Reasons your DNS-323 won't work with your Xbox 360:

• You need to update the firmware to the latest version (Xbox support was added in firmware version 1.06).
• You have upgraded your firmware and not reset to default settings causing UPnP to stay disabled even when you enable it in the web admin settings.
• You have 'Root' sharing enabled in UPnP.
• Your UPnP directory has filenames & paths longer than 81 characters.
• Your files have special characters in their names.

Following these steps should resolve all of these issues and get your DNS-323 NAS working with your Xbox 360:

Steps for DNS-323:

1. Upgrade to the latest firmware.
1. Download the latest firmware version from the dlink website.
2. Open the downloaded firmware zip and copy the file inside to your desktop.
3. Login to your DNS-323.
4. Select TOOLS from the menu then FIRMWARE.
5. Click Browse and select the firmware file copied to the desktop in part b.
6. Then Click Apply to upload the new firmware and install it. Be patient and follow the prompts as it is possible to break your DNS-323 if it is powered of or reset during this process.
2. Reset to default settings.
1. Select TOOLS from the menu then SYSTEM.
2. Click Save under CONFIGURATION SETTINGS to save a copy of your current DNS-323 settings as they will be wiped in the next step.
3. Click Restore under DEFAULTS. This will cause your DNS-323 to default settings. You might need to use the EasySearch utility to find it again.
4. Log back into your DNS-323.
5. Select TOOLS from the menu then SYSTEM.
6. Click Browse under CONFIGURATION SETTINGS and select the configuration file you saved in step b.
7. Click Load to restore your previous settings.
3. Reorganise your media to fit with the DNS-323 path length and character limitations.
1. Reduce the number of folders and simplify the names of your videos, music and images do not exceed 81 characters in length.
2. When renaming files they should not contain any special characters, to be safe stick with dashes, spaces, letters and numbers.
4. Enable UPnP on the DNS-323.
1. Select ADVANCED then UPnP AV SERVER.
2. Select enable.
3. Un-tick Root.
4. Click Browse and select the medial folder created in step 3.
5. Click Save Settings.
6. Click Refresh and wait for your media to be catalogued, you should only need to do this once as the DNS-323 will automatically catalogue newly added files.
5. Your Xbox should now be able to see folders and files on your DNS-323 when you go to the Video Library, Music Library and Photo Library in the My Xbox menu.

Steps for Xbox 360:

1. Install 'Optional iPod Support' (instructions copied from xbox site for convenience).
1. Go to the Xbox Live area of the Xbox Dashboard and select Xbox Live Marketplace, Game Downloads.
2. Select All Games, Alphabetical List of Games.
3. Select Optional iPod Support twice (once from Xbox Live Marketplace and again from the Xbox Guide screen), then Confirm Download.
4. Once your download is complete, select Done and return to the Xbox Dashboard (press BACK or B three times).
2. Note that not all video and audio formats are supported by Xbox 360.
1. The xbox site has a Video Playback FAQ which lists supported formats.
   
2. You can re-encode your videos to work with your Xbox 360 using a tool like Handbrake.

References

D-Link Forum - Bad Characters

D-Link Forum - Path & Filename Length Limitations

D-Link Forum - Codec Issues

Google Docs lets you really easily create web forms, which are great for surveys, site feedback and more (and importantly free). However responding to submitted forms can be a little more difficult as your data just ends up in a big spreadsheet.

Luckily you can use a spreadsheet formula to easily create a 'Reply' email link for each submitted form using these steps:

1. Create a google form. Make sure that you create a field on your form to collect an email address.
2. Open your forms spreadsheet and select the very top cell of an empty column to place the 'Reply' links in.
3. Insert =HYPERLINK("mailto:"&TRIM(B1),"Reply") into the cell (bold text only) replacing the text 'B1' with the top cell of the column that contains the email addresses from your form.
4. Click the letter at the top of the column to select all of that column's cells and press CTRL + D to fill the formula down to all the cells.
5. Go to the view menu and select 'List View' to make the links easily clickable.

Unfortunately you cannot automatically populate the subject and body of the email. Whilst google spreadsheet supports 'mailto:' urls it doesn't support the '?subject=' and '&body=' extensions.

This year for Christmas I made an 'Interactive' Christmas Display. It is a simple JavaScript web page that lets you select and place animated gif's on the page. We projected it on the wall as virtual Christmas decorations at the office. Passersby are free to add new images to the scene as they please.

 You can try it out or use it in your office:

1. Go to robotification.com/InteractiveChristmas. 
2. Move your mouse to the top of the page to see the menu.
3. Click on an image to select it.
4. Then click on the page to place the image.

WebScreenSaver displays web pages in full screen as your screen saver on multiple monitors (download at bottom). It has the following features:

• Interactive mode.
• Pressing the escape key allows you to interact (scroll & click links) with the displayed web pages. Interactive mode will turn of again after 5 minutes of inactivity or you can press escape again to re-enable it (eg. When you want to leave the screen saver).
• Support for unlimited monitors (in theory)
• Fading every 5 minutes.
  
• Every 5 minutes the screen fades to white for a few seconds to help prevent screen burn in (which apparently effects LCD monitors as well as old CRT ones). 
  
• can specify a URL on the internet or your local machine for each monitor

Anyone downloading the screen saver should note:

• The screen saver cannot be used for the domain/login screen, due to the fact that accessing the internet requires you to be logged in.
• The screen saver is for Windows.
  
• If you use this with more than four monitors I would love to see a photo ( email it to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ).
  

Download (Source and ready to use .scr)

WebScreenSaver.zip

Please note: You will need to have the .NET framework installed for this to work. 

This screen saver is something I had wanted to make for a while, I thought it would be a great way to unobtrusively keep an eye on google news or server up/down status. Making the screen saver was a great learning experience for me as I mainly code ASP.NET, so I got to play with Windows Presentation Foundation for the first time. I found that WPF databinding isn't quite as easy as in ASP.NET but on the plus side it does force you to create proper view objects. Also some of the animation features in WPF don't work quite so well for the whole screen (fading is a little jerky).