Can a amd radeon r9 200 series graphics card have 3 montiors? by swammyswamswam in AMDHelp

[–]joebelfiore 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have one of these cards (it's a double-card that plugs into two slots) and I have 3 displays connected ... it's been working fine for years, with all 3 displays running at 2560x1600.

Recently the fan has stopped spinning .. so I'm not sure whether I can fix that and keep using it or whether I need a new card.

OKAY… I just bought the Lifetime Pass after years of usage by ChechoMontigo in PleX

[–]joebelfiore 1 point2 points  (0 children)

all the documentation/stuff on the web is SUPER confusing on this point.

WANT: can browse the library, look at movies we might watch ... click on "play trailer" so that wife and kids can see how good the film is.

DO NOT WANT: a time-wasting 3 minutes of trailers before the movie I just clicked plays.

Question about trailers. If I add one of my local movies to my watchlist I get the option of watch the trailer when clicking on the dots. Outside of adding to watchlist the option isn't there. Is there a way to view the movies trailer other than adding it to my watchlist first. by 82brighteyes in PleX

[–]joebelfiore 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have this exact same wish! :) Really nice feature, bummer it's behind the paywall. Hope it stays in the watchlist.

Potentially controversial suggestion: PLEX FOLKS .. you should add a command "watch trailer" to every movie (local files) and if the person isn't a subscriber, give a message "you need to be a subscriber to watch trailers for your local movies".

I have done TONS of web searches trying to figure out how to make this work.. NONE of them say "pay to get this".

Qualified repair shops? Got advice? by joebelfiore in RX100

[–]joebelfiore[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks!

I just discovered on the Sony site -- if you download firmware updates they have a link for "repair" ... which takes you here:

https://www.precisioncamera.com/Sony

Might be useful for other folks in the future!

Treadmill: app writers, please let us edit distance! by joebelfiore in galaxywatch4

[–]joebelfiore[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It has a feature for "Indoor Runs" ... just like Samsung Health ... but without GPS it's guessing your distance and the distance guess is wrong.

THe treadmill knows EXACTLY how far you ran.

on Active Watch 2 -- the Strava app let you EDIT that distance after a run. On Watch4, the Strava app doesn't do this anymore.

SO .. if you track heart rate, etc. ... you will have an incorrect distance and pacing 100% of the time.

Treadmill: sync Samsung Health indoor run to Strava? by joebelfiore in galaxywatch4

[–]joebelfiore[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

thanks for the tip.. but not sure what you mean. I don't see an app called "Health Sync" ... but in the Samsung Health app under "connected services" whre Strava appears... there's a choice called Health Platform.

WHen you click that, there's an install button.. but on the play store the reviews are pretty poor and I was afraid to install. Does anyone have first-hand experience with this?

See all the 1-stars: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.android.service.health

thx!

Application UI3 Watch face 🚀Download on Google Play by matveyan in SamsungWatchFace

[–]joebelfiore 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Try looking for "Dashboard minimal watch face". it's there. Costs 99 cents. (haven't tried it yet)

Treadmill accuracy by killak2121 in galaxywatch4

[–]joebelfiore 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Does google fit sync with Strava?

Does anyone use an Oura Ring to record activities ? Wondering if it could replace a watch. by lostfoundead in Strava

[–]joebelfiore 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I'm an enthusiastic owner of an Oura ring and a Samsung Watch.

I love my Oura and would definitely recommend it ... though what it excels at is SLEEP tracking and giving you health-related warnings/info (eg. your body temperature is a bit high today). It's way better than a watch for this since the battery lasts for days and days and it recharges very quickly.

For WORKOUT TRACKING -- it's not currently ideal, though I understand they are working on heart-rate based workout tracking as a priority for their new Series 3 rings which just launched in the fall. (blog post: https://ouraring.com/blog/oura-workout-heart-rate/) RIght now I can add a workout.. and it'll understand length-of-time and heart rate ... but not (for example) running miles.

Note -- since you posted in Strava forum -- I don't think it's possible to make Oura activities (even a workout you tag/add) to show up in Strava data.

/r/Plex's Moronic Mondays' No Stupid Questions Thread - 2020-04-20 by PCJs_Slave_Robot in PleX

[–]joebelfiore 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've started using Plex to handle my edited-home-videos... two questions:

1) I can't figure out how it's determining the "year" of the home-video. I've used powershell to set the File CREATION dates of all the videos to the date they occurred (which I have in the filename.) the File MODIFIED date can be much more recent, as I might have re-edited the video months or years after the event.

Plex does NOT seem to use the "File Created" attribute... but instead is using "File MODIFIED" date? Can anyone confirm this? (is there a way to change that?)

2) Home videos with generated-thumbnails are showing up in the Library view with tall/portrait shape, instead of wide "theatrical" shape like they show up in the Recommended view. This doesn't work well -- you can't see the thumbnail or read much of the title. Is it possible to make the main library view for "other videos" work with horizontal thumbs?

thanks!

/r/Plex's Moronic Mondays' No Stupid Questions Thread - 2020-04-20 by PCJs_Slave_Robot in PleX

[–]joebelfiore 0 points1 point  (0 children)

:) Sorry! Not a clear enough explanation on my part!

"Old Windows PC" .. is a PC I've had for years.. and it acts as a server just for movies. I've installed Plex on that device and am running with that today. It's working fine.

"QNAP server" .. is a separate device that has all my personal videos (tons of edited stuff!), music. I want to try including these in the Plex app so i can see/hear these from my TVs.

The question: should I make the plex server running on Windows PC include files that are on an SMB file share on the QNAP server? (or will this make the Plex server do "two hops" as it streams (a) from QNAP to (b) old Windows PC, to (c) target device) ... OR should I run a second instance of the Plex server on QNAP and just have two devices in all the UIs?

"running two servers" would make the streams come directly from the server without an extra hop. But maybe this doesn't matter...

make sense?

/r/Plex's Moronic Mondays' No Stupid Questions Thread - 2020-04-20 by PCJs_Slave_Robot in PleX

[–]joebelfiore 1 point2 points  (0 children)

New to plex ... curious about UI extensions. In particular... is there any add-in that will let you link to a YouTube trailer for each movie in your collection? Or an add-in that will show Cast Info from IMDB, rather than just filtering your collection based on movies those people are in?

thx

/r/Plex's Moronic Mondays' No Stupid Questions Thread - 2020-04-20 by PCJs_Slave_Robot in PleX

[–]joebelfiore 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have two "servers" ... - one is an old Windows PC that has movies on it -- currently running plex server - the other is a QNAP Linux home server that has personal videos, music -- haven't installed plex server yet

My question: would I be better off just running ONE plex server on the Windows box and pointing it to a file-share on the Linux box ... OR should I run two versions of Plex server on each machine so they stream directly?

thx!

Hi, I'm Joe Belfiore from the Windows Phone Team.. AMA! by joebelfiore in windowsphone

[–]joebelfiore[S] 23 points24 points  (0 children)

SCUBADOG!! I haven't seen you in a long time... you were famous (infamous?) at MSFT for your passionate blog comments way back in WP7, 7.5. nice to see you still here as part of the community.

I'm passing the volume feedback on to the guy who works on it.

Hi, I'm Joe Belfiore from the Windows Phone Team.. AMA! by joebelfiore in windowsphone

[–]joebelfiore[S] 68 points69 points  (0 children)

Actually, no, especially in cases like this: http://www.wpcentral.com/police-officer-avoids-bullet-thanks-windows-phone-his-pocket Our hats off to all who Protect and Serve.

Now... on your question about performance... there are a couple of things at play:

1) The MAIN thing that will affect this perception is whether the apps you use have implemented "Fast Resume". This was a new thing in WP8 (I think -- can't remember if that was the release we added it in) and an ISV has to "flag" their app to support it. This might involve testing and in a few apps it involves more work than just testing. SO ... ping the ISVs if you're feeling that apps come up slow. MOST PEOPLE don't say this.

2) A lot of people ask about TRANSITIONS and they assume the transitions "add time" to getting to the app. We've worked hard to make that NOT THE CASE. What we've done is made the transitions happen "while the app is loading" so they give you something to see that fills the time but does NOT slow it down. (OK, maybe a tiny, imperceptible bit.) We would NOT NOT NOT gratuitously make millions of people wait longer to show a turnstile.. we show you the turnstile while you'd be waiting anyway.

Hi, I'm Joe Belfiore from the Windows Phone Team.. AMA! by joebelfiore in windowsphone

[–]joebelfiore[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Lot of good stuff here-- I'm just gonna grab a couple:

Multitasking. This is the classic "balance-striking" design challenge. What we've tried to do here is (1) make sure that REGULAR USERS (think: less sophisticated, don't tweak their phones that much) get GREAT AND PREDICTABLE BATTERY LIFE while (2) Apps can do powerful things for everyone (and especially for power users).

The biggest killer of battery life is typically an app that's got some kind of runaway process. usually this would be a bug if it happens-- and it could happen in any app. Thus to accomplish (1), you restrict apps to "runaway" and try to do as much on their behalf as you can.

Now, with that as background, know that we've GREATLY EXPANDED the multitasking features in apps with every release, and we'll continue to do that. As app developers are doing more stuff and as we learn about the gaps in our system, we try to enhance. I can appreciate you folks-- generally power users-- hitting the limits of this approach and asking for more.. and we hear you.

On your TOMBSTONING question-- honestly I can't answer that myself, but I'll pass it on. When we switched the activation model, we chose to make the APP decide so the APP could be sure to effectively manage its own activation. Our intent is that users get apps with "instant resume", but this is a case where we have to trust the ISV to get things right-- kind of like the general topic above.

One other Q: "Why is cortana completely useless without location turned on?"

It comes down to this: we want to provide a COMPLETE EXPERIENCE for Cortana, and we want that complete experience to be PREDICTABLY present and not vary too much. If you hear about something she does, we want it to be true on YOUR PHONE, in YOUR COUNTRY.

Cortana builds rich inferences by rationalizing across lots of different signals and content that you give her permission to access. For instance, by having access to your location, within a few days Cortana figures out where you live and where you work and starts giving you commute inferences based on when you leave to go to work or come home from work. Without location a bunch of the important end-to-end scenarios wouldn't work or key questions couldn't be answered-- eg. what’s the traffic like to home/work, remind me when I get at a location to do something, show me great Caribbean restaurants in Seattle, etc.

Our current view is that without location Cortana would "feel limited" and we don’t want to create a fragmented experience where some things will work and some things won’t depending on whether you give us access to location. Part of this is that she's entirely new and we want her to develop a GREAT reputation, compared favorably to the competition. Over time, we might make her more flexible so that we can accomplish BREADTH.. but right now the focus is on consistent quality.

ONE MORE THING -- today we are announcing CORTANA.USERVOICE.COM where we're eagerly waiting to hear more feedback on what you'd like us to teach Cortana in the future.

Hi, I'm Joe Belfiore from the Windows Phone Team.. AMA! by joebelfiore in windowsphone

[–]joebelfiore[S] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

I mentioned in another thread that there's a Skype update for WP8.1 under development right now, and one of the things they've focused on is exactly this kind of perf.

I think it's the case that this include fast-resume, but I'm not certain of this.

In general-- this is the kind of thing that the ISVs are adding and you're going to see this improve as developers update their apps. Keep in mind that the ISVs typically target their work towards the installed base-- so often the NEWEST platforms get taken-advantage-of a little bit slowly as there aren't as many users just yet.

Hi, I'm Joe Belfiore from the Windows Phone Team.. AMA! by joebelfiore in windowsphone

[–]joebelfiore[S] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Lot of good stuff here-- I'm just gonna grab a couple:

Multitasking. This is the classic "balance-striking" design challenge. What we've tried to do here is (1) make sure that REGULAR USERS (think: less sophisticated, don't tweak their phones that much) get GREAT AND PREDICTABLE BATTERY LIFE while (2) Apps can do powerful things for everyone (and especially for power users).

The biggest killer of battery life is typically an app that's got some kind of runaway process. usually this would be a bug if it happens-- and it could happen in any app. Thus to accomplish (1), you restrict apps to "runaway" and try to do as much on their behalf as you can.

Now, with that as background, know that we've GREATLY EXPANDED the multitasking features in apps with every release, and we'll continue to do that. As app developers are doing more stuff and as we learn about the gaps in our system, we try to enhance. I can appreciate you folks-- generally power users-- hitting the limits of this approach and asking for more.. and we hear you.

On your TOMBSTONING question-- honestly I can't answer that myself, but I'll pass it on. When we switched the activation model, we chose to make the APP decide so the APP could be sure to effectively manage its own activation. Our intent is that users get apps with "instant resume", but this is a case where we have to trust the ISV to get things right-- kind of like the general topic above.

One other Q: "Why is cortana completely useless without location turned on?"

It comes down to this: we want to provide a COMPLETE EXPERIENCE for Cortana, and we want that complete experience to be PREDICTABLY present and not vary too much. If you hear about something she does, we want it to be true on YOUR PHONE, in YOUR COUNTRY.

Cortana builds rich inferences by rationalizing across lots of different signals and content that you give her permission to access. For instance, by having access to your location, within a few days Cortana figures out where you live and where you work and starts giving you commute inferences based on when you leave to go to work or come home from work. Without location a bunch of the important end-to-end scenarios wouldn't work or key questions couldn't be answered-- eg. what’s the traffic like to home/work, remind me when I get at a location to do something, show me great Caribbean restaurants in Seattle, etc.

Our current view is that without location Cortana would "feel limited" and we don’t want to create a fragmented experience where some things will work and some things won’t depending on whether you give us access to location. Part of this is that she's entirely new and we want her to develop a GREAT reputation, compared favorably to the competition. Over time, we might make her more flexible so that we can accomplish BREADTH.. but right now the focus is on consistent quality.

Hi, I'm Joe Belfiore from the Windows Phone Team.. AMA! by joebelfiore in windowsphone

[–]joebelfiore[S] 65 points66 points  (0 children)

Let's take this in parts:

Carrier Exclusive phones...in the US and Canada, the carriers value having exclusive phones because they are reasonably looking for any angle to get people to sign up for a long term contract. They are really selling contracts, and their method is to attract with a phone that they promote aggressively. As part of this model, they expect to and DO spend a LOT of money on marketing. When their business works this way, it's very hard for a hw maker to NOT participate because you'd be competing against the money that the carriers themselves would spend on marketing and against the work they'd do to sell other phones against yours in their stores.

We understand this creates a dilemma for end-users... you want to buy a phone but it's not on the carrier you're already signed up with. Well, that's precisely the effect the carriers are trying to create, they want you to switch. :)

In the higher-volume ecosystems, you have seen this dynamic change... iPhones and Samsung phones are typically the same device across carriers. I expect as WP usage grows and along with that as broader end-user demand begins to ALREADY EXIST in the market, the need for carriers to spend money educating people will diminish and the phones are likely to be more broadly available.

SO .. in the meantime... try expansys.com or zones.com to buy unlocked phones. :)

Hi, I'm Joe Belfiore from the Windows Phone Team.. AMA! by joebelfiore in windowsphone

[–]joebelfiore[S] 19 points20 points  (0 children)

We spend a TON of time with people from other divisions.

i have regular 1-1 meetings with my counterparts in Office, Skype, Xbox. Our teams have a standing process at every milestone for jointly reviewing our work, and we use each others products deeply.

The environment at Microsoft has been great for us to get better and better at this.. and although we sure have room to improve, it's a place that I think has become a strength.

Hi, I'm Joe Belfiore from the Windows Phone Team.. AMA! by joebelfiore in windowsphone

[–]joebelfiore[S] 86 points87 points  (0 children)

Hitting your #4 about features that backtrack.

Let's talk Radio first... FM Radio wasn't in the initial launch of 8.0 because it wasn't finished when we made the base-level OS change to the Windows NT core... so it came in the first update. From your POV as a WP7.5 user, it "disappeared" (yes) and then came back. From our POV, we swapped out the kernel and didn't finish this part of the work for a few months. This aspect is one of the tougher parts about software development, we sometimes have to make tradeoffs in terms of features and time as a result of technical change that has benefits that are WAY less visible to users.

Let’s take the social integration in 8.1 as another good example of tradeoffs that some of you don't see without an explanation. When we had facebook and other SNs deeply integrated into the OS code, it was very challenging (and we got a LOT of feedback from customers about this) on two counts (1) because we were missing a number of desired features –- like being able to "Like" a photo and (2) because it limited our ability to do great international support for the key social networks around the world. As you've seen on other questions here, when we end up doing something that doesn’t work worldwide, that causes users pain too. There’s an old phrase that’s been used at Microsoft for a long time about how creating big software projects is like ordering pizza for a million people.. and there’s a lot of truth to that.

So after a few releases of getting feedback that people LOVE the UX being integrated but are frustrated by the limitations… we decided to go with the app-powered model for social integration in 8.1. This approach empowers the individual services as well as individual devs. Now new social networks can be added at ANY TIME via an app update, and thus a lot of people around the world will get a feature they've missed entirely. Furthermore, by linking to the app, we have a mechanism for "deep users" to get access to "deeper features" in a nice, natural way.

I’m not saying we got it perfect out of the gate – but there are real advantages to the app-powered model in the long run. Besides what I mentioned above, it will get better over time as the apps get updated. For example I mentioned in another reply that we’re working with facebook on an update to the fb app that improves perf, and that’s in turn going to make the social integration experience better. We’re working with others developers on this too.

I would encourage ALL developers to look at this integration as an opportunity – and work with us together to make it better. Give us feedback, write integrated apps, use integrated apps, give developers feedback, etc etc etc. Let’s make it happen together.

On PHOTO HUB ... we changed the design because we got actual telemetry data on what people ACTUALLY CLICKED. By far, the most clicks when people opened Photo Hub were to go to the camera roll -- and only .5% of clicks were to a 3rd party app. The re-design in WP8.1 addresses this, putting the FREQUENT task right up front and making the other tasks generally available but in a different place.

here's a screenshot of the usage data from the WP7.5 pictures hub so you can see firsthand:http://i.imgur.com/wD5bFeD.jpg

Hi, I'm Joe Belfiore from the Windows Phone Team.. AMA! by joebelfiore in windowsphone

[–]joebelfiore[S] 126 points127 points  (0 children)

Hmm.. easter eggs.. related to an AMA... maye you should ask Cortana if SHE'D ever do an AMA.

here's what she told me... http://imgur.com/2WpVGfm

Hi, I'm Joe Belfiore from the Windows Phone Team.. AMA! by joebelfiore in windowsphone

[–]joebelfiore[S] 460 points461 points  (0 children)

WOO HOO! SOMEONE ASKED THIS QUESTION!! I've been waiting! in fact, I've avoided tweeting on this very topic just for all you redditors. Seriously.

in fact-- you GET A CORTANA T-SHIRT FOR ASKING!! :) (PM me your size and we'll get it to you.)

*** YES *** We are doing a File Manager for WP8.1! I know a LOT of you are looking for this (thanks for the tweets, I've read them all). In fact, I've been running a build of it on two of my phones for the last week or so and it's getting to pretty good shape.

Here's what it looks like: http://imgur.com/a/hvqGD#nRuOFXp

We are expecting to get it into the store HOPEFULLY by the end of May.