Just a few small changes in this update:

From the release notes:

Inputtie Version 0.1.5 (17/10/10)

+ Middle mouse input is now caught and transferred between devices
+ More errors are caught in the client
+ Keys are now depressed when a connection is cut, no more lingering Shift, yey!

The new version should automatically download, but if you don’t yet have it go grab it on the download page -> http://www.inputtie.com/download/

Mummy wow! Im a big boy now! I have just published my first Chrome extension.

It was really annoying me that when I found a funny cat or some other silly image I would have to go through a whole ball-ache process to get that image on my Tumblr account.

What I really wanted was some right-click-post action going on and wondered why no one had one it yet. So with an hour or so to spare I whipped this extension up really quick.

It uses the Chrome 6 Context Menu API so you obviously need to have Chrome 6 to be able to use it.

Currently it only posts images as that’s all I needed for now but if enough people want more then ill whip out the other data types.

The source couldn’t be any simpler really, infact this is it here:

Source code

chrome.contextMenus.create({"title": "Post Image To Tumblr", "contexts":["image"], "onclick": postImage});
 
function postImage(info, tab)
{
	var email = localStorage["tumblr_email"];
	var password = localStorage["tumblr_pass"];
 
	if(!email || email=="" || !password || password=="")
	{
		alert("Need to set your Tumblr username and password in the options before posting!");
	}
	else
	{
		var o =
		{
			"email":email,
			"password":password,
			"type":"photo",
			"source":info.srcUrl
		};
 
		var success = function(data,textStatus,request)
		{
			if(textStatus=="success"){ alert("Image posted to Tumblr. Image -> "+info.srcUrl); }
			else { alert("Bad email or password"); }
		}
 
		$.post("http://www.tumblr.com/api/write",o, success);
	}
}

Simples!

Theres even an option page where you put in your Tumblr details:

Oh, there is one issue.

No matter what I tried I couldn’t manage to get the Tumblr API to return an error. So if you enter your username or password incorrectly it still reports success, not entirely sure why, if someone knows I would love to hear why!

Interested? You can go grab it over on the chrome extensions gallery page -> HERE

Woooo Hooo! Finally after almost a years worth of toiling we have finally released the beta version of Inputtie.

Now I have only performed a limited amount of testing so im sure there are going to be bugs-a-plenty. If you find something I would love to hear about it. We dont currently have a dedicated email address you can use for this so just use the contact box on the side of the inputtie page to get in touch.

Anyways, here are the release notes for this version:

Inputtie Version 0.1.3 (22/03/10)
+ Beta Release!
+ Fixed an issue that was causing the mouse pointer to not quite reach the edge of the screen
+ Fixed it so that you can now choose not to show the “new device” help tip.
+ New Icons, yey!

Grab the download over on the download page now!

Oh BTW we decided to go with the “e” in a bordered square for our app icon:

For the last year or so my major personal-project has been under wraps but after a few intense weeks its finally time to talk about it!

First before I explain exactly what Inputtie is I will talk about why I started this project and the problem I was trying to solve.

(If you aren’t interested in all the background fluff and just want to find out what Inputtie is, head over to inputtie.com)

The Problem

About a year ago I was doing a lot of work at home that involved working both on my desktop PC and my MacbookPro. Often I would find myself using my mouse and keyboard on my PC then having to lean accross to use the trackpad and keyboard on my MBP. Now, I hate trackpads so what I started doing was unplugging my keyboard and mouse from my desktop then plugging back into my MBP when I wanted to use it.

This situation was obviously less than ideal, so I started looking around for other solutions. I had heard of hardware you can buy that involves flipping a switch when you want to change which device you want your input to go to. I considered this but thought there must be a more elegant software solution. I had an idea in my head where I wanted you to simply move my mouse pointer off my desktop monitor and it would then magically appear on the laptop screen.

It was at this point I found out about Synergy. I took a good look at it but for the life of me could not get it to work no matter how hard I tried. It also involved lots of fiddley messing around with IP addresses / hostnames and command line parameters (it has improved in a year, but more on that later). So I thought to myself surely there is a better way of doing this, surely its not a tough technical problem to solve!?

The Solution

I had originally intended to talk about the myriad of attempts, blind alleys, different languages and general headaches I endured to get to this point however its a very lengthy topic. So instead in this post im just going to talk about the final solution talk about the previous attempts in later posts.

So without any further ado I present a screenshot of Inputtie, so you can get an idea of whats going on:

It’s an Adobe AIR 2 application so it means it will look and work the same across all supported operating systems (Mac, Windows, Linux). AIR also makes it super easy to install and update so for most users it should be a very simple matter to get it up and running.

The way it works is simple. When opened it automatically detects other devices on your network that have Inputtie running. You then make a connection between your two devices by simply dragging and dropping an arrow from one device to another:

Do the same on the other device and your computers are now connected, its that simple! Now when you move your mouse across to the side of the screen (side dependant on which arrow you picked) it will magically appear on the screen of the other device, splendid!

Now over there you can use your keyboard and mouse as normal and the input will be transferred over.

You can even also copy and paste text from one device to the other. This is great when you just want to blast a URL or some other bit of text to the laptop or back again without having to send emails or use IM or make a text file and send it over a network or anything else.

If you want to fire up a game or something  that inputtie may interfere with you can simply and easily toggle it to disabled:

Website

Early into the project I teamed up with my partner in crime and jack-of-all-trades Oliver Pitceathly. The original idea was to release this as a commercial product so we wanted to have a nice high-quality website as a landing page for potential customers. In the latter stages of the product we decided to drop the commercial aspect and make it donation-ware instead.

Despite my constant badgering and mind-changing Oli has done a fantastic job on the website, it looks simply great!

He even found time to do an awsome video that shows off the best features of Inputtie:

Planned Extensions

There are many potential extensions that you could imagine would be really handy.

Imagine being able to tare a tab from your desktop browser then drag it over to your laptop and having it then appear there.

Even better how about simply dragging a file or folder over then having it transfer quickly, be pausable, restartable, and toggle the bandwith it uses. All possible and planned extensions in Inputtie.

Another idea is using the multi-touch track pad on the macbook to interact in a multi-touch fashion with windows 7 on your desktop.

Beta

“So where can I get my hands on it?” you cry. Well we haven’t actually release it for download just yet, there are some niggley bugs and things to work out with it still. If you are interested in testing it out tho sign up for the beta over at inputtie.com and ill shoot you a mail when its ready to go!

Use left and right keys to navigate.

Next step is a gun and destructible terrain, and not forgetting particles!

http://www.facebook.com/mikeysee

Yes, im on Facebook after years of trying to stay away. Unforuntely as my job is making games for the platform, its kinda tricky to avoid.

http://mikeysee.tumblr.com/

Tumblr is a reccent addition to my collection. Im primarily using it as a dumping ground for stuff that amuses me. Expect photos, videos and madness inside… oh and plenty of cats!

http://twitter.com/mikeysee

Ahh Twitter, that strange little service that is just sooo addictive! Find me, follow me, expect nothing sensible.

http://soundcloud.com/mike-cann

Not exactly  social network, but still find a collection of my mixes

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/mike.cann

Again, not a social network, just a collection of pictures of me, my friends and my antics.

http://uk.linkedin.com/in/mikecann

Oops! I forgot about LinkedIn! Well you can find some (fairly) up to date information about my skills and job experience

Well as my previous post was about how I had moved my personal presence I thought I would mention the move of my virtual presence too.

For a while I have been hosting my sites on Slicehost, and things having been going okay. Slicehost however is a basic VPS that simply gives you root access and then you are expected to know what to do next. I spent a long time setting it up in the beginning following various tutorials. I learnt alot of Linux along the way but unfortunately I dont think im ever going to have the time to learn enough to maintain this box, especially now that I have 7 domains of my own and am hosting two by other people.

So I recently started looking for a better solution. Thats when my partner in crime olip.co.uk recommendation that I checkout Web Fusion, so I did and was mightily impressed. For a very similar price to Slicehost I get a much bigger box with much more features, and ofcourse the awesome Plesk 9.0 admin tool.

So the last few days I have been moving over, its gone pretty smooth but there have been a coupple of growing pains, which others may wish to learn from:

Shared Rather Than Exclusive Hosting

If you wish to be able to create new clients using Plesk then allow those clients to create domains you must remember to set your VPS as “shared” rather than “exclusive” right at the beginning before doing anything. I found out the hard way that if you make domains on an “Exclusive” IP VPS then you can no longer set that IP as “shared” and therefore clients cannot make domains. The solution I was forced to take was to ring support (which was generally helpful, ive seen worse *cough* BT *cough*) and they were able to sort it for me.

Mod_Rewrite and .htaccess

This blog is wordpress and I wanted the pretty perma-links that WordPress is capable of so http://www.mikecann.co.uk/about/ rather than http://www.mikecann.co.uk/?page=about. To achieve this I tried many different things before I hit on the correct solution which was to use FTP to modify the permissions on the httpdocs folder to 777 then go to the perma-links section of the WordPress settings and allow WordPress to setup .htaccess for me! I then just went back and changed the permissions back to 750, simples!

As I have already done a video of this place, Ill just reuse it:

EDIT: It would appear that Youtube have removed the soundtrack to the video, so, while watching this video imagine “Manson – Wide Open Space” playing in the background

Just got my new computer at work. First thing I did was chuck out the stock keyboard and replace with my favourite mac aluminium keyboard.

As usual when trying to get Apple hardware to play nice with Microsoft there is a little friction. In this case the keyboard doesn’t come with any mapping drivers resulting in the fact that some of the keys are messed up and in wrong locations. So we get to the point of this post. As I have had to do this several times now I thought I would post my solution so I dont spend ages searching each time.

The solution is to use the Apple Pro Keyboard Layout from parkernet.com.

For convenience I have taken the details on how to use the file directly from the stite: http://parkernet.com/applepro/

Download

Download the installation package Apple_Pro_KBD_v2 (250K)

System requirements

Windows XP or Windows Vista, 32-bit or 64-bit versions. Maybe Windows 7 RC but not tested. Apple Pro Keyboard or new aluminium Apple Keyboard. Untested with wireless keyboards but it should work okay.

Installation

After unZipping the Apple_Pro_KBD_v2.zip file, open the Apple Pro KBD v2 directory and run the Setup.exe installation file.

The installer will run and automatically install the keyboard layout .dll file into the correct location for your operating system.

To remove the keyboard layout simply run the installer again.

Configuration

Use the Windows XP Regional and Language Options control panel to select the new keyboard layout. Full details are included in the read me text file included in the ZIP download.

For those of you who want a step-by-step guide with pictures that you can print out, click here.

Sorry there’s no Vista step by step, but I have skillfully avoided Vista since it’s release.

Keystrokes

All keys now operate as per the legends printed upon them.

Shift-2 = @

Ctrl-Alt-2 = €

Shift-3 = £

Ctrl-Alt-3 = #

Well I guess im a little late to the party but I have recently discovered the joy that is Google Reader.

I never truly understood the purpose of RSS readers until I started to wonder how I could make my daily trawl of flash,  flex, tech  blogs faster and more efficient. It was then I re-discovered google reader (I had played with it before but didnt understand the purpose too much).

Needless to say it has pretty much transformed how I use the web. Now instead of opening 20+ tabs every day to check my favourite blogs I instead just add a subscription to the blog and then I am updated whenever there are new posts. Old concept I know but im amazed how I did without it until now.

There is one problem however. Im a little bit of a neat freak and I just cant stand seeing that there are unread items. This becomes an issue if you subscribe to a very busy site such as Gizmodo. If I leave it for a day or two without checking im liable to have 100 posts from that one site alone to read. As much as it pains me I have taken to reading about 10-20 from this site a day then clicking the “mark as read” button, just so that its nice and tidy