Geeky weekend offline

Well it looks like my weekend is almost full up already. On Thursday (remember Thursday is meant to be the new Friday or something?) I got the Ravensbourne degree show private view, which sounds like its shaping up well into something maybe a little different this year.

Then I got a Jeremy Zawodny double bill, first one for BBC staff in White City then the second one as a special mid month Geek Dinner. Great work to Ben for arrange this one at short notice. Then on Saturday (could be argued, the first day of the weekend) Open Tech 2005 in west London. I expect there will be another meal afterwards and lots of drinking and chatting like last years notcon04.

Sunday will certainly this weekend be a day of rest, or riding the scooter depending on the weather.

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New link blog coming soon…

Just a quick note that I'm attepting to keep a small link blog of things I read, listen to or watch which gives me a little inspiration. The blog is simply called inspiration and will be more of a challenge in my process of blogging that anything else. Ideally I would just mark something as good enough for the link blog that loading up a blogging app and blogging it. I'm sure this is very possible with something like Automator for OSX 10.4 but on windows without knowing VB? Maybe not…

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Is it time for the mainstream to get Torrent TV?

Bit torrent

PBS Launches NerdTV, the First Downloadable Web-Exclusive Series From a Major Broadcaster.

I'm unsure if the last part is true but its a brave and good move by PBS. Although I have to say its about time a major broadcaster started really taking advantage of downloadable video. There was no mention of using bit torrent for distribution which is a shame when you consider the amount of the NerdTV target users use it and with this recent announcement from Opera about there bit torrent support. Its also used by quite a few podcasters and the new range IPTV programmers (cant think of a better name). From the shadows, Systm by Kevin Rose and of course The Scene by Jun Group entertainment are a few which come to mind.

For a public broadcaster like PBS, NerdTV certainly makes a lot of sense but for the commercal enterprises, IPTV sounds like a nightmare. Those which strike the balance between the audience demands and there own stand a fair chance. I found this quote on the fromtheshadows forums.
There is no competition for air time, no time slots, and no commercials.

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Note taking and outlining

I thought I had it covered. Joe on the TabletPC and Pocket Thinker on the ipaq, both support OPML naively but pocketthinker does not import OPML from Joe. So I'm back to the start with note taking.

I'm seriously douhting if OPML is the right thing for the task. Uche goes one step futher and suggests XML formats for outlining are complete rubbish. Danny Ayers also gets the boot in on OPML. Honestly he has a point but offers up a couple of others which I had not looked into before. OPL in reaction to the ugliness of OPML. Looking at the spec, I'm not sure it goes quite far enough. XBEL on the other hand looks too wildly different but useful for outlining. Uche also did a follow where he reviews. I like the idea of XoXo but prefer the idea of using XHTML or RDF which is easily parsed and integreated into other processes.

Then I found Wikipad… and had high hopes for a pocketpc version like this palm version or even this mobile phone type version. Wikipad doesn't have the name of something like Voodoopad but it certainly does do a good job of notetaking for now…

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First few days using the bluetooth keyboard

small size bluetooth keyboard

So at long last I got it and have used it quite a bit. But I really got to try it out at a political blogging lecture I attended just recently. The complains I heard from other users about the keyboard timing out after a minute or even less didnt seem to happen to me. Generally my ipaq would turn off before the keyboard would. It is a bit of a pain having to reconnect when the ipaq has switched off but even that only takes 2secs and only requires you to press a key. None of that bluetooth bonding each time, which was a relief to discover.
I was not able to bond my 3G Phone with the keyboard of course but unexpectly my tablet would not pair with the keyboard. After a browse through the Stowaway forums and Microsofts FAQs, it seems the Toshiba bluetooth drivers are utter crap and they dont support the HID profile along with others like the Audio profiles. So I attempted to remove the toshiba bluetooth drivers and force the service pack 2 ones into action. However its going to take more work as none of them working now.

Generally the Bluetooth keyboard is pretty great and I highly recommend it. I just cant wait to make proper use of the keyboard when at a conference or decent lecture. My thoughts of using the bluetooth keyboard as a interface for most of my machines may have been a little forward thinking on my part. Oh well at least I'm half way there.

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Harry Potter madness starts today?

Tesco struggle to keep up with the demand
I went down to my local Tesco for some quick midnight shopping and ended up snapping some pictures of the chaos which was named Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I believe about 100 people turned up and queue just to get there hands on the either of the two versions (well different jacket designs) which were published and released today. I have no problem with this kinda of crazyness, I have queued to be first on a few things in my past but why any parent would drag there kids along at midnight is beyond me.

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bbc.co.uk/opensource

http://www.bbc.co.uk/opensource provides information about open source projects from the BBC. It lists projects developed by the BBC where the source code has been released as open source.

For the BBC, open source software development is an extension of our Public Service remit. Releasing open source software helps our audience get additional value from the work they've funded, and also get tools for free that they couldn't get any other way. It also allows people outside the BBC to extend projects in such a way that may in future be used in the BBC.

Well, backstage.bbc.co.uk and the creative archive now include bbc.co.uk/opensource to the amazing line up…

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Mark just does not get it, why big media is in trouble

First a quote from Mark,

Just because you can do desktop publishing on your laser printer doesn’t mean you’re going to replace the local newspaper.

I was almost going to scream after hearing the above and lots more just a moment ago. I'm seriously suprised Rob Greenlee didnt ring the “what on earth are you on” alarm. Has Mark Ramsey never heard of concepts like the longtail, emergence, community cooperation and open source? Rightly so, the correct answer to the statement was – dont bet on it!

Luckly Doug broke his silence in his usual news update and expressed the fact that “Mark doesn’t get it!”

Its also nicely covered here if you don’t want to hear two lots of podcasts in one go.

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Whats the future of Blogmatrix Jaeger?

I recently sent the guys at blogmatrix a email asking whats going to happen to Jaeger in the light of Sparks! I use Jaeger everyday because it pretty much does what I really need a RSS reader to do. It stays out of the way of my browsing and allows me to glance over many feeds (almost 250 now) very quickly while working away. Its not perfect however, there are bugs like the sync bug which ignores your proxy server settings. So I cant sync my work machine with my laptop and home machine. There are also lots of little things I would love to add if I was a python hacker, like more search engines, send via email (generates a email with the link, title and small description already written), post to blog or del.icio.us and output xml/rss. I'm almost able to hack this together myself except its a XML or XHTML only affair. There seems to be no way to have both. The templates are luckly velocity templates but there seems to be no way to specify other templates Jaeger should server up. On that same vein, I'm not able to get Jaeger to serve up HTML outside of the local machine. Not sure if this a constraint, bug or something I'm doing wrong. Anyhow, here's the email, I'll be interested in what others feel.

Hi David and others,

Quite a while ago I wrote in regards to Jaeger support and what's going to happen to it? I just wanted to ask again, with all the support and push for Sparks, I'm wondering if Jaeger would ever make it to a version 2? I understand the development and time constraints attached to having 2 products Jaeger and sparks.

Dont get me wrong, I like Sparks! But its well over kill for myself, there are also some things which have been lost in the transformation.

* Single Panel (works with my standard browser)
* Offline/bulk reading seems better in Jaeger
* Synchronization! (This is a lifesaver when working with 3 Jaegers clients, I even got my pocket pc rss client to read the stored OPML every week now!)
* Universal Search Engine (I'm actually hacking around with Python to add support for A9 and others)

If Sparks had all these I would upgrade, but it strikes me that Jaeger and Sparks are different products and thats a good thing. So in light of this and the development effort, I wonder if you had ever considered,

* Open sourcing Jaeger or making it more open at least (if I was a python programmer I would love to re-engineer Jaeger, right now my XHTML+CSS templates are custom to my preferences which is the best I can currently do. But I had thought about hacking Jaeger into outputting XML which I could then transform into a Konfabulator widget, screensaver or something else)
* Releasing a version without the licence nag? (Now sparks is free, shouldnt Jaeger be too? I believe you were charging $30 per client for Jaeger a while ago?)
* Make a donate Jaeger version (I would be happy to donate to Jaeger but not pay $30 for each version of Jaeger I install on my many machines)

Anyway, I hope you understand this isn't an attack of Blogmatrix, I personally think Jaeger is great and still beats some of the mature rss readers like blogbridge, feeddemon, etc. But I'm left pondering what future it has everytime I get the licence nag. Plus there are bugs in Jaeger which seem to be fixed in Sparks but I'm unsure there ever make it to Jaeger ever


I recieved a email from David Janes from Blogmatrix after a couple of hours.

Hi Ian,

The source code for Jaeger is available on sourceforge, if you'd like to
play with it. I'd be more than willing to offer help as time allows.
FYI: Our llicense agreement says it can't be rereleased without the nag
unfortunately.

So it looks like Jaeger will be supported but its going to take lots of time and resources from the blogmatrix guys, till then I'm hoping some open souce developers pick it up and do some interesting things with the code. Yep a little lazyweb but hey theres nothing wrong with that.

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As the police request for media of the blasts…

No to terrorism

…bloggers, grassroot journalist and the cameraphone carrying public can be proud of the great work they have done. Not only some of the best pictures and videos of the tragedy could also be used for evidence in capturing the actual people who took part. Like Dan Gillmor, I turned to the BBC then the guardian then to the blogosphere, wikinews and google news.

Some of the highlights of the terriable tragedy,

Flickr: Photos on day of bombing in London – Flickr becomes a great resource for the latest pictures.

Wikinews: Coordinated terrorist attack in London – Collaborative news finally starting to work

LA Times on cameraphone coverage of London bombings, indeed the watershed moment in the history of media journalism.

Forbes interviewing Adam Stacey about his natrual reaction to film and take pictures from the choas underground.

Some signs, large media is starting to get the future picture of breaking news and the longevity of such terriable stories.Public provides new dimension to media coverage by the guardian.Mobiles capture blast aftermath and lots more by Jo Twist of the BBC.

Missing persons groups, although the BBC one will get more views flickr really allows for the interaction which could in the end be that life changing result.

The infinite space of the internet allows for voices which are sometimes hard to swallow and sometimes unvalued voices which the mainstream media wouldnt be interested in. For another example of this, I recieved a Spanish Trackback on my blog entry (sarah tried to translate, but found her spanish tougue a little missing). Its really intereting to hear from other countries besides america what they thought of the attacks. And it would be great to hear what the people of madrid (or even spain) thought of the attacks in light of there own attacks last year.

Everyone can take the opportunity read and write no matter how small there involvement but not only that do it on there own terms. My wife gave an telephone interview to her local paper back in Racine (near chicago) where her parents still live. However the Journal times misquoted and screwed my wife over for the story they wanted to write. Nothing new, I hear you say but in this new world Sarah can have her say and call them on the crap there writing it in a way publicly which was never heard of. And even if things do kinda of work out but not quite Sarah can keep them on there toes.

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In Case of Emergency, call ICE

A Cambridge-based paramedic has launched a national campaign with Vodafone to encourage people to store emergency contact details in their mobile phones. Titled the “In Case of Emergency (ICE)” campaign.

The idea is that you store the word “ICE” in your mobile phone address book, and against it enter the number of the person you would want to be contacted “In Case of Emergency”. In an emergency situation ambulance and hospital staff will then be able to quickly find out who your next of kin are and be able to contact them. It’s so simple that everyone can do it. For more than one contact name ICE1, ICE2, ICE3 etc.

Simple and effective… but I decided to added 3 ice's with a combination of home and mobile telephone numbers (defaults set to mobile). Then add how there related to me in the last name section of the contact. So for example ICE1:wife, ICE2:parents, etc…

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Windows Software Ugly, Boring & Uninspired?

An anonymous reader writes “CPU magazine has written a very straight-to-the-point editorial on the lack of quality and innovation in software for the mainstream OS. They compare it to the Mac, which is found in a much different light. Where has all the innovation gone?” From the article: “There's too much coal and not enough diamonds within the sphere of downloads. The greatest pieces of software are plagued by unintelligent design, and very few rise to the level of ubiquity. Windows users don't have a strong sense of belonging; there's no user community rallying around the platform. We use the computer, certainly, or is the computer using us?”

You are damm right! I dont totally agree with the article but generally most of the newer software out there are just that, ugly, boring and uninspiring. Some examples…

Blogging applications: Show me a really good blogging application for Windows which was not a port of one on the mac platform? The best one I've seen and used is Ecto which was for the mac and then got ported over the pc later. Wbloggar is good, stable and works but wheres the Atom api support? Yes I know Atom is still in that unstable state but come on! Wbloggar is also a pain to use if you got multiple blogs and blog alot. I actually use Blojsom's bookmarklet because wbloggar is a pain when inserting trackbacks and technorati tags. Its good for quickly bashing out thoughts or a post but nothing else really. Compare it to Ecto and you got something very different.

Ok taking things up a notch, wheres the innovation in this area? Yes you guessed right on the mac side. Flow which Miles showed me a while ago seems to be one example of this innovation on the mac platform. Not only is it a well thought-out application but its not bad looking either (dont have a mac to try it out sorry). The nearest thing to Flow is Blogwave which is far too complex and somewhat ugly compared to Flow, but to be fair there not quite the same. Blogbridge seems to be the only cross platform aggregator which does much more than just read news.

Look at the instant messenger client field, I wasnt exactly impressed with iChat then iChatAV came out and I was unimpressed with the unknown protocal used for video and audio. But saying that, iChatAV, Proteus and Adium all work well and look good. Compare it to GAIM which Adium is actually based upon. PSI which works well but looks pretty poor (interestingly works on the mac too). Only Pandion and Neos MT looks good. However I'm starting to use Grush which I'm sure I will write more about soon.

The other area where the windows platform is so far behind is in the widget area. Konfabulator has been out for ages and the widgets on the site are pretty good and useful till Apple launched Dashboard in OSX 10.4. Now look at the differences between Dashboard widgets and Konfabulator widgets. For example, a search for google map on konfabulator and dashboard returns 1 for konfabulator and 9 for dashboard. A search for flickr returns 1 for konfabulator and 5 for dashboard. Do you see a pattern emerging here? I still wonder how hard it would be to convert between konfabulator and dashboard widgets. But honestly at this very moment Dashboard widgets are way better than Konfabulator widgets and the innovation in them are amazing when compared. I'm sure Konfabulator can do the same but konfabulator widgets are smply uninspired.

So generally Chris is so right about Windows, I dont know how this can be fixed but it seems a lot more software is going cross platform now.

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