If you're wondering what on earth I've been doing lately, I've been fiddling with some of my own projects lately.

 http://www.push-a-button.com.au/downloads/BlindTimerSetup.msi - a 32 bit version of a simple poker game timer. It tells you the current blinds the current ante and how long until they next go up, with text-to-speech announcements of blind increases and warnings when they are getting near.

 http://www.push-a-button.com.au/products/mce/vista/youglevista/ is the latest verison of Yougle (Yougle Vista) that has recently replaced the older Yougle 2 I linked people to on this website.

  Yougle Vista currently is still in alpha - it has a number of flaws - but I thought people may want to play with it.

  KNOWN BUGS:

    1) Buffering for Flash Video files (such as YouTube, DailyMotion and Google Video feeds) is extremely slow - it can take quite some time for playback to start. If in doubt, press '#' to download the video rather than trying to stream it directly.

    2) The X64 version of Yougle Vista can NOT play Flash Video files, so you will be unable to play videos from YouTube, DailyMotion and Google Video. This is because there is currently no FLV video splitter for 64 bit Windows, and although you are given a 32 bit copy of Windows Media Player (meaning it can use 32 bit video codecs) you only get a 64 bit version of Windows Media Center.

    This may be resolved in the not-to-distant future, but right now it's going to cause problems.

    3) Pressing the 'Back' to go from your video source (such as YouTube) to the Source Selection screen can cause Yougle to go slightly haywire and drop back to the Media Center start menu. I am aware of what causes this problem, but fixing it is causing me all kinds of pain.

   [ for any interested developer, it is because of the fact that Choice objects raise an exception if you try to choose something outside the valid range. When I remove all of the sort entries from the list, but the user had selected anything other than the first one, the exception occurs without me having any ability to catch it, which throws the app back to the Start Menu. The resolution requires me to call two Invokes, one to force the focus of the sub-sort menu to go back to the first item, then a second one to bring focus BACK to the parent sort menu ]

   Common Questions:

      Q) Will it work on my 360?

      A) To a limited degree. The MSN Soapbox source may very well work for you, but most others will not.

      Q) Can you make it work BETTER on the 360?

      A) I don't know. Perhaps Transcode360 will work...but since I don't yet have enough donations to purchase a 360 or any other Extender device, I simply don't know because I can't test this sort of thing.

      Q) Can you add <insert provider her> to Yougle Vista?

      A) Probably not (unless it's a REALLY good idea)...but YOU can.

          When Yougle Vista goes from Alpha to Beta, I will release the SDK that allows you to quickly and easily write your own Yougle Vista sources in Visual C# Express or Visual Studio. The SDK will include complete samples of working sources, such as DivX Stage 6 and YouTube - you will be able to base your solutions on these samples.

Yougle Vista Production Video