If the following experience is anything to go by, MotoDev, Motorolas Developer site, must be full of inaccurate information. I recently purchased a v500 phone from eBay because MotoDev says it supports still image capture (JSR135) via Java. After much time wasted, I find that it does not. I then purchased a v80 because this site says it Bluetooth access (JSR82) from Java… more time wasted to find out that no, it doesn’t! These may be old handsets, but I would still be wary of buying Motorola phone in future if they can’t get these fundamental details right. £50 and 2 days of coding and headscratching down the drain 
Thanks Motorola.
Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Motorolas Poor Support for Java Developers
Monday, September 14th, 2009First iPhone App on the AppStore
Thursday, January 29th, 2009My first iPhone App, on behalf of Pocket PT, has now been released for sale on the AppStore. Essentially a bundle of videos, with text description pages plus a page updated from the web, it is simple enough by coding standards – but an important maiden journey through Apples not-so-straightforward submission process, paving the way for more advanced apps. Here’s a link to the iTunes product page: Swiss Ball Exercises with Pocket PT
I have joined Pocket Innovation
Monday, November 10th, 2008Having spent over 4 years in the DVD authoring business, and pretty much explored all the technical possibilities the platform has to offer, I have decided to leave Metropolis and join a new technology company. Pocket Innovation are developing Pocket PT as the next generation in health and fitness sales and service – providing a three tiered online Personal Training solution: direct to customers, for Personal Trainers to manage their clients, and also a back end designed to enable gyms and health clubs to manage and retain members effectively. I am working with web technologies to develop and ‘white label’ our current site at www.pocketpt.co.uk. I am also responsible for developing opportunities for our brand in the mobile arena, with plans to develop a range of supporting iPhone and Mobile Java apps to accompany the site.
bdjforum.com down
Friday, June 13th, 2008NOTE: Thanks to a kind offer from a forum member, I am currently making arrangements for bdjforum to be moved to a co-located server to ensure future reliability. More news to follow…
Unfortunately the server ran out of space a few days back and caused Ubuntu to crash. Clearing space quickly bought everything back up except bdjforum. I am unsure what the problem is at the moment, having taken the following actions so far:
- Standard checks and repairs on the mySQL database, which showed no errors.
- Checked the Apache2 and PHP logs which again show no errors.
- Added some debug output to index.php to confirm that it is being processed, which it is.
At the moment phpBB3 is merely giving blank output. I have backed up the database and am trying to repair the forum as my first priority, even if this means a reinstall over the weekend. I know this will be an inconvenience to some daily users, so I will keep you posted.
The next thing I will try is clearing the phpBB3 cache folders which may have cached blank or truncated output due to the previous lack of space. If anyone has any suggestions I am keen to hear them…
Server Upgraded
Monday, May 19th, 2008This webserver installation was moved to another hardware platform for the second time – now a 2.4Ghz Celeron – to improve response times. The internet upstream was also upgraded from ADSL 512Kbps to Cable 768Kbps. Page loads have shown a marked improvement.
Ubuntu once again proved itself as a hardy operating system, requiring only an edit to the GRUB boot settings, and a re-run of the X-Server configuration, to take account of the new graphics hardware.
bdjforum.com launched
Saturday, January 26th, 2008With the recent victory of Blu-ray in the HD format war, it is clear that demand for Blu-ray Java (BDJ) development will increase. Home entertainment companies will be looking to wow consumers not only with high quality video, but also new features made possible by fully programmable graphics layers, internet connectivity and persistent storage.
As with all technical developments, there are many questions to be answered, and ‘best practice’ methods yet to be found. I have created a new forum for aspiring BD-J developers so that we can share information and experiences towards creating exciting applications that will help consumers make the best of their new kit.
Excel to ExtendScript Bridge released
Thursday, January 24th, 2008A common request over on AEnhancers.com is how to read data into Adobe Scripts from Excel spreadsheets. For a long time there has been no satisfactory answer; the standard advice being to export and read-in via a delimited text file (CSV). In an attempt to improve this situation, I have created a tool, part Adobe Script, part Java, to enable communication between user scripts and Excel.
This tool is functional but in its early revisions so I encourage you to try it out and welcome any suggestions or bug reports you may have. Note that the documentation on the project page is also included in the download for ease of reading.
‘GapFinder’ utility released
Thursday, November 15th, 2007I often face the situation where a numbered sequence of files is being generated or delivered, either from a design team or computer renderfarm. Where they are not arriving in order, identifying which files are missing can be a lengthy task and difficult to automate. So, I developed a small GUI based program to do it. ‘GapFinder’ analyses a folder of numbered files and lists apparent ommissions in an easy to read format.
‘GapFinder’ takes the form of an executable JAR file and is cross-platform. Get it here:
GapFinder.jar (<10kb)
benbailey.org.uk portfolio website launched
Sunday, September 30th, 2007I have just finished creating a website for friend and former colleague Ben Bailey. With over 15 years of experience in Production, Ben Bailey has established a skill set that covers writing, directing and editing (Avid Media Composer) to an advanced professional level. The website employs a clean, functional HTML design and high quality streaming Flash video to achieve the showcase functionality that Ben was looking for.
Undocumented AE Scripting Commands
Monday, September 3rd, 2007Today I learned of two undocumented commands in After Effects’ Scripting which have huge implications. It is well known that not all of After Effects’ features are presented by the ExtendScript API, leading to many limitations, such as the inability to create a layer mask via code. This can be largely overcome with nab’s discovery of two commands (taken from this post):
app.findMenuCommandId(”<GUI command name>“) ;
app.executeCommand(<commandId>);
The use of these should be self explanatory, but their existence begs two questions: firstly why they exist, and secondly why are they undocumented? My guess is that they are an ‘in development’ feature used by Adobe programmers to test the integration of scripting before the API was complete.
Since the API is still incomplete these commands remain very useful
There is a suggestion on the source thread that these command may be unreliable under After Effects CS3, which I am unable to test at this time. This could be down to the reporter trying to directly use the same command code ID’s as reported by After Effects 7.0. Since these numeric ID’s are internal references and probably vary between versions, I would suggest always nesting these commands in conjunction, like so:
app.executeCommand(app.findMenuCommand(”<GUI Command Name>“));