There I was trying to setup a Dell Latitude ST Slate (more on this later) for use as a OneNote note taking PC. The idea was to have it sync to a OneNote notebook that was sitting up in the cloud on SkyDrive. Everything was working out until I actually opened the OneNote notebook on Skydrive. The Windows Live Login popped up and I was greeted with this.

A totally black screen instead of the typical Windows Live login window. Using the ever so useful ProcessMonitor I was able to figure out that the Windows Live login window was running using the .Net WPF runtime. WPF is a neat set of technologies, but relied on the fact that your video drivers are doing what they’re supposed to be doing properly.

Search on the Internet enough and you’ll realize that Intel DOESN’T exactly do what you call a good job in the video driver aspect.

I first tried the obvious approach which was to install the latest video drivers for the GMA 600 on the Latitude ST, but I was ALREADY running on the latest video drivers.

So I tried to disable WPF’s use of hardware acceleration but turning it off in the registry as mentioned here.  But that still didn’t work. Again using ProcessMonitor to look into how the program was accessing the registry I could see that the program wasn’t even LOOKING at the disable hardware acceleration setting!

I was about to throw in the towel over this issue when I decided to switch ProcessMonitor to see what "WindowsLive" related items where being opened by the program. And then I saw IT! The Windows Live login window tried to look for a very interestingly named registry key.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live\UX\LayerManagerSoftwareRendering

Software rendering? OH YES PLEASE!! I quickly edited/inserted the value into the registry to the most sensible value of 1

And then finally..

So much work because of a farked up driver… BAD INTEL, BAD!

If you're facing the same problems and don't know how to edit the registry, here's a link to the exported registry key. Just download and open it to merge it with your registry.

Registry File To Enable Software Rendering For Window Live Client

When I wrote the article chronicling the evolution of toy lightsabers, I would have never guessed that one year later today I'll be writing another article about what I think is.. the ULTIMATE lightsaber toy... this is IT!

 

Savy readers would have already know that this is Luke Skywalkers lightsaber from Return Of The Jedi, you can clearly see that this is nothing more than the hilt of a plastic toy with it's seams and everything. Let's pull the camera back a bit.

Look at that blade, it's a solid one piece tube... in fact it looks just like the blades they have on those cool nifty replica lightsabers...

ZOMFG!! The collectors in you would say Hey... that looks just like the FX replica lightsabers! Well... that's because IT IS the same basic design technology that powers the FX lightsabers! Hasbro got the license to make them super expensive replica lightsabers, and in true profit oriented form, they reapplied the tech into an cheaper, affordable package, retaining the BEST factors of a replica lightsaber: The glowing blade, the awesome motion based effects. And then giving it a lightweight plastic body, along with a PRETTY sturdy blade, and you have the ULTIMATE LIGHTSABER TOY!!

Why is this the ULTIMATE LIGHTSABER TOY? What.. glowing blade not good enough for you? Have another look!

The price of this Ultimate FX Lightsaber is a fraction of a Replica Lightsaber at RM159. Since it's plastic, it's also very light. These 2 factors combined means you will have no reservations trying to practice twirling the thing around, if you drop it while you're playing with it, you'll just pick it up from the floor instead of going "Oh my god!!! I scratched my limited edition hilt!! Oh my god!!! I cracked my tiles!! Oh my god!!! My wife is going to kill me!!"

If you ever wanted to buy a replica lightsaber JUST for the cool blade effect, get this instead, it has the same effect AND you can actually play with it! How about a commercial to boil the blood a bit more?

It's tons of fun!

So here’s the scenario, you have 2 links below. In Internet Explorer 8 and above right click on both of them and check out the difference in behavior.

Link One

What you should see is that for Link One you’re able to see the options you expect to see when right clicking on a link, which is the usual Open In New Window, New Tab, etc. etc. options. But for Link Two you don’t see such options.

This bothered me for quite a while wondering what was causing this problem. Finally after some poking around I figured it out. The HTML for Link One looks like this.

<a href=”http://www.windowsphone.com”>Link One</a>

Nothing out of the ordinary there. Now let’s look at Link Two.

<a href=”http://www.windowsphone.com”><div>Link Two</div></a>

Notice that there’s a DIV tag enclosed in the A tag. And it seems like this causes IE to decide not to show the typical right click on link options. Any element that has a CSS display attribute of BLOCK or INLINE-BLOCK contained in an A tag will cause IE to NOT display the typical link context menus on right click.

Definetly a bug. Doesn’t seem to be anyway around it. So… just remember this behavior and not use BLOCK tags inside A tags. The only other fix for your page is to force compatibility mode I guess, since pressing the compatibility mode button in IE8 fixes the problem. But that just introduces other problems.

If you use Internet Explorer, lately around the web you might have been receiving a LOT of "Only secured content is displayed"  messages such as the one below.

After you get such a message, the site might not work properly, or you might not be able to interact with certain features on the site.

Why is this happening? Well, the culprits include, but are not limited to...

Yes.. the simple LIKE type buttons.

In order to better protect the privacy of their users, the scripts for these buttons are now being retrieved via HTTPS instead of deciding which to use depending on the protocol the source page is using.  This means there's now a mixed scheme content scenario that's occuring.

I'll try to explain it in simple terms. If you visit a website using the url of

http://www.marauderzstuff.com

And that page chooses to draw in content from another source using HTTPS such as

https://plus.google.com/plus.js

The page now contains content from a secured location as well as an insecured location. And IE treats that as a potential privacy concern, and hence pops up the message you see at the top of this article.

The Solution

There'll be people who argue that it's GOOD that IE decides to warn users about such mixed mode content, and there'll also be people who argue that IE is BAD for not allowing it since the other browsers have no such problems (I'll get to them later) But... if you want to get rid of these warnings (which might be a good or bad thing) here's what you do.

Go to Internet Options (Under the GEAR menu for IE9, Under Tools menu for older versions)

Select the Security tab, then hit the Custom Level button.

In the giant list that appears find Display mixed content and change it from Prompt to Enable

Click on the OK button to accept the changes and you'll be rid of the mixed mode warnings.

What about the other browsers?

Now... what about the other browsers how do they handle mixed mode content?

Google Chrome takes a more conservative approach to it's warnings in the sense that if your main page is viewed using HTTP and then gets something from a more secured HTTPS connection, it won't complain about anything since the extra content is MORE secure than the original content. But... if you're on a HTTPS page, which then calls for something from a HTTP source such as images, plugins, widgets, etc. etc. you get the warning below.

(Site identity removed because I'm not implying that the site isn't secure and I don't want people to get that idea) Clicking on the broken lock presents a non intrusive indicator (crossed out https) to show that everything the site is showing isn't fully encrypted. Even comes out with a explanation of the current mixed mode situation. Of course a normal user probably couldn't care less about how much of the page they're viewing is encrypted. And thus we come to Firefox's method of handling mixed scheme content.

It's what I'd like to call the "Users don't give a damn about this stuff anyway!" method.

First of all there's NO indication on the address bar that anything is amiss with the page at all when a HTTPS page contains mixed mode content from a less secured source. Clicking on the help indicator would give you some information, but as there's no broken HTTPS indicator like in Chrome, a user would have no incentive to click it and find out if anything's amiss

Ok... So there is one DIFFERENCE between a mixed content page, and a fully secured page

A fully secured page show's it's domain name in the address bar, but how many users would know that if it wasn't pointed out to them?

Of all the 3 browsers and how they deal with mixed scheme content. I must say I personally prefer Google Chrome's non intrusive method of telling users about mixed scheme content. Though the crossed out HTTPS icon might scare users into thinking the page is not secured.

I picked up the Microsoft Touch Mouse today. And first thing to comment about it the packaging, on the outside it looks like a normal box.

But even in retail display mode, the top of the box is actually a flip lid which you can raise to check out the mouse during display.

Then, when you buy it back home, all you have to do is remove 2 extremely sticky pieces of tape to be able to separate the top off the box from the bottom which holds the mouse

The mouse is attached to a plastic base which secures itself to the mouse via it’s battery compartment.

very ingenious design I must say, I had no trouble at all getting to the mouse. Except for ONE part, if you looked at the picture above it tells you to remove the mouse by tilting it off the plastic base. Problem is that the final small hook that latches on to the mouse was a bit tight and made a scary noise (you don’t want the owner of a new gadget to hear plastic snapping noises when they remove the item from the packaging) when I finally peeled it off the base.

Other than that, the packaging was a win in my books.

So, the packaging looks and works great, but how does the mouse work?

Based on looks, it’s your usual sleek, ambidextrous capable mouse. It feels more hefty than other wireless mouse I’ve been using, probably because of the extra electronics to support the capacitive touch functionality and also because the thing uses TWO AA batteries instead of the now common one AA battery.

You can find many reviews about how the touch surface on the Microsoft Touch Mouse work elsewhere on the Internet. But here, I’m gonna tell you what every other review I’ve seen failed to mention.

Why I WON’T Be Recommending The Microsoft Touch Mouse To My Peers

I was extremely reserved about the Microsoft Touch Mouse when it was first announced, my main fear was that I was afraid that there wouldn’t be any physical switches on the mouse and thus clicking the mouse buttons would be a very weird experience. But then after reading reviews and they mentioned that the mouse actually clicks with a physical action I was a bit relieved, it was also a nice plus that you can use your thumbs to swipe the side of the mouse for navigate back/forward in your browser. So the ONLY real problem for me would me dealing with the lost of the middle mouse button.

Or so I thought.

Remember how I mentioned that the mouse physically clicks? Yes, there is a physical button underneath the mouse. BUT… there’s only ONE BUTTON there! The Touch mouse detects right click via a little cheat, basically it’s a right click if there’s no finger contact on the LEFT HALF of the mouse and the button is clicked! I’ll emphasize this

YOU CAN’T REST A FINGER ON THE LEFT HALF OF THE MOUSE WHEN YOU CLICK IT IF YOU WANT A RIGHT CLICK!

I don’t know about you, but when I right click I rest my finger on the left half. So unless I’m in the minority group of how people use mice, it boggles my mind why the hardware engineer thought it was such a good idea to detect right clicks as such instead of using a rocking top shell with actual physical left and right switches? Maybe it was because a rocking shell would have made the capacitive area prone to breakdown?

This also means of course that you CAN’T PRESS BOTH BUTTONS DOWN AT THE SAME TIME!

Definitely a question I would like to ask the hardware engineer if possible. Here’s a video explaining the problem.

Because of this little caveat though, there’s on way I’m going to flat out recommend the Microsoft Touch Mouse to anyone. I mentioned the technical to my wife and she’s the type of person who leaves her finger on the left mouse when she right clicks, she also agreed that that’s a STUPID DECISION INDEED!

So… the Microsoft Touch Mouse FAILED THE WIFE ACCEPTANCE FACTOR!!!

I didn’t know that it was possible for a mouse to fail WAF other than because of it’s physical design!

One of the things which is going to be the hardest thing to teach WZ and make him understand about the consequences of his actions. It's easy enough to tell him when he's done something wrong or right. But what happens when he does something that doesn't have a clear cut definition on what is right or wrong?

How do I teach him that when that time comes, it's not a question about doing the right thing but rather can you live with the consequences of your actions?

Is that something you can even teach instead of having to experience or come to a conclusion for the question yourself?

This is a wireless network camera.

This is a BATTERY POWERED wireless network camera.

This is a RELATIVELY SMALL CR2 BATTERY POWERED wireless network camera.

You’ve just seen the Trek Ai Ball battery powered wireless network camera. It’s unique feature is that it is an honest to god WiFi Network camera in an extremely tight package and through the use of a battery means its can be truly wireless. All these features make for some very interesting applications.

The camera has very little physical features, the entire rear section after the blue divider line happens to be the battery compartment.

It’s design has an interesting purpose, more on that later. On the side you find the on off switch.

when you first turn it on the camera will establish a ad hoc network which you connect to using your web browser, then like any other network camera you will be able to view the feed from it. image quality is…. usable, but I guess I shouldn’t be expecting miracles from a 3V driven camera.

So… it runs off a pretty expensive little battery, the manual says it’ll run for about 90 mins on a fresh battery depending on how long you spend looking through it. The range of the wireless radio is about 2 rooms in doors I expect longer range reception when you have line of sight.

Now, they didn’t expect people to keep running the camera off batteries, so they sell a cradle accessory.

which, luckily for me was included in the old slightly trampled package. The cradle basically allows the camera to be powered through a USB connector, or what I’d like to call 5V of the gods! The socket sits at the back as you’d expect.

The entire front half of the cradle is actually a battery analog complete with the necessary contacts.

But the damn contacts on my cradle wasn’t high enough to reach the contacts in the camera, causing me a few moments of panic as I thought something was wrong with my set. An interesting thing to note is that the voltage coming off the contacts is 3V and not 5V, so there’s some sort of resistor dropping the voltage in the cradle.

So all you need to do is just snap the camera onto the cradle and you have your typical connected network camera.

Snap is the right word to use, because there’s a horrible crunching noise of weak plastic whenever you insert or remove it, wonder how long it’ll last if you keep moving it from the cradle.

So, while the cradle grants the ability to use 5V to power the camera, the stand gets in the way, luckily it is easily removed by unscrewing it from the side.

So now I have a more compact camera, now all I need is a source of power to make it mobile again, and a way to secure said power supply to the camera. I believe I have the parts.

And here’s what I ended up with.

Why is it that all user hacks end up looking like IEDs? But aside from that it is now a slimmer package which can be concealed easier, also the fatter battery should provide a longer runtime than the single battery.

Why should you get it?

It’s a pretty darn small battery operated network wireless camera, yes it broadcasts it’s SSID out in the open and there doesn’t seem to be any advanced settings available to turn that off. But still if a light bulb went on in your head when you heard the product description you know you want it!

Why SHOULDN’T you get it?

There’s no onboard recording medium, you’ll need a Java capable web browser to record streams. Or… you could just BUY their iOS recording applications, I understand that the apps would most likely be generic enough to work with any MJPEG source, but seriously? I bought your hardware and you couldn’t even give me the software for it? Not even just the ability to ONLY VIEW the streams? (granted, if all you wanted to do was view the camera, browsing to it using most modern mobile browsers would work)

Another downgrade of the Ai-Ball’s appeal is that the build quality just doesn’t feel too good! inserting the cradle feels like it’s gonna snap the hooks, the battery door feels thin and flimsy, the power switch feels flimsly. You get the picture?

If you DO intend to pick it up, do realize that there are TWO hardware revisions out there, v3.0 and BEFORE V3.0, from the pictures I see on the web seems like v3.0 has some new management functions in admin mode for dealing with the wireless settings. I got a PRE v3.0 model, guess that’s why they were bundled it along with the cradle.