You don’t need any plugin to listen to podcasts, but the method of doing so isn’t entirely obvious and the official documentation isn’t exactly helpful. I spent two weeks playing around with plugins that didn’t really help before stumbling upon this method, so I feel like I should share it.

Simply put, there are no good plugins, as of this writing, for managing your podcasts in XBMC, but there is a way to listen to and watch podcasts by default. Your media center will be way better if you do this.

Adding Your Podcast Using The GUI

So what’s the trick? Basically, it’s adding the RSS feed as a media source. I know, it’s not intuitive. The media source menu seems like a place to add folders with media files and nothing else, but that’s simply not the case.

Head to the “File” menu of the music or video section of XBMC, depending on what sort of podcast you are adding. Then click “Add Source.” Instead of adding a folder on your computer, type the RSS feed yourself, beginning with “rss://” instead of “http://”.

So far as I can tell, you can’t paste the URL into XBMC, meaning you’ll have to type the URL by hand. Keep reading if this is too much work; there’s another method.

Repeat the process for all of your podcasts, being sure to put video and audio podcasts in their proper places. That’s it; you can now stream music from your podcasts by browsing the “File” section whenever you like.

Editing Sources.xml

Do you prefer editing a text file rather than messing around with the GUI? That makes sense. You can manually add your sources in Sources.xml, if you’re geeky enough to figure it out.

Where is Sources.xml? It depends what operating system you’re using. Here’s the list:

• Windows XP: Documents and Settings\Application Data\XBMC\userdata\
  
• Vista/Windows 7: Users\\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\userdata\
  
• Mac OS X: /Users//Library/Application Support/XBMC/userdata/
  
• iOS: /private/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/XBMC/userdata/
  
• Linux: $HOME/.xbmc/userdata/

Once you’ve found the file, you’re going to need to add code. Use this code:

<source>
<name>RSS Feed</name>
<path>rss://</path>
</source>


You’re going to need to replace “RSS Feed” with the name of your podcast, and “rss://” with the URL of your podcast. Remember: you need to replace “http://” with “rss://” or this may not work. You’re also going to want to make sure that audio podcasts are within this <music> tag, while video ones are within the <video> tag.

Are you confused by this method? Stick to the GUI, then, but know that learning this can save you time.

Using The Favorites

Once you’ve added your podcasts you’re going to want to browse them regularly. They’ll be a lot easier to find if you add them to your favorites. Doing so is easy – simply right-click on the podcast in the “File” menu, or press the “C” key while the podcast is selected. Then click “Add to Favorites”

You can add just about anything to your favorites, including shows and sections from addons and even shows on Hulu, so this menu will quickly become the center of your media center.

Conclusion

XBMC is complicated, but rewarding. Adding podcasts is no exception. I don’t know why this needed to be so hard, but I really like having access now that I figured it out. I hope I’ve helped you solve a problem too.

What podcasts do you like to watch or listen to on your media center? Share, along with any other thoughts, in the comments below.

This is how people often produce written reports based on data that’s accumulated and updated in an Excel spreadsheet. We’ve offered a lot of really cool tips and tools for Excel over the years, such as Saikat’s article on producing professional looking charts, and Steve’s article on cool Excel templates for project management.

In this article, I’m going to dive a little more into the background VBA scripting that allows you to actually program connections between data that might be stored in an Excel file and Word documents where you may be producing reports.

It’s actually surprisingly easy to accomplish this once you know how to add the right references, and how to lay out the syntax of the background VBA code.

Integrating Data From Excel Into Your Word Document

In this example, I’m going to start out with a fairly simple Excel spreadsheet. In reality, the Excel file can consist of multiple spreadsheets with lots of data, it doesn’t matter.

So long as you know where the data resides in the spreadsheet, you’ll be able to reach in and grab it using VBA.

Here’s what my sample spreadsheet looks like. It’s a list of expense totals that have been calculated throughout the entire year.

Now, lets say you have a manager that would like to see a nicely formatted report that describes the expenses, grouping together like items and laying it all out in a layout that’s a little more pleasing to the eye (and easier for the big boys upstairs to understand).

You can do this by incorporating objects like textboxes or labels into your Word document. When you’re in Word, just click on the Developer menu tab, and then select “Design Mode” in the Controls box. Use the Legacy Tools dropdown icon to find where you can insert labels into your document.

Once you have the label placed in the document where you want it (not always an easy task), you’re ready to program the data feed. But first you’ll need to name the label so that the VBA can identify it. Right click on the label and go into Properties. Find the “(Name)” field and call it something that you’ll remember.

Now, add a Command Button from the same Legacy Tools dropdown list, place it in your document, and double click it to open up the VBA editor. When you get your code working later, you can modify it so that the code runs on the Document Open() event. You’ll see that in the object dropdown boxes in the editor window.

To get started connecting Word to Excel, you’ll need to reference Excel. Click on Tools, and then References. Scroll down the list until you see the “Microsoft Excel 12.0 Object Library” and select it.

Once you’ve done this, the rest is just a matter of writing a ridiculously simple VBA script to pull in data from an Excel spreadsheet and automatically update the label caption with the data. Here’s how that works.

Private Sub CommandButton1_Click()
Dim objExcel As New Excel.Application
Dim exWb As Excel.Workbook
 
Set exWb = objExcel.Workbooks.Open("c:\temp\expenses.xls")
 
ThisDocument.yrTotal.Caption = exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(12, 2)
 
exWb.Close
 
Set exWb = Nothing
 
End Sub

See how that works? The “exWb” Excel application object opens the Excel file at the path you provide it, and it’ll go right into the specific sheet and cell number, extract the data, and place it into the Caption property of the label that you named “yrTotal“.

Here’s the VBA macro in action.

The hard part with dealing with labels in Word is that it’s sometimes hard to align it at the end of a sentence or alongside any other text.

One way of overcoming that is actually incorporating some of the text alongside the data in the VBA code itself.  As you can see here, I’ve put the static text right into the Caption when I create the label itself.

Now, all you have to do is include that text when you update the label with your VBA script, and just append the data from the Excel file to the end of that text. Here’s what that kind of code would look like.

Dim objExcel As New Excel.Application
Dim exWb As Excel.Workbook
 
Set exWb = objExcel.Workbooks.Open("c:\temp\expenses.xls")
 
ThisDocument.yrTotal.Caption = exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(12, 2)
ThisDocument.totHotels.Caption = "Hotels: " & exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(5, 2)
ThisDocument.TotDining.Caption = "Dining Out: " & exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(2, 2)
ThisDocument.totTolls.Caption = "Tolls: " & exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(3, 2)
ThisDocument.totFuel.Caption = "Fuel: " & exWb.Sheets("Sheet1").Cells(10, 2)
 
exWb.Close
 
Set exWb = Nothing

You can use the string concatenation “&” symbol to place connect the static text with the data extracted from the Excel sheet. Here’s what the final results look like in the updated Word document.

Again, if you don’t want to have a big, ugly grey command button in your word document, just have the data-update script run on Document.Open(), and it’ll all take place behind the scenes.

In fact, in many cases you could create the initial document once, and then you’ll never have to create it again. All you’ll have to do is open it, and all of the labels will automatically update for you with the data from the updated Excel file. All you have to do is click to Print, and submit the report to your manager. A 30 minute report just turned into a 1 minute printout!

Can you think of any other cool uses for this data-integration technique using VBA? Share some of your own ideas and thoughts in the comments section below.

Shutterstock

However, my laptop and humble browser still represent the main means by which I access this content. And the BBC iPlayer represents the very best of TV-on-demand services. The BBC has tried to make watching television (and some movies) through iPlayer as easy as possible, but there are some layers to the service some people won’t be aware of.

BBC iPlayer

Watching directly in a Web browser is only officially allowed in the UK, and simple proxy servers don’t seem to help. However, using a VPN, for those inclined to do so, makes it possible to watch BBC iPlayer anywhere in the world.

There is also a global iPlayer app available for those outside of the UK who are willing to pay to use the service. Unfortunately it’s currently only available in selected countries (including Australia, Canada, and parts of Europe), only available on the Apple iPad, and offers mainly archived content.

As a UK resident I’m lucky enough to not to have to deal with that. So here is how to get the best out of iPlayer when watching through a Web browser.

BBC Recommends

If you’re not sure what you want to watch, simply use the following to help you make a choice.

Featured

The BBC thinks it knows what you want to watch, even without any knowledge of who you are or what your televisual interests may be. Consider the ‘Featured’ section the best of the BBC, at least the best broadcast over the last seven days.

Most Popular

If you don’t want to be told what to watch by the BBC you can instead just follow the herd by watching what is ‘Most Popular‘. Flagship shows such as Top Gear and Doctor Who dominate, alongside the big movies the BBC gets permission to air through iPlayer.

Delving Deeper

You can also start completely fresh and browse the content on offer in other ways.

Channels

You can view content by channel. All of the BBC channels are here, including the interminably dull BBC Parliament and the channel for Gaelic speakers, BBC Alba. Choose your channel and you can then view content by day. Or you can scroll to the bottom to view the full schedule for your chosen channel.

Categories

If you have narrow interests or simply know what kind of show you’re keen on watching at that given moment, you can browse by ‘Categories‘. From ‘Children’s’ to ‘Sport’ and everything in between, and there are also options to filter for ‘Audio Described’, ‘Signed’, and ‘Regional‘ content.

A-Z

The final option is to view by ‘A-Z’. This is when you know what show you want to watch on catch-up, and simply need to find the link to it. Content is shown by title only, with no context or description provided.

iPlayer Player

Once you’ve selected content to watch, you can do so by clicking the ‘Play‘ button.

To Stream Or To Download

Most content has the option to both stream directly in the browser, or download to the iPlayer Desktop, Windows Media Player, or portable devices. When streaming with a robust broadband connection there should be little to no buffering needed. Unless you’ve chosen to watch in HD, in which case the glorious picture will be countered by endless pauses.

Other Options

There are a couple of other options open to you in the simple and elegant iPlayer player. You can choose to watch the content as it is, in full-screen, or in a pop-out player recommended for those who will be carrying on with their usual Web browsing while the content is playing in the background.

Volume To 11

One strange but frankly genius quirk is the fact that the iPlayer volume goes up to 11. Which surely has to be a direct reference to This Is Spinal Tap. I certainly cannot see any other reason to make it 11 rather than 10. But I’m not complaining.

BBC iD

There is the added option of signing up for a BBC iD in order to gain extra features on iPlayer. But it isn’t worth it just for iPlayer, quite frankly. All you can really do is add programmes as ‘Favourites‘ in order to navigate to them quickly in the future. Options to share via Facebook and Twitter are open to everyone, BBC iD or no BBC iD.

Conclusions

I adore the BBC iPlayer and use it on a weekly basis. My Freeview Plus box consequently sits unused and unloved underneath my TV. The BBC has managed to create a catch-up, TV-on-demand service which looks good but which is simple enough for all the family to use. I just wish it was available globally. For all your sakes.

Do you use the BBC iPlayer? Is there anything you’d like to see changed or improved about the content and/or user interface? Are there tips or tricks for using iPlayer in the Web browser that I have overlooked? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Recent events have highlighted the importance of local backups. Google makes getting data back onto your computer pretty easy but you can also use these same methods if you’re looking to ditch Google because of concerns about their privacy policy.

Google Takeout

You may have heard of Google Takeout, which we’ve covered in the directory. Google Takeout is supposed to package all your Google data into a single file for download, but it isn’t quite there yet. It is improving, though – Google recently added Google Docs support.

With just a few clicks, you can download photos from your Picasa Web Albums account, documents and files from Google Docs, contacts from Gmail and various bits of information from Google+. Google does all the work of getting your data together and packaging it into a single ZIP file for you — you can even close the window and have Google email you when the file is ready to download.

In a perfect world, this would be the end of the process. But we still have to manually back up our Gmail emails, calendar events and other information.

Gmail

Gmail emails are the hardest thing to download properly. Google’s other services let you download a file directly from the associated website, but Gmail requires an email application that supports IMAP. We’ll use Mozilla Thunderbird here. Gmail Backup, which we’ve covered in the past, is another option.

First, you’ll have to head into your Gmail settings, click over to the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab and ensure that IMAP is enabled. You’ll also want to disable folder size limits – otherwise, Thunderbird won’t see all your Gmail messages.

After that, you can launch Thunderbird and add your Gmail account. Thunderbird automatically detects and provides the appropriate settings for Gmail, so you don’t have to enter them manually.

IMAP isn’t meant for doing full backups, so Thunderbird won’t automatically download all email messages and their attachments by default. We can use Thunderbird’s Configuration Editor window to tweak some internal settings and transform Thunderbird into a proper IMAP backup application.

First, set the preference “mail.server.default.mime_parts_on_demand” to False to have Thunderbird download all email attachments. If you can’t locate this preference using the Filter box, you can create it by right-clicking in the window and creating a new boolean preference.

Second, create a boolean preference named “mail.check_all_imap_folders_for_new” and set it to true. Thunderbird won’t download messages from outside your inbox unless you click each label individually until you set this preference.

Third, set “mail.imap.use_status_for_biff” to false. This causes Thunderbird to always check each label for new messages.

Lastly, ensure “mail.server.default.autosync_offline_stores” is set to true, or Thunderbird might delay downloading of emails until you go offline.

That’s quite a few settings, but after configuring all four you can click Get Mail and Thunderbird will automatically download and store all your email and attachments. If you have a lot of email messages, this may take some time.

Thunderbird automatically updates your local backup each time you open it. If you want to switch to another email provider, you can even add another IMAP account to Thunderbird and drag and drop your Gmail emails onto that account.

Chat Logs

Your Google Talk chat logs are stored along with your email in your Gmail account, but you won’t see them in Thunderbird yet. Not to worry, you can back up your chat logs along with your email in Thunderbird.

Just go back into Gmail’s settings, click over to the Labels tab and enable the Show in IMAP check box for the Chats label.

Google Calendar

Calendars are easy to download from Google Calendar. Just click the arrow next to My Calendars in the Google Calender sidebar and click the Export Calendars link on the page that appears.

You can’t download calendars that have been shared with you using this link. Instead, download a shared calendar by clicking the arrow next to the calendar’s name, selecting Calendar Settings and clicking the iCal button.

Other Services

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Google offer easy ways of pulling your data back down to Earth from the cloud – not like Facebook, which requires tricks. If you want to download data from another Google service not covered here, check out Google’s Data Liberation Front page. It provides guides for nearly every type of data associated with your Google account (although its Gmail guide is incomplete).

Let us know in the comments what your experiences have been with backing up your Google data.  How easy or difficult was it?  Did you use a different method to the ones outlined here?

As the operating system is a customized version of Android, you might expect the Kindle Fire to have access to the Android Market, but in fact Amazon has its own app store which it uses as a library of additional software, apps and games for the Kindle Fire.

The problem with this is that the Amazon App Store doesn’t work outside the USA, resulting in travellers, those with non-US credit cards and anyone overseas who received one of these tablets as a gift being unable to install new apps via either of these methods. Fortunately there are alternatives…

Using The Amazon App Store (If You’re In The US)

Amazon has made its app store extremely easy to use and doubles the pressure on the official Android Market by giving away a free app every day.

A shortcut on the Kindle Fire will display the goodies on offer in the Amazon App Store and all you need to do to download an app is open its description page and use the Buy now with 1-Click button (or Get now with 1-Click for free apps) and the software will be installed – although of course you shouldn’t do this without reading the reviews and recommendations and checking screenshots first! Note that you must have 1-Click purchasing available on your Amazon account for this to work.

A few moments later you should be able to use the app in question. Of course, if you’re not in the United States then you won’t be able to access the Amazon App Store.

Why You Shouldn’t Install The Android Market On The Kindle Fire

The most obvious solution to overcoming app installations by international users of the Kindle Fire is to find some way of installing the Android Market. In fact, you can do this but the results at present aren’t entirely stable. For instance, after spending money on movies to download and watch on your Kindle Fire you might be pretty angry to find that they can no longer be enjoyed in the same way.

Installing the Android Market requires rooting your Kindle Fire, a process that allows access to system files for particular apps. Sadly doing this and installing the Android Market results in some conflicts that cause choppy movie playback among other odd quirks that wouldn’t have occurred previously. Additionally, the Market doesn’t offer all of the apps that you might expect to find as the device doesn’t meet all of the hardware specifications required by Android.

The best option here is to steer clear of the Android Market until a version that supports the Kindle Fire becomes available.

Third Party Solutions: Opera, SlideMe & GetJar

Fortunately there are other solutions that are not region-specific.

Probably the first place you should head to is the Opera App Store, which you can open by visiting apps.opera.com in your Kindle Fire browser. You will then be able to browse for and install useful and popular apps such as Skype and Angry Birds.

Other places you might try include andappstore.com, slideme.org and m.getjar.com. Note however that for safety and anti-virus reasons you shouldn’t attempt to download any app that isn’t already available in the Amazon App Store or the official Android Market (market.android.com).

Once the download has completed, expand the Status Bar, tap the downloaded .apk file and wait for the software to install.

Conclusion

Clearly using a Kindle Fire internationally isn’t easy, but as this is such a popular and easy to use tablet in all other respects it isn’t hard to see why people are happy to persist.

While the procedures described here are intended to help anyone desperate to use a particular app on their Kindle Fire, going forward, you should keep your eye on the Amazon App Store. Although it is ostensibly for North American users, reports recently have indicated that international or European access is about to be granted following a short period whereby users in the UK were able to download apps.

You’re probably reading this because you’ve seen a niggling error message popping up when you’ve tried to install application updates, saying “Installation Error: Couldn’t install on USB Storage or SD Card” or possibly “Error -18 Unknown”. This error is apparently caused when you’ve started installing an application and then lost Internet access in the meantime. One temporary little file got left on your SD card in the process and never got deleted. Thankfully, it’s pretty easy to fix.

Please note, you may get a similar message if your SD card is full, so check that this isn’t your problem before you continue reading.

The Non-Technical Temporary Fix

If you don’t have any tech skills (or don’t have any time spare) this is a hack that will suffice for a while. All you do is move that application back to the phone before you try to update. Once it’s updated you can move it back to the SD card and use it as per usual.

The Rooted Phone Fix

This method will only work if you have a rooted phone. Using a file manager application like Astro or Root Explorer, navigate to either /sdcard/.android_secure or /mnt/secure/asec/ and delete the file called smdl2tmp1.asec from the folder. This will be invisible on non-rooted phones.

The Windows Fix

Set your phone to mount as a USB Disc Drive when connected to a PC. Alternatively, unmount your SD card from your phone and put the card into an SD card reader connected to your computer.

Ensure that your file manager is set to view hidden files. On a Windows machine you should be able to press CTRL-H. Then navigate to your SD card and delete the file called smdl2tmp1.asec from either the /sdcard/.android_secure or /mnt/secure/asec/ folder.

The Mac Finder Fix

The steps for the Mac Finder fix are the same as for the Windows fix, however viewing hidden files is a little different.

To view hidden files, Mac users will need to use Terminal (found in Applications > Utilities) to run a quick command.

From anywhere in your file system, type this to view hidden files:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

Then you’ll need to restart finder. Press CMD-OPTION-ESC to bring up the “Force Quit Applications” dialogue, highlight Finder and click on Restart.

To revert this and hide hidden files again, use this command in Terminal and restart Finder again:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles NO

The Unix / Mac Terminal Fix

The steps for the Unix command line (also Mac Terminal) fix are essentially the same as for the Windows fix, but you’ll either need to know the name of your SD card or be able to navigate your way to the file by following your nose in order to work out what the SD card is called.

If you haven’t changed it, your SD card is probably called “No Name“, but you might like to check a GUI file manager to check what it is called.

Given the two possible locations of the file, you should be able to get rid of it by using one of these commands:

 rm /Volumes/NO\ NAME/.android_secure/smdl2tmp1.asec
 rm /Volumes/NO\ NAME/mnt/secure/asec/smdl2tmp1.asec

Obviously, if your SD card is not called “No Name” you’ll need to replace that part of the command, ensuring the backslashes go before spaces.

More Android Reading

Here’s some more great posts you might like:

• DOWNLOAD MakeUseOf’s “Best Apps” Android App!
• Gentle Alarm – A Fantastic Way To Wake Up Gradually Every Morning [Android 1.5+]
• Manage & Share Your Files With File Expert [Android]

Have you fixed any similar errors on your Android? What did you do?

It’s time for you to learn how to save yourself a lot of time at every startup and automate the process of joining your favorite IRC servers and channels. This is, by the way, another reason why HydraIRC is the superior client to those of you who are new to the chat universe. Creating “scripts” is incredibly simple and intuitive.

Let’s start off by going into the Options menu and clicking Prefs…. A window of preferences should then pop up for you.

On the left, click Scripts. At this point, you should see a single option of “SomeNetwork_OnLoggedIn“.

In my screenshot, you’ll see many more because I’ve set up autojoins on several servers. Nonetheless, this is an example script profile that HydraIRC has created for you. Using it alone, some users can gauge how to set up their scripts. You can learn a little more about command/script profiles on the official website, but let me do some basic explaining.

HydraIRC has three built-in profile name suffixes that trigger the program to automatically execute a script. These three are as follows:

• OnStartUp, which will execute the script immediately when the application is launched.
• OnLoggedIn, which will execute the script when you have joined a particular server.
• OnJoin, which will execute the script when you join a particular channel.

By creating profiles with the names “OnStartUp”, “{SERVER}_OnLoggedIn”, or “~{SERVER}_{CHANNEL}_OnJoin”, you are authorizing HydraIRC to automatically execute the scripts during those conditions. If we wanted a script to automatically execute when we join the EFNet server, we’d name the profile “EFNet_OnLoggedIn“. If we wanted to execute the script only when we join the #chat channel on EFNet, we’d name it “~EFNet_#chat_OnJoin“.

Let’s go over an example. We’ll use GameSurge, as we did in my first post. By default, it is included with HydraIRC. On the server list, it is given the exact name “GameSurge” (which will need to be exact, case sensitive, in the profile name).

On Gamesurge, we’d like to automatically join #sourcemod, #gamesurge, and #linux when we connect. So we’ve done the hard part. Now here’s our script, “GameSurge_OnLoggedIn”:

/quietjoin sourcemode,gamesurge,linux

It’s very simple. The “/quietjoin” command is ideal when you’re joining multiple channels at once as it softens each join. Afterwards, the channel names (pound signs are not required) delimited by commas.

Now what if you want to automatically join GameSurge every time you launch HydraIRC? That’s simple also. Your script profile would be “OnStartUp”:

/server irc.gamesurge.net

That’s it. At this point, when you start HydraIRC you’d now automatically connect to the GameSurge server and automatically join those three channels. Do you want to connect to multiple servers on startup? Just add a new line with the following (with FreeNode in this example):

/newserver irc.freenode.net

Every power IRC uses user scripts. Automation is one of my favorite things in the world, and you’ll find that automating certain parts of your chatting experience will allow you to do what you came to do – enjoy it. If I’ve still been unable to convince you that HydraIRC is the way to go, check out a few interesting scripts for mIRC.

Holler at me in the comments if you’re having trouble or want to share any more useful scripts for the IRC platform.

Unfortunately, there is one difficulty with connecting with so many people across the world – time zones. You may want to be available to interact with your readership or to do business with potential clients, but at some point, you have to sleep.

Enter the chat bot. A chat bot can serve as your front desk digital secretary when you aren’t available to accept IM requests. The intelligence of this digital “secretary” really only comes down to how well you’re able to program the dialogue into your chat bot.

MUO has previously covered ChitterIM, which is essentially a chat bot that accepts IM commands from you in order to interact with Twitter. This is just one example of how a chat bot can automatically perform tasks for your site or your business, but in this article I’m going to show you the basic steps to make your own chat bot for your own site or business.

How to Make a Chat Bot

By far, the best available tool for doing this is IMified. We’ve briefly covered IMified in the directory, and Mark covered how to use the prebuilt IMified bot to use a whole list of premade applications that the folks at IMified already offer.

However, you can also create your own customized chat bot by signing up for a new account, and then clicking on the “Create a New Bot” button on the right menu.

Setting up your own customized chat bot is as simple as creating an ID for your bot, and defining the URL where your bot’s chat code will reside. In my case, I’m storing the PHP code for the bot programming on my own website, so I’ve provided the path to that PHP file.

When you’re done, you’ll receive a long “Bot Key” that you can use when you get more deeply into integrating your bot into various services, such as programming your own Twitter features. However, for now we’re going to focus on creating that basic PHP file where you can program your bot to interact with your users.

To show how this basically works, I’m going to explain how the basic PHP file offered by IMified works. Here’s what the basic interaction code looks like.

<?php
switch ($_REQUEST['step']) {
case 1:
{echo "Hi, I'm the TSW Support bot, do you already know what service you want?";
break;}
case 2:
{echo "You've requested service " . $_REQUEST['value1'] . ", is that correct?";
break;}
case 3:
{echo "Thank you for requesting service " . $_REQUEST['value1'] . "<br><br>You said " . $_REQUEST['value2'] . " that you know.<reset>";
break;}
}
?>

If you step through this sample code you’ll see just how simple it is. The IMified bot lets you take the conversation through several “steps”, and you can force navigation. You can allow the user to type something and continue to the next step by doing nothing and just ending that section with “break;”. If you end your echo with a “”, it’ll reset the bot (and the conversation) back to the start. Your bot will forget everything that was recently said.

IMified also lets you use a “goto” command to go to a specific step in the conversation, and will force the conversation one step back (I’ll show you how this works below).

But first, here’s what the bot conversation will look like. The bot is called “tswdesk”.

Of course, you’re going to want your chat bot to be a little more intelligent (and interesting) than this simple example. However, since you are controlling the conversation using PHP code, just think of the possibilities. Based on the conversation, you could perform different services for your readers or your clients. Send out an email, log “feedback” test to a file, or provide the user with requested information. The possibilities are really unlimited.

Here’s a sample PHP bot code where you can provide the visitor with the option to select from a menu of “services” that your bot offers.

<?php
switch ($_REQUEST['step']) {
case 1:
{echo "Hi, I'm the TSW Support bot, do you already know what service you want?";
break;}
case 2:
{
if ($_REQUEST['msg'] == "yes") {
    echo "Cool, go ahead and type your request.";
    break;
} elseif ($_REQUEST['msg'] == "no") {
    echo "Here are our service commands:<br><br>1-Subscribe to newsletter<br>2-Request to talk to editor<br>3-Submit Feedback<br>4-Subscribe to RSS Feed<br>5-Request a phone call<br><br>Please type your request:";
    break;
} else {
    echo "I don't understand your answer, try again. <error>";
    break;
}
}
case 3:
{
if ($_REQUEST['msg'] == "1") {echo "Thank you. I've subscribed you to our newsletter using your IM email account. Have a nice day.<reset>";}
if ($_REQUEST['msg'] == "2") {echo "Thank you. I've let our editor know that you would like to speak with him. Have a nice day.<reset>";}
if ($_REQUEST['msg'] == "3") {echo "Thank you. Please type your feedback now.";}
if ($_REQUEST['msg'] == "4") {echo "Thank you. Add our RSS url to your Reader to subscribe: http://www.topsecretwriters.com/rss. Have a nice day.<reset>";}
if ($_REQUEST['msg'] == "5") {echo "Thank you. You've requested a phone call. Please type your phone number.";}  
 
break;
 
}
 
case 4:
{
   echo "Thank you. Your information has been submitted. Have a nice day.<reset>";
   break; 
}
}
?>

Now that there’s a bit more logic and information in the background code, you can see how much more intelligent the bot will appear to users, as shown in the conversation below.

Now, carrying out some of these tasks may be as simple as writing to a logfile or sending out an email to the editor using PHP, but if you want to have your bot serve you by accepting Twitter commands or issuing alerts to all chat “friends”, it will require using some of the IMified APIs. That’s outside the scope of this article, but we’ll get to those cool features in an upcoming article.

Have you ever used IMified to customize your own bot, or have you used any other similar service? Share your chat bot experiences and insights in the comments section below.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

The Great Firewall of China has several different ways of blocking websites, so your website’s availability may change over time. If you have a front-page report about Tiananmen Square, you might find your website blocked, only to find it unblocked after the report vanishes from your front page. Another website might have had its DNS records tampered with or might see any connections ended by the firewall itself, no matter what the website’s current content is.

Great Firewall Of China

In spite of its name, the Great Firewall’s policies can be patchwork and inconsistently applied. Websites blocked in one region may not be blocked in another region. Great Firewall Of China is the quickest way to check your website’s availability at different locations in China.

Enter a website address and the service will send it to five different servers in China. Each server tries to access the website and shows a success or failure message.

It’s simple and quick, but this service has some drawbacks. You can only test homepages and not individual subpages. When I tried to specify a subpage on a website, I received an error message. The service also only checks if a website responds – the Great Firewall could re-route website requests to another web server and you’d be none the wiser.

WebsitePulse

WebsitePulse is useful because it lets you check specific subpages. The Great Firewall doesn’t only block websites, it also filters individual pages based on forbidden words and phrases in their URLs or content. WebsitePulse also offers different regions of China. Both Great Firewall Of China and WebsitePulse can test from Beijing, but the other locations are different.

Plug in a webpage address and you can see whether or not it’s accessible. WebsitePulse can only check one location in China at a time.

The English Wikipedia looks available. We’d get the same results if we tested it on Great Firewall Of China.

Further investigation reveals that some parts of the website are being blocked. Here, the Wikipedia page on the Great Firewall itself is inaccessible. Note how it says “Failure in Receiving Network Data” instead of providing a clear “Blocked” message. The Great Firewall does not inform users when it blocks a website; blocked requests just appear as network errors. The results from Seattle help clarify this – Wikipedia itself isn’t down; it just appears down in China when you access this page.

ViewDNS

ViewDNS checks for DNS poisoning. One tactic the Great Firewall uses is redirecting website addresses to other websites. For example, an Internet user in China might be redirected to Baidu, a search engine based in China, when they try to access Google. This subterfuge will show up as your website loading successfully in other tools. Another tactic is just changing a website’s DNS entry and pointing it nowhere – the website won’t load at all.

Enter an website’s address to see the expected IP address and whether it matches with the IP address returned from DNS servers in China. ViewDNS also tries to access the website in different regions and informs you whether or not it was successful.

Note how each different region points Facebook’s website to a different IP address — none of them load anything, but this prevents access to Facebook. It’s also interesting that the server in Inner Mongolia received a timeout rather than an incorrect IP address — is this because Facebook is being blocked differently in that region, or because of a legitimate network problem? That’s the thing about the Great Firewall: it’s hard to tell whether the firewall is interfering or whether there’s an actual network problem.

Bypassing The Great Firewall

Is your website blocked in China? You may be wondering how to unblock it. Unfortunately, there’s no appeal process. The most you can do is remove blacklisted words and content and hope that helps. There’s no official list of blacklisted content, either – Kafkaesque, isn’t it? The Great Firewall blocks by IP address, so multiple websites may be blocked if they share an IP address with a flagged website.

The good news is that the Great Firewall doesn’t block encrypted traffic. There’s no way to inspect encrypted traffic and businesses require encryption for security, so blocking it isn’t an option. This means that any foreign VPN service or proxy server can be used to bypass the great firewall. If you’re in China, you can tunnel out of the Great Firewall of China with a VPN or proxy server and access the full Internet.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

This is a very in-depth topic, and I can’t possibly write a tutorial that will cover 100% of cases or every problem you might come up against. What I can do is give an overview of the entire process so you have an idea where you’re getting stuck; some tips that might help you out on the way; and some pitfalls that kept me searching for days.

Getting Started

In case it isn’t obvious, you need a paid iOS developer account ($99/year) in order to submit applications, free or otherwise, to the iTunes App Store. Ensure your Apple ID includes up to date information, and that the address is accurate. You will need to verify your address and identification details, usually by way of faxing a passport copy and utility bill. If in doubt, call developer support for your local country – I found the UK team were more than helpful in getting my old Japanese Apple ID transferred to a UK address.

I’m also going to assume you already have an app that’s been tested on the simulator, with no bugs or memory leaks. Getting your app to that state may be a monumental task in itself, but I can’t help you there. Crucially, make sure there are no serious compilation errors – though in my case there were lots of “semantic issues”, those are acceptable. Test, test, and test again before you think you are ready for release. Adding icons and debugging code is outside the scope of this tutorial, I’m afraid.

Here’s a quick summary of the whole submission process:

• Create a unique App ID for your app and change your bundle identifier in Xcode
• Create a secure Distribution Certificate for yourself
• Create a Provisioning Distribution Profile for the app
• Code-sign your app with the distribution profile
• Archive it, ensuring Project is set to Skip Install-> Yes and Target is set to Skip Install -> No
• Create an App on iTunes Connect with your meta data and sales information.

Most of this occurs within the Provisioning Portal, XCode, Keychain Access utility and iTunes Connect.

Create An App ID

• First, you need to create an App ID – a unique identifier for your app. Head over to iOS Provisioning Portal – the link is one the right side once you’ve logged into the iOS Developer site, and choose App ID from the sidebar.
• Click the button to create a new app ID. The first description field is just a name for your reference. The bundle identifier is a kind of coded name for your app, usually written as your company domain (in reverse), followed by a dot and the app name. For example:

com.makeuseof.demoapp

• Over in X-Code, click Target -> Summary, and change the Identifier to be whatever you decided above (com.whatever).

Create A Distribution Certificate

This is a secure certificate stored on your profile which confirms your developer identity and signs your code. There’s an elaborate version of this process detailed on the Distribution tab of the Provisioning Portal, but the simplified version is:

• Open up Keychain Access, and turn off OCSP and CRL from the Preferences.
• From the Keychain Access menu, choose Certificate Assistant -> Request Certificate from Authority.

• Enter your email address (no CA email needed), choose Saved to Disk and Let me specify key pair information, then Continue
• Choose key size of 2048 bits, and RSA algorithm, Continue.
• This creates a .CSR file on your desktop.
• In the Provisioning Portal, choose Certificates -> Distribution -> Add Certificate, and upload the file created.
• It may take a few seconds to approve. Download and install the WWDR intermediate certificate in the mean time (just download, double click it).
• Refresh the page, and you should be able to download your certificate. Again, install it.

• As a final step, open up Keychain Access, highlight your private key that you just installed and select Export Item from the menu. Keep this key safe with a backup somewhere, as without it you won’t be able to submit apps in the event of an OS reinstall or on different systems.

Create A Distribution Provisioning Profile

Yes, there are an endless number of certificates and profiles that need to be made here. Bear with me.

Again, from the Provisioning Portal, select Provisioning -> Distribution and create a new profile. Choose App Store as the distribution method, a profile name, and choose the App ID you created earlier. Submit that, refresh a few seconds later, and again download and install the profile – this time it will be added to XCode, but there are no further steps needed here.

If you want, you can check it’s there from the Window -> Organizer -> Devices tab, and select Provisioning Profiles from the sidebar.

Check Code Signing & Build Settings

As a final preparatory step, open up XCode and find Code Signing in the Build Settings area. Ensure that the Release option (for both Project and app Target) has your Distribution Profile selected (the one you installed just now).

Select iOS device as the build scheme, and move on to Archiving.

Archiving Your App

Nearly there! Before you can actually submit your app, you need to create an archive of the whole project – the final set of files that will be uploaded to iTunes Connect. Assuming everything has been done correctly until now, the first step is check you have an Archive scheme to build the release version with.

Click on Edit Schemes from the top-left, and either make sure the Archive one is set to Release, or create one now with the appropriate settings. Using the Auto-Create Schemes function within manage schemes should also create this for you.

Next – and this is the bit that really induced headaches for a week in my case – if your app uses external libraries of any sort, you need to change the Build Settings for the project to be Skip Install. To do this, click the main project (not the target) -> Build Settings -> type Skip into the search field, and ensure Yes is selected for the Deployment -> Skip Install option.

The TARGETS Build Settings for Skip Install should be No. Double check that – Project Skip Install, Yes; Target Skip Install, No.

This tripped me up because every tutorial I could find simply said “set Skip Install to Yes” – but with these both set to yes, the archive just mysteriously wouldn’t materialize.

The final step then is to build your deployment archive to upload. Select Product -> Archive from the menu. Once completed, you should be able to find your app in the Organizer -> Archives section.

Create An App On iTunes Connect

iTunes Connect is the commercial side of the app store, which handles the actual sales of your finished app, which countries to sell in, description and screenshots etc. It’s actually quite easy, but there’s a lot of information to be filled out, and it’s at this point that you’ll decide whether to sell the app, give it away, enable iAds to be displayed, enter bank information, and sign any contracts needed for release.

To get started, just head to iTunes Connect and Add a New App. You’ll need to choose the bundle identifier from the drop selection box (the com.whatever name you created earlier), but I won’t walk you through the rest of this as it’s really self explanatory – Apple will tell what’s waiting to be done at every step of the way.

Eventually, your app will be added, and be in the Waiting for Upload status, at which point you can go back to XCode Organizer -> Archives, and hit Submit to upload. You’ll asked to log in and check which app it is you’re uploading, and now you need to just wait for it to be approved – usually a few weeks.

This has been a totally new experience for me as I’m sure it will be for many of you also. Hopefully you’ve got a clearer understanding of the process now – personally I was a bit daunted by it all and found myself muddling through most of it. Is it as complicated as it sounds? Yes – but only the first time. And in fairness, it’s this rigorous process that prevents insecure apps and malware from ever making their way onto the app store, so that’s something I’m eternally grateful for.

Let us know your experiences submitting to the app store in the comments.