Month: September 2004

Microsoft Wallop!

Got an invite to join wallop through Marc Smith who gave a presentation last week inside the BBC. And I have to say without going into much detail, its looks pretty amazing. And it actually works really well in Opera and Firefox. Except when uploading files it would seem. Anyway I will play with it more later…

This is my RSS feed of Wallop, which is basicly Cubicgarden running through Wallop then out again. For some reason it adds all this crazy styling stuff to it. Bad Microsoft, bad! I swear pictures are coming soon, just having problems uploading them at the moment.

Wallop in action

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Skype finally tried and tested

Ok I finally tried and tested Skype, when it first came out I first thought it was another iChatAV, only this time only for Windows. Then over time they brought out a PocketPC version, then a Linux version and now a Mac version. So now I'm thinking well I should at least try it out, I mean I compiled the linux version and installed the beta on my PocketPC but never actually tried it.

Well I'm happy to say it works so well on the PC that I've never heard quality so good. The Pocketpc was also great except the processing power required makes reading links sent via skype-im difficult. If you stay in Skype all is well, but if your for example reading your rss news at the same time then it will get choppy, and it may even crash skype. There is rumours of Skype being ported to Smartphones, but I dont think this will happen till they hit 400mhz processors (SPV2 currently runs at 133mhz). I have yet to try Skype over GPRS but I will try it out tomorrow and see what happens. By the way can I just say that the designers behind Skype are doing a pretty good job.

Skype for PocketPC now available 1.0

I know skype uses some closed P2P system to work, but damm it just works even behind my multiple layer firewall, even file transfer works! Its good that all im chats over skype are secure I still prefer the idea of using something H323 or SIP based but at this moment I will use jabber for IM and Skype for audio chat. If all goes well I may even try there SkypeOut service to call friends in Europe. Reminds me I need to try out the conference feature, as 4 other people at the same time is a huge plus if it works ok.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Nerd Values

I was reading a article in wired with Craig Newark from the Craigslist fame. Anyhow something got my head thinking…

You've also had a couple dozen buyout offers for craigslist. Aren't you tempted to cash out, move from your foggy neighborhood, and buy an island somewhere?
I admit that when I think of the money one could make from all this, I get a little twinge. But I'm pretty happy with nerd values: Get yourself a comfortable living, then do a little something to change the world.

And in last part of the quote, lies everything. In work I've been having this ongoing discussion about not wanting to be rich and famous just making the world a little bit better a place to live. Its easy to be singled minded and follow the money where it leads, but the harder thing is to live in your means and try and make the world a little better.

I was listening to Syndication Nation Panel at this years Supernova conference. Liz Lawley made the point not every single blogger wants a large audience, not every blogger wants to be ongoing or Scobleizer. And I totally agree, simple as cubicgarden is hosted on my single broadband line. I do not want a massive audience, couldnt cope with a huge audience. At the moment I get a lot of traffic but the traffic is mainly through RSS and search engines cutting through my blog hierachy (which i have no problem with at all). End of the day I am that of many millions of bloggers and to stay in the middle region is fine for me

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

The BBC Creative Archive project at Ravensbourne

Friday, 8 October 2004 – 2pm – 4pm

Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford University and cultural commentator thinks that the BBC have got it right with their proposal of making their freely archive available to the public for non-commercial uses.

By making the content available, commercial entities will also be able to identify BBC material and then license it for a fee.

Lessig describes this as a brilliant response to the extra ordinary explosion of creative capacity enabled by digital technologies.

There is less evidence of this sort of thinking in the US: corporations there are opposed to sharing standards and protocols and, as highlighted by the fascinating and ongoing Linux vs. SCO vs. IBM case, suspicious of the open source movement.

To found out what this all means come to the lecture open to all students.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Exploring the Bittorrent and RSS relationship

Rather than reading student synopsis, I've been put off track by looking at the future of peer 2 peer networking. Then I looked at Slakinski log which talks about the release of Nucleus which is a RSS aggregator that focuses on Bittorrent files embedded in them. Very cool, even Harvard Law is following this area with enclosures. I'm interested if anyone has brought Enclosure to RSS 1.0 and ATOM? If not I think I may do it myself, as one of the great reasons for RSS 1.0 is its modules which could include a whole number of things, or so I was led to believe. I mean even the ability to use namespaces is an advantage surely?

Anyhow this is all really interesting stuff, and it seriously reminds me that I need to fix my apache cocoon to take advantage of this great idea. I mean for example it wouldnt be that difficult to search through a load of torrents and make rss files with enclosures to then syndicate onwards. This would be great because then you could do mass filtering and even create a webservice. Think of it as Suprnova but with no front end. Tell the trust some must have done this already? Oh and heres a good article explain it all.

I was also reading Steve Mallett's blog about the future of the semantic web, specially in the light of RSS and Torrents.

Now, would you rather publish your book review using Amazon's form or the weblog you use many times a week? Would you like to write your book review on Amazon and then write again on your weblog that you wrote a review – possibly writing the review twice? How about your local bookstore? Are you going to write one for them as well?

It got me thinking about this DIY model. Steve makes many valid points but the one which strikes home is the one about Social software. I signed up to Orkut and got pretty sick of filling in information which I didnt really want to give in the first place. I tend not like to commit to different services now, I mean flickr was the last one I signed up to, and even then I'm not using it alot. I put myself in the bloggers and geek girls are sexy groups, for all of 1 day, I thought it would be good idea to contrbute pictures in a group fashion, but i got bored – quickly…
Steve ends with Own your data. This future is here and is evenly distributed. I have to agree up to a point, I find it hard to believe I'm still hosting cubicgarden.com on my 512k broadband connection. Hows that for owning your own data?

By the way a google one query return

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Broadband upgrade

Ok I've reviewed the situation again. If I want to get more broadband, I have 4 options.

NTL with Xbox plus Demon option
Total broadband bandwidth: 2meg down | 384kps up
No connection fee
Breakdown: 39.99 per month for NTL 1.5meg with Xbox console plus 24.99 per month for Demon 512. Total = 64.98 per month
Positive: Xbox, No connection fees, cable
Negative: Expensive, not much upload, mettered downloads, 12 month contract

NTL plus Demon option
Total broadband bandwidth: 2meg down | 384kps up
No connection fee
Breakdown: 37.99 per month for NTL 1.5meg plus 24.99 per month for Demon 512. Total = 62.98 per month
Positive: No connection fees, cable
Negative: not much upload, mettered downloads, 12 month contract

Bulldog plus Demon option
Total broadband bandwidth: 2meg down | 512kps up
50 pound connection fee plus 74 connection fee to BT for new line
Breakdown: 40.00 per month for 2meg Bulldog (extra 33 for modem and connection, unless i can get internal adsl modem working),10.50 for BT Together 1 connection, plus 24.99 per month for Demon 512. Total = 75.49 per month
Positive: Fast and option of static ip (5 per month more), 1 month contract option
Negative: Expensive, new line needed

Demon Business option
Total broadband bandwidth: 1meg down | 256kps up
50 pounds connection fee
Breakdown: 55 per month (plus VAT) Demon business 1000. Total = 64.63 per month
Positive: One single connection, static ip's
Negative: not much upload, 12 month contract, business price

I do have the option of going less on the NTL and Bulldog options, like NTL 750kps instead of 1.5meg. The 1meg Bulldog service would equal the same cost as the others around 64 pounds. But I'm seriously thinking I should keep it simple and get 1 meg Demon but for roughly the same price I get more bandwidth and another xbox with NTL. Help what should I do? Anyone rate NTL even with there mettered downloads? And when the heck are demon going to bring out there 1meg consumer broadband package! *screams*

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Ecto on Windows

Slipped right past my rader, the windows version of Ecto . Needs the Microsoft .net framework version 1.1 which is a pain but acceptable. Downloaded it myself and tried it out but I can not get it to post a blog entry. I've tried using the MetaweblogAPI and even the AtomAPI but no chance. There seems to be some problem with categories on both API's. Its odd though because the Mac version seems to work ok? The support forum doesnt seem to have much in the way of answers either. So in the meantime wbloggar is what I will use, but I have to say the atomAPI looks pretty tasty.

But for now I still need sort out my blojsom installation, as it seems not to post any blogs I send via xmlrpc. Quite odd. Anyway as said before I'm looking at the meta plugin with more joy, first project I'm thinking is using the Amazon RESTful service and Meta plugin on the bookmarks fill in details on books and films. Need to learn more VM or work out how to run XSL inside of VM?

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

More changes to cubicgarden

I'm currently making changes to cubicgarden.com. First thing you will notice is the added Anyone else [ blogging it? ] and related pictures? links underneath each post. I've also extended this out to the bookmarks which has related links to http://del.icio.us instead of http://www.flickr.com. By the way for those people asking why I'm using feedster over daypop, technorati and blogdex? Well feedster seems to be much more configurable and exposes more rss than the others, plus it loves cubicgarden.com. Does a much better job than even google. Oh yeah plus its the only one which realises that 80.177.x.x and adrenalin-online.demon.x.x is all part of cubicgarden.com. By the way you may be interested to see how cubicgarden is doing on the blogshare market

So whats it all about? Well I'm still fighting with myself about using external web services for my personal data. Even my personal bookmarks which I dont mind sharing with the world, I cant help but get worried about trusting to a beta service like del.icio.us. Flickr I cant trust all my photos with anyway because I got so many and there huge in size (1.5 gig of space used so far) and I'm not paying for flickr to store that. I think the RESTful nature of these services are good enough and passing the title around is a good start. I may start using the metadata feature in Blojsom soon because I want to pass more semantic information than a title around to these services. Ideally I really need to get XSL in between or into VM templates.

The other thing which is changing is, I'm removing myself from the XFN sphere – soon. I never used it and using decent metadata and FOAF I can do a much better job, oh and theres been some debate about XFN's effectiveness. I think if there was a blog (xmlrpc) client which came with XFN built in I would use it much more. I keep looking out for wbloggar 4.0 but its always in beta, I keep thinking I should really 1. find something else which at least supports xhtml 2. runs on the pocketpc2003 os.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Getting free music legally?

Friends with benefits image

Just recently I've not been consuming enough music. I use to follow dance music alot but I've been consuming too much Television and Movies from UKnova and Suprnova. They do have music too but usually popular albums rather than the edgy underground stuff I listen to. Plus they rarely do tracks rather than full albums. So I've been thinking about using a p2p client like Shareaza again to share and trade tracks.

But then again I was reading Xeni Jarden's article about putting the share back into filesharing. I keep meaning to check out the links and see if its any good. However the ripping off live radio is back in fashion and much more accessable than ever before. Streamripper seems to be the application which all others is copying. Streamripper is Opensource (GPL) and runs on Windows and OSX, so there seems to be little reason why you cant compile it for other platforms? For those new to all this, basicly this application will rip what it hears streamed. It will use ID3 tags to create the individual mp3 files with the right meta and filenames. Plus its actually not against the law to record it for personal use. I have yet to try it yet, but I'm going to try it this weekend for sure… I've been tempted to do it at work, except I would have no way to take all the tunes home after work. Maybe this is a good time to get that 160gig drive (55 pounds plus vat is going rate at the moment) for my external harddrive enclosure?

Update, installed the version for Winamp 5 and it worked like a dream. Creates nice folders for each stream. But you can configure all those options. My main problem is once again bandwidth, I had 3 torrents going on while doing streamripping and so any long dj mixes ended up as parts in the incomplete folder. But any tunes shorter than 10mins long were fine. I highly recommend streamripping over kazaa or any other weird p2p app. Lets just hope the induce act isnt copied over here in europe.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Creative Commons UK goes live!

The founder of the Creative Commons project, Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig, will be at UCL on 4 October to launch the UK version of the Creative Commons licenses. Come and hear from him about the problems of the existing copyright system and the future of creativity in the Internet age.

Need I say more?

Well actual I do have a lot more to say. With great fore-sight before summer, I booked a lecture with Paula Le Dieu at Ravensbourne College in October. Paula is a fantastic speaker and the ideal person to talk about the partnership of the BBC creative archive and creative commons licences. I'm sure she will inspire new and old students (hey lets not forget staff too) about the BBC Creative Archive project and make them think about there own work and practices.

If your unsure about what this is all about, check out some of the news about this important project and announcement. But before that, check out this link to a official transcripts from another news agency. Sourced from Weatherall, Thanks!

There was a great piece titled Mr Rights, in the media guardian this week, unfortually you need to register to read it. But just use guardian@dodgeit.com password = Picasso7. Glad to see others have had the same idea. By the way,
Cory Doctorow's Written Testimony to Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, is also excellent work and really shines the light on how important the creative archive really is.

And just incase you ever missed it, Lawrence Lessig on the BBC Creative Archive…

Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford University and cultural commentator thinks that the BBC have got it right with their proposal of making their freely archive available to the public for non-commercial uses.

By making the content available, commercial entities will also be able to identify BBC material and then license it for a fee.

Lessig describes this as a brilliant response to the extra ordinary explosion of creative capacity enabled by digital technologies.

There is less evidence of this sort of thinking in the US: corporations there are opposed to sharing standards and protocols and, as highlighted by the fascinating and ongoing Linux vs. SCO vs. IBM case, suspicious of the open source movement.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Synergy raises its head again

Synergy logo

Installed Synergy on my dual screen work pc and development mac. Works so well that one of the designers commeted that …Its like god has come down to earth with this software. What more can I say? I do know I will get a slap down at some point for installing software on a work machine. But seriously theres no douht its worth of the slap because its so damm useful. Just from a ergnomic view, having one keyboard and mouse to control 2 machines is a god sent for sure.

A couple of tips I learn along the way. Use the windows machine as the server, as its quicker, more stable and has a simple gui. And on the mac run the command like this ./synergyc -n MacScreen -f PcScreen. If you try it without the name, synergy will use the rendez-vous name not the mac computer name, and dont forget to run the command on a mac you need to add your ./. Very cool, anyway… Cant wait to add redhat box to the synergy configuration.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Bugmenot

I cant remember where I first heard about this first but I've been meaning to try it out for a while now. Usually I tend to use mailinator.com or now dodgeit.com to create a temporary account which I tend to use again and again as I make the username and password easy to remember. For example today I was trying to get into the guardian.co.uk site and so I tried to setup an account with the email address – guardian@dodgeit.com with the password of password (hehe). But someone had already done it before. So I simply requested the password again, and waited till the guardian sent the email. Easy

But even that can be a hassle, so bugmenot is ideal. Its basicly a huge database of username and passwords which people donate for others to use on registration sites. Good idea, well thought out with plugins and bookmarklets.

The bugmenot official response to the fact there webhost also hosts the neonazi group combat 18.
I've decided that its better to go through the little hassle of using dodgeit or mailinator than to promote the clinical response of freespeech from bugmenot.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Dont you just love multi language RDF?

The BBC world service has finally commited to delivering RSS 1.0 (RDF) feeds for content syndication. I'm suprised the blogsphere has' not caught on quicker because I wrote automatic discovery into the xsl on Monday / Tuesday and the RSS feeds have been out there for at least 2 weeks now.

I kid you not this is a huge project, to syndicate in over 30 different languages on one site is a worlds first and shows how creative the BBC is as an Corporation. I cant say too much about the future stages of content syndication but other formats are being considered and other options are also being considered. But at this stage all new indexes on the BBC worldservice language sites should be publishing rss. And they should be linked in the html files, using simple feed discovery.
Here's an example of the BBC Indonesia news index in RDF form and the sport section in RDF too. The URL is pretty easy to work out (we adopted a RESTful type URL) http://www.bbc.co.uk/{language service}/{section}/index.rdf. Feel free to check them out, but be warned this is still in beta and may be withdrawn without notice. If yu want to see more check this aggregator example which will be taken down soon.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Ravensbourne Online learning community

After posting about Dissertation time again… and late night lectures. I have been offered the chance to try something out for the college. So if your one of my ex-students reading this, contact me via my ravensbourne email address and I will add you to the group. As it sounds, its a experimental online learning community which I will use not only for dissertation but for teaching and learning over the next year. Oh by the way this applies to 1st, 2nd and 3rd yrs mainly in interaction or subjects close to interaction.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

IT conversations

Its one of those things I've been meaning to blog for ages but forgot due to the reshuffle of cubicgarden.com (comments and trackbacks should be fine now). IT conversations is how to do streaming audio correct. Not only does it host some of the best talks from some of the best conferences, oh no they host it using streaming mp3 or windows media. Theres an option to just download the mp3 if you like too. Theres full text transcripts and they syndicate new streams with enclosures. I mean things can not get any better, oh did I forget to say you dont even have to register if you want to… Excellent resource and I'm proud to say its what I listen to at work.

I highly reccommend listening to Tim O'Reilly's Watching the Alpha Geeks. Covers a lot but well worth it. It also reminds me to check Dan O'Brien's Intro to life hacks. Which is still not completed. Saying that, I've still not sorted out the copyright vs community audio and video streams!

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]