Introducing systemBash’s first Windows Mobile theme: Black Grass.
This totally free theme features a grass background and a black menu bar. Text is white and accents are green. It in meant for pocket PC / Windows Mobile version 5 and above.
In case you are wondering what the clock/center menu uses, it is phoneAlarm and uses this theme.
Joomla! 1.0.12 appears to have a pathway bug. If you use a component other than com_frontpage for the “Home page” of Joomla - meaning the first link in mainmenu and the page that appears when you load the root of the Joomla! site - then when you click on an article you get a “Double pathway”, for example the pathway will state “Home > Home > Title of article”. The Home, or whatever you named this link, part will be duplicated. It isn’t a big problem but it does look unprofessional on your site!
I looked for ages for a fix to this problem, and eventually found it but the site I can not find the site I originally downloaded this fix from. It is courtesy of Reinhard Hiebl - www.hieblmedia.de (whos site is in German, one reason why I’m saving it here). I thought I would throw it online here for your download. The fix is in two parts of code in /includes/pathway.php.
At line 54 in includes/pathway.php:
// Fix for dublicate home if home have childs //
// by Reinhard Hiebl -- www.hieblmedia.de //////
// get first published item
$query = "SELECT id"
. "\n FROM #__menu"
. "\n WHERE published = 1"
. "\n AND parent = 0"
. "\n AND menutype = 'mainmenu'"
. "\n AND access <= " . (int) $my->gid
. "\n ORDER BY ordering"
. "\n LIMIT 1"
;
$database->setQuery( $query );
$first_mitem = $database->loadResult( 'id' );
////////////////////////////////////////////////
And at line 284 in includes/pathway.php immediately after “$item =& $mitems[$mid];”:
// Fix for dublicate home if home have childs //
// by Reinhard Hiebl -- www.hieblmedia.de //////
if ( $item->id == $first_mitem && !$item->parent ) {
break;
}
////////////////////////////////////////////////
I also have the file zipped up so you can just replace includes/pathway.php with this file. Note that this is for version 1.0.12 only, so it might not work with previous or newer versions.
pathway.zip
Just received an invite for VeohTV Private Beta!
Thanks for your interest in the VeohTV beta!
VeohTV is a free specialized video browser that turns online video into Internet Television.
Watch video from thousands of web sites, in one easy-to-use full screen application. Watch streaming video from major television networks such as Fox and CBS, to independently-produced content available on sites such as YouTube, Google Video, Veoh.com and MySpace.
VeohTV makes watching Internet video as simple as watching television – navigate with a keyboard and mouse or use a PC remote control. VeohTV is like a free DVR for web video. Watch video on-demand or record it to your hard drive to watch later. You can watch your favorite shows in full-screen on your PC, or connect your PC to your television.
Installation and Setup Instructions:
1. Go to: VeohTV beta download page
2. Select the Download button and save the VeohSetup.exe file to your PC
3. Run the VeohSetup.exe installer
4. Enter your private beta key: XXXXXXXX
5. Log-in with your Veoh accountEmail us your feedback at veohtvbeta@veoh.com.
Experience Internet Television with VeohTV!
Thanks,
The VeohTV Team
With Joost, VeohTV, YouTube; Orb, Snapstream, Sage, and MythTV; and all of the other “New TV” outfits out there; television is moving off of old-school Cable and moving to the internet. Although it will take a long time for television to move off your PC and onto your Television in your livingroom - it will inevitably happen. It is just a matter of making it easy enough to offer the content on your PC and share it in a way that the average user can handle.
My primary beef with all Web TV outfits (not THAT WebTV) is that all of the content is decidedly low-definition. Bandwidth requirements for HDTV over Internet are pretty hefty - but the pipeline is now available at your house. Verizon’s FiosTV is one such service who offers HDTV over their Fiber lines - they also offer internet plans up to 30Mbps (or 50Mbps in some areas) already. Once the ultra high speed networks come really gain market penetration, there will be more of a push for HDTV over IP.
Finally, there is the whole sticky issue of television studio involvement. Some outfits are backed by major names; for example VeohTV by Disney and YouTube by Viacom, YouTube by CBS. How crucial are these deals? My thoughts are they are very important. But, according to a source I have who is involved with a very beta video streaming services, the networks are knocking down doors at these startups to give them money, with the hopes they will hit the one that grows to become the major new internet TV provider.
When it comes down to it, the two crucial things that are most important to these new startups: the technology and the content. For technology, they need to make this software easy enough to use but still deliver the highest quality content with the easy of use of a remote. For the content, there really is only one way to go - you NEED to partner with a studio that is putting out the titles. Imagine if a show like Lost was shown on Joost - that would soon be a major draw for anyone who is able to access it (including those out of the US who are usually using technologies like Bittorrent to download shows shortly after they are released in the states.
The stakes for the television studios are high as well - if they don’t adapt to these new technologies - and make it EASY for consumers to get their shows (with advertising revenue?) then most people will just take the easy way and download the shows for free.
For Firefox and Opera only: Use the Google Secure Pro Greasemonkey script to force these Google programs to use SSL in your browser. It changes any accesses via http to https which is supported by Google, this secures your connection between your browser and Google’s servers.
If you do any type of work using Google’s services where private data is exchanged, I would highly recommend this greasemonkey script to secure your communications!
If you try to use Z-index with Internet Explorer (I hear this is a problem on both 6 and 7), you may have problems getting it to “listen” when Firefox seems to handle z-index just fine.
The problem is a bug in IE which does not render z-index properly all of the time. If you just use z-index: XXX and do not have a position tag, then it does not work. By adding “position: relative” or “position: absolute” tag to your CSS div tag, it magically works!
Thanks for wasting several hours of mine IE.
I received an interesting mail from CallWave this morning:
Great news: CallWave is reinventing voicemail – again! — with two fantastic enhancements to the CallWave service:
1. VtxtSM: A new feature that transforms your voicemail into a concise text message that you can read on your cell phone or email.
2. PhonePage: A permanent, searchable web-based archive that lets you treat all your mobile messages just like email. Use your PhonePage to read, hear and save your messages, send texts, call back, organize your contacts and more.You have been selected to participate in the CallWave VtxtSM and PhonePage Beta Test. There’s no charge to participate. All we ask is that you agree to provide feedback and answer a brief survey after using it for a few days.
If you would like to try the new CallWave VtxtSM and PhonePage features, simply reply to this email with your mobile number, and tell us you want to be included. We’ll notify you when it’s activated.
Thanks for using CallWave!
Sincerely,
The CallWave Team
I’ve been using CallWave’s Visual Voicemail feature for a few months now. It is great - instead of using Cingular/AT&T’s voicemail system, I switched to CallWave’s system. It has a number of features AT&T simply does not have - including e-mails with voicemail attached as a wave file, and SMS notification of voicemail which replaces the “Voicemail” notifier on my phone.
This service that CallWave is going to be testing - Vtxt and Phonepage - sounds like it is going to be speech-to-text detection of voicemail messages. I’m curious as to how accurate the translation will be because in the past PC based speech recognition has been hit or miss, but a lot of time has passed and maybe it is a bit more accurate than it used to be.
I can’t wait to see what they come up with!
