BBC’s iPlayer has the best music and radio programs. If you’re a fan, then certainly you want to listen to it on the go.
An article that tackles this scenario fairly well can be found here. If that doesn’t work for you try the methods described here. These have been tested with an HTC Touch Diamond and HTC Touch:
Method 1: Streaming with Real Player
- Download Real Player Pocket PC edition. Real Player for the PPC was never really released. The link points to a cab that needs to be copied over to your device and then executed.
- Extract the RAM files for shows that you like.
- Copy the ram files over to your device.
- Open the ram files begin streaming your favorite show.
This makes it easy to play shows on the go. It should automatically play the most recent show. However, the steps mentioned above are not obvious and requires some one time only effort on your part. In addition, if you are in an area with low signal strength, streaming quality will suffer. This method is only suitable if you have an unlimited mobile data plan.
Method 2: Sync and play with Real Player
- Download www.flashget.com
- Extract the RAM files for shows that you like.
- Use flashget to download the RAM files.
This method will give you better audio quality since there is no streaming involved and does not require a data plan. If you have the time to download each show (which flashget makes it easy to do), then this isn’t so bad.
Method 3: Skyfire
- Download www.skyfire.com to your mobile phone.
- Visit BBC iplayer site as if you were on your PC
This is the easiest way to do it – if you have a data connection. The audio fidelity isn’t great at all, but this works if you are just listening to the news. Keep this browser handy, in case you want to listen to a show that you don’t have the RAM files for.
Method -1: Other methods that don’t work
You could get the BBC iPlayer Windows Mobile tool. Problem solved! No, wait, it doesn’t work in the US. You could use the iPlayer desktop download. Thats UK only too. Well, you could use a proxy. You could stream using Opera browser and change your browser’s user agent. Using the HTC Touch Diamond, iPlayer wont let you do that either.
The everyday BBC iplayer junkie can simply go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer and listen to his/her favorite program. Here’s how you can download your favorite show, listen to it offline. or take it with you on your music player.
The gist of it is: visit the show in your web browser and view the page source. Then look for a url with “.ram” in it. Then all you need to do is to download that file. Once you have the Real media file, you can re-encode it to any format.
I’ve spelled it out for you:
Extracting the Real Player (RAM) file for any show on BBC iplayer
Step 1: Visit the program in your browser
Step 2: View the page source (Page > View Source on IE8)
Step 3: Look for the words “.ram” (without quotes, of course)
Step 4: Copy the URL you just found
Step 5: Download that file
There are many ways to do this. The easiest is to download www.flashget.com and use it to download the RAM file.
Taking the show on the road
Now that you have a collection of shows (RAM files), you want to take it with you. Burn it to a cd, your ipod or mp3 player. If you have a player that can play or stream RAM files, you’re done. If you dont, you need to re-encode your show. Again, there are many free ways to do it, I would recommend: Magic Ram to MP3 Converter.
I own an HTC Touch Diamond. I have owned an HTC Touch, TyTn and Wizard. Most experienced users of Windows Mobile phones will know nothing of great value comes from an out of the box experience. Anything interesting is a result of a workaround or a hack.
The device’s UI (TOUCHFLO) is basically a very sophisticated Today plug-in, hiding the user from the horrid native interface.
The following posts will enumerate my experiences with this device and some not so obvious tricks.
Recursive binary tree traversals have been documented everywhere and is quite trivial to solve. After a bit of web crawling, my favorite article documenting this was found here.
Non Recursive tree traversal is much more complicated than its recursive counterpart and requires a stack. Every time we decide to postpone an operation on a node, we need to push that node onto the stack.
Post order Non Recursive Binary Tree Traversal
Order: Left, Right, Root.
Key: In addition to a stack, we need two pointers - a current node and previous node pointer that help us determine which direction we are traversing. The direction will help us as follows:
- If we are going downward, we either need to keep going downward or print if we cannot go downward anymore.
- If we are going upward from the left, we need to explore the right. If we are going upward from the right, we are done analyzing the right and need to print the root and go further upward.
The algorithm without error handling:
- curr = prev = root
- Initialize stack
- while (true)
- if ( curr is prev or a child of prev) //Traversing downwards
- if (curr is a parent) //More traversing to do
- stack.push(curr)
- prev = curr
- curr = curr.left
- else //curr is an orphan: go upward
- print (curr)
- prev = curr
- curr = stack(top)
- if ( curr.left = prev) //Traversing upwards from the left: go right
- prev = curr
- curr = curr.right
- if ( curr.right = prev) //Traversing upwards from the right: Print & go upward
- print (curr)
- stack.pop()
- prev = curr
- curr = stack.top()
- if (stack.IsEmpty && curr == null) return
This is a simple Windows Mobile tool that lets you set your music as your alarm clock.
Set any playlist/mp3/wma file to play at a time you specify. Finally, wake up to music you like.
The tool is FREE. Its available to download here or :
http://www.codeplex.com/mp3alarm/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=12207
The source code is available here:
http://www.codeplex.com/mp3alarm
Download from: (Windows live gallery)
Recent items - An age old feature residing in our start menu since forever deserves more credit that it has earned. The assumption here is that most of us work with the same set of files and directories (hereon referred to as items) most frequently, and thus these items deserve some dedicated screen real estate.
Can we leverage our usage history to get to the items we are looking for in a more efficient manner? The Vista sidebar seems to be a good way to test this simple idea.
Peyush Bansal and I have been looking into breathing new life into features like "history" and "recent", under the presumption that they have great potential but have been presented at the wrong time and at the wrong place.
The gadget allows you to access your most recent items, sorted by their location. This gadget can be downloaded here: (Windows live gallery).
Pin your recent items to the list so that they never disappear! This was the most requested feature in the 5 click feedback. Thanks to all those who provided their feedback!
Your Feedback
Existing users: Send your feedback using this questionnaire (can be completed in 5 clicks): Recent items feedback.
Known Issues
- Broken links show a box icon with a square dot centered in the middle: If an item in the list does not exist anymore, or is unavailable, you see a weird icon.
- Gadget does not respond for about 5 seconds at times and freezes up: Only when the items in your list point to files on your network that are not currently available, the gadget will lock up for about 4 seconds per file that is unavailable.
- The full path of an item shows up as a tooltip only sometimes, but predominantly doesnt show: A tooltip showing the full path of an item will show up only if the gadget is in focus. This is a gadget issue, but a workaround is being figured out.
