Category: social-hardware

turn your blog into a book. Why?

Seen on my feeds – http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/002692.html. It basicly turns your blog into a printable pdf book. First thing, I could make a xsl-fo stylesheet to do this using cocoon within a afternoon.

Query blojsom for all its entries ever written using the simple ?entries=-1 add flavor=rdf and your well away. Transform the rdf into pdf using xsl-fo and your done. Hey even write a simple webservice so you can submit a url and get a binary file back?

But my question really is why? why oh why would you want a book of your entries? Saying that I'm use to reading on screen so maybe I'm the wrong person to ask the question? By the way I'm reading Cory Doctorow's Standard Eastern Tribe on my ipaq and its an excellent read so far (page 63/128)

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Now this is what i wanted…

Open Dating

I have set up a password-protected website with PHP iCalendar that lets a few trusted people access my entire calendar, with all of its confidential information. But I’ve written another program that can create a version of the calendar suitable for public viewing; in this “sanitized” calendar, descriptions of appointments and events are replaced by the word “busy.” I publish this sanitized calendar on my website. It lets people know when I’m free for meetings but doesn’t reveal any of my secrets.

Want to create the same but not using PHP calendar. Anyone know of anything Java servelet based I can use? Ah found this page with someone pretty much asking the same questions. But alas, they seem not be quite what i need.

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Opera, blogs and fravia

Opera - simply the best internet experience

I was talking to Fravia about browsers and blogging over dinner with Richard Stallman yesterday, we went to the Star of India in Old brompton Street, near Earls Court, West London. Good food but I unfortually didnt feel too well the day after.

Fravia made an interesting statement on Thursday. Opera know what he does but they dont really care because the publicity of using opera is more than enough for them. And on that point I have to say Opera 7.5 is the best browser for advanced web searchers and developers… Some of the noteable features of 7.5, RSS newsfeeds directly in the browser, IRC chat client like Mozilia, better opera mail with spam filtering, New skin and Kiosk mode. Now if only there was a upgrade option I would be very happy.

Screen shot of Opera 7.5

Fravia mentioned Amazon's A9 search engine in the event. And how it displays the 5 or 10 texts lines before and after your search. Now with automation it is possible to grab the whole book. I never really thought about it but it makes total sense and means yes you can grab almost any book in Amazons store…

I questioned Fravia about blogging and syndication. He felt, he couldnt quite make up his mind on blogging. He felt it might isolate pages off, and so many blogs are written using blogger, typepad or moveable type that they were too simular. I see what he's saying but the instant semantic nature of blogs allow for advance searching beyond the logic of most search engines at the moment. Saying that I did notice Yahoo now searches and knows what RSS is. I've promised to write a piece about the advantages of searching in a blogging landscape very soon. The thing I love is when you add up other technologies like XFN and FOAF with semantic blogging, you got somekind of landscape to search in. Wont even get started on xlink, xpointer and xpath search engines.

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London Bloggers getting together [attended & enjoyed]

Ok I hope to write something here really soon about the event last wednesday. Till then check out the photos of the event, as I didnt bring my camera and it was too dark for my smartphone. I am not happy with that photo of myself. I mean any shot but not when my mouth is wide open please.

I left work at about 19:10 and made my way up to the meeting place through convert garden. On the way I read that Moveable type 3 was out and thought…who cares? Obviously I'm not a MT user and dont really care too much. I think David sums it up best. If you're abandoning moveable type 3.

Anyway back to the event. I got there about 19:30 and got a drink straight away, well actually someone else bought me a shark. If I could remember who it was I would credit them here. Then got talking to Seyed Razavi. I never knew who he was so just chatted generally about alot except actual blogging. My memory gets a little hazy about then. I remember seeing most people run towards Cory when he dropped in. I did shake his hand and he seem suprised that I was the Ian who's been writing to him for the last few months.

I sat with another celeb blogger PixelDiva. I tend to read her blog on and off and did tune in to her spot on Radio 4 a while ago. I'm glad to hear she was very down to earth and very chilled out about the whole radio show. I met lots more people, too many to mention. Ambalance driver who blogs his days, need to find that site! Didnt talk to Tom coats, he was too busy surrounded by a group of people all the way through the event. Missed Annie who won a blogging award for her site. Honestly I never seen the site till recently and thought why would it be interesting? then actually got kind of hooked and thought about doing a simular thing myself about people using technology. Sure I'll catch a few people toothing but I've seen some very interesting uses of technology while going to work everyday.
Other people worth mentioning include a student from Westmister college who understood the whole teaching and learning issue to the T. He actually mentioned Learning about learning while I talked about educational blogging. A guy who was working on a system to rate music, I suggested using metadata in blogs and looking at the slashdot methods. And all the people who stayed till midnight… Good night all round when's the next one James.

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Social software and google’s Orkut

So I've now signed up to Orkut.com from google.com. As I'm interested in how it compares to Wallop and Friendster. Gareth was messing with it and showed us that half of the more vocal members of the BBC new media are already on there. Actually looking at it, I did a search for BBC and got tons of groups sorry communities. Slaves of BBCi is where the newmedia people hangout. Owned by Tom coats of plasticbag

Generally it seems ok, tons and tons of questions could be answered, but I opted for a more secretive approch, only giving up name, work number, date of birth and city. Some of the drop downs ignoyed me slightly. For example – am I african american? I don't bloddy think so! Black yes not African or American! Typical American view. But also all the towns and stuff can only be filled in if you live in America. At least Meetup.com has a more balanced view of the world. Talking of which I listened to Scott Heiferman from meetup.com talk about it on Social Computing Symposium – Keynote: New Dynamics of Using Online to go Offline. Interesting the idea and the risks taken.
Back to Orkut a bit, the interface is yuk! Really need a way to allow you to upload your own stylesheet or pick a style?

Oh yeah my username is cubicgarden by the way, if you want to add me as a friend…

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Calling from munich, germany

So i'm hoping this goes through on to my blog before Wednesday, as I
should beable to send this blog as an email to blojsoms moblogging
plugin from my ipaq. Now unfortunately I tried to send a couple of
emails from work on friday but they never ended up on the blog, for some
unknown reason. Anyway will look into it when I get back from holiday.

Yes this time in munich, germany. And i'm happy to say international
gprs roaming with orange via tmobile is working a treat. Actually
working better than America and even some parts of south london I would
say. I'm in studentenwerk north munich and the gprs is actually quite
quick. All I need to do now is sort out my email accounts so at least of
them will send email from my ipaq. Honesty I even signed up with hotpop
so I could get it working. Should have signed up with orange's email
really, but its long and complex…

Anyway here's to moblogging from abroad…
*raised wine glass* from my sisters apartment in studentenwerk, munich.

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Clogging up the web with RSS

Wired are running a feature about RSS readers clogging up the web.
This kind of ties to my cutting rss short.

TeledyN's Murphy runs one of the most popular open-source Linux sites (which he started in 1994). He was one of the first to offer an RSS feed in 1999 when Netscape introduced the format. By late last year, Murphy's website would run out of bandwidth by 8 p.m.

Murphy's problems arose because he, like many bloggers, included most of his site's front page, including graphics, in the RSS feed, allowing users to read his entries in whole without visiting his website.

In contrast, most news sites, including Wired News, want to bring readers to their websites, so they serve up only a headline or a couple of sentences along with a link to the full story.

I think the feature is valid but blog software should include something like the conditional get helps with the badly written rss readers.

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Social Computing Symposium

Lunch time at the BBC and I'm still buzzing thinking about the possible outcomes of the moblogging plug-in in Blojsom 2.14. I posted a comment on blojsom blog about the ability to now blog anywhere there is a net connection, which for me is anywhere. Even abroad because I've got international GPRS roaming.

Anyway one of the things which happened when I started the plug-in was, Blojsom picked out a email which happened to be one I sent to myself in a BBC. I meant to keep it as a copy and the blog picked it up. Now think about it one second, a blog which picks up things you want to keep? (I keep forgetting email is the leader in social technology by the way) And imagine if you could do the same for instant messager too?
A blog which stores useful things through out the day without actually having to send a post? Nice, maybe not on my main blog but for example on the bookmarks blog will be useful. If you could add metadata too we would be very cool.

I've also been thinking about what happens when Blojsom can respond back to you? Its one of those things I wanted in blojsim for a while. I know Blojsom can send email but I've disabled it and I don’t really know why its there. Anyway, I'm thinking out loud…

Been watching Social Computing Symposium. And thinking about social networking and its software, social technologies like email, text, im, blogs, wikis, etc. E invite sounds interesting never come across it before. Would you call blogs and wikis lightweight authoring?
Interesting enough, the BBC try and encourage people to use im to communicate through-out the buildings. Unfortually there using Microsoft MSN messager so no interoperability with Ravensbournes Jabber server will be available in short term.

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Cutting RSS short

I am becoming quite obsessive about sites that provide RSS feeds but only a line or two. Some drive me up the wall when they only show the head title and nothing more. The whole point of Syndication is syndication surely? I understand that news sites want to drive people to the site. So take BBC for example, there feed only shows the headline and a brief paragraph of text. Fine, I can live with that…
But I can not live with sites like xbox-scene.com which only show the title or much worst still ftrain, Jono the blog and demosgreenhouse. I'm sorry but for example Douglas Rushkoff supplys a full feed without any trouble and he's blog is read by many many people. Techdirt Corporate Intelligence is a another example of how easy the temptation of full feeds can be…
I dont really understand the reason except advertising for not showing all the content in a feed?

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higher level aggregation

The higher level aggregators have started coming about. One of notice is Kinja which uses xhtml 1.0 strict and css in its site. But doesnt give off another feedm which is a real shame. So I count this as more a end of the line aggregator, kinda of like google, etc. Still prefer bloglines, but ultimatly the best is still something like flock, which gives off a rss feed too. I have started using cocoon's aggregator, which is pretty awesome too. Specially because any one with a bit of xsl can knock out decent feeds.

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