Paul just sent me a link to a cool sounding (but unfinished) project called code4lib session snatcher. It sounds like it’s a pet project of a systems librarian who was working on some code on a flight to the code4lib conference. The code is intended to act as a presentation recorder for the S5 presentation system, recording both slide timings and audio, and (presumably) packaging both up for playback after the fact.
It’s currently Pretty Darned Hard to properly record a full-on presentation. Getting the audio is no biggie, but getting the timing of the presentation so it synchs up to the audio is decidedly non-trivial. The session snatcher author referenced Lawrence Lessig’s quest for a usable solution to do this. I’m not sure S5 would satisfy Lessig’s style, but this just might work…
Art took an interesting tack in recording an S5 presentation – it looks like he’s using a java client/server combination to act as both webserver (hosting the S5 presentation, and therefore recording times of requests) and recording the audio. That’s pretty cool. I couldn’t find a download to try it out (and couldn’t find more info about it on his blog), so I’m just dumping a reference to it here so I’ll eventually remember to come back and see how things have progressed.
Paul just sent me a link to a cool sounding (but unfinished) project called code4lib session snatcher. It sounds like it’s a pet project of a systems librarian who was working on some code on a flight to the code4lib conference. The code is intended to act as a presentation recorder for the S5 presentation system, recording both slide timings and audio, and (presumably) packaging both up for playback after the fact.
It’s currently Pretty Darned Hard to properly record a full-on presentation. Getting the audio is no biggie, but getting the timing of the presentation so it synchs up to the audio is decidedly non-trivial. The session snatcher author referenced Lawrence Lessig’s quest for a usable solution to do this. I’m not sure S5 would satisfy Lessig’s style, but this just might work…
Art took an interesting tack in recording an S5 presentation – it looks like he’s using a java client/server combination to act as both webserver (hosting the S5 presentation, and therefore recording times of requests) and recording the audio. That’s pretty cool. I couldn’t find a download to try it out (and couldn’t find more info about it on his blog), so I’m just dumping a reference to it here so I’ll eventually remember to come back and see how things have progressed.
To prevent myself from backing away from this, I’ve gone ahead and requested a new project on Eduforge.org to host the mythical EduGlu application development.
I’ve got no idea what this thing might be – not even what language it will be written in – but I’m sticking a flag into the sand to say I’ll help build this sucker.
It’s going to have to be a spare time / after hours project for me, since I’m already way booked at work. If it turns into anything, I’ll try to address any issues that come up there. That’d be a good problem to have, though.
The project hosting hasn’t been activated yet – could take 72 hours – but it should show up https://eduforge.org/projects/eduglu/.
Anyone else want to play? I’m hoping to do the whole thing out in the open, with an Open Source license to make sure it’s available to anyone. Next step, to brainstorm what this thing should be capable of. There will be a project wiki space when it’s been activated by the folks at Eduforge.org…
To prevent myself from backing away from this, I’ve gone ahead and requested a new project on Eduforge.org to host the mythical EduGlu application development.
I’ve got no idea what this thing might be – not even what language it will be written in – but I’m sticking a flag into the sand to say I’ll help build this sucker.
It’s going to have to be a spare time / after hours project for me, since I’m already way booked at work. If it turns into anything, I’ll try to address any issues that come up there. That’d be a good problem to have, though.
The project hosting hasn’t been activated yet – could take 72 hours – but it should show up https://eduforge.org/projects/eduglu/.
Anyone else want to play? I’m hoping to do the whole thing out in the open, with an Open Source license to make sure it’s available to anyone. Next step, to brainstorm what this thing should be capable of. There will be a project wiki space when it’s been activated by the folks at Eduforge.org…
In my neverending quest for The One True Blog Management App, I downloaded the latest beta of Qumana. It’s pretty cool. Cross platform now (well, MacOSX and Windows). It’s got its own ad manager system, which I won’t be using, but that’s how they’ll be trying to pay the bills.
The WYSYWYG editor is pretty decent. Haven’t tried to break it yet, though. Let’s see how it handles preformatted code:
public void Main() {
System.out.println("Trying out Qumana");
}
Hmm… didn’t handle that well… They all seem to bork on that.
Oh, and the app is free (but not Open Source). By default, it adds a “Powered by Qumana” link at the bottom of every post, but that’s apparently removable.
Categories are nicely sorted in the editor interface, so that’s a benefit (still prefer the freeform text entry field in the WP interface via Cat2Tag…)
I’ll give it a shot for awhile and see how it fits. If you can read this, it’s off to a decent start.
Update: It didn’t like Categories, either. And gave XML-RPC errors on posting (although it posted OK). Maybe I’ll hold off on using it for awhile…
Update 2: The pre/code block was created by Qumana as invalid XHTML – it was inserting paragraphs in funky places there. I’ve re-editid this post (in Deepest Sender) to remove the funkiness.
In my neverending quest for The One True Blog Management App, I downloaded the latest beta of Qumana. It’s pretty cool. Cross platform now (well, MacOSX and Windows). It’s got its own ad manager system, which I won’t be using, but that’s how they’ll be trying to pay the bills.
The WYSYWYG editor is pretty decent. Haven’t tried to break it yet, though. Let’s see how it handles preformatted code:
public void Main() {
System.out.println("Trying out Qumana");
}
Hmm… didn’t handle that well… They all seem to bork on that.
Oh, and the app is free (but not Open Source). By default, it adds a “Powered by Qumana” link at the bottom of every post, but that’s apparently removable.
Categories are nicely sorted in the editor interface, so that’s a benefit (still prefer the freeform text entry field in the WP interface via Cat2Tag…)
I’ll give it a shot for awhile and see how it fits. If you can read this, it’s off to a decent start.
Update: It didn’t like Categories, either. And gave XML-RPC errors on posting (although it posted OK). Maybe I’ll hold off on using it for awhile…
Update 2: The pre/code block was created by Qumana as invalid XHTML – it was inserting paragraphs in funky places there. I’ve re-editid this post (in Deepest Sender) to remove the funkiness.
I just saw a link to coComment (via an OReilly blog, IIRC – can’t seem to find the link at the moment) It looks like a way to track comments that you make on various blogs, providing a way to keep on top of conversations distributed throughout the blogosphere.
I’ve been doing a low-tech version of this by tagging blog comments on del.icio.us with “blogcomment” so I can periodically check in on them. But this appears to but some intelligence, or at least some automation, behind the concept.
coComment is in a closed beta, by invitation only. If anyone has the goods and feels like hooking me up, I’d love to take it for a test drive. I’m just sayin’…
I just saw a link to coComment (via an OReilly blog, IIRC – can’t seem to find the link at the moment) It looks like a way to track comments that you make on various blogs, providing a way to keep on top of conversations distributed throughout the blogosphere.
I’ve been doing a low-tech version of this by tagging blog comments on del.icio.us with “blogcomment” so I can periodically check in on them. But this appears to but some intelligence, or at least some automation, behind the concept.
coComment is in a closed beta, by invitation only. If anyone has the goods and feels like hooking me up, I’d love to take it for a test drive. I’m just sayin’…
Trying the free blog editing client app Bleezer – it’s a cross-platform java app. A little rough around the edges, but has a pretty decent UI (but categories are provided in a popup, so you can select only one category for a post).
The editor is not WYSIWYG, but toggles to preview mode easily. It doesn’t grok the convention of skipping p and br, so the preview is spaced oddly. The app provides an interface for direct FTP uploads of images etc. as well.
This one’s close, but still isn’t exactly what I’m looking for. Back to the WordPress web UI…
So far, Performancing and Flock are the closest thing I’ve seen to an ideal blog management client app, but even that doesn’t make me hate using the WP web UI…
Trying the free blog editing client app Bleezer – it’s a cross-platform java app. A little rough around the edges, but has a pretty decent UI (but categories are provided in a popup, so you can select only one category for a post).
The editor is not WYSIWYG, but toggles to preview mode easily. It doesn’t grok the convention of skipping p and br, so the preview is spaced oddly. The app provides an interface for direct FTP uploads of images etc. as well.
This one’s close, but still isn’t exactly what I’m looking for. Back to the WordPress web UI…
So far, Performancing and Flock are the closest thing I’ve seen to an ideal blog management client app, but even that doesn’t make me hate using the WP web UI…
The Performancing extension for Firefox was just updated, and they added some great new stuff. It’s now tied into del.icio.us, and adds a “Page Tools” view that looks up the current web page in Technorati (handy, but no handier than a bookmarklet).
Firefox is still not quite as nice as Safari, so I don’t think I’ll be using it full time (page scrolling performance in Firefox is terrible on my ‘book, and text rendering isn’t quite as nice as in Safari). Maybe I’ll try it for a few days to see how it works out.
The beauty of keeping all bookmarks in del.icio.us is that it completely commoditizes the browser. My bookmarks are completely portable. The only links/tools that get left behind are the bookmarklets I keep in a browser’s bookmark toolbar, and those are easily replaced.
Two things that they could add to make Performancing rock harder would be:
- Sorting categories. 285 categories and counting, and it’s hard to find specific categories for a post (where did “performancing” go in this unsorted mess?)
- Category search. Even with sorting, it would be handy to be able to search/filter categories. Maybe it’s a tool that only shows up if a blog has more than 20 categories or something… It took me longer to find the categories for this post than to write it.
One thing that strikes me is just how much faster/easier/more flexible adding categories is through the WordPress web UI, when combined with the Cat2Tag plugin – it is a simple text entry field, similar to del.icio.us or Flickr, with autocompletion of existing categories and seamless creation of new ones as needed. It even provides a sorted and weighted tag cloud view of existing categories if desired. No idea if adding categories is even possible via the posting API, but it keeps me coming back to the WordPress posting UI…
Update: Disabling Firefox’s “live scrolling” makes it feel about 6 bajillion times faster. It’s totally usable now. I’ll try it for a week or so (again)…
The Performancing extension for Firefox was just updated, and they added some great new stuff. It’s now tied into del.icio.us, and adds a “Page Tools” view that looks up the current web page in Technorati (handy, but no handier than a bookmarklet).
Firefox is still not quite as nice as Safari, so I don’t think I’ll be using it full time (page scrolling performance in Firefox is terrible on my ‘book, and text rendering isn’t quite as nice as in Safari). Maybe I’ll try it for a few days to see how it works out.
The beauty of keeping all bookmarks in del.icio.us is that it completely commoditizes the browser. My bookmarks are completely portable. The only links/tools that get left behind are the bookmarklets I keep in a browser’s bookmark toolbar, and those are easily replaced.
Two things that they could add to make Performancing rock harder would be:
- Sorting categories. 285 categories and counting, and it’s hard to find specific categories for a post (where did “performancing” go in this unsorted mess?)
- Category search. Even with sorting, it would be handy to be able to search/filter categories. Maybe it’s a tool that only shows up if a blog has more than 20 categories or something… It took me longer to find the categories for this post than to write it.
One thing that strikes me is just how much faster/easier/more flexible adding categories is through the WordPress web UI, when combined with the Cat2Tag plugin – it is a simple text entry field, similar to del.icio.us or Flickr, with autocompletion of existing categories and seamless creation of new ones as needed. It even provides a sorted and weighted tag cloud view of existing categories if desired. No idea if adding categories is even possible via the posting API, but it keeps me coming back to the WordPress posting UI…
Update: Disabling Firefox’s “live scrolling” makes it feel about 6 bajillion times faster. It’s totally usable now. I’ll try it for a week or so (again)…
It’s been a LONG time since I’ve played with Ecto. I used the previous incarnation (KungLog) before it changed to become Ecto, and lost touch with it since then. I’ve been using the browser-based WordPress posting interface almost exclusively, with occasional dabbles into the worlds of Firefox+Performancing and Flock.
Gotta say, I’m less impressed with Ecto’s write-and-preview flow (and by default, it’s not even a live preview, and the “automatic” preview isn’t quite “live”). If an app is going to provide an interface like this, it really should go the extra mile and use a full-out WYSIWYG interface (with the option to revert to source editing mode). And the controls for entering/editing hyperlinks are, well, bizarre and non-intuitive. A mini-toolbar at the bottom of the editing window is pretty un-Maclike, and odd when considering all other controls are in an almost-conventional toolbar above the editing pane…
I do like the management features, but they’re not radically different/better than Performancing’s offering. Actually, what would really rock would be a version of Performancing for Safari. I know it’s probably just a XUL app, so this could be a non-trivial task, but most Mac users are using Safari, and it would be nice to have this stuff brought to it…
Oh, and Performancing should sort Categories. Ecto does this (well, any sane app should) and it really helps if you have, say 285 categories…
When all’s said and done, I don’t see myself ponying up for an Ecto license. It’s a cool app, but other apps are coming along and nicely eating its breakfast.
Update: Ecto published this post after the < ! --more--> block, which tells WordPress to show the post content only on the single post display page. The text entry fields weren’t labeled, so I thought I was doing it the other way around… It also threw an error dialog up saying the post couldn’t be published, when it was published just fine. This is app is supposed to increase blog posting productivity hownow?
It’s been a LONG time since I’ve played with Ecto. I used the previous incarnation (KungLog) before it changed to become Ecto, and lost touch with it since then. I’ve been using the browser-based WordPress posting interface almost exclusively, with occasional dabbles into the worlds of Firefox+Performancing and Flock.
Gotta say, I’m less impressed with Ecto’s write-and-preview flow (and by default, it’s not even a live preview, and the “automatic” preview isn’t quite “live”). If an app is going to provide an interface like this, it really should go the extra mile and use a full-out WYSIWYG interface (with the option to revert to source editing mode). And the controls for entering/editing hyperlinks are, well, bizarre and non-intuitive. A mini-toolbar at the bottom of the editing window is pretty un-Maclike, and odd when considering all other controls are in an almost-conventional toolbar above the editing pane…
I do like the management features, but they’re not radically different/better than Performancing’s offering. Actually, what would really rock would be a version of Performancing for Safari. I know it’s probably just a XUL app, so this could be a non-trivial task, but most Mac users are using Safari, and it would be nice to have this stuff brought to it…
Oh, and Performancing should sort Categories. Ecto does this (well, any sane app should) and it really helps if you have, say 285 categories…
When all’s said and done, I don’t see myself ponying up for an Ecto license. It’s a cool app, but other apps are coming along and nicely eating its breakfast.
Update: Ecto published this post after the < ! --more--> block, which tells WordPress to show the post content only on the single post display page. The text entry fields weren’t labeled, so I thought I was doing it the other way around… It also threw an error dialog up saying the post couldn’t be published, when it was published just fine. This is app is supposed to increase blog posting productivity hownow?
I’ve been using Blogbridge for awhile, but I didn’t truly appreciate it until I tried to switch to another RSS reader. After I left, I realized I was spending much more time reading my feeds than I was when I was using Blogbridge. After switching back to it, it’s like coming home. I’m blasting through my feeds quickly, and “checking in” isn’t an onerous process anymore.
So, what makes Blogbridge better? How am I more efficient using Blogbridge than the other reader apps? Let me count the ways:
- “Starz”. I can mark feeds as having a 0-5 star rating, and then I can build “Smart Feeds” that list items from all feeds (or a subset of feeds) that are within a range of Starz ratings.
- Smart Feeds – most other reader apps have these now, but these really shine when combined with Starz. I’m so totally addicted to this method of filtering content – I’ve had iTunes doing the same thing for a couple of years now.
- “River of News” – David Winer appears to think he’s invented something called a River of News. It’s just a view of a feed (or set of feeds, or a set of items from various feeds) that displays every item together as if in a single flow of info. A river, if you will. Clever. (btw, Drupal 4.7’s “Organic Groups” module has an option called ‘River of News” for group content display… I’m just saying…) But, Blogbridge goes one step further, because you can easily toggle the amount of info presented in a River. There are three views – just the titles, titles + short excerpt, titles + entire content (that’s where I live). It makes it VERY easy to scroll through 200 items quickly, scanning the River as it passes through my screen.
- Integrated with del.icio.us. Most of the time, the only reason I open a post in my browser is to then add it to del.icio.us so I can find it later (or from another machine). Blogbridge lets me do that right from the River view. Now, the only posts I have to open in my browser are photos from Flickr that I want to mark as Faves.
- Reading lists. I can subscribe to an OPML file containing a set of feeds, and Blogbridge will ingest it and subscribe me to the feeds. It will also monitor the OPML file, and add new feeds as they are added, and ask me if I want to delete feeds that are removed from the file. A future version of Blogbridge will also let me publish sets of feeds as guides, making it really easy to share sets of resources.
So, in less time than it used to take me to “check in” on my RSS feeds, I’ve read my email, read all of my RSS feeds (exept for the Flickr feeds – that can wait), and written this blog post. Now, there’s still a few minutes to get ready for a morning of meetings…
Here’s a screenshot of my Blogbridge setup. I’ll annotate the version in Flickr to describe what bits are for.
I’ve been using Blogbridge for awhile, but I didn’t truly appreciate it until I tried to switch to another RSS reader. After I left, I realized I was spending much more time reading my feeds than I was when I was using Blogbridge. After switching back to it, it’s like coming home. I’m blasting through my feeds quickly, and “checking in” isn’t an onerous process anymore.
So, what makes Blogbridge better? How am I more efficient using Blogbridge than the other reader apps? Let me count the ways:
- “Starz”. I can mark feeds as having a 0-5 star rating, and then I can build “Smart Feeds” that list items from all feeds (or a subset of feeds) that are within a range of Starz ratings.
- Smart Feeds – most other reader apps have these now, but these really shine when combined with Starz. I’m so totally addicted to this method of filtering content – I’ve had iTunes doing the same thing for a couple of years now.
- “River of News” – David Winer appears to think he’s invented something called a River of News. It’s just a view of a feed (or set of feeds, or a set of items from various feeds) that displays every item together as if in a single flow of info. A river, if you will. Clever. (btw, Drupal 4.7’s “Organic Groups” module has an option called ‘River of News” for group content display… I’m just saying…) But, Blogbridge goes one step further, because you can easily toggle the amount of info presented in a River. There are three views – just the titles, titles + short excerpt, titles + entire content (that’s where I live). It makes it VERY easy to scroll through 200 items quickly, scanning the River as it passes through my screen.
- Integrated with del.icio.us. Most of the time, the only reason I open a post in my browser is to then add it to del.icio.us so I can find it later (or from another machine). Blogbridge lets me do that right from the River view. Now, the only posts I have to open in my browser are photos from Flickr that I want to mark as Faves.
- Reading lists. I can subscribe to an OPML file containing a set of feeds, and Blogbridge will ingest it and subscribe me to the feeds. It will also monitor the OPML file, and add new feeds as they are added, and ask me if I want to delete feeds that are removed from the file. A future version of Blogbridge will also let me publish sets of feeds as guides, making it really easy to share sets of resources.
So, in less time than it used to take me to “check in” on my RSS feeds, I’ve read my email, read all of my RSS feeds (exept for the Flickr feeds – that can wait), and written this blog post. Now, there’s still a few minutes to get ready for a morning of meetings…
Here’s a screenshot of my Blogbridge setup. I’ll annotate the version in Flickr to describe what bits are for.
Every now and then, I remember about the great search application called Kartoo. It’s a flash UI on top of a bunch of search engines, and does some really interesting things with the aggregated search results. The coolest (and most visible) thing is the “concept map” view of search results – and this display doubles as an on-the-fly social network diagram.
For example, I just did a quick ego search (don’t laugh – you do it too. fess up!) for “darcynorman.net” to see what kind of diagram came up. I was surprised by how on the mark it is. The diagram is a good starting point (although far from comprehensive) for getting an idea about what interesting bits I published (since only those will be linked to by others), and you get a rough idea of my immediate social network. The display is paged, which is unfortunate and counterintuitive (since you can zoom and pan the diagram, and pagination only makes sense for text lists…). Here’s a screenshot of the second “page” of results mapped out:
Every now and then, I remember about the great search application called Kartoo. It’s a flash UI on top of a bunch of search engines, and does some really interesting things with the aggregated search results. The coolest (and most visible) thing is the “concept map” view of search results – and this display doubles as an on-the-fly social network diagram.
For example, I just did a quick ego search (don’t laugh – you do it too. fess up!) for “darcynorman.net” to see what kind of diagram came up. I was surprised by how on the mark it is. The diagram is a good starting point (although far from comprehensive) for getting an idea about what interesting bits I published (since only those will be linked to by others), and you get a rough idea of my immediate social network. The display is paged, which is unfortunate and counterintuitive (since you can zoom and pan the diagram, and pagination only makes sense for text lists…). Here’s a screenshot of the second “page” of results mapped out:
After I wrote some thoughts about what I’m looking for in an RSS reader, I realized that the only application that comes close to what I was describing is BlogBridge. It has prioritization of feeds and items via “Starz”, and ties into social services (both a custom network for sharing keywords and ratings, and a direct connection to my del.ico.us account).
It’s got some room for improvement – my biggest beefs are resource hogging and the seeming inability of java apps to open URLs in a browser without bringing it to the front. But they aren’t fatal flaws – only annoying.
I took another quick look at Shrook, and while I like many things about it (the paned UI that pans out of the way as you drill down) it just doesn’t offer the innovative coolness that BlogBridge is working on…
After I wrote some thoughts about what I’m looking for in an RSS reader, I realized that the only application that comes close to what I was describing is BlogBridge. It has prioritization of feeds and items via “Starz”, and ties into social services (both a custom network for sharing keywords and ratings, and a direct connection to my del.ico.us account).
It’s got some room for improvement – my biggest beefs are resource hogging and the seeming inability of java apps to open URLs in a browser without bringing it to the front. But they aren’t fatal flaws – only annoying.
I took another quick look at Shrook, and while I like many things about it (the paned UI that pans out of the way as you drill down) it just doesn’t offer the innovative coolness that BlogBridge is working on…