Archives For Learning

Watching Starhub TV Online on your Mac

March 16, 2009 — 1 Comment

Though there is much dislike about “Starhub”:/2008/08/an-open-letter-to-starhub-dear-sparky/ over the Jesus phone, their TV offerings on Starhub TV is still something I enjoy, especially their Sports channels… at least until they lose out on English Premier League hosting rights.

Besides watching it on TV, if you are a “MaxOnline”:http://www.starhub.com/portal/site/Online user, you can also watch selected channels on your computer with their “Starhub TV Online”:http://www.starhub.com/portal/site/iView. They also offer “TV on Demand”:http://play.starhub.com/starhubtv/video.do where you can download certain shows they are screening on TV now, but unfortunately, that’s “Windows ONLY”:http://www.starhub.com/portal/site/CableTV/menuitem.b0b0f265fac5dfb3f75eb1109b1000a0/?vgnextoid=f3692a0a19134010VgnVCM100000b901000aRCRD&vgnextfmt=ItemCMId%3Acf4293f7ee45c110VgnVCM100000464114acRCRD#2.

Anyway, not to be disheartened, there are still seven channels which you can watch online – Football Channel, Goal TV 1 and 2, CTI TV, Fashion TV, National Geographic and Nat Geo Adventure. However, you cannot watch it off the “StarHub TV Online website”:http://www.starhub.com/portal/site/iView but requires the Windows Media Player (“download here”:http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/flip4mac.mspx) to do so.

Once downloaded, you have to manually input the URL to watch the channels of your choice:

  • Football Channel: http://www.starhub.com/config/FC.asx
  • Goal TV 1: http://www.starhub.com/config/GTV1.asx
  • Goal TV 2: http://www.starhub.com/config/GTV2.asx
  • CTI TV: http://www.starhub.com/config/CTI.asx
  • Fashion TV: http://www.starhub.com/config/FTV.asx
  • NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: http://www.starhub.com/config/NGC.asx
  • NAT GEO ADVENTURE: http://www.starhub.com/config/NGA.asx

As these are streamed through cable, there is a slight time lapse. So don’t be surprised if you hear your neighbour shout GOAL and all you see is the ball being passed around.

Also, if you are behind a router, make sure you enable Multicast Streaming if you have issues connecting to the Starhub server.

Update – Have just swopped my Dlink router to the Airport Extreme Base Station and just like that, TV Online stopped working for me. Anyone had it work with this router, please let me know.

I can't watch on the website

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Doing the shuffle – earphones remote control instructions

March 12, 2009 — Leave a comment

remote-shuffle

Apple has put up a page in its “Support section”:http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3458 describing the various combinations of button pressing to work the new “iPod shuffle”:/2009/03/ipod-shuffle-slimmer-smaller-smoother/.

Getting the various combinations of double or triple clicks and/or hold the center buttons will probably be a frustrating experience in the beginning. Remembering them will probably another story.

Do bookmark that page if you are going to be a new iPod shuffle owner.

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Unit Converter Dashboard Widget cranky

March 11, 2009 — 3 Comments

The Unit Converter Dashboard widget provided by Apple has been giving me wrong conversion since the last OS X 10.5.6 update. Although the economy is bad, but not to the extend where a unit of US$ showed up as an astonishing S$3.751.

Going back to my Internet best friend – “Google”:http://www.google.com – I found that it was a coding error in the javascript file for the widget as shown in this “Mac OSX Hints”:http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20090225162441861 page. It resulted in the drop down menus for the countries not tallying with the rates that were downloaded. For example, if you choose the top two countries on the drop down menu, on the left it shows Australia and on the right USA. But both rates ended up $A1 = US$1, which is incorrect.

Unit Converter gives wrong info

Thankfully, the work around is pretty simple.

Firstly, locate the widget file at /Library/Widgets/ as “seen here”. Next, drag it onto your Desktop to create a copy of the Unit Converter.wdgt. Right click on the file and click Show Package Contents to access the files that run the widget.

Open this file UnitConverter.js with your text editor and search for this line: if (a.iso == "USD") return -1;. Delete that line, and on the next line which reads: else if (a.name < b.name) return -1;, delete the word else from that line. (see image below)

converter-screwed-4

Once that is done, save the file and drag it into the Widgets folder found in your User folder: ~/Library/Widgets so that you won’t overwrite the system’s copy.

Double click the file to make sure the edited copy is installed, and you should be able to see that the country lists on both drop downs are the same, and the conversion is correct.

converter-screwed-5

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Combining files in iDisk online

February 20, 2009 — Leave a comment

sharingmultfilesApple has “added the ability”:http://www.apple.com/mobileme/news/2009/02/sharing-multiple-files-at-once-with-idisk.html to combine and compress files in MobileMe’s web iDisk interface:

bq. A number of MobileMe members have asked if there’s a way to use the new iDisk sharing feature to share multiple files at once. The answer is yes, it can be done easily using the Compress command in the iDisk web app.

Once you’ve selected multiple files you want to share with others, choose the “Compress X items” option in the drop down menu and iDisk will archive them into a .zip file, just like your Finder. Select the new file and choose the “Share File…” option. Easy as 1-2-3.

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Taxes and your iPhone app income

January 27, 2009 — Leave a comment

The “Mac Daddies”:http://macdaddyworld.com at “Ecamm Network”:http://www.ecamm.com/ has a good tip for iPhone app developers with regards to their earnings: If you have not done so, go fill in a 12 page Japanese tax exemption form as the Japanese tax authorities will withhold 20% of your earnings unless the forms are received.

They discovered about this after constantly finding around 20% of their earnings missing from sales of their app in the Japanese App Store. When they wrote to Apple, this was what they received:

bq. “There is a 20% withholding tax in Japan until the Japanese tax authorities have accepted your tax exemption forms. This can take 90 days or longer. … They were required at the contract setup time in iTunes Connect. If you haven’t completed these and sent them in, you must or you should not have been paid.”

So for Singaporean iPhone developers out there, do spend some time during this Chinese New Year break and fill up all these tax forms to get all your income. (via “Daring Fireball”:http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/01/26/yen-app-store)

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