Win 7, broken as ever!

At least on 64 bit.

Changed from Vista 64 to Win 7 because Vista 64 kept screwing up the NTFS tables (Knoppix sometimes was able to help out, where the expensive, for profit, POS software fails).

Installed Win 7, VPN no longer works (no warning, but you’ll learn after having waited 3 hours to install the idiot OS). Video Drivers went AWOL, got new ones though the wonderful wizard, now I have a nice error message every time i boot.

Icons that “lead nowhere” give you the helpful error message “The parameter is incorrect” – I am sure that little 5 year old Asian kid knows the significance of THAT message.

Forget Microsoft, and stick with the Snow Leopard – this Windows 7 is a piece of feces.

An example of the attention to detail in Windows 7:

MeaninglessDragger

Update : Win7 has been playing nicer than Vista since i installed it (no NTFS problems)

Ocularis In-Store Display

Some clients have a nice full screen display mode with no GUI for in-store displays. Ocularis has one too, and it allows you to customize the layout a little bit.

In its standard form, OC would look something like this.

Ocularis In Standard Mode

In a kiosk setting you might not want to display the camera name, the menu bar, the connection indication and any status or error messages that might make sense otherwise, so these things can be turned off.

First you need to create a “skin file”:

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<skin>
  <kioskmode>yes</kioskmode>
  <globaloverlay>c:\skin_custom.png</globaloverlay>
  <showdiskspaceerror>no</showdiskspaceerror>
</skin>

The file should be called skin_custom.xml and be placed next to the HeimdallViewer.exe file (usually in the c:\program files\OnSSI\Ocularis Client directory)

The tag kioskmode puts the Ocularis Client into – well – Kioskmode. That means: No menu bar, no camera labels, no connection status and a nice, calm fade between cameras in a carousel. That also makes the showdiskspaceerror sort of moot (since no errors are ever shown on the screen).

The globaloverlay node is a path to a 32 bit PNG file. The file is stretched to match the window/screen, so to avoid any stretching artifacts, you should prepare a PNG that has the exact same size as the screen (or at least have the same aspect ratio).

In my example, I made a small PNG with a logo and some happy rainbow colors.

Example of Overlay File
Overlay

The end result is this:

It should be noted, that some screens are susceptible to burn-in, so keep that in mind before going deciding to place a logo on the window.

Focus Groups?

I am pretty sure that day to day interaction between clients and developers is the best way to develop useful, and remarkable products.

Here is what Jonathan Ive said

So how did the company decide what customers wanted – surely by using focus groups? “We don’t do focus groups,” he said firmly, explaining that they resulted in bland products designed not to offend anyone.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/07/listening_to_mr_iphone.html