Apperceptions

Further Adventures With Thunderbird

I am starting to investigate several interesting issues with the Mozilla Thunderbird email client.  I use it for both email and RSS newsfeed aggregation.  I also use it to pre-sort new items for my Internet Archive Tonight playlists over on WebJay.org (Matt May at staccatomusic.org says "audition").

The first issue is to investigate some possible bugs related to duplicate channels in the newsfeed tree (you can see them if you use the t-bird OPML import/export add-in for the manage subscriptions dialog).

The second issue is to see if we can further automate the "audition" process.  I can well attest that building playlists from archive.org postings can be a very labor intensive process and Matt mentioned this too.

To this end, I have been over at MozDev studying how T-bird plug-ins work.  More on all this later; this is just a status report.

Is anyone else doing these sorts of things?  Any good tips on creating t-bird plug-ins?

Going Open Source

As part of what I wrote in the earlier post, I decided to look into what is required to "go open-source".  There are several issues:

• Where is the source to be located?
• How does one form a project "team" around the software?
• What is the license agreement?

Of course, there is no reason why one can't just set up their own website or weblog around a project and let people download the code or content from there.

I obtained memberships for both Source Forge, MozDev and Fresh Meat, three major open-source repositories.  I took snapshots of the SourceForge project setup process and intend to write up a separate post on that.  Mainly I wanted to see what the policies and features were at each one. 

This, in turn, led to a whole tangent on open-source licensing and that deserves it's own post as well.

For the time being, I think I will set up a separate webllog for our open-source projects with links for downloading the installs and the source.  Later, we will decide how to put a community around it, either using a tool like Droupal or the services of one of these repositories.

Ojai Fountain

Can you guess why this fountain is so special?

Apperceive 2.0

Apperception is the process by which we connect what we perceive with what we have already experienced. 

Today, we record our experiences as digital content that we connect and weave into stories about ourselves, our families, our work and our dreams

The content we produce stands in for us when we are not present and serves to build a connection with others over space and time.  Whether it be a simple note, weblog, photographic image or a music video, the content we create summarizes our experiences and cognitions for others.

At Apperceive, we strive to apply new technologies and ideas to making these connections between our knowledge and vision, as well as with each other.  This is the motivation for the open-source applications, content and services that we build.

It is not easy to lay out a development plan for how to best integrate new, and rapidly changing, technologies into existing products. Apperceive, does this by utilizing agile and extreme development techniques for rapid adoption of new and existing open architecture and open source products and services.

Like all explorers before us, we cannot always predict what lies ahead; but we are experienced at sailing into uncharted waters and establishing a beach-head for those who follow.  We bravely go where no app has gone before.

With apperception, comes expression and art. 

Apperceive, Inc. is not a private service provider and does not seek or commit to specific development projects and deadlines.  Instead, we are more like a think tank or studio with regular publications, events and presentations of results.  All of our work artifacts are open-sourced and licensed under the Creative Commons as "Attribution-ShareAlike".  Our sponsors, as well as others, are free to utilize or derive from our work.  This includes code, media and web content.

Of course, our sponsors are typically the first to leverage the fruit of our labors as they have both participated in the work, as well as the presentation of the results.

We collaborate with other organizations to set up environments for mutual growth.  By funding and participating in Apperceive project activities, sponsors can foster development of the specific web related services and content that is useful to them.  While we do not wish to become an advertising forum, we proudly display the logos of our sponsors on appropriate websites and feature them prominently in our weblog postings and articles.  We work with sponsors to establish project related memes and to create buzz around our collaborative efforts.

We measure our work by the number of people who utilize the content, applications and services that we produce.  Sponsors measure us by the ROI they get from utilizing our results and participating in our projects.

These are some of the things Apperceive is interested in doing:

• producing weblogs
• developing web services
• participating in open-source projects
• working with online communities
• creating digital media research centers
• architecting online events
• writing articles and reports
• creating digital media content
  
• participating at conferences

We are considering spinning off or creating several new weblogs and enhancing the existing ones:

• apperceptions
• mobile applications (new)
• aggregation/filtering (app.etitio.us)
• ia tonight  (with ourmedia tonight?)
• web 2.0 (new or existing)
• ojai sights & sounds (new)
• comedy (we are currently making a mash/mix of marc cantor)
  

We wish to publish several blog article series:

• moving digital media (Spin, FTP, etc)
  
• tutorials for web 2.0 (flickr, DLA, Spin, etc)
• the well dressed net socialite (social networking, digital presence, buzz)
  
• profile "unsung heroes" of the web (example: webjay cromegat)
• blog reviews (audio, video, other)
• digital urban planning with web 2.0

We are considering the creation of several web-based directories:

• media playlists
• audio blogs
• video blogs
• web 2.0
• events

We wish to pursue the development of open source services and applications in the following areas:

• digital aggregation - content and digest aggregation for use in personal publishing, integration and interoperability of digital services and applications
  
• content filtering - newsfeed and data stream filtering of digests and content into pre-defined and dynamic contexts
  
• distributed media - newsfeeds and podcasting to F&F or business
  
• searching tagged data - applying social tagging to business, automatic contextual tagging
  
• secure communities - private and business blogging and wikis, portfolios, digital marketplaces and supply chains

Brinkster Multiple Vulnerabilities

Upon doing a little research, it appears that Brinkster has security problems as well.  Reported over a year ago, it is not clear whether or not Brinkster has ever addressed these vulnerabilities.

Link: Brinkster Multiple Vulnerabilities.

Addendum: It appears that lot's of folks are having problems with Brinkster (mainly problems with availability):

http://www.aspin.com/func/review?id=1150810&rid=1805420
http://forums.aspfree.com/archive/t-14253/Brinkster-Free-ASPNET-Hosting-problems
http://forums.pcworld.co.nz/archive/index.php/t-32987.html
http://frassle.net/Directory/index?feed=945
http://www.vtdotnet.org/blog.aspx
http://www.aspin.com/func/review?id=1150810&rid=1805420
http://apperceive.blogs.com/apperceive/2005/03/elgg_and_apcala.html

Brinkster Hosting Service Sucks

I have been using Brinkster for website hosting for a while now and must admit that their email and web hosting service is worse than all the others I have tried. 

Email outages are becoming a daily occurrence.  My website and email are down right now (thankfully this blog is on TypePad and I have alternate email providers for outgoing mail).  As usual, they say it is because of a DNS issue and just for a few hours.  At least this time they did not ask me to check my email or browser settings or reboot even when they know the problem is on their end (usually the dead giveaway is that their own site is not responding).  My Brinkster hosted websites have often been unavailable during important demos.

Brinkster has even been losing email messages lately.  It's one thing to not be able to retrieve or send messages for short periods, but it is another entirely to actually fail to accept incoming messages.  This is unacceptable.

The good news is that if you complain to Brinkster Billing they will issue you a refund.  I actually email all my complaints to them and CC support - I get a faster response that way.  The bad news is: it ain't worth it.

Obviously I'm not the only one suffering with "service provider" growth issues.  Tom Evslin, who writes one of my favorite weblogs, has blogged (twice) about his problems with Vonage.

Can anyone recommend a better hosting provider?  Everything I have is ASP at the moment, but it would not be a big deal to change it over to PHP.

Sign up in the comments if you want to form a group of dissatisfied Brinkster users.  Maybe we can get a better setup deal as a group from another provider.

Addendum: when I went to spell check this post, it was suggested that the word "Brinkster" should be "Prankster".  I agree.

IA Tonight: Thursday

With the launch of ourmedia.org, the amount of new submissions to the Internet Archive has gone up a little and there is a bit more to sift through.  Unfortunately, most of these new submissions are generally not quite as interesting as the material submitted to the other IA collections (except for the photos) and so a little help in sorting the wheat from the chaff would be welcomed. 

One solution that I found is to pre-sort the Internet Archive's new submissions newsfeed using Mozilla Thunderbird's Message Filters feature.  I first set up a filter to check if the body of the message contains "collection:" and "ourmedia".  This filters out the ourmedia submissions to a separate folder that I have set up.

I also noticed that some newsfeed items result in messages that have a "Message-Id" header (shown as "Website" in the Thunderbird Message Header) that contains URLs such as the following:

http://www.archive.org/details-db.php?mediatype=audio &identifier=exp012

http://www.archive.org/details-db.php?mediatype=Image &identifier=DavidWallaceSailsDSC03613tweakedagainjpg

http://www.archive.org/details-db.php ?mediatype=movies &identifier=nokturnal-jamaica

So I look for "mediatype=audio", "mediatype=movies" or "mediatype=Image" to sort items into folders named "IA Audio", "IA Movies" and "IA Images".  You need to add the "Message-Id" message header using the customize option at the bottom of the message field pull-down in the Filter Rules dialog that is accessible from the "New..." and "Edit..." buttons on Tools | Message Filters dialog.

One can also search for keywords that indicate genre: ambient, noise, trance, indie, pop, rock, etc.

With filters like these setup, it is easy to pre-sort the new submissions into folders that are easy to work with (i.e., I can do all the new Ambient at once).  This also makes collaboration with other reviewers easier (anyone want to take on the Techno/Trance playlist?).

As always, all the interesting new submissions we find are added to our playlists at WebJay.

Note: our first playlist, "Promises, Promises" has been played 2877 times at the time of this posting.  Wow!

 

Beautiful Day in Ojai

The calm between two storms.  Alicia and I took a walk in the Ventura River Preserve and I grabbed a few photos and put them up on Flickr.  There was a wonderful wind today.  Yesterday there was quite a bit of rain (and some thunder too).

Creating Passionate Users

I recently discovered the "Creating Passionate Users" weblog and I am so much the better for it.  Most of the articles are by Kathy Sierra, who has an interesting and eclectic background in software and web development.  Also a member of the "Head First" team of book authors, she has a witty and irreverent style and perspective.  I  particularly enjoyed today's post "One of us is smarter than all of us", along with the related earlier post "The Power of One."  I highly recommend reading this weblog for it's fresh ideas, but also entertaining presentation.

I have yet to read any articles by the other team members, but I definately intend to check out their book on patterns.

Ojai Garden Flowers

A beautiful, sunny day in Ojai today. The Poppies are in full bloom. Click here for a brief slideshow.  I finally coughed up the dough for a paid Flickr account.  Gadzooks!  1GB upload per month and unlimited bandwidth.  That's so hot.  I've been thinking about all kinds of uses for this besides the most obvious.  For example, I have been thinking that I could use Flickr's fancy image annotation features to create interesting interactive photos, screen snapshots and diagrams for use in teaching, tutorials and how-to articles.  Too cool.

QuickTime Pro

Ok, I finally broke down and bought QuickTime pro for the Mac.  I guess I'm getting serious about making some videos.  I'm particularly interested in comedy videos (I love those snapshot stories on Mad TV) and training videos for use with software (screencasts).  Also a good way to record software bug reports.  Besides the fact that I don't have to put up with the Apple nag screen and the fact that I can now blog about it, I'm not sure why I really need this over iMovie (version 3.0.3 -- an upgrade to the new iLife will require a DVD apparently). QT Pro does seem easier and more light weight than using big old iMovie.  I can cut and paste segments quite nicely now thank you.  We'll see how it works out.

Just What the Doctorow Ordered

I am finally getting caught up on listening to my backlog of IT Conversations interviews.  They are often interesting but can be a bit long for most people (most are around 20-30 minutes but some are as long as an hour or more).  Most are worth a listen (to me), but few are worth making a point about to others.  This is one that is.

Cory Doctorow is an articulate speaker and has some great historical examples of the impact of digitization on the music industry that throw a good light on our current DRM (digital rights management) issues.  Did you know that John Sousa violently opposed player pianos and told Congress that these inventions would destroy the music industry's only business model (plus he thought we would lose our vocal chords to evolution, just like our tail, if we continued on this route and stopped singing)? LOL!!!

Link: IT Conversations: Cory Doctorow - Web 2.0.

IA Tonight: Friday

Here's a quick and cool little video of a 3D face mask that I found tonight on the Internet Archive.  Click the picture to view the movie or click on the link below for the complete IA details page.

Personality and identity is seen on the background of the age of digital reproduction/manipulation and the central issue in today's science: genetic modifications.

A 3D scanner was used at Eastman Dental Institute for Oral Health Care Sciences University College London for capturing face data. Programmed average heads were rendered by using the database of the Institute. The faces you see, do not exist like this for real (...what is real?) The data of the face scans has just been used like a surface, modelled onto someone else's scull (the artists' sculls).

Link: Program Details for (Remote) Mind - The Strangers are still me. (extract).

New Home Page

Several years ago, I set up a My Yahoo page and had used it to keep abreast of the news.  Initially, I was only interested in tech news, but eventually added Reauters, AP and others for biz and entertainment.  At some point I added the "most viewed" and "most emailed" stores to my list of news items (social networking).  Then they added RSS feeds.  But it was too late.  I had already switched to using Thunderbird as both an email and news reader.  From there it's easy to export to Bloglines. Now my home page is this blog since I can get to everything I need from here.  It has become my personal portal.  Signs of things to come: Secure Personal Internets and Digital Lifestyle Aggregators.  I intend to publish more on this over then next few days.

Addendum: 

I finally added the old news feeds from Yahoo (i.e., the "News" feeds - the stuff that's happening in the world).  And after less than 24 hours I have deleted them.  What poor quality they are.  I had forgotten how much garbage was in them (somebody in Florida is trying to have their plug pulled it appears) and most of the items have bad links (I think they retract, modify and re-issue the stories with new urls, becaure I get what appear to be dup stories, but only one leads to a valid page). 

I have come to expect a certain quality to my feeds.  Others have advocated a basic rule that I have followed: ruthlessly delete any feed that was not consistantly valuable and on topic with your interests.

I am amazed to find that the major news publishers are the ones I cut out the fastest.  I left one: the most emailed stories.  I figure if people take the time to actually email it to someone, then that is at least some kind of recommendation and better than what the media suggests as "breaking news".  Ok, maybe I shouldn't be so amazed.

1000 Hits on Webjay!

WooHoo!  The Promises, Promises playlist on Webjay is about to cross over 1000 hits!  It seems to be being hit more and more the last few nights.  It was only at 500 about a week ago.

This playlist is a collection (a collage, if you will) of videos and music from yesterday and today that dare to predict our future.

Link: Webjay - "Promises, Promises" by app.etitio.us.

Ojai Rain

It's raining lightly in Ojai today.  Gray and overcast.  A nice day for a fire actually.  The poppies are all closed up, trying to keep warm I suppose.  I posted about a dozen photos from the garden at Flickr.

24 Hours on Craigslist

Too funny.  A movie about craigslist.  Back in the mid-90's, we had the same kind of fun on AOL.  What stories I could tell!

Link: 24 hours on craigslist.

Full Speed Ahead!

WooHoo!  I ordered "higher" speed Internet access from Adephia, my cable provider.  For an extra $16/month they say I will get 768Kb upload and 6Mb download. 

I think I'm supposed to be getting about 1Mb on the download now.  The 2Wire bandwidth meter says that I am getting between 2.4-3.3Mb today (that seems even higher than usual, even for them -- I usually cut their estimates in half), but my FireFox bandwidth tester is giving results between 400-700Kb (this is fairly typical) and I think that is more reflective of the actual experience in terms of file transfers and page loads.  I'll have to take more readings in 24 hours and report again.  In any event I hope to see an improvement. 

What kind of bandwidth are you getting and what does it cost you?  What is your quality of service?

Adelphia's network availablity has been rather poor until the last month (I complained and went thought half a dozen service calls over the period of several weeks). We find it necessary to maintain our older and more reliable Ojai.net wireless DSL access as a backup (384K upload for $79/month).  With Adelphia, we do need the backup from time to time.  Adelphia's service call time is 3-4 biz days and often results in worse service.  Ojai.net usually responds same day (often the same hour for a house call).  Support your local provider (even if they are slow and expensive)!

Apple iSight

I got an Apple iSight videocam for the old G4 eMac.  Nice looking camera.  Incredible packaging.  The truly amazing thing is that while it seems to work with the QuickTime Broadcaster, it appears that iMovie does not recognize the camera.  What a joke.  It's times like this that you realize just how much of the Apple hype is pure BS.

Addendum: Does not seem to work with MSN or AOL (I guess that is what iChat is for).  Does not work with iCamShare.

At least my scanner is still working.  Under Windows 2000, my scanner stopped working the last time I added a WebCam.  I love computers - they save so much time.

Addendum: Outhink, Inc. has generously supplied the Mac I use as part of my work for them.  Thanks Dave!

IA Tonight: Wednesday

Tumbling Capsules is an entertaining and relaxing little short (1.25 minutes) by Frank Panucci.  Very nice 3D graphics, colors and sound.  See the Internet Archive information page for additional information and formats.

How To Start Smoking is another short that presents a somewhat unusual message to make a now classic point (don't smoke cigarettes, of course).

Thunderbird Filters and RSS

RSS and OPML have been dominating my thoughts as I have been experimenting with various forms of newsfeed aggregation and analysis.

One issue that I am trying to address: develop methods to help pre-categorize the Internet Archive new submissions newsfeed items into "buckets" (media type, categories, keywords, etc).  Sometimes there are hundreds of new items to look over for the IA Tonight playlists and I could use some help.  BTW, human help would be even better - anyone want to make IA Tonight into it's own website and podcast?  Please let me know - it could be a fun project and I'll bet we could find some sponsors for it.

Back to RSS buckets, I've started by using Mozilla Thunderbird's RSS aggregator, together with some filters.  This is working pretty good for local (desktop) work.

An issue that I have yet to resolve: sometimes Thunderbird adds "duplicate" entries into the feed folders.  Not sure why.  Is it the feed or Thunderbird?  It happens almost daily with the Internet Archive newsfeed and rarely with others (but it has happened with a few of my other feeds once or twice).

Just like normal email, there is a lot of "junk" (and one person's junk is another's gold) and some items are of higher priority than others, etc.

C-SPAN: DIGITAL FUTURE

Not sure what happened to the Live C-SPAN broadcast.  It seems that it was prempted by some vote and an announcement by some "lacky to a lacky" as Zatoichi would say.  In any event, the video is now available online.

Addendum: the lacky-sub-lacky was Karen Hughes.

C-SPAN: DIGITAL FUTURE - Digital Publishing

Edward L. Ayers, dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia will be speaking live on C-SPAN today from the LOC at 3:30 PST.  Here is description from the C-SPAN site:

Ayers is the author (with Anne S. Rubin) of "The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War" on CD-ROM. Among the questions Ayers will address are the implications for the creation and distribution of knowledge in today's digital environment.

You can email in questions.

ANT's Not Television

I came back from my trip to find OVER 50 NEW Videoblog posts to watch!!!  Rocketboom, Ryanne, karmagrrrl and so many others to catch up on!  PLUS new blog comments from those great folks at ANT's Not Television are announcing a new release that adds new sorting capabilities.  Oh this is just too much for one day!  I admit it.  I'm a videoblog addict!!!  Where will I ever get the time to catch up?  Remember when you had to catch up on dozens of emails?  Well, now it's video!!!

I have to confess something: while I have nurtured and evolved my RSS newsfeeds for blogs (I use Thunderbird and am also trying out Bloglines), I have never added a feed to ANT.  I just let it automatically fetch the feeds that they had shipped the first version with!!!  Even though they had a great del.icio.us directory for feeds (see also here) I never got around to checking out any new ones, what with the amount of time I already put into my work projects and my IA Tonight work.  So here comes a new version and, probably, an update to the feed list.  I was gone for 5 days and had over 50 videos waiting for me.  What's next?  100?  I still need "better radio", but I love this stuff.  Thanks to all the videobloggers (especially you ANT people).  I love what you're doing.

IA Tonight: Saturday

I've added new items to the following playlists:

• Internet Archive Tonight
• IA Tonight: Ambient
• Ambient, Electronica & Eclectic
• Internet Archive Overflow
• Cartoons

Enjoy!

LA Zen Zoo

Gordon Gould of Weblogs, Inc. and I got together at the Zen Zoo tea cafe in Brentwood for a fine meal and some great conversation about the future of blogging, tagging and Web 2.0. 

In addition to some delicious teas, Zen Zoo has a nice Dim Sum selection that we sampled most appetitiously.

With all the recent storm damage, Brentwood is about a two hour jaunt down The Pacific Coast Highway from Ojai.  I took the convertible, of course - too much fun!  No freeway hassels (until you try to come back to Ojai - the main road in is still down to one lane) and the majority of the drive is beautiful (mainly the ocean and the costal mountain range).

Brentwood and Santa Monica are about the only places in LA that I really enjoy visiting anymore, although I still now a few places downtown that are still worth a pilgramage to whenever possible.

Back From China Lake

I'm back from another energizing OOA&D class at China Lake NAWS.  The student interaction was excellent and many interesting viewpoints and "war" stories were shared.  Except for Betty Toole's wonderful book, it appears that Ada is truly dead (as a programming language) and that C++ is king.  More and more Java is being used too.  Things are getting more "unified" and "agile" all the time.   My Eclipse and Junit demos generated a lot of interest.  I put some photos from the trip up on Flickr.  I had a great time, but it's wonderful to be back home again.

IA Tonight - Wednesday

I didn't find anything last night (Tuesday) that interested me enough to post.  Lots of good stuff, mind you.  It's just that I'm looking for more than just something to post. I'm looking for special new items to share with you. Maybe it was just me being too tired.  But tonight is different! There is almost too much to choose from.  When it rains, it pours and tonight good music and classic cartoons are raining down on us.

Here are some of the new items added to the IAT playlist: I really like "Sunday" by Star Fighter Pilot. I just set the loop mode on and listen to it over and over again. Too much fun. They have contributed four new songs entitled collectively as "Feeding and Chaining".

Check out some of the other playlist additions:

Ambient, Electronica & Eclectic: Liquid Concept has some strange and eerie sounds that any Space Pirate would enjoy.  Xinqu Hill brings a great beat to our collection too.  Check out "Sungate" and the other 8 tunes from their "Maps of the Impossible" collection.

Cartoons: A whole bunch of old cartoons were also uploaded to The Archive.  This is a new playlist.  Felix the Cat, Big Bad Wolf, 3 Stooges (Mixed Media), Little Audry, Little Lulu, Mighty Mouse, Woody Woodpecker (heh, heh - he said "pecker") and much more.

Enjoy!

IA Tonight - Monday

This is a sweat little video by Erik Nelson of a young couple fishing and playing in a beautiful river.  I posted it in the Travelogue playlist.  Here is a link to the IA page: Program Details for The Green River.

Here is some interesting "intrumental parts of a radio play (radio hbw, 2003)" from DJ Summer.  This has been posted to the IA Tonight playlist.  Here is the IA page: Details for Summer - Hoerspiel Extrakte [TAM013].

IA Tonight - Sunday

I added two nifty drum and bass pieces to the playlist.  Here is the artist's own description.  Use the left sidebar playlist options to listen or click the following link for the complete Internet Archive submission page: 

Details for [xgn012] Martsman.

Martsman's debut release definitely shows his creative thinking 'outside the box', as he drops Exegene two tightly produced pieces of abstract and leftfield drum and bass. The A side, Geister, is a collection of perfectly arranged influences of dub blended with his straight forward, energetic, machine like drums. Vert, continues into the abstraction, with some techy sounds and more glitchy noises. Without a doubt, Martsman's talents are going to go unmissed in the near future, as he already has secured a release with the pushers of outstanding leftfield drum and bass, Offshore Recordings.

GoToMyPC Deal

If you call to cancel your $19.95/month GoToMyPc Trial (or even later), they are currently offering a "lifetime" rate of $9.95/mo ($99.99/year) and they even prorate what you already paid.  That was a good enough deal to "keep me hanging on".  I wasn't using it much, but as some point, it becomes like AAA roadside emergency service.

Saturday Flyby - The View From Our Den

Looks like a lot of fun, but I gotta move to a more private place!  Sad thing to have to say about Ojai.  But I got three shots of this noisy contraption off quick as he went by.  You can tell from the reflection in the first photo that I am taking the photo from behind glass.  We have some really nice big windows in the den (you can not watch a conventional glass screen TV in this room during the day - it's so bright - but a great view at times, or at least interesting).

Malcolm Knows

Malcolm knows that I'm off to teach an OOA&D course for the next few days.  He needs some attention before I go.

So do I. It's hard to get a good photo of Malcolm because he's so dark.  Alicia took these pics with the "old" Kodak digicam.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Elgg and Apcala - The Social Software Weblog - socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com

An interesting article on social software tools for "e-portfolios" and beyond.  It has several good links to papers and new web services. I signed up for Apcala.  It looks like they are still working out the kinks in Apcala, as I signed up, but never got an email reply back I got my email reply (it appears that my hosting provider, Brinkster, is the one working the kinks out).  I can't wait to check it out.

Link: Elgg and Apcala - The Social Software Weblog - socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com.

One of the things being talked about in academia at the moment is how to use social software to assist learning in higher education. This goes beyond “e-portfolios”, which are more or less online CVs with embedded examples of work, to create a network of people who share reflections and objects in a learning environment.

IAT Playlists

After some more testing and feedback, I felt there were more problems with all the playlist buttons I added since the last post.  Also, Flash is nice, but adds it's own set of issues (e.g., no support on PDA, need for popup, etc).  Thus, I have decided to just use some simple links to the WebJay playlists themselves.

Internet Archive Tonight - 2005.03.04

Based on feedback from some listeners, I am adding a player and list in the (left) sidebar.  Just press the play button to start it.  It has pause, previous and next, as well as a volume slide control.  It requires Flash.  Please let me know if this works for you or not.

As usual, you can also find links to all these items on our WebJay playlist.  Enjoy!

Paunch, beard, glasses.

I noticed this old entry on Lucas Gonze's blog today.  Does anyone know what they are talking about?

(I was trained as a Mathematician, actually).

Jim says:

There is a certain group of 50ish computer science types that all have the same paunch, the same beard, and the same glasses. What will my generation look like? 

Lucas' Answer: Paunch, beard, glasses.

Internet Archive Tonight - 2005.03.03

Tonight's new items include: Lisa Rein, JKP, Gregorians and Scotish.  All in all an eclectic mix of dance, alternative and guitar. 

As usual, you can find links to all these items on our WebJay playlist.  Enjoy!

Internet Archive Tonight - 2005.03.02

Here we are again.  Got some more goodies posted on our WebJay playlists.

We got some new podcasts about mac's and media.  Plus some interviews.  Also a video on making videos.  Some nice ambient, techno and dance music, plus an old time recording from 1907.  Check the associated web page links on the playlists for more details.

I'm a little tired tonight and so I'll just say that we added about a dozen links to the following lists:

• Internet Archive Tonight

• Technology & Media Videos

• Podcast This!

• Ambient, Electronica & Eclectic

Speed Jamming: Award Winning Movie In 48 Hours

Sean Fitzroy and Vikki Merriman exemplify the spirit behind what Outhink CEO Dave Toole calls "Speed Jamming"...

Speed Jamming can be defined as "using secure personal internets (SPINs) to assemble creative professional teams, rapidly collaborate and then move on to new projects anywhere, anytime".

In this fascinating presentation from the Mac OS X Conference (put on October 25-28, 2004 by O'Reilly Media), the two award winners discuss various aspects of "speed jamming" as it applies to making an award winning movie for the 2003 Boston 48 Hour Film Project competition using Apple hardware and software.

So many of the workflow issues that they faced in 2003, are now as easy as "drag & drop" with products like SpinXpress (released for the Mac in Summer 2004).

Here is a summary of their talk:

The presentation will begin with a viewing of Pie in the Sky, an 8-minute long mockumentary short about a dot-com that tries to start an automated online pizza delivery service. The filmmakers will discuss the media management and work flow techniques that enabled collaboration between multiple editors and compositors, a composer, and a sound recordist that needed to quickly manipulate and exchange and work with large audio and video files.

Learn about the technologies that enabled the filmmakers to log and capture on the set, collaboratively edit the film and create animations on three networked laptops, record music directly into Final Cut Pro in real time, and even create a "mobile unit" so that the film could be output to tape in the car on the way to the drop-off point. The Mac OS X voice "Bruce" even has a supporting role!

Link: IT Conversations: Merriman and Fitzroy - Real-Time Filmmaking on OS X.

Lawrence Lessig on C-SPAN

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
The Digital Future  
THURSDAY ON C-SPAN AT 6:30PM ET

Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society Lessig is the author of "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace" and an expert on the issues of copyright and "copyleft." He is the inventor of the revolutionary concept and application Creative Commons, which invites the right to use material under specific conditions.

QUESTIONS TO MR. LESSIG
THURSDAY ON C-SPAN AT 6:30PM ET

Does anyone want to set up a back channel for this and send in email?

CC Mixter Contest Results Announced

Creative Commons announced today that ...

The final winners of the Freestyle Mix, and the Milita Mix contests have been announced on Mixter. The top eleven Freestyle Mix entries have won a spot on the Creative Commons release, The WIRED CD -- Ripped. Sampled. Mashed. Shared. (playing off the original WIRED CD), and free passes to the M3 Music Summit in Miami. The top track of the Militia Mix Contest won a spot on the next Fine Arts Militia Album Featuring Chuck D. Brian Hardgroove of Fine Arts Militia has this to say: "Overall, I would have been proud to put most of those mixes on the new record -- mad props to the producers."

Stream All Winners

If you havent checked out CC Mixter, then go there right now!  It is an awesum place for CC licensed content.  Why are you still reading this???  Go there now!!!

Internet Archive Tonight - 2005.03.01

Ahhh, a more quiet day on the Internet Archive new contributions RSS feed.  We have just a few entries, but they are all good ones.

First, we have Prof M Stereo with "Out of my way".  To me it sounds a little like a spaghetti western soundtrack written by David Lynch.  I particularly like the ethereal vocals.  This is a CCMixter competition entry (see also here).

We also have another CCMixter remix competition piece called "Dangerouse" featuring cuts by Curious.  You can't modify it and you can't sell it, but you can download it and pass it around to anyone you like.

Things turn funny when Happy Elf makes music and they are making quite a bit of it (11 songs!).  They call it weird, but then people call me that and so what can I say but "I like it."  They also self-categorize themselves as Club-house and Electropop.

A new album by HAPPY ELF with eleven songs from the past. The songs create a wonderful world, full of sounds, melodies, electronic beats and confused lyrics.

HAPPY ELF plays all instruments. The main instruments are the analogue synthesizers and drumcomputers. The music of HAPPY ELF is unique and unlike any existing style.

Lastly, we have a new video.  This may not be the best thing for kids and I don't necessarily advocate the theme, but "Why I love shoplifting from Big Corporations" by Franklin Lopez is a very funny video and certainly suitable for our "Promises, promises" playlist.

As usual, you can find links to all these items on our WebJay playlist (except the video as already mentioned).  Enjoy!

Java and RSS with Informa

I started playing with the Informa.  I downloaded the latest version, expanded to a folder, created a new project in Eclipse and set the classpath to point to the provided jar's, created a package and class, added a few imports and a few lines of code (mainly an exception handler) and viola!  I quickly had a simple program to read in an RSS file (OPML too) and parse it into "channel" and "item" objects. Cool.  I tried it with a few different example files.  I even downloaded a little patch for Thunderbird that allow for OPML export and import of RSS feeds (cool, again), but Informa did not like it's format (I'll have to figure out why).  I have a couple of small projects in mind to get my feet wet with this (I've been wanting to play with this for a while and I finally got the time).  Here are the ideas:

• Find out why Internet Archive new submission feed generates duplicate entries in Thunderbird and no other feed does.
• Calculate simple statistics on RSS feeds.  Counts to start (e.g., number of items in a given date range on a given feed/url).  Later we want to do some more interesting things like tabulate Creative Commons licensing in new submissions for plotting as pie charts.
• Podcast tools for use with my new iPaq (if needed).
• Tools to help automate Internet Archive Tonight production.
• More as they occur to me.

Ok, so I need to learn the API and the RSS "DOM".  Not much documentation, but still should be fun.  More on this later.