JordanDev

iPhone, Software Development, Music, Tech and other geeky stuff

Windows 7 Media Center with Media Browser

Jan 7

Posted by jordandev in Movies, Tech | 4 Comments

I recently decided to try out Windows Media Center. Instead of spending money on a cheap, small HTPC and setting up Windows Media Center, XBMC, or something else I figured the easiest way would just be to use my Xbox 360 as a Media Center Extender. So I went about finally setting up Windows Media Center on my new installation on Windows 7.

I found the movie browsing rather lacking, basically just a big grid of all the movies I have. I hardly had any DVD covers so the presentation was a bit lacking. So through searching for ways to spiff it up a bit I stumbled upon a plugin named Media Browser (http://www.mediabrowser.tv/). I also found a great program for automatically populating cover art, background art, and all of the metadata you need for Media Browser to work well with your movie collection. It’s called Media Center Master (http://www.mediacentermaster.com/). It takes a bit of organizing your movies into folders to get it to work properly but it is worth it.

Here is how my movie browsing looked before:

And here is how it looked after installing Media Browser, organizing my movies, and using Media Center Master to fill out the metadata:

default

You can customize it by changing wallpapers, changing the icons, changing the way your folders are layed out, and many other things. It makes it possible to browse your movies in a standard grid, in a strip, in a list, and even in a nice looking coverflowish layout like above.

strip

list

Once you select your movie, it brings you to the details screen where you can see information on the movie and the actors.

movie

If you go and select an actor it will show you a selection of movies that actor has performed in.

actor

You can group your movies into sections by year, genre, director, studio, and more.

genre

It also works great for TV series.

tv

I highly recommend this plugin. If you have any other must have plugins or ways to enhance Windows Media Center let me know in the comments.

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CategoriesSB – improving on Categories for iPhone

Dec 23

Posted by jordandev in iPhone, jailbroken app reviews | 2 Comments

Categories

CategoriesSB – Cydia – 99 cents

An new jailbreak addon came out awhile ago that I recently got around to trying. CategoriesSB is an extension for Categories. If you use Categories then you need CategoriesSB. It’s that good.

Features:

  • Loading time to open a folder is reduced to almost nothing. This makes it so that you can use nested folders without more and more loading time making it frustrating.
  • It now works with things like extensions like 5 columns.
  • You can add a folder called ‘Recent’ that will work like a quick launcher of the most recently used applications.
  • You can scroll the folder either vertically or horizontally.
  • You can keep the dock at the bottom when you open a folder now.
  • You can enable swipe to close.
  • more

All of these features should just be implemented in Categories as they are very useful and feel like they should have been there from the start.

My old categories folders looked something like:

while my new ones are much improved (yes I know the wallpaper is gone but I’m referring to the icon layout):

For 99 cents the increase in usability for Categories is significant enough to recommend that anybody who uses Categories must have CategoriesSB.

Any thoughts on it? Comment below.

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LockInfo – great iPhone Lockscreen improvement

Nov 12

Posted by jordandev in iPhone | 11 Comments

IMG_0076

I recently purchased LockInfo, a great Lockscreen app available on Cydia/RockApp for $5. I had the trial for a few days to see if I would like it better than Intelliscreen and liked it so much I now use it instead.

What does it do? It let’s you view your email, SMS, Calendar, todo, weather, missed calls and voicemails on your Lockscreen. Basically everything that Intelliscreen can do, minus the RSS feeds. I now use it instead of Intelliscreen because I find it easier to use and nicer to look at.

It is very configurable. You can set what is collapsed by default is you prefer a cleaner looking screen like below:

IMG_0074

Or for an even cleaner screen you can make it so that only sections that actually have items will show up:

IMG_0078

I usually have my default set as:

IMG_0077

Another nice feature is that you can add this screen as the first page of your homescreen, either instead of or in addition to the lockscreen. Then you have all of the same info and your dock like this:

IMG_0073

I currently have the WeatherIcon, Appigo Todo, and Clock plugin installed. I find all 3 to be very useful. You can even get themes for LockInfo, a popular one being Gruppled. See here for information on that: Gruppled

I really recommend at least checking out the trial of this app to see if it’s what you are looking for. Anybody used it and have any thoughts? Comment below.

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