Archive for Blog
March 2, 2007 at 3:48 pm · Categorised under Blog
The BBC and YouTube have struck a deal that allow clips of BBC shows to be available in three channels on the YouTube website. The three channels consist of:
- BBC - Consists of trailers and short features that will act as promotional material for the show.
- BBC Worldwide - Features self-contained clips of popular shows such as Top Gear, David Attenborough’s nature programmes and other similar shows that would likely have worldwide appeal.
- BBC News - News clips (almost 30 per day) for a non-UK audience. UK users will not be able to access these videos, although these will be available on the BBC News website only for UK users.
One of the most interesting quotes (shown below) defines the thinking behind this move:
“The BBC would not be hunting down all BBC-copyrighted clips already uploaded by YouTube members - although it would reserve the right to swap poor quality clips with the real thing, or to have content removed that infringed other people’s copyright, like sport, or that had been edited or altered in a way that would damage the BBC’s brand.”
“We don’t want to be overzealous, a lot of the material on YouTube is good promotional content for us,”
· Posted by Utills
March 1, 2007 at 10:31 am · Categorised under Blog
A relatively unknown feature of Google Reader is the ability to create a bookmarklet that will immediately take you to the source of the next unread post at the click of a button. This is especially useful for those that prefer reading posts with the styling of the poster’s site. One interesting application of this is to cluster together all the blogs that show only partial feeds. Then create a bookmarklet for that folder so that you can always see the full post whenever you click on it.
To access the bookmarklets go to Google Reader -> Settings -> Goodies. Then drag the bookmark of the folder you want into your Bookmarks Toolbar and you’re all set.
· Posted by Utills
March 1, 2007 at 10:02 am · Categorised under Blog
del.icio.us
A short tutorial on automating the process of keeping a kottke.org style remaindered linksblog using del.icio.us.
It is pretty easy to have a sidebar with a list of your del.icio.us bookmarks, but the purpose of this HowTo is to create blog entries with content. First of all you’ll need the following two files:
Extract the heisel script and rename the config file to “del2wp.config.php”. You’ll need to edit the file to give it directions on where to get your del.icio.us links from. I would recommend creating a special purpose tag in del.icio.us especially for blog links, otherwise all your previous bookmarks will be created as entries.
Once the config file has been edited to reflect your del.icio.us account, extract the magpieRSS archive. Copy the extlib directory and the four .inc files into a new directory called “magpierss”. Upload these to a folder on your server, preferrably where the wp-config.php file resides.
To fully automate the process create a cronjob for your server, for Cpanel this is in the cron jobs link from the start page, and enter the following information:
0 */2 * * * curl -s http://www.domain.com/path-to-script/del2wp.php
Obviously you’ll need to tailor the above URL to your site. This will run the script every other hour which means you never need to worry about logging in to Wordpress to create an entry.
Beware that the notes section in del.icio.us only accepts a limited amount of input. Therefore keep the entry limited to a few sentences.
· Posted by Utills
March 1, 2007 at 1:04 am · Categorised under Blog
Contaminated petrol caused cars to breakdown
Trading Standards officers have launched an investigation into a suspected batch of contaminated petrol that is thought to have caused thousands of cars to break down.
Drivers complained their cars began misfiring and losing power after buying petrol from filling stations … “extensive” tests [carried out] on current and past batches of unleaded, including fuel from affected cars … found no contamination.
· Posted by Utills
March 1, 2007 at 12:45 am · Categorised under Blog
The top 100 books by the Telegraph
A list of the top 100 books, noted by the Telegraph. Not sure how they came up with the list, A poll of the British public for World Book Day asking them the 10 books they “couldn’t live without” and here are the top 5:
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
· Posted by Utills
February 28, 2007 at 11:46 pm · Categorised under Blog
iScrybe.com Demos Papersync
A clever feature of online organizer … a mapping of the next 8 days of your calendar onto a piece of paper that, folded 8 ways, fits right into your pocket.
· Posted by Utills
February 28, 2007 at 11:11 pm · Categorised under Blog
Virtual Ubiquity Screenshots
An impressive looking Word Processing application for the web. It uses Flash so not sure how responsive it will be compared to HTML/AJAX alternatives, although in the past Flash has been far more reliable in comparison to Java.
· Posted by Utills
February 28, 2007 at 10:38 pm · Categorised under Blog
Software For Virtual Teams
· Posted by Utills
February 28, 2007 at 7:04 pm · Categorised under Blog
A group of researchers have created a tool that takes in a headshot and tweaks it to look “more attractive”. [via kottke.org]
· Posted by Utills
February 28, 2007 at 5:45 pm · Categorised under Blog
- BBC’s Chris Long has a rant on the viability of Government backed projects
My concern about all this is the ignorance of the technical thinking behind these ideas; … it was John Reid [UK Home Secretary] who caught my attention when he said he was thinking of forcing paedophiles to put their online identity details on the Sex Offenders Register.
I knew what the words meant, and they almost sounded sensible. But the reality is that it is so easy to create an online identity … But Mr Reid wasn’t talking to me, he was talking to people that will nod sagely and say “bloody good idea”, because these people also don’t have a clue about getting online identities.
- Google reveals Gadget numbers
Google has released the daily rendering numbers of Google gadgets. To see the numbers for an individual gadget go to the Gadgets For Your Webpage directory.
- Are Google Apps’ Customers For Real?
There’s been a big hullabaloo about Google Apps Premier, … but let’s back up and see who’s really using it. All you have to do is look at Google’s customer list to realize that Google Apps Premier is hardly eating Microsoft’s (MSFT) lunch.
· Posted by Utills
Next Entry »
