Simple uploading of videos with Radio

I need a more contemporaneous method of blogging. A good camera, with a good keyboard and inbuilt connection to my mobile internet network. Sure, then I'd need a Photoshop-like red eye fixer, crop, adjust balance and so on, spell checker, search past entries... Lot's of nick nack functions.

But a nice camera, good keyboard, Radio Userland, Photoshop, and a browser with a decent screen, and I'd ditch my PC.

I need something that I can snatch 10 minutes with a pint of best, to blog up some pix of the kids as they climb slides, and balance on obstacle courses. Current mobile phones with cameras, are max'd at 1 megapixels. Don't know yet, about the quality of video, but, surely that would be a shortcut or a do-a-way-with for a qwerty keyboard? Thus, I could video comments rather than write them up, add in a txt msg/description 4 the video, and open a window (in Radio on the home PC) containing an outline of all such txt msgs at home for me to touch up later.

Sounds about right? Anybody think of another way to blog kids when one's out and about?

Stylesheets in RSS?

Extending Radio's aggregator posting method

AOL to Buy Advertising.com, an Online Direct Marketer

Aggressive marketing? That's a new term to me. "Spam is here to stay. If you look under the hood, everyone is doing deals that are related to spammers."

I hope the cluetrainers will one day put a bullet in these heads. Think of the wasted money that we, as consumers, pay. Are we really so gullible? Do we really buy pills to increase our willies?

"50% of my advertising works, I just don't know which 50%." I think it's much lower than 50% these days.

Bit torrent downloading

Been hanging around suprnova.org yesterday, downloading a gig anf a half of music in the background. All of my other torrent sites have gone since I was last there, probably a month or two. So, how come the largest suprnova is still alive. Surely, it's under a tonne of pressure?

Remember to use some protection while you're out there. Otherwise, you'll have Sony or RIAA looking down your ports.

Joel on Software: How Microsoft Lost the API War

BBC: New generation embraces mobiles

"There are lessons here for manufacturers concentrating on making phones as smart and function-filled as possible.
These include increasing the amount of space for storing texts, giving more indication of where calls are coming from and a better way of ordering all the information people are increasingly storing on phones."

Photohop goes RDF with IPTC

eBay item 6302772552 (Ends 23-Jun-04 20:00:00 BST) - Retro BLUETOOTH Phone Handset (Unique) work with mobile

How to save Esme's ephemera and memories

The scrapbooking phenomenon: blogging + permanence?.

My daughter spends much of her workday at the computer, but has no interest in blogging. Her hobby is scrapbooking, a hobby that now supports a $2.5 billion industry. <snip> There must be a combination of the electronic and the real in there somewhere. I'd certainly like to find it. My daughter's only 5 and ¾ so much of her 'journals' consist of scraps of paper, glued to toilet rolls, with glitter placed inside shoeboxes. At least this is this week's project.

Weblogs, Ho! Mostly dead or unused

"List of sites hosted on this server"

I've been nosing around this site of 3,000+ Manila weblogs. Seems there's been much fuss about nothing. To me 90% are long dead. Many never went past the "It Worked" page — the first page that's seen when the site is created. Many more never went further than the year 2000. Only 4 or so of the 50 or so that I looked at were still alive, and out of them 3 were annoncements that the owners or community had moved to blogspot or liveJournal due mainly to the outage.

Dave Winer says that 40 or so had posted their URL to reclaim their site. So, I wonder how many are actually wanting to pay? Somewhere between 300 - 30 will be viable, of which 10% will want to pay = 30 - 3 Of which 10% would move their Manila site. So, tops, I reckon, 3 - 0.3 will move hosters.

There's four other hosters: ideaForest.net, editThisPage, Weblogger, and me.

Not, a big businesses. Hence, a lot of fuss about nothing.

weblogs.com and 'outing' the crazies

As a server owner, who has deleted abandoned blogs, who sometimes sits up all night fixing bugs, who knows the 24/7/365 worries of maintaining a server, I sympathise with Dave Winer's need to not have the stress. As a user of his tools, and sometimes early adopter of his inventions I admire him. I'm not a minion, however, I have picked fights over some blind alleys he's lead me up, while I really wanted to stop and fix bugs.

As a community owner (I know I don't own people, but I own the servers) I understand the pressures that can be put on one from jerks, who have no right to stick their oar in, moreover, to threaten or abuse. And it is true, I did once receive a death threat by email — a casual, overstated angry comment probably, but it had a major effect on me.

But, what I saw in those comments on Dave's site requesting the URLs of sites that wanted to be 'saved' (these have now disappeared) was shocking, mindless, vicious abuse of Dave. It reminded me of the children in IRC rooms who send screaming messages that block out everybody else. It was appalling. Frightening, that someone, who I've watched for so long could attract such vitriol.

I wrote about it. I was worried that I too could be put under such stress. When you do things for free, people get real angry with you. Raise your head up too high, and the tall poppy choppers come for you (but also on the internet they come for your children, with axes and knives). The internet it seemed could attract madness like a lightening pole, and that's what I want to stop, I believe all good people would want to stop.

I've seen it before in newsgoups in Usenet. A person I knew, though he put up a brave fight, and though, yes, he was a trolling nerd, called in the police and moved his real address, such was the threats and anger.

So, I volunteered to chip in, something has to be done about this I thought. This sort of abuse cannot be ignored. Good people have to stand up and say they are disgusted, appalled. Dave Winer named three names, only one of which I could find easily at the time.

After reading her posts, I figured that Sessum was a she, and that was waaaay important to her arguments. After reading her self description I saw that she was indeed in therapy. "Well like most of the US," I thought. Her blog was thought out, considered, and though it's biased from a female perspective, even though weblogs.com's outage or shut down was nothing to do with sexism, there seems nothing violent. Lots of rage, or more correctly, anger directed at Dave. Was she a vitriolic poster in those comments?

But Sessum pointed to others, I guess for back up: fem2fem, as Dave: mano2mano. Still, I look for those crazies from the comments on Dave's site. Yet, all I find is well written feminist arguments about power relationships, which are easy to write, once you know the rules. Hell, I use the same, but from a working class down trodden male like me shaking his fist at the class system of England, same thing, different characters. Rehearse it often enough, it comes across as a seemingly powerful division. When you're a toff in private scoool you can be troubled by it; as when you're a man, hassled by oppressed 'hysterical women.' Obviously, you see it as their problem.

All this sexism role playing , in my opinion is off topic. It's the anonymous abusers in those comments on Dave's site I want to name, shame and ridicule. If anyone of these angry yet considered public bloggers would stand up and say, yes it was I, or it was this person, or those commentors were very, very wrong, then perhaps, I, and the rest of the blogosphere could move on, noting who condemns this behaviour and those that condone it.

You pays your money, you takes your choice

EditHere.Com offers Manila hosting, with a 180-day free trial, $35 per year after that.

After seeing this last night, I thought long and hard, about my pricing levels, as they are over double Thomas's. Nah, my price is reasonable and fair. My service and suport levels are extremely high. My additional features are exceptionally wicked. My up coming features are drop dead gorgeous. My experience is long and deep in Radio as well as Manila. It is, then, top line. And for that you get what you pay for. I will however, do a special offer of 10% discount, and offer 30 days free trial to ex weblogs.com sites. I'll write more about this later.

Lockergnome: Why You Should Dump Internet Explorer

IE is too old, too insecure, too slow, too behind in standards, too inextensible. While Firefox, which I've been running now for over a year in one form or another, is wicked, man. Fast, powerful, a pleasure to use. If you're not running Firefox, and still in IE land, likely your IT manager at work says that's the way it is (so sorry ;-) or your a newbie to the net.

On that note, Thunderbird the email reader is pretty nice too. Though missing text search through a folder of messages.
[Update:] 02/07/04 Doh, Thunderbird has the BEST text searching, really fast, very configurable. Just not where I expected to see it: Tools menu ==> Search messages. Brilliant!

In comments about weblogs.com

In the comments in Dave Winer's post re: weblogs.com he says:

"Groundrules: Personal comments, ad hominems, will be deleted. And no negotiating or whining."

Pity he hasn't deleted a lot of the abusive messages posted there. Because I'm having second thoughts about my offer:

1. there's many, many more than thought, perhaps with high traffic, maybe loads of pictures or other server loads
2. whilst some are thankful, others are downright abusive
3. why the hell should I do something for free, when most of these people could afford to pay?

Of course, not all will come here. It's probable that the abuse is just one twisted soul. But, are these all freeloaders? Will I be expected to support them and host them in perpetuity? What would happen if I make a business decision, "the free ain't paying, the payers are taking too much of their burden, please download your site and move else where?" Would I be subject to the same abuse and outcry?

No, sorry, if you come here you'll need to pay our standard rate for Manila hosting and our relationship should be one of business, not charity:

£49.50 ($90.56) a year in one lump sum.

Or, £4.13 ($7.56) a month for 12 months.

You'll get the service then, that you'd expect and I wouldn't feel ripped off.

You should also buy a domain name off a reputable supplier like register.com, that's where I buy mine. You can then take charge of where that name points to, and even wildcard it so you can have more sites here like www.mysite.com, fred.mysite.com, apples.mysite.com and so on.

If you're serious about your weblogs.com site, then you should be serious about hosting it. A domain name of your own is vital!

Harvard man loses 3,000 weblogs | The Register

Dave Winer popularized Netscape's RDF syndication format, which has since splintered into nine incompatible formats.

This is just troll bait.

I'm unsubscribing to the register. The news there has gone tabloid.  Obliviously they're after traffic for ads. Wankers.

weblogs.com

A long time ago, a weblog at http://heroes.editThisPage.com was thrown off--for too much traffic. Well, it was doing 30,000 to 60,000 hits a day! My mate ran the site and still to this day moans about being thrown off. I roll my eyes and tell him it was free! For about two years he had free hosting! Sheesh!

Dave Winer was helpful, downright damned helpful. We had plenty of warning, he even put a redirect in, that we never asked for.

Pretty quickly the site was up and serving. It was a natural home for him since I was already hosting the blogs that were a spin off from this site. Soon they'll be four years old.

So, I hereby offer the same for orphaned weblogs.com sites. I just hope that they too don't clock up 6,000 page builds an hour at peak times.

My own service manila site may give you a clue as to the service levels, and the extra features that are available, like thumbnails, spawning of further blogs under your domain name, your own inbuilt aggregator, enhanced surveys and a bunch of other bits and macros that aren't available anywhere else.

Adverts in feeds

Advertising in feeds? Letmesee, who does that already?

Oh yes, real people talking to other real people. Like Scoble and Microsoft, Winer and RSS and numerous others who are their own brand.

If some real person who physically made chocolate bars built a weblog, and it was interesting enough, I'd subscribe. So long as it wasn't ALL about chocolate, I'd need to see their soul too.

Nike's blog is same old same old. No character nor personality — fake.

If NYTimes wanted adverts in feeds, get the manager of the ad sales dept to blog about: ads, selling space, wrong copy, sunny days...

If Nokia wanted to advertise in feeds, get the clam shell designer to blog about: other clam shells, dropping phones down toilets, tricks and tips, trout fishing, being told "if you don't stop smoking you'll die..."

Advertising is necessary for companies to tell prospects they exist. But, with TV ads, junk snail mail, spam, enclosures in free ad packed newspapers it's just too much. Sure, repeat seven times and I'll trust you, but it's so hard to get under my nose seven times without pissing me off. At the crunch moment in the action thriller... adverts! I scoop up pizza and beers leaflets from my letters. Tune filters in my email app, turn page after page, looking for local news in the free press. Ads, piss me royally. They phone me just when I sat down with a nice cup of tea. They get in my way, begging for purchases. Too many, too often, too soulless. Tax them, delete them, cut them down, stop them.

Word of mouth has always been a better, more sure fire way of getting me to buy. Why? Because I ask for information. I have a problem, the geezer down the pub has a solution. I just wish he made the mobile phone too.

You want my attention? Give me some soul, some reality, some honesty.

Pub Sub warns me that my traffic's shot up

Google mulls RSS support

Bloody typical! I go over to the dark side with Atom API, and find that it's pretty shaky, but seemingly fairly powerful. Just don't wobble the table too much ;-)

Then, Google comes back into the light with RSS.

The only reason Ev Williams took on Atom was to shaft Dave Winer. Bollocks about Atom API being better, and not wanting to confuse teenage girl customers with too many tick boxes. Ben Trott's reasons for choosing the erstwhile Echo API look hollow these days too.

So now what? Do I wait till Ev's been binned by Google along with Atom? Or will there be two versions of the feeds and then two versions of the API? Or, do we have to wait to see if they'll join together into another half breed API? Or wait till IETF matures the Atom API? Or Web-Dav swallows everything?

Fear, uncertainty, doubt!

I guess, this blog vendor will do this, and that blog vendor will do that, which is the way, it seems that Six Apart is adding their own stuff to the Atom API, books, music, links and people lists... Sure Blogger will add their own soon, if they haven't already. Though Atom is extensible so I guess that it's good move.

So I'll move on regardless. One API for these, one for those.

Atom APIs

I was reading Mark Pilgrim on the Atom API and the Atom authentication till late last night. Thinking that it looks not too difficult, once you get into it. After using XML-RPC and the MetaWeblog API as a well as the Blogger API for years, this doesn't look too tricky at all.

I'm interested in it for a project that I'm thinking up, and it's the API I'm interested in not the feed. So was also reading: TypePad's Atom API documentation and Ev Williams on the new Blogger's use of templates and the Atom API: I've taken some notes.

[Update:] Nonces in UserTalk. More from Mark Pilgrim re the Nonce in Atom API And to sha1 I'll try a com object, since there's no sha1 in usertalk. [Update:] Andre Radke pointed to a set of crypto bits for Frontier, with a sha1 hash. Works perfectly.

BBC: Song-swappers settle out of court

"Seventeen Danes and one German have settled at a cost of several thousand euros each. In Italy 30 criminal cases are being brought against individuals."

And so it comes. Or rather goes—the end of the golden age of free music.

Global mobile phone sales soar

600m handsets in 2004? Maybe Russel Beattie will be right about billions of mobile users joining the internet. Mostly Chinese ;-)

Let users decide what's important and what's to be done in your company

This article tells of the layers of corporate waffle and loss making work middle manages seem to generate, but the one gem is this allegory:

An architect once designed a cluster of buildings. When asked by the landscape crew where to pave the sidewalks, he told them to plant grass between all the buildings, wait a year, then, after the occupants had worn the most useful paths, the architect told the landscape crew to pave the pathways that the occupants had created.

The comments and discuss features in blogs, where readers can leave feedback help to create the right lines, the right thinking, the right story. People aggregate and work out the best paths, ideas, deeper conversations happen, people actually think harder before they write. Relationships start between people and ideas. Other blogs link into these thoughts, stories, driving more traffic, and more thought... This is group thinking at its best. AKA internal, blogging systems, just like the one I run for the Government Office for the West Midlands.

eBay Hops Aboard The RSS Train

eBay: "...the feeds would be used to push special offers, promotions and system status messages via RSS."

Doesn't sound very interesting as a first step. Another site provides RSS feeds that are targeted at your search key words — much more useful, and its been out nearly a year.

Mobile tsunami brings opportunities — if you're looking

Russel Beattie ranted about the lack of vision in Silicon Valley, re the coming explosion of mobile phones joining the internet. He reckons that there'll be another 1.5 billion or so coming on line soon, and many will be in the 3rd world, where they can afford mobiles but not laptops. Think also of all those teenagers who are glued to their mobiles. And the penetration of mobiles compared to computers.
In the US there is such a disjointed mobile network that they are far behind Europe, which is in turn far behind Japan. This from two years ago: "The first thing that strikes a visitor to Japan now is that the number of people looking at their phones exceeds the number who are talking on them. Phones are to be seen flipped open and in use everywhere- on subways, while walking, in lines, while walking, in bars and restaurants..."

A commenter on Russell's site, who works as a tech in a software company in Helsinki pointed out where the money is and isn't: VAS (Value Added Services) is not selling particularly well in Europe and get this the States are THE growth area for VAS. For the folks at home, VAS is the acronymn the telecom industry uses for non-voice (data) services.You heard me right, the States are where the action is. Europe is quiet as a mouse. Who woulda thunk it?

And..."As a rule of thumb selling content services to mobile operators is an excellent way to go out of business. Death by revenue split. The mobile carriers will hang you out to dry my friend.
So where's the money at? Infrastructure software, baby. As long as you have the resources to weather a 6 month to 1 year sales cycle (!) you just might make it."

iBLOGthere4iM: Atom is too Complex

A developer writes: In Google's latest implementation of Atom, they are creating Atom entry elements w/ no namespace. Any client who is expecting to find the entry w/in the Atom namespace will be surpised to find this obvious problem.

From this post it seems that typePad are also doing what the fuck they like.

Why? I thought they'd play nice together, at least for a while, till Atom had matured, but suspected business reasons to rip them apart, after all they're letting other apps and developers live off their hard work. I suspect that this sloppiness is just that, sloppiness.

I use the metaWeblog API which uses RSS 2.0 as its base. Simple, and been around for over two years. With XML-RPC, I've been whacking folders of images into Manila sites with no bother whatsoever. Why on earth would someone want to re invent the wheel, and create something that isn't compatible with other wagons nor circular. Oh, never mind, I'll let them get on with their complexity, I'm happy in my little world, where I know what's there and how to get it.

I'm also lucky that I can work both sides of the fence, being a Manila hoster, as well as someone wanting to get at the API, so it's easy for me to extend the metaWeblog API.

John Battelle's Searchblog: Gates at D: MSFT Will Wear White Hat In Search

""Web search is a incredible business," he continued. "(But) If you want to find things that are local...it's terrible today. If you want to find things that are of particular interest to you, it is quite terrible today."

Microsoft is going to go after Google, big time.

I wonder if they or Google will crack the local problem? My take would be that there aren't enough 'local' sites here in Shropshire, UK. Those that are, aren't marked, as mine with geoURLs in their meta tags. Personally, I think if there were more, local, blog suppliers, then this problem would go away, more sites, with geo meta tags would make searching much easier, and this would bring advertisers to the big search engines. However, it gives smaller, more tightly focused local search engines space to compete.

It's a big world out there, and sometimes I just want to know what's happening in my street. That type of info can only come from local news producers (bloggers).

BT puts block on child porn sites

British Telecom has taken the unprecedented step of blocking all illegal child pornography websites in a crackdown on abuse online. The decision by Britain's largest high-speed internet provider will lead to the first mass censorship of the web attempted in a Western democracy.

Excellent news. I just hope they can keep up with them changing their IPs. For sure, it'll be an arms race. [Update:] The Register has more tech details.

And what about IRC? I understand, from TV shows here in the UK, that's where the next level of paedophiles orperate. This level that BT have blocked, is just for casual browsers, I'd guess, though what they see is abhorrent and may serve to change a casual browser into a collector (from there into a 'rea life' paedo). So, it's a good thing, to make it very difficult to see such stuff.

Recently the police here in the UK brought out satellite tagging and lie detectors for paedos. This is all good to see.

BlogPlanet, mobile blogging

"Server Setup"

This seems a nice way of blogging from a mobile phone, using the metaBloggerAPI, yet, reading the set up instructions, there's no mention of Radio, nor Manila, the people who invented XML-RPC and the metaBloggerAPI.
Blogger, TypePad, MT, Roller, B2 and Nucleus are there.

Has Radio and Manila such a small installed base, that it has slipped off the blog landscape?

So You Want To Embed A Video, Huh?

Yep, thats exactly what I want to extend my picture Radio tool. Got enough pix of my kids, now I want vids offa my digicam, embedded as easy as my jpegs are now.

For later.

Big Brother 5 UK - Unofficial Site, Updated 04/06/2004; 23:04:52

The famous Scottish Lass says: Syndicate this site:

So done chick ;-) I'm subscribed in my Radio aggreator. I must start watching the programme. I read some stuff in the Sun in McDonalds tonight. Made me think there could be murder invthe house let alone sex.

And I blog into my big brother category. My own BB5 RSS 2.0 feed here:

Top-Consultant.com UK Newsletter

This is an intriguing place for me. I'll take some print offs for tomorrow (when I get an opportunity :-) with the kids in the park. Saturdays — what else are they for?

I see some blogging opportunities amongst the great and the good in the business consultancy sector.

Really Simple Syndication: and sex

I had a particularly vivid dream this morning. An RSS dream. Sure there was no ATOM, so it must have been a dream.

I was staying in a swank New York hotel. Having a breakfast meeting with the great and the good of syndication. The debate was leaving me aside, as it was about the future, the vapourware that exists there.

I moved over to the manager of the hotel, started passing the time of the day. She was nice, big tits, nice teeth (this was an early morning dream, did you think she'd be a he?)

I explained RSS in a few sentences — an elevator pitch I suppose though I was more interested in those tits. "Hmmmm," she said. Suddenly, we were talking business applications. Menus. Vacancies. Special offers. Billing and expenses  information. She could see the value of up to date information for her, for her customers, for her customers employers.

Pretty soon, we had a contract, and I had an expense account at the hotel ;-) I was writing code, in Radio, she was getting her feeds on her mobile, then we met to discuss further projects, and my daughter woke me up. <Sigh!>

A business trip to London

Off to the Smoke tomorrow, that is a trip to London, for some business meetings about blogs. But as the main rail line is closed I have to drive. I read the Virgin website, that, "customers to use alternative rail operators’ to/from London". Which is stupid, as the line is under works, closed. No other advice. No advice about driving and park and ride. Typical.
[Update:] I can use Chiltern Railways but that would take 2 hours and 15 minutes as it stops nearly everywhere and goes a circuitous route. Hmmmm. Maybe better than driving 170 miles (340 total) though.
It'll be a nice ride in the Saab. But park and ride for me. Don't want the hassle of driving around London.

Companies prefer authoritarianism to democracy

From Wired: Firms need to aggregate collective wisdom.

I've been saying this for years. No doubt others were saying it before me. Now, that the web has appeared and taken root, perhaps blogs will shake the tree? Only if one company takes a lead so others will follow (or die).