Ijams request system not working properly..

[Steve Lynch]

Ok, so I have a d-link router just to use as a hotspot so I can call it karaoke, and folks know what to join. Everyone with an iPhone was able to use the system.. Anyone with a palm pre, trek, blackberry, or laptop was not...

Are we stuck with just apple devices, or can the other 4/5 of the world access our list also??

I tried router, ad hoc, and had no success either way.. They can pull an I.p., they're on the right subnet, etc.. The host name just won't resolve. Http://karaoke.local.:12345/


Any suggestions??

Thanks!

[Sedge]

At a guess, it's partly because the apple devices are using bonjour or something, because I don't think any browser would recognize that address as you wrote it.

try http://karaoke:12345/

or (not sure why you'd actually configure it this way, but in case you did)

http://karaoke.local:12345/

note that you have a period after .local - this would be enough to cause the address to not resolve. Also note that your results will vary based on the browser their phone is using - Opera, RIM OS's old and new browser, and whatever Palm or WinCE has running will vary quite a bit. If you haven't yet, bring it up on a Windows laptop in Firefox and/or IE to get an idea of what it is *supposed* to look like. I have gotten it to come up in Opera Mini on my blackberry, but I don't remember it being very usable, especially for doing anything more than searches.

Also keep in mind that the phone devices need to actually be using the local wifi network you create, not their normal data over cell phone signal. My blackberry Curve doesn't do that, I had to do some more trickery to get it to work at home, but wouldn't be able to easily get it working anywhere else.

At a guess, I'd say that the development necessary to create a similar app for other cell phone OS's is far beyond the scope of this project, but if anyone wants to try, I'd also bet that Dave would be willing to give them whatever they need. It's inaccurate to refer to it as the other 4/5, because we're really only talking about other smart phones that have wifi, whose market share is likely less than 50% when compared to the market share of iPhone/Touch phones. Anything else would be apples and oranges. However, it may be a decent idea to support a WAP version of the current web interface that more wifi-enabled mobile phones will be able to use.

The only other option is to start playing with bluetooth and/or java, which bring all kinds of security issues and memory holes in to play.

>>Sedge

[Steve Lynch]

Hmmm. Ok... I copied the address directly from the bonjour tab in safari. It includes the period. I didn't configure itthat way, kjams did...

[Sedge]

Quite right. Bonjour does things a little different than regular old http. The short story is that with an http address like this, you are trying to get DNS resolution of a machine on your local network. Windows hides this using "Network Neighborhood" which isn't actually direct DNS, but something more similar to Bonjour. Other OS's do different things, but the fallback is good old DNS. Your DNS "server" is technically the d-link router box, which will at least store the machine name of everything connected to it as a viable option. Getting any device to "see" that option is simply a matter of giving whatever protocol (in your case, http) an address that can be sent to the router and then, well, routed. Bonjour skips this step, broadcasts all over the network that it exists at a location, and then tells everything else how to get there.

So, assuming you have set your kJams box/lappy to be named "karaoke", then your router will at least have a "karaoke" entry in its DNS tables, and be able to route traffic accordingly. If it is named "karaoke.local" then it will likely have at least an entry for "karaoke" and possibly one for "karaoke.local" as well.

An interesting hiccup in all this - in the underpinnings of DNS server protocol, technically everything starts with a period, and is sometimes backwards to what we normally see - however, web browsers are far enough removed from this (using http) that actually using addresses this way would not be understandable to a browser. Java is a bit different - it still uses the old way to address things - hence why in the bowels of your Library, you'll see a lot of com.apple.--- stuff

Ok, that wasn't really the short version. But I already gave you that. Seriously, try http://karaoke:12345/

>>Sedge

[Steve Lynch]

Wow! Great read, and great advice... it seems to have solved the problem on the laptops at least.. will have to wait to try other phone browsers..

Thanks a million Sedge!

[Steve Lynch]

Dave, Allow me.....

[dave]

Umm, you're allowed. But what am I allowing, exactly?

[Steve Lynch]

You always follow up a post with your little sunglasses guy when you're satisfied that a post was relatively resolved.. I was satisfied, so I made the sunglasses guy for you..

Forget it, I was just being cute..

[dave]

Oh, okay. You're cute.

[Brendan]

I have always had problem connecting to kjams using the ijams app. Sometimes it connects but usually i can not get it to connect. It takes a long time to find the venues, like two minutes, then when i try to choose the venue, it says "Error unable to connect". Should i try to re install ijams on my iphone? I think i have everything else setup right

[Sedge]

How are you broadcasting your internet? I've noticed after setting up an ad-hoc wireless network on my mac, then trying to connect a kiosk machine to it, it takes *forever* to actually connect fully and get an IP - if your phone is going through the same hell, I'm not surprised it's timing out.

However, if both your machine and the iPhone are connecting to a pre-existing wireless network off a normal wireless router, then it should work fine. Of course, if you're trying to connect to it over EDGE (AT&T's cell phone data network) and back through a router to your kJams machine, again you may have some lag that may cause timeouts.

Oh, while I mentioned it, anyone know any way to speed up connections to Mac ad-hoc networks? (THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH KJAMS - MAKING THAT CLEAR NOW)

>>Sedge

[dave]

more info from Kyle:

It is possible for this to happen on a wifi network where the router has been configured to partition the connected devices so that they cannot communicate with each other. This is common in public wifi hotspots where the provider does not want to take liability for inter-device snooping/hacking/whatever.

The other possibility is that firewall software on the Mac is preventing Bonjour packets from being exchanged between kJams and iJams. Could either of these two situations be causing the issue?

[MinnieStrone]

Wow! Great read, and great advice... it seems to have solved the problem on the laptops at least.. will have to wait to try other phone browsers..

Thanks a million Sedge!

WAP version of the current web interface that more wifi-enabled mobile phones will be able to use.

[dave]

umm, what?

[DeusExMachina]

Another solution for some of you might, of course, be to get a domain name and host your library via that domain name.
Yet another, that I have been experimenting with, is to have kJams move your library files to a dropbox folder, and then permit access to that folder publicly. You can then have the page accessible via your Dropbox URL.