JaikuEngine vs Laconica

In addition to the post I wrote about slowly moving to Identi.ca. I found this very nice forum thread about Jaiku and Laconi.ca in Jyri's bookmarks. Some take aways….

However the code runs on Google AppEngine. This means setting up your own instance takes less than 5 minutes. You don't need your own hosting. You don't have to pay any money for hosting unless you get enough traffic that you go over AppEngine's free quota: http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/quotas.html

In general my advice is that you sign up to both Identi.ca and Jaiku.com (as they're the single biggest instances of both Laconica and JaikuEngine) to get a feel for how the two systems work. Not only will this give you an understanding of how they compare to each other but you'll see how they differ from Twitter and be able to interact with the respective development teams.

Generally Laconica is a little further down the path but both are mature enough for large scale use. Jaiku has a advantage of running on Google App Engine, which means it can be setup fast and scale super large. Laconica has better support in clients because of the Twitter like API it uses. Federation support is also unique to Laconica at the moment but Jaikuengine does have plans for that and the Twitter like API support. The only other thing which separates them is one is Laconica is PHP based and is AGPL while Jaiku is Python and Apache licensed. So as Evan says in the comments So, wouldn't it be awesome if this were the main question people were deciding right now?

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I should be a Apple fan but I’m so not

People keep getting at me about my Apple hating. “Why is it I'm not a Mac fan?” On paper I should be a fan and should own some of its hardware. So what happened? Here's some history which you may find interesting, even from the point of pure nostalgia.

So with a background in design and running a ST computer back in the early 90's I really wanted to get a Mac. I mean the mac as symbolised in that famous 1984 advert was about breaking the mold, not being a boring grey suit, yadda, yadda. Well at that young age, I was amazed and wanted one. In school they only had boring RM PCs running Windows 3.1 and trust me that added to the myth that PC's were so boring. After leaving school, I had pushed my ST to its limit and I landed a job working for a local newspaper working with Adobe Photoshop 2.x and Quark Express 3.1 while at college. The work place had macs for most of its output and the college had macs for the design school, and pcs on the other side of the campus to this thing called the internet. So there was this dilemma, should I want to do any work, I'd have to use the macs if I wanted to download or check out the web I had to go across the road to the business school and use there pcs. After about a year or so they finally hooked up a sub-powermac (think it was a quadra) with a 28.8k modem and you use the internet on that one machine, but only a few months later they also put in a load of 486's in the room next to mac design suite. They were unlocked and we were able to find software like paintshop pro to put on the pcs. So although the macs could do some amazing things like video editing (we had a couple of powermacs 132's with miro dc030 cards in them, they were no match for the lure of the open internet.

About this time I was big into POV Ray and being able to run this on the pcs was great. I was even able to run it on the PC's really easily, plus late at night I could run super complex scenes over many machines in parallel. It was really liberating. I also discovered with other friends that the UWE (University of the west of england) had a 24hour computer lab with 486's and super fast (at the time) internet over 2 rooms and 40 machines in each one. And security was really lax, so lax that after a while we got to know the security guards and we would just pop in and out without being asked for ID ever. Anyway, this is about the time I also got into PC networked gaming with Quake and learned how to build myself a PC with the help of a guy from the Newspaper called Mike. I need a new computer as the ST really wasn't cutting it any more, and I did crazily consider getting a Silicon Graphics 02 with all the money I could scrap together but thankfully couldn't afford it with everything I had, So the next best thing was a mac but it didn't happen because it was so much cheaper to buy and make a PC. But the Mac had a lot going for it. Quicktime for example was untapped features in it which I'd wished I had more time with at the time. I remember being so amazed with QTVR, that I ended up buying a book on it, which I still own today. At one point I borrowed a Mac from my friend Carl while he was on holiday somewhere and although I did enjoy it and never felt like quite like my own. But I digress,

At the time Intel and AMD were neck and neck but Intel was seen as the enemy, so I made a 200mhz AMD K6 because only the Microsoft fans would pick the expensive and slower Pentium chip. (I also remember this was not long before the whole CPU benchmark thing where Apple compared the G3 to a Pentium 3 but never a AMD. This further fuelled my dislike for Apple, I mean the AMD's were beating the Intel chips on everything non MMX or SSE based. Once I learned how to build my own, that was pretty much it. I customised my PC, by pained the case black replaced the leds with blue ones and played with stardocks object desktop to create insane hacker (the film) type startup screens etc. Software was easily available and sharing it was currency. Life was all good.

So running Windows was my prefered choice but it gave me more alleged freedom that a mac. I did try switching over to linux at some point but decided it was too command like, and I wanted something more visual like the mac desktop. So I choose BeOS which was around at the time and was still a viable alternative. Obviously that all went down the pan, and I only ever installed it on a spare machine thankfully.

I can't remember exact times or dates, but here's a few things which put me off Apple even more over the last ten years. I remember the imac, it was loved by everyone in the community but when I tried to actually use it, it was shockingly slow and troublesome. The round pluck like USB mouse really got to me, I think it was about then I become aware of the Steve Jobs approach to design and products. Maybe it was also the software OS8 and 9 but I saw people on there knees over the look of the imac and general use was anything but good. Apple sold this and all other mac since as aspirational machines, when frankly there anything but. The religion of the Apple Mac really rubbed me up the wrong way, even with the serious mistakes of OSX/Classic. It wasn't till OSX.3 when things starting getting good enough again. But back to the cult of the mac, remember those Mac vs PC adverts. Apple totally shot themselves in the foot with me. And to double back Microsoft's advertising campaign, I'm a PC is pure genius.

Funny enough this Guardian Article sums up my thoughts till OSX.3, adding FreeBSD is the only saving grace.

I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don't use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.

PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customise it into oblivion. Sometimes you have to slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis /images/emoticons/laugh.gifoctor Who, incidentally, would definitely use a PC). PCs have charm; Macs ooze pretension. When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is, “I hate Macs”, and then I think, “Why has this rubbish aspirational ornament only got one mouse button?” Losing that second mouse button feels like losing a limb. If the ads were really honest, Webb would be standing there with one arm, struggling to open a packet of peanuts while Mitchell effortlessly tore his apart with both hands. But then, if the ads were really honest, Webb would be dressed in unbelievably po-faced avant-garde clothing with a gigantic glowing apple on his back. And instead of conducting a proper conversation, he would be repeatedly congratulating himself for looking so cool, and banging on about how he was going to use his new laptop to write a novel, without ever getting round to doing it, like a mediocre idiot.

The Mac and Apple always stood for creativity and thinking differently, even now there are some amazing software created by its insanely dedicated community which can't be found on other platforms. I've never even looked at development in Cocoa but there's certainly heard good things about it. I also think OSX is actually not bad with its BSD backbone but I'm not keen on the Gui. The whole iPod and iPhone thing drives me totally insane. Most companies create different versions of consumer electronic products to capture the market, but Apple don't do that. Fair enough but to argue that Apple products are better that anything else and thats why there's only one type or two types is simply arrogant. A while back I looked into getting a new laptop and did consider a Mac book but for me the size was a little too big, general ports very low and actual spec not as efficient as the many models by Dell, HP, IBM, etc. I'm not saying there better but I am saying my requirements are different to Steve Jobs. For example the iphone still has not got stereo bluetooth support, for most people this is a who cares? But when you already have 2 sets of headphones and a set of speakers at home with Bluetooth support, this is a deal breaker.

To finish, I already touched on the snobbery of most Mac users. But there's something equally strange about this snobbery. Maybe in the same way there's iphone socks and macbook screen protectors. Most PC users have a love/hate relationship with there machine. Well this seems to be less so with Mac users. Is this because the fisher price machine does exactly what its told to do or maybe because the Mac users have self brainwashed themselves into believing the hype? I think I know which one it is but thats for another post. I'll leave you thinking with this.

Cue 10 years of nasal bleating from Mac-likers who profess to like Macs not because they are fashionable, but because “they are just better”. Mac owners often sneer that kind of defence back at you when you mock their silly, posturing contraptions, because in doing so, you have inadvertently put your finger on the dark fear haunting their feeble, quivering soul – that in some sense, they are a superficial semi-person assembled from packaging; an infinitely sad, second-rate replicant who doesn't really know what they are doing here, but feels vaguely significant and creative each time they gaze at their sleek designer machine. And the more deftly constructed and wittily argued their defence, the more terrified and wounded they secretly are.

Ultimately the campaign's biggest flaw is that it perpetuates the notion that consumers somehow “define themselves” with the technology they choose. If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that “says something” about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe – but not a personality. Of course, that hasn't stopped me slagging off Mac owners, with a series of sweeping generalisations, for the past 900 words, but that is what the ads do to PCs. Besides, that's what we PC owners are like – unreliable, idiosyncratic and gleefully unfair. And if you'll excuse me now, I feel an unexpected crash coming.

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Profiles – Plaxo, Linkedin and now Google

Google Profiles

Its all over the tech press recently, Google giving users the ability to slightly influence search results on themselves with Google Profiles. Here is mine. But I'm not totally sure this is the best way to solve this problem. For example, my plaxo profile has all the same information and better controls, surely it would be better if Google just picked up on the information and the structure of the plaxo profile page? Further more, what about Linkedin, Facebook, etc? It strikes me there's no need to duplicate everything again. What would be very cool would be if they could copied ping.fm and become a sort of super aggregator or broker.

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Interview with Boxee founder

Found this good interview with Avner Ronen, one of the founders of Boxee. Interesting to hear about Avner's previous work on XBMC and helping out the project. So far there's been two forks for XBMC, Plex and Boxee. Boxee is certainly the more interesting. I would use it more but I find XBMC does everything I need and I love the Mediastream Skin, which looks amazing on my 40inch LCD screen.

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Asserting equivalence between tags

Stowe Boyd's come up with a interesting and simple solution to the problem of multiple tags for events and things.

Today, on Twitter, I introduced a simple mechanism for asserting equivalence between tags — making them explicitly synonyms — using the equal sign '='. For example:

#web2expo = #w2e

This has the immediate impact of informing people following one tag that there is another they might want to follow too. And it shows up in searchs for any of the tags. Here's the first post in which I used tag equivalence:

[from http://twitter.com/stoweboyd/status/1649219359]

#aporkalypse = #snoutbreak = #hamdemic = #h1n1 = #swineflu = #parmageddon = #epigdemic = #pigpox

Obviously, tools that track or do anything interesting with tags could benefit from taking advantage of these synonyms. And those involved with creating 'beacons' — predefined tags, often associated with conferences or events — would be smart to start publishing the synonyms, too.

This is just another interesting example of microstructure cropping up in the Twittosphere, to help us make sense of the torrent of information flowing through the microstream.

,,,,,,,,,

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Next09: The sharing economy

Some of you might already know I've been invited to talk at the Next Conference in Hamburg. This conference is one of the major web conferences in Germany and is attended by lots of different nationalities in Europe and further a field. One of the best parts is its all filmed and put on the web for anyone to follow (its a real shame they don't supply a licence too).

Originally I was also meant to talk last year too, but it all fell through due to Over the Air and Mashed events. Anyway this year I'll be there and I was asked by Anna of the Next09 team to write a short 2 or 3 paragraph abstract explaining my view on the sharing economy. So last night on the train back I wrote this…

The Sharing Economy is something a lot people talk about but rarely
actually jump into. Almost every company is having their innovators
dilemma, they refuse to give it up and just jump at the new
opportunities which await them. However its not simply the companies
fault. The whole way business is done does not reflect a sharing
economy. In actual fact sharing is done at the very end when something
has served its purpose or no other value which can be extracted. This is
usually because we are using short-term and costing metrics.

The smart companies are balancing the short-term money needs with the
long-term needs participators. Their content is a participatory mix
spread all over the net and they are good citizens by releasing
creditable amounts of rich data to create a ecosystem around themselves
and their business. Being a smart business isn't easy work, the
challenges juggling needs isn't a parlour trick, it can only be done
with a strong level of transparency.

Now reading it back, there's quite a few things I want to change and you can tell I wrote the first part with another second part then changed it later without changing the first part again. There's also quite a lot of buzz words in it but its not too bad? The general point is put across and of course I think the BBC with its public remit is a ideal example of a smart company, in some part.

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The slow but sure move to Identi.ca

Identi.ca logo

Guys I live twitter, its been amazing. Most of the people I know are on it and in time we may look back at it like the start of email. But thats the problem, its not email its one network email, its like texting way back in 1996, when you and your friends all had to be on the same network to be sure you would get the text message (sms). I'm sure others older that me will tell stories of when email use to be the same, but luckily I've never known that restriction.

Identi,ca is microblogging done correct, its Affero GPL licence, as API friendly as Twitter (same API really) and supports federation remarkable well. Now this isn't the 1st time I've talked about this service, you may have heard me talk about la.conica and identi.ca many times. But whats interesting about identi.ca is I'm starting to see it being put in next to Twitter in clients. So for example I use Twhirl most of the time and now identi.ca support is there and its not just a add on, its all there. I've started noticing that Identi.ca's clients list is also growing. But whats also getting me really excited is seeing la.conica being put into Drupal and other places. So not only can you have your community blog but you can also have communal microblogging.

I'm personally starting to actively use identi.ca more and more. I'm sure at some point i'll start looking up friends on identi.ca and other systems and add them. Hey I may even start saying different things on them. I can certainly see one day when my default is identi.ca and it posts on to twitter via some bot or service like ping.fm. Unless of course Jaiku gets going again.

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Oh yes they did… Lessig sent DMCA Takedown

Found in Ars Technica, Lawrence Lessig was sent one of those DMCA takedown notices by Warner Music recently. And out of all the people you want to send one of those takedown notices, Lessig is the very bottom of the list.


Oh no you didn't: Warner hits Lessig vid with DMCA takedown

Legal scholar and copyright reform advocate Lawrence Lessig was unhappy to discover that one of his presentations on YouTube was hit with a bogus DMCA takedown notice from Warner Music. Lessig intends to fight back and give Warner some schooling on fair use.

When will they learn?

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Tethering on Ubuntu with a Windows Mobile phone

Been meaning to write this one for a while, specially now Sam helped me solve both connection problems I was having in one go without even knowing it. So if you follow this guide and you should be able to do most of what you want with the windows mobile phone.

However there is a problem with some phones like my TouchHD. They have the wrong MTU setting and this sometimes depending on how you got your machine setup can make it unresponsive when trying to access the web. So if you have the problem of being able to ping but not access the web correctly now check the MTU size. I also got everything working with Bluetooth too instead of USB but its a lot more complex and battery life becomes a problem when you got Bluetooth on for 3 hours straight during a train journey.

Tethering on a Windows mobile phone is pretty simple and as far as I know its pretty much the same on Windows and the Mac. I know you can get those USB dongles but do I really want another contract? Not really thanks. Its a shame that Microsoft didn't give this platform much more attention because its actually pretty good in parts. I mean I couldn't imagine buying a phone which can not be tethered for internet access and mass storage.

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Free dj mixes generate more downloads?

I was listening on the train to Marcel Woods at Trance Energy 2009. Popped the title into Google and came up with this excellent site called the Liveset Database with the mix I was listening to and I quickly identified the tune I was banging my head to (Art of Trance – Madagascar (Richard Durand remix)) and went to Audiojelly typed in the song title and found it to download and buy right there. Not only did I find that one but I also found many other remixes.

I made reference to the maybe unique ecosystem of Trance music in a previous blog post. I actually thought I heard Armin Van Buuren give a shout out to a large Torrent site called Trancetraffic the other day but I think after hearing it again, it didn't quite sound like that. But I can't work out if trance has come so far that its done away with the idea of selling mixes or just let the tapers just take over. And why not? I mean, like all music, dance music included, it sounds better and more heart felt in a club, rave or outdoors over a heavy driving sound system. Some of the cynical in you will say it sounds better with the drugs, but I wouldn't know anything about that. So generally Live and loud. There's always been this idea of mixtapes being quite disposable but back in the mid 90's gready promoters started to sell tapes and cds of the mixes. However generally most made copies and no one got sued that I know. There's also something about owning the original tune, be it on vinyl or something else, maybe because somewhere deep down everyone liked dance music had a dj inside of them? Funny enough, i've also never heard anyone call someone else a pirate even when another artist does a bootleg remix.

Is sharing mixes one of the cornerstones of trance music? And through the mix, the meme of the music is widely distributed? Interesting….

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