EirePreneur adds to the earlier idea of a GPS opensouce map of Ireland which got me to thinking about all the recent Ajax hacks and tweaks of services and APIs. One such example is the Google maps integration into Craigslist which even the Google folks gave kudos to. It won’t be long now before someone does the same with GeoUrl so we can see a Google Map of our area with those little balloon thingies showing local Bloggers and GPS co-ordinates.
Mapping / tagging / Ajaxing
April 17th, 2005I’m only blogging this so I can get in the Tribune
April 17th, 2005Bernie gives a good summary of what the Tribune is saying about IrishBlogs The BoggerSphere idea got a mention and praise was heaped on Slugger O’Toole’s election coverage and rightly so. The energy that’s put into that site is nothing short of fantasitc. Keep reading the Planet of the Blogs feeds as I’ve a feeling a whole new group of journalists are going to be poached from there in the next few months and years. If done right the irishblogs could be the breeding and training ground of the new wave of journalists. as well as other forms of media and it was great to the most powerful man in media embrace the future.
Hopefully the media in Ireland will catch on too as the Tipping Point is coming. Which Irish paper will be first to embrace this and what can we do to further this ?
Free Audio download of Murdooch’s speech.
I love this bit: “But our internet site will have to do still more to be competitive. For some, it may have to become the place for conversation. The digital native doesn’t send a letter to the editor anymore. She goes online, and starts a blog. We need to be the destination for those bloggers. We need to encourage readers to think of the web as the place to go to engage our reporters and editors in more extended discussions about the way a particular story was reported or researched or presented.
At the same time, we may want to experiment with the concept of using bloggers to supplement our daily coverage of news on the net. There are of course inherent risks in this strategy — chief among them maintaining our standards for accuracy and reliability. Plainly, we can’t vouch for the quality of people who aren’t regularly employed by us – and bloggers could only add to the work done by our reporters, not replace them. But they may still serve a valuable purpose; broadening our coverage of the news; giving us new and fresh perspectives to issues; deepening our relationship to the communities we serve. So long as our readers understand the distinction between bloggers and our journalists, and so long as proper safeguards are utilized, this might be an idea worth exploring.
To carry this one step further, some digital natives do even more than blog with text – they are blogging with audio, specifically through the rise of podcasting – and to remain fully competitive, some may want to consider providing a place for that as well.
And with the growing proliferation of broadband, the emphasis online is shifting from text only to text with video. The future is soon upon us in this regard. ”
To catch a thief- An experiment for IrishBlogs
April 16th, 2005Ryan’s posted the pic of the guy that allegedly knicked his wallet. Would be nice if the people that live in the irishblogs space were to manage to spread the word about this.
Don’t know how legal it is for someone to post a pic of someone online and accuse them of a crime, though the Gardai seem to do it on Crimeline.
Ryan, The other thing I’d have an issue with is slagging off the person in question. While it’s natural for you to take back power by various means when someone has done wrong to you, I didn’t like the bit where you try and humiliate him by alluding to him being a knacker, gay and has a small penis. I don’t like the implication that there is something to feel humiliated about if you’re gay.
Knacker(taking the scumbag definition) = Inferior
Small penis = Inferior
Gay = Inferior
Er, why ?
Napster DRM Hacked by iTunes hackers
April 15th, 2005It’s the Internet folks. Hundreds of millions of people can now examine your security “features” and rip them to bits. All that’s needed is one person to find the flaw, post about it online and we’ll all find it and tell others. We’re all connected. How about allowing the people to show that they have a natural bent for being honest besides doing your best to fuck them over ?
So yes, Napster DRM has been hacked.
Google Video Redux, Participatory Culture , GMail
April 15th, 2005Jacob has put Google Video under the microscope and come up with some interesting facts such as they may charge you for excess bandwidth and they take a 30% cut on revenue generated, plus they can package ads around your video. Still Google aren’t known for screwing people over and I guess they have to stick in worst-case scenarios in the terms and conditions just in case. be cool if they brought in tagging and made themselves into a video form of Flickr. Might prove very insightful for irishblogs.
Update:[ Scoble points to Vimeo, which is a bit like Flickr for video. ]
It’d be interesting comparing the Google model to the model of Participatory Culture where you create your own videos and choose your own TV. From the site:
”
DTV
A desktop video player application that brings internet TV to the fullscreen. Subscribe to channels: videos download in the background and the player notifies you when they’re ready to watch.
Broadcast Machine
A video publishing tool built on Blog Torrent. Publish fullscreen video to thousands with virtually no bandwidth cost. Simple, flexible, installs on a website in seconds. Easier than most blogging software. ”
In other Google news, it seems GMail will have a newsreader built into it. About time too. GMail will evolve into way more than email storage I’d wager. It’ll soon be the personal online space of many. Taking more and more power from desktop applications.
Misc linkage:
Checks Google for news and then links it to a world map. Showing where most “buzz” occurs.
3D Fingerprint Maze. Create a 3D virtual maze from a scan of your fingerprint. Sweet.
I love search logs
April 15th, 20052005.04.14 22:33:08 213.94.235.9 Search: query for ‘DENIS’
2005.04.14 22:33:21 213.94.235.9 Search: query for ‘GER’
2005.04.14 22:35:35 213.94.235.9 Search: query for ‘AIRLINE’
2005.04.14 22:35:47 213.94.235.9 Search: query for ‘CABIN CREW’
2005.04.14 22:36:03 213.94.235.9 Search: query for ‘RYANAIR’
2005.04.14 22:36:18 213.94.235.9 Search: query for ‘MICHAEL’
2005.04.14 22:36:27 213.94.235.9 Search: query for ‘MICHEAL’
2005.04.14 22:36:35 213.94.235.9 Search: query for ‘PAUL’
2005.04.14 22:37:07 213.94.235.9 Search: query for ‘CHRIS’
Creative Commons in Ireland – Not just the EFF that’s needed
April 14th, 2005Hope this starts an interesting discussion on the IrishBlogs sphere.
Posted this on the Creative Commons Ireland mailing list
“The BBC Creative Archive – http://creativearchive.bbc.co.uk/ was recently launched which hands over some content to the public to play with.
How can RTE be convinced to do the same ? Can anyone outline any legal restrictions stopping them from doing it ? Assuming it’s only home produced content they’d release. ”
To add to what I posted, here is the Slashdot Commentary on Creative Archive Launch. Channel 4 and the Open University have also joined this initiative.
Coupled with this, the BBC today announced more podcasts are being made available. It’s pretty damned cool if RTE made podcasts available and not crappy RealMedia files that I have to stream off a computer to listen to. Sure, there are workarounds to download the stream, convert it to mp3 and then listen to it, but it’s cumbersome and it’s not endorsed by RTE. Morning Ireland is still the best show around with quality journalists and for those that sleep in late it’s a shame to miss it.
RTE are being slightly progressive I guess. They have the streaming media on the site, pity it’s realmedia. Give us OGG Vorbis for audio ! RTE also have XML feeds for their news section, they don’t advertise this on their site though, which is a shame.
So, what would be some bold steps from RTE ?
1. Podcasting, with podcasts wrapped in XML feeds
2. Online audio and video archive available for download, and using BitTorrent to solve bandwidth issues ? They should include free tools to allow people to remix the content.
3. RSS Feeds for all online content as well as allowing people to comment on online stories.
Any additional suggestions ?
I finally chime in about that Pope stuff.
April 14th, 2005IrishBlogs – Way more voices
April 14th, 2005IrishBlogs just got a major boost today as Planet of the Blogs has incorporated the feeds from the Boards.ie journals into its service. That’s 194 Irish feeds and growing. John Breslin is doing sterling work on this and his inclusive attitude will see this grow much larger.
I posted a comment on his site which I reproduced below in regards to stats and monitoring of the blogs. Hopefully other developers in the BoggerSphere will chime in and come up with a solution:
“So, for phase II of PoTB ruling the BoggerSphere, how about sticking up some kind of tracker for the blogs so we can measure total traffic to all the blogs and then create a chart of the top blogs. Something like this.
Actually, one of those simple sitemeters wouldn’t do, would it ? Not if half your traffic comes from an rss feed. You’d need more intelligent tracking software besides an image thingy on the front page. ”
David LaChapelle – Rize, Red Piano and BK
April 14th, 2005The Red Piano is designed and directed by David LaChapelle featuring Elton John, now showing at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
Some clips are kinda odd but there is a fantastic dance sequence too, which is well worth watching.
LaChapelle also has a new documentary coming out called Rize about a dance craze called Krumping. very David LaChapelle
Big heads up on this from MetaFilter.