Category: Tech

@DaveWiner, SUP and pubsubhubub

~ rbonini ~ 1 Comment

Dave Winer has been suggesting alternatives to Google’s pubsubhubub and Friendfeed’s SUP.

Both of these methods are aimed at making the polling of RSS feeds more efficient.

Neither of these protocols use RSS. Which, come to think of it, is really strange. The RSS protocol has been around for a good number of years. Its well understood. and built into most Blogging software and CMS software. Not to mention RSS readers everywhere.

Dave Winer made a good case for prior design as a, well, design method. The idea being that things should be designed from the get go to be backwards compatible.

Those of you watching my Twitter feed will see that I fired off a few tweets to Dave saying that RSS can do the job in and of itself.

Consider. All we are really saying is that we should have a single feed or resource detailing what blogs  or feeds have changed in the last x number of minutes/hours. The idea being that you then go and poll only those feeds. Thus drastically cutting the number of requests you have to make you check ALL the blogs/feeds in the directory, or that are in your RSS reader.

So RSS basically details a number of entries, including title, link, author, date, etc. These entries typically refer to blog posts, and the like.

Capture

So assuming your software knows that directory y is a hub for x number of feeds, by checking y’s RSS feed, you can determine what blogs have updated because they are in Y’s RSS feed. Any blogs that are not in the feed, have not updated. There is a date element in the feed as well, which could be used as well.

This requires simple changes in the logic of the software, rather than the support of an entirely new protocol. I think everybody wins here.

Update on WHS2SmugMug

~ rbonini

Back in January i said I’d get back to writing this Windows Home Server Add-In.

Its now June, 6 months later.  For 3 of those months my camera was back at Nikon being repaired. So I took exactly zero pictures during that time. Its now back and I’m bracing myself for the flood of pictures. I carry 26Gb’s worth of memory cards with me, so I nearly always end up over doing it.

Which brings me to the Add-In. I’ve set up a Codeplex page here. And I’ve made a few check-ins. This is not even pre-alpha code. Let me explain.

A few weeks ago, I asked, via Twitter,  Omar Shahine if I could use his Smugmug Uploader code. now I’m a great fan of the Uploader. I’ve used it for every single uploaded to SmugMug.

So Omar kindly emailed me his code.

So what you will find in the Check-ins, should you be brave enough to take look is Omar’s back-end code sans any UI as part of a WCF service. The WCF service is hosted by a Windows Service (imaginatively called “UploadService”). My plan ( cunning or not) is to have the UI in the Console communicate with the uploader process via WCF. There are other methods, but WCF gives me incredible latitude when it comes to moving data back and forth.

So the Home Server Console tab will simply be a UI for uploading stuff. Instead of Remoting in and using Omar’s uploader. This is an intermediate goal.

My ultimate goal is actually to have a “Smugmug” folder and under it a folder for every Smugmug Album in your account. the above mentioned service will monitor those folders for changes and replicate those changes to Smugmug.

So I’m building now with such a convoluted architecture with a view to where i want to get this Add-in to.

So hopefully I can get the Add-in working soon.

I’m a pretty good test case for this, but I will need testers for it.

Watch my twitter account or my FriendFeed account for updates 😉

PS If you’re asking why I’ve not moved blogs yet, I’m waiting for the next Oxite Release first.

Apple Tv – How It Fits In…..

~ rbonini

So i got me an Apple Tv last week, more on impulse than as part of any rational thought, as such things go.  i was planning on getting one, but only later this summer.

But such is life….

So its sitting there on my Tv cupboard, replacing the DVD player that does not work any way…. surrounded by my impressive collection of DVDs. Which do me no good sitting on the shelf instead of on my Apple Tv hard drive….

The solution to this is, of course to back up your DVDs to disk. I use DVDShrink 3.2 (the last version ever released), or DVD Decryptor. both of which leave you with a folder full of .vob files ( usually  a VIDEO_TS folder).  This will strip copy protection from the files.

These files do us no good. Apple Tv will not take .vob files. But, and I must admit my irritation here, Windows Media Center does ( serves me right for being a turncoat 🙂 ).

So the next step is to use Handbrake ( for Mac and Windows) to take your backed up files and turn them into Apple Tv readable m4v or mp4 files. These files can be read across iTunes, Apple Tv, and your video capable iPods and iPhones.

Now this conversion process is eyewateringly long. I’ve resurrected an old laptop ( Intel Celeron M 1.4 ghz, 256Mb RAM). The average time is about 10 hours – at 4.3 frames per second. My 3ghz Pentium 4 with 2Gb RAM is actually only slightly faster, confusingly enough. in any case, i need the desktop and no the laptop, so the old and busted laptop is doing the conversions.

The 10 hours conversion does not bother me much. I set it up to go in the morning, and its usually almost done my the time I’m back home in the evening.

All this media is being stored on my Windows Home Server, with a normal install of iTunes being the server. I’m not sure if Firefly Media Server will work with Apple TV, but if it is, I’ll install that instead.

Finally, I use MetaX 1.0 for Windows (theres a Mac version, too) to add in metadata – pic, sypnosis, direcots, actor, etc…. This is amazingly useful and saved me loads of time….

Now my music library is full of duplicates (my fault for leaving the “Copy to iTunes library” option on when i import stuff), So I’m slowly going through it and deleting the duplicates (and saving space at the same time).

My Photos are spread across a hundred folders, so i have to get some sort of organisation going so i can sync them to Apple Tv and show them off on my Tv 🙂 .

I have SageTv running on the same server. Their conversion process for Apple Tv takes just as long and won’t work – sigh. If I could just get Sage to save the files in m4v format, i could sync my recorded tv directly to my apple Tv without any (hours long) conversion in between.

Update 14-10-09: The latest version of SageTv does indeed convert to m4v perfectly. Works wonders, but the time is still rather long. I reccomend turning off everything, defrags, AV runs (and temporarily, backups) if you have a long queue of files to convert. Right now I have 16 files to convert all of which are about 2- 3 hours long. Usually two a day. So for this week, I have turned off the defrag passes. SageTv actuall scales its CPU usage remarkabely well in these situations.

If i could, i’d have uploaded everything to EC2 for encoding 🙂

Thanks to the guys over on Friendfeed for help with this.

Dvd backup software thread: here.

Metadata thread: here.

Blogging: I need my Mojo back

~ rbonini

 

Blogs still have a very important place in the on going conversation. There is no medium quite like it, not even Friendfeed. Like books, blogs are the long form, the canvas on which we write our longer thoughts. Whether we use it for venting or ranting, commenting or telling or just plain writing, blogs are the corner stone of the online presence.

The one blogging tip I’ve consistently found is the “stick to it” rule: find your subject and stick to it. Which, in all honesty is not something I’ve done very well with this blog. There is so much to talk about and comment on and just plain only chat about that it can be easy to lose your focus :).

This is partly due to the fact that I only joined Twitter and Friendfeed recently, both of which are better for the kind of wide ranging discussion i enjoy.

And its also to do with the fact that, originally, this blog was set up at the drop of a hat, without any thought as to where it would go and what I would be doing online. It was almost an experiment with this newfangled thing that had come along. The whole idea was to witness the internet from the driving seat, rather than from the RSS feeds. This was at the dawn the of the social networking age, before Twitter and Facebook. Before a lot of stuff.

But I digress.

So what is my focus?? All things technology related. But as you can see, everyone else covers this far better than I ever could. Politics is too much of a heated subject for me blog about. Photography, one of my new passions in life, and programming (the passion), and music (the classical kind) and books (I joined Goodreads the other day).

My online presence at the moment is spread throughout Twitter, Freindfeed, Delicious and Smugmug. I’m seeing more and more people moving to bring these strands together in one site. This is perfectly logical and its the right thing to do.

A new site, a new blog, a new platform seems to be what I need. Sometimes I think setting up a WordPress blog is a little too easy. When you put the time and effort into the creation of something, you regard it totally differently.

So that what I’m going to do – set up a new site, part of which will include my blog.  And it’ll be me on the web, a personal presence tying together all of these desperate strands. Kind of like Austin’s Jet:

So I’m on the lookout for a new platform on which to run it. .Net is the preferred option, mainly because I can code it. I’ve looked at Oxite closely and the more I play with it the more I like it.

Why the effort?? You see, I enjoy writing. I really do. I don’t have English teachers after me for essays, or books to write. So writing a blog is the next best thing (maybe THE best). There really isn’t any other medium like it.

Now this particular blog will remain. No doubt I will find some use for it, but all that info is staying on line 🙂

I will continue posting here till things are sorted out, its probably some time away in any case.

Tweets of the Week

~ rbonini

Here they are. Hope you like them.

Scott Hanselmanshanselman RT @carlosfigueroa: #MIX09 MVC actually stands for Model-View-ChuckNorris. Controller is just one of his nicknames. about 16 hours ago from TweetDeck

Scott Hanselmanshanselman RT @blowdart: #mix09 List<ScottGu> throws an exception – there is only one ScottGu. about 18 hours ago from TwitterFon

Yuvi Pandayuvipanda RT @codinghorror (Twitter): "Klingon programs don’t do accountancy. For that, you need a Ferengi programmer." about 19 hours ago from TweetDeck

Wil Wheatonwilw Things I didn’t expect to see when I woke up today: 4714 people have looked at a picture of my socks. 51000 people are reading this. Um. 5:13 PM Feb 2nd from twitterrific

Loic Le Meurloic No, I won’t publish any seesmic videos of Bill Gates in #davos bathrooms, I promise 11:04 AM Jan 30th from TwitterBerry

ScottBourneScottBourne RT from @guykawasaki – If you have money and power, you choose Macintosh If you’re oppressed, you use Windows. 11:16 PM Jan 28th from web

Mona N.Mona I think Napolean Dynamite smells like bacon. 7:54 PM Jan 26th from web

Brent SpinerBrentSpiner Ah, home again. Phoenix was very nice. Gee, Wil Wheaton. What a nice young man. What was I thinking…heh,heh,heh. 6:12 PM Jan 26th from web

Dave Winerdavewiner Facing facts: I am one of the most hated people on the Internet. 7:31 PM Jan 24th from web

Scott AllenOdeToCode 5 minutes of blinding snow followed by 5 minutes of blinding sunlight. I feel like I’m in mother nature’s test suite. 3:17 PM Jan 24th from Witty

There you are.  Some are funny. Some are true. It just my sense of humor.

Windows 7 (Part 1)

~ rbonini

One question: is it the bees knees??? Yes it is.

At this point every other review is going wax philosophic about how great Windows 7 is, how its what Vista was supposed to be. And then go on to debate whether it should be a Service Pack instead.

I’m going to try avoid all those issues. But I will say this. Microsoft think that it should stand alone as it own OS, and that’s how I’m going to review it.

Its running on a Dell Inspiron 6400, 1.72Ghz dual Core with 1gb RAM.

First off. the problems I’ve had with it have been few and far between.

Now, every time a close the lid and then re-open it, the screen refuses to display the screen again. Its really annoying and requires a restart. The fix is simple – change the power options to do nothing when I close the lid. And it works like a charm now.

Second, IE8 RC wont install here. Don’t ask. But and earlier version of IE8 is installed. No solution as far as I know and I use Firefox anyway.

Third, iTunes runs quite well. Its faster. but not much else. however, it hangs on exit when its saving the iTunes library. And there’s not much choice here but to kill it with task manager.

You can get around this problem, perversely, by running iTunes as an Administrator. I suspect that the UAC tweaks are  the culprit here.

Fourth, every now and again 7 will hang at the shutdown screen (when it says “Shutting down”). This is annoying because you’re not quite sure what’s going on.

Finally, and i don’t know why this happens, the Adobe Bridge Photo Downloader no longer has the “Convert to DNG” option.

Adobe

Before everyone leaves comment, I have installed all the updates delivered to me. And Adobe Bridge tells me its version 2.1.1.9. Since I convert everything to DNG on import, this is really a disaster.

Most programs, actually run in Windows 7 quite well. I did have a problem with Windows Live and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 but hey, all installed eventually.

The Taskbar

7 is done right in a number of ways. The taskbar is particularly important as its the primary focus of any interaction with the OS.

On first use, telling the difference between pinned and active icons can be difficult. Its a very subtle UI cue there.

Taskbar

 

The Icons and notifications are better and never become too cluttered. Handling overflow is done particularly well.

At the bottom right of the taskbar, a little area sits on its own, separated from the rest of the taskbar. Clicking on this shows the desktop. However its not immediately obvious what this is for.

The taskbar itself stays transparent even when viewing a maximised window. I’m not sure about this. There is an argument to keeping the Vista behaviour of a solid taskbar when working with a maximised window.

The Start Menu

The Start Menu isn’t visually different from Vista’s. There are subtle UI cues however, that give away further functionality.

Programs that have been used have arrows next to them. Clicking on this arrow give the documents recently used by this program. the time saving nature of this cannot be over stated.

Taskbar2

The search box now says “Search programs and files” instead of start search. Its more obvious about the function of the search box, and encourages users to use it more. This is one of my favourite features of the Vista-esque UI ( i.e since Vista)

Taskbar search

The Shutdown button is quite blunt as to what it does, differing from Vista’s Off icon. It is possible to change the functionality of these buttons in the power settings and this always confused me. text makes it so much easier to distinguish  what’s going on.

Paint and Wordpad

Both Paint and Wordpad have the new Ribbon toolbar. this makes them much better as applications.

Paint

I tend to use paint quite a lot for situations when its not worth firing up Photoshop or Illustrator. Even in the few times I’ve used it, the Ribbon toolbar makes it so much better to use. and its not crappy old paint anymore either.

A few nice additions include the ability to Zoom right out ( right click to zoom out). This jumped out at me as being new.

Edit: Jordan Hofker pointed out on Freindfeed that its Wordpad not note pad. Many Thanks.

Personalization

The changing backgrounds have been around for ages in third party programs or as part of the Power Toys stuff. however this time its baked right into the OS.

The themes feature is very powerful. Of course I can still remember how Microsoft offered Plus for windows 95. I was too much of a cheapskate to get it, but the idea of a theme has been around for a while.

This marks the first time (that i can remember, anyway) that themes are actually files you can share rather than an amorphous collection of settings.

Whereas before (pre-vista, anyway) settings and dialogs had to be navigated with a map ( literally), important dialogs such as for the mouse pointers, screen resolutions, screen saver and sounds are literally a click away. This will encourage people to get more out of their computers (even the not so computer literate ones).

More later this week as i continue exploring Windows 7.

Apple and Steve Jobs

~ rbonini

So its all over the internet. Its covered both my FriendFeed and Twiter streams. Scoble already has a post out.

TechCrunch is on it.

Engadget is on it.

Dave Winer said it for all of us:

Dave Winerdavewiner steve jobs steve jobs steve jobs steve jobs steve jobs steve jobs steve jobs steve jobs steve jobs steve jobs steve jobs steve jobs 29 minutes ago from web

Steve Jobs is stepping down. Albeit for 5 months.

On the one hand since something changed between the time he issued THAT press release, it is a course for concern. Especially worrying is that according to the BBC, his health issues are more serious than first imagined.

On the other hand, my non-tech-savvy mother got an iPhone today. How is that related? Apple does not stop making money, selling iPhone, Macs or Apple Tv’s.Apple is more than Steve Jobs. Just because Steve Jobs is not at the helm, does NOT mean anything will interrupt apples string of successes. Since Jobs took Apple over, he has imbued it with his vison, his persona, his drive, his ambition. It has worked for Apple and will continue working.

Work is the largest obstacle to recovery. I know that for experience. So i applaud Steve for taking the time off to recover fully and completely. I send him and his family my good wishes.

Hopefully, the Apple faithful will see him once again in June.

Windows 7

~ rbonini ~ 2 Comments

Yep. I’m writing this from my Windows 7 VM (on Virtual PC 2007 SP2).

Performance wise, The setup inside of the Vm is making it sluggish. But of the gig of RAM its got, its only using 32%. Which is notable. Vista beta 2, on the other hand) on the same machine in a dual boot configuration used up 80% (of one gig of RAM) standing still.

Talking of performance, I’ve backed the VM up to Windows Home Server. It took all of 20 minutes. Which frankly surprised me. given the fact that this was a new OS running under a VM.

So I’m inclined to wonder exactly how similar to Vista is 7, file wise? Since WHS only copies to the server files which it does not have a copy of (or a version of). Or, it could be that 7 is optimised for WHS to backup (Which makes sense on a number of levels, but not to the European Union).

The other thing i notice is the new taskbar. I’ve grown used to the Vista taskbar for some reason or other, but this is a pleasant change. The fact that the  task bar items can be configured to show application names or not, is really neat.

They do, however get confused with the buttons in the Quick Launch bar quite easily.

The UAC logo has changed colour, to yellow and blue, in keeping with the OS colour scheme. The UAC prompts themselves are worded differently.

The absence of a sidebar is nice. And I hope that the performance hit that running Sidebar produced is gone too. Gadgets are still there, just in the background and way less conspicuous.

Its quite a please feel to the whole OS. Does it feel like Vista?? A little. Its familiar territory. But In truth, I’ve yet to explorer the OS thoroughly. So that answer will have to wait.

One thing that is defiantly different is that Google Chrome 1.0 looks different.its a dark Blue instead of alight blue.

Talking of web browsers, i decided to install IE8. Which didn’t install. It didn’t recognize the OS for some strange reason. Must try again cause I hear that a few people have managed to do it.

I must say that I’m impressed enough to be considering upgrading one of my Vista machines to Windows 7.

This Beta 1 makes me look to Beta 2 and Release with a lot of hope that Microsoft have learned their lesson of the Vista Release debacle.

The one thing that no ones said anything much about is the WinFS file system that Vista was supposed to ship.

With Sun’s ZFS redundant file system, Microsoft are lagging behind. Even OSX has ZFS built in ( it has to be enabled with some obscure command line tricks, but its there).

Even if Microsoft released a separate beta version with WinFS, I’d be happy. 

NTFS is old. Time to innovate it.

Favorite Tweets/ FriendFeed Comments of the Day

~ rbonini

Ok, quickie post here. I’m still alive but busy on university projects and studying for exams :(.

In no particular order

  1. FF : Ian May posted “My wife said, "Whatcha doin today?" I said, "Nothing." She said, "You did that yesterday." I said, "I wasn’t finished."”
  2. FF: Stupid Sleepy (aka Tina) asked: “Caption, please!”

    sumocaption.png

    See the suggested captions at FriendFeed here.

  3. FF: BreakingNewsOn – Tweeted:

    “Statement from Israel on boat collision involving former US Congresswoman McKinney: http://www.bnonews.com

    To which Evan Brown commented: “Thankfully, McKinney is no longer in Washington screwing things up. Unfortunately, she is now oversees screwing things up”

  4. FF: Stupid Sleepy (aka Tina) posted this story:

    Mr Fixit’s Emily Newton, left, and Sara Cooper are ready to make the Taste toilet experience more enjoyable.

    I beg you to read the hilarious comments on FriendFeed here.

  5. And finally, while there its not funny, theres a twitter/Friendfeed effort to get Robert Scoble an interview with Steve Jobs of Apple. See here (FriendFeed) and here (Scoble’s original tweet) and here (@joshaidan’s response).

To be honest, emailing Steve Jobs is a bit daunting. But I will get round to it.

So come on,  help Scoble get an interview with Steve Jobs: email Steve: sjobs@apple.com. @joshaidan says to make it personal.

Twitter Vs FriendFeed

~ rbonini ~ 1 Comment

Ok, so I got the FF bug before going to Twitter (you can follow me here).

So I installed Twitterific on my iPhone and turned on FF-to-Twitter integration. And I imported Twitter into FF, too.

This whole set up works very well. Twitters that go out of FF (as items that are posted to FF) aren’t re-imported to my FriendFeed stream (clever!). And comments in reply to twitters also go to Twitter.

The above accounts for 90% of the updates on Twitter.

So, what value do I see on Twitter?

Well, I have had several conversations, both public and private on Twitter with people all over the world. So yes, there is value there.

But I increasingly find that its easier to talk to those people that I’ve been following on FF for a few months already. And you’ll find that most of those people I follow on Twitter I also subscribe to in FF.

This raises an interesting comparison: what service do I get the most value from when i follow the exact same people in both?

FriendFeed is the clear winner here.

  • One, FF makes it a lot easier to follow conversations, even across several different items. This makes for focused interaction on specifics. Threads rarely ramble, and usually spark a new one if that happens. I’ve see and been part of more debates that I can count, but always come out of it feeling good – win lose or draw.
  • Two, we get far more from the stream. FF allows anything with a link or even just a message to be posted. Videos play right in the stream. YouTube video appear automatically when you post them. Google maps appear for location based services. Pictures can accompany the links, giving nice visual feedback on the item even before you click on it. all these little things and more engage the user far more than simple text can.
  • Three, Likes and Comments. Both are nice to get on a item you’ve posted. And both help item to rise to the top of your stream. Its not unusual to see items a few hours or even days old suddenly appear. These are usually some of the good stuff that been posted. these allow you to see the real hotbeds of activity on FF. Twitter has no such system.
  • Four. Twitter integration. This is a circular argument, but its nice to pull stuff back into Twitter. Especially since I’m not that fussy about using twitter directly.
  • Fifth. The team. The FF team use FF itself to engage and interact with the users, giving them a voice into changes to layout and such. This is important. user know that they are being looked after. this will prevent people leaving easily. it certainly makes me feel better that they’ve got my back.
  • Sixth, and finally – the API. The FF API has no restrictions on it and they provide libraries for all platforms and languages. Getting data in and out is easy.
  • Seventh, Ok, this really is the final point. Rooms. The notion of subject oriented streams has really taken off. You name the subject and there’s a room for it on FF. The US Politics room was particularly useful during the election. The nearest Twitter has are hashtags.

So, I will continue to use Twitter. And I’ll continue to use FriendFeed. Both are very much essentials for the modern internet hog. Even if you don’t like (or have) an account with the facebooks and myspace’s of the internet, even if blogs don’t figure in your online presence, both Twitter and FriendFeed are as good a start as any.

The shared opinions of millions live on the internet, but I have my little corner of that universe. And that good enough for me.