Posted by sharpstyle on October 26, 2007
It was my birthday and I had another chance to pick a gift for myself on behalf of my relatives. I decided that it is unlikely that I will ever have the time to build my own DIY Digital Picture Frame, and after some research I decided to purchase i-Mate Momento.
What I liked about it:
- Standard card/usb drive/flash drive support
- Wi-Fi support
- Vista Sideshow support
- i-Mate’s own Live service that allows RSS type updates
What I was cautious about:
- Relatively low resolution (not a big problem when looking from a few feet away)
- Issues with setup from Engadget post
I’ve read a few reviews and ignoring the warnings about setup issues on Engadget ordered it from Amazon.
It arrived and I had the hardest time connecting it to my wireless network. I have Dlink DIR-655 with two laptops connecting to it without any issues. Momento just didn’t see my SSID, while seeing neighbors’ networks. It seems to detect Netgear networks the best. I tried a lot of different things without success: loading settings through USB, changing settings on Dlink router, etc.
Here is what worked for me:
- Install latest firmware (1.10 as of 2007/10/26) — do not believe status page that says you are running the latest
- Backup settings before installing this one — it resets everything to default
- Turn off “Wireless Protected Setup” – that allowed Momento to see my network ssid, but it wasn’t enough
- Change WPA Mode to "WPA Only"
- Change Cipher Type from AES to TKIP – that allowed Momento to connect.
Here are my settings:
A few words about customer support: horrible, horrible, horrible… Gadget that costs $300 should come with phone support. i-Mate only offers email support that responded with the same generic troubleshooting steps that are available on their website. I am still waiting (3 days) for the answer to my follow up email.
Now that I got it to work, a few first impressions:
- low resolution is kinda annoying if you are trying to examine the picture closer than few feet
- Didn’t see a way to setup a schedule for it (turn on at 9AM, turn off at 11PM)
- Remote control is ok
- Feels a little sluggish
- UI is pleasant
More details to come.
Links:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000J6E2WW/ref=noref/102-6992261-9696926?ie=UTF8&s=photo
http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/25/hands-on-with-the-i-mate-momento-70/
Mike Grushin
Posted in Gadgets, i-Mate Momento | 11 Comments »
Posted by sharpstyle on October 16, 2007
This one seems to be documented here: https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/ASC-2800
Consider the following:
for each (var element : XML in _samplePresetsXml.children())
{
var ns : Namespace = new Namespace(element.namespace());
default xml namespace = ns;
….
line with "default xml…" throws the following error during launch:
VerifyError: Error #1025: An invalid register 2 was accessed.
at PresetsConfiguration/_PresetsConfiguration_XML1_i()
at PresetsConfiguration()[D:\Work\Flex3\PresetsConfiguration\PresetsConfiguration.mxml:114]
at _PresetsConfiguration_mx_managers_SystemManager/create()
at mx.managers::SystemManager/initializeTopLevelWindow()[E:\dev\flex_3_beta2sdk\frameworks\projects\framework\src\mx\managers\SystemManager.as:2428]
at mx.managers::SystemManager/docFrameHandler()[E:\dev\flex_3_beta2sdk\frameworks\projects\framework\src\mx\managers\SystemManager.as:2320]
While the following two variants work completely fine:
var ns : Namespace = new Namespace(_samplePresetsXml.namespace());
for each (var element : XML in _samplePresetsXml.children())
{
ns = new Namespace(element.namespace());
default xml namespace = ns;
…
OR
var ns : Namespace = new Namespace(_samplePresetsXml.namespace());
for each (var element : XML in _samplePresetsXml.children())
{
default xml namespace = ns;
…
My XML is pretty straightfoward:
<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>
<Examples xmlns=http://tempuri.org/Examples.xsd>
<Example>
<Id>17d4d7f6-d7d4-4de4-b8b9-e04a5ea5d35b</Id>
….
A piece of advice: when working with XML, get to know namespaces and what role they play in retrieving node values. In reference to above, this is how you would get to GUID in ID if not using "default xml namespace" directive:
trace(">>" + element.ns::Id.text());
Mike Grushin
CTO
Posted in Flex, Flex Builder 3 Beta 2 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by sharpstyle on October 13, 2007
We are playing around with Flex Builder 3 and I ran into a few issues that I wanted to document:
————————————————————————
<mx:Label x="62" y="75" text="Label" width="517" height="353" id="_label"/>
You cannot user "_label" or "label" as id of <mx:Label>. Flex gives the following errors
_label: Attempting to initialize non-public inherited property ‘_label’ from MXML
label: Attempting to initialize inherited property ‘label’ of type ‘String’ with value of incompatible type ‘mx.controls.Label’.
————————————————————————
Consider the following simple application.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute" applicationComplete="ApplicationComplete()">
<mx:Script>
<![CDATA[
private function ApplicationComplete() : void
{
_presetsTextArea.text = "Test";
}
]]>
</mx:Script>
<mx:TabNavigator bottom="9" right="9" left="10" top="10">
<mx:Canvas label="Visual" width="100%" height="100%">
</mx:Canvas>
<mx:Canvas label="Source" width="100%" height="100%">
<mx:TextArea id="_presetsTextArea" right="10" bottom="37" left="10" top="10"/>
<mx:Button x="810" y="665" label="Apply"/>
</mx:Canvas>
</mx:TabNavigator>
</mx:Application>
The following line produces a runtime error:
_presetsTextArea.text = "Test";
Error:
Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference.
Works fine if TexInput is in the first "tab". After some debugging it looks like immediate children of TabNavigator are added to stage, but canvas children are added only when user clicks on the appropriate tab. Not the behavior I expected.
————————————————————————
You have to be careful which part of Flex Builder is focused when you press Ctrl-Z:
- Add new file/class
- Start typing code
- Click outside of code editing window (console, project treeview, etc)
- Press Ctrl-Z
- Your new file is removed together with the work you’ve done
- If you think it is in the Recycle Bin — you are wrong!
- Redo also doesn’t work
Mike Grushin
CTO
Posted in Flex, Flex Builder 3 Beta 2 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by sharpstyle on October 4, 2007
I probably wasted an hour trying to figure out what was wrong with my XML, and at the end it turned out that Flex Builder is not doing some right when debugging XML nodes. As you can see from the screenshot below, "trace" executed correctly showing me the right value, while Expressions reports an error.
Bottom line — when working with XML use trace() to verify that you are getting the data you want, not Expressions window.

Mike Grushin
Partner, CTO
Posted in Development | 1 Comment »