Category: xml and web 2.0

DataPortabilityAndMe videos

So finally I have edited and re-encoded my videos for the DataPortabilityAndMe video project. Now before you all moan about the quality or the very strange eye movements. Bear in mind this was shot while in Hamburg at about 2am in a hotel room while I was trying to talk clearly but not loudly, as to not wake my neighbours. I had also just come from a girl geekdinner where I was drinking wine and just finished a espresso before turning the camera towards myself. So yes generally not the best of conditions but I just needed to do it, or the nerves would have gotten hold of me and I would never have done it.

The quality is a little poorer that expected because I had finally run it through 3 different encoders. At the start it was shot on my Sanyo HD1 camera at HighDef 720p resoultion using the lower quality mpeg4 codec (I wish I'd used the higher quality one now). The footage was copied from SD card to hard drive and transcoded into Mpeg4 video and Mpeg1 audio so Kdenlive could edit the footage without the audio error I was getting when importing straight from the Sanyo HD1 footage. So after editing using Kdenlive (which I have to say is one of the best desktop editing tools for gnu/Linux at the moment) I exported the video in a range of video formats for uploading to Blip.tv. In the end I found it easier to just output from Kdenlive using Divx and Mpeg3 audio then once again transcode that using VLC into Mpeg4 which Blip could understand. Yes its a pain but I finally got there. Next time I would convert once to HDV files and encode again before sending to bliptv.

Some of you might have noticed I also shot two videos. DataPortabilityAndMe (Large version) is me talking for less that 5mins and the longer version where I quote “wax lyrical” (yes I wish I had not said that too) is called DataPortabilityAndMe Adhoc Talk (Small version). Enjoy and let me know what you all think.

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Kevin Rose talks about Data Portability on Diggnation

So it started off about the facebook applications on any site and their global javascript library. But before long Kevin Rose is informing Alex about the advantages of this move for Facebook and some of its users. Kevin then points out that its disadvantage is for the users because its still tied to Facebook. He briefly mentions OpenSocial then starts talking about DataPortability. During the following 3-4 mins Alex challenges Kevin about Digg.com and its Dataportanility stance and to be Kevin admits he's all for dataportability in Digg.com. This is obviously very fitting looking forward to the announcement a while back that Digg joins the Dataportability group.

For someone whose one of the founders of the Dataportability group, I've been quite quiet about it. Don't get me wrong I'm lurking a lot and I already have my fingers in certain dataportability pies. You may have seen some data portability videos around, well I'm glad to say I have completed mine and I'm just trying to edit mine with Kdenlive and Pitivi but not having much luck. It seems Kdenlive doesn't like my Sanyo's Mpeg4 audio format. So I need to convert them first into something else using VLC. Pitivi is strange and does weird things to the video, which means it won't play in much including the great VLC.

Big thanks to Kevin Rose for allowing me the permission to clip this video and put it up on Blip.TV. Originally not only was I having problems with encoding but Blip kept removing my video because I was breaching Revision3's Copyright. So after a brief email to Kevin directly, he replied yes but he would have liked to have seen the video first. I told him if he doesn't like it I will take it down.

There is also now a Geekdinner about Data Portability in London. If your interested in this subject and in the area of London on Wednesday 27th Feb, come along for a good debate about the whole project and subject.

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Either Googles really good, or I should be scared?

Googles good?

alt.support.divorce and diet.low-carb, hummm I guess I should be scared. Google couldn't have worked this out from my gmail because I don't tend to use that much for personal emails. My google reader subscriptions and blog might be the source if this isn't just a fluke. Problem is that I can't see the same page without logging in, otherwise I would be able to tell for sure. Now if Google only supported APML then I could know for sure. Yes another reason for APML along with Tristan's thoughts on the radio labs blog.

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Xtech 2008 proposals

I have put in a couple of proposals for Xtech 2008 which is this year in Dublin. The theme for the year is the web on the go which actually fits in nicely with our thoughts about for over the air (more details about that really soon). So the way I see it is data portability is a type of movement like data on the go, in actual fact you can't have data on the go without some dataportability. Roll on the brief descriptions… .

The truth behind Data Portability
Data portability is in a way one of the greatest freedoms users and developers can have. Portability of data underpins the web of data, apis and the ability to move data to other services, platforms and devices. It is silo busting and is deeply weaved into the debate over social platforms, identity and mobile data. In this talk, I will explore the problems, solutions and gamut of policy decisions

The attention economy is only just around the corner
The attention economy was talked about at the end of 06 to death. Through all the hype, a couple of guys from down-under started to make sense of attention and proposed APML (Attention Profiling Markup Language).Unfortunately little is known about APML and there is a lot of mis-information on APML. As one of the working group members I will run through what it is, its purpose and why its important

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Developing Widgets on GNU/Linux

Compiz Screenlets

So I just noticed that Konfabulator/yahoo widgets has the ability at long last to embed HTML and Flash. Not only that there is a full HTML DOM too. If this was in there from day one, I wouldn't have given up on konfabulator widget development all that time ago.

Whats odd is that Konfabulator never made the leap over to the linux world. Actually to be honest, the current state of widgets on linux isn't fanastic (sorry i'm not a fan of gDesklets, but thats due to change with the Compiz Screenlets. Screenlests are SVG widgets written using Python (which is another reason to learn python). Jackfield is also interesting because it can run Apple Dashboard widgets and is adding support for Yahoo & Opera widgets and Vista Gadgets.

I got to say screenlets are great, they work like konfabulator widgets. So you can make widgets sit above, below or on the widget layer. I love Compiz fusion.

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Things to make you move

APML logo

I have not written much about APML for a while, partly because I've been focused on Data Portability. But I saw this a while ago and forgot to blog it over December.

Attention data is an emerging concept in web circles that focusses on making people the owners of the data about the websites they visit, or pay attention to. Currently, this kind of information builds up in the individual websites that we visit, but in most cases that information is never shared us. The Attention movement seeks to remedy that by making data about what we pay attention to available in a portable format.

That format is known as APML, or Attention Profile Markup Language. And, with some simple integration with APML providers, Engagd, we’ve now made it possible for Ma.gnolia members to build an attention profile from their bookmarks.

A new setting in your profile controls, found on the newly-renamed Bookmarks tab, allows you to turn on the generation of APML from your bookmarks feed. After the profile has had some time to build up, you can grab a copy of your profile data.

When I first read this, my finger hovered the sign up button. Yes I was that close to converting from delicious to magnolia. And lets be honest Magnolia's openID signup would have made things so simple. I bet it would have taken all of about 5mins to signup and to be using it like how I use delicious right now. Its not too late either… If anything will make me move or join a new service its going to be APML support and OpenID. OAuth support is a nice touch but not essential. RSS/ATOM, a API and Microformats should now be a given. If there not, obvioulsy the service isn't serious about its dataportability policy or you could say really care about the advanced participations.

Great news about Yahoo and OpenID by the way, I look forward to seeing OpenID support on Flickr, Delicious, etc very soon.

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Data Portability Video


DataPortability – Connect, Control, Share, Remix from Smashcut Media on Vimeo.


CREDITS:
Written, designed and edited by Michael Pick, smashcut-media.com

Music – “Bongo Avenger” – Eric & Ryan Kilkenny: CC Attrib. Non Commercial

Hands photo: Scol22 – Stock.xchng

Additional images: istockphoto

Animated Flourishes: Andrew Kramer

So I was impressed with the production value of the video but felt it needed more snap. Chris asked what I meant by “snap?” But I think you will know what I mean and agree, it certainly needs more snappyness. Not that I'm slagging it off, actually its really good and well worth sending around to people who don't know or understand the whole data portability movement.

I've also finally put in a Xtech 2008 proposal for Data Portability at long last. Here is my short description.

Data portability is in a way one of the greatest freedoms users and developers can have. Portability of data underpins the web of data, apis and the ability to move data to other services, platforms and devices. It is silo busting and is deeply weaved into the debate over social platforms, identity and mobile data. In this talk, I will explore the problems, solutions and gamut of policy decisions

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URL X shutdown again

urlx.org shutdown again

I like URL X because the shorten URL's it makes are still human readable and there's a very simple API. However its been shutdown again.

Bad news: Dreamhost has shut down url(x)! (Again.) They don't think the service should exist in its current anonymous incarnation. I disagree with their assessment and will be moving the site to a new server. I will be tightening some things up, but the service will return in its current form. Sorry for the inconvenience — we will be back shortly!

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Facebook, Google And Plaxo Join The DataPortability Workgroup

Dataportability

Forget Open social, this is huge! This a huge win for interoperability, portability and fair use. Chris told me a while ago but promised to say nothing till now. It also shows how much influence characters like scoble have, but I'm sure these companies were looking at Data portability long before scobles account got suspended.

After publishing an invitation to Facebook to join the DataPortability Working Group January 4, we never thought that Facebook would accept it. Today changes everything you’ve ever thought about social-networking data and lock-in before, because today Facebook, Google and Plaxo have joined the DataPortability Workgroup.

Google and Plaxo joining are a positive, however given that both have previously joined together for platforms such as OpenSocial it’s not that significant, but Facebook is another matter. On January 4 Michael sort of defended Facebook’s stance against Plaxo pulling data from Facebook on the grounds that “Facebook also has a very good reason for protecting email addresses – user privacy.” Today, by joining the DataPortability Working Group Facebook is embracing open standards and open access, and that is a huge fundamental change from its previous stance on being locked in to closed standards.

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Scoble calls for dataportability

Thanks Tom for the heads up… Straight from Scoble. A very good reason for dataportability. You should be able to export your data even when your account is disabled.

Facebook disabled my account

If you are trying to contact me on Facebook, please don’t. My account has been “disabled” for breaking Facebook’s Terms of Use. I was running a script that got them to keep me from accessing my account. I’m appealing. I’ll tell you what I was doing as soon as I talk with the developers who built what I was using and as soon as I talk with Facebook’s support (I sent an email in reply to the one below, but haven’t heard back yet).

I run this stuff so you don’t have to. 🙂

UPDATE: Rodney Rumford, who runs the FaceReviews Blog about Facebook says that all traces of me have been already removed from Facebook too.

UPDATE2: Tonight I learned about DataPortability.org and signed my name to that effort.

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