Sony Lives!!!

For years now, Sony, the once titan of consumer electronics has been on a slow downward spiral. In console games, Sony had lost the market share lead to Microsoft. It seemed with a new generation of consoles coming out, Microsoft would be able to consolidate its lead with the XBox One. But fear not Sony fans, Microsoft has decided they don't like the lead.

According to IGN, Microsoft is going to make it very difficult to buy and sell used games on the XBox one. You can only loan games to friends once, if they meet certain conditions. Fees related to selling and buying used games still remains murky.

While on the Playstation 4, sharing is this easy. Plus, the console is $100 cheaper. Unless Microsoft changes it tune drastically, expect Sony to regain its market share with the new consoles.

Intercall Cheat Sheet

I have used Intercall conference at work for years. However, whenever I need a cheat sheet showing all the available commands, it is always difficult to find. So I made one. Enjoy!

Intercall Commands

Muting Commands

*5 --- Mute all lines except leader

#5 --- Unmutes all lines

*6 --- Mute an individual line

#6 --- Unmute an individual line

Announcement Commands

*3 --- Change entry/exit announcement (recorded name, tones, silence)

Other Commands

*0 --- Operator assistance -- conference

00 --- Operator assistance -- individual

*1 --- Dial-out to a participant

*2 --- Begin/End recording of conference

*4 --- Private roll call

*7 | #7 --- Lock | Unlock conference (incl.organizer)

*8 --- Allow | Disallow conference continuation

*# --- Participant count

** --- List available keypad commands

Was Apple WWDC Cool Enough?

Well, the much anticipated Apple WWDC was today. It was interesting to see which of the rumors turned out to be true.

We didn't see:

• New iPads of any kind
• A new iPhone
• An iWatch

We did get what looks to be an awesome upgrade to iOS. Certainly the look and feel will be much improved. I was hoping for more updates with Siri, but there did not seem to be much emphasis there.

The OS X upgrades were cool, but not all that earth shattering. But that's ok with me, I think OS X is in a pretty good place where it is.

There was a lot of focus on improved battery life. The new MacBook Airs with 9 and 12hrs of charge being the best example. I like this, it would be pretty awesome in my book if the iPhone and MacBooks could get in the same range of battery life as the iPads.

The new MacPro looks interesting if not a little bit vague. I like the idea of external expandability. However, it is still nice of have things like memory and CPUs to be easily configurable. Looks like you can choose the number of cores up to 12, but there is only 1 CPU? Not sure there. Large and fast SSDs are gonna make this machine scream. But with all the goodies, your pocket book might scream as well. :)

Firefox OS Details

Sitepoint has a good article explaining the details of Firefox OS. A good read if you are interested in how it works.

In Search of Responsive CSS Tabs and Button Bars

I've added a couple of examples on my Blue Sky Workshop site. For a side project, a tool or button bar was required. So I decided I would come up with a simple responsive solution using CSS.

Here are links to what I came up with. The button bar seems to have turned out the best. It is very simple and auto wraps at any size. The tab bar looks good too, but does not wrap. I'm not sure either solution is perfect, but not bad for a first attempt methinks. Anyway, it was fun and easier than using a full blown HTML5 framework.

• Flat CSS Button Bar
• Classic CSS Tab Bar

Turn off Bullets with CSS

A simple question deserves a simple answer.

How do I turn off bullets in an HTML list?

Inline: <ul style="list-style-type:none;">

Stylesheet: ul{ list-style-type:none; }

XBox One ends Used Games?

Microsoft had their big XBox One announcement yesterday. See this CNet link for full details. I kind of stumbled upon part of presentation during lunch. From what I saw, the feature set looks really cool. Built in Skype, some nice TV features, improved voice and gesture control, and of course very beefed up hardware.

However, the big question before the announcement and after was whether Microsoft will support used games. A huge industry has been built around buying, selling, and trading old games. The issue was not addressed in the presentation. However, according to Wired and Gamespot, Microsoft will be changing a fee any time a game is transferred to a new XBox live ID. The fee amount was not disclosed. If you look at the comments on the previous link, the kiddies are NOT happy.

Unless this fee is a trivial amount (for example $1), Microsoft is about to shoot themselves in the foot. Instead of cementing their domination in console gaming, they are opening a door for Sony to re-emerge as the leader. Brilliant!

Should be interesting to see how this plays itself out.

Run a Shell Script from the Mac OS X Desktop

Ever need to run a shell script from the Mac OS X desktop? In my case, the goal is to add an icon to the desktop or Dock that allows me to click on the script and run it. At first, I took a look at Automator, but that overcomplicates things and really isn’t needed. The actual answer turns out to be much easier.

So here are the steps.

1. Create your script and debug it from the command line. It might look something like this:

   #!/bin/bash
   ~/path/to/script 
   

2. Next, go into Finder and find the script you want to add an icon for. It should have an icon like this.



3. Make an alias for the script by right-clicking the script icon and choosing “Make Alias”. This makes an alias for your icon.

4. Move the alias to the Dock or Stack as needed. Now clicking on the icon should run the script.

Fixing up the Script

Setup this way, the script will execute, bring up a terminal window, and quickly disappear. So if you would like a little more information I suggest your update your script like this:

#!/bin/bash  
~/path/to/script  
echo My script ran!
sleep 1

The echo statement displays a message to the console or in this case terminal window. The sleep statement determines how long the message will be displayed in seconds. Set the sleep time to whatever you feel is good. This will be the amount of time you can see the message before the terminal window disappears.