First thing I did was to install QuickTime Player 7 from optional installs on the SL CD. Then I can always open with QT 7. For most uses this is all you need.

But to get more freedom on (old fashioned) web tv sites like nrk.no, I also had to make QT 7 the default player, for real. Also for Flip4mac in web browsers. Only changing the applications’ filenames will fix that. Type or paste the following lines of code into a Terminal window:

cd /Applications
sudo mv QuickTime\ Player.app QuickTime\ Player\ X.app
sudo ln -s Utilities/QuickTime\ Player\ 7.app QuickTime\ Player.app
exit

QuickTime Player X then becomes QuickTime Player X (not just QuickTime Player), and QuickTime Player 7 becomes QuickTime Player (in addition to still being QuickTime Player 7).

If you need QT X to be the default player in Finder just Get Info, change the Open with, and Change all.

Excerpt of unknown music.

It’s nice to get lots of “hits” but don’t fool yourself.

The example php backend script simply counts the play, pause and completed states received from the plugin. If you think the play count is the number of times your video has been played, you’re wrong. If you think the completed count is the number of times your video has been played to completion, you’re wrong. The pause count is probably the only number which is what you think it is.

Here’s what’s being counted:

PAUSE. Every time a user hits the pause button the pause counter is increased. Fine.

PLAY. Every time a user hits the play button the play counter is increased. No surprise there either. But if a user hits play, then pause, waiting for the buffer to load, then hits play again (many people does this), he’s count twice. Also, everytime a user does a seek, that’s moving to a different place in time, either backwards or forwards, that’s actually resulting in a new play event. So if I want to rewatch the scene I just saw, clicking the timebar a few times to find the right spot, every move is a play count.

COMPLETED. When a user has played a video to completion the complete counter is increased. That’s what it sounds like, so that’s fine. We want to know how many has seen the whole film. But if a user “cheats” and skips to the end to watch the last few seconds, he’s also counted as a complete watch. And if you click to jump to a spot in the video which is not loaded yet, the player resets itself and it’s actually counted as a completion. Figure that. On the other hand, a user might watch the whole video but skip to something else 2 seconds before its completely done (skipping credits perhaps). Then that’s not counted. But it should be.

Also, I’ve been logging what comes out of Your Analytics for about two weeks. In addition to people watching a 40 minute lecture in 30 seconds (from the first PLAY to COMPLETE), there also seems to be a bug either in the player or in the plugin that results in a lot of COMPLETE events being sent. Sometimes 20 or 30 in a row. At other times many hundred from the same IP at the same time (from 4 to 10 each second).

MY POINT IS: If you simply count the play, pause and complete events sent from Your Analytics, as done in the example script, at best you get a reliable number of now many times people have paused your video. Well, you could use the play count as an indicator of the interest payed to a video. But not how many users are involved.

WHAT TO DO, NOW. Well, since the data coming from the plugin is transmitted by HTTP you actually get some interesting info in addition to the state and filename.

You get the user agent (name and version of the user’s web browser).

You also get the http referer (where they’re coming from, the url).

More importantly you get the users’ IP addresses. It’s not a session id, nor guaranteed to be a unique user, but combine it with a timestamp, and perhaps the user agent, and you have something somewhere up that alley.

To build a good analytics backend you have to keep track of state changes for each user along a timeline. That way you can not only count individual users, but also the number of playings.

To get good output data requires knowledge of the input data. Since that knowledge is not in the plugin it has to be in the backend.

If you have no clue what I’m talking about or if you have no experience in analyzing data you should not use this plugin.

NEW: COUNT TRACKULA
This new analytics plugin might be an easier choice. It does things a bit differently. Instead of sending all state changes to the backend it sends a message when the video starts, when it’s in the middle, and when it ends. It can also send a message when it has played a set number of seconds.

A couple of remarks: Each message is only sent once. Upon replay it will not send any messages to the backend. Also, there’s a bug causing development versions of the Flash player to popup with a warning. That shouldn’t be hard to fix.

Here’s a typical error message:

An error occurred opening file '/Users/test/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Flash CS4/en/Configuration//JavaScript/DeployVideo.jsfl'

You fix it by renaming the directory .../Javascript to .../JavaScript (with a capital S).

Who’s doing this rotten programming? Also note the double slash (//)…

3 excerpts from the track [mp3]

På vanlige trådløse hjemmenett funker den “ut av boksen” — velg et nettverk, skriv inn passordet, og du er “på”. Nøyer du deg med dette på universitetsnettet, må du titt og ofte skrive inn brukernavn og passord i nettleseren. Dette blir fort plagsomt, og skal du bedrive andre nettaktiviteter enn rein surfing så funker det ikke. Da må du sette opp en VPN-forbindelse.

1. Du først være helt sikker på at du ikke allerede er tilkoblet UiB-nettet. En aktiv sesjon uten vpn vil klusse det litt til.
2. Deretter går du til: Settings > General > Network > VPN > Settings
3. Velg: PPTP
4. Sett:
   Server: vpn-ansatt.uib.no eller vpn-student.uib.no
   Account: brukernavn@ansatt eller brukernavn@student
   RSA SecurID: off
   Password: passord
   Encryption Level: Maximum
   Send all traffic: on
5. Velg: Save
6. Slå på VPN

Tror det er stort sett slik det gjøres på iPhone også. Dette er for 1.1.4.

…

Og det gjorde dei. Ein og ein halv dag med litt regn, elles sommar og heitt. Reiste uspesifisert og havna i ei leilegheit i Makarska, og det passa oss veldig bra.

Den funker og er enkel og grei å sette opp (gnome):

1. Start kontrollpanel for skrivere (ubuntu: System > Administration > Printing), velg New Printer, og fyll inn:
> Printer Type: Network Printer - Windows Printer (SMB)
> Host: print.uib.no
> Printer: pullprintcolor eller pullprint
> Username: uib\brukernavn
> Password: passord
Trykk Forward

Studenter må sette rasmus eller student (eller noe) foran brukernavnet sitt istedenfor “uib”.

2. Velg driver: HP - Color LaserJet 4730mfp Postscript (f.eks.)
Trykk Forward

3. Skriv inn et fornuftig navn, f.eks. PullPrint ;-)
Trykk Apply

Se utskriftstjenester ved UiB, og payprint.uib.no der du (nesten) kan se hva du har i køen.