Do you watch a lot of video on your computer? I sure do. I download conference talks and interviews. I especially watch a lot of TV recorded by my Windows Media Center PC by copying the video files to my laptop. Media Center is SO much better than TiVo because you can copy / transfer / save video to other places (like your laptop).

That’s all well and good, except I really miss the ability to skip commercials and pause video via my media center remote control.


That’s been a pain to say the least inside Windows Media Player. Well goodbye days of frustrating commercials and TV via the mouse!

Introducing “Minimalist TV Player” (by me!):


It looks like Windows Media Player and has the same basic features for playing video.

But – you can control it like a Media Center TV to skip commercials and replay an action scene (like the crash shown above at the last Indy 500, just jump back 15 seconds to see the replay)!

You can use the keys PageUp to jump back 15 seconds and PageDown to skip commercials (forward 30 seconds). That’s a good start. But, if you have one of these presentation remotes:


Then you can use it to control the TV Player like a Media Center Remote! Here’s the control mapping:



Now you have the same controls as your Media Center PC on any computer that has Windows Media Player installed! How cool is that?

Download the beta 1 version here:  MinimalistTVPlayer (128 KB)

This beta version is fully functional but will expire in 2009. The supported file types depends somewhat on your system. The program will play any video files that your Windows Media Player can play. This usually includes WMV, MPG, AVI, and possibly DVR-MS files from Windows Media Center and DivX if you have the decoder installed.

One final tip: You can associate the application with your video file types and choose “Open With” to directly launch the program from a file:



Just be careful to not set the TV Player as the default program to load your video with unless that’s what you want.

If you this program, be sure to help promote it by kicking it!

[Update June 5, 2008: I'm working on a much slicker UI which I'll try to get out soon.]

If you'v been using my Visual Studio Recent Files Utility, then you may be interested to find out that I just released it as open source on CodePlex here.

    Visual Studio Recent Files Utility on CodePlex

Enjoy!

Hi All,

I recently added my Big Mailer project to CodePlex.

     Big Mailer on CodePlex

You can download the source code among other things.

Enjoy!

I often have to send large files around by email. For example, I had to email a colleague a 10 MB file. It seems a little rude to hit him out of the blue with a 10 MB email. I wanted something cleaner and less intrusive.

So I created a simple utility I called "Big Mailer". I figured I'd blog about it and share it with the world. Feel free to use it as you see fit. This program consists of both a client and server piece that simplifies uploading content to your web site. Then the program gives you a regular web link you can send via email.

Here's a screen shot:

You can download and install it via ClickOnce here:

Install Big Mailer (700 KB)

You must have the following to use this program:

1. .NET 3.5 Framework installed on the client
2. .NET 3.5 Framework on the server
3. An ASP.NET web site to host the WCF service

After you install the client, click "Host Service" and you'll get the server side code to drop onto your ASP.NET web site. There is a test web site with instructions in that code.

If you don't have an ASP.NET web site to host the service at you can always use public services like Drop Boks (a great service!) or other file sharing sites. The benefit of this program / service is that you retain control of the files and you can conceivably send more sensitive content.

You can also just use FTP if you have that for your web site, but I hate FTP personally. I don't like fighting the firewall issues and I don't want it running on my servers.

So this program allows you to upload content of unlimited size, without FTP, without sending your files to a third party. Also, it sends everything in 16KB blocks, rather than one giant http message. So you get the benefit of both being able to send huge files (say 1 GB) and you get progress / cancel support.

One feature that's notably lacking is authentication. I'll probably release an update with security built-in. For now, take that into consideration before using it.

Enjoy!

PS - This project is now Open Source and is host on CodePlex.

Welcome to my third Visual Studio tricks post. This time it's more of a utility, than a tip. I want to talk about managing the recently projects list. If you're like me, then you work with many different projects (especially after I teach a class) and your recent project list becomes polluted with projects you don't care about.

     


In this post, "Recent Projects in Visual Studio 2005", .net DEvHammer discusses how to access the registry to alter that list.

Well, I didn't feel like going to the registry everytime I wanted to clean that list. So I whipped up a simple UI to manage that list (basically manage that registry list).




You're welcome to download this program if it looks useful to you. I decided to publish it via ClickOnce so it will always be up-to-date. If you're using FireFox, you'll need to FFClickOnce add-on to make this work.

    Install Visual Studio Recent Files Utility (approx 200 KB)



I hope you enjoy it!

This project is now hosted on CodePlex and is Open Source.