Gareth Jones

The online guitar tutoring website, Jamplay, asked us to develop a custom version of Name that Note:PRE to fit in with the scoring structure and look of their existing games.

The whole process took just under two weeks from initial discussions to delivery, with lots of play-testing and adjusting in-between to get the optimum experience.

Head over to the game page at Quak Multimedia for more information.

• Current project: Upgrading the Thecus media server's original 256MB of RAM with 1GB; playing Darwinia on PC.

Having read the news that Nokia was making the navigation function of their Maps software free to use (forever!), as a 5800 XpressMusic user, naturally I wanted to get this up and running ASAP!

Nokia’s site confirmed the claims and went on to describe the necessary steps – the first of which was that I’d need firmware version 31.0.0.8 or later. My phone was sporting version 21.*, and since I had checked for a new firmware not long ago I came to the conclusion that 31.0.0.8 must be brand new. Immediately I connected my phone to my computer and ran Nokia’s software update program. “No updates available”. What? I ran it again only to be greeted by the same message. I did some research and found that many people had had the same problem – months before! It turns out that version 31.0.0.8 has been available for a long time but my phone has always insisted that 21.* was the latest version.

Further research suggested that I needed to change the product code with NSS to a code that had the update available, and that my phone must currently be using one that had not had the update yet. This would make sense as I actually changed it from the factory setting about a year ago in order to get the 21.* firmware. I found a code that was reported to work, applied it to the phone and ran Nokia’s Update software again – still nothing.

I restarted my phone, thinking maybe it needed to restart for the product code to take effect. Nope. I closed all of Nokia’s software and ran it again, thinking maybe it had cached the product code. Nope.

Finally I ran a factory reset on the handset to force it to apply the installed firmware again (with code *#7780#), thinking maybe something hadn’t completed properly the first time round, and ran the Update software again – it worked* and the software informed me that version 40.0.0.5 was available to install! I installed it and then completed the rest of the installation steps for Nokia’s latest Maps software; the end result of which is that I now have free satellite navigation on my phone.

Ovi Maps as it’s known is, in my opinion, much better than Google’s solution as the maps can be downloaded and installed to the phone, which means it doesn’t need a continuous connection to the internet to provide me with navigation. This will save battery of course, but it also means that it will work where there’s no network service. There aren’t many places in the UK where there’s no network service at all, but there are plenty of places that aren’t covered by HSDPA or 3G networks and in these areas downloading map imagery from Google is a slow and painful process.

* I got it working in the end on a Windows Vista 32-bit laptop; Nokia’s desktop software continues to be slow, bloated and unhelpful crap and the Update application kept crashing/freezing on my Windows 7 64-bit machine with irrelevant and useless error messages. Research suggests that Nokia’s 64-bit support is currently lacking, so I’d advise running the Update on a 32-bit machine (or from the phone directly if you’re feeling particularly brave with *#0000#) until Nokia sort themselves out.

• Current project: Working on a game for JamPlay.com.

Nicola and I went into CTWorld in Ormskirk a couple of weeks back to buy two DVI cables (and a 10-pack of blank CDs) because the VGI cables on the two monitors that Nicola bought last month just didn’t seem to allow the monitors to display their images as perfectly as we would have liked.

The cables were pretty expensive to be honest – pretty much double what we could have got them for online – but they were available there and then and we didn’t have to pay any postage, plus if there was a problem there wouldn’t be any faff in returning them to the store.

On attempting to connect the cables to the monitors, I found to my horror that the only connection the monitors had (22 inch Dell widescreens) were VGA! What the heck? Monitors that were bought just a month ago didn’t have anything better than VGA?! Fair enough no HDMI, but no DVI either?!

A couple of days later, Nicola went to take the cables back to CTWorld to return them, but despite the fact that she had the original receipt and was returning them mere days after buying, CTWorld refused to give her a full refund and instead offered 85% of the price because there was nothing wrong with them. Now, I accept that there was nothing wrong with the cables and that it was my fault for not checking the monitors first and just assuming they’d have DVI connections, but the vast majority of shops on the high street will take back goods bought in error and issue a full refund – even if just for a credit note – simply because they value that customer’s custom and want to demonstrate good will. All CTWorld did was point out that there was no legal requirement for them to take them back.

Later that night after calming down a little, Nicola sent the store an email highlighting her disappointment with them. They never replied.

Ormskirk is a small town, and while that means there aren’t many places to buy IT equipment it also means that there aren’t that many customers for the shops that do exist.

Last year alone I spent around £3,000 on IT equipment and although most of that was spent online (I’d be happy to return to stores if they can start competing a little more on price) it would have been great for me to have a friendly, reliable and convenient local source for my IT needs for when I want something there and then. CTWorld unfortunately won’t be that store, and I’d urge anyone who walks into that store to consider what they would do if, for whatever reason, they needed to return their item for a refund. There’s plenty to be said about supporting local independents, but when it means paying over the odds for sub-standard after-sales service, I think next time I need something in a hurry I’ll drive down to PC World in Aintree.

• Current project: Already working on some new features for Mercury and trying desperately to get some more time on the 360!

It’s here at last -  Mercury 1.0 launched today!

For more information either check out the launch post at Quak Multimedia or check the Mercury website directly, where there is even a demo of the software showcasing some of its capabilities.

Mercury is viewed as a live product that will evolve and adapt over time with the needs of our clients, so this won’t be the last time I mention Mercury on this blog I’m afraid!

As well as the software itself, we’ll also be offering a development service where we will either help clients develop their eLearning or develop it all ourselves for an extremely competitive rate.

Any questions? Feel free to ask.

Perhaps, since the Zinc story is obviously striking a chord with so many others, I should attempt to explain why Zinc V3 is so full of bugs.

Back in the Flash Studio Pro days, MDM hired Xtrabass (Jethro Grassie) to make their first OSX-supported software, Zinc 2.0. We all know how well that turned out. Jethro disappeared after that and OSX support started to falter with no-one there to support it.

MDM then hired Kevan Harriman as their lead developer (according to a news item on their website), and he worked on the Windows and OSX rewrites which gave way to the now infamous Pandora/Zinc V3. Kevan disappeared from the forums about a year ago and now runs Deep Cove Software (according to DNS records for deepcovesoftware.com), and it’s these guys that have built Inferno for MDM. That’s right, Inferno, MDM’s newest application, was developed outside of MDM because MDM currently lacks the development capability in-house. For a company that sells software, this is a serious problem, the results of which we are seeing today with Zinc V3 being so bug-ridden.

Anyway, Viper (Matthias Davis) disappeared from the MDM forums over a year ago and his website (fatal-exception.co.uk), which used to be full of Zinc-related posts, has been completely overhauled. I don’t know if Matthias was doing development or just support but that pretty much left Peter and Gambini holding the fort at MDM.

The departures of Jethro, Matthias and Kevan have had a big impact on the level of support at MDM and Gambini himself has been distracted doing stuff for his other venture, Amayeta. With no in-house expertise in the technology it’s not surprising that support sucks and they can’t get bugs fixed in a timely fashion, and with Inferno being developed externally you can bet there will be support issues with that software too.

By all accounts from people that I have spoken to, Gambini is a bit of an idiot and he’s managed to alienate pretty much everyone he’s ever worked with. It will be interesting to see if he can hold onto a decent developer long enough to fix the issues with Zinc V3 once and for all, though his other option is to do what he did with V1 and V2 before it and just ditch the software overnight and launch a new version and charge everyone an “upgrade” fee for continued support.

Think I’m making this up? Check out their forums from about 2 years ago.

Consider yourselves warned.

For nearly 30 minutes in the early hours of December 3rd, anyone visiting Microsoft’s search engine was greeted by an error message.

A Microsoft statement said the outage was caused by a “configuration change” made to the site during testing. This, it said, had “unfortunate and unintended consequences” which included making the site unavailable.

Detecting the problem and fixing it took about 30 minutes, he said.

First question – why are people testing changes on a LIVE site? Doesn’t the largest company on earth have a test server somewhere?

Second question – why did it take 30 minutes to check the effect that this change had had on the site? When you change some of your code, don’t you test it immediately?

Final question – Where I work, if Google goes down someone notices pretty much immediately and yet no-one at Microsoft noticed Bing being down for 30 minutes? I guess a possible explanation for this is that they all use Google over there, but even then the developers responsible for this change should have been able to ignore Google for a second and test their changes on Bing before the support calls started coming in!

The guys over at Northcode have obviously taken a keen interest in recent events on the MDM forums and have put on a great offer to help get people working with decent software.

Send a copy of your Zinc registration email to support@northcode.com and put “Zinc Sucks” as the subject, and they’ll send you a coupon code that will give you a $75 discount on a SWF Studio V3 Professional license.

It’s worth pointing out that I’m not getting any commission or anything else for posting this offer – it’s just the right thing to do since SWF Studio works and Zinc V3 doesn’t. Update: here’s why.

• Current project: Watching as traffic to the site rockets surrounding the activity on the MDM forums. Great work, Gambini.

After my banning from the MDM support forums for pointing out that Zinc V3 is a load of rubbish, MDM pruned the forums of multiple posts that had anything negative to say about the software and closed down the bug reporting page:

We have currently suspended new Bug Submissions whilst we compile and validate existing entries. Thank you for your patience.

Evidently, the only way MDM is able to reduce their bug count is to prevent people from being able to report them in the first place. Likewise, the only way they’re able to have a forum of satisfied customers is to delete every negative post as it comes in. Let this serve as a warning to anyone thinking about buying anything from MDM.

On the positive side, the entire conversation was saved before it was deleted by Gambini and is provided here for posterity: Page 1, Page 2.

As you can see, Gambini seems to be of the opinion that if a large organisation has been sucked in by his false advertising, the ridiculous bug level of his software is irrelevant. He also seems to believe that unless you have a multi-million selling product that your opinion on software that you’ve paid good money for is worthless. Furthermore, should you dare to ask questions about this, you will be banned.

Is this is a company that you want to support?

• Current project: Trying out the latest SWF Studio from Northcode.

I’ve just managed to get myself banned from the MDM forums for stating that their Zinc V3 software is a load of rubbish. Released about two years ago, the software currently has a whopping 70 open bugs – many of which date back to the beginning of 2008!

I first started using Zinc around 6 years ago, back when it was called Flash Studio Pro (1.9.x). The software was pretty flaky but was good enough for the small projects that I was working on at the time. Soon after though, support for the software vanished as MDM released a new product called Zinc V2 which provided a new GUI and a load of new commands. I upgraded like most of MDM’s users, only to find that Zinc V2 had just as many bugs as FSP and that MDM was just as slow to fix them.

Some time later, support for V2 again dropped off the face of the earth as the company excitedly announced the release of Zinc V3 – a cross-platform application that was built from the ground up, no less. MDM made lots of noise about it being the most stable version of the software yet, thoroughly tested and that it would only be released when it was absolutely bomb-proof thanks to an extensive beta phase. Another thing that I remember from this time was disgruntled customers who had just bought Zinc V2 being told that their product was no longer supported and that if they wanted to move to V3, they’d have to pay an upgrade charge. The V2 forums were also locked, making it difficult for people who didn’t want to “upgrade” to V3 discuss and resolve issues collaboratively. So much for looking after your customers.

Anyway, fast forward two years and here we are. The bugs that are to be fixed in the next version (the 17th for those keeping count) include fixes for such basic functionality as being able to export JPEGs, read and write to the Windows registry, resetting event handlers, broken AS3 support, broken MAC mask support and a load of other things that should have been resolved before launch let alone before the software’s 2nd birthday. There are even bugs on there that were once fixed but have since been re-introduced in later “updates” thanks to the poor level of testing they do over there. A full list of the open bugs is helpfully available on their website here.

I never upgraded to V3 myself. Having seen first-hand how painful it was to come up with workarounds to V2’s bugs after jumping from V1, I decided to sit out the next ride and wait for the inevitable bugs and other issues to be resolved before taking the plunge – yep, despite MDM’s bullish claims of QA this time around. I also didn’t see any major benefits in V3 seeing as I hardly ever need to develop for Macs or Linux-based PCs (just as well as the support for these two OSs is patchy and inconsistent), so I was in fact more than happy to watch from the side-lines until the dust settled. The problem was that the dust never did settle and two years on V3 users are still having to put up with an insane bug count. V2 was bad sometimes, but nowhere near as bad as V3.

Despite not having taken the plunge for V3 myself, I would still visit the forums occasionally, sometimes helping out a newbie or two with some Flash/Zinc related questions and sometimes just watching in amazement as the bug reports continued to come in thick and fast – bug reports for standard functions that showed quite clearly that were was next to no testing going on at MDM between releases. As the bug count continued to rise and MDM continued to clumsily release hit-and-miss updates, I thanked my lucky stars for not having given them any more of my hard-earned cash.

Finally it was the 2nd of December 2009 and I took another look at the forums – hoping that by some miracle V3 was in a usable state by now. What I found in Gambini’s post (that they were “aiming” to fix some of the bugs but couldn’t make any guarantees) just floored me and so I started asking awkward questions and suggested that perhaps a 2-year-old application that had over 70 known bugs is actually a load of rubbish and that hey really needed to sort themselves out. Other users agreed but stopped short of venting their own frustrations as openly as I – surprising really since they had paid good money for V3 while I had not. MDM responded by offering some pretty lame excuses (we’re a small team, there’s lots to do, we’ve had lots of things go wrong this year, blah blah) and totally failed to explain why 2-year-old software that they charge good money for should still be on the shelves with over 70 known bugs.

Rather than admit Zinc’s problems, Gambini (or Jaspal Sohal to give his real name) tried all kinds of tactics to divert attention from the software by – among other things – accusing me of not caring about MDM and being there only to start arguments. While I don’t really care for MDM either way (why would I? And why is that even relevant?), I do care about having access to good software and I do dislike it when honest, hard-working people are ripped off when buying faulty goods.

Anyway, for making my thoughts known, I was banned. I haven’t logged back in to see what they did with my posts, but I was there long enough to see that they deleted some other posts that didn’t reflect too kindly on themselves or their products.

In short, anyone who owns Zinc V3 and is unimpressed with its bugs should be prepared to be banned from the forums if they dare raise their concerns with the administrators. Anyone who is looking to buy some decent (i.e. working) software on the other hand would be wise to seek out some alternatives! The one that I’ve recently started using again is Northcode’s SWF Studio. I had used SWF Studio in the past but was never 100% happy with the script language, but having been forced to search for an alternative to Zinc due to V3’s ridiculous bug count, I found that the latest version of the software (SWF Studio 3) has a brand new scripting language that is much more intuitive – but most importantly it actually works!

• Current project: Finishing off a Christmas game for Bug Interactive and prepping Mercury for its imminent launch.

Quak Multimedia will, very shortly, unveil a rapid eLearning creation tool called Mercury.

Mercury is a Flash application that builds rich eLearning from simple XML instructions. Everything about the eLearning can be defined quickly and easily, including the resource’s language(s), navigation layout, number of pages, content structure, sessions, activities, assessments, videos, photos, audio, animations and text.

Course material can be presented in an almost infinite number of ways, with total control over the look and feel and the ability to select from a wide range of options when it comes to functionality – all without typing a single line of code. In fact, you don’t even need to own Flash to make a resource in Mercury.

The product will be launched initially with two pricing options – one for a single use license and one for unlimited use. Further options may be possible at a later time depending on feedback.

I’ll post an update when the site is live, but any enquiries before that time are welcome.

• Current project: Just applying the final touches to Mercury and setting up a new development machine with Windows 7!