Archive: December, 2008

I’m back in Ireland for a little while. ‘Tis the season for merrymaking, munching mince pies, imbibing wine and—if you’re a geek—fiddling with code. That’s what I’ve been doing, sitting by the fire with my Macbook on my lap, hacking on Huffduffer.

I’ve been messing around with Google’s Chart API. I thought it would be nice to have some discreet little sparklines on profile pages. I had a little help from the ghost of Christmas past in the form of Brian’s 24 Ways article from last year.

The data I’m graphing is activity over time (huffduffing in this case). The time stamp of the first action is the starting point. The current time stamp is the end point. This timeline is then divided into 50 equal parts; the final sparkline will be 150 pixels long, giving 3 pixels per time period. Each action is allocated to the appropriate time slot. Once that’s done, the results are normalised according to the largest amount. So if the maximum activity in the timeline is six, then six becomes 100%; if the maximum activity is just one, then one is 100% and the resultant chart will be quite spiky.

You can see an example sparkline on my huffduffer profile, showing my huffduffing history at a glance. While I was at it, I added sparklines to tag pages as well. Here’s the tag page for “music”. I’ve styled them so that they don’t stand out too much. They’re supposed to look like quick pencil sketches.

For more than you ever wanted to know about sparklines, here’s Sparklines: theory and practice from the Ask E.T. forum.

At the same time that Flickr are demonstrating idiocy in the human resources department, they continue to do so some very cool stuff behind the scenes.

Aaron has been walking through some new API methods over on the Flickr code blog, quoting something I said in a chat with Steve Ivy:

something:somethingelse=somethingspecific

…which I don’t even remember saying but the shoe fits.

There’s something about the mix of rigidity and haphazardness in machine tags that appeals to me. While they all share the same structure, everyone is free to invent their own usage. If machine tags were required to go through a specification process we would have event:lastfm=... and event:upcoming=... instead of lastfm:event=... and upcoming:event=... but really, it simply doesn’t matter as long as people are actually doing the tagging.

With the introduction of these new API methods, it looks like there’s room to build more finely-tuned apps to pivot around namespaces, predicates and values.

Paul Mison has written an desktop-like machine tag browser which shows at a glance just how many different machine tag namespaces are out there. Quite a few pictures have been tagged with adactio:post=... since I first introduced the idea.

When Flickr announced The Commons at the start of this year, I made no secret of my enthusiasm for the project. Since then it has gone from strength to strength with more and more institutions adding their collections; the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, and many more. That growth has largely been as a result of the tireless work of George Oates.

George has been fired. It beggars belief—it certainly beggars mine.

The Commons is not just one of the finest achievements on Flickr, it’s a shining example of just how great the web can be. If the project dies because of the idiotic actions of some short-sighted bean counters at Yahoo, it will be a great loss for you, me and our culture.

My trust in Flickr has been shaken. I’m beginning to think that entrusting Flickr with my photos, my data and my memories might prove to be an ill-judged decision.

Steven Pemberton was right.

The Last.fm hack day took place in London yesterday. Much nerdy fun was had by all and some very cool hacks were produced.

Nigel made a neat USB-powered arduino-driven ambient signifier à la availibot that lights up when one of your friends is listening to music. Matt made Songcolours which takes your recently listened-to music, passes the songs through LyricWiki, extracts words that are colours, passes them through the Google chart API and generates a sentence of cut up lyrics (Hannah’s was the best: love drunk home fuck good night). The winning hack, Staff Wars, is a Last.fm-powered quiz that allows people to battle for control of the office stereo—something that could prove very useful at Clearleft.

I knew I’d never be able to compete with the l33t hax0rs in attendance, so I cobbled together a very quick little hack to enhance Huffduffer. I hacked it together fairly quickly which gave me some time to hang out with Hannah in the tragically hip environs of Shoreditch. My hack has one interesting distinguishing feature: it doesn’t make use of the API. Instead, it uses two simpler technologies: microformats and RSS.

1. Microformats. User profiles on Last.fm are marked up with hCard. If a URL is provided, the user profile also makes use of the most powerful value of XFN: rel="me". If that URL also links back to the Last.fm profile with rel="me"—even if in a roundabout way—that reciprocal link will be picked by Google’s Social Graph API. I’m already making use of that API on Huffduffer to display links to other profiles under the heading Elsewhere. So if someone provides a URL when they sign up to Huffduffer and they’re linking to their social network profiles, I can find out if they use Last.fm and what their username is. The URL structure of user profiles is consistent: http://www.last.fm/user/USERNAME.
2. RSS. Last.fm provides users with a list of recommended free MP3s. This list is also provided as RSS. More specifically, the RSS feed is a podcast. After all, a podcast is nothing more than an RSS feed that uses enclosures. The URL structure of these podcasts is consistent: http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/user/USERNAME/podcast.rss.

So if, thanks to magic of XFN, I can figure out someone’s Last.fm username, it’s a simple matter to pull in their recommended music podcast. I’m pulling in the latest three recommended MP3s and displaying them on Huffduffer user profiles under the heading Last.fm recommends. You can see it in action on my Huffduffer profile or the profiles of any other good social citizens like Richard, Tom or Brian.

This isn’t the first little Huffduffer hack I’ve built on top of the Social Graph API. If a Huffduffer user has a Flickr account, their Flickr profile picture is displayed on their Huffduffer profile. When I get some time, I need to expand this little hack to also check for Twitter profiles and grab the profile picture from there as a fallback.

None of these little enhancements are essential features but I like the idea of rewarding people on Huffduffer for their activity on other sites. Ideally I’d like to have Huffduffer’s recommendation engine being partially driven by relationships on third-party sites. So your user profile might suggest something like, You should listen to this because so-and-so huffduffed it; you know one another on Twitter, Flickr, Last.fm…

I’ve been with the same ISP for years: Eclipse Internet. I never had any cause to complain until recently. I’ve been finding that certain types of requests simply weren’t completing; file uploads, some forms, Ajax requests…

I started googling for any similar reports. I found quite a few forum posts, all of them expressing the same sentiment; that Eclipse used to be good but that since getting bought out by Kingston, service had really gone downhill. Most alarmingly of all, I read reports of traffic shaping.

I called up technical support. They didn’t deny it. Instead, they tried to upsell me on a package that would give me an admin panel to allow more control over exactly how my packets were throttled.

Screw. That.

I started shopping around for a new ISP. When I twittered what I was doing, I received some good recommendations. Eventually, I was able to narrow my search down to two providers who both sounded good: Zen and IDNet. With little else to distinguish between the two companies, their respective websites became the deciding factor. That settled it. IDNet was the clear winner. Not only is their site prettier, it also validates and even uses hCard.

To cancel my Eclipese account, I needed to call them to request a MAC. Of course the reason why they make you call is so that they can try to persuade not to leave. Sure enough, the guy who took my call asked And can you tell me why you’re moving away from Eclipse?

Traffic shaping, I responded.

Ah right, he said. Technical reasons.

I corrected him. Moral reasons, actually.

I got the info I needed. I ordered my new broadband service. Today I switched over.

If you want to find out if your broadband provider is a filthy traffic-shaper, check to see if it’s listed on this wiki page of bad ISPs.

If you find yourself changing to a more ethical ISP, you too will probably be asked to explain why you’re jumping ship. Just tell them what you want:

Fat Pipe, Always On, Get Out of the Way.

24 Ways is back again this year. Today’s article is a little something I penned called The IE6 Equation. Share and enjoy!

The design of 24 Ways has been refreshed for this festive season and it has prompted quite a varied reaction. That’s always a good sign. You might love it or you might hate it but you’re probably not ambivalent about it. Veerle has written more on this subject, provocatively asking Do you innovate or opt for the safe route in web design?

The implementation prompted as much feedback as the design itself. Clearly, 24 Ways is a site with an immovable deadline. It’s an advent calendar so it must go live on December 1st. This year, that meant that some cross-browser issues weren’t sorted out on the first day. A few days after the site launched, everything was hunky-dory but in the interim, there was a clamour of epic fail! from indignant visitors to the site. I’m finding that Andy’s thoughts on this term of derision has become the canonical document to point people to for a healthy dose of perspective.

Merlin Mann’s observation, delivered in fewer than 140 characters, deserves to be framed and mounted next to every input device:

Some days, the web feels like 5 people trying to make something; 5k people turning it into a list; and 500MM people saying, “FAIL.”

If you’ve ever created anything on the web—a story, a picture, a video or an application—then you’ll be familiar with the range of responses that will result. I don’t just mean the laughably mindless babblings of the Diggtards and Reddidiots; I’m referring to that peculiar effect that sitting behind a monitor has on otherwise level-headed well-adjusted people. In the same way that some people undergo a Jekyll and Hyde transformation behind the wheel of a car, computer keyboards have a tendency to bring out the fuckwad in many of us—I include myself amongst that group.

The upshot of this effect is that criticism tends to be harsher online than if it were delivered in real life, which might just be due to the lack of phatic communication. Should you find yourself on the receiving end of some criticism, having built a labour of love, I’ve put together a hierarchy of verb tenses by which you can weigh the feedback you’re receiving:

1. Past. Advice from someone who has also built something is valuable. Their opinion is informed by experimental data.
2. Present. If someone else is also building something, it’s worth paying attention to what they have to say.
3. Conditional. This is the bottom of the pile. If someone describes what they “would” have done or what you “should” have done, it isn’t worth wasting your retinas on the photons of that feedback.

Although this hierarchy of verb tenses was prompted by web-native creations, it probably works equally well for film-making, plumbing, literature, dentistry, music, or just about any endeavour of the human spirit.

All of my Flickr pictures are published under a Creative Commons attribution licence. One of the reasons I switched over to using this licence was so that people didn’t have to write and ask me whenever they want to republish one of my photos. But I still get plenty of emails from people asking me if it would be okay to use one of my pictures. I’m very lax at responding to those requests. If and when I do respond, I point out that they don’t really need to ask; as long as they credit me—as either adactio or Jeremy Keith—then they can use my photos wherever and however they want.

Back in March, right before I was setting out for Mix’08 in Vegas and South By Southwest in Austin, I received a typical request:

Is the photo Andy in the VAB your image on flickr? If so can you please contact me with regard to possibly allowing us to use a part of this image in a feature film.

I didn’t respond. I was too busy packing and gearing myself for a big showdown with Microsoft (this was right before they reversed their decision on IE8’s default rendering). I soon received a second email with more details:

The photograph would be cropped in a way where no people would be shown. We are interested in using this image as a background to insert our main characters which would be included as part of a biography film on our main character which is shown at an award ceremony honoring him in the film.

I thought it was an odd picture to be asking about. Let’s face it; it’s not a very good photo. It’s blurry and washed out. I guess it’s somewhat unusual in that it was shot inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral. Usually members of the public aren’t allowed inside. Myself, Andy and Paul were lucky enough to be part of the first open day since 2001. It was all thanks to an invitation from Benny, a bona fide rocket scientist at NASA—thanks again, Benny!

I never got around to responding to the emails. I figured that, whoever it was, if they really wanted to use the picture, they would notice the licence and realise that they didn’t have to ask permission.

I quickly forgot all about it. Other events were foremost in my mind. I got a call from Pete Le Page and Chris Wilson telling me that Internet Explorer 8 was going to render pages as if it were—get this—Internet Explorer 8. Now I was going to Vegas for a celebration instead of a battle.

After a long trip across the Atlantic, I awoke in my hotel on the first morning of the conference, eager to hear the opening keynote. But before I could head downstairs, my mobile phone rang. I answered it and the woman on the other end said, “Hi. I sent you two emails about using a picture of yours…”

“Ah, right!”, I said. I then launched into my usual spiel about Creative Commons licencing. I explained that she was free to use my picture. All she had to do was include a credit somewhere in her little movie.

“Well”, she said, “the thing is, getting your name in the credits usually costs at least $1,500. That’s why we need you sign the license release form I sent.”

“Wait a minute”, I said. “What is this for?”

“It’s for a movie that’s currently in production called Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jnr.”

Holy crap! One of my photos was going to be in Iron Man? That certainly put a new spin on things.

“So I guess you want to use the picture because it’s inside NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building?” I asked.

“No. We just thought it was a picture of some warehouse or something.”

The woman on the other end of the phone—her name was Ashley—said she could reimburse me for the use of my photo if I signed the form she sent. I thanked her, told her I didn’t need any reimbursement, and said I would print out and sign the form for her. Ashley made it clear that I would need to get the form faxed to her before the end of the day.

There was a printer in my hotel room so I set about getting it connected up to my Macbook. That’s when disaster struck. My Macbook began making the dreaded ticking time bomb noise. Within seconds, my hard drive was dead, broken, kaput. Pining for the fjords, it had shuffled off this mortal coil and was an ex hard drive.

Well aware of the irony of my Apple hardware failing while I was attending a Microsoft conference, I abandoned all hope of printing out the license release form and sat in on the opening keynote. This consisted of a few words from Ray Ozzie, a quick look at IE8 and about a billion hours of Silverlight demos. That’s what it felt like anyway.

The next day, I made my way to Austin for South by Southwest. That turned out to be quite an adventure.

Once I finally made it to Austin, I settled into a comfortable routine of geeking out, having fun and generally over-indulging. As I was making my way to the conference centre one morning, my mobile phone rang. It was Ashley.

“Sorry I didn’t manage to get the form to you”, I said. “My laptop died on me. I know it’s too late now.”

“Actually, there’s still time”, she responded.

“Look”, I said. “Let’s cut out the computers completely. Can you fax the form to my hotel? I can sign it and fax it back to you straight away.”

And that’s exactly what we did.

Iron Man was released a few weeks later. I never got ‘round to seeing it in the cinema; I’m not a big fan of the whole cinema-going experience. But some time later I was travelling across the Atlantic yet again and one of the in-flight movie options was Iron Man. I fired it up, wondering if my picture had made it into the final cut and even if it had, whether I’d be able to spot it.

Three minutes into the movie, there was my photo.

It fills the screen. The camera lingers over it while performing its best Ken Burns effect. Not only was Robert Downey Jnr. photoshopped onto the picture, Jeff Bridges was on there too! The Dude!! …On my picture!!!

My Flickr pictures have been used in some pretty strange places but this must surely be the strangest …and the coolest.