Imagine a block in the margin of Joi Ito's weblog. Last update 9:23am. Location: Geneva Airport. Listening: Monkey Radio. Last seen in IRC: Channel #joiito 1m43s ago. Phone: On a call. Last Meeting: Davros. Next meeting: Supernova. Mood:Inspired

What I want is a generic dashboard app that plugs into a weblog margin and does as much as possible of this stuff automatically.

We're all becoming more and more mobile. We're working from laptops, PDAs and advanced mobile phones no matter where we happen to be. We end up borrowing computer time and internet access when we can't get it directly. ("Can I just check my email?").

Next, we're increasingly comfortable with Instant Messaging systems like Skype and Messenger that say that we're "online", or "busy" or "away".

So wouldn't it be neat if these same presence systems could work out and show where we were as well as that we're online. And it would be more neat if this information was available to applications running on our own machines and not just a website or network operator.

Here's some techniques that might be useful.
- GPS. GPS for laptops and PDAs is still a little expensive and it's not built in automatically the way that LAN and Wifi often is. SImilaly it's not yet built in to mobile phones due to size, space, battery life and cost considerations.

- Mobile phone location. The location of Mobile phones is more or less known based on the cell they're connected to and triangulation with multiple cells inrange. It's extremely hard to come up with a generic solution to this. And the network operators hoard this information. Each one has it's own data which makes it hard for a 3rd party to get access to it as you have to do deals with each one separately.

- WiFi. A couple of companies are attempting to build a database of the MAC address of every WiFi access point worldwide with their deployed location. This feels like a boil the ocean solution but might end up being a sort of poor man's GPS.

- IP. If you're internet connected, the IP address can give a rough guide to where you're located. But it's pretty rough and often wildly wrong.

- Human. As a last resort, you could get the human operator to tell you where they are. Except that describing your exact location is pretty hard. Do you know your latitude/longitude position right now? How about the exact Postcode/Zipcode? What about when you're at Cafe Grand Prix? Or in a train somewhere between London and Edinburgh? The most useful answer to that last question is actually "In a train somewhere between London and Edinburgh" and not a geographic answer.

FInally. The moment we open up the idea of including geographic information in presence, other things come to mind as well that could be added. Starting with the old favourite "What I'm listening to". [from: JB Ecademy]

I've got a need for a venue in central London for a gathering of geeks. Can any recommend somewhere?

- 30-40 people
- Reasonably priced food. ie not stupidly expensive
- Sit down or stand up. It doesn't have to be a proper restaurant but it should be real food and not just canape. Some of the people will want to sit and talk
- There's no money for room hire!
- Quiet enough that people can actually talk to each other without spending all evening shouting

I suspect that the last requirement is actually the hardest. [from: JB Ecademy]

The list of blogs on the main site's home page and the list of blog titles now includes entries posted on the other Trusted Networks. This should encourage flow to the other sites. It should also cut down on the number of times that people feel the need to post the same blog on several TNs (please don't do this!).

So when you post a blog, think for a moment if it would be more appropriate on one of the TNs. You'll still get the exposure of appearing on the main site.

The corresponding area on the home page on the TNs and the list of blog titles on the TNs are unchanged.

BTW. I've also fixed the long standing bug that when you were replying to a comment, your photo was on the view of that comment not the author's. [from: JB Ecademy]

Julian Bond wrote:
>I've just uploaded the first cut of a php FOAF parser for use in
>applications that need to read FOAF without needing to understand RDF.
>http://www.voidstar.com/foafPerson/

Some changes (and some bug fixing)

1) I've added an array of ifps (inverse functional properties) to each Person. These can be used as keys to identify a Person also referenced elsewhere. mbox is converted to mbox_sha1sum and duplicates are stripped.

2) I've added a single entry "name" to the person array. This uses a heuristic to try and come up with a human readable name for the Person. roughly (in pseudocode).

foaf:name

 else 

foaf:givenname

 else if foaf:surname

foaf:firstName foaf_surname

 else if foaf:family_name

foaf:firstName foaf_family_name

 else

foaf:firstName

 else

foaf:nick

There are times when it's useful to have a value like this without having to run through the whole heuristic in App code.

3) I managed to find an RDF file that had some FOAF in it but it was impossible to work out which was the primaryPerson. The Error handling now deals with this.

4) There are at least two namespace URIs in use for Eric's relationship schema. The code now handles the most recent. http://purl.org/vocab/relationship/ If you're still using the old one, please update your foaf (Marc!). There's a generic RDF problem here to do with namespace versioning.

I've started another attempt (4th!) to write a general aggregator/scutter/smusher using all this. So far it's going better than last time. I do feel like I'm finally getting to grips with FOAF. Most of it is data driven so it's easy to add new namespaces and tags. And there's relatively few special cases to deal with.

The Times Online - T2 has a fun couple of articles on what makes women and men happy. This can be summed up as:-

Men: "Bring beer. Come naked"
Women: "If women are allowed to follow their instincts, they'll be happy. For half an hour."

Most of the stories are based on viewing humans as fundamentally mammals and only really explores this sort of darwinian, biological, mammalian analysis. It can indeed be useful to understand that most of us spend a large amount of time allowing the lizard brain and mammal brain to control us. But it ignores what makes us different from other animals.

We have a human brain that thinks. It's our blessing and our curse.

And I happen to believe that the thinking human brain transcends gender differences. So can we think ourselves into being happy even when our mammal and lizard selves are trying to stop us? [from: JB Ecademy]

Why do people send "Out of office" replies on email? What am I supposed to do with them?

Just another of life's unanswered questions. Like why do Anti-Virus systems send warning messages back when 90% of current viruses spoof the from address?

Please don't do either of these. And especially don't use them if the system can't tell that the target address is a mailing list or that it's sent one to that address already. [from: JB Ecademy]

Skype is rapidly becoming my preferred IM client quite apart from it's voice capabilities. So what would you like to see in Skype?

- Send file during a session
- Web display of presence information via an embedded URL or image in a web page
- An API so people could write add ons
- Store and forward so you could leave a message for a contact who wasn't currently online. The message would be delivered automatically when they came online.
- Better management of the contact list. Import and export via vcards

Now here's the contentious one. With the programmer's experience of Kazaa, it wouldn't be hard to build file sharing of a specific directory between you and the people in your contact list. With some search of the directories of all the people in your contact list then bolted on top. This would end up something like the closed groups in WASTE or Soulseek. It could use the privacy and encrption to hide what was going on. This is the online equivalent of burning a CD for close friends and handing it to them. I've had a quick play with Microsoft's 3 Degrees addon to MSN and with Skype's conference call capability this wouldn't be hard to build in to Skype as well.

What's fascinating about this process is that Skype now have a business model that should bring in revenue. Which means there's no need for them to bundle dubious adware or to litter the user interface with advertising. Skype may be built on voice, but what they've got is actually a general purpose platform that lets them progressively build IM function on top. It's going to be very interesting to see what they do with it. [from: JB Ecademy]

consultationprocess have re-invented The ID Card Consultation document as a blog complete with comments, trackbacks and a permanent URL for each paragraph.

It may or may not make any difference, but feel free to criticise and analyse each individual word. [from: JB Ecademy]

www.mnftiu.cc | get your war on | page thirty-seven

Does this mean we'll be bringing home the troops two days early?

I've now added links to phone numbers in your profile so that when you click on them, it tries to use Skype-Out to make the call. Some hints.

1. In Ecademy format your telephone numbers as +country_code number_without_leading_zero eg
+44 8701 161 161 If you don't people may have to edit the call number after clicking on the link.

2. Get the latest release of Skype 0.98.0.28

3. Pick the Dial tab, click on the link at the bottom and buy some credit

4. Click on Ecademy telephone numbers to connect at cheap rates. eg
EU0.014 per minute UK->USA [from: JB Ecademy]

First an unusual comment from me. "I really don't know what I'm talking about here"

What's the current state of Enterprise (and consumer) Instant Messaging? I don't have hard facts or links to back this up, but something's going on here. Whizzing around in the back of my head are the following non-facts which may or may not be true.
- Yahoo and AOL pulling out of the enterprise market
- Microsoft still haven't shipped their enterprise system (RTS?). The beta still has less function than MSN Messenger
- Jabber is getting more and more traction. Often in specially customised versions.
- So in the standards war, XMPP is winning out against SIMPLE
- Meanwhile, corporate employees are using Skype and consumer level IM whether their IT department likes it or not.
- More and more universal clients are appearing that side step the lack of interoperability standards by hacking into each system. The systems keep changing prototcol to keep them out but their losing the battle.
- Skype has made Voice attached to IM, the next must have. And none of the other IM systems have a credible solution to this.
- The best system is Apple Mac only. iChat is much better than any of them, but it's still Mac only.
- One of these days, one or more of the Voice IM systems will hook up to the plain old telephone system in a way that challenges "real" VoIP.
- Whatever happened to BT's VoIP project in partnership with Yahoo! It should be shipping now, shouldn't it?
- Where's IM on mobile devices like cellphones and PDAs? Why isn't it seamless to move between a mobile device and PC?
- Why is MSN Messenger essentially the same application we had 5 years ago? It's got a prettier front but it doesn't actually do any more. And when are they going to blow out the 150 person limit in the contacts list?
- Why can't you send a message to someone who is offline in most IM systems? Doesn't anyone else see store and forward as an essential feature? You'd be annoyed by an SMS system that didn't have this. Why do we put up with it on IM?
- Why is there still no common URL scheme so you can embed an IM link in a webpage. Or a way of embedding a presence indicator in a web page. And why does MS keep changing the ActiveX only interface for this so that web developers can't keep up and it's not cross platform.

Really, the IM market is almost as irritating as the mobile cellphone application market. What a graphic example of the mess and chaos that happens when commercial interests get traction before the standards get agreed.

Well there's a lot of unanswered questions. Anyone? [from: JB Ecademy]

The v6.2 release of MSN Messenger has some new options on the Actions menu which link to the 3 degrees site. So 3 Degrees has effectively come out of beta.

So what's it all about then? [from: JB Ecademy]

As the USA Presidential campaign reaches a new low (Come on people. Don't you know about Godwin's law?) I have to ask myself, what is it about Americans and cookies?

Watch out! Incoming mass hack attack

So here's what the internet has finally come to. An unpatched flaw in MS IIS has been used to attack some major websites. This turns them into infection points for Internet Explorer users via an unpatched flaw in IE6. Some of these sites are rumoured to be major banking, shopping and shopping comparison sites. The irony here is that even if you had been religiously patching web servers and IE6 installations you're still at risk because there's no patch available for either part. The virus has not yet made it into Anti-Virus packages. The only solution is to change browser. And you can bet that at least one of those sites is IE6 specific and doesn't work without IE6.

Or maybe it's all just an urban myth. Move along. Nothing new to see here. Stop using IE6. Switch to Firefox/Opera/Mozilla. Or buy a Mac. Stop using IIS. Switch to Apache. Or buy a Mac. [from: JB Ecademy]

[from: JB Ecademy]

There's a huge amount of information on the web that is deliberately closed to the search engines. This is either because it's in odd formats, or that the owners have excluded the database from search engines. Or sometimes that the database navigation means that Search engines ignore it. Or that these sites have nobody linking in to them and so are never found.

Invisible-web.net - Searchable databases and specialized search engines Is a site that attempts to build a directory to these resources. Most of the sites allow free access and a link is provided both to the site's home page and to the search page within the site.

The Invisible Web resources we've selected range from a searchable bibliography about African Elephants to a road construction database for U.S. highways. From a database of Canadian statistics to an interactive calendar of events at the world's leading art museums. It's an eclectic collection, but we feel that every resource included represents one of the best sources of information available for its particular subject area.

[from: JB Ecademy]

I've just uploaded the first cut of a php FOAF parser for use in applications that need to read FOAF without needing to understand RDF. You can find it here.

Here's the readme. There's a test rig here.

Copyright:

  Original written by Julian Bond 

  This work is in the public domain:

  SEE: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/

  So do what you like with it!



Description:

  A general purpose Person Class for use when reading FOAF into 

  non-FOAF aware Applications. It assumes that the FOAF file is a 

  personal profile  document for a single Person. It attempts to locate 

  this person using a  heuristic that works from an explicit PrimaryTopic 

  downwards to guesswork.



  Requires RAP v0.8 http://www.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/suhl/bizer/rdfapi/

  A cut down copy of RAP v0.8 is included in the zip in the sub-directory

  api/ with unused files commented out in RdfAPI.php. Please note that the

  above license info only applies to this file. RAP has it's own license.



Usage:

  $data = foafPerson_FetchDataCurl($url);

  $thePerson = new foaf_Person($data, $url);

  print "<pre>".print_r($thePerson->values)



Data:

  $thePerson->model gives access to the underlying RAP memmodel

  $thePerson->Person is the single top level person

  $thePerson->values is a sparse array of values of types keyed 

  on the tag name.

  - Literal

  - URI

  - geo

  - Vcard address

  - knows Person



  eg.

  values["name"][0]

  values["weblog"][0]["uri"] or ["title"]

  values["based_near"][0]["lat"] or ["long"]

  values["ADR"][0]["Street"]or["Locality"]or["Region"]

or["Pcode"]or["Country"]

  values["knows"][0]["relationship"] or ["person"] where Person is 

 of the same form as values but without any knows array



Extensions:

  It's fairly easy to add new namespaces into foafPerson_ns() and

  namespace tags into foafPerson_rdfTags() The array of tags has three 

  elements

  [0] associative key into the namespace list

  [1] tag name

  [2] tag type



  New types can be added into the foaf_Person constructor with a 

 corresponding new function to create the array.

Microsoft Research DRM talk Cory Doctorow

This is a beautiful piece of work. It's the transcript of a talk Cory Doctorow from the EFF gave to Microsoft Research about the perils of Digital Rights Management and why MS should keep DRM out of products like Media Player.

The argument comes down to 5 points.

1. That DRM systems don't work
2. That DRM systems are bad for society
3. That DRM systems are bad for business
4. That DRM systems are bad for artists
5. That DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT

Particularly interesting is that last one and uses the example of Sony. During the early days of video recorder's Sony fought back against the entertainment industry and won a judgement that recording programs and tapes was fair use and the manufacturer of the device could not be held responsible for that use. That judgement was instrumental in creating the huge video industry we know today. This time around Sony bought a major entertainment corporation and ever since has been wasting time with a succession of hardware devices that are crippled with DRM. The end result is that they have effectively lost a whole series of markets beginning with the personal music player.

Microsoft is one of the few companies with a media player that is big enough, arrogant enough, independent enough and with enough spare cash to simply stand up to the entertainment industry and stick two fingers in the air. Unlike Apple or Sony, MS don't need an iPod or iTunes to survive.

Anyway, Cory's piece is quite long and detailed but if you're remotely interested in the future of music, video, consumer rights and DRM, you must read it. [from: JB Ecademy]

SWAD-Europe: FOAF Workshop @ DERI Galway (1-2 Sept 2004)

The first two suggestions

# Social network metadata standards
# Trust issues in social networks

mean that this is an important workshop for us. [from: JB Ecademy]