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Comcast Remote 30 Second Skip

There are two features I missed when I switched from my dish network DVR to Tivo. Surprisingly, Tivo didn’t have a dual tuner for years after it was available from satellite providers.  The second feature I missed was the 30-second skip feature which allows you to immediately  jump +30 seconds (the length of most commercials), forcing you to use a clunky VCR-like fast-forward mechanism.

I recently switched to Comcast (dual tuner! digital! HD ready!) and found out that you can enable the 30 second skip for their system too. 

1) Press the “Cable” button at the top of the remote to put it into Cable Box control mode.

2) Press and hold the “Setup” button until the “Cable” button blinks twice.

3) Type in the code 994. The “Cable” button will blink twice

4) Press (do not hold) the “Setup” button

5) Type in the code 00173 (for 30 second Skip)

6) Press whatever button you want to map the skip

Special thanks to the posting on Damon Cortesi’s blog for this tip.

As it turns out, TiVo can do a 30 second skip as well -

Sync Your Phone with Zyb

Zyb is a new service that allows you to sync your mobile phone contacts and calendar without wires for FREE!  This is great news, and I encourage you to check their phone compatibility list before purchasing your next handset.

You can use ZYB with almost any mobile from Nokia, SonyEricsson, Siemens and Motorola, as well as some of the newer models from Samsung, LG and others.  Sync is done over-the-air via a connection over the mobile phone network.

And to think those creeps at Verizon want to charge you $2 per month for the same service.  For shame Verizon, for shame!

 

31 Ways to Lace Shoes

Ian's Shoelace Site illustrates 31 different ways to lace your shoes.  The author points out that while mathematically there are there are over two trillion possibilities, these 31 are his favorite.

Add Streaming Video to TypePad Blog with Stickam

Stickam™ allows you to easily place streaming video on your blog and/or web site.  The video is uploaded via the Flash browser plug-in and displays as a flash movie - NICE! 

However, if you copy and paste the Stickam code as the site suggests, you’ll get a very busy full-sized 160 x 400 interface on your blog that takes up a lot of real estate.  (See the image to the left.)

If you are not planning on using the chat features, and simply want a streaming web-cam, then you can mask the display using HTML and have a nice streaming video window on your web site or blog.  Here’s how to do it:

Two Useful TypePad Hacks

There were a couple of things I wanted TypePad to do better.   Once was searching and the other was opening external pages in a new window - so that visitors could easily come back to the blog after clicking on a link.

TypePad has a widget for the new browser window feature, but even though it seemed to have code to handle the situation, it opened all links - even ones within the blog - in a new window.  You can imagine how annoying this is.

Skew.org XML Tutorial

Here it is, the skew.org XML Tutorial.  Mike J. Brown's reintroduction to XML with an emphasis on character encoding.  Everything else a developer needs to know about XMl (ok, maybe not everything) can be found on xml.com. 

More Photo Sites

In an earlier post I talked about FreeFoto and Stock.XCHNG, two sites with access to free photos.  A post on cnet brought two others to my attention:  Yotophoto and everystockphoto.  Yotophoto claims to be the "first internet search engine for finding free-to-use photographs and images", but those who have been reading this blog know better.  ;)

The Creative Commons web site is another good place to start when looking for works in the pubic domain.

Geek Christmas

In 1843, the first Christmas cards were printed and placed on sale in London.  Relatively new technologies - printing and railroads - were enablers to the tradition of sending out cards for the holidays.

For me, relatively new technologies help me with my holiday traditions.  An Excel spreadsheet with my holiday address list along with Word’s mail-merge function allows me to print-out my card envelopes with ease.  The spreadsheet is something I keep up to date all year as I add new friends and as others change addresses.

The second new technology is the Internet.  My 19 month old niece in London and I use a program called iVisit for web-conferencing.  It doesn’t compare to a live visit, but it beats a phone call.  Everyone with a broadband connection, a $400 PC (or $6000 Mac) ;) and a $30 web-cam (for MAC ~$700) can now video conference with anyone on the planet.

In some ways, these technologies allow us to spread out a little more, so that's a downside, but at the same time, it keeps those real connections going.

Good stuff.  Merry Christmas.

Great Stock Photo Site

In an earlier post, I wrote about FreeFoto.com, but Sotck.XCHNG has an entire community of contributors with over 100,000 stock photos from over 9,000 users.  If you're looking for inspiration and a trouble-free source for photos, this is the way to go.

A New Approach to Web Applications

Ajax is shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML.  It's a combination of widespread web technologies like XHTML and CSS and the esoteric XMLHttpRequest object which enables web clients to retrieve XML data in the background.  When cleverly tied together with JavaScript, the results can be impessive. 

Jesse James Garrett has a great article on Ajax here.  (His company, Adaptive Path is taking credit for coining the term.)

You can see Ajax at work at two new Google sites – Google Suggest and Google Maps.