Author: Greg

Greg is the head cat at JumbleCat, with over 20 years of experience in the computer field, he has done everything from programming to hardware solutions. You can contact Greg via the contact form on the main menu above.

Dell Venue 8 Pro and ASUS Miracast adapter

Greg

[sc:hardware-category ]When I purchased my Dell Venue Pro 8 I didn’t notice that it supported Miracast and quite honestly it wasn’t a feature I was really looking for as the only Miracast adapters were far too expensive.  Recently that’s changed.

I started looking for a Miracast adapter a while ago for my notebook, but I was unsure if it supported Miracast and didn’t want to shell out $150+ to find out for sure.  However I found the ASUS Miracast Adapter for a reasonable $56.99 over at Mike’s Computer Shop so I decided to take a chance.

The adapter comes with everything you need, a 90 degree HDMI adapter, a MicroUSB cable and power adapter and the Miracast adapter itself.

Plugging it all in was easy enough and in just a couple of seconds I had it waiting for a connection on my TV.  The ASUS unit displays on-screen instructions on how to connect to it, however it does assume your running an Android tablet.

Windows 8.1 has Miracast support built-in and swiping in from the right and selecting the devices charm let’s you project your screen on to the Miracast adapter.

The ASUS adapter uses a very long and complex name, which includes the device firmware version in it.  It’s a bit of a weird choice on ASUS’s part, but not a big deal overall.

After connecting the display is duplicated and everything worked fine… for about 30 seconds and then promptly disconnected.

This happened every time I connected to the adapter.

I decided to check the ASUS support site but there was nothing talking about disconnects, there was however a new firmware version.

If you’re using an Android tablet, firmware updates are pretty easy to do.  Otherwise you have to connect to the Miracast adapter via WiFi and manually upload the new firmware to the device.

It didn’t take long and after a few minutes it was back up and running.

After the update though the name of the adapter changed as the new firmware was no reflected in the adapter name.  This required me to delete it from my Venue and re-add it.  An annoyance at best but worth the effort as the firmware update resolved the disconnecting issue.

Once everything was up and going, the display was crisp and reasonably responsive.

Windows 8 on the Venue Pro is a very smooth experience in general, but the overhead of Miracast does make it a little jerky.  Nothing that makes it impossible to use, just not the butter smooth experience it usually delivers.

So far everything I’ve tried; Netflix, YouTube, Windows Media Player and more, has worked just fine.

Over the years I’ve tried to find a good media center PC to drive my TV, but I may have found a better solution in Miracast.

The only one small grip with the ASUS dongle is how wide it is near the HDMI port.  One TV I tried it on had another port right beside the HDMI connector and the ASUS adapter just would not fit.  Other than that, it does run a bit hot, but works quite well.

 

Earin on KickStarter

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[sc:hardware-category ]I’ve been watching KickStarter with interest for a while, it’s an interesting site and there was something finally on it that got me to sign up, Earin.

I’ve been using a Jabra Halo set of Bluetooth headphone for quite a while and they do the job, but they are cumbersome to carry around and I’d been looking for a set of inear Bluetooth earphones for a while.

The problem with the ones I had found were that they all had a cord running between the earbuds.  Earin seems to have solved the problem and I look forward to getting a set early next year.

Favicons and Tiles with WordPress

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[sc:wordpress-category ]Running JumbleCat exposes me to some things I general don’t want to deal with, one of those is making sure the site looks right when bookmarked or pinned to the Windows Start page.

Recently I found RealFaviconGenerator.net (via WPTavern) which highlighted some pretty bad results for how the JumbleCat.com favicon looks on some of the modern mobile platforms.  There’s really four areas of concern when it comes to favicons:

  1. The classic desktop favicon.
  2. Apple’s home screen icons.
  3. Android’s home screen icons.
  4. Windows Live Tiles and Task Bar icons.

Searching the WordPress plugin directory for an easy solution turned up a couple of different options for 1 or 2 of the above items but nothing that took in to account all of the above.

This really seems to be something that should be in WordPress core, basic functionality that every WordPress site should have.

A few weeks with Windows Phone 8.1

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[sc:mobile-category ]I’ve been running Windows Phone 8.1 now for a few weeks and there are a few things that are on my mind.

First off, it’s a great update overall, the following are just some items that seem to stand out to me.

Notification Center

The new notification center is a big improvement in 8.1, but there are a few things about it:

  • the old behaviour of swiping down is gone, so you can’t just bring up the status bar any more for a quick check on your network status or battery level.
  • the grab bar at the bottom is a little small, however as you can just swipe up from below the hardware buttons it’s not much of an issue.
  • Store notifications sometimes act weirdly.  Normally when you get an updated app notification, when you select it you go right to the downloads page.  The same with toast notifications.  However sometimes you don’t and instead just end up at the store front.
  • Notification options for e-mail are based on your inbox configuration.  If you leave your inboxes separate, you can set notification options for each one.  However if you use a unified inbox, you can only set notification options for the unified inbox, not the separate inboxes.

Xbox Music

The new Xbox Music app just sucks in comparison to the old Music hub.  It broke pinned playlists from the Music hub and often they still don’t work.  It needs some major work, first and foremost it needs to work better.  After that a full playlist editor and MP3 tag editor would be nice as well.

The best part of Xbox Music is that it’s just an app so Microsoft should (and have been) be able to quickly iterate through the issues.

Battery Life

Some people found battery life to be worse in the initial release, I didn’t have any issues and the recent update was targeted at some of those concerns.

6 Tile Wide Mode

My Nokia 925 supports the new 6 tile wide mode, but honestly it’s a little too small on-screen to be my preferred option, so I’ve stuck with 4 tile wide.

Internet Explorer 11

Even though by all appearances IE11 is a minor update, it has a major impact.  The ability to save and sync your passwords with your desktop IE is quite simply the best new feature in the entire 8.1 update.

Another nice item is the fact when you pin a site to your start page it can use the Windows 8.1 live tile configuration settings if the site supports it.  This means you can get live tile notifications from sites right on your start screen!

Cortana

Cortana isn’t available in Canada yet, but I’ve changed my settings and have it active.  I have to admit I don’t use it much, but the quite hours is nice.

What I’d really like Cortana to be able to do is to alert me for individual contact activity.  So for example if I received an e-mail from one of my contacts, to play an audible alert or do some other kind of notification that isn’t the default for e-mail.

Individual Volume Controls

This is a very good thing and that’s all I have to say about it 🙂

VPN

I’m still waiting for OpenVPN to support Windows Phone 8.1, it should be possible now.  If it does I’ll probably enable it and just to see what it’s like.

People Hub

The People Hub took a big hit in 8.1, it lost much of its usefulness as Microsoft had to admit that allowing third-party apps to manage the social updates was the way to go.  It would be nice to be able to set the default start page to be the “What’s New” instead of the contact list though.

Transparent Tiles

Don’t use them, don’t want to.

Calendar

The week view is so much more useful, but I do miss the agenda every once in a while.

 

Zens Cupholder Wireless Charger

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[sc:mobile-category ]I’ve had the Nokia Wireless Car Charger for a while in my car, but I recently purchased a new car and didn’t transfer the mount over.

The new car had built-in GPS so I didn’t really need a car mount for my phone.  However I did find myself missing the wireless charging when in my car.  The Zens CupHolder Wireless Charger has come to the rescue though.

The first thing you’ll notice about it is the price, for what it is, it’s a little high.  A lower price point would make it much easier to swallow.  I found a Canadian distributor for it at Blueshop and I also had a discount code so I decided to give it a go.

The unit itself is quite nice, it feels well-built and does exactly what it says.  Overall it’s quite nice, I do have a few thoughts on it:

  • The power cable uses a custom connector instead of a USB connector, as most new cars have a USB port in them it would have made sense to send a USB cable.
  • The included power cable has a tightly wound stretchable cable, but that makes it hard to get through a compartment if required.
  • The slot doesn’t have a front/back indicator on it so you have to guess which way to put the phone in.
  • Inside the slot is a spring to keep the phone pressed against the charging side, but the spring is bare metal against the display, this seems like a recipe to eventually scratch your phone.  I’ll probably find something to place between the phone and spring.
  • The slot is a little thin, it could have been a bit wider to allow for a larger case to be on the phone.

These are all small things overall, it’s quite nice otherwise.