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Found 8 entries.
Things are looking good in the 'open' social networking scene.
For a while now, I've been interested in OpenID, open sharing of information and also the social graph everyone is talking about.
Heck, I even told a (non-geek) friend of mine the other day that 'information wants to be free'. He was laughing at me - very hard (hi Dave).
As it turns out, all the different thoughts and plans lots of people all over the globe have been having about how to open the social network out will all be pushed aside if this happens.
The interesting thing is though, even though it might turn out to be a big launch for Google, I think they've already started with the opening out of their GData JavasScript Client Library of Calendar. And we're promised, more of their Application API's to come.
The difference between this client library and the preceding ones is that it allows anyone to mashup an application of theirs to be writable as well as readable. What this means is anyone out there on the internet can now 'program' Google's Applications using a JavaScript library. The aim of GData in the first place was to standardised their internal applications this way so it's no surprise it's now writable.
The main point about this write thing is that, to be able to write to something of yours (yes, you own it, it's your data), that means the application has to know who you are - which is authentication.
So hang on let's recap:
Does it sound like Facebook to anyone?
Yes, but there is one big difference. To create an application, you don't have to do it inside Google as you do with Facebook, you can just go ahead and do it.
That sounds like progress to me :-)
Two other things we need to consider are authentication and the personal data we're talking about.
For authentication we already have OpenID which can say that you are the owner of this particular identity. So maybe November 5th is the big day for Google giving all of their accounts users an OpenID (yay!) Even though they don't need it and their APIs won't use it, it would be really nice of them to do it.
So, the personal data that will be used in these PWMU's (Private Writable Mash-Ups) that might be used by an application may come from Google... BUT, and this is the best bit, I suspect that anyone in the world will also able to create an application which has a PWMU API which implements all the necessary features that the GData API does.
So, finally, what does this actually mean.
It means that anyone can provide an Authentication service, anyone can be a Data service and anyone can create a Personal Writable Mash-Up service.
Sounds like decentralised control of everything - which is exactly what the proponents of the Open Social Graph problem want.
The fact that OpenID creator Brad Fitzpatrick now works for Google and is leading this project gives me even more confidence that things will go in the right direction. As the techcrunch article above states, if Facebook is 98% open, then Google will be 100% open.
And let me finish on a more personal note. I've been planning on adding OpenID to Zaapt and hence KiwiWriters in the next couple of months but let's just imagine some other possibilities. We could create an application which implements a Work In Progress API which allows you to read/write you WIP information from any mashup site. Let's say that in the future people decide to move away from KiwiWriters (let's hope not), then they can copy/move the data that they own to another site which implements the WIP API. This means that the user is free to choose the best provider they see fit AND they actually have the ability to do it. Talk about keeping providers on their toes :-)
P.S. Most of the second half of this post is speculation about what will happen, but yeah, either way, it's going to be very interesting.
Labels: openid, google, planet-geek, planet-catalyst, facebook, social-graph
Inserted: 2007-09-28 10:47 (2 years, 10 months ago)
I'm not talking about me having an epiphany about the web, I'm talking about using the Epiphany Browser instead of Firefox.
For a while now, my Firefox browser has been going in fits and starts. More often than not it starts winding up to 100% CPU and that's just silly. My browser is fairly plain vanilla with just a few minor extensions so who knows what's causing it.
I have been using Google Maps quite a lot recently and I'm thinking it has to do with that, but really, it's far too often getting it's knickers in a twist.
Also a few other things have been getting on my nerves recently. For example, if I'm editing inside a text box, I can't Ctrl-PgUp/PgDn since the text box keeps the focus and gives you options for previous things you've typed in there in the past - not a feature I ever use.
So I decided last night to give Epiphany a go. Many years ago I'd played with Galeon from which Epiphany grew and also had an itch to give it another go. A couple of years ago it still didn't seem to be what I wanted but nowadays it seems fantastic.
So far, it's been a breath of fresh air. It's responsive, it renders really fast (oh I know it uses Gecko which Firefox does, it just seems faster) and there isn't tonnes of cruft to get in the way. I don't need or use history, I keep my bookmarks online and most things I do, I use the mouse for. It's a small slimline browser which goes wonderfully with my minimal desktop (I use Ion3).
Also, using Google Maps never seems to slow it down ever though I'm sure it's quite intensive. I've had 4 tabs open on 4 different pages with maps on them, a load of Flickr pages, lots of Wikipedia pages and other random pages and it's still super responsive. Apart from not stealing all the CPU it also just feels fast for the simple things like switching from tab to tab, which I do a lot.
I don't think I can fully switch yet since I need to check out the extension mechanism but so far, it's looking really promising. I'll definately switch on my home computer at some stage, maybe I'll keep using Firefox on my work one.
Yet another demonstration how free and open source software works. If something better comes along, it doesn't cost an arm and a leg to try it out :-)
Labels: epiphany, galeon, firefox, planet-catalyst
Inserted: 2007-09-25 22:17 (2 years, 10 months ago)
Seeing as everyone else seems to blog about IRC, I thought I'd give an exchange between me and some bots.
The characters are:
15:06 < pie> tabby! 15:06 < tabby> tabby(TM): Was it good for you too? 15:06 < pie> absolutely tabby, you're the best 15:06 < tabby> tabby(TM): Stop that or you'll go blonde! 15:07 < pie> I already am, you made me tabby 15:07 < tabby> tabby(TM): 30% less redundant than itself. 15:07 < pie> a-ha, I win 15:07 <@htaccess> dullbot: pie! 15:07 < dullbot> htaccess: Look, pie. We had a nice conversation. 15:07 < pie> dullbot: I thought you'd been evicted from #<channel> 15:07 < dullbot> pie: No retard, from the moment i left you, this has been a good cat, and a pretty grim thought. 15:07 < pie> lol 15:07 < pie> dullbot: no, you're the best! 15:07 < dullbot> pie: No, you're the best. 15:07 < pie> :-)
Labels: irc
Inserted: 2007-09-19 15:16 (2 years, 10 months ago)
After a long time planning, developing and testing, Member Challenges are now live on KiwiWriters.
Today saw the launch of a brand new section of the KiwiWriters site; the ability for members to create their own challenges. Not only that but it can also be of one of a number of different types of challenge too.
Most writing sites which hold challenges have two limitations, both of which I always wanted to avoid:
From the very start, the KiwiWriters committee said "let's have member challenges" (I forget who's idea it was), so since that day I've been planning on having something completely flexible. I have blogged about this before - My Proudest Moment for KiwiWriters - and all that hard work is now paying off.
We allow writing challenges, editing challenges, time-based challenges, preparation challenges and random-other-stuff challenges. There is plenty of variation and scope for whatever it is people out there want to do and best of all, they can do it whenever they want, there's no need to wait around for one of those other challenges to start. Also, any other member people can join in your challenge too, which after all, was the whole point in the first place.
Gladly one member has already added our first ever member challenge - Survival of the Human Race and we're hoping for a number of people to join. So overall, it's been a very exciting day.
Now then, it's not often I boast but for the first time in a while, I'd like to blow my own trumpet (as it were). Technologically speaking, I'd like to summarise what the KiwiWriters challenge part of the site has over and above all the other writing sites I've seen:
We also have all these added extra features too which not all sites have either:
So overall, it's been a hell of a lot of work to get everything going and now I'm just hoping that this new feature will be the 'killer app' for the site and that lots more people will start using it.
One area I'd love to expand is to get writing groups to use our site for their own challenges. Setting up infrastructure like that and getting it going is quite hard and really time-consuming. People shouldn't have to do all that themselves and instead, I've already done it. Instead, they just go to the site, create a challenge, get people to join and away you go. People don't even have to look at the rest of the site if they don't want to but hopefully, that would be a good drawcard to introduce people to other parts of the site. It's a great tool for encouragement and for being pushed (or pulled) along with a wave of other people.
One of my biggest dreams however, is to get schoolteachers, obviously English teachers, to add their bigger homework/project assignments as a challenge within the site and to get all of their pupils to accept the challenge. Just imagine all those extra words the kids would write if they knew their best friend was ahead of them. We all know from experience that doing something in a group gives you more encouragement, a greater sense of involvement and an incentive to do even more than you could ever imagine. I think that this would be a great way for kids to write more and have lots more fun in the process...
...after all, that's exactly what the whole site is aiming to achieve.
Labels: planet-geek, member-challenges, site-challenges, planet-catalyst, kwi-writers
Inserted: 2007-09-16 00:09 (2 years, 10 months ago)
On Friday afternoon's a lot of people stay around in work for beer o'clock. I do too, but not really for the beer.
Free beer, fresh bread and lots of chips and dips is great in anyone's book but I enjoy sticking round in work on Fridays for a whole lot of different reasons.
Instead of going to the cramped and loud room where everyone is gathering and chatting, I usually just wander the office, find someone to talk to and say "So, teach me something you learned this week." It reminds me of the mathematician Paul ErdÅs who used to turn up at colleagues houses and say "my brain is open." There's something I like about that, it's kinda cool and very geeky.
So for the past 2 months or so I've wandered past people's desks, sat down and just started talking. A few times, I've just stayed at my desk and one or two people would come and sit and talk. I find it a good situation to be in since then you can chat for real and get to know people a lot more than you do during the normal (hectic) work week.
Tonight was really, really good. Beer O'Clock was on my level today so I just sat at my desk. Firstly I had a good chat with Finlay about projects, technologies and management. Then, there were a number of us geektalking (and we even had Nathan Torkington there who is visiting Wellington for Bar Camp tomorrow). Sorry, but geektalk is always interesting.
Finally, Brenda, Caroline, Aaron and Joh were all teaching me sign language. I knew Brenda knew it but hadn't realised how many others did too. It's something I've been interested in for a while but never really did anything. Back in 2000 I printed off the signs for the alphabet and some other beginner's stuff, but there's nothing like having a group of people to learn from and ask questions of.
My first impressions of sign-language is that it's a really creative language. I laughed at a number of signs, such as the ones for various countries (like France, Italy, Russia and Germany) since they actually seem a little outdated. But better than that, signs for people themselves are really cool. It's about taking something to do with sign, a letter, or maybe two, an altogether different sign, mixing them together or with either the personality or the physical appearance of the person and creating something new. So, a letter, a pre-existing sign, a name, a personality and producing something (almost) unique for that person.
Caroline's sign, suggesting long shoulder length hair is very cool. Brenda's (Shiny) suggests something shiny or glittering by throwing your fingers apart (sorry, hard to describe in words, sign is so much easier) and Aaron's, using two thumbs (because pointing to one thumb is for the letter 'a') to point to his dimples on his cheeks is the best of the lot.
What it comes down to is, that people's sign-names are basically mash-ups of sign itself and the person they are for :-)
Wellington's sign is also kinda cool and I'll tell you how to do it. Take your main hand and put your 2nd, 3rd and 4th fingers up with your palm away. Then, move you hand from side-to-side as you also lower it from eye-level to chest level. Yep, that's the wind and rain you're hinting at and that means Wellington. It's brilliant and I love it.
A task I shall be setting myself for this week is to find an evening class somewhere so I can take sign language and learn a bit more. Also, like learning any other type of language (linguistics or programming) it's much easier to learn if you have people to practice with. So Brenda, Caroline, Aaron and Joh, I shall be looking for you guys so I can practice some more. It's lots of fun.
Labels: beer-oclock, planet-geek, sign-language, planet-catalyst, geek-talking
Inserted: 2007-09-14 22:49 (2 years, 10 months ago)
So here's the deal ... and it's a head wrecker.
Over on \l{KiwiWriters|http://kiwiwriters.org/} we're releasing \b{Member Challenges} onto the site on the 15th September. So for example anyone who has signed up to the site can create a challenge that anyone else can join. It's going to be very cool.
There will also be other general improvements such as the one where we'll automatically track your daily progress for any of the challenges you're signed up for ... and this is where it starts to get complicated.
I need to know:
This is kinda weird in two respects.
The first is that timezones are weird - we already know this, but I've just figured out something else a little strange. At 11pm tonight for example, the Pacific/Pago_Pago timezone just crossed into the 3rd September but the Pacific/Tongatapu timezone just crossed into the 4th September - at exactly the same time.
So, the list of active challenges is any challenge that was open for even just 1 minute today. This is the 2nd strange thing and it isn't as easy as it sounds. The logic is a little weird. You'd think it would be about checking the start and end datetimes but you actually want to know if a particular challenge was open at any stage of today - and as you've seen above, today might mean yesterday, also remembering that you've already crossed over into tomorrow.
Let's take midnight tonight for example. Once we cross midnight then the CURRENT_DATE is 2007-09-04. This means that the list of active challenges for today (the 3rd) are those who's start_date <= '2007-09-03' AND end_date >= '2007-09-02'. It seems a little strange at first and it took me ages to figure it out. I don't consider it to be straightforward logic since there was a lot of thinking time but it definitely works.
So as an example for my test data. For Pacific/Pago_Pago my test data said that there were two challenges active yesterday. But for Pacific/Tongatapu it said there were four because it was for today. Yet all of these are processed for different days at exactly the same time.
As we speak, Pacific/Chatham has just passed midnight and is therefore offset by 45 mins from mainland New Zealand so again, something different the fact that I have to check every 15 mins!
So tonight has been a bit of a head wrecker trying to get all these things in place. As it turns out, I think I've got it sussed but wow, it's amazing how much time can disappear on what appears to be a simple problem.
Labels: kiwi-writers, timezones
Inserted: 2007-09-03 23:28 (2 years, 11 months ago)
I managed to do fair bit of what I wanted today but playing with other things also reminded me how much you need to know to get the job done.
Yesterday, I declared that today was Hack Day. Overall, I didn't even finish my first task but that's because of two things: (i) coffee, and (ii) refreshing my memory.
All I want a simple cron'd script to do something every 15 mins. As it turns out there is lots more stuff you have to consider for that one ickl' script and it needs a lot more infrastructure than you expect. I ended up using:
dh_installcronLog::Log4perlpostinst with id and useraddlogrotate and dh_installlogrotateIt's funny how a simple script requires all this other padding around it. The good thing is, I've done it the once now so adding further scripts in the future should be easy enough.
I've set it going on my laptop and I'll check the logs tomorrow. If it seems fine so far I'll finish the script off to do the actual database insertions I need.
Phew! Like everything at the moment it's the small things that take the most time.
Labels: postgresql, kiwi-writers, planet-catalyst, timezones
Inserted: 2007-09-03 00:31 (2 years, 11 months ago)
I believe the weather is going to be bad tomorrow, so I now pronounce it hack day.
Actually, it doesn't matter about the weather at all. There are just some things I need to get done. I wasn't going to write a list of things I had to do because then I'd be bound by it, but that's probably a good thing and then I'll see how well I did.
Okay, here goes:
I don't hope to do all those things, but I may get the first and some of the second done.
Labels: zaapt, kiwi-writers, planet-catalyst, google-maps
Inserted: 2007-09-02 01:31 (2 years, 11 months ago)
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