I have been playing around with Media Streamer for a while and am able to stream all my photos from my XP PC, to my Nokia 770 wirelessly; using TVersity Media Server on my XP PC & Media Streamer on my Nokia 770.

(I am using TVersity V0.9.8.1 with Media Streamer V1.1-2 Apologies for the quality of TVersity Logo, it's all I have)

I do not need to worry about rescaling and pre-downloading my images to the Nokia 770 because TVersity and Media Streamer work together so seamlessly.

All the images below are screen grabs from the Nokia 770, illustrating how Media streamer can be used to view images.

1) Tversity_logo (Image) has been selected from My Pictures
and added to the Media Streamer Play list

2) Tversity_logo (Image) has been loaded as
a thumbnail in Media Streamer Player

3) Tversity_logo (Image) is being loaded
(full view) in Media Streamer Player.

4) Tversity_logo is in full view in Media Streamer Player
(Arrows to go Fwd/Back, useful with a playlist of images)

5) Tversity_logo in full view in Media Streamer Player.
(When we view an image, info & arrows are discarded)

6) Play list of images from a trip to Moscow in 2006
One image selected and displayed as a thumbnail.

7) Same Moscow image being fully displayed.

I set up my old IBM T23 as media center in my living room, and got the cheap Logitech Cordless Desktop EX110 as remote.


As it is running Linux, a few tricks are needed to use these multimedia keys on the keyboard. First, hotkeys should be installed and autostart when X startup. And hotkeys.conf and itouch.def should be edited.



For a ubuntu user, please edit:
/usr/share/hotkeys/itouch.def

In this file, the codes of keys are mapped to some names easy to remember. And then please edit:

/etc/hotkeys.conf

In hotkeys.conf, each key name is mapped to a command, when the key is pressed, corresponding command will be invoked.

To know what's the keycode of a key, we can run xev, and press the key, xev will print corresponding keycodes to standard output.

A easier way: as for most Logitech keyboard, the keycodes can be found at here

Some useful keycodes are (copied from 1n12, maybe is for microsoft keyboard, but most are right for my logitech, haven't tried all):
keycode 115 = SLstart
keycode 116 = SRstart
keycode 117 = Smenu
keycode 234 = Sback
keycode 233 = Sforward
keycode 232 = Sstop
keycode 231 = Srefresh
keycode 122 = Ssearch
keycode 230 = Sfavourites
keycode 130 = Swebhome
keycode 236 = Smail
keycode 160 = Smute
keycode 174 = Svolumedown
keycode 176 = Svolumeup
keycode 162 = Splaypause
keycode 164 = Sstop
keycode 144 = Sprevtrack
keycode 153 = Snexttrack
keycode 129 = Smedia
keycode 198 = Smycomputer
keycode 161 = Scalculator
keycode 223 = Ssleep

since I'm playing with OLSR I quickly built a package for my 770. In order to use it you need to be root and you need some basic knowledge about olsrd. The general steps are: edit /etc/olsrd.conf to fit your network, bring up interface and assign an IP address, configure the wireless part (essid, ad-hoc mode, and channel number), and finally start olsrd.

The package is available in my Maemo2 repository and on my Nokia 770 page.

I know bugzilla.gnome.org uses points... currently when I visit BGO, it shows me a real name and a point category.

I'm unfortunately in a position where I want to only show real names to people if:

1. The person being shown specifically blesses the person/person's group
2. The person observing and the person being observed are relatively "close" as measured by point categories

If neither apply then instead of seeing real names, you'd see point-category-person-A with the letters (A, B, ...) being given out sequentially to accounts involved in the bug. Letters would only be uniquely assigned to accounts for individual bugs.

OK, point categories...

• probably assigned as ranges say 1..5, 6..10, 11..15, 16..20, ...
• possibly re-centered based on the observer.

The goal is to obfuscate who is doing what without actually hurting a user's ability to interact with people. The problem is basically that we have some people who are known for making changes from which other people can financially benefit.

<marnanel> gosh, how exciting. covert subterfuge and stuff.

Imagine you were able to watch people entering and leaving:

E Capitol St NE & 1st St NE, Washington, DC 20001

And from there you could figure out what is happening inside, without looking, and then you could do something which would earn you money/fame/fortune - unfortunately, harming the world in the process.

<marnanel> this is bugzilla.fbi.gov or something? :)

The hypothesis is that you wouldn't be able to do this if you couldn't see the faces of the people. The problem is that if you can't see any of the faces at all, then you don't know who is at least somewhat important. It's OK to recognize the difference between a clerk and a cleaner and an elected rep. I need to give a parallel to my problem w/o explicitly writing it.

I think the parallel works reasonably well.

The worst scourge The worst scourge

Media Streamer V1.1-2 provides Album Art in it's interface whilst playing tracks directly on the Nokia 770 or whilst controlling playback on a UPnP Player that allows for UPnP remote control such as the Philips SL300i.

I have been able to view Album Art on Media Streamer when using PMM and/or Twonky on .mp3 and .wma tracks where my initial testing seem to indicate :-

• PMM (& I imagine Simple Center) work when the Album Art is in the same folder as the tracks and named as (folder.jpg)
• Twonky works when the Album Art is tagged within the Audio file.

I have also tried adding Album Art to .wav using AudioShell 1.3 Beta 2, but this is not being correctly read by PMM and/or Twonky and passed to Media streamer. (If this is how it's done?)

TVersity V0.9.8.2 does not yet support album art but hopefully won't be long in coming now that id3V2 is supported ;-)

Media Streamer apparently also works with unprotected .acc files I imagine the Album Art will work in the same way as for .wma and .mp3 audio. Here are some examples screen captures...

1) Crowded House, Weather With You in .wma format, with playback on Nokia 770.


2) Madonna, Papa don't Preach in .mp3 format, playback on Philips SL300i


3) Peter Gabriel, Downside-Up in .mp3 format, playback on Philips SL300i


4) Crowded House, Weather With You in .wma format, with playback on Philips SL300i



Issue Notes: (Probably interesting to the Media Streamer development team)

I did notice some niggles switching between the audio formats when using Media Streamer as either a controller or a player, I was using Twonky during my tests. (The playback time status gets corrupted and sometimes Media Streamer would state a playback error on completion of buffering or similar but would play the track?)

I also noticed that Media Streamer works best and most consistently when there is ONLY one Media Server on the Network. (Think something becomes confused and Media Streamer perhaps ends up communicating with more than one UPnP Server, in error)

You will note that the Album Art has a small magnifying glass indicating you can view images at full scale on the Nokia 770, this however does not work for Album Art.

Comments are always welcome...

I had this problem lately, that sometimes sound just stopped working. This is not related to the previous incident - I checked that first... but I was to find another surprise this time..
Turns out Acrobat Reader was to blame for this one:

# lsof  /dev/snd/pcm*
COMMAND     PID   USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME
firefox-b 17368 tigert  mem    CHR 116,11      8338 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p
acroread  21635 tigert  147u   CHR 116,11      8338 /dev/snd/pcmC0D0p

What the Fsck?? Last I checked, "Acroread" was a tool to view PDF files. Why does it block the audio device when nothing is even being played..?
(for an added shock, if you are an interaction designer or involved in usability, check out the acroread preferences, if you haven't for a while.. they have 21 pages of settings.. but that's another story..)