Kuneri bloggy

It’s cool Nokia 5800 automatically rotates the screen to landscape/portrait according to phone orientation. However, you do not want that to happen always when developing Flash Lite applications. Apparently there is no way to disable this ‘freature’ directly from Flash Lite [1]. UPDATE: After my post, Nokia published a new platform service API to disable auto rotation. Please see here.

Below is a hack to disable auto rotation / orientation change from a Flash Lite project for Nokia 5800 (360×640 screen). It simply rotates the main Movieclip to rotate -90 degrees and back whenever an orientation change is detected. It’s not the perfect solution, however will keep you going until Nokia or Adobe fixes the real problem. (Note: You need a main Movieclip for this to work)

var stageSizeListener:Object = new Object();
stageSizeListener.onResize=function()
{
if(Stage.width > Stage.height) {
_root.main._rotation = -90;
_root.main._x = 0;
_root.main._y = 360;
} else {
_root.main._rotation = 0;
_root.main._x = 0;
_root.main._y = 0;
}
}
Stage.addListener(stageSizeListener);

Kotimainen Karttaselain on uudenlainen maastonavigaattori mobiilisovellus.

Sen lisäksi, että sovellus näyttää tarkasti maastonmuodot, siinä on mainioita ominaisuuksia kuten osoitehaku, GPS:n seuraus, retkeily- ja matkailukohteiden näyttö.. Karttoja voi näyttää tarkasti jopa 1:2000 mittakaavalla.

Oheinen kuva näyttää miten tarkka Karttaselain (oikealla) on verrattuna Google Maps:iin :

Sovellus on Beta-asteella, toteutettu Flash Lite:llä ja sen saa ILMAISEKSI puhelimeen osoitteesta www.karttaselain.mobi.

Ohjelman kehittämistä voi tukea lahjoituksella, suosittelemme!

You have been using VirtualBox, but you don’t need it anymore. Or you need free space as I did. Well, in that case you might want to remove VirtualBox from your Mac. Uninstalling is easy, drag-drop-done, right? Yes it is, but it won’t take long for you to figure something is wrong. Eventhough you removed VirtualBox, not much free space you got back. Next thing, you went to VirtualBox Forums and they told you to look for /Library/VirtualBox directory, or look for VDI files. However, damn, you could not find any?!? Well, welcome to the club :)

I had a similar issue and figured out that, after removal, VirtualBox doesn’t erase all files/folders created and also these files and folders are not visible on Finder. What you have to do is simple:

1. Open Terminal

2. Type cd /Users/<user_name>/Library

3. Type ls an see if VirtualBox directory is there (should be)

4. rm -rf VirtualBox

Now you should get the free space you deserve :)

My Macbook hard disk almost got full, so I needed to do some cleaning. I thought there might be huge files that I forgot to erase; therefore wanted to list files bigger than 200MB. Following command worked well, now I have 12GB more space :)

mdfind ‘kMDItemFSSize > 200000000′

I usually need to change permissions of files and folders on our servers or on my Mac, in order to execute software correctly. Most cases, folders should have 755, files should have 644 permissions. It’s not possible to do that one by one, therefore I usually need some unix / OSX commands to do that. And figured out whenever I need this (almost every week), I figure out I try to search the Internet. So here is the magic code; so we all know where to find it when we need it again :)

chmod -R 755 *
find -type f -print0|xargs -0 chmod 644

I recently felt the need of changing my VMWare Fusion 2.0 Beta, because it kept on locking my Mac. I found VirtualBox, which is recently acquired by Sun, offered for free and has a recent release 1.6. I read some nice reviews, and although it lacks some features, looks like it’s quite fast and reliable (will review it when I get to use it more).

First thing I needed to do with VirtualBox, after setting up a Windows was to share files between my Mac (Leopard) and Windows (XP). VirtualBox does not offer drag and drop for now, but hopefully will do soon. To share files between 2 computers:

1. Install Guest Additions

Go to “Devices->Install Guest Additions”. After selecting this, open “My Computer”, and you will see there is Guest Additions installer mounted. Just double click and install. After installing, do not forget to reboot (that’s important).

2. Create a shared folder

Go to “Devices->Shared Folders”. Press “Add” (+ sign on right side). Browse for your shared folder on your mac. Pick up a good name and note it down (we will use the name later on). I suppose you selected a folder to share and named it “shared”.

3. Create a batch file

On Windows XP, shared folders are browsable. Easiest way to mount shared folders is to create a batch file, instead of writing a command each time you login. To do that, right click on Desktop, select “New->Text file”. Rename your text file to “Mount.bat” (or something else you wish). After renaming, right click on it and select “Edit” and paste the code below (with necessary modification, depending on your shared folder name. I assume it’s “shared” in our case)

net use x: \\vboxsvr\shared

Beware of the space in between “x:” and “\\” otherwise you will get;

System error 67 has occured

Which in my opinion a common mistake. Save the file and you are done. Just double click on “Mount.bat” on your desktop and you will see X: drive will appear with your shared folder on My Computer.

Enjoy :)

If you like Inkscape (an open source alternative to Adobe Illustrator) and have a Mac with Leopard; you will figure that it after installation it will not work. It will say that font caching might take time, but never start. It’s because of a simple bug, with a simple solution. Just open a terminal (Applications/Utilities) and type this, followed by an enter;

mkdir ~/.fontconfig

After that it should start normally.

And a note: Latest snapshot doesn’t seem to work. Just grab the latest stable package.

I just found a simple diagram I prepared for a common question: Can I develop my own plugins for KuneriLite?

Answer is “No” at the moment, but there is a simple way to use KuneriLite System plugin and communicate your application with your Flash Lite movie using KuneriLite. Check the diagram below.

Nokia published some tips and tricks for Flash Lite content and Actionscript optimizations.

This article gives some recommendations regarding performance improvements when using Flash Lite. Optimization efforts are needed in order to create a high-quality movie or application. The article covers both content optimization and ActionScript optimization.

One thing you might want to have in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress would be a local SIM card. Roaming is crazy expensive, so you should get one. If you do not know Spanish (like me), it’s a little blind dive, but following recommendations and a lot of asking + walking, I got a Yoigo with an internet access. Surprisingly, no one I asked knew about it, but it’s easy and it works. Here are some time saving instructions for you;

- Find a “The phone house” store. There is one in La Rambla. If you ask Tourist Information point, they will tell you
- Ask for Yoigo. Takes 5 minutes to register and get it working. You will need a passport, that’s all. It costs EUR 10 with EUR 5 credits included.
- You will want to have internet access. Internet access is not activated by default. If you know Spanish, call 622 and help yourself. If not, ask the gentleman or lady to activate it for you.
- Your internet connection should be activated in a day (mine did). I have no idea how much it costs, but can’t get too wrong, it’s already prepaid :)

Ugur.-