Working Cisco AnyConnect, CISCO IP Communicator on VMWare on MAC OSX LION Host, WINDOWS 7 Guest using broadband datacard

This one was probably one of the most challenging ones i have faced so far.. I am not a networking expert by any sorts but this issue specifically has taught me stuff i don't wanna even know..


I hope people reading this post will find it useful to help them in following situations:

1. If you run VMWare or Parallels on a host MAC OSX machine and have trouble running CISCO AnyConnect VPN on the guest WINDOWS 7/Vista/XP etc. connected via a broadband data card (which only support VPN via PPP as detailed in my previous post).
2. Since there is no CISCO IP Communicator for MAC, this is probably your last option to have CISCO IP Communicator run on a MAC OSX machine via the guest WINDOWS operating system after connecting through VPN to your corporate network.
3. The other party can't hear you via CISCO IP Communicator (the whole debate around NAT Vs. BRIDGED connections in VMWARE/Parallels)

So how did i end up writing this.. Well recently got a ATT datacard and had to struggle through to get CISCO AnyConnect VPN working on MAC OSX (LION). My previous post details out how to get that working. Now once you get that working you still can't use your corporate IP phone (especially CISCO IP Phone) since they don't have a MAC OSX version even after promising it for several years. Don't know if its APPLE or CISCO but what ever..

So what are your options... I guess the only reasonable one is to run CISCO IP Communicator on the Windows guest operating system either using VMWARE or Parallels. Almost everyone who owns a MAC, has WINDOWS OS running on it for variety of reasons beyond this post..

Now for CISCO IP Communicator to run on the guest WINDOWS OS on host MAC OSX, you most probably need to connect via VPN to your corporate network. The challenges you face there are plenty.

1. There is this whole issue of how VMWARE/Parallels uses the network connections i.e. NAT, Bridged or HOST. You will find several posts talking about that it works only in BRIDGED mode but the challenge with BRIDGED mode is that it only works with an ethernet/wifi adapter i.e. if you are connected via either one of them. So if you are using a USB modem or data card, you are pretty much out of luck.
2. The biggest issue with NAT is that the person on the other side of IP Communicator can't hear you. There is some networking issue that i can't seem to understand.
3. You can try various things like Internet Sharing in MAC OSX, and even then can't get the CISCO AnyConnect VPN to work. Believe me i tried and couldn't get it working.. 
4. Any who..Your best bet is to figure out a way to get Cisco AnyConnect working on the guest WINDOWS OS and then connect the CISCO Ip Communicator. You will not have to deal with this BRIDGED/NAT BS either if you follow the steps below. 

So the steps that i followed to get this working are below:

1. Connect your data card to MAC OSX the normal way and let it connect.
2. Start VMWARE/Parallels and connect the network adapter in it so that you have internet access.
3. The key to getting this working at least on WINDOWS 7 is the BFE (Base Filtering Engine) service. Somehow for me the service was altogether missing. I tried researching but no luck. Some noble soul had posted the registry settings to create the BFE entry and i am attaching it below.
4. Once you run the registry file, it will create a BFE entry in the following location --> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\BFE
5. You will now need to open regedit.exe as administrator and go to the above entry and modify the permissions of the BFE folder in the registry to allow full access to the user operating the HOST & GUEST. You can also try giving full access to "everyone" user.
6. Now go to My Computer > Manage > Services and start the BFE service. It should start without any ACCESS DENIED errors if you have done step 5 above.
7. Now start CISCO AnyConnect VPN and it will connect to your corporate network in a jiffy.
8. You will still have the network adapter in VMWARE/Parallels connected and able to access the internet. If you need proxy, make changes accordingly.
9. Start CISCO IP Communicator and that too will connect without issues. Make a test call to yourself just to make sure that you can hear both sides :)..

This is all you need to do to get this complicated stuff working. Its working for me.. Hope it does for you guys too... Happy calling!!

BFE Registry Files for WINDOWS 7

Wireless Data Cards (Sierra Wireless 313U) and Cisco AnyConnect VPN - Solved!!

Just got a brand new AT&T USBConnect Momentum 4G LTE data card by Sierra Wireless. Setup was straight forward and i was connected in no time. The ATT Communications Manager application installs by itself (MAC/Win7).


I started playing with the card and the first thing i tried was my corporate VPN via Cisco AnyConnect. What do i find???? No matter what i tried, restart, reinstall, Sierra Wireless Air Card Watcher, nothing would work. It would go as far as the last step and give me the following error


"The VPN client was unable to modify the ip forwarding table...."
"AnyConnect was not able to establish a connection to the specified secure gateway..."


There was no way for me to connect to the Cisco VPN using the data card. So i tried investigating online. People talk about various ways they have tried but no luck. There is an inherent problem with the security in Cisco and the way the data is handled via a wireless card using WWAN. After wasting a lot of time and effort, i stumbled across few posts which talk about using the Native Interface for connection or have some sort of NDIS drivers. Being a MAC user, it was a nightmare to find any drivers.. let alone the setups and configuration instructions. I even called AT&T and got the usual answer about the lack of support for VPN and especially MAC OSX (Hope APPLE is listening...) and was asked to contact my local cop orate IT.


Started playing around and finally got VPN to work on my data card. I think the approach is device agnostic so should work with any data card on probably any operating system as long as you know how to go about creating a Dial-Up Networking (DUN) interface. I am mentioning the steps for MAC OSX LION 10.7.4 but same steps can be followed for WIN7 or LINUX.

1. The first and foremost thing is that you make sure that your initial install of the card doesn't have issues and installs the following network interfaces
• direct IP (Its just the name of the interface at least on my MAC) - This is the basic network interface required by the AirCard Watcher or ATT Communications Manager.
• The second but most important is the "AirCard 313U" interface which is basically a USB modem network interface. This is what we will use for setting up the DUN.
2. One important thing that i noticed is that the drivers that came on the card are actually the only ones (at least for MAC OSX) which install the USB Modem driver and are embedded into the ATT Communications Manager that it installs. If you download a version of ATT Communications Manager from AT&T's website, you may be out of luck and you may not get the Modem Driver installed.
3. Now if you don't wanna do VPN, you can continue to use the ATT Communications Manager utility to connect.
4. For VPN, you need to go to Mac OSX Network Preferences. You will use the same approach for any OS. All you need to do is to identify the USB Modem Network Interface.
5. Once you have located the USB modem network interface, enter the following settings on the Network Interface.
• Telephone Number - *99#
• User Nam & Password - Optional. If your network provider has provided you one, please use it otherwise leave it blank.
• Under Advanced Settings
• Select the Modem Driver - Sierra Wireless (or your specific vendor)
• Model - GSM or CDMA
• APN - broadband or ISP.CINGULAR (These are only for ATT. You can find your network provider APN from the AirCard Settings)
• CID = 1
• Proxy - You can setup proxies if required by your corporate.
6. Save the settings and make sure that the ATT Communications Manager is not running and is not connected using the "direct IP" interface.
7. Click connect and you will be connected to the internet via DUN (Dial-Up Networking).
8. Start Cisco AnyConnect VPN and try connecting to your corporate VPN and there you have it.. A working VPN with no degradation of speed ( i validated using speedtest) on a wireless 4G LTE Data Card.

Oracle Apps on MAC OSX!

Great post on how to work with Oracle Apps on MAC OSX. Its pretty smooth and works better than on firefox and IE.


http://marinussnyman.blogspot.com/2008/07/oracle-e-business-suite-on-mac.html

Transferring Thunderbird/Firefox profile to MAC OSX Lion

A novice user of 11.6 " Mac Book Air and a survivor of couple hard drive crashes on Toshiba Portege, i was faced with the challenge to migrate all my emails, profile settings etc from Windows 7 to Mac OSX Lion. Tried several websites and no help. Thought of trying something and it worked like a charm..


So if you are struggling to transfer your mail account settings and locally stored emails from Win thunderbird to Mac thunderbird, below is the step by step guide.

1. Thunderbird installed on Mac OS, installs in the following directory - /Users//Library/Thunderbird/profiles. If you want to explore the directory, try MAC + SHIFT + G and type in the complete path. Finder doesn't show certain directories.
2. This is where the thunderbird profile is stored. Copy the profile from the windows machine and paste it in the profiles folder on MAC.
3. Rename the existing folder to profile.orig and change the new profile you copied to the profile name created by thunderbird which you just renamed above without the .orig.
4. Go to thunderbird in offline mode and all your account settings etc will be available in MAC.
5. Now you can change the local folder to the folder where you wanna store the downloaded emails by going to Tools -> Account Settings --> Local Folder or you can keep the existing one. Close thunderbird.
6. Copy all the locally stored email files from windows machine over to the local folder identified in step 5.
7. Restart thunderbird in offline mode and you will have all your emails available for viewing.
8. You can restart in online mode and start using thunderbird for managing your emails.

You can follow the same profile copy approach for firefox. So far i am happy with Safari as my preferred browser but if you have VMWare for WIN7 you can use the same approach to copy the profiles and you will have the entire data set with saved passwords etc.

How to Fix "Itunes cannot read the contents of the iphone"

You might be faced with this situation at times when you have a jailbroken iPhone/iPod Touch. You might have played around with some CYDIA apps, most notably the apps which try to modify the contents of iTunes Database File. One of those apps is MewSeek which lets you add the songs to the iTunes library directly from your iPhone/iPod Touch. Well sometimes it corrupts the following two files iTunesDB and iTunesCDB.

You will get the following message on iTunes “Itunes cannot read the contents of the iphone. Go to the summary tab in IPhone preferences and click restore to restore this iphone to factory settings”.

If you didn’t Jailbreak and you are in this situation, you have no choice but to do a full system restore on your iDevice and rely on a backup. But if you have jailbroken your iDevice, you can use iPhoneBrowser or iFunBox to explore the contents and fix it yourself without doing a restore. You might have to copy your songs/ringtones/videos back again but you still have everything else. The Songs etc are there on the device its just that the DB files are corrupted. So using iPhoneBrowser or iFunBox navigate to the following directory

/var/mobile/Media/iTunes_Control

Now within the above directory you will find two more directories

Music

Under Music, delete the following directory - itunes_db_checked

iTunes

Under iTunes, delete the following two files - iTunesDB and iTunesCDB

Disconnect the iDevice and reconnect. iTunes will detect it fine and you may or may not have your media. Try the option below which might help with just reusing the backed up DB files. You can also use iPhoneBackupExtractor to get the same DB files and see if they help.

FYI - You may try copying the iTunesDB and iTunesCDB from tmp folder back to iTunes directory to see if your songs/ringtones/videos come back

This is all you need to get your iDevice back in shape without a restore.

Interesting Pic - Godfather

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Change iPhone/iPod iTunes Backup Directory from default C Drive

If you have portable external storage (1TB) or plus, why would you waste precious C (OS Partition) space with backups etc. Apple thinks that we shouldn't be allowed to change the backup directory.. Dunno why?? if you can change the directory where all music etc is stored, why not the backups.. There is a quick and easy way to do this though. Esp with Win Vista, Win 7. All you need to do is create a SYMLINK for the backup directory using standard MS utility "MKLINK". Below are the steps.

1. Make sure iTunes us not running.
   
2. You will need ADMINISTRATOR access to your computer. Open START and in the search type CMD. Right Click on the CMD.EXE and click "Run as administrator"
3. You will see the command prompt pop up. Change the directory to the iTunes Backup Directory which on WINDOWS 7 is "C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync"
4. Cut the entire backup directory and paste it on your portable external drive. Say "H:\iPhone\backup". Make sure that there are no spaces etc in the new directory name on the portable drive.
   
5. After the cut/paste is complete, in the Command Prompt Window, type the following command "mklink /D backup H:\iPhone\backup"
6. This will create a symlink called backup in the iTunes backup directory pointing to your portable drive directory.
7. Open iTunes and connect your iPhone or iPod Touch and perform a backup. All the data will be stored on the portable drive from now on. You can still click on the backup SYMLINK created on your C drive to access the backup.
   

How to Verify if an Email Address Is Real or Fake and Find the Person Behind an Email Address

Below are two posts which will help you narrow down the search for a fake email. One is a LifeHacker post and the other one is by the author Amit Agarwal on his website..

How to Verify if an Email Address Is Real or Fake


Find the Person Behind an Email Address

Vodafone/Airtel India Free iPhone Tethering & Internet access

Well i had to figure this one out cauz it was giving be a lot of grief. It was easy but i somehow didn't put 2 n 2 together for couple days. I think it should work on all cell operators which let you access internet via the phone. I am using it on the iPhone with a Vodafone Sim. Earlier there used to be a hack which will let you access the internet free of cost but i think both vodafone & airtel have patched those holes. Vodafone India offers a 2 GB plan for ₹ 95. If you have an unlocked phone you must have TetherMe from CYDIA or MyWi. Also if the APN Editing is enabled you can directly enter the settings below our use the iPhoneConfiguration utility to create a ".mobileconfig" file with the APN settings and connect your iPhone and install the mobileconfig profile. The settings are below. Now all you need to do is to enable tethering on iPhone and connect it to your PC. After connecting go to the proxy settings of your browser on your computer and enter the following in the proxy address & port

Proxy Address - 10.10.1.100
Port - 9401

The only catch though is that you will only be able to access WEB. VPN, IMAP, POP etc i.e. anything other than Web might have a problem because its blocked by Vodafone/Airtel unless you subscribe to the VMC i.e VM Connect for all that and for that you will have to pay extra which is rediculous.. However i must say that if you have a SSL VPN system like CISCO AnyConnect, that will work with this setup. Also all other protocols will work once you are into VPN. You will have to change the Proxy to your work proxy for everything else to work once in VPN.

Below is the XML generated by iPhoneConfiguration utility as a .mobileconfig. You can copy paste the XML and rename the file to a .mobileconfig and install on your iPhone as well.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>PayloadContent</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>PayloadContent</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>DefaultsData</key>
<dict>
<key>apns</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>apn</key>
<string>portalnmms</string>
<key>proxy</key>
<string>10.10.1.100</string>
<key>proxyPort</key>
<integer>9401</integer>
</dict>
</array>
</dict>
<key>DefaultsDomainName</key>
<string>com.apple.managedCarrier</string>
</dict>
</array>
<key>PayloadDescription</key>
<string>Provides customization of carrier Access Point Name.</string>
<key>PayloadDisplayName</key>
<string>Advanced Settings</string>
<key>PayloadIdentifier</key>
<string>vodafone.apn.in.apn1</string>
<key>PayloadOrganization</key>
<string>Vodafone</string>
<key>PayloadType</key>
<string>com.apple.apn.managed</string>
<key>PayloadUUID</key>
<string>CF9B2C59-5EC1-42D5-93FC-5B4999599946</string>
<key>PayloadVersion</key>
<integer>1</integer>
</dict>
</array>
<key>PayloadDescription</key>
<string>Vodafone India APN</string>
<key>PayloadDisplayName</key>
<string>Vodafone IN</string>
<key>PayloadIdentifier</key>
<string>vodafone.apn.in</string>
<key>PayloadOrganization</key>
<string>Vodafone</string>
<key>PayloadRemovalDisallowed</key>
<false/>
<key>PayloadType</key>
<string>Configuration</string>
<key>PayloadUUID</key>
<string>45D0FE6C-94C1-44CD-9863-E366CDB4B02F</string>
<key>PayloadVersion</key>
<integer>1</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

Jailbreak iOS 4.1 on all iDevices using GeoHot's BootRom Exploit LimeRa1n !

GeoHot has caused quite a stir among the JB community by releasing his pwn4life exploit which JBs all iDevices to date. He released it well before Chronic Dev-team could release Shatter exploit which would only JB iPhone4. Still the unlock is not available but hopefully someone is working on the next release of UltraSn0w which will unlock the 4.1 bootrom and the new baseband 05.14.02. Users candownload LimeRa1n from the following website which is the untethered version due to some amazing work by Comex the guru of userland JB (the infamous jailbreakme.com)

LimeRa1n by GeoHot & Comex

GeoHot has registered another domain which is prompting rumors about a possible unlock solution for all iPhones. Its codenamed LimeSn0w

Enable Multitasking & Wallpaper on iPod Touch 2G & iPhone 3G with iOS4 !!

With iOS UserLand JB out and all thanks to COMEX & Dev Team, you can now manually modify plist file to enable MultiTasking & WallPaper on iPod Touch 2G & iPhone 3G.

Links for JB are below

Comex JailBreakMe
ModMyI Mirror Link

Now all you need is iPhoneBrowser and go to the following directory

"/System/Library/CoreService/SpringBoard.app/"

Save the N72AP.plist on your computer. Download PList File Editor free from iPodRobot website

PList File Editor

Install PList File Editor and open the N72AP.plist file and add the following key/value pairs

For Multitasking Add the following

<key>multitasking</key>
<true>

For Wallpaper Add the following

<key>homescreen-wallpaper</key>
</true>

Save the changes to the .plist file and upload it on the iPod Touch or iPhone via iPhoneBrowser in the same directory i.e. "/System/Library/CoreService/SpringBoard.app/"

Restart iPhone/iPod Touch and you will have both feature.

To Check the WallPaper navigate to Settings > Wallpaper and you will get an option of setting the wallpaper for homescreen & lock screen

To Check Multi Tasking, double press the HOME Button and it will show all the apps which are currently in background. You can click each app (press & hold HOME) and it will let you kill that app. By default and app that is closed goes into background.

Restore Selectively to iPhone instead of a Backup Restore using iTunes

Most of the times when you restore, you may not want to restore to a backup which may have had apps, and other junk which you don't want. All you want is selective stuff like Address Bood, SMS, Book Marks etc. Well Apple gave you no way to achieve this. Either you get everything or nothing. This is a big nuisance when you don't want everything esp any app that caused your phone to crash or not boot at all. Well now there is a way. Follow the steps below and you will be all set.. All of the steps below require the iPhone/iPod Touch to be JB.

1. Download iPhoneBackupExtractor from This Link. You can either buy this software of use the trial version which will let you extract certain files manually. Just google for a Full version if you can't live with the trial version.
2. This software will identify all the backups you have from iTunes and will let you selectively open a specific backup and extract certain files like AddressBook.sqlitedb & AddressBookImages.sqlitedb or sms.db.
3. This software will save these files on your computer
4. Now open iPhoneBrowser. You can download it from This Link
5. For AddressBook go to /var/mobile/Library/AddressBook and copy the addressbook files saved using iPhoneBackupExtractor. For SMS go to /var/mobile/Library/SMS and copy the SMS files saved using iPhoneBackupExtractor.
6. Sometimes you might have an issue syncing contacts using iTunes and Google Contacts, use OPENSSH in iPhone using CYDIA, get the iPhone/iPod Touch on WiFi and SSH into the phone using PUTTY from your computer and do a CHMOD 0777 on the addressbook files.

Hope this helps

Oracle Forms Display Issue with Laptop on Battery..

This turned out to be a simple fix. Everytime i used to unplug the power from my laptop, oracle applications (11i, R12) both used to act abnormally. if you clicked on a Form or a menu or Function, the refresh was not correct. It was as if you didn't even perform the action. If you did an ALT-TAB and switch back and forth from another application to Oracle Apps, it would then refresh. I struggled and thought may be it was something to do with the Power Settings etc.. But no, it just turned out to be the Refresh Rate of the monitor/laptop screen. Just make it to 60Hz and you will be all set without any issues.

VISTA/Windows 7

Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization\Display\Screen Resolution

Click on Advanced Settings > Monitor

Change the Screen Refresh Rate to 60Hz instead of default 40 Hz.

Record Live Streams & Radio on iPhone/iPod Touch !!

Another useful tool for a heavily protected OS. If you want to record live streams, radio or any stream or even podcast on iPhone, you can now do that using Pocket Tunes. Pocket Tunes now comes bundled with all codecs for almost all formats for all streams. You can add your custom URLs even if the standard search doesn't find the URL or radio station you are looking for. For you to download the recording (which is saved as a .AAC file) you obviously need to jailbreak and just use iPhoneBrowser and navigate to /var/mobile/Applications/Documents/PtRecordings. Below are the links to PocketTunes & iPhoneBrowser.

On a side note PocketTunes has this new AACPlus codec which i have still not managed to get because the link via the app to itunes is broken or maybe iTunes is no longer carrying the codec. if anyone finds it please let me/us know..

PocketTunes iPhone APP

iPhoneBrowser

AT&T Tethering finally working on iPhone 3GS 3.1.3 Latest Bootrom..

As usual this was another one which took forever to find. After the Spirit Jailbreak for iPhone OS 3.1.3 was out, everyone started searching for the tethering options. The SinFull "Enable Tethering" via Cydia didn't work anymore since they were compatible only with 3.1.2. The only option was to go via MyWi App available on CYDIA. The new feature on MyWi is to enable tether via WiFi as well as USB. Now MyWi also has an option called "Auto Fix Tethering". Try that and it will bring back the Tether Option under Settings > General > Network and will enable it by default. Now you don't even have to start MyWi to have tethering. You can download MyWi from Sinfuliphone Repo after adding it to CYDIA.

Sinfuliphone Repo

iPhone or iPod Touch 3.1.3 Jaibreak via Spirit Userland Jailbrak is Available !!!!!

iPhone or iPod Touch 3.1.3 Jaibreak via Spirit Userland Jailbrak is Available !!!!! Download it from Comex Website correctly named as SPIRITJB.COM

Best Free Media Converter - Any Format to Any Format of Audio, Video & Images

Stumbled across yet another great find. I have always struggled to convert media from one format to another. There are professional paid softwares out there which can do this but none of them do everything in one. Also most of them are a big resource CPU, MEMORY, IO hog. I found this Free Software called FormatFactory and its just amazing. It will let you convert from any media file format to any one you desire. Its especially great if you have mobile devices that play certain formats or if you don't have all the codecs on your computer, this piece of software can be of great help. Check it out and post your reviews of what you think.

Format Factory Download Link

Download iPhone Visual Voicemail to computer

I think Lifehacker had a post about the same but for those who didn't find it, i am just posting it. You need to jaibreak your iPhone and then download iPhoneBrowser and go to the following Directory "/private/var/mobile/Library/Voicemail". Copy the .AMR files to your computer and you are all set...

MS Exchange Calendar on Thunderbird with Lightning

Finally figured out how to integrate the Microsoft Exchange Calendar with Thunderbird using the Lightning Add-on. There is no clean way to do this but whatever i am going to mention below at least works and lets you treat the Exchange Calendar as a CalDAV Server, so you can very well imagine what all you can do with it.

1. Download DAVMail Gateway from this LINK. DAVMail is a sourceforge project which basically uses the OWA to get all the data you need i.e. Mail (SMTP/POP), LDAP and most important, the proprietary Calendar Data
2. Install DAVMail and what it will do is basically install a server on your computer which will interact with the Exchange Server and manage creation of new events, accept events and the whole 9 yards.
3. All you need to do is provide the OWA (Outlook Web Access) URL to the settings page and it will ask you for outlook Username & password.
4. Here is a Link from the Wiki page on DAVMail for Step by Step guidance for Thundebird Setups.

UPDATE

Just found out a great add-on for Lightning & Thunderbird called "Exchange 2007/2010 Calendar & Tasks Provider"

The Link is below

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/exchange-20072010-calendar-/?src=ss

The setup is pretty straight forward. Follow the screenshots on the page and you are all set. Just make sure that the URL you use is "https:///ews/exchange.asmx" and provide the user id and password and you are all set.

How To Play StreamTheWorld Radio Streams on SONOS, Windows Media Player or any media Player

Guys this was a tricky one and took a lot of time to figure out. I'm on Windows 7 and use a widget call MiniRadio. Its a nice add-on where you can configure all your online streams in a playlist fashion. Almost a month ago, some of the streams which were either .wmp or .asx or .m3u stopped playing. Finally figured out that the radio stations migrated to this new "StreamTheWorld" service. This messed up everything for a lot of stations because you cannot play them on any media player because first of all, the streams are all encrypted in the Flash Player which is proprietary stuff by stream the world. So now you can't get the direct http address of the stream which you can just try in WMP or VLC or as a matter of fact any media player. Also it affects all players like SONOS who reply on the HTTP URL. So for n00bies the flash URL looks something like below..

http://player.streamtheworld.com/liveplayer.php?CALLSIGN=ARNCITY

This is for City 101.6 Fm Streaming out of Dubai..Good channel and i hated to let it go and me having to open the flash player to listen to it..

For them to play you will have to download some unique useless flash media players or directly stream from radiotime or stations website as another browser popup. It was a nuance and thought that there should be some way to find out the actual url of the stream. I tried several URL snooping, flash downloading tools but nothing worked.

Then while i was playing around with WunderRadio app on iPhone, i saw that most of these streams allowed "play in background" feature on WunderRadio. Now what that does is, it opens up the stream in Safari and its an HTML page since iPhone doesn't support Flash.. Good for us right.. yeah at-least in this scenario :-).. Now what i did was i copied the URL WunderRadio opened in Safari sent myself and email so that i can open the URL in FireFox on my Laptop.

The URL looks like this

http://wunderradio.wunderground.com/support/wunderradio/web_play.php?version=1.9&device=iPhone&skin=bluesunset&wuiId=rt:14329

This link is for Radio City 101.6 streaming out of Dubai. For other Streams, all you need to do is find the last numbers in the URL (which in my case are 96716) for your stream and do as below.

There is now an easier way to get the RT Number for the station by just using FIREFOX.

Based on Rich's comment, i went ahead and looked up the station on RADIOTIME's website

RadioTime Website

Hover your mouse over the URL of the station and below in FIREFOX you will see something like

http://radiotime.com/station/s_18760/KFH-FM_987.aspx

The number following s_ is the RT Number. Use that number and replace it in the following URL and you guys can get the URL yourself without asking me for it :-)

1. Now when you open the link on firefox, you will get an alert to install missing plugin. FireFox cannot find the plugin so don't worry.
2. All you do is Right Click on the page and click "View Page Info". Go to the "Media" tab and you will find and ADDRESS of type "EMBED".
3. PS: Since radiotime is now owned by TuneIn, get the the stream URL from TuneIn, view page source using firefox, and search for "TuneIn.payload =". You will find "http://stream.radiotime.com/listen.stream". Copy the entire string in firefox and you will get a page with the MP3 URL. Search for "MP3","URL", and the HTTP URL next to it will be the URL you can use for streaming using your favorite media player.
4. Click on the Address and below you will see the Location which you can copy.
5. Copy the URL and again paste it in FireFox. It will look like this "http://wunderradio.wunderground.com/support/wunderradio/m3u/m3umaker.m3u?action=m3u&wuiId=rt:14329"
6. When you open the above URL, Firefox will ask you to save the file "m3umaker.m3u". Save it on your desktop and open it in Notepad. You will see the HTTP or whatever protocol for the stream.
7. For the Radio City 101.6 Streaming out of Dubai the URLs are below..
   
8. http://208.92.52.50:80/ARNCITYAACCMP3
   http://208.92.52.50:3690/ARNCITYAACCMP3
   http://208.92.52.50:443/ARNCITYAACCMP3
9. Now the next challenge is how to play encrypted ACC on Media Player or on Windows. These streams will play fine using iTunes but for me it was more about how to get this working with my MiniRadio gadget which is an extension of the Windows Media Player.
10. Figured out that there is a plugin for Windows Media Player to play these kind of streams. Its a free plugin by a company called ORBAN which you can download here "http://www.orban.com/plugin/".
11. If you can't find the plugin anymore, download it from my rapidshare link below
12. ORBAN RapidShare Link
    
13. Download the essential codec pack from "http://www.free-codecs.com/K_lite_codec_pack_download.htm" followed by the ORBAN plugin and you will be able to play the AAC and AAC PLUS streams directly in Windows Media Player..
14. Now For Windows Media Player to play the AAC & AAC+ streams using the Orban Plugin, you will need to change the protocol from HTTP to ICYX.. So for the HTTP URLs above, the Windows Media Player link would be something like this "icyx://208.92.52.50:80/ARNCITYAACCMP3"
    

So finally i have my MiniRadio gadget playing the AAC and AAC+ streams which StreamTheWorld stations are playing.. I hope this will be helpful for people who are searching for the same. This is a big deal for people who own players like SONOS etc which need a HTTP url because they can't play flash. Let me know if anyone has any issues and i'll see if i can help out with the URL stream... Cheers and happy listening..

PS : Note to all users who have followed the steps above and the .m3u file from RadioTime's website says "Stream Not Supported". This means that StreamTheWorld or the Radio Station has blocked the access. I'll continue to find another way, till then you will have to use the flash based player for all those streams.

The new way to play the non supported streams is mentioned below

1. Download the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack from the following link "K-Lite Mega Codec Pack"
2. This codec will install a FLV/SWF/Flash Player plugin for the Windows Media Player.
3. Now Go to the Radio Time Website and find the radio station you want to listen to
4. Click on the LISTEN link. You can also go the the station website and do the same.
5. Make sure you are doing this in FIREFOX.
6. Also make sure you have No-SCRIPT plugin installed and is set to block flash streams
7. Now when you click on the LISTEN link, a new window pops up with blocked SWF/FLV player.
8. Right Click on the FLASH/SWF blocked link and click "Copy Link Location". This will copy the swf/flv/flash URL
9. No go to Windows Media player of your favourite Windows 7, Windows Vista Gadget and press CTRL+U to play a URL and paste the URL. The Stream will play seamlessly without any issues. You can try the same for all other streams as well.

For users requesting the stream for Radio Asia 1269 AM, the URL is mentioned below

http://www.radioasiauae.com/new/radioasia/radioasia_am/user/live/Player_AM1.swf


PS : A new comment by ViRuS has given some excellent information on how to still get the PLS file when the none of the methods described above work.

1. Get the Call Sign for the Stream. For City 101.6 Fm Dubai, its ARNCITY.
2. Use the following URL http://provisioning.streamtheworld.com/pls/ and replace the call sign after pls/. So the final URl will look like http://provisioning.streamtheworld.com/pls/ARNCITY.pls.
3. Open it in Firefox and it will ask you to download the ARNCITY.pls to your computer.
4. Download the file and open it in notepad and you will have the actual stream URLs. use anyone in windows media player or any media player and you are all set..

Cheers to ViRuS for finding this out.

Another anonymouse reader has posted about a freeware tool on source forge. Please give it a try and see if it helps.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/tidirectlink/

Happy Streaming & Listening guys..