1. Recording analogue TV (as well as Freeview channels).
2. Ability to watch recorded shows straight on the PC without having to finalise the disk (which previously meant possibly wasting upto 3hrs of unused space).
3. Ability to effectively pause live TV (i.e. record and playback the same show).

I only discovered recording analogue TV was possible after it auto-tuned some in some analogue channels after popping up an onscreen message saying that there were new channels available.

Regarding watching shows without finalising the disk, and pausing live TV, I was using it with standard DVD+R write once disks, meaning these features just did no show up (you need to use special DVD-RAM disks).

Widget powered by EveryTrail: GPS Geotagging

Around Eltham and surrounding areas by Bike 2

Widget powered by EveryTrail: GPS Geotagging

Suspecting that there was something more wrong than just a corrupt file I took out the hard drive and plugged it into another Windows XP based system via a USB to IDE adapter in an attempt to copy off the data. The hard drive came up however attempting to open it locked up Windows Explorer. I therefore tried plugging the USB to IDE adapter into a MacBook Pro and after spending some time thinking about it the drive came up, and I was able to copy off all but one file from the “My Documents” folder (accessing this one particular file or other specific system files caused finder to momentarily lock up and the drive to make some odd noises).

These services were not particularly innovative, as various companies offer SMS services, and the free Asterisk PBX software allows you to do almost anything you need on the voice side of things however what I found attractive about the BT offering was the ease of use for the developer (SDKs for various languages were provided), and straight forward per call rather than per minute charging model.

Shortly after finding out about the service I developed two main applications using it. The first linked in with an existing back office diary / calendar / contacts system via SMS enabling lookup of contact information, initiating voice calls, retrieving the days events, adding events, and sending out reminders on those events. The second was a calling card type service I named Talk59 which allowed you to enter your number, and the calling parties number, it would then call both parties and connect them together for a fixed cost per call with a time limit of 59 minutes.

Even though I did very little in terms of promotion the site was starting to see a reasonable amount of use, particularly with those in India and Australia. On the 25th of September however BT suddenly sent out an email announcing the service would be suspended on the 10th of October. The fact they only gave 15 days notice while within their rights left myself and others very little time to consider our options for switching to an alternate supplier, and ultimately I decided to discontinue Talk59. Evidently the same decision Fizzcall (who offered a similar service) also came to “You may have noticed that today we suspended purchases and sign-ups on the Fizzcall website”.

Allong with the initial email, BT pitched Ribbit (the company it recently acquired / the reason it is discontinuing Web21C SDK) as a suitable replacement, however after spending some time looking into it as far as I can see Ribbit is primarily aimed at Flash uses, and does not even connect calls to the UK. I am now left trying to claim back credits purchased for Web21C SDK which I can longer spend. For this reason I am left distinctly unimpressed with BT.

For the first few attempts we did not pay any attention to lighting. The result was that the blue fabric could not be easily fully removed in Photoshop, as the dark shadows meant the blue turned to black.  We then tried number of things to remove the shadows however not having any kind of professional lighting equipment this was not possible in the room we were using.

In the end the unexpected solution was to remove nearly all light from the room, and then just set a long exposure time. This resulted in no major shadows, and therefore a consistently coloured blue background that could easily be removed.

To remove the background in Photoshop I used the “Color Range” tool with ~100 “fuzziness” clicking multiple times in different areas of blue in the picture.

After manually removing an unfortunate reflection in the glass on top, then adding a 2 pixel feather the end result came out looking very respectable / much better than I had been expecting.

There are currently 3 main ways to use OpenStreetMap data:

1. Google Maps API - However this would introduce licensing issues which were likely the reason OpenStreetMap data was chosen in the first place.
2. OpenLayers - An open source Google Maps type API.
3. OpenLayers via Mapstraction - The advantage of Mapstraction is that you write code once, and can then easily switch it between one of 9 major mapping providers including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, MultiMap.

In theory using Mapstraction is an obvious choice leading to a much more portable application. In practise however things are not so simple. I found myself frequently viewing the Mapstraction JavaScript code to find undocumented functions (use of which is not recommended by the documentation). Also unless your application is very simple “if” statement will be needed in various parts of your code that call the Map APIs directly where Mapstraction does not provide the required functionality.

Even with undocumented functions, and “if” statements in the code supporting 3 mapping providers in places I found it necessary to go a step further and actually override Mapstraction functions where it was simply not possible to do what was required otherwise. I am now experiencing an issue whereby markers placed on the map move when changing zoom levels which I have not yet found a solution for. Same code works fine when switched to Google or Multimap. Therefore unless you have a very simple application or you really know what you are doing with JavaScript, and think the benefits of Mapstraction outweigh the extra time spent coding for it, simply using OpenLayers directly may be the best choice.

Using OpenLayers with OpenStreetMap

The process for using OpenLayers is relatively straight forward however involves a number of steps.

1. Download OpenLayers
2. Copy the OpenLayers “build/OpenLayers.js”, and “theme/”, “img/” directories to your webserver, putting them in the same directory (also be sure not to rename OpenLayers.js / change the letter case on the filename or it will not run correctly).
3. Copy the OpenStreetMap JavaScript file to your webserver.
4. Copy the OpenStreetMap HTML example script found on the Wiki to your webserver.
5. Edit the HTML example script such that the paths to the “OpenLayers.js” and “OpenStreetMap.js” JavaScript files point to your local copies.
6. Edit the “OpenStreetMap.js” JavaScript file changing the tile location to be the path where you uploaded your map files to.

Or download a zip file with the above already completed, you just need to the edit the tile location path in “OpenStreetMap.js”.

Then see the OpenLayers documentation and Examples for details on adding markers lines etc to the map.

Also see Part 1: Obtaining mapping Data.

The main issue with using OpenStreetMap however is map coverage, since they rely on user submitted data, maps may not be available for your area, however since starting in 2004 they now have good coverage in a number of areas, especially popular tows, and cities.

To make use of OpenStreetMap data in a way similar to the Google API (i.e. such that lines / markers can be displayed on it, and the user can click/drag the map around on screen) two main components are required, the mapping image data itself (i.e. the individual png files making up the area mapping data is required for), and the JavaScript API used to create the interface. It is also possible to just use data from the OpenStreetMap site directly however this would primarily only be suitable for low volume non mission critical applications.

.osm files

The map image data is supplied in the form of .osm files (containing XML describing the map features). There are two main types of file, the large “Planet” file containing all the mapping data OpenStreetMap currently has available for the entire planet (supplied directly by OpenStreetMap), and smaller “Extracts” files provided by contributors each containing only certain areas (i.e. Countries, or parts of countries). Additionally custom .osm files can be generated by using the Java OpenStreetMap Editor tool (”File” > “Download from OSM” then “File” > “Save as” options) however the total size is limited,

Converting .osm files to .png files

To convert the XML .osm files into .png image files that can be displayed by the web browser a rendering tool is required. There are two main tools available: Kosmos which runs on Windows and Mapnik that runs on a number of platforms, they are both very different in terms of what they can do and how easy they are to use.

Kosmos is fairly straight forward to install / use and has both a GUI and command line version available. It comes with a sample .osm file containing the Isle of White. To render the sample it is just of case of using the command line: Kosmos.Console.exe tilegen “..\Samples\Isle of Wight\Isle of Wight.kpr”. To render your own osm files edit the sample .kpr file removing configuration lines that are not required, and changing the location to the .osm file. [Download Example]

Kosmos may occasionally crash while starting up, this is generally due to someone editing the “Kosmos General Purpose Rules” page on the Wiki and failing to correctly test it (Kosmos downloads a copy of this file each time it runs). To stop this from happening, download your own copy of the raw rules file upload it to your web server, and change the “WikiPage” variable in the .kpr file. Kosmost however has a drawback in that it processes .osm files by first reading them into memory, therefore it is limited in the total size of .osm file it can process. For anything but small areas, another tool such as Mapnik is required.

Using Mapnik requires a non trivial setup procedure, for documentation on setting up and using Mapnik see the Mapnik OpenStreetMap Wiki page. As of yet I have not had any success setting this up on two different virtual machines running different OSs for which the Wiki provides setup instructions. My next attempt will involve the Fedors packages / instructions from Passback Mapping.

Also see Part 2: Making use of map data.

If you need programmatic access to Google search results, and do not have a SOAP API key it is still available, just under the somewhat misleading title of “Google AJAX Search API”, and in a different format (JSON rather than SOAP/XML).

Google even provide code snippets for accessing it in Flash, Java, and PHP. For details see Google AJAX Search - Non-Javascript Environments.