Bus error: Jake Billo’s weblog

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This application and all support for it has officially been moved to my new website. Please visit that location to download the latest version or to submit a comment.

In my the first part of my Microsoft Zune review, I mentioned that frustration with the autoplaylist feature of the Zune jukebox software had driven me to write a VB app that converts iTunes playlists to Zune compatible *.zpl playlists. On Jake’s suggestion, that app is now available for download here.

The program is pretty simple to use. Just follow these handy steps:

1. Download the zip file and unzip it to a directory of your choice
2. Open iTunes and close the Zune jukebox software
3. Right click on the playlist that you wish to export and select ‘Export Song List…’ from the context menu
4. Choose where you’d like to save the playlist, and ensure that ‘Save as Type’ is set to *.xml
5. Launch the ‘iTunes to Zune Playlist Converter.exe’ application from the unzip directory
6. Use the browse button to load the saved *.xml file into the ‘iTunes Playlist File (XML)’ field
7. Use the browse button to choose where you’d like to save the converted Zune Playlist file. Note that for the Zune player to recognize the new playlist, it must be saved to C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\My Music\Zune\Playlists\ on Windows XP, or C:\Users\UserName\Music\Zune\Playlists on Windows Vista.
8. Click the ‘Convert’ button, and wait for the success message box to pop up.
9. Launch the Zune jukebox software and go into the ‘Playlists’ view. You should see your newly created playlist in the pane to the left. Note that it might take a second to recognize the playlist, and another minute or two after that until the list is playable, depending on the size of the list. This is because the Zune software has to sift through the playlist and link each referenced file to one in its current library before the list can be used.

There, that wasn’t too hard, was it? Lastly, it’s important to remember that this only works if the iTunes library and the Zune library in question are drawing from the same media files! That means that you should have the Zune jukebox software set to monitor the iTunes music folder that you are drawing from, so that the same files are referenced in both programs’ libraries.

This little hack worked well for me, and allowed me to load my Zune with playlists created in iTunes, without having to try and use the gimped Zune rating system and autoplaylists to do so.

Enjoy, and if you have any questions or comments, post here, or email me at jonfritz at gmail dot com.

Cheers,

Jon

Edit: Thanks to David F for pointing out a flaw in the program that made converting multiple playlists in one session a pain. The application is now fixed. If anybody notices any more bugs, please let me know so that they can be fixed immediately.

This is something I’ve been wanting for a while now - the Xbox Live DRM utility now functions properly. As some background information, when you download video or games from Xbox Live Marketplace, the content is licensed to two places: your Gamertag online, and your console by its serial number. If you change consoles, you can only access content if you’re signed into Xbox Live under that original profile.

For me, this was a major problem because I’m now on my fourth Xbox 360 - two exchanged through EB’s warranty program for faulty disc drives, plus a functional unit that I sold so I could upgrade to an Elite with 120GB hard drive and HDMI. As a result, some of my Rock Band tracks were licensed to the previous console and some to the new one. Offline play at a friend’s place was severely hampered and the game always required my acount to be signed in to access the content. No longer, though!

Check out Major Nelson’s post on the process, or hit up the license migration page. All my content was relinked to my 360 Elite properly and there should be some good times with Rock Band in the near future.

I experience this issue every time I go to seek a pre-Windows Vista driver for an Asus motherboard: their download servers always peter out at about 100KB/s, regardless of which mirror I choose. I have half a mind to set up mirrors of the most popular drivers - even if a LAN or audio driver isn’t necessarily the latest version, it’ll still help people get up and running sooner rather than later.

nVidia and ATI have persistently fast download speeds, even for the size of their respective driver suites. It’s just the motherboard and chipset manufacturers that have this problem. I recall waiting for a 4KB/s download from an audio chip manufacturer because nobody else had the right drivers.

Build it in to the cost of your high-end products if needed. I’m sure the people buying “gamer edition” motherboards, who are the ones updating their BIOS weekly and wasting time asking technical support about how to overclock their RAM and set unsupported timings, should be shouldering the cost. I just like to have drivers available and at fast download speeds when I need them.

From Digital Inspiration via Lifehacker. TechSmith, makers of Camtasia Studio (software for capturing video demos or “screencasts” from your PC) are giving away slightly older versions of their software for free. I’ve used Camtasia in a former role to edit and produce demos for IBM, and while I probably wouldn’t pay full price for the software, a free version is always excellent.

To grab the software, visit the following posts:

SnagIt 7
Camtasia Studio 3

I think I’ve found a group of people just as annoying as elitist Mac users. This group would be the no-holds-barred Firefox/Mozilla zealots who hang out at Spread Firefox and post Diggbait articles about the state of browser compatibility. Yes, Firefox has done great things for Web standards and interoperability of sites; it’s also nice to have the same browsing UI on Windows, OS X and Linux boxes. Yes, not everyone at Spread Firefox is drooling with glee as they report sites for misplacing a LI tag. Unfortunately, today’s target of my wrath does not meet the criteria for exemption.

It’s specifically this list that irks me today, written by a guy whose interests apparently include bashing “Micro$oft”, South Park boot screens, and writing about browser incompatibilities.

The only reason I even bring this up (and since I refuse to go into the Digg comments; they’re already at over 110 and I don’t think I’ve seen one intelligent one yet) is because Nathan links to blackberry.com as one of the sites that’s incompatible with Firefox.

Wait, hold up. blackberry.com (the consumer/promotion site for the devices) is about one of the most likely sites to comply with Web standards, since it’s also designed to be viewable on a BlackBerry device. What’s this guy on about? His complaint is specifically the Google Talk instant messenger download page:

http://www.blackberry.com/GoogleTalk/index.do Uses obsolete ActiveX junk. And Google is somehow involved with this?!?

For reference, here’s what the website says when I go to it using Firefox:

Notice

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or above is required to download this Instant Messenger.

This web page uses ActiveX controls that work only in Microsoft Internet Explorer. To ensure that Google Talk for BlackBerry devices is correctly downloaded to your BlackBerry, this site is not designed to work with any other Internet browsers.

This page is a separate application with an ActiveX control, designed to connect to your device using USB and load a Java MIDlet (which can’t be done with conventional web scripting language, so ActiveX is really the only way to go.) Furthermore, anybody accessing this page can also do it from their BlackBerry device, which also properly loads the application without the IE requirement.

For the record, I use both IE7 and Firefox at work, each for about 50% of typical usage. All my custom development works equally well in both browsers, except for SharePoint/Project Server integrated plugins (and that’s a Microsoft limitation.) Yes, it’s not entirely great that you can’t load MIDlets with Firefox, but the reality of the business world is such that you can count on a Windows/IE combination for corporate desktops; a Firefox extension/plugin for the same functionality doesn’t really make sense when there’s already a browser-agnostic way of performing this task.

It must be a banner day for Eclipse projects, since the primary IDE I use for both work and personal projects has been released as a 1.0 version at eclipse.org.

The primary download mirror from eclipse.org is fairly slow (I’m pulling about 50-60K/s from my work connection from it, when normally I get much speedier downloads), at least for the full-sized Win32 large package. I’d suggest you use an alternate mirror - the OSU Open Source Lab mirror seems to be pulling in the ZIP file fairly well. It also hasn’t percolated to all mirrors yet, so try a different one if you’re unlucky with the first.

I’m going to check and see if the minor file naming bug in RC1 made its way out to the final release; stay tuned.

Update: Wow, we’ve got a UI and a pain-in-the-rear bug when trying to create filenames with multiple periods:

I might decide to report this to the Bugzilla site, but last time I did, apparently the description and sample code I provided wasn’t really needed.

Update 2: Apparently this will be fixed in the next integration build, but it’ll still probably have an ‘illigal’ spelling error.

Update 3: The typo should be picked up in the next nightly.

Update 4: The typo and bug has been fixed in the N20070920 build, but still doesn’t allow the creation of filenames with dashes. Might have to report this one.