Adobe announced today the Open Screen Project.

The Open Screen Project is dedicated to driving consistent rich Internet experiences across televisions, personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. ...

Specifically, this work will include:

• Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
• Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
• Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
• Removing licensing fees - making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

They have a decent list of technology leaders. I hope to see more companies added to the list soon (like Apple).

You can find more about the project on their Open Screen Project and also a decent writeup at techcrunch.

The jcFarcryFlvPlayer plugin for FarCry gives you a flash-based video player for your website.

The plugin takes advantage of the JW FLV Media Player (a flash-based audio/video player) to offer your website/web-application users playback of your video and audio content (FLV, MP3, H264, SWF, JPG, PNG and GIF).

Examples

Listing Page (teasers)

Example screenshot taken from: http://www.lowellgeneral.org/go/videos

Video Player/Details Page

Example screenshot taken from: http://www.lowellgeneral.org/go/videos/the-birthplace

I wrote the original version of this code about a year ago for another client. As more clients needed the feature (I'm now using it on 3 different FarCry websites) the need for converting it to a reusable plugin was evident. I finished the plugin for mass consumption by January, but never got around to releasing it (due to inadequate documentation :) ).

There are two version of the plugin (v1.0.x for FarCry 4, and v1.1.x for FarCry 5). Both currently have the same functionality (they are just designed for different versions of FarCry).

Find more information and detailed documentation on the docs/wiki page.

I've been researching new backup solutions for both online and offline backups of my development computers. I don't just want to backup a few files, I need disaster recovery (if my machine completely fails, I want to be able to replace the HDD (or computer) and be able to restore it back to the way it was in a few clicks).

For years I've been backing up my PCs using Acronis True Image Home to my local NAS drives. This works great for local backups, but I moved to a Mac last year and haven't found a backup software I really like yet that does compression as well as Acronis (currently PC-only) and offers something close to a GFS backup solution.

But this blog post is to discuss online backup solutions. While I continue to try different offline backup solutions to backup my data to my NAS drives, I really need an offline backup solution for redundancy.

Here are a list of some solutions I've been researching. I'd be grateful to hear people's thoughts on the products or to hear what other people are using that they might suggest to consider. I need something that can backup my Macs (most important), but if there is a product that can backup my PCs as well, it would be preferred:

• Jungle Disk: Offline storage powered by Amazon S3. Very affordable at only 15 cents per gigabyte per month (and you only pay for what you use).
• CrashPlan: A really cool product that allows you to use either their online storage facilities, or backup to your own servers (online and offline). You can even do redundant backups (backup to multiple devices, both your own devices and their online backup facilities). I really like this option, except it doesn't (yet) have an option to just backup to offline HDDs (like my NAS) without involving another OS (I say "yet" because their site lists that they are working on that option and may be offering it soon). Check out their video for a pretty cool demonstration.
• Mozy: An online-only backup solution. This one has been around for a while. It still doesn't appear to officially support Mac OS 10.5 yet (like CrashPlan), but I've had friends say they're using it without a problem. I believe it deletes your data after 30 days.
• Carbonite: An offline backup solution. This is a very enticing solution... only $49.95 per year with no file storage capacity storage limitation. What's that you say? You heard me correct. The downside is that its Windows-only (and I need a solution for the Mac). Still, it was worthy to list here. I believe it deletes your data after 30 days.
• iDrive: Looks like a pretty cool online backup solution, but their pricing os too high for the amount of data I need to backup and it's Windows-only.
• Drobo and DroboShare: Okay, I know... this product doesn't belong on this list of online backup solutions, but it was too cool not to talk about anyway :). The two devices together act like a NAS (using new technology that may replace standard RAID as we know it (my personal opinion)), but limitations like USB2 between the devices, no redundant gigabit connections, etc. are holding me back. Its been out for a while, so hopefully they will have a new version out soon with many of the missing features people have been asking for.

If you Google "online backup solutions" you'll get a long list of products out there (only a few of which I've looked into). So, what do you use or suggest?

Early this morning Daemon released a packaged beta of FarCry 5.0 (code-named Fortress). This is an early beta and has known bugs, however I've been running it and so far it is pretty stable (IMO).

FarCry 5.0 has a very large feature set. The new installer is great (see image below) and the upgrader does an amazing job (currently only updates from FarCry 4.0).

New FarCry 5.0 Installer

Of the many new features in FarCry, the one I'm really digging is the new skeleton functionality. In essence when you create a skeleton you take a snapshot of your current project (configs, plugin connections,... even data) and you can redeploy it in other installations (this is all managed from an easy user interface).

Another feature that a lot of people will be excited about is that FarCry can now run from the webroot (allowing you to deploy it on a shared hosting environment).

You can find more about FarCry 5.0 in the online wiki.

Here is a list of some of the many of the features being released in FarCry 5.0:

• New Security Model (it's type-based now)
• New Workflow Engine
• New Formtool Enhancements
  • Ability to Create Formtools without a Persistent Object (providing a construct for using formtools without the need for a content type in the background)
• FarCry now Uses Application.cfc
• ExtJs 2.0 Integration (a new tag library that concentrates on panels and accordions)
• New Webskin Security Model
• New Skeleton Functionality (for solution distributions)
• New Skeleton Explorer (allowing you to export your existing project into a skeleton)
• New Webskin Security (example: You can secure any view)
• Type-Based Webskins (the ability to run a new webskin on a collection of objects of the same type)
• New Inline Documentation Functionality in the Webtop
• Categories are Now Content Types (No need to create custom category types anymore)
• The Config has been Normalized (allowing plugins to have their own config)
• New Installer
• And Much More!...

There are so many more features. Even small ones... like date fields for example (Thanks Mat). While editing in a form (in the webtop) and modifying a data field... sure you can use the date icon and click through the dates. But you can also just type into the date box in any format (and the date will automatically be converted to your locale). Example: You can type the string "+ 2 weeks" or "+2 months" and you will instantly see the resulting date.

Daemon has put a lot of work into this release and deserve all the credit we can throw at them :). They are asking for people to beta test and report bugs in the public Bug Tracker and/or in the FarCry-Beta Mailing Lists.

I'm currently using Mac OS x 10.5 and originally had these scripts while using 10.4 (thus I haven't tested them on any earlier versions).

Normally when you want to map (mount) to a Windows shared network drive you have to click on the word "Go" in the finder menu, choose "Connect to Server..." (propeller-K), and use SMB to mount to a Windows shared server.

Example:

However, I have several shares I use on my network (a NAS that uses SMB) and I prefer to have my shares connect automatically on startup. So I use the following script to map to my drives (using Apple's Script Editor).

From there I can either add all the drive mappings I want to that one script, or save them as individual scripts (the way I usually do it). Then I save the script as an application (make sure to uncheck "Startup Screen", unless you want that extra step).

Finally I add the applications to my startup (System Preferences --> Accounts --> Highlight the account --> Login Items (tab) --> Then I add the applications to the list.

On some occasions (for some reason), when my machine starts up not all of the mappings will connect (giving an error that the destination was unreachable). I haven't figured out why yet, but it only happens occasionally, so I've been living with it (to fix it I just manually click the application again and I'm in).

There are plenty of other methods to get this to work, but I haven't had much luck with others yet (I'm still a bit new to Mac and *nix). If someone else out there has a great idea (or a better one), feel free to let me know.

Yesterday I received my copy of Microsoft Office 2008 (Home Edition) from Amazon. So far I'm really liking it (the video tutorials on Lynda were very helpful to me in getting up to speed).

The printer I use (Canon MP830) is not networkable, thus I needed to purchase a network print server that supported a Mac (I'm currently using the D-Link DPR-1260. Although it supports multi-function printers (including my printer) it only supports "printing" from Macs (unfortunately I didn't find that out until after installing the device... the box just said Mac OS X supported)). When I upgraded to OS X 10.5, Apple pre-installed the Gutenprint printer drivers, which allowed me to finally print to my printer without a problem. Although it doesn't support all of the features of the printer (actually, hardly any features... not even draft printing) it at least had a few important features like duplexing (or what Apple calls "Two-Sided" printing). So far, every program I've tested on my Mac has had great success... until I installed MS Office 2008. From Office I can only print (with little-to-no feature options).

The solution? It was easier than I thought. When you're ready to print, choose "print" from the "file" menu. Then hit the "Preview" button (which loads up Preview). Now you'll be able to have all of your print features again.

As an aside: During my trials, I tried upgrading the Gutenprint printer drivers to the latest version (which claim they fix some bugs and add more printer support... at this time I upgraded from 5.1.3 (Leopard default) to 5.1.6). Although it didn't address my issues I thought people might like to know I am not having problems using the new versions. The only thing I should point out is that when the new version installed, it deleted my current printer from the "Print & Fax" settings in System Preferences. Although it only took me a moment to setup I was glad that I wrote down the settings before I started the upgrade :). Still, had I known that it wouldn't have addressed my issue, I wouldn't have bothered (if it's not broke, don't fix it).

The sessions and speaker lists were published tonight on the cf.Objective() conference website. The topics listed there are amazing and I'm excited to once again be a part of it.

This will be my third year speaking at the conference and I couldn't be more excited. I'll be speaking on one topic: Introduction to FarCry 4.1. The new version of FarCry, estimated to be released in early next spring (northern hemisphere :) ), promises to be an exciting release with great features. It is rumored that the final release version will be renumbered to 5.0 (instead of 4.1) due to it's major build modifications.

On the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog, Google announced a new feature called Video Sitemaps.

Video Sitemaps-an extension of the Sitemap Protocol that helps make your videos more searchable via Google Video Search

I played with it for a couple minutes and it looks pretty cool (I sense maybe a few more features for it coming... we'll see :) ).

As the blog states: To get started, create a Video Sitemap, sign into Google Webmaster Tools, and add the Video Sitemap to your account.

Okay, this really isn't as difficult as many are making it out to be. It took me 5 minutes (once I knew what to do). Essentially all you need to do is replace one file (mod_jrun22.so).

[More]

A few months ago I made the plunge and bought a MBP. I've been slowly converting over my apps and configurations from my PC to my Mac (learning as I go) and couldn't be happier.

I'm so pleased with it that I've been preaching to family members to get one for their next computer upgrade. I even bought a new iMac this weekend for the new family computer at home (waited until Leopard was released).

I decided to upgrade my MBP to Leopard (knowing full well that CF8 is not yet fully supported (I still have my PC laptop here as well and all of my projects are in SVN, so its not a big deal to use that until a CF8 patch is out or I decide to use a workaround (see comments on that page)).

I have several programs that don't quite work correctly (but I researched them before upgrading, so I'm not surprised and can live with them as-is until they are updated).

My overall impression so far is that I'm very pleased:

• Spaces is excellent. Sure I've used similar mutli-desktop programs for the PC since the late 90's, but its nice to have something like this built into the OS and officially supported.
• Time Machine works great (although I have a feeling I may still do nightly image backups on my NAS until I've done enough testing to make sure Time Machine is backing up everything (ie. my Apache configs, etc).
• And Boot Camp runs great (I was already using the Beta, so I only needed to update the drivers in Windows) and also loads well from VMWare Fusion (note: If using VMware Fusion 1.0, there is a new release of 1.1 Beta to support Leopard. Just keep in mind that its beta (although its working great for me so far)).