Author: Ianforrester

Senior firestarter at BBC R&D, emergent technology expert and serial social geek event organiser. Can be found at cubicgarden@mas.to, cubicgarden@twit.social and cubicgarden@blacktwitter.io

Flickr useage

I've got a presentation coming up tomorrow and I'm just adding the finishing touches now. Now this is quite interesting and a lesson to myself. In one of my slides.

Minning against searching

Google and other search engines work on page-scraping technology. Google will for example ignore html metadata.Technorati, Daypop and Feedster work on content syndicated rss feeds only. Minning content like this, better represents BBC content as it keeps content in context.

I've been searching for images using google image search but the results when looking for certain subjects or topics are not good. Gogle relies mainly on the image filename and webpage it sits in. Well thats ok, but Flickr does a much better job because people actual asign metadata to the pictures. Then I've been thinking actually this is better way to get pictures because you can see the copyright licence straight away, for example Perfect morning by Bmann has a creative commons licence. I love flickr so much that I've actual signed up myself, wont be put too many pictures up because I'm not totally sure about storing personal data on a beta service (much my same problem with Gmail and del.icio.us). But I'll put up some photos which I dont mind other people using, glad to see flickr makes it super easy to do this. I picked Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike for obvious reasons, and incase you didnt guess my flickr address is http://www.flickr.com/photos/cubicgarden/ and http://www.flickr.com/people/cubicgarden/. Good to see Flickr is making use of all the backend data (EXIF, XML, RSS) as well as making great web interfaces. Just dont understand why there using Flash 7 to display images?

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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?

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Blojsom events

Ever since David announced the blojsom event notification and listener API, I've been thinking about 100's of ways to use it. But before I explore the possibilites I need to at least upgrade to 2.18. And alot of you will be glad to hear that I will be sorting out my feed links which are still relative rather than absolute.

I still need to run tests on blojsom, My aim is to get blojsom to output SSI's for use with the BBC blogs. Talking of which, got some really interesting news about the BBC but I cant tell quite yet. Once I can, I will post it here first before anywhere else.

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My top Firefox extensions

Get Firefox

I've now got Firefox on three different machines which I use everyday. But my problem is that each one is slighly different because I dont have the same extensions and themes on them. Of course I still use Opera, but with my GNU/Linux setup at home now, I've decided to not install any Open/Free software on it. Which was a problem at first but I've pretty much made Firefox work like Opera now.

First up the ones which make Firefox like Opera for me
Nuke Anything 0.2 – Adds a Remove this object entry to the right-click context menu, which will remove an object from a webpage temporarily. The effects can be undone by reloading the page.

Paste and Go 0.3.1 – Lets you paste an URL from the clipboard and directly load it.

Mouse Gestures 0.9.20040902 – Allows you to execute common commands (like page forward/backward, close tab, new tab) by mouse gestures drawn over the current webpage, without reaching for the toolbar or the keyboard. You can also use “rocker” gestures.

MiniT (drag+indicator) 0.3 – Adds tab dragging with drop place indicator.

Image-Show-Hide 0.1.3.2 – Adds an icon to toolbar. By clicking this button (Or “Shift+B” shortcut) you can simply turn on|off images on all web-pages and (optional) autoreload current page!

QuickNote 0.5.9.2 – A note taking extension with advanced features.

ReloadEvery 0.3.2 – Reloads webpages every so many seconds or minutes

User Agent Switcher 0.6 – Adds a menu to switch the user agent of the browser.

Sage 1.2.2 – A lightweight RSS and ATOM feed aggregator.

Single Window 1.4 – A simple extension that allows Mozilla to fully utilize the built-in tabbed browsing behavior, compatible with Mozilla, Netscape, and Firefox. Singlewindow has only two options: * Single Window Mode — Traps links that would normally open in a new window

And ones I just love
EditCSS 0.2.2 – Stylesheet modifier in the Sidebar.

BBCode 0.3.2 – Adds BBCode/HTML/XHTML formating to the context menu for forums like Mozillazine. Based on Cussers pastequote extension.

Delicious Delicacies 0.1 – Restores our favorite cookie placeholder text.

Wikalong 0.9.5 – A roaming wiki embeded in the sidebar of your browser, indexed off the URL of your current page. It is probably most simply described as a wiki-margin for the Internet.

FoxyTunes 0.5 – Control any media player from Firefox and more… [Windows/Linux]

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Xbox and Linux update

Its so good to hear that the Kai team are now working on a Linux version of the Xlink Kai engine shame they feel the need to keep it closed sourced. With my move to Linux, I lost the ability to play xbox games over the internet xbox live style. Which is a real shame because I would love to play Burnout 3 full screen and online against some serious players. Been feeling the old wipeout experience while playing it at work recently.

The announcement also drawed my attention to the latest xbox media centre cvs builds. See I've got rather use to using xbmc 1.0 day in day out, and cant really imagine what else they could put in it to make it better (for me). I mean iTunes compatability would be nice for alot of people but certainly not for me. Saying all that actually, I do have some requests but there much more higher level things, generally its all good. Which reminds me I still need to sort out CCXstream or the SMB server on my linux box. I got a huge partition on my linux box but I share stuff on my server which has about 20 percent of the storage. Crazy!

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Late night lectures

Been talking to Yoojin about the possibilies of setting up lectures at Ravensbourne again. Then I started thinking, why not use the internet to broadcast the lectures? I mean, I've been meaning to do something interesting with jabber and the icecast streaming server.

So what I'm thinking is, I do a live lecture as such via my connection over audio while in a chat space of somekind? (maybe using the rave jabber conference rooms?). Or shall i forget the audio aspect and just go for a conference room style chat through out? I think I would prefer that as I could do it from anywhere – allowing me to keep a regular timeline, while not affectig anything at home.

I've also been thinking about using meetup more. My previous experiences have been pretty bad, but maybe there will be a chance to hijack one or create my own which consists of lectures and idea throwing around a pub/cafe environment? I mean do people still go to the london meetups?

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What’s your personality type?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/whatamilike/index.shtml

Your answers I picked suggest I'm a Strategist…

Summary of Strategists
Quiet, easy-going and intellectually curious. Use logical, objective thinking to find original solutions to problems. Think of themselves as bright, logical and individualistic. May be impractical, forgetting practical issues, such as paying bills or doing the shopping

Dont usually follow these personality testers but Sarah sent me it and the guardian covered it today. But one question why does it not work in Opera but its fine in the Mozilla family?

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flickr and del.icio.us more semantic web activity?

First thing I have not said anything about flickr or del.icio.us recently but there very good ideas and well excuted. i think even Jon Udell is happy with these RESTful/web services/applications? In my view anything which creates semantic-ish meaning is good. Some things which I've seen recently.

FOAF
RSS 1.0
ATOM
ebay to rss
another one, rss auction
Google to Atom
bleb.org tv-listings
Netflix's rss feeds
iTunes music store rss feed generator
iTunes playlist to RSS

When's imdb going to do rss?. Now owned by Amazon they must have syndication in there future plans. I mean it wasnt long ago when imdb would allow you to copy there databases?

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Dissertation time again…

I felt really honoured last year when Nick, Richard and others interviewed me for there dissertations. And once again I'm glad to help in my own way my ex-students on there dissertations. I encouraged them all this year to use the power of the internet and more specificly blogging to build up there dissertations. Well unfortually a couple of them have embrased the idea but none of them have used the blog format to build up sections.

Kelvin – kelchashock wins an award for the most un-google-friendly site to search for. Anyway Kelvins synopsis is actually quite good and sells it to me for sure, bearing in mind I've only read the first paragraph so far.

Ben – Bens design doesnt seem to be up at the moment but he's got quite a few comments to his ideas right from the start. Its just a crying shame he doesnt put up more content for people to get there teeth into.

Some credit has to go to Harry, Ben and JC for getting in touch via IM or/and Email to ask me questions about there subjects. Lets hope they get there blogs sorted soon…

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More RSS + Torrents

TV RSS (Television with colour bars)

In my previous blog I made alot of reference to RSS for discovery and Torrents for delivery. Well I was reading my feeds and came across this. It details some interesting developments like Buttress and sorry I have to shout this… how glad am I changed to Linux. Makes me want to install Azureus.

Its a shame the Salon arcticle is locked behind a wall but this eweek arcticle says a lot about the BitRSS idea, made up the name myself.
Very good to see a UK student posting RSS feeds for torrents.

And on the subject of rolling your own reruns, the other day I was watching The 100 Greatest TV Ads on Channel4 and had to change to Spy on BBC 3. Now I wasnt that bothered about the Greatest TV Ads but it would have been nice because Sarah hasnt seen classic ads like the you've been Tango'ed advert. However I wasnt that bothered because I knew someone would post it onto UKNova. And sure enough 2 days later I have the whole 3 hours of The 100 Greatest TV Ads. Roll your own indeed!

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Browse a little happier

Browse Happy logo

I don’t think the site http://browsehappy.com is the best or most original idea in the world but it does once again highlight issues with IE and maybe why we should warn/advise the public about other IE. And empower there browsing experience with better browsers.
I for one never use IE unless I have to in work (Legacy systems, I hate them too). I mainly use Opera and Mozilla if there are issues with cookies. But I've installed Firefox on my linux box and may start using it more and more in replacement for Mozilla. Specially because I love Thunderbird and Mozilla calendar. Yet to try sunbird yet…

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Dodge it mail

I was flicking through some of my feeds today and came across Kevin rose's Dark tips. Thought I'd check out a few of the sites while I was waiting for something else to be done . DodgeIT – free email with no login caught my eye, and I thought this is going to be some rip off mailinator service. But to my great suprise – this one offers RSS as well! Damm, how good is that? I love mailinator but this is so barebones and quick and the rss is the final knife in the heart.

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Dont let this happen to you?

I was browsing around today and found this page for unixness.

This page has been removed because it was being stored on an unliscensed Linux server.

Dont let this happen to you!!

For information on purchasing a SCO liscnese for your Linux server, click here.

For information regarding lower-cost alternatives to Linux, click here.

I'm wondering what the hell? Is this for real or somekind of joke. And if its for real did the ISP upload the page or what? I've never seen this before, anyone else?

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