Category: xml and web 2.0

Call for Participation: XTech 2007

Xtech 2005

Looks like my proposal for Etech 2007 was rejected. Which is fine, because that means I could present the idea and proposal at Xtech 2007 instead, which happens to be in Paris this time round. Yep its that time of the year again. Call for Participation…

Proposals for presentations and tutorials are invited for XTech 2007,Europe's premier web technologies conference. The deadline for submitting proposals is December 15th, 2006. Read the CFPs and submit proposals online at http://xtech.expectnation.com/event/1/public/cfp

The theme for this year's conference is The Ubiquitous Web. As the web reaches further into our lives, we will consider the increasing ubiquity of connectivity, what it means for real world objects to connect with the web, and the increasing blurring of the lines between virtual worlds and our own.

The technologies underpinning these developments include mobile devices, RFID, Second Life, location-aware services, Google Earth and more. The issues surrounding them include privacy, intellectual property, activism, politics, regulation and standards.

XTech is comprised of four thematic tracks:

  • Applications: web applications, vocabularies, publishing, content management, case studies
  • Browser Technologies: browsers, mobile, user interface, related issues and standards.
  • Core Technology: the heart of web technology, markup, protocols, semantics and more.
  • Open Data: technology, experiences and policy behind open access to data.

More detail on the content for each track can be found at http://xtech.expectnation.com/event/1/public/content/tracks

Keynotes for XTech 2007 include Adam Greenfield, author of “Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing”, Gavin Starks of Global Cool and designers of the future Matt Webb and Jack Schulze.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Adams Geoblogging Blojsom mashup

My new Geo update for Blojsom

Adam has pimped out his blojsom blog with a Googlemap as a selectable flavor. I got to say this is awesome stuff and I look forward to what he does next. This also shows how powerful Blojsom is as a platform for advance blogging (geoblogging, semantic blogging, etc). I just don't understand why more people don't use it. I think Adam has also pushed me into finally buying Ecto after trying out Live Writer again. I really need to make putting in Microformats and other metadata into blog entries a lot easier for myself. That also reminds me I need to get my Blojsom 3.0 blog up and going.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Why do I use Blip.tv? and what is their business model?

I use to upload all my audio and video to the Internet Archive, but the uploading tools and general tools once the file was there, were very poor. So Tom recommended Blip.tv one night at BarCampLondon. I did check it out and really give it a squeeze. But it came out clean, so since then I've been pretty much using that and enjoying it. I think the feature set and general openness to download the actual high quality videos makes a hugh difference

This was pretty much confirmed in my mind today when Miles sent this entry from Joi Ito which links to the entry by Lawerence Lessig where he compares a whole host of video sites to a web 2.0 ethic.

In this context, YouTube is a “cool” poster-child of the Web 2.0 trend, but doesn't meet the basic requirement of allowing the user to download videos from the site. While it is “sharing”, it is what Larry is calling a “fake sharing site”.

Harsh but the truth, its painful to get content out of Youtube, even Google Video is a pain. And all I wanted to do was play it on my big widescreen tv via xbox media centre.

Funny enough, I was talking to Cary Marsh, CEO and Co-founder of a site called Mydeo (meant to be in Tech Crunch this week). Her take on things is that people want to be able to upload video and only show it to a small group of friends and family. They also may not want there wedding videos next to kids racing each other in supermarket trolleys. I see what she means. But what got her was when I started listing off the reasons why I use Blip.tv. She honestly was dumb-founded and wanted to know what there business model was/is. I pointed out that there may be pro version in the future but right now you can.

  • Upload video of any length
  • Download the archived orginal
  • Use there non branded flash player anywhere you like
  • Add a creative commons licence
  • Automaticlly add content to Internet Archive
  • Add advertising to your video (start or end)
  • Add alternative formats of the same clip

And thats just for starters… So to the question of is Youtube really web 2.0? Well I agree with Larry and say nope, its more a 1.75ish type site. Maybe Google will change this in the long run, but my money is certainly at Blip.tv for now. But I do worry that unless they do setup pro accounts soon or start running serious advertising, they won't be substanable and a great video service will go under.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

BBC Weather feeds

BBC Weather

After all the fuss, harsh words and long wait for BBC weather feeds. They are now here for use under the BBC Backstage licence. Its been something we've been sitting on for a while because we wanted to make sure it was all correct and wouldn't get pulled after a few days. So here's the official announcement from Kathryn at BBC Weather

I am very pleased to inform you that BBC Weather's first RSS feeds are now live. Links to them can be found on all 5 day forecast pages: http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/5day.shtml

The feeds are located at http://feeds.bbc.co.uk/weather/feeds/rss/{world|id}/{location_id}.xml

E.g. http://feeds.bbc.co.uk/weather/feeds/rss/5day/id/2315.xml and http://feeds.bbc.co.uk/weather/feeds/rss/5day/world/4567.xml

All of the 7379 feeds are updated at least* twice a day (at approximately 8AM/PM *GMT*).

We are planning more feeds, and improvements to these ones as well (e.g. dynamic generation of feeds, which will allow us to offer different flavours such as Atom; additional content such as tide times and current observations (Met Office willing); additional semantic mark-up).

In the meantime we look forward to seeing your BBC Weather widgets in the Backstage Widgets Compo: http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/news/archives/2006/10/widgets_competi.html

I have included geo:lat/long tags in all entries to facilitate mappy mashups. Enjoy!

I look forward to hearing your comments, concerns and ideas.

Best,
Kass

I think we're going to have to do something for the first person to map the BBC weather feeds on top of a Google map.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

RSS in 2007 finally something for casual users?

RSS badge on a shoe

Richard MacManus over at the Read Write web, suggests that 2007 will be the the big year for RSS. Although I agree, I think 2006 was also a big year for machine use of RSS. 2007 looks to be a big one for casual users or consumers. The main reason seems to centre around every single browser supporting RSS in some way once IE7 is launched. Outlook 2007 also supports RSS so this pretty much covers all of Microsoft's bases. Pretty much now, if its not got RSS, its either a old site or the site can't be taken seriously. Pretty much everything has RSS including yahoo mail and google reader./p>

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

BBC Backstage Widget Competition

So those talented guys at Backstage.bbc.co.uk just launched a Widget competition. The prizes include a Origami PC and Nokia Internet Tablet but the other interesting thing is there will a meetup event where the winners will be announced.

I'm still new to widget creation so, I'm also going to try making a couple and link to any resources which I find useful. Like we talked about internally this is not simply a competition where we put it out there and expect submissions back. This is a conversation, and we will be listening and learning during the month. So good luck and subscribe to the mailing list for more information.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Flickr reaches 250,000,000 photos

Found via BoingBoing

On February 15, 2006 I discovered that the photo sharing site Flickr had reached 100 million hosted photos. Today (September 22 2006) at 11.18 PM CET, only seven months later, Flickr passed the quarter billion mark – 250 million photos.

It maybe that Flickr is doesn't have the number of people that Yahoo Photos might do, but I very much douht that the quality and quanity of photos is anywhere near flickr. I do wonder the percentage which are creative commons licenced however.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Trusted places launches to the public

Trusted places

The venture which I should have got much more involved in has launched to the public.

Trustedplaces.com is open for business!

Yes, our dear friends we are now one letter up; have moved from alpha to beta and have opened up the site so that anyone can join. What a difference a letter makes. You’ll see a new home page, some very useful options for your reviews, favourites and friend’s favourites, quite a few design tweaks, but you’ll also be able to search for places that are near you.

Trusted places is simply a place to put all your favorate places and then tag them for other friends to find. You can write reviews and post pictures too but the most interesting thing is the friends aspect. Yes I'm thinking really long tail stuff here. The trustedplaces team haven't quite made a point of drumming that up yet but its in the pipeline I'm sure. There's also some really other things which are planned which make sense when your not at a computer.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]