Category Archives: Software

How to get Pandora on Jailbroken Apple TV 2

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This is how I got Pandora script going on my Apple TV 2.
I used the script here:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=70471&highlight=pandora

First make sure your Apple TV is jailbroken and you have XBMC and SSH installed.

ssh into the Apple TV
ssh root@XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX
password is alpine

cd /Applications/XBMC.frappliance/XBMCData/XBMCHome/addons

wget -O xbmc-pandora-xbmc-pandora-master.tar.gz http://gitorious.org/xbmc-pandora/xbmc-pandora/archive-tarball/master

tar -xvzf xbmc-pandora-xbmc-pandora-master.tar.gz

rm xbmc-pandora-xbmc-pandora-master.tar.gz

mv xbmc-pandora-xbmc-pandora script.xbmc.pandora

cd $_

wget --no-check-certificate https://github.com/PromyLOPh/pianobar/raw/master/src/libpiano/crypt_key_output.h

wget --no-check-certificate https://github.com/PromyLOPh/pianobar/raw/master/src/libpiano/crypt_key_input.h
After that, start up XBMC -> Music -> Music Addons -> Pandora
The first time you run the script, it will ask you to go to the settings page so you can enter your login information.
Hopefully that gets Pandora going for you. 

 

Mac App Store

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Apple opened the Mac App store just the other day and it works sorta in the same way that iOS apps are purchased.
You load up a App to access the store and there you can see if the program is already installed or if not you can purchase it.  They do have free apps also for download. I think this is such a great idea because it allows more exposure to programs that you normally might not know about.
To get the Mac App store App, you just update Snow Leopard to 10.6.6.
Here I have downloaded the game Angry Birds and it looks great on my 15″ MacBook Pro.

New MacBook Airs, iLife ’11, and OSX Lion Preview

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At the Back to the Mac event Apple announced a few new items.

From the Apple Press release RSS feed:

Apple today unveiled an all new MacBook Air, the first of a next generation of notebooks which will replace mechanical hard disks and optical drives with Internet services and solid state flash storage. Read more…

Apple today introduced iLife ’11, a major upgrade that gives Mac users even more great ways to create and share photos, movies and music. iPhoto ’11 has a whole new look, with stunning full screen modes for Faces, Places and Events. iMovie ’11 makes it easier than ever to edit videos and quickly transform them into fun theatrical trailers for easy posting online. GarageBand ’11 introduces new ways to improve your playing and create great sounding songs with Flex Time and Groove Matching. Free with every new Mac, iLife ’11 is available as a $49 upgrade for existing users. Read more…

Apple today announced the public beta of FaceTime for Mac, an entirely new application that allows Mac users to video call iPhone 4 and iPod touch users as well as other Macs. Featuring an easy to use interface, FaceTime for Mac automatically uses your Address Book contacts so there’s no need to create special buddy lists, and it works seamlessly with the built-in camera and mic on Mac notebooks, iMac and Apple LED Cinema Displays. Read more…

Apple today gave a sneak peek of Mac OS X Lion, the eighth major release of the world’s most advanced operating system. Shipping next summer, Lion is inspired by many of iPad’s software innovations. Today’s sneak peek highlighted just a few of Lion’s features, including the Mac App Store℠, a new way to discover, install and automatically update desktop apps; Launchpad, a new home for all of your Mac apps; system-wide support for full screen apps; and Mission Control, which unifies Exposé, Dashboard, Spaces and full screen apps into an innovative new view of everything running on your Mac, and allows you to instantly navigate anywhere. Read more…

Mac OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard

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About 1 week ago Apple released the it’s new operating system Snow Leopard.  It was basically a improved version of Leopard with a few new features but not a lot.  It was priced very reasonably at $29 for a single user license upgrade.
There’s been a lot of people talking about how it isn’t much different and breaks some compatibility with some old applications, so some have not upgraded and some have rolled back to Leopard.
Myself I have upgraded all of my Macs and I find that it is much faster and responsive.  The sleep and wake function now works really fast and as I’ve been using it for the past week, I have slowly started to notice new features that weren’t on the previous OS Leopard.  Some of these updates like when you click on the WiFi icon you can now see the signal strength of all the wireless networks detected which can make choosing one easier.  Also expose is much better now and can now show what’s been minimized in the dock.
Overall I think Apple was going for stability and not so much for new features as that is what they mentioned in the last WWDC.  One feature that works now for the address book that didn’t before and left my address book unable to work was adding a smart group that shows all the contacts that are not in a group.  That use to make my address book hang and I would have to reset some settings to get it to function again, but now it works fine.
Also a big change was the ability to run in 64 bit native mode which only some macs can do.  You can hold 6 + 4 during boot to force the OS to boot into the 64it kernel which makes the OS all 64bit but you may find compatibility issues if you do so.
I think most of the new features will be more apparent once developers utilize the new programming features like grand central dispatch and Open CL.
You can find out more about Snow Leopard here – http://www.apple.com/macosx/
Tomorrow September 9th Apple is holding a event in San Francisco which rumor has it they will be showing off their latest new iPods.  Stay tuned for a post tomorrow on whats new tomorrow.

Exporting Photos from Aperture to iPhoto

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I’ve been using Aperture for a while but now that iPhoto ’09 has all these new features like Face Recognition, Flickr and Facebook integration I figured I wanted to be able to use iPhoto.
Problem is that I’ve been exporting all the photos from my camera to Aperture and not iPhoto.
To get your Aperture photos to iPhoto you need to export the masters from Aperture into a folder and then drag that folder into iPhoto and it will import the photos in.
I choose All Photos in Aperture, and selected all the photos. (I selected the first photo, scrolled to the last photo, held down shift and clicked on the last photo to select all photos)
After selected all the photos I clicked File -> Export -> Masters, and choose to export the masters into folders based on the project name.
After all the masters were copied to the specified folder I dragged that folder into iPhoto and everything was copied over.
Now I just gotta wait for the new iPhoto ’09 to be released and try out all the new features.

Apple releases iPhone 2.2 Firmware

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Apple just released the new iPhone 2.2 Firmware.
Some of the new features include:

  • Enhancements to Maps
    • Google Street View*
    • Public transit and walking directions
    • Display address of dropped pins
    • Share location via email
  • Decrease in call setup failures and dropped calls
  • Enhancements to Mail
    • Resolved isolated issues with scheduled fetching of email
    • Improved formatting of wide HTML email
  • Podcasts are now available for download in iTunes application (over Wi-Fi and cellular network)
  • Improved stability and performance of Safari
  • Improved sound quality of Visual Voicemail messages
  • Pressing Home button from any Home screen displays the first Home screen
  • Preference to turn on/off auto-correction in Keyboard Settings

To enable street view, you go to a area on the map where street view is available and drop a pin if you don’t have one currently up and click the small person in the red circle.
You can find out more about the update here – http://www.apple.com/iphone/softwareupdate/

Google Video Chat

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Well Google finally released a Video client.  They have had the chat client for a while, but now you can video chat also.  This is good like Skype for cross platform communication, because other services like MSN video chat require you to run Windows to video chat with users, so if you have a Mac, you can’t video chat with MSN users unless you run Bootcamp or the like.
You can download it over here – http://mail.google.com/videochat

iTunes 8, New Nanos, iPod Touches, and iPhone Software Update 2.1

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Apple had a Let’s Rock event this week and announced some new products and iTunes 8.
iTunes 8 mainly added a Genius feature which is a revamp of the mini store.  Whats interesting is it can create playlists on the fly by selecting a song and choosing Genius playlist.  It will pull songs from your library that go with that one particular song.  It’s a pretty cool feature for making mixes.

These are the new nanos and the colors they come in.  Very bright colors that can stop traffic in case you are listening to your iPod too loud and stumble into oncoming traffic.
They include a accelerometer like the iPhone and iPod Touch and have games based off it also.
It has a new shake to shuffle feature which is sure to make a few Nanos fly across the living room.

The new iPod Touch with 2.1.1 software.  I have held and tested one of these and it is really thin now.  It has a built in speaker and volume control buttons now.  Something that the first one really should of included.  The speaker isn’t as loud and clear as the iPhone 3G’s but still good enough to hear what’s going on in a general enviroment.
What is also interesting is they include a built in Nike+ sensor that works with a Nike+ shoe insert that can track your running workout.

The new iPhone 2.1 Software Update.  Update includes:

  • Decrease in call set-up failures and dropped calls
  • Significantly better battery life for most users
  • Dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes
  • Improved email reliability, notably fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts
  • Faster installation of 3rd party applications
  • Fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes for users with lots of third party applications
  • Improved performance in text messaging
  • Faster loading and searching of contacts
  • Improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display
  • Repeat alert up to two additional times for incoming text messages
  • Option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts
  • Genius playlist creation

I’m still backing up my phone now and waiting for it to install.  After it is done, I’ll post a update to see if it fixed these issues.

Update:
After using the new iTunes 8.0 for about a week here is what I noticed.
The iPhone syncing and backup is all fixed, no more waiting for the iPhone to backup.
The new visualizer is pretty cool if you have a large screen to enjoy it on.
And last but not least, the new iTunes Genius feature is a great way to make mixes and seems to make the mixes pretty well.
Also BTW, the new iTunes 8.0 has the equalizer on by default.  Mine was set to rock on my MacBook Pro.  You can further adjust the equalizer by clicking Window on the and equalizer on the menu.