Please read. How Not To Blog - REAL ID is not an identification card. It's a national surveillance infrastructure

The background is that the US government has just sneaked an ID Card bill through on the back of a very large budget allocation for Homeland security. It calls for all the same things that have been mooted for the UK ID card. A centralised database, machine readable ID cards, embedded biometric information.

Don't let them try the same thing in the UK. The much reduced Labour majority will make it considerably more difficult, but it's still worth supporting people like No2ID. [from: JB Ecademy]

Many-to-Many: Google Acquires Dodgeball : Google Acquires Dodgeball

There should be a good fit between Dodgeball and Google maps.

The problem I have with Dodgeball is the need to report where you are and the process for doing it. This is another application case for the phone knowing where it is either by GPS or cell ID and a small app on the phone reporting up to the central server. This App could either poll periodically or on demand under user control. Then we have the fact that it's still US only (I think). And that to really take advantage of it we need flat rate data transfer instead of per Mb charges.

So all the usual issues with walled gardens, awkward networks, lack of application development tools on the phone side, lack of standards and missing LBS support on the phone side.

So what's next? Google starts an MVNO?

Let's say you have an image that is actively updated but keeps the same filename. How do you force browsers and proxy caches to refresh at the browser end? I "touch" the file so that it's last modifed date is now and often it has a different size and hence etag. Apache correctly honours this and returns 200 OK or 304 no modified it asked. but it seems that a lot of browsers and caches don't ask.

You may have noticed we've got Skype indicators on Ecademy today. If you're in my contact list, then your indicator will be live while I'm online.

The way this works is that I have a desktop tray program running that watches my copy of Skype. Whenever it sees a presence change, it makes a webservice call to the Ecademy web server. You can see the web service here. The server side then creates a pair of images in /skype/ called your_skype_name.gif and your_skype_name_g.gif These are the images that appear on your profile and against your name in lists. The web service checks to see if the Skype_profile_name is a person that is an Ecademy member. So this is not a general service but only for Ecademy members.

The problem here is that when your skype contacts list gets very big (eg >500) presence updates get slower and slower. So I can't really run a single Ecademy Skype Presence server and have everyone connect to it. People who've tried to do this (Like Jyve) discovered that updates were taking 15 minutes to several hours to propagate.

So what I'm looking for is:-
- A few more people prepared to run the desktop app. The benefit to you is that your presence on Ecademy will change immediately. The side effect is that all the Ecademy members in your contact list will also be activated.
- A programmer prepared to take on the code for the desktop app. It's currently written in Delphi but could easily be reverse engineered into C#, C++ or others. It's fairly clean but it doesn't yet cope well with putting the machine into sleep mode or closing down and restarting.

BTW. My Skype contact name is julian.bond
BTW2. It's important that the skype name in your profile is the same as your actual Skype name. And it is case sensitive and typically all lower case. [from: JB Ecademy]

O'Reilly Radar > ETech 2005: Where Did They All Come From? :

Europe and UK do seem to be under-represented in the data. There were times during the conference when it seemed like the Brits had taken over. Maybe it's just they were all giggling a lot, or that they were more active on IRC, or had taken over the bar. And what about the "Virtual SuW" Does a person from Wales attending via iChat count?

More seriously, the contact detail for attendees and especially presenters seemed surprisingly thin. For instance, I'm sure there were a lot more people with a Skype address than mentioned this. Perhaps next year the data entry form should have a FOAF import filter. And to make geocoding easier, make Zip/Postcode a required field. There are some good Zip/Postcode to Lat/Long databases freely available.

And lastly, it always seems like conferences are overly protective of all this data. I'd really like to see the contact list online in the run up to the conference and afterwards. It shouldn't be too hard to have an online registration form that has a privacy switch and where access to the data is only available if you've registered.

Formal Friday
Suicide fever is a keeper. Suicide is painless mashed with Pacman game sounds [from: del.icio.us]

The Huffington Post | The Blog : The new iPod my girlfriend gave me is a trap.

Is Hilary gay? I think we should be told!

But really, doh, the humanity of it all. Here's the ex-head of the RIAA railing against DRM and lock in. Well surprise surprise, the iPod does actually support non-DRM Mp3 files just like every other music player in the world. You don't actually *have* to get your music from iTMS. So don't.

Just Say No To DRM

The right place for data in your feed - 0xDECAFBAD Blog talks about Microformats in syndication. It's a subject that is close to Marc Canter's heart as well as he evangelises microcontent.

There's something that bothers me though about both Decafbad's article and the main article on Technorati. Neither of them really address the issue of getting implementations ot happen of each new format. This is something that really hit me last year when being involved in FOAF. It's all very well coming up with a neat new metadata standard but without implementations at both ends (publisher *and* subscriber) it's just academic wanking. What tends to happen here is that the standard comes first, then we get some reference example data. But we never get the application that consumes it. Even when the data is all in RDF (it's all triples, man) and the data is readable into your vast triple store, you still need the understanding of what the data means to do anything useful with it and present it in UI to some human. The net result is that the vast majority of these microformats (and even some of the big names like FOAF) remain "Write-Only Data".

So here's some advice for potential standard architects. To get your standard implemented, you need
1) A written non-ambiguous doc in the style of an RFC with lots of examples
2) Example Apps and proofs of concept for both the publisher and the subscriber that answers a real need
3) Toolkit libraries in all the major languages and environments. perl *and* php. Java *and* C#
4) A community of evangelists who go out and spread the word and put effort into persuading likely publishers and subscribers to support your new standard.

Of all these, 2) is the most important. and regarding 3) I don't care how clever your Ruby, Java or Python toolkit is, the world uses perl and php. If you can't support those you're never going to get widespread adoption. And ignoring C# because MS is evil is a bad idea. It's hard to get those MS-heads involved but they are finally waking up to the existence of the non-MS world. And there's an awful lot of them and an awful lot of potential customers using MS Win XP.

Skype Journal: I'm All Ears : There's been research on music listening, I'm willing to pay a premium for a headset (prefer wireless) that is guaranteed easier on my ears. Just like I know a top end stereo, I need a topend, robust and light-weight easy-to-listen-to headset. It can't be tiring... thus must be just like a top quality stereo. Where's the brand and the model?

I still haven't found a good solution to this. My requirements are worse because I listen to a lot of music. I want to switch seamlessly from using a high quality stereo headset to talking on Skype. So I think what I want now is a pair of those great Sennheiser phones with a boom mic and a really small inline mic mute button.

I've wondered about the effect of mono-stereo on phone calls. We're all used to listening to phone messages through one ear only. When you hear a phone through both ears and the voice is in the middle of your head, it seems to dominate your thinking to a greater extent. I'm wondering if Skype should provide an option to play back in mono through only one channel?

The other alternative is to have a headset Mic but play back through speakers (assuming you work in an environment where a speakerphone would be ok). The catch is that I still can't find a boom mic that is really good at ignoring ambient noise and the potential feedback from the speakers. If you reverse this and use a desktop Mic with headphones, then the desktop Mic picks up all the typing and mouse clicking noise, not to mention the PC fan.

I've tried a pair of Plantronics ear buds with inline mic but the sound quality is cheap and the mic is effectively omni. Right now I've got a plantronics boom mic duct taped to some high end Sony ear buds but that's less than perfect. That may be the way to go though. High end stereo headphones with a duct taped high end boom mic.

ps. Skype auto-pauses Winamp. It doesn't always auto-restart it. And why not iTunes/WMP as well?

See http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/05/digital_camera.html and http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/05/what_is_where_2.html

O'Reilly is running the Where 2.0 conference for people hacking geo-spatial applications. Google Maps has given a big boost to this. The second link is to a report that Ricoh now sell a digital camera with built in GPS which drops the lat-long coordinates into the metadata of the JPG images. With Phone Cameras now the market leader for digital cameras and with Phones (somewhat limited) knowledge of their location, there's a huge opportunity here for all sorts of hacks and interesting applications. As ever, it's the walled gardens that are holding it up. The phone networks don't want to let you get at the location info without paying. And they're still making it hard to get the pictures off your phone without paying. Even Garmin make it hard to extract the GPS info from their GPS devices.

When will these people begin to understand that having simple, open APIs encourages third party developers which then expand the market. Lock in is always a short term game that is inherently limited. Openness is a long term game that always results in much much bigger rewards.

One thing puzzles me in all this. Why are GPS devices so expensive? Presumably they've been around for long enough now that there's a single chip solution. There are USB-GPS antennas now for <£70 which means that the factory cost of the raw bits must be down at £10. At that price, couldn't they just be bolted into high end phones? Or is the network subsidy process such a problem that wholesale costs of even a high end phone are critical?

Scripting News: 5/6/2005

Dave has cancelled his subscription for Audible because the DRM is tied to both the iPod and PC he was using and both have now gone. This raises an issue I was aware of but I hadn't really considered properly. Let's say you use iTunes to buy and download lots of music for your iPod. All goes swimmingly for a year or so until your iPod dies, or is lost, or the dog ate it. Around that time Creative (or Archos or iRiver) introduce a new machine that is a must have alternative that blows the iPod out of the water. Just one catch, it doesn't play iTunes encrypted AAC. What are you going to do?

Music is for life, not just for christmas. I've still got LPs, and even occasionally listen to them, that I bought more than 30 years ago. Can you be sure that whatever DRM scheme you buy into will still work in 30 years? The plain old CD and the MP3 might well still be around. But I can pretty much guarantee that iTMS encrypted AAC won't be.

Just Say No To DRM.

I Voted For You Because... - Tell them why you voted in the 2005 general election?

This is another nice little site from the MySociety people. It joins:-
* WriteToThem.com — Send a message to your Councillor, MLAs, MSPs, MPs and MEPs free, across the internet
* TheyWorkForYou.com — Want to know what your MP's been upto in Parliament - from debates to expenses, including elections and interests - all in one place in a nice readable fashion
* PublicWhip.org.uk — Want to find out how your MP voted, or even keep tabs on a particular issue and how your MP votes on that? Well PublicWhip is the site for you.
* NotApathetic.com — Want to see why other people didn't vote or went and spoiled their papers? NotApathetic has users' reasons and discussions
* PledgeBank.com — Want to do something, but don't want to do it solo? Set up a pledge, print flyers, email friends and get doing things: together!

These people are doing extraordinarily good work, pretty much for free. I don't know of any other country anywhere in the world that has anything similar. Their next project is "Your Constituency mailing list" which intends to provide a forum for constituents to engage with their MP.

A brief mention here as well for my aggregator of UK Political Blogs and feeds. [from: JB Ecademy]

UK elections - DoWire.Org
Comprehensive set of web links to Uk Politics [from: del.icio.us]

::: Holy Moly ::: Cunts Corner :::

Ah, bless. it makes one feel good to be British. like that attitude that says we don't have to be PC because we take the piss out of everyone equally, including ourselves.

Quick Online Tips: The Great Flickr Tools Collection
yum [from: del.icio.us]

Wired News: Blogs Enliven British Elections is actually just a Reuters fluff piece reprinted without comment. So not surprising they ignored my UK Political Blog Aggregator.

"It is very cynical -- and transparent. Even Blair now has a blog and everybody knows he simply hasn't the time to actually write it. It is just spin," Davies said. Well folks. It ain't a blog if it ain't got a feed. And like most of the official party websites and a lot of the big media sites, there's no feed. So it doesn't make it into UkPoliBlog.

This has been the most disappointing side of watching the nascent Uk Politics website and blog movement. Amazing numbers of clueless websites put togther with dreamweaver and notepad as if this was 1998.

Iraq

Let me try a little alternate history
- 9/11 changed everything. It meant that Bush had to do something. And as many leaders have discovered throughout history, there's nothing like a little war to keep the populace on your side. So Bush is fully committed to regime change in Iraq regardless of the facts.

- This then leaves Blair in a tricky situation as soon as he finds out. It's impossible for him to follow France and would potentially do huge amounts of damage economically to the UK's many business interests in the USA. But he can't actually come out and say this. SO he has no alternative but to support the USA

- Bush and the NeoCons have already decided they are going into Iraq, but they aren't ready yet to dismantle the UN so everyone searches round for excuses that let them go ahead anyway.

- Blair gets roped into this. And unfortunately the complete lack of political opposition means that he has no leverage over Bush to temper the response. So he's stuck on a path of doctoring evidence and intelligence, spinning legal briefs, hiding facts from cabinet and parliament

- The rest plays out.

So the big lie is actually Bush's but to some extent he's excused by 9/11. Blair's big lie is to go along with this and not to tell the truth which is that the UK cannot afford to go against the USA. Blair's continuing lie is to go on saying the same half truths and story that Bush/Blair cooked up to get them round the UN. Everyone knows this. But nobody can say it, because it would expose that Bush and Blair were going to go ahead regardless. And that's potentially disastrous (even though everyone knows it) because it makes them no different from Saddam.

What's worse about all this is that Labour depserately want the whole issue to go away so that they don't ever have to say what really happened. And even though they try and avoid calling the election a referendum on Iraq, you can be sure that if they get a big majority it will be used as after the fact justification for everything they did.

Which brings us back to the one big word, IRAQ. The best way of making sure that this doesn't happen again, and that Labour don't feel that the populace have given them carte blanche to do whatever they like is to try to prevent a big Labour Majority. It's OK if they get in, and they are probably preferable to a Conservative government. But it must be with a much reduced and preferably pretty small majority. And the best way to make sure that happens is to keep on banging away at the IRAQ issue for the remaining 48 hours.

Labour In - Blair Out

An idea for a Skype plugin. I've got people trying to push me to use Avecomm which is a Netmeeting clone (whiteboard, screen/app sharing etc) written as a zero install activex/java application. Unfortunately the voice performance sucks. ISTM that an add on to Skype in the style of the video plug ins could do all the same things but piggy back on Skype's voice, chat, conferencing, file transfer and presence. You'd get all the benefits of SKype's superior performance and add in the missing netmeeting style functionality.

Of course, you run the risk that Skype will eventually include all the functionality themselves.

Incidentally, we ended up using Skype's voice and chat simultaneously with Avecomms app sharing. it worked fine as long as you disable voice in Avecomm. I also had problems with Avecomm's java not working with Firefox's Sun Java installation which was cured by switching to IE6.

TweakGuides.com
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