Sharing Files With Your XBox 360

I had been meaning to look into this since we got our XBox 360, but I never seemed to find (or make) the time; the question was "how can I share files with my XBox 360?" I know that Microsoft Windows Media Center PCs do this out of the box, but I only run XP Home and XP Pro. The answer was surprisingly simple and took only a few minutes to set up. The solution is to install the Zune software on your PC where your media files are located. Unlike the poor experience Engadget had,I found installing the Zune software pretty straightforward and painless. It probably helped that I already have a "Windows Live ID," and if you have the 360, you probably have one too. After installation, the software scans your PC and finds your photos, music, and videos and imports them into your library.

Now to sync with the 360 - In the Zune software, go to Options –> Library –> Media Sharing. Assuming your XBox 360 is networked, you’ll see it in this window. You can then name your library something (like "Sarah’s Library") and check which types of files (photos, videos, music) you want to share. Finally, play your media from the 360! In the XBox Dashboard, scroll over to "media" and select either Music, Pictures, or Video. The shared files from your Zune library are right there and ready to be enjoyed!

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I’ve made some changes over at MySpace. My current profile is now private and the only friends I’m going to keep on there are my family and close friends…as in people I see, know, hang out with, and talk to in my real, offline life.

For my online friends, fellow bloggers, blog readers, and fans, I’ve set up a separate MySpace profile: myspace.com/sarahintampablog. The new page is pretty sparse right now, but over the next couple of weeks, it will be built up. If I’ve never met you in real life, then you might be removed from my private profile, but feel free to send a friend request to the new profile!

Hopefully, you all will understand; the online world is a wacky place sometimes, and I need to actually know you before we get too personal. I hope to see you over on my new MySpace!

Instead of keeping it a secret, last week Google made a pre-launch announcement about an addition to the the Google Docs & Spreadsheets service -a slideshow/presentations app.  Through the acquisition of Tonic Systems, based in San Francisco and Melbourne, Australia, the plan is to have the new features go live sometime this summer. Can we call it Google Office now?

MyBlogLog, the popular blog community site, has rolled out some big changes to keep their service useful and fun. Earlier this month, to combat the influx of MyBlogLog spammers, the service put into place a message cap that limits the number of messages that can be sent per day. Initially, this limit is set at 20. If any messages are responded to, then the sender’s limit will increase. Last week, another new change went into effect - sorting community members by relevancy, as opposed to an alphabetical listing by name. In the future, there are plans to implement several tabs on each section, so that you can sort the information in different ways, in case their version of relevancy isn’t the same as yours. They also ditched the annoying animated gif avatars, starting offering Pro accounts to Microsoft MVPs, and brought back auto-join, but you can opt out of that last one.

This is one service that gets it, really gets it, and that’s why I’m still a member - and why you should join!

Mobispine is a free feed browser for your mobile phone that lets you stay up to date with news, friends, and entertainment via RSS feeds. You can search for feeds from your phone using the Mobispine app, and surfing feeds consumes up to 20 times less data traffic compared to surfing the web via your mobile browser. Sounds great, now if they would ever just send me my SMS text…

My first post regarding the issues I had with the disappearing call logs on the Blackberry Pearl received a lot attention. It also finally gave me a real solution. Thanks to the commenter, Pete, I was directed to the Howard Forums website, where I found the fix on the RIM forum. The solution is to update the phone’s firmware. As of April 4th, 2007, Cingular has released the most recent version of the Pearl firmware: version 4.2.0.73. My Pearl is from T-Mobile, but the poster on the forum says that’s OK - the firmware update will not de-brand your phone. Lucky for you, I went ahead and tried this first, and I didn’t end up with a paperweight after the upgrade, so it’s relatively safe to proceed; but be warned, this is not an upgrade for the faint of heart - you should be cautious - have a good backup in place & know how to do a restore from your Blackberry Desktop Manager, just in case.

The steps (re-posted from the forum):

1. Download the software update from this link: https://www.blackberry.com/Downloads/entry.do?code=577BCC914F9E55D5E4E4F82F9F00E7D4 (note: you have to pick the option for the “BlackBerry Pearl (Red 8100c)”

2. Save the update to your PC in an easy-to-locate place, like your desktop. When the download completes, double-click the executable to run the installation program. (Choose setup language: English, click “OK”; click “Next”; accept the agreement; click “Next”; on the last screen make sure the checkbox “Yes, I want to start the Desktop Manager Software” is NOT checked; click “Finish.”)

3. Go to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Research In Motion\AppLoader and delete Vendor.xml

4. Connect the Blackberry Pearl to the computer via the USB cable

5. Open the Desktop Manager software (this came with your phone and should already be installed on your PC.)

6. After the phone finishes syncing, you will be prompted to apply the update. Click the “Update Now” button.

7. Another wizard will display - click “Next,” “Next,” “Next,” & “Finish.” As it turns out, my update crashed at some point, leaving me with a white screen with an black icon with a slash over it. The fix for this is to reboot the computer and then restart the Desktop Manager; click on “Application Loader” and restart the process.

I ended up with a functioning phone with none of the Blackberry Pearl issues including the memory leak issue, disappearing emails, disappearing call logs, delay in answering phone calls before someone can hear you, slow media access time, and slow reset time.

If you try this, post here with your results or over on the thread at the Howard Forums.

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The largest record labels, Universal, Sony-BMG, Warner Music, and EMI, are in talks with Apple once again, putting pressure on the Apple to make some changes over at the iTunes store. Top on the list will be the request for iTunes to offer a subscription service, something many iTunes customers have wanted for a long time. The labels believe that a subscription service would bring in more revenue as it would increase consumption of music as well as provide the labels with a share of the monthly payments. Also on the agenda is something that iTunes customers don’t want: higher prices for new music. Apple fought this battle back in 2005/2006 and prevailed, keeping the downloads at a fixed price. As it stands right now, Apple has the power in these negotiations since they are the number one music download service, accounting for 75% of online music sales in the U.S.

You just know the record labels were hoping the Zune would be the iPod killer that Microsoft had wanted it to be so they could get out of Apple’s stranglehold over the online marketplace. I personally don’t want to see an iPod killer if it means the labels would be able to start making demands on Apple to charge me more for my tunes. However, on the plus side, if Apple ever had any real competition, the price of the iPod players themselves would come down.

A newspaper consortium of a dozen companies, jointly owning 250 newspapers, has just announced a deal with Yahoo to share advertising and editorial content online. According to this article,
2006 was the first year in which newspaper companies during a period of
economic growth and the losses have only grown in 2007. The papers, facing abandonment by both readers and advertisers want to bring more traffic to their websites so they can offer national advertisers a one-stop-shop for advertising with multiple newspapers online. In turn, Yahoo will gain access to the local content and the advertising sales forces of the papers. The terms of the agreement call for Yahoo placing prominent links to the papers on their main section pages like Yahoo Sports or Yahoo Finance and the papers have agreed to integrate Yahoo’s search engine on their websites.

This is certainly the topic du jour, especially considering the recent layoffs at the Tampa Tribune, one of Tampa’s top local papers. In fact, I was a panelist today discussing this very subject. The panel was at the Florida Scholastic Press Association conference and the focus of the panel was "Blogging and How it Shapes Journalism."  A lot of discussion took place regarding newspapers’ recent transition from print media to more online content. One of my fellow panelists, Patty Kim from the Tampa Tribune, is in the midst of watching the old media powerhouse of the Tribune struggle to adapt to the new, online world. The other panelists included Tommy Duncan of Sticks of Fire, a well-known Tampa blog, and Eric Deggans from the Times.

I recently received an email from someone at GigaTribe, a new file sharing program, asking me to try out their application. I get a lot of PR emails, but I’m always interested in file sharing apps, so I decided to give them a try. No, I’m not being paid to review, but I have been offered an upgraded account, which I may or may not even use. However, five lucky readers can also get a free premium account, by being the first to comment here.

Onto the review…
GigaTribe lets you share files and folders on your computer with select others that you add to your  network. The GigaTribe software boasts some great features such as no limit on the sizes of files that can be exchanged, encrypting all exchanges for privacy purposes, automatically resuming  interrupted exchanges with no data loss, the ability to do multi-source downloads to increase your speed, and it can be used to access your PC from a remote location. This is certainly more than what my current program of choice, Pando, offers. After taking the time to configure the port forwarding on my router (for the non-geeks, there is an "easy access" option if you’re not the type to unblock ports on your own), I had the software up-and-running. My only complaint was the user interface. I’m used to clean, easy, intuitive software like Pando or the web-service box.net. Gigatribe was more…complex. I actually had a hard time figuring out how to upload a file…which is probably because you don’t really upload files, you "share" folders on your computer instead. (For the record, you "share" the file by clicking the Network button, clicking a text link to "Modify My Shared Folders", using the mock Windows Explorer display to browse to the folder you want to share, then clicking a link over on the left to "Share folder". Ack!) Honestly, the software seems like it was designed by an ex-Microsoftie!

Still, for feature set alone, the software is worth a look, especially if you haven’t found a file-sharing program yet that fits your needs.  Oh, and it is free!*

*Premium accounts are available for a fee (or by being the first five people comment here asking for one).

Breaking news for Photobucket/MySpace users: yesterday MySpace decided to block Photobucket users from posting their videos and remixes to their MySpace pages. The reason? Photobucket recently began an ad-sponsored slideshow encouraging users to post these ads in their bulletins and profiles. The ads focused on the upcoming Superman 3 movie. MySpace stated that ads such as these were in violation of MySpace’s terms, so they had no choice but to block Photobucket from the MySpace community. Photobucket now joins the growing list of blocked services, including Revvr, Vidilife, and Stikam. Outraged? The Photobucket blog post about this issue suggests some actions you can take to let MySpace know. I think it’s time we let them know exactly what we think by ditching MySpace for some other up-and-coming wannabe service like Virb!  Oh wait…hold on…I just got an email on MySpace…ummm…well, why don’t you guys start and I’ll…uh…meet you over there…