Month: November 2004

Engadget Podcast with SMIL2.0 enclosures

Been spending more than usual time thinking about podcasting. 1. How do we make podcasts more blog entry like, so you browse through it, search engines can index it, etc? 2. How do we make advance the format without emposing a standard on it?

I was encoraged to listen to the engadget podcast yesterday from Kosso in a debate started by me centering around podcasting. Anyway, I was listening and the first item which centered around the fact, there podcast was actually a photo podcast and they were looking for a better way to do it. At this moment if you want to take part, you need to download this zip file and manually change the pictures when they tell you to in the podcast your listening to. Ok fair enough for now, but I was screaming SMIL while listening. Then they finally mentioned it.
Wicked Cool… before they started to rethink the idea, let me explain…

First up SMIL does not stand for simple markup something! Its Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language.
Getting a smil player on the portable players and everyone agreeing would be a problem? I always thought a MMS client was a SMIL player? Please for the love of all things decent in this world do not use Flash. And please no not powerpoint! For now yes, human interaction maybe one way of doing it but there was a good comment on blog about how to do it using a ipod and itunes.
See the fact your breaking down the mp3 into single objects is a good start. Some would scream blue murder, but joining them up together again could be easily done if you use playlists like pls or m3u for now. Hey why cant the podcast software join up the mp3's? even if using filenames which link them together?

Anyhow I'm thinking about two things, putting smil inside of RSS or changing the enclosure element to support structure. I much prefer the first one using smil with xml namespaces. So I'm going to show you how it could look. Please note, i'm doing alot of things in this example. I'm showing how you can play not only content which is downloaded but also content if your connected. And of course how to play audio with pictures in a large sequence. Check out the Engadget Podcast with SMIL2.0 enclosures

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Tools for the del.icio.us API

I've been spent along time in bed this weekend ill but checking out some of the tools based on different webservice API's. The blojsom author /images/emoticons/laugh.gifavid Czarnecki) created a set of java api but I dont need them now i'm using cocoon.

For a while now I've been considering using http://www.flickr.com or http://del.icio.us for creating a text map. If you dont know what I mean check out flickr Tags and real world del.icio.us tags. Anyway I'm really cosidering messing with svg to the same as extisp.icio.us. You can see the cubicgarden one here. Very nice but not useful enough for me. It all sits nicely with Harrys dissertation which is due today and I'm looking forward to reading sometime soon.

On another side, nutr.itio.us, makes posting to del.icio.us more a treat. Sid.vicio.us interface is an interesting take on making an web ontologies. The backup del.icio.us is simple and effective but I could easily do the same using cocoon by download the whole lot into a xml file on the server. Hell I could even trigger it on demand from anywhere in the connected world or set it up so it will do a backup after 100 (or whatever) requests through cubicgarden.com/blog.This guy (Joshua Schachter) has everything you need for more information on other tools.

By the way, i've not tested RSS Calendar yet, but it sounds interesting non the less.

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Belonephobia

Yes I am fucking terrified of needles. But once again, maybe like 3 times in the last month I have been ill with Flu like symptoms. Sarah assures me that I should have a flu vaccine jab. But she will never ever understand what its like to have such a fear run your life.

I remember I could never watch Trainspotting all the way through because I was so terrified that they would show a needle in someones arm. To that effect the pulp fiction scene where they jam the needle into Mia Wallance (Uma thurman) reduced me to hiding behind the sofa for the rest of the movie. And you know what is odd, I can take anything else but not if it involves a needle.
I choose not to go into past doctor and hospital appointments regarding injections because the stories actually bring back the terror I've come across. Lets say one thing, have you ever been stabbed in the finger with a needle when you were not looking by a doctor? didn't think so…

So what am I going to do about it all? I know I'm going to have to take a shot at some point soon, I'm going to recommend they knock me out first. You know sleeping gas, hit over the head, what ever as long as I dont see or feel the needle going into my arm. I've also been considering the fact of being drunk when I get my next injection, as I wouldn't feel it so much and would be powerless to do anything about it. Next up, brut force. I need like 3 guys to hold my arm down and stop me from moving while the doctor or nurse quickly gives me an injection.

Things I dont understand, why oh why do they have to give you a shot in your arm or your bottom? whats wrong with the leg? Is this the only way to give flu vaccine and other types of vaccines? couldn't I take pills over the course of a month or something else. Seriously I would rather take a pill up my arse that take a shot in my arm. OK and what ever happened to those air vacuum sprays which spray through your skin? I would pay for the privilege of using one of those if it meant I didn't need to have an injection.
I really hate it when people just write off off my fear, there are many people with this fear and you cant just get over it!

Obviously none of this covers giving blood for a blood test, but seriously I can not imagine anything worst than giving blood. Even taking a shot in the arm for a vaccine. For everyone who knows me and may think its funny to show me a needle in real life, let me tell you now its not funny and its not clever. If you threaten me with it you may be suprised when you see rage in my eyes and I will put you down for doing so.

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The love of REST webservices

You may have noticed that my bookmarks blog is now not used for storing my bookmarks. Instead I'm using del.icio.us which is a social bookmarking service. Anyway, until recently the section in cubicgarden titled my latest bookmarks was still pointing at the old bookmark blog but through the del.icio.us REST API. I was able to extract my latest bookmarks using http://del.icio.us/api/posts/recent. Pull that into Apache Cocoon then do a XSL transformation to create the simple HTML include which Blojsom then called in using its Import tool plugin. Why do i need to use cocoon? Well the results from a REST interface are usually in xml and you need to transform it into html if you want to display it on a webpage. I could have found some way of doing it using Velocity, but why bother when cocoon does such a good job. It also cache's the request and supports http authentication. Making the two step process easy as pie. You can play with the cocoon pipeline which generates the reults by changing the number of entries on the end. http://adrenalin-online.demon.co.uk/cocoon/delicious/5 – will only get 5 of the latest entries. I also thought about doing the same using a RSS to html xsl transform, but why bother when the REST API is already there for you to use. Honestly I've only scratched the surface and theres lots more to play with. But for now this is good…

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Flickr API based desktop application

This is why company's needs to open there API's. I mean seriously would ludicorp build a desktop application for flickr this good? Maybe but they didnt need to because they simply opened there API's up over REST and Soap and someone built a application for them. This has to be a dream for companys, someone else building applications based on there services for free! I mean theres nothing stopping Ludicorp buying or bringing out there own version. But come on, why bother when someone else has? They just have to sit there improving there service and seeing more people converting to Flickr Pro. This is why google, ebay, amazon, etc are happy to expose there API's and let people build away. The web is indeed the platform… whens the windows version?

On the same vein, how to do a decent development weblog. Yahoo! Search blog, Flickr blog, Bitflux blog and of course Blojsom blog. Google your blog sucks, sorry to say. I've actually found myself liking Yahoo more, specially after there recent efforts with RSS. Its actually got me thinking about the rss feeds i generate. Maybe theres somethings I could do to make them more user friendly. Even if it includes putting a damm my yahoo button on my blog. Oh you can listen to the presentation here and the notes are here. Respect Y!

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Kerry has conceded but diebold questions are worrying

its over right now, but theres talk about the diebold machines being wrong. Did a search for news on it in google news and got this.

Google Error,
We're sorry…

… but we can't process your request right now. A computer virus or spyware application is sending us automated requests, and it appears that your computer or network has been infected.

We'll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your computer is free of viruses and other spurious software.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we'll see you again on Google

Looks like google is over run… All the web is fine and feedster loves me.

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Presentations the XHTML and CSS way with S5

S5 is a slide show format based entirely on XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript. With one file, you can run a complete slide show and have a printer-friendly version as well. The markup used for the slides is very simple, highly semantic, and completely accessible. Anyone with even a smidgen of familiarity with HTML or XHTML can look at the markup and figure out how to adapt it to their particular needs. Anyone familiar with CSS can create their own slide show theme. It's totally simple, and it's totally standards-driven.

At long last a way to do presentations without using powerpoint, keynote or openoffice formats. Meyers work is great and well thought out specially for a opera user like me. Its not that I dont like using open office (what i prefer out of the three), its just I usually have to outline it some application like Java outline editor then convert it into something open office will read. Then I end up creating a powerpoint version, pdf version and open office version. i never use the html convert because its usually really nasty and non standard based.

Anyway, i'm going to use it for a presentation to BBC Learning English about RSS and Enclosures. And at the same time write a xsl to convert opml to this xhtml S5. I thought about other transformations but I dont have the time no more, plus it would be alot easier to just do a opml to pdf rather than xhtml S5 to pdf or open office (wouldnt even attept to do keynote). If all goes well i will adopt it for all my presentations. As someone mentioned it would be great if this was the default option in open office or keynote.

More resources. The slashdot discussion, Opera's thoughts from a while ago, Opera's slideshow generator, Information about Citydesk software

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More thoughts on podcasting

I've been really trying to embrace the podcasting movement, i say trying because I obviously dont have a ipod and most of the software around syncs with itunes or windows media player. What I really want is a piece of software which syncs podcasts to my pocketpc or smartphone's storage card. Till then I check every morning before i go to work if theres any more pods from adam curry, it conversations, dave winer and a couple more. Then copy it to my SD card for use in my mobile devices.

If you dont know what podcasting is check out this nytimes story which adam curry and dave winer were talking about recently.

Ok things I would like to see done with podcasting sometime soon, please comment if you've already seen it.
Better podcasting client software, so I dont need to manually copy files on to my SD card. Even better – a way to put pods on to phones and mobile devices. Sync folders would be nice, and hey why not download to a public place like a webdav server? Imagine podcasts shared between multiple people. Hey and dont forget about other devices like the xbox

Smil used in podcasts. This one pushes against the podcasting concept, but I've also been thinking about relevent pod advertisements mixed in with podcasts. I'm a big fan of smil and started thinking if you could mix in smil inside of rss or atom or get the software to download the smil file. Once the smil file is downloaded, it then searches through and downloads the bits it needs. As I said it breaks the podcasting method but its a thought because then you could reference and quote other podcasts inline. It also adds a little more structure to podcasts. Adam curry for example plays creative commons music in his podcast, it would be kinda of cool to get different music depending on when you play the pod back. Maybe?

As talked about before the process of using creative commons and other non-copyright (as such) music inline is pretty cool and using other podcasts inside your own is great too. But I've been thinking an enclosure element can support almost any type of media. Why not podcast images? And you know what this fits perfectly with the new ipod which now supports photos. I already thought about including photos in as enclosures but seriously why not? Maybe the podcast is talking about a new product or service, why not include some detail shots of it? I remember a while ago on the gilmor gang they were talking at great length about the google desktop search and I'm sitting on a tram thinking god there has to be a decent screen shot somewhere. So I spent sometime searching for a image while on my GPRS connection. If I had it before it would have made a big difference to my listening pleasure.

I wont get started on authoring tools but I would like the authoring tools to reflect the structure of the show. Even simple things like putting in decent metadata and cc licencing would be a start. And please use decent file names, date formatted file names are not good enough – seriously. Hey and why is there only a few group based podcasts? I mean using the 4 way skype conference calling feature you could easily record a nice podcast for later. Actually I've been thinking about doing one with Dave, Harry and Miles at some point just for a test, maybe around a dinner table or something? Miles had the thought about embedding SMIL inside of RSS using namespaces.

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South London teenagers + Halloween = Big Trouble in little beckenham

My poor poor neighbours. There a family of 2 parents and 2 teenage daughters aged 15 and 17. Anyway there the sweetest family you can live next to. So it wasn't a problem when Sue (the mum) said to me and Sarah, Holli (15yr daughter) was allowed to have a halloween party with a load of friends we thought nothing much of it. I mean we were planning to be at another party anyway. Luckily Sarah was ill and we couldn't go and we convinced Sue to stay in our house as she wanted to be in ear shot distance if anything happened.

Around 8pm the music started, and it wasn't loud. I mean I could have turned my cinema amp on and blasted theres away. Anyhow, we were enjoying Daily shows when the first lot of guests started turning up. I'll stick to calling them guest at this moment.
By 2045 there were alot of people in our neighbours upstairs flat. Sue started turning some guys away if they didn't know whose party it was, which was a very good thing, as we could have had another 20 people upstairs who knew noone.

By 2100, it was in full swing and there people outside the back smoking and drinking, while others packed the flat and front garden wall. Things were getting busy. Anyway, I offered to pick up some other guests from the tram station about the same time. When I returned, Sarah was very upset because the guests had been throwing glass bottles out the top window into our garden. She told them to knock it off, but they started aiming it at her and our dog. So she went to tell Holli what she thought of her guests. I guess things got really heated as the guests got really cheeky and didn't respond well to be told off by an adult.

At the same time, Sue and Sarah called 999 as some of the uninvited guests wouldn't leave. Pat (the husband) had come back too, and was trying to eject people from the party. Only problem was that they wouldn't go. Actually the group of about 20-30 boys would try getting in around the back and through the front. Finally getting everyone to the front, they still wouldn't leave.

I swore it felt like ages the standoff, but finally the police came. First 2 cars, then 3 more then a unmarked SUV. At first I thought it was overkill, but even with 9 police officers, they were outnumbered 3 to 1. Luckily most of them choose to walk off when the 2nd lot came.

The damage was unbelievable. The guests had thrown everything and I seriously mean everything out of the windows. Toothbrushes, toothpaste, Hair products, the bathroom plug, reading glasses, photos, potted plants, Cans, Butter, Frozen Peas, Fruit, Jam, Milk, etc… Out the windows. They had burned hole through the carpet with fag ends, been sick on the older daughters A-level certificates and bed, ripped down pictures and curtains.The Carpets were black with mud and some idiots broke eggs behind appliances, put crisps in the kettle and fish where it was warm in the house.
Yes makes you think a few times before considering to have kids I bet.

There was something else which happened on the same night which I cant talk about because its still part of a police investigate. All I can say is a very angry dad came knocking around 0300 Sunday morning and me and my neighbours are glad the police were there to divert the anger. The party will be far from over for one teenage girl for the rest of her life. I just hope justice is served swiftly…

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