Just Released: Fun Voice for Windows Phone

Have you ever fancied sounding like Alvin the chipmunk, Darth Vader from Star Wars, or the Cylons from Battlestar Gallactica?

Well, now you can—with my latest app, Fun Voice.

Fun Voice is an entertaining voice morphing (a.k.a. voice changer) app for Windows Phone. It’s great for bringing amusement and laughter to friends and family, keeping little ones entertained, sending funny voice greetings, or just plain curing boredom.

By simply speaking into the device microphone, Fun Voice will repeat what was spoken in the voice of choice—almost instantaneously.

Fun Voice also features SoundCloud integration. This means that users can save, upload, and share their new-found voice with the rest of the world or in private. Here’s an idea: Send a funny voice birthday greeting to someone special in your cutest chipmunk voice!

In addition, users can make ringtones out of their morphed voices—something other voice changer apps on Windows Phone can’t do but requested by many.

Available voice effects include backwards, deep, helium, robot, spooky, and many more!

Free trial version is ad-enabled, fully functional (except for ringtone feature), and not time-limited. Paid version removes all ads and limits.

Download Fun Voice from the Windows Phone Store:

http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=77488a2a-30e1-4e48-9a0f-229fd031482b

App website: http://apps.portalgroove.com/funvoice/

Other cool apps: http://apps.portalgroove.com

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Just Released: Baby Lullaby for Windows Phone

Traveling with a baby? Is your baby feeling restless? Having difficulty sleeping your baby?

Try out my latest app: Baby Lullaby

Baby Lullaby is a beautifully made baby soother and sleep app for Windows Phone. Now you can soothe baby with sweet music box lullabies, soft soundscapes, or even your own recorded voice while offering a calming animated dream show. Baby will be drifting into dreamland before you know it!

Just like a real pullstring toy, slide down on the virtual pullstring to start a musical lullaby show. It even functions as a baby rattle!

Free trial version is ad-enabled and comes with a limited number of toy characters, melodies, soundscapes, and voice recording slots. Otherwise, all key features are fully functional and not time-limited.

Download Baby Lullaby from the Windows Phone Store:

http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=e342e6de-9dd8-453a-bc9a-3bbccbb42d80

App website: http://apps.portalgroove.com/babylullaby/

 

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Enhancing UniFi HyppTV Experience with Powerline-Ace

Back in mid-2010 when I had just got my UniFi high-speed broadband service installed, I wrote a detailed post describing my setup. Since then, I had received numerous questions from blog readers pertaining to UniFi installation in general. It’s 2012 now and I’m writing this post because I’ve got an interesting technological bit to share. Read on…

My UniFi Setup – A Recap

As described in my earlier post, here’s how my devices are set up: The fibre broadband termination unit (BTU), the residential gateway and the DECT phone are situated near the middle section of the house. The IPTV set-top-box (STB) is located next to the TV in the living room. I felt that it wasn’t practical for me to pull a cable from the middle section of the house to the living room to stream IPTV content to the STB; so, I settled for a pair of HomePlugs (or Power Line Communication Adapters). These HomePlugs transmit network data via existing home electrical wiring. No unsightly long cables. Pretty cool right?

The HomePlug “Gotchas”

The HomePlug solution does work…well, to a certain extent. Yes, I was able to get UniFi HyppTV to stream to my TV. However, the streamed video would occasionally stutter—visibly seen in the form of pixelated blocks on screen. The experience is analogous to watching Astro while it’s raining…if you know what I mean.

Although my Aztech HL110E HomePlugs are rated at 200Mbps, from what I understand, the numbers are usually no where near that under real-world scenarios.

It’s recommended that for best data transfer rates over power lines, HomePlugs should be plugged straight to the wall socket but unfortunately, I don’t have that luxury. As mentioned in my earlier post, both my HomePlugs are plugged into a power strip on each end, respectively. Having other devices sharing the power strip introduces “noise” to the power line and therefore impacting the data transfer rate. In fact, other appliances within other parts of the house are also adding noise to the power line.

During usage, the Aztech units in my setup were mostly showing “red” on the data transfer rate LED (green = best, amber = good, red = fair, none = failed). This is certainly far from ideal!

The Solution for the Solution

It came to my attention lately that there’s a new add-on device that can solve the transfer-rate issues typically associated with HomePlugs. This device is developed by Cal-Lab (the Malaysian-based company known primarily for its patented lightning isolators) and is called Powerline-Ace. I had the privilege of testing the product out during this pre-launch phase.

The Powerline-Ace model as shown in the picture (above) has three sockets. One socket is reserved for the HomePlug and the remainder two sockets are for attaching other electrical items like a power strip. Apart from being a power line network conditioning device, the unit is also a lightning isolator. On the side of the unit, there are two available grounding points for attaching earth leads from Cal-Lab LAN lightning isolator—for example.

In my test setup, two Powerline-Ace units were added to the mix i.e. one unit on each end. Other than that, nothing else changed.

The Result

After about a month of usage, all the video streaming issues that I had mentioned before has gone. Even the HyppTV HD channels like Travel Channel and LUXE.TV streamed flawlessly.

This was evident by the transfer rate LED on my HomePlug. Both HomePlug LEDs sustained at green (previously red) throughout usage.  I have a mini-HiFi which is on the same power strip as the TV and STB. Even with all of these appliances turned on at the same time, IPTV streaming remained smooth and the HomePlug LED remained at green.

In fact, when other noise-generating appliances (e.g. the water heater, rice cooker, etc) from the other parts of the house were in use, the Powerline-Ace units remained steadfast—performing admirably.

In the following video, I documented how turning on the vacuum cleaner did not negatively affect the HyppTV viewing experience at all. Also, take note of the middle LED on the HomePlug.

Powerline-Ace Test – Streaming UniFi HyppTV content over power line with vacuum cleaner turned on.

For a more robust experience, Cal-Lab also offers a single-socket power line network conditioning device (see below – left) for attaching to noise generating appliances. I had the opportunity to test these units out too.

Since I already had good results without these additions, there was nothing much else to look out for (with respect to my HyppTV viewing experience). I suppose these units would make a difference if the HomePlugs were used for regular Internet usage (i.e. surfing, P2P transfers) where squeezing every bit of the bandwidth matters more or if complete lightning protection is required.

To sum it up, the Powerline-Ace units performed exceedingly well and it definitely enhanced my UniFi HyppTV viewing experience. Now I know there’s finally a technically viable solution for HomePlug or power line network related issues!

Update (October 2012): Powerline-Ace is now available in Malaysia.

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Discovering Windows Phone 7 – Part 1

Just two weeks ago, I became the proud owner of a brand new HTC HD7 phone running on the new Microsoft Windows Phone 7 (WP7) OS. Woohoo!

I thought I share a run-up on how I first got to know about the new phone platform, and then learnt how to develop apps for the phone, and finally, got the phone in full flesh itself.

Getting to Know About Windows Phone 7

I had my first glimpse of Windows Phone 7 in action at a local developer event way back in early 2010.

What intrigued me was the phone UI. It was…radical. It’s nothing like the UI on the iPhone, Android, or even Windows Mobile. At that time, I had my reservations on how well it would work in the real world though.

In fact, I thought the use of lots of text, black background (much like in the DOS era), and the absence of chrome for the UI were a little strange for a modern smartphone. Other than that, the animated transitions seem fluid and contemporary.

Apart from the new UI, what was under the hood of WP7 was then still pretty much a mystery at that time…

Diving into Windows Phone 7 App Development

Just when the WP7 range of phones were officially launched in the US in October of 2010, my growing curiosity with the new mobile platform eventually led me into tinkering with the newly released WP7 software development kit (SDK).

The nice thing for developers is that, apart from the SDK, Microsoft has provided the phone development tools including the emulator for free! The emulator allows testing apps for the phone without requiring a real WP7 phone. The learning experience was made easier with the many online tutorial videos already available then.

Thankfully, the learning curve was manageable since I can leverage on my existing WPF programming skills. The development platform uses a flavor of Silverlight (which is very much based on the regular Silverlight and WPF) and C#.

There is an alternative development platform called XNA used mainly for developing games but unfortunately, my current hardware just couldn’t support it. Ideally, one would need a DX10 graphic card. Mine is only a DX9. It works for Silverlight phone development but apps run slow on the emulator as they can’t take advantage of full GPU acceleration. Guess it’s time to upgrade my graphic card?

What I also later discovered is that developing for the new platform is not solely about having the right coding knowledge and skills but also a good appreciation and understanding of the new Metro UI design language and the Marketplace app requirements. The Marketplace is Microsoft’s version of of the iPhone App Store or the Android Market, if you will.

Microsoft imposes strict certification guidelines for apps that wish to make it to the Marketplace. At time of writing, the only legit way to load apps onto the phone is via the Marketplace.

Armed with some newly acquired knowledge, I took upon a challenge on myself to develop simple apps that could potentially appear in the Marketplace some day. I thought that would be the most effective way to master the platform in the fastest time. In the process, I developed several proof-of-concept apps like a Malaysian live traffic cam viewer, a traditional board game, a physics game, and other silly utilities.

Marketplace Woes

Unfortunately, not only is Malaysia NOT in the list of countries having access to the Marketplace, Malaysia is also NOT in the list of countries eligible to enroll in the developer App Hub… i.e. I can’t sign up as a registered WP7 developer and list my apps for distribution in the Marketplace! Oh bummer!

The irony is that Microsoft has officially launched the phones in Malaysia. I gather it’s only a matter of time before Malaysia appears in the supported country list.

Getting a Feel of the Real Thing

After much publicity of the phone in Malaysia, I decided to drop by at one of the truck roadshows to get a feel of the real phone. I managed to spend some time toying with one of the HTC HD7 demo units.

Because the roadshow truck was parked outside of a mall, the sunlight was interfering with the experience; I could hardly see the stuff displayed on the HD7’s LCD screen. I thought a more conventional indoor roadshow would have been more effective.

Anyway, after having played with the OS on the emulator, it’s good to finally have a feel of the real thing. At least now I get to experience the phone dialer, Office, the various “hubs”, utility apps, etc. which are not available in the emulator version.

To be continued in Part 2…

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UniFi HyppTV Review

In my last blog post, I’ve written about my UniFi IPTV setup. In this post, I thought I share my brief experience with the UniFi IPTV service itself — namely, HyppTV.

Channels

The HyppTV IPTV service runs on its own dedicated network. For IPTV, TM has allotted 8Mbps of bandwidth which is good enough for HD streaming and more than enough for SD streaming.

There are currently 22 channels with more channels to come by the end of the year. Out of these channels, only 2 channels are in HD.

Channels are classified into three — Live TV, Video On Demand (VOD) and inter@ctive.

Live TV includes local and international broadcast channels. Local channels include free-to-air channels like TV1, TV2, TV3, NTV7, 8TV, TV9, etc. Some of the international channels include Australia Network, BBC Lifestyle, BBC Knowledge, Fashion TV HD, LUXE.TV HD, Star Chinese Channel, etc. Some of these channels are Premium channels.

Come September 2010, for VIP5 and VIP10 customers, a separate subscription will be required for Premium channels. For VIP20 customers, the Premium channels will be part of the package.

In VOD or pay-per-view if you like, there’s a selection of Hollywood, Malay, Chinese as well as Bollywood titles.

Movies typically have a validity of 24 hours. Within that 24 hours you can watch the movie as many number of times as you like.

One of the highlights in the VOD offering is the Hollywood Premiere Series; this selection contains the latest TV series — available 24 hours after the US release.

For TV series, validity is typically 30 days or longer.

For some titles, free previews or trailers are available on demand. Purchasing a VOD title is easy; just select the title from the on-screen VOD catalog (see above) and enter a PIN. During this preview period, TM is giving out free trial tokens.

Once purchased, the title is ready to be watched immediately or anytime within the validity period.

For VOD, playback control is available i.e. pause, fast-forward, reverse and bookmarking.

There’s even an option to rate a title. The average rating for a title is displayed in the on-screen VOD catalog.

inter@ctive channels include flight info, Malaysian history, Malaysian football and games (see below). I understand more interactive services will be added on later. Can we expect a YouTube channel? That would be nice isn’t it?

IPTV Video Quality

In general, the colors from IPTV seem more vivid compared to the colors from Astro — at least on an SDTV. HD channels will still play on an SDTV but the aspect ratio need to be manually adjusted.

Though UniFi’s IPTV service is not affected by the rain as in Astro, occasionally, there’ll be those nasty picture artifacts similar to Astro. Nevertheless, those artifacts often disappear fast enough before becoming annoying. Note that I’m using HomePlugs for my IPTV setup. A wired network connection to the IPTV may give better experience.

Switching between channels is almost instantaneous but I’ve observed some stuttering in the first few seconds after a channel switch — possibly due to buffering?

There’s also Picture-in-Picture (PIP) (see below).

Concerns

To view IPTV on the television set, all equipment necessary to support IPTV like the fiber broadband termination unit, residential gateway and set-top box (STB) must be turned on. If HomePlugs are used in an IPTV setup, that must be switched on too. So, as you can see, should any of the equipment fail, IPTV won’t work!

To add to the concern, the residential gateway (DLink DIR-615) provided by TM has been reported to be very fragile; it tends to get fried.

I’ve placed the gateway unit on a heat sink and hooked it to a surge-protected electrical socket as one of the measures to add more robustness to the whole setup.

Is HyppTV another Astro?

Well, one of the inevitable questions is whether TM’s new IPTV service is a worthy replacement of Astro.

At least for now, I don’t think so. Content is a bit limited at the moment though there are channel overlaps. However, things might change in the future!

Technorati tags: tm, unifi, hsbb, broadband, iptv, hypptv

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My UniFi IPTV Setup

It’s about 3 weeks since I’ve got my UniFi high-speed broadband service deployed. In my previous posts, I’ve written about my UniFi installation experience and some speed tests that I’ve done.

This time around, I’m going to share my experience on one of the UniFi service triple-play component, namely the HyppTV IPTV service.

Getting IPTV Up and Running

As part of the UniFi VIP5 offering, an IPTV set-top box (STB) is provided free by TM (see below). The STB connects to the TV via a regular set of A/V cables. An HDMI cable is also provided but we’ve only got a Standard-Definition TV (SDTV).

This STB is connected to the residential gateway which in turn is connected to the fiber broadband termination unit. The IPTV stream runs on a separate LAN (a Virtual LAN or VLAN) at an allocated bandwidth of 8Mbps. On the TM DLink DIR-615 residential gateway, the VLAN for IPTV connects to one of the ports (i.e. port 4).

In my home setup, the broadband termination unit and the residential gateway are placed in an area where the internal CAT5 wiring from the bedrooms terminate. This area is near the center of the house. The CAT5 wiring was done several years ago.

However, there’s no permanent wired network connection leading up to the living room where the TV and STB are located.

During installation day, I loaned the TM technicians a loose CAT5 cable for setting up and testing the IPTV service. Testing went well but I still need a permanent network connection for the IPTV.

Why not go wireless? For one, it’s simply not reliable for IPTV streaming. Wired connection seems to be the way to go but then I’ll need to pull a cable up the ceiling. Having wires snaking around wouldn’t play well with the home aesthetics either — especially the living room.

HomePlugs to the Rescue!

At the end, I settled for a pair of Aztech HL110E 200Mbps AV HomePlugs. Each unit comes with a yellow 2-meter CAT5 patch cable (see below). It’s pricey but at least there’s no need to drill holes through the ceiling. Essentially, the HomePlug technology utilizes the wall electrical wiring to transmit network data. Pretty smart eh?

200Mbps sounds like an overkill for a max 8Mbps video stream. Operational speed actually depends on many external factors. In the worst case, both HomePlugs won’t even detect each other.

It’s recommended that a HomePlug be plugged directly to the wall socket for best signal quality but I didn’t have that luxury. There are simply not enough wall sockets in the house. I had no choice but to plug each of HomePlugs to a power strip on both sides (network hub area and living room).

Here’s my exact setup:

1. Network hub area:

Residential gateway  > HomePlug > Surge-protected power strip > Lightning isolator > Wall socket

2. Living room area:

STB > HomePlug > Power strip > Lightning isolator > Wall socket

Despite getting only a red LED status (green = best, amber = good, red = fair, none = failed) on the HomePlugs, IPTV streaming still works although the setup wasn’t very ideal as you can see.

Note that I didn’t get it working the first time; one old power strip caused a failed pairing but a newer one works. So, a little patience and experimentation paid off.

Now that everything works, I’ll follow up with a detailed review of the TM UniFi HyppTV service next. Stay tuned!

Technorati tags: tm, unifi, hsbb, broadband, iptv, hypptv, aztech, homeplugs

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UniFi Speed Tests

Having been using TM’s UniFi high-speed broadband service for slightly over two weeks now, I’m quite pleased with the service. It’s been surprisingly stable for me.

Internet Speed Test Results

I’m currently on the VIP5 package (over FTTH) i.e. 5Mbps download and upload. In my previous post, I had written about my UniFi installation experience.

Here are the speed test results from Speedtest.net:

 

 

As you can see from the above, download speeds were generally within the package speed limit.

I believe some of the upload figures from Speedtest.net were slightly inflated.

It appeared that there was some kind of speed throttling going on here as I saw the upload speed meter going down in sudden decrements at certain intervals as the upload test progressed. Had the upload test been longer, I would think it would have stabilized at around 5Mbps.

I have seen various speed meter movement behaviors over the past two weeks which lead me to think that TM was probably experimenting with various traffic flow or routing configurations?

In fact, in the initial days after I got my UniFi service deployed, I had seen insane speeds from Speedtest.net — even up to 50Mbps; but that has changed in the recent days.

Note that for some servers around the world, I got lousy speeds and slow ping times (see below).

My guess: This could be caused by a slow server or slow path to the server or both.

Ping Performance

Pinging to Google’s public DNS (8.8.8.8) averaged 4ms. I also got the same results pinging to a local web server.That’s pretty fast. On Streamyx, I normally get about 11ms.

Foreign server ping times were more or less the same, if not, just slightly better over ping times on Streamyx (typically >200ms for US servers). This is understandable since foreign traffic for both UniFi and Streamyx is probably routed over the same international backbones. The ping time advantage came mainly from the local side.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more UniFi reviews!

Technorati tags: tm, unifi, hsbb, broadband, ftth, speedtest

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