Friday, June 24, 2016

CBC Radio One Live Audio Streams

Update Aug 2019


All CBC radio streams are now no longer available.

Official CBC response 

CBC Stream URLs ended/stopped working/unavailable as of Aug 2019

Radio One Stream URLs as of Aug 2016
CBC Radio released new audio streaming urls as of Aug 2016. 
However, all of the MP3 streams below are streamed at sub-standard 48 Kbps bitrate.

"Going from 64 kbps to 128 kbps (internet standard) adds more important data than going from 128 kbps to 192 kbps"  A informative article on Slate to explains bitrate(kbps) in relation to audio quality. 

Good news the streams work natively for Windows Media Player, for the first time, which great news. 

Update: Still working in 2018.


Open Windows Media Player, and press keys simultaneously CTRL u to play. 

Source of Streaming URLs here......
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/includes/stream.html



Province City  MP3
 
BC  Kamloops http://cbc_r1_kam.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/440/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_kam
  Kelowna  http://cbc_r1_kel.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/229/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_kel
  Prince George http://cbc_r1_prg.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/966/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_prg
  Vancouver http://cbc_r1_vcr.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/723/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_vcr
  Victoria http://cbc_r1_vic.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/728/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_vic
     
Yukon  Whitehorse http://cbc_r1_whs.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/319/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_whs
     
Alberta 
  Calgary http://cbc_r1_cgy.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/298/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_cgy
  Edmonton http://cbc_r1_edm.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/904/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_edm
     
Saskatchewan 
  Regina http://cbc_r1_reg.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/666/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_reg
  Saskatoon http://cbc_r1_ssk.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/842/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_ssk
     
Manitoba 
  Winnipeg http://cbc_r1_wpg.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/831/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_wpg
     
Nunavut 
  Iqaluit http://cbc_r1_whs.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/319/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_whs
     
Ontario 
  Kitchener-Waterloo http://cbc_r1_ekw.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/63/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_ekw
  London http://cbc_r1_ldn.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/104/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_ldn
  Ottawa http://cbc_r1_ott.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/613/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_ott
  Sudbury http://cbc_r1_sud.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/380/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_sud
  Thunder Bay http://cbc_r1_tba.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/245/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_tba
  Toronto http://cbc_r1_tor.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/632/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_tor
  Windsor http://cbc_r1_wdr.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/813/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_wdr
     
Quebec 
  Montreal http://cbc_r1_mtl.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/35/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_mtl
  Nord Quebec http://cbc_r1_n_mtl.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/823/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_n_mtl
  Quebec City http://cbc_r1_qqu.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/29/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_qqu
     
New Brunswick 
  Fredericton http://cbc_r1_frd.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/553/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_frd
  Moncton http://cbc_r1_mct.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/383/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_mct
  Saint John http://cbc_r1_snb.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/754/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_snb
     
Prince Edward Island 
  Charlottetown http://cbc_r1_chr.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/169/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_chr
     
Nova Scotia 
  Cape Breton http://cbc_r1_syd.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/897/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_syd
  Halifax http://cbc_r1_hfx.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/981/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_hfx
     
Newfoundland & Labrador 
  Corner Brook http://cbc_r1_cor.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/550/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_cor
  Grand Falls/Gander http://cbc_r1_gfa.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/492/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_gfa
  Labrador http://cbc_r1_gba.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/274/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_gba
  St. John's http://cbc_r1_snf.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/750/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_snf
     
Northwest Territories 
  Inuvik http://cbc_r1_ink.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/967/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_ink
  Yellowknife http://cbc_r1_ykn.akacast.akamaistream.net/7/369/451661/v1/rc.akacast.akamaistream.net/cbc_r1_ykn

Get Winamp 5.666 Download, still the best player




Tuesday, June 14, 2016

OneDrive 2016 Upload Speed

Here my test results of using a browser to upload  a folder in Overdrive.
Overdrive queued a max of 3 files to upload simultaneously. 













Overdrive took 20 mins to upload 868 Mb folder, so roughly  
0.7233 Mb/s on a 29.22 Mpbs (down) / 7.54Mps (up) line.

Calculate your speed here
http://techinternets.com/copy_calc?do







You can perform a speed test here.

http://vancouver.speedtest.telus.com/


Lets test a hypothesis in the comment section;

Is Onedrive speed maxing out at 
10% of your internet connection upload speed? 



Speed: 0.754 MB/s 

Size: 1 GB
22 Minutes and 38 Seconds

is a rough estimate to what I am getting for OneDrive upload times  - 1 Gig in 23 mins.

Thursday, June 9, 2016

Gmail : How to selecting multiple emails using keyboard shortcut almost

Gmail is a very popular with a reported 1 billion active daily users and you figure their engineers would designed Gmail with the best user interface experience possible for you, a user. 

But I will report one glaring over site, Gmail provides no keyboard shortcut to select multiple messages.

Outlook and Yahoo Mail provides this feature seamlessly and the way you would expect it, using Shift key to select multiple messages. 

So I give Gmail a big fat epic fail or F for not have a keyboard shortcut to select multiple messages.

Here's what you have to do in the mean time;


  1. Click the  gear in the top right and select Settings.
  2. Find the "Keyboard shortcuts" section and select Keyboard shortcuts on.

  3. Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.
  4. To select multiple messages,

    Start with pressing x key(1) on first message, as inidicated by the vertical blue bar
    |.
    You can move this intuitively using up/down arrow keys.
    Now press Shift key (2) and with your mouse click the last message to select multiple messages.

Selection Keyboard shortcuts for Gmail - full keyboard shortcut list here.

xSelect contactChecks and selects a contact so that you can change group membership or choose an action from the drop-down menu to apply to the contact.

Its easy enough to select all messages, but a range impossible! 

Shortcut KeyDefinitionAction



* then aSelect allSelects all mail.
* then nSelect noneDeselects all mail.
* then rSelect readSelects all mail you've read.
* then uSelect unreadSelects all unread mail.
* then sSelect starredSelects all starred mail.
* then tSelect unstarredSelects all unstarred mail.

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Microsoft's OneDrive 2016 Online Text Editor includes syntactic highlighting

Microsoft's OneDrive Online Text Editor is a amazingly easy an intuitive. It works with any text file including .txt, .html and .cs (C# Code files) and includes syntactic highlighting for these file types!

You may have missed the fact there is an text editor, since there is no indication of an EDIT option for text files.

There no EDIT in the main menu (at top) and there is no EDIT in the right-click menu (when you select the file). Adding EDIT would be a intuitive UI improvement.

To edit the text file, you just click on it.

Just click on your text file to edit file in the Online Text Editor!
















OneDrive Online Text Editor is basic, but functional enough to make quick changes that you Save and you're done!

It really feels like a true mini-editor, so you can edit your project files online in a snap, and share those files quickly and easily with others on your team.

Simple and efficient, and comes with line numbers and syntactic highlighting! Great job OneDrive developers.

.txt file



















Great feature, example of syntactic highlighting of .HTML document.



















Example of syntactic highlighting of .cs (Microsoft .NET C# XAML) document.

One annoying item, however the main text file name is stripped of its file extension for the text document. For example, readme instead of readme.txt (you have to choose information icon to get the full file name). This can get confusing (see example below) when you are edit mainwindow.xaml.cs and .cs is remove. .xaml files are valid files so hence the confusion.








































Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Using Microsoft OneDrive 2016 as Content Delivery Network (CDN)

For web developers who are mindful of Page Speed scores, finding a free Content Delivery Network (CDN) to load your static content from a cookie-free domain is a nice to have!!!

This is a examination of using Micorosoft OneDrive as a possible CDN. I will test this using
https://onedrive.live.com to hosting a 
ASCIIfy-StarFunv2.gif a 2.06 KB GIF image.  

One caveat off the top is that 
OneDrive is a COOKIE domain and requires authentication to get it's public resources, but that has change as of June 1, 2016 as part of new API change.
In fact, if you use the "Share Link" in OneDrive this uses a cookie to authenticate and will drastically reduce speed to grab the resource, you can read all about that in my old post here.

But the API has change as of June 1, 2016 and now the "Embed Link" uses a different url scheme and still does use a cookie, but it's working much quicker. 

Here's how to get the embed link for a resource on OneDrive. 
































For more information on how to get a link to use in your website page for testing, read my blog entry on Microsoft OneDrive Direct File Download URL Maker.

Now lets examine some network timings from Google Chrome Inspect window.



















Now you notice 4 different timings, and they each have the following URLS


  1. stripped parameters from url
    https://p6ba7a.bn1303.livefilestore.com/y3mApmpUSctgeOuEOS4blUjmbV3QAxw9o2UOzCOi5twGZxPD3pXxa9drxklb-mVgl99kBhaBloBjIwFpZZS0NN503mE4cer1KUrATRxGF-O_WC2r3qoHuVrNyPvsq5XcdcLgjMvkdrSAKXrWjKabagJ6A
  2. Original Embed Link code (Copy the to embed image url in 1st image)

    https://p6ba7a.bn1303.livefilestore.com/y3mApmpUSctgeOuEOS4blUjmbV3QAxw9o2UOzCOi5twGZxPD3pXxa9drxklb-mVgl99kBhaBloBjIwFpZZS0NN503mE4cer1KUrATRxGF-O_WC2r3qoHuVrNyPvsq5XcdcLgjMvkdrSAKXrWjKabagJ6A
    ?width=85&height=85&cropmode=none
  3. Using http instead of https

    http://
    p6ba7a.bn1303.livefilestore.com/y3mApmpUSctgeOuEOS4blUjmbV3QAxw9o2UOzCOi5twGZxPD3pXxa9drxklb-mVgl99kBhaBloBjIwFpZZS0NN503mE4cer1KUrATRxGF-O_WC2r3qoHuVrNyPvsq5XcdcLgjMvkdrSAKXrWjKabagJ6A?width=85&height=85&cropmode=none
  4. redirected from 3 (to https//:)
  5. tried 1 as http:// and resulting in a redirect as well, so insignificant result.

Explanation

  1. Stripping the Embed Link of ?width=85&height=85&cropmode=none, permitted getting the original gif, produced the best results. You'll noticed that image took a swift 226 ms to grab the ASCIIfy-StarFunv2.gif  and that rivals many CDNs!
  2. Using the original Embed link with the ?width....code transformed the gif to a sized jpeg! This nearly double the request time.
  3. Here I attempted to use http:// request and was redirect to 4
  4. Uses https and has simliar timings and equivalent to 2. So no saving using http, always redirects to https

Conclusion


OneDrive can be used as an effective free Content Delivery Network (CDN) to load your static content.