Monday, July 27, 2009

BBC iPlayer on Sony Xperia

Ever since updating the ROM on the "not very good as a phone" X1 it's been unable to play iPlayer live with sound.



There doesn't seem to be a fix available and the Vodafone web site is not particulary helpful.



What does seem to be a solution is to download the SkyFire browser. This has some annoying features like a reluctance to save bookmarks but will play iPlayer with sound.



The only caveat is that you have to make sure it connects via a Server in the UK. If it doesn't iPlayer will not let you connect as it will think you are outside the UK.



If you get this problem after installing Skyfire, check the Server it is connected to by Menu -> Help -> About -> More Info.



If the Server address starts with 10.110 it has connected to a UK server and iPlayer should work.



If it is anything else it has connected via the US and iPlayer won't work. To fix this you need to delete the Prefs file in Application Data \ Skyfire and reconnect and repeat this process until it connects via a UK Server.



Once this has happened it should always use the UK server unless it is unavailable.



I'd recommend taking a copy of the Prefs file just in case.



BTW, one you have started Skyfire, IE and Opera won't work until you exit Skyfire and force the data connection to Disconnect.

Thursday, July 09, 2009

Windows 7 (Yawn)

A new version of Windows, gosh.

Now my only interest in this is whether my applications are still going to work.

I'd be very surprised if this isn't also the view of several million other users.

As threatened by Google Chrome OS all we want is something that "just works".

As far I'm concerned that was mostly Windows 2000 but I'll concede XP has a few useful features and of course enforces Microsofts licensing model.

So far we have downloaded the Release Candidate and installed it to a Windows XP VM running under Vista.

Much to my surprise this actually worked. Runs like a crippled slug though.

However, there is no upgrade path from XP to Windows 7. You have to do a clean install and then re-install all your applications.

Why would anybody want to do this?

On first impressions its just another annoyingly modified version of windows which means I've got to spend ages trying to find where Microsoft have hidden or disguised everything we are used to and work out what hoops we have to jump through in order to get our apps to function as expected.

For our next trick we will be installing Sage 50 and our applications to see if it all works...

Just as well there's a credit crunch...

Idiots.