Google talk is live and using jabber

Google Talk beta

So Google Talk has been covered to hell now, but the best entry I have found is this one called Smsh which details how to connect to Google Talk with any Jabber client. I havent even bothered downloading the client because Skype serves me well right now, but I'm interested to find out what protocal there using for voice over ip.
I got a feeling that Google Talk is only the start of things…. it would be really useful if google added a bot for searching via im. Till then, I'm currently using it under the username – cubicgarden if you want to drop me a test im and confirm it works. You can find my Gaim settings here on Flickr.

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The opening keynote from SVG Open

Taken from Kurt Cagle's presentation at SVG Open 2005The Future of SVG and the Web

I think a few of us (okay, maybe all of us) wish that this process was going faster, but its worth putting things into perspective. Two years ago, I had to explain to most programmers I worked with what SVG was. A year ago, I had to explain to most non-programmers I worked with what SVG was. Today, companies are hiring SVG developers, SVG is on our phones, is moving into our browsers, is appearing in embedded display systems on our trains and planes. This did not happen in a vacuum. It occurred because you took the message of SVG, of open standards, into your workplace, into your schools, into your government offices.

And thats the only the start. Kurt later runs through different points which he feels add to the changing landscape of the net. One of the key points I feel is his one about the rise of domain experts and platform independence.

Rise of Domain Experts, Not Programmers. XGUI based systems separate the abstract representation of applications from their implementation, which means that increasingly (likely using tools) specialized programmers will be replaced by domain expert non-programmers. This is already happening in fields like GIS. GUIs for designing such XGUI applications will similarly look more like flash editing tools or web layout tools with a few “access points” into scripting exceptions than they will complex IDEs. This doesn't make programmers obsolete, but it does increasingly push them into a component developer role.

Data/Platform/Language Independence. XML is increasingly abstracting the form of data access, turning complex and arcane queries (and updates) against LDAP servers, SQL databases, web services, mail services and so forth away from dissonant technologies and towards common XML ones. XML based XGUIs abstract the underlying platform interfaces and turn them increasingly into XML-oriented virtual machines that can degrade gracefully in the face of more limited capabilities, and makes such religious issues as Java vs. C++ vs. C# vs. flavor of the month language irrelevant – you use what works on the system to implement the abstraction. This doesn't eliminate the need for software – you still need to have those component implementations, and many of them may be extraordinarily complex and specialized in the back end, but it goes a long way toward eliminating the need for re-engineering the 90% of actions that we still do using the web now, from gaming to e-commerce to communication.

I have to say this is key! XSLT is so powerful once your able to get everything down to a XML level. Proprietary ways are moving aside while bridge applications are being used to open the data into XML. I actually remember when I first started using Cocoon and my fear was that there would not be enough XML sources to really make use of its ability. Boy was I wrong. I'm seeing lots of new web API's built on a RESTful interface, Bridge Apps for IM, email, newsgroups and even operating system information stored and generated in XML. SVG adoption has indeed been slow but its growing and it will be just another common place namespace.

Its well worth reading the whole of Kurts entry yourself, I actually found it quite moving….

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RSS 3.0 and language support

Quoting from the RSS 3.0 standard

The < language > Element
The < language > elements may be present under the < channel > element and also under the < item > element.

Good Stuff, its about time the language element was transferable down the RSS true. I'm a little upset

This feature is cascading. This means that when present beneath the < channel > element, all the channel's items are to consider having that language specification unless in those under which another < language > element is present, if any, in which case it overrides it.

Indeed, cool and very happy

When missing, this element's content is assumed to be “en”.

What the f*ck? This has to be a bad idea? Honestly why should the default be english?

For this purpose this elements may have one attribute, “rel”, whose content may be “meta”, “link” or “both”. This attribute is presumed to be “link” when missing. The content “meta” conveys the notion that the element is specifying the language of the metadata in the RSS document itself. The content “link” conveys the notion that the element is specifying the language in which the relevant content of the given link is written. The content “both” makes the two above mentioned interpretations equally relevant.

Now this is a good idea which I've seen used in the microformats and XHTML 2.0 areas.

This item's content must be compliant with the RFC 1766, “Tags For The Identification of Languages”. This means that the content of this tag is two letters representing a language (as defined in the ISO 639) which may be followed, after a dash, by two more letters signifying a particular country (as defined in the ISO 3166).

Implementors should only acknowledge the first letters until the dash, if any (presumably two), though if the specific country is relevant it may regard the country specification. Thus if the element's content is “en-US” it is to be considered as “English”, and may choose to regard or disregard the country specification.

Hummm… I really dont like the way, english labeled content is being singled out above other languages. Indeed its worrying and that just the language element…

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You are reading the 485th ranked blog according to feedster

Each month, Feedster brings you a list of 500 of the most interesting and important blogs. Enjoy browsing to see what people are reading, to find feeds that will bring topics of interest to you on a regular basis, and to discover new voices in the Blogosphere.

yeah well I told you this blog was read by more than a couple people. I didnt even know till Ben Metcalfe wrote me a email pointing me to the feedster top 500 page. I still cant believe I achived 485 position without doing anything. I'm sure next month I'll be out of the running totally unless they do a Top 1000 too. Anyway ego trip a side, its good to know people are reading my slightly mis-written and slightly under spell checked thoughts and ideas. The list also shows the top blogs dont get a lot of comments or trackbacks. By the way, the list seems to be arranged based on incoming links from other blogs and websites.

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Is Technorati selling?

Via Get Real

Rumours are that it is being sold to a “large search company” in about a week. BL Ochman bets it's Yahoo. Tris bets Google. If rumour mills are accurate, as they were with Flickr, we'll see the sale go off. Technorati Tags:

It has to be Yahoo! I cant imagine Microsoft buying them. Google maybe but I'm sure they will buy something like more general like feedster or blogdigger. Theres also Ask Jeeves which have been quite since buying Bloglines. maybe i'm wrong again? it could be AOL?

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DTV and the RSS enabled Television

DTV Beta screenshot

Broadcast TV is indeed dead in my house. I'm hearing about good things to watch via friends and family and downloading them via UKnova and other torrent feeds. Its working so well except one thing.
Managing all these RSS feeds is becoming difficult. At this moment I have my bloglines feeds which I use on my laptop and desktop machines. I also finally got PocketRSS to read straight from bloglines and build a subscription list from the OPML. But I have another set of feeds which I use in my torrent client Azuerus for TVRSS type downloading. It works well but more and more podcasts I'm subscribing to also deliever video media.

I orginally thought FireAnt would do well in this new role but It seems to want to take over from my torrent client, RSS reader and video player. Sucky indeed! But there something new which I spotted recently. DTV Beta. It seems to have everything which FireAnt has but is GPL and is backed up with the Broadcast machine.and supports Yahoo Media extensions along with standard enclosures. I'm expecting the next version of Windows media player will also do simular things, but it looks like iTunes 5.0 will be first out of the blocks in the same area. I'm assuming the majors will deliver your big name content and leave small producers out in the cold again. Anyhow, roll on the Windows version!

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Social news with digg

Diggnation video

I have been thinking about using some other tool to capture news content which dont quite make its way into slashdot and boingboing. Metafiter is one which Tom uses religiously but I dont quite like the old style of web product it is. Del.icio.us popular is good, but the content tends not to be totally news. Sometimes you get the links related to the news, instead of the actual news. This also applies to technorati popular.

So I'm testing out Digg which has a slashdot type model but allows for a much more longtail approch via friend aggregation as well as the whole digg nation. Talking of which, there is a show hosted by Kevin Rose and Alex Albright called Digg Nation where they take the top few stories from a week on digg and simply talk about it. Its kinda of slashdot review but with comments turned on. The show comes in audio and video podcast forms and I have to give huge kudos to Jon for making there feeds compatable with a RSS TV setup. Do check it out if you have a Azureus with RSS automation type setup. But back to Digg Nation for a moment. Currently Digg Nation only deals with the most digged/popular news. But theres nothing stopping someone doing a show about the most digged/popular content between certain groups of friends or a certain category. If they adopted a tagging option too, it would be endless.

For now digg is getting the thumbs up for me. I know I would love to see digg move away from the website. What I mean is tools and applications which mean I dont need to log into digg to do everything. At the moment you can get RSS feeds for pretty much anything in Digg, but it woud be great to see APIs for posting and digging news. Maybe directly in the RSS reader via a RESTful url like how a trackback ping works. So you can see what being digged and dig it by simply clicking a link at the bottom of the entry.

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The matrix revisited, this time by the fans…

Matrix remixed

From the CCB the editors of The Matrix Dezionized, a special fanmade edition of Matrix – Reloaded and Matrix – Revolutions.

We got the idea, when we finally watched Matrix Revolutions and couldn't believe, how bad it was, pathetic, without purpose. The most important thing is, to realize what is wrong, why is this movie not working, what makes it so bad. We decided that the complete plot string about Zion and Zion's battle against the machines was rather distracting from the main Matrix plot than improving it in any way. So we edited both DVDs, took out plenty of scenes, wherever needed and made a new edition, about 90 minutes smaller (the length of an entire moive, yes) and combined them to one final Matrix chapter.
What you get is a complete story, the story of Neo and his being the one. Plenty of people already watched this and the feedback was nothing but great. Still we had to redo the thing over and over again, just to get rid of possible flaws, bad cuts or whatever seemed unnecessary to us. Of course you can have a different opinion. And if you do and still like the idea of a better Matrix 2 movie, make your own edition and let's watch it. Choice is the problem of the Matrix universe, but choice is the thing that means freedom for us. We all like to be able to choose between editions and switch to the one we like best, no
matter who has created it. This is not meant to take any credit from the great Wachowski brothers, we admire your work, we are not interested in credit at all and absolutely not in making profit or money. Our interest is to improve an already existing work of art. See for yourself, decide for yourself.

Watch the trailer here (encoded using Xvid)

I'm currently watching another remix titled The Matrix Regenerated. The Matrix regenerated has an alternative ending and seems to be a little more suttle with the cuts. There is a point between Part 2 and 3 which has the cliff hanger about neo, well they did some very good work to change that and make it a smooth flowing section. Generally I would have like to have seen a better quality 2CD version, as some scenes are a little pixelated due to the low bitrate. The sound is also plain stereo which sucks because the Matrix was made for a AC3 surround sound system. But I imagine editing in AC3 is still really difficult. I guess these people like myself already bought the dvds and copied them to there hard drive for editing, it really makes me want to do the same for a couple of films I own – Donnie Darko and Matrix included.

Wired did a shamefully small piece about the greatest graffiti artist I have ever seen – Banksy. Just on a side point, I grew up in Bristol and that means living and seeing Banksy anywhere and everywhere. But I was flicking through his latest outdoor collections and came across this one and some text, which I've copied into real text.

Rat pouring away toxic sewage

Imagine a city where graffiti wasn't illegal, a city where everybody could draw wherever they liked. Where every street was awash with a million colours and little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was never boring. A city that felt like a living breathing thing which belonged to everybody, not just estate agents and barons of big business. Imagine a city like that and stop leaning against the wall – its wet.

If your not quite getting the connection between banksy and the matrix remixes, your missing out on remix culture. Not until now have I really thought about banksy being the perfect example of remix culture. His help pages are a inspiration to all those involved in remix culture.

  • Think from outside the box – Be highly creative
  • Collapse the box and take a fucking sharp knife to it – If the box is too restrictive, take a fucking sharp knife to it and build your own. Creative Commons and Bit Torrent is a great example of this in action.
  • Leave the house before you find something worth staying in for – Dont sit on your arse and simply consume. The internet was always meant to be a read/write medium, take advantage of that fact. Why cant this read/write ability apply to other mediums?
  • Remember crime against property is not real crime. People look at an oil painting and admire the use of brushstrokes to convey meaning. People look at a graffiti painting and admire the use of a drainpipe to gain access – Theres lots of parellels between graffiti artists and internet remixers. Its a crime yes, but there not really villains.
  • The time of getting fame for your name on its own is over. Artwork that is only about wanting to be famous will never make you famous. Any fame is a by-product of making something that means something. You don't go to a restaurant and order a meal because you want to have a shit – This is very much the net too. Fame is a by-product of your actions online. You are no one till you start leaving a digital footprint.

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The matrix revisited, this time by the fans…

From the CCB the editors of The Matrix Dezionized, a special fanmade edition of Matrix – Reloaded and Matrix – Revolutions.

We got the idea, when we finally watched Matrix Revolutions and couldn't believe, how bad it was, pathetic, without purpose. The most important thing is, to realize what is wrong, why is this movie not working, what makes it so bad. We decided that the complete plot string about Zion and Zion's battle against the machines was rather distracting from the main Matrix plot than improving it in any way. So we edited both DVDs, took out plenty of scenes, wherever needed and made a new edition, about 90 minutes smaller (the length of an entire moive, yes) and combined them to one final Matrix chapter.
What you get is a complete story, the story of Neo and his being the one. Plenty of people already watched this and the feedback was nothing but great. Still we had to redo the thing over and over again, just to get rid of possible flaws, bad cuts or whatever seemed unnecessary to us. Of course you can have a different opinion. And if you do and still like the idea of a better Matrix 2 movie, make your own edition and let's watch it. Choice is the problem of the Matrix universe, but choice is the thing that means freedom for us. We all like to be able to choose between editions and switch to the one we like best, no
matter who has created it. This is not meant to take any credit from the great Wachowski brothers, we admire your work, we are not interested in credit at all and absolutely not in making profit or money. Our interest is to improve an already existing work of art. See for yourself, decide for yourself.

I'm currently watching another remix titled The Matrix Regenerated. The Matrix regenerated has an alternative ending and seems to be a little more suttle with the cuts. There is a point between Part 2 and 3 which has the cliff hanger about neo, well they did some very good work to change that and make it a smooth flowing section. Generally I would have like to have seen a better quality 2CD version, as some scenes are a little pixelated due to the low bitrate. The sound is also plain stereo which sucks because the Matrix was made for a AC3 surround sound system. But I imagine editing in AC3 is still really difficult. I guess these people like myself already bought the dvds and copied them to there hard drive for editing, it really makes me want to do the same for a couple of films I own – Donnie Darko and Matrix included.

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Makoto Shinkai somewhat in Conversation

Blury shot of the conversation

So yesterday I did make it to the NFT for Makoto Shinkai in Conversation which kicked off a short season of Anime at the NFT. To start off we were treated to She and Her Cat followed by the insanely popular Voices of a distant star. The nicely air-conditioned NFT2 cinema was perfectly dark, specially when compared to the Filmworks cinemas where half the lights were on through out the film (highly distracting). After which the somewhat conversation started. There was tons of clapping while Makoto Shinkai walked down the cinema followed by his translator. Well it seemed that way at first. See the translator was very tired and didnt want to translate slightly difficult questions. She was struggling with questions about what anime Makoto is looking forward to this year! When I asked the tricky question about what Makoto felt about remixes, fansubs and re-versions of anime for other audiences (such as the uk one). We must have spent about 10mins on it. In the end Makoto answered with a interesting answer. First he was not totally aware of alternative versions of his films but he believes in building on top of peers work which involves taking other peoples anime films apart is a fine. When you post it to the net for others to learn and build upon your in tricky ground. He some what supported this but followed with a comment about his publishers and producers would not support such a movement.

Other questions included the usual what influences you, did you really make the anime yourself, what applications do you use? Adobe Photoshop and After Effects. A japanese lady asked in japanese how old he was and did he have a girlfriend? Makoto covered his mouth when he replied out of shyness, but at only 32 he's still looking like 24. After the questions and answers Makoto signed tickets and DVDs (got mine done) outside in the lobby. Generally it was good event let down by the translator, which I understand is a bloody difficult job but its what you do.

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