Apple TV not showing on iTunes

I just got as Christmas present an Apple TV, and while still syncing the media content from iTunes it stopped showing in the Devices list. Only 10 movies were synced and the HD movies bought in the Apple TV were not sent to iTunes.

I searched on different forums for a solution, but some of them suggested factory resetting, and I didn't want to pass through the iTunes, Podcasts and online pictures setup process again. So I kept looking for an alternative and found some posts saying that the AppleTV should be visible using 'pings'. In my case that wasn't the case. I reset my router and then I was able to ping the Apple TV new IP address.

So, if you're Apple TV is not shown in iTunes, first try to 'ping' it from a command.com or terminal window, and if it doesn't try to renew the Apple TV IP address or to reset your router.

Places I've Been

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iPhone firmware 2.1

Phone version 2.1 contains many bug fixes and improvements, including the following:
•  decrease in call set-up failures and call drops
•  significantly improved 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 if you have lots of 3rd 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

 

Today Apple publicly released the new firmware for the iPhone. It promises to solve many of the issues we were having since the firmware 2.0 and iPhone 3G were released.

Personally, I'm really disatisfied with battery life, in iPhone 3G is clearly inferior to battery life on my previous 8G iPhone. Backup times are really long, but I can live with that, after more than 10 years of regular Palm hotsyncs I get used to plan the best moment to do it, but it's for sure that iPhone must have a faster backup. And I have a lot 3rd party applications, about 40 from AppStore and another 20 from Cydia, and I experienced the hangs caused by the firmware, you get stuck in the Apple logo and you need to ssh from Mac to kill the buggy processes in order to get a proper reboot.

Apple claims these 3 issues, and the always welcome performance improvements, are solved with the new firmware. I hope so, I really like this portable computer and I plan to keep using it a lot for personal management, software development, movie watching, internet browsing, and game playing. Ah! And for making phone calls too! :-)

SAP in Blackberry

Trying to keep their advantage on business sector, RIM will include applications from the successful german ERP, SAP, in their Blackberries.

I really ike the iPhones, and I think that they are a far better platform for leisure and business applications, and even when in the company I work we use SAP, this annoncement wont make me think in switching to Blackberry.

Windows Live Writer

I've write for some blogs, in english and spanish, in blogger and in proprietary servers, about technology, process and hobbies. So it's important for me to have a tool that allows and easy management of the different blogs. I've been using MacJournal, a Mac OS tool, but now I tried Windows Live Writer, a free Microsoft tool.

MacJournal allows to download and organize previous posts, allows to add tags compatible with Blogger, but those tags are not organized by blog, instead they are listed in a common list.

What I like about Windows Live Writer is the ping services, and that it downloads the blog style and you can locally see how the post will look alike once published. It also makes a more friendly management of tags, and picture publishing.

For now I will be using Windows Live Writer, did I mention it is free?

Partition Recovery

The Context
I use an external 320GB WD Hard Drive as backup disk for Mac and XP files. Therefore it has three partitions: one partition to backup XP files, one partition to backup Mac files, and a last partition as common repository. This last one is a FAT32 partition with ebooks, music and movies that I want accessible from XP and Mac.

The Problem
This morning the common partition could not be mounted on Mac, Disk Utility was not even able to verify it. I tried on XP and I received a "Drive is not formatted message. Do you want to format it?". The other two partitions had no problem.

The Alternatives
I Google'd for 'partition recovery' software and I found a lot of alternatives, most of them commercial software with a free demo. I downloaded some of them to see if my data can be receovered. 'Partition Table Doctor' and 'PartRecovery' were able to see my files in the damaged partition, but before paying for the solution I searched for other alternatives. 'Find And Mount' is an interesting software it builds on the fly a partition that can be mounted on a different drive letter, it was able to mount my data, but since it is 'on the fly', the performance makes it unusable.

The Solution
Then I found TestDisk, it is a freeware tool available for different platforms, and in no time it was able to rebuild the boot sector and FAT partitions. Now everything is working fine. I strongly recommend this program and, if you also find it useful, consider donating something in their webpage.

iPhone writing recognition software

There is an application at http://iphonecake.com/src/new that enables iPhone and iTouch to recognize writing, Grafiiti style. Well, it is not actually Grafitti style, it looks more like the writing recognition in Windows Mobile devices.

The original Grafitti, one of the reasons of the high popularity of Palm handhelds, allowed to enter the most used characters using a single stroke. But at some point, Palm was forced to replace this marvelous software due to legal issues, and the new Grafitti 2 required two strokes for some frequently used characters (i, j, t, k, x, 4). This single fact significantly reduced writing speed because the software needs to wait for a possible second stroke. Personally, with the original Palm’s Grafitti I could achieve almost the same speed I have in regular paper, and with the newest version it is really annoying trying to enter a single paragraph.

Well, this iPhone app is a nice try, elegantly integrated on existent keyboard, but it is even slower than Grafitti 2, it waits for whole phrases, meaning a lot of strokes in queue before trying to recognize them. And after the wait, the application is not efficient recognizing the entered strokes.

Less accidents also mean less money

Last week, Dallas officials reviewed the numbers and decided that a quarter of the cameras they had installed to catch motorists running red lights were too effective. So they shut them down.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23710970

Even when the red light diminished accidents they were sut down because they also diminished money collected from fined. So, who are these officials serving to?