Archive for May, 2008

Some of the iPod and iPhone ideas were mine!

Saturday, May 31st, 2008

So, if you have ideas for apple products you’re welcome to submit those ideas. But, if you want them to look at your ideas without putting them in the garbage then you have to agree that all of your ideas become Apple’s ideas.

I want the products that I use to be great, so I’m always ready to provide feedback and suggestions for free, so I agreed that my ideas would belong to apple.

Idea #1 was implemented in the iPod firmware EXACTLY as I proposed it, and if you had a 5G iPod you know that it didn’t do this originally and was added later through a software update. I don’t want money and I don’t need any credit, but it would be nice… especially in the form of a 3G iPhone when available (you can have my non-3G iPhone back).

I should note that looking back, some of these ideas are terrible… but apparently 3 of them were good enough. Here’s the document that I sent Apple:

_____________________________

Dear Apple

I have read the unsolicited ideas verbiage and I agree all my ideas become property of Apple.

I appreciate apple products for their intuitive design and usability, but here are some short comings.

1. Backlighting should be adjustable, just like on my laptop. When I am in a dark room and I don’t want to blow out my eyes, or when I want to compromise brightness to save battery power I can dim the screen. My iPod should do the same, that will give me more power to watch movies during travel. I propose if the center button is clicked again after the shuttle/scrub state then the wheel will be in backlight dimming state.

2. The back of the ipod should have a belt clip/stand that can be deployed in a way that it will sit upright on an airplane seatback table to watch movies without having to hold it. This could be an accessory but it would be nice if it was built in or at least included.

3. iTunes should allow me to flag content and re-organize which folder it will appear in on my iPod.

4. While listening to music, there should be a built in trippy video or real time rendered visualization I can watch or use to show off how great the screen is on the iPod.

5. The next generation iPod should have a 16:9 screen ratio. When I hold it vertically, the screen is much taller than wide for easy grip and click wheel usage, but when I want to watch a movie I can turn it sideways and it will flip the screen. My Nikon digital camera has a mercury switch it in to sense which way I’m holding it, the next iPod should do the same to take advantage of a wide screen and still offer the comfort of the current generation while browsing music.

6. It would also be amazing if the next generation could be the same size as my 5G except with the entire front a wide screen / touch panel. Click wheel goes touch wheel… sweet. That could open the doors for a lot of other applications, like a full QWERTY onscreen keyboard for typing emails and text messages on the go. Even if it just acted as a Bluetooth keyboard for my cell phone.

7. A built-in camera to capture video and snapshots would be awesome. This could be an accessory.

8. Support for flash lite, (adobe/macromedia’s) flash’s mobile display engine would guarantee a bunch of really cool applications could be built for the iPod. The most obvious would be skinning the UI. Even proprietary apple UIs that could be bought at the iTunes store. People pay for cell phone ring tones to customize their phone, they’ll do the same to customize/personalize their ipod interface.

8. The next generation nano should be the same size as a PCMCIA card and fit into that slot for charging/docking/protection/transportation/removable storage.
Thinking Different…

- Chad Upton

Posted in Invent, Vent | 10 Comments »

Guided Setup, Using Perforce with Flex Builder

Sunday, May 4th, 2008

Perforce software makes a plug-in for Eclipse that makes life a lot easier when using the two together. This setup guide is directed specifically at using Perforce with Flex Builder 3.

As we know, Flex Builder 3 (FB3) is based on Eclipse 3.3.1. Since Flex Builder 2 is based on Eclipse 3.1.2, it probably won’t work – the release notes for the plug-in suggest is works on 3.2 and 3.3 only. I have not tested it, but if you were to upgrade Eclipse and use the Flex Builder plug-in then you should be OK.

Setup

  1. Open Flex Builder 3.
  2. Choose the following menu command: HELP > Software Updates > Find and Install.
  3. Select “Search for new features to install” and click Next >.
  4. Click “New Remote Site”.
  5. In the dialogue box, enter the Name “Perforce Plugin”.
  6. In the dialogue box, enter the URL: http://www.perforce.com/downloads/http/p4-wsad/install/
  7. Click OK.
  8. Click Finish.
  9. You will be prompted to “Select the features to install”.
  10. Be sure to check, “Show the latest version of a feature only” (at the bottom of the window)
  11. Fully expand the “Perforce Plugin” tree.
  12. Choose the last item in the tree that begins, “P4WSAD”.
  13. Click Next.
  14. Accept the terms in the license agreement to continue.
  15. Click Next.
  16. Click Finish.
  17. The feature will be downloaded and you may receive a Feature Verification warning
  18. Click “Install” if you receive the Feature Verification warning.
  19. The installation should occur and you need to restart Flex Builder.
  20. When Flex Builder restarts, we’ll tell the plugin where it can find Perforce on our system.
  21. Choose: Window > Preferences.
  22. In the left column, browse to: Team > Perforce.
  23. Under “Location of p4 executable” select “Location” and click “Browse”, then locate and select p4.exe. The default location is C:\Program Files\Perforce\p4.exe.
  24. Click Open.
  25. Click Apply.
  26. Click OK.
  27. Now, locate and open the project that you wish to use with Perforce.
  28. Right click on the project folder and choose: Team > Share Project.
  29. Select Perforce and click Next.
  30. The “Recent” field will probably be blank and that’s fine.
  31. Port will be the IP address and port of your Perforce server. (ex. 192.168.254.55) If you already have P4V or P4Win setup then you can find this in the title bar of the application.
  32. User is going to be your Perforce username, likely given you to by an administrator.
  33. Client Workspace should also be found in the title bar of P4V or P4Win if you’ve got those setup.
  34. Charset can probably be left to the default (none) but may require changing in certain circumstances.
  35. Click Finish.
  36. You will likely be prompted for your Perforce password – the one that goes with the Perforce username you entered.

Assuming everything went smoothly, you should now be able to edit files and Flex Builder will automatically add that file to the default changelist and make the file writable so you don’t get that annoying message.

Some other useful things that this plug-in does. Go to Window > Other Views…
In this dialogue box you can open the Perforce folder and select “P4 Pending Changelists”. This view will show you the files you have opened for editing and allow you to right click on the changelist or individual file for submitting.

Also, you’re probably used to seeing error and warning messages in the Problems view. Now you’ll see info messages when some things are out of sync with the repository. For example, if you add a new file your project but it’s not in the repository then you’ll see an info message warning you. Right click on the file and choose “Open for Add” then Submit the changelist and it will be added.

I hope this makes your life easier and please send me a quick line if you found any errors in my instructions, that will help other people!

Further details on setup are available at the Perforce website: http://www.perforce.com/perforce/doc.073/user/p4wsadnotes.txt

Posted in AIR, Flex | No Comments »