 'advanced' list of options then he would've realized that in fact the implementation in Vista is virtually identical to what he ended up specifying.

To the normal user there are really just 2 options, a 'Power' button and a 'Lock' button, which have tool tips that explain what they do.

Now on my desktop PC with a default install of Vista the Sleep option is a new hybrid sleep implementation which is really a combination of hibernate and sleep. When the PC goes to sleep, either based on an explicit user request or because it has been idle for 1 hour then Vista writes out any necessary RAM pages to disk as it would for a hibernate, but then instead of switching off it goes into sleep mode. The advantage of this scheme is that if there is a power failure (environment, cord unplugged accidentally or on purpose) then when the PC is powered on again it performs a hibernate resume. I've actually experienced this first hand with a recent power failure and it was really useful to get back to all my open applications etc. after the power failure.

Now in addition when the PC resumes from sleep in this scheme you are presented with a login screen, and if Joel had taken a look he would've also noticed a 'Switch User' button on this logon screen just below the password edit control.

So this default scheme is pretty darn close to what Joel has specified as his ideal UI, it really just has 1 extra option, the 'Lock' button.

The main issue I think is that Joel hasn't approached this as 'regular' user, but rather more as an advanced/power user who has decided to click on the advanced list which is shown when you click/hover over the '>' button. So Vista has provided the simplicity for regular users and has made an advanced list of options available for more advanced users. Now what may have been a more useful posting/debate is whether this advanced list is too easily accessible to regular users by accident, e.g. should it maybe only show up if say the 'alt' key is held down like a lot of the menu bars in Vista applications.

Re: The MacMini HDTV revolution

Sean McLeod — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 11:00:06 -0000

There have been a number of Media Center Flickr plug-ins over the last couple of years.

One of the more popular ones is Big Screen Photos, http://www.mobilewares.net/mce/bsp2/default.htm.

Version 1 was released in mid 2006.

Big Screen Photos also works with Media Center Extender devices. So you can use it either with your Media Center PC directly connected to your HDTV or use it via an extender device connected to your HDTV.

Give it a whirl and see how it compares to Dave's new Flickr app.

Cheers