circle.ch weblog by Urs Gehrig

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A weblog about libre software, law, technology, politics and the like.
2010-03-17T18:33:46
Academic, Apache, Apple, Art, Best Of, Biotech, Civil Society, Content Management, Cooking, Copyright, Creative Commons, Crosspost, Culture, Database, Deutsch, DRM, Economy, Education, Event, Gadget, General, Geodata, Government, Health, Howto, Humor, Innovation, Intellectual Property, Java, Language, LaTeX, Law, Linux, Media, Moblog, Mozilla, Music, Office, Open Content, Open Source, P2P, PHP, Podcast, Politics, Privacy, Projects, Random Thought, Rant, Science, Search, Social Network, Software, Sport, Talks, Technology, Technology Transfer, Travelling, Weblog, Wiki, Wireless and Mobile, XML

10. July 2007

reCAPTCHA - avoid spam
Weblog (wiki) | Technology (wiki) - urs @ 17:31:29

reCAPTCHA is a service for your blog, webpage, guestbook what so ever. It helps to avoid getting spammed by providing a CAPTCHA feature [1]. There are e.g. plugins for various blog engines.

[1] http://recaptcha.net

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12. July 2006

zlyfe - Blogs, Bilder, Community et.al.
PHP (wiki) | Weblog (wiki) | Deutsch (wiki) - urs @ 13:46:33

Der Slogan tönt so:
zlyfe is the place where you can tell others about the most memorable, astonishing, or funniest moments in your life.
Grundsätzlich kann man das und vieles mehr auch auf anderen Plattformen. zlyfe [1] pflegt aber einen besonderen Bezug zur Schweiz - sprich - die Technologie kommt aus Bern [2].

[1] http://www.zlyfe.net
[2] http://www.adfinis.com/node/176

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03. May 2006

Swiss Blog Awards am nächsten Freitag
Weblog (wiki) | Deutsch (wiki) | Best Of (wiki) - urs @ 08:12:19

So, nun ist es also soweit. Am kommenden Freitag findet die 1. Swiss Blog Awards Ceremony statt. Ab 17:00 Uhr ist ein gepacktes Programm zu erwarten [1]. Das Booklet [2] gibt einen guten Überblick, wer nominiert ist, wer sonst noch so mit dabei ist und wann die After-Party mit Creative Commons Musik startet. Wer sich interessiert, was sonst noch so über die Awards geschrieben wird, kann sich bspw. auf den "Planeten" blogug.ch begeben [3].

[1] http://swissblogawards.ch/program
[2] http://swissblogawards.ch/material/sbaw_booklet.pdf
[3] http://planet.blogug.ch/search/linkex:swissblogawards.ch

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23. March 2006

Swiss Blog Awards - nomination period started
Weblog (wiki) | Best Of (wiki) - urs @ 12:41:52

The nomination period for the 1st Swiss Blog Awards has started today [1]. The award ceremony will take place on Mai 5th 2006 in the Volkshaus in Biel-Bienne [2].

[1] http://nominations2006.swissblogawards.ch
[2] http://ctssa.ch/d/events/?id=19

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03. March 2006

Bleublog powered by Kaywa
Weblog (wiki) | Wiki (wiki) | Deutsch (wiki) - urs @ 08:13:42

Bleublog [1] bietet Blogs für die französischsprechende Schweiz an - initiiert von Le Matin. Auf den einzelnen Blogs werden Werbebanner aufgeschaltet. Die "Charta" [2] führt zudem in Ziffer IV. Diffusion aus:
Tout ou partie des contenus des blogs peuvent être cités ou repris dans les différentes rubriques du Service BleuBlog et peuvent être diffusés de façon publique, notamment par une éventuelle publication dans les titres d′Edipresse Publications SA, groupe Le Matin.
Jeder Blogger ist sozusagen "Journalist on hold" - falls ein interessanter Artikel oder ein Bild, Video oder ähnliches von der Redaktion erspäht wird, so kann dieser Inhalt in einer Publikation der Edipresse Publications SA, groupe Le Matin, publiziert werden.

Der Blog Service wird durch Kaywa Technologie betrieben. Die Dokumentation für den User wird in einem Wiki angeboten [3].

[1] http://www.bleublog.ch/
[2] http://www.bleublog.ch/charte
[3] http://fr.wiki.kaywa.com

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08. October 2005

QR code - decoder to proof the concept
Weblog (wiki) | Wireless and Mobile (wiki) - urs @ 13:26:59

I finally came along a QR code decoders tool, that are written in Java [1,2]. So the implementation here in this blog is actually working [3].

My next edition of business cards will probably have not only the human readable information but also a QR code printed on it. Thus, mobile phones with QR code decoders will be able to do the job of business card scanners. A convenient implementation would be a QR code to vCard converter [4], to make the address organization in the mobile phone as easy as possible.

[1] http://www.intelcom.ru/2d/english/demo.php
[2] http://sourceforge.jp/projects/qrcode/
[3] http://blog.li/trash/2005/10/08/2248.html
[4] http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/archives/2004-01/0014.html

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06. October 2005

QR coded blog entries
Weblog (wiki) | Technology (wiki) | Random Thought (wiki) - urs @ 00:23:26

Innovations is - if it works, but you do not have the technology to prove it. The blogpost title, the blogpost date, the URI to each blogpost and some copyright ("CC") information of this weblog are QR coded. Actually the images have not been decoded yet, since the writer of that code has no QR code scanner nor has he a mobile phone with an appropriate software to decode those codes.

But anyway. QR codes are kind of twodimensional barcodes [1].
While conventional bar codes are capable of storing a maximum of approximately 20 digits, QR Code is capable of handling several dozen to several hundred times more information.
20 digits are not enough to encode a typical blog title, a link, a date string and some copyright information. As an example, the QR coded string for this blog post is: "QR coded blog entries, 06.10.2005 00:23:26, http://circle.ch/blog/p1773.html, CC-by-sa_2.5". The QR code library behind my implementation is written by Y. Swetake [4].

If it makes sense, to link from a QR code to a blog post, is not yet plain clear. But I could imagine a simpler, maybe automated navigation for mobile phones:
  • Reading a blog feed (e.g. qr.xml or qr img link in the RSS feed) with QR codes
  • The phone decodes the images and displays the title to the blog entries
  • A single click on the auto-linked title is enough to access the full blog post
At least in Japan there are various applications that support QR codes [2]; e-commerce e.g. is a big issue [3]. Is anyone out there with an opensource QR code decoder? ;)

Update: The ETH Zürich has a project running called "Visual Code Recognition for Camera-Equipped Mobile Phones" [5]. They also provide so called Recognizer software for Symbian OS based mobile phones.

[1] http://www.denso-wave.com/qrcode/qrfeature-e.html
[2] http://www.eurotechnology.com/store/qr-code/sample.html
[3] http://www.camreader.jp/eng/service/index.html
[4] http://www.swetake.com/qr/
[5] http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/rohs/visualcodes/

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19. September 2005

VTX mit Blog Hosting
Weblog (wiki) | Deutsch (wiki) - urs @ 17:31:26

VTX Internet Solutions hat sich offenbar basierend auf der Typepad Technologie zu einem Blog Hosting Service aufgerüstet [1]. Die vier verfügbaren Angebote variieren preislich zwischen CHF 0.00 und CHF 229.50 Jahresgebühr. Dann wollen wir die Entwicklung in der Schweizer Blog-Landschaft doch mal weiter beobachten. Gut, dass Matthias von blog.ch genügend Bandbreite hat. ;)

[1] http://blog.vtxnet.ch

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18. September 2005

Reenabled LiveSearch
Weblog (wiki) | Wiki (wiki) - urs @ 13:13:41

LiveSearch has not been available for a short period of time on this blog. So I reenabled and refined it a bit. It searches now not only blog posts but also wiki titles. Further there is a search term hightlight function, which should make the reading of the result set more comfortable.

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07. September 2005

Get mapping coordinates from an address
Weblog (wiki) | Random Thought (wiki) | Geodata (wiki) - urs @ 14:41:57

randy [1] found a way to get the longitude and latidue out of an address like "1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View CA 94043". He uses an XML-RPC call to rpc.geocoder.us and gets an array of mapping coordinates in return. Awesome.

As the current petrol prices are rising, I would like to see an SMS service, where you can send something like "Lorraine, Bern" to a certain number and in return you would get an MMS with a map with a red outlined track to the next petrol station with the lowest prices on petrol. ;)

[1] http://www.randys.org/content/?p=50

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06. September 2005

Finding related tags to blog posts
Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 22:04:37

As you can see there are in most cases "Related tags" listed with each blog post. Those tags have been automatically chosen for each post. Most of them fit to the post, some do not. If you look at the post just before this one, you can see that the content is written in German. Amazingly there is e.g. a tag called "deutsch". The code behind is no rocket science. All I do is looking for matching entries in the database and group by the categories found for those entries. That's it.

One method to refine the results could be that the content of a blog post should be tokenized, stemmed [1], and put into a FULLTEXT search query against the existing entries. That code on the other hand is not yet finished ;)

[1] http://google.ch/search?q=define:stemmer

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30. August 2005

Freetag - a tagging and folksonomy system
PHP (wiki) | Weblog (wiki) | Random Thought (wiki) - urs @ 23:08:58

Or more detailed:
Freetag [1] is a module that implements a simple, fairly robust beginning of a tagging and folksonomy system. It works with PHP4 and MySQL 3.23 so far, and i imagine that if it gets popular, it should be easy to port to additional databases and/or languages.
Maybe a way to build up its own tagging repository. Acutally I haven't tried, but according to the docs it is promising. As to feed the database, one could use his own tags or category names first.

There are probably at least two ways to tag a blog post. Either tags selected by hand at the time of writing or as a self-tagging system (algorithm), that takes e.g. the content of a blog post, analyzes it and applys the tags to the post.

Some more thoughts on tagging and retagging at overstated.net [2].

[1] http://getluky.net/freetag/
[2] http://overstated.net/04/10/09-migrating-to-delicious

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29. August 2005

Get Tags with Yahoo! Term Extraction
PHP (wiki) | Weblog (wiki) | Technology (wiki) - urs @ 21:54:35

This is a start:
The Term Extraction service provides a list of significant words or phrases extracted from a larger content.
It can be implemented by making use of the Yahoo! API [1]. One might then need to sort out the result set a bit and use them as "tags". Since this blog has no cache and the API only lets me have a limited number [2] of requests a day, I will not dive into it yet ;) For those using PHP, there is a so called yahoolib availabe.

[1] http://developer.yahoo.net/search/content/V1/termExtraction.html
[2] http://developer.yahoo.net/search/rate.html
[3] http://sourceforge.net/projects/yahoolib

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Blog backend with recommended tags per post
Weblog (wiki) | Random Thought (wiki) - urs @ 12:57:59

I like the support of the del.icio.us Firefox extension for del.icio.us' interface with clickable recommended, own and popular tags. This is something I would like to see in a backend/admin of a blog software. So, the code under GPL is there [1]. I am wondering, if the javascript could be used more or less instantly. The are various needs. E.g. as recommendations per post for Technorati, Flickr or del.icio.us tags.

[1] http://www.mozdev.org/source/browse/delicious/src/

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28. August 2005

Related posts on b2/cafelog
PHP (wiki) | Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 23:46:54

To get the related posts, there was only to apply the FULLTEXT feature to the the b2posts table.
ALTER TABLE b2posts ADD FULLTEXT post_related ( post_title, post_content )
A typical SQL query looks like:
SELECT ID, post_title, post_content,
MATCH ( post_title, post_content )
AGAINST ( 'make zip files' ) AS score
FROM b2posts
WHERE MATCH ( post_title, post_content )
AGAINST ( 'make zip files') AND ( ID != '910' )
ORDER BY score DESC
LIMIT 5
The you only need to handle the results and format it with a little bit of HTML. Thats it.

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Working out a category cloud
Weblog (wiki) | Technology (wiki) - urs @ 20:32:18

The category cloud above does work with a variable font-size for each item. The font size is related to the number of posts per category. Since some categories have up to 600 items while others only have two, I had to find a suitable scale. A good effect could be found by using a logarithmic value. So I used something like the following:
printf("<a href='/blog/p%s.html'
  title='%s' style='font-size:%s;'>%s</a>",
$row->cat_id,
$row->cat_name,
floor(log($row->items_per_cat) * 20) +100 ."%",
$row->cat_name );
I preferred to chose this solution from having e.g. a switch with ranges of posts/category to point to different style classes like size1, size2, size3 etc.

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TagCloud to analyze my blog
PHP (wiki) | Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 18:21:50

TagCloud (beta) is an automated Folksonomy tool. It analyzes RSS feeds and comes up with a cloud of related items [1]. Even though items like "http" and "htm" do not make that much sense, it might e.g. help giving an idea on what topics certain blog is talking about.

I guess either with MySQL FULLTEXT search [2] or Bayesian classification [3] one could handle out something similar on his own blog.

[1] http://www.tagcloud.com/User/index.php?TC_Cloud_ID=5920
[2] http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/fulltext-search.html
[3] http://www.xhtml.net/php/PHPNaiveBayesianFilter

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03. August 2005

PHP Developers for blog.ch
PHP (wiki) | Weblog (wiki) | Technology (wiki) - urs @ 10:55:09

blog.ch is seeking PHP developers to turn the projectlist into reality [1]. Matthias has some good ideas and is eager to fulfil them.

[1] http://blog.ch/blog/?p=148

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26. April 2005

Emily Turrettini Interview
Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 13:33:48

A well known Geneva-blogger [1] in an interview with Mobuzz TV ;)

[1] http://www.mobuzztv.com/player.php?recordID=33

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25. April 2005

CC-ch weblog
Weblog (wiki) | Creative Commons (wiki) - urs @ 07:59:11

Creative Commons Switzerland is now also online with a blog [1]. The aim of this country specific blog is to talk about what is happening regarding CC licenses, events et.al.

[1] http://www.creativecommons.ch/weblog/

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15. April 2005

Swiss Blog Awards
Weblog (wiki) | Best Of (wiki) - urs @ 12:42:04

Eine Idee geistert durch das Netz: Swiss Blog Awards

Innert kurzer Zeit haben sich Weblogs vom Randphänomen zum Mainstream im Internet entwickelt. Zu Millionen veröffentlichen Einzelpersonen oder Gruppen auf diesen notizbuchartigen Webseiten wichtige und belanglose, witzige oder ernsthafte Inhalte; sei dies als Text, Bild oder Ton. Prominente tuns, Politikerinnen auch, Wissenschaftler, Musikerinnen und Tagebuchschreiber sowieso. Kurz: Hinz und Kunz bloggen.

Mit den Swiss Blog Awards wollen wir besonders gelungene Weblogs auszeichnen und gleichzeitig eine Plattform schaffen für das Phänomen an sich. Mit der gleichen Selbstverständlichkeit wie alljährlich die schönste Frau und der schönste Mann ausgezeichnet werden, sollen auch die originellsten, auffälligsten, schönsten, sprachwitzigsten Weblogs gewürdigt werden.

Wie und wann und wo die ganze Chose über die Bühne gehen wird, wer die Weblogs nominiert, wer in der Jury sitzt, ist alles noch Gegenstand von Diskussionen, an denen auch Du Dich beteiligen kannst. Das provisorische Organisationskomitee bestehend aus:

* Jan Zuppinger, pieceoplastic.com
* Nick Lüthi, bernergazette.ch
* Matthias Gutfeldt, blog.ch
* Urs Gehrig, circle.ch

hat unter http://blog.ch/award/ ein Weblog eingerichtet, wo der Stand der Dinge nachzulesen ist. Die Kommentarfunktion steht allen offen, die ihre Ideen einbringen wollen.

Nach einem provisorischen Fahrplan gehen wir davon aus, dass die Awards-Zeremonie frühestens Anfang 2006 stattfinden wird. Bis dahin gibt es einiges zu tun. Packen wir es an!

Jan, Nick, Urs & Matthias

[1] http://blog.ch/blog/index.php/archives/2005/04/15/swiss-blog-awards/

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30. March 2005

PHP Naive Bayesian Filter against Spam
Weblog (wiki) | Technology (wiki) - urs @ 21:37:07

As recently mentioned this blog got an awful amount of trackback spam. After a short period of silence it started again today. So I turned off the trackback feature and will live without it for a while.

Loïc d'Anterroches by the way has implemented a PHP Naive Bayesian Filter [1] that I could imagine would help me out the most with the trackback spam. Captacha is no solution there and I would rather prefer the "Bayesian Way" compared to semi-automatic solutions like moderation, blacklisting et.al. By the way, the script by Loïc did work right out of the box. ;)

[1] http://www.xhtml.net/php/PHPNaiveBayesianFilter

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24. March 2005

NASA is podcasting
Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 08:52:09

[via Innovation Blog, 1] Science@NASA is providing a podcast now for about a couple of months now and they report an increasing number of requests from day to day.

[1] http://www.hlb.com/inovlog/archives/2005/03/you_know_its_go.html
[2] http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/21mar_podcast.htm

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23. March 2005

Multiuser Worpress evolved
PHP (wiki) | Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 16:05:11

As talked about multiuser-Wordpress earlier, I was wondering what is going on with it. So here is a refresh pointing to some sites of interest:

- http://blogs.linux.ie/xeer/2005/03/15/wpmu-snapshot-2/
- http://blogs.linux.ie/download/wpmu/ChangeLog-wpmu.txt
- http://www.proyectoisla.com/planetawp/?cat=10
- http://incsub.org/blog/?p=266

Most coding seems to be done by donncha.

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Doctorow in Zürich
Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 15:45:12

Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow will talk tonight in Zürich; for those swiss bloggers who act fast without delay, go and have a chat with him [1, via Jan: 2].

[1] http://circle.ch/wiki/?page=WikiAgenda.20050323
[2] http://pieceoplastic.com

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22. March 2005

GeoURL is back online
Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 18:49:03

[via Jan, 1] GeoURL is back online as Version 2.0 beta [2]. Ask Bjørn Hansen who took over the development from Joshua Schachter - aka del.icio.us programmer - already pointed out a new firefox extension that integrates GeoURL services [3].

[1] http://pieceoplastic.com
[2] http://geourl.org/near/?p=http://circle.ch/blog
[3] http://geourl.org/news/2005/03/14/firefox_extension.html

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16. February 2005

WYSIWYG Plugin for Wordpress
Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 07:55:20

Joe Schmoe [1] worked out a WYSIWYG plugin for Wordpress based on TinyMCE.

[1] http://mudbomb.com/archives/2005/02/02/wysiwyg-plugin-for-wordpress/

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09. February 2005

Wieder mal Intimes aus der Bloggerwelt
Weblog (wiki) | Humor (wiki) | Deutsch (wiki) - urs @ 00:10:50

[via stefan, 1] Das Migros Magazin hat erneut einen Artikel zum Thema Blogging erscheinen lassen [2]. Im Gegensatz zum Beitrag von SFDRS werden Blogger in ein etwas anderes Licht gestellt - vornehmlich eine vernünftigere Sicht. Doch finde ich, dass die US-amerikanischen Präsidentschaftswahlen langsam in Vergessenheit geraten dürften und ich wunder emich auch etwas ob der aufgezeigten "typischen" Blogs wie myzuri.ch oder stadt.be ;)

By the way; Dean ist dann doch nicht Präsident geworden. Und Kerry übrigens auch nicht ;)

[1] http://www.stefanbucher.net/blog/451
[2] http://www.migros-magazin.ch/index.cfm?id=5528

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08. February 2005

Tagging for lots.ch
Weblog (wiki) | Technology (wiki) - urs @ 11:20:58

chregu [1] pointed out how you will be able to aggregate lots.ch related/linked information via del.icio.us as he introduced the tag "lots.ch".
And we aggregate the del.icio.us tag "lots.ch", which will be displayed on the page. If you have an interesting link somehow related to lots.ch, just tag it with "lots.ch" and the link will show up on the OpenBlog.
I started yet another tag on Technorati as you can see below [2].

tag:lots.ch


Feel free to link in. But what counts most; just do not forget to visit us in Bern finally ;)

[1] http://blog.bitflux.ch/p2019.html
[2] http://www.technorati.com/tag/lots.ch

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07. February 2005

KABLOG - enhanced mobile blogging
Weblog (wiki) | XML (wiki) | Wireless and Mobile (wiki) | Java (wiki) - urs @ 14:53:49

Amazing... KABLOG [1] is offering variuos front-ends for mobile phones which make mobile blogging easier:
KABLOG is a tool for mobile phones and PDAs that allows you to post photos and blog entries to blog servers and services such as TypePad, Movable Type, Blogger, B2, Blog-City, UserLand (Radio), Roller, SnipSnap, and other blog servers that support either the simple blogger xmlrpc interface or the extended metaWeblog interface. In addition, KABLOG provides extended support for posting entries to TypePad/Movable Type.
As far as I can see, it also works with images.

[1] http://www.kablog.org

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01. February 2005

Hemmunglose Internet-Selbstdarsteller
Weblog (wiki) | Deutsch (wiki) | Rant (wiki) - urs @ 00:26:55

Gelesen und mit Erstaunen verfolgt auf SFDRS [1]
Blogger Ausstellung in Zürich

Blogs nennt man die Internet-Tagebücher, in welchen Internet-Selbstdarsteller oft hemmungslos mit Bild und Text über sich und ihr Leben berichten. Ein Trend welcher vor Jahren in Amerika startete und nun immer mehr auch in der Schweiz an Beliebtheit gewinnt. Eine Ausstellung in Zürich zeigt, worum es geht.
Naja, das Obgenannte kann man auf zwei Arten interpretieren; entweder haben sich die Redaktoren in Zusammenhang mit der Ausstellung das erste Mal mit Blogs beschäftigt, oder aber sie haben Blogs bereits als eine ernstzunehmende Informationsquelle erkannt und als Konkurrenz, statt als Kontrolle oder Ergänzung der Medienlandschaft interpretiert und versuchen nun, die Blogger als Narzisten [2] zu verniedlichen. Erfolg verpflichtet - nur fragt sich nur wen? Eine Kurzrecherche hätte eigentlich ein anderes Bild von Bloggern vermitteln müssen. Aber wie hiess es doch gleich? Kommt Zeit, kommt Rat. ;)

[1] http://www.sfdrs.ch/content/news/tagesschau/archiv_sendung.php?docid=20050130
[2] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narzissmus

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27. January 2005

Got G-rated
Weblog (wiki) | Social Network (wiki) - urs @ 22:37:41

Gravatar
Every gravatar [1] submission is rated with an MPAA style rating [2] before it is made publicly available. This allows implementors to decide on the rating level that is suitable for their site. A "G" rated gravatar is suitable for display on all websites with any audience type. Nothing potentially offensive will be given this rating.
I need to add a gravatar plug-in in this blog I guess. ;)

[1] http://www.gravatar.com/rating.php
[2] http://www.mpaa.org/movieratings/

Update: As this blog runs still b2/cafelog/urs-häck, I will not be able to simply add-on those wordpress plug-ins. But worth mentioning anyway [3,4].

[3] http://www.noscope.com/journal/2004/12/favatars
[4] http://dev.wp-plugins.org/wiki/favatars

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ffmpeg - The upcoming tool for video conversion
PHP (wiki) | Weblog (wiki) | Wireless and Mobile (wiki) - urs @ 11:16:19

ffmpeg [1] is the tool I have used locally for some time now [1]. It allows conversions of various video formats and video to image conversions. Over the last few months I started a collection of links to some helpful articles and discussions [2]. Recently, there has been started the development of a PHP extension [3]. I could imagine, that ffmpeg would be quite an interesting PHP5 standard extension ;) I haven't checked the license for compatibility though.

Grabbing a frame out of a video is as simple as follows. It took me quite some time to figure out the appropriate options, since the web and the documentation did not yet satisfy my needs:
$ ffmpeg -i test.3gp -f singlejpeg -img jpeg -y test.jpg
Input #0, mov, from 'test.3gp':
Duration: 00:00:04.8, bitrate: 80 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Video: h263, 128x96, 10.00 fps
Stream #0.1: Audio: 0x726d6173, 8000 Hz, mono
Output #0, singlejpeg, to 'test.jpg':
Stream #0.0: Video: mjpeg, 128x96, 10.00 fps, q=2-31, 200 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
frame= 48 q=4.0 size= 117kB time=4.8 bitrate= 200.0kbits/s
I am sure this will boost video blogging enormously [4]. I first was heading for mplayer, but mplayer is IMHO kind of related to X and we do not really want X to be installed on a production server, do we?

Finally, I would like to talk about animated GIF files and provide an example. As with a combination of Imagemagick and ffmpeg, it is a matter of two command lines evtl. one (I am not a pipe specialist ;). As shown below, ffmpeg generates a set of 10 images and Imagemagick converts them to an animated GIF:
$ ffmpeg -i test.3gp -f image -img gif -t 1.0 test%03d.gif
Input #0, mov, from 'test.3gp':
Duration: 00:00:04.8, bitrate: 80 kb/s
Stream #0.0: Video: h263, 128x96, 10.00 fps
Stream #0.1: Audio: 0x726d6173, 8000 Hz, mono
Output #0, image, to 'test%03d.gif':
Stream #0.0: Video: rawvideo, pal8, 128x96, 10.00 fps, q=2-31, 200 kb/s
Stream mapping:
Stream #0.0 -> #0.0
frame= 10 q=0.0 size= 0kB time=1.0 bitrate= 0.0kbits/s

$ convert -delay 20 -loop 0 test*.gif animated.gif
Feeback always welcome ;)

[1] http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net
[2] http://www.circle.ch/wiki/MpegToJpeg
[3] http://ffmpeg-php.sourceforge.net
[4] http://www.circle.ch/wiki/3gpVideo

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16. January 2005

Sandro has a new blog
Weblog (wiki) | Social Network (wiki) - urs @ 15:24:37

Sandro Zic [1] has a new blog now [1].

[1] http://www.sandrozic.de/weblog

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09. January 2005

Migros Magazine about Blogging
Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 16:08:11

Migros Magazine writes about Stephanie Booth as one of the pioneers of Helvetic Blogging [1].

[1] http://www.migrosmagazine.ch/index.cfm?id=4156

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07. January 2005

LiveJournal backend presentation
Weblog (wiki) | Technology (wiki) - urs @ 08:10:55

Brad Fitzpatrick presents some LiveJournal backend know-how [1]. Some related information is available about the wikipedia back-end [2].

[1] http://www.danga.com/words/2004_lisa/
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers

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06. January 2005

Six Apart bought LiveJournal
Weblog (wiki) | Economy (wiki) - urs @ 18:15:08

Too many blog ASPs around, as it seems [1] ;) The page may load slowly as there are more that 2674 comments on this entry.

[1] http://www.livejournal.com/users/news/82926.html

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27. November 2004

Bloggermeeting in Bern
Weblog (wiki) | Social Network (wiki) - urs @ 18:58:09

Just come from the 1st edition of the Bloggermeeting [1] in Bern. It was nice meeting you [2].

[1] http://circle.ch/wiki/WikiAgenda.20041127
[2] http://blog.li/trash/2004/11/

Update: More of such: http://www.haslo.ch/permalink_469~ger

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Blogsome - Worpress based Blog Hosting
Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 14:12:06

Blogsome [1] is a free blog hosting service and seems to be based on Wordpress. Someone just added this link to my wiki.

[1] http://www.blogsome.com

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25. November 2004

Atom enabled Weblog in PHP
PHP (wiki) | Weblog (wiki) | XML (wiki) - urs @ 18:05:31

Yoan Blanc has worked out a fully functional Atom based weblog tool [1].
This project is a school essay about dealing with atom format, HTTP request and XSL transformation.
The code is available under the GPL license. Let's hope this will ignite some further implementations.

Yoan also has a short presentation available [2].

[1] http://atom.dosimple.ch
[2] http://atom.dosimple.ch/docs/pres/

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19. November 2004

SVG Wiki Witheboard
Weblog (wiki) | XML (wiki) | Wiki (wiki) - urs @ 15:12:24

Danny Ayers has some news on his earlier work [1] done on a graphical whiteboard heading towards an SVG Wiki [1]. The file only worked in IE on my machine. But the result is amazing; you can choose colors, shapes, operators and the like and also delete the paths later on. Very nice. I'd like to have that feature in my blog as well. Maybe there is a rainy weekend ahead soon ;)

[1] http://www.xml.com/lpt/a/2003/11/19/svgwiki.html
[2] http://dannyayers.com/archives/2004/06/08/svg-wikiwhiteboard-new-code/

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17. November 2004

Die Weltwoche bloggt
Weblog (wiki) | Deutsch (wiki) - urs @ 20:19:26

Die Weltwoche hat seit geraumer Zeit einen eignen Blog [1], basierend auf Typepad Services, offenbar implementiert durch additiv [2]. Good to know.

[1] http://weltwoche.typepad.com
[2] http://www.additiv.ch

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12. November 2004

Andreas has a Blog
Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 16:00:19

Andreas just silently started blogging [1] ;)

[1] http://blog.andreashalter.ch

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06. November 2004

Blogger Meeting in Bern
Weblog (wiki) | Social Network (wiki) - urs @ 13:47:16

There will be a blogger meeting in Bern in about three weeks time [1]. I will try to attend it. To give it some dynamic I have left a note in the WikiAgenda and trackbacked this event from this post... Just playing ;)

[1] http://circle.ch/wiki/WikiAgenda.20041127

Update: It just seems that that Wiki trackback does not work anymore. The hosting partner switched to safe_mode which probably causes the problem. I will need to find a workaround.

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31. October 2004

Fetching content frequently
Weblog (wiki) | Intellectual Property (wiki) - urs @ 23:36:06

Just had a chat with Joshua Schachter from del.icio.us as he asked me
Do you have any idea why a few hosts are fetching del.icio.us/rss/urs so frequently?
I am always amazed, whom of you out there could be interested in my blog posts or - as it seems now - my bookmarks. Nevertheless, blogging to me has been like using a pocket- or scrapbook to jot down my thoughts, ideas and things I would forget within no time ;) Anyway, it is good to have folks like Joshua to provide such fancy services like del.icio.us.

Update I: By the way. The last of my bookmarks saved on del.icio.us was a link pointing to an article in the NZZ [1]. Mr. Vasella is told to have said that those who waive the patent protection would undermine innovation. Maybe this is a bit too simple. An egg-and-chicken problem maybe. First we need innovation and maybe then it can be a good idea to protect that innovation with a patent. But just have a look at the writing of Karl-Friedrich Lenz [2]: "Grenzen des Patentwesens. Konkrete Maßnahmen gegen die Patentinflation."; worth reading.

Update II: via chregu [3]
"Es spricht einiges dafür, dass Patente auf Software, die in USA gängige Praxis sind und in Europa vor ihrer Legalisierung stehen, in Wirklichkeit die Innovation einschränken. Europa könnte immer noch den Kurs wechseln." Deutsche Bank Research [4]
And Switzerland?

[1] http://nzz.ch/2004/10/31/wi/page-article9YI9S.html
[2] http://k.lenz.name/d/v/index.html
[3] http://blog.bitflux.ch/archive/nosoftwarepatents.html
[4] http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/de/m/intro/index.html

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30. October 2004

BlogCMS
Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 15:58:06

Just mentioned Radek Hulán an entry before; he is also responsible for the weblog engine BlogCMS [1]. Worth to look at, as it seems [2].

[1] http://www.blogcms.com
[2] http://www.sebbi.de/archives/2004/08/12/blogcms-vs-wordpress/

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Multi-user blog, pictures handling and PDF generation with Wordpress
Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 15:35:35

Wordpress offers a multi-user blog engine - currently running as version 0.13 [1] - using the Smarty template engine. If you like to handle images with Wordpress, just have a look at Pictpress [2]. Then finally, today I came along WP2PDF [3] which is an add-on for Wordpress to generate PDF files from blog posts. What do we need more? Maybe a single sign-on handling; then just have a look at chregu's post [4] and modifications to have his bxcms-blog to interoperate with Sxip services.

Somewhere on my machine there is a homegrown blog-post to PDF generator laying around: the concept of my implementation was this:
- there is no guaranty, that blog posts are wellformed XHTML; use PHP PECL tidy to fix that.
- have a look at FPDF, a PHP class to convert content to PDF; make sure your content is XHTML.
- glue the blog output, the tidy conversion and the PDF conversion together.
E voilà. Maybe, just skip the above and look at what Radek Hulán scripted [5].

[1] http://mu.wordpress.org
[2] http://www.curioso.org/?s=pictpress
[3] http://wp2pdf.sourceforge.net
[4] http://blog.bitflux.ch/archive/sxip-support-for-bxcms.html
[5] http://hulan.info/blog/item/html2pdf-convert-your-xhtml-to-pdf-easily

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22. October 2004

Flickr inside
Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 12:20:53

Niall Kennedy [1] posted some interesting links about Flickr architecture.

[1] http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2004/10/flickr_architec.html

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21. October 2004

Do You gregaire?
Weblog (wiki) | XML (wiki) - urs @ 22:18:25

By Jean-Marc König:
gregaire is a flexible web based RSS-aggregator written in PHP 5. It uses a database like MySQL or SQLite to store its data. The user interface is written in standards compliant XHTML, CSS and Javascript (DOM). Thanks to SQLite you should be able to install gregaire on any webspace on earth, supposed the webserver runs with PHP5. gregaire is open source software released under the GNU LGPL license.
More about it [1].

[1] http://www.gregaire.com

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20. October 2004

Cropping, rotating and resizing images in Wordpress
PHP (wiki) | Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 12:42:41

Some month ago I implemented a PHP script [1] to handle images that I integrated into the "Manage" respectively "Edit" menu in Wordpress. The script allows images located in a certain directory to be rotated, resized and cropped. The cropping is based on a library provided by Walter Zorn, whom I mentioned earlier this year already. A PHP script building a cropping interface around that library can be found at amunts.com [3]. The script discussed here is an updated version (added cropping) of what I posted in March [4]. Use it or leave it! ;-)

[1] http://www.circle.ch/php/files/edit-images.phps
[2] http://www.walterzorn.com/dragdrop/dragdrop_e.htm
[3] http://php.amnuts.com/index.php?do=view&id=12
[4] http://www.circle.ch/blog/p1371.html

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19. October 2004

Google towards moblogging?
Weblog (wiki) | Wireless and Mobile (wiki) - urs @ 08:08:16

Picasa, Inc. about Picasa:
We built Picasa because we were frustrated with how difficult it was to find, organize and do things with our digital pictures.
Picasa is now part of Google [1]. A quick look into the Googles businessplan(s) would probably clarify a lot ;-)

[1] http://www.picasa.com/content/download.php
[2] via http://www.moblogging.org/2004/07/google_moving_i.html

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18. October 2004

Wordpress and umlauts
Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 22:53:08

Moving a WP 1.2.0 to 1.2.1 installation did not bring the expected results regarding dropped umlauts. That post [1] did it for me. The problem even with WP 1.2.1 remains, when either Textile 1, Textile 2 or the Markdown plugin is activated. To have all three of them turned off finally brought the umlauts back again.

[1] http://wordpress.org/support/6/5408

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17. October 2004

Visual history of spam email
Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 21:48:51

Raymond Chen [1] has a visual analysis of the spam that he has received over the past ten years. Do you archive your spam mails too? ;-)

[1] http://weblogs.asp.net/oldnewthing/archive/2004/09/16/230388.aspx

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Rewrite of captcha-like feature
PHP (wiki) | Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 20:31:27

The captcha-like [1] feature on behalf of the blog comments for this weblog has been rewritten. If it does not work for you as expected, please let me know. The feature is based on a completely homegrown implementation written in PHP and adopted to b2/cafelog. If you like something similar then you might like to have a look at the PEAR captcha package [2].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha
[2] http://pear.php.net/pepr/pepr-proposal-show.php?id=80

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06. October 2004

No ISSN for Weblogs in CH
Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 23:22:43

Got an Email from the ISSN-Centre in Switzerland today as an answer to my request to try to get an ISSN for my weblog. Result: negative. Unfortunately I got no explanatory statement why the ISSN-Network dismissed such numbers for weblogs. Does anyone of you know?

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28. September 2004

Plazes to be
Weblog (wiki) | Social Network (wiki) - urs @ 11:55:20

[via joi and chregu] plazes.com seems to become a luxury version of geourl [1].

[1] http://beta.plazes.com

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18. September 2004

Blogs controlling the mass media?
Weblog (wiki) | Economy (wiki) | Civil Society (wiki) - urs @ 00:36:29

Take it as checks and balances of the mass media, what currently happens to CBS. Bloggers around the world have strong arguments that the National Guard documents presented by the CBS are likely to be fake [among others 1,2].

[1] http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1211285/posts
[2] http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1210662/posts

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12. September 2004

As it was to expect
Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 23:10:50

Nokia Lifeblog will become compatible with Six Apart's TypePad and enable multiplatform blogging [1]; obviously Joi wasn't in Helsinki just because he likes travelling ;-)

[1] http://prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/09-08-2004/0002246056

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Gmail as a blog engine
PHP (wiki) | Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 17:09:09

Jonathan Hernandez [1] wrote a PHP application that converts Gmail messages to blog entries, where the messages are signed with a star. Replies to conversations are converted to blog comments. The scripts are licensed under GPL. Some more Gmail related projects are linked in my wiki under GmailFS.

[1] http://ion.gluch.org.mx/files/Hacks/gallina/

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Blogging is like a Cocktailparty
Weblog (wiki) | Social Network (wiki) - urs @ 12:51:49

Joi Ito is talking about blogging in the todays issue of the Sonntags Zeitung [1].
Sieben Millionen bloggen

Der Japaner Joichi Ito ist mit seinem persönlichen Journal (http://joi.ito.com ) ein Star unter den weltweit sieben Millionen Bloggern. Ito gründete Neoteny, eine Risikokapitalfirma für Onlinegesellschaften, sowie PSINet Japan und Infoseek Japan. Seine Favoriten sind der Gruppenblog «boingboing.net», der irakische Blog «Baghdad Burning» (http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com ) und der Blog aus dem Iran «editor:myself» (http://www.hoder.com/weblog ).
[1] http://www.sonntagszeitung.ch/dyn/news/multimedia/414514.html

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08. September 2004

del.icio.us - plugins and conversions
Weblog (wiki) | XML (wiki) - urs @ 08:50:07

The del.icio.us plugin for Mozilla [1] is gorgeous. A click here and some text there and the link in question has been added to the social bookmarks manager.

As quite a bit a fan of the brainstorming tool freemind I am pleased to read that someone implemented a del.icio.us to freemind conversion [2]. The python script basically grabs the del.icio.us links and transforms them into the appropriate freemind XML format. Maybe kind of related is extisp.icio.us [3].

[1] http://delicious.mozdev.org
[2] http://www.brownhen.com/delicious_mind/source.html
[3] http://blog.var.cc/extispicious.html

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13. August 2004

Patch for multi-site capability of Worpress
Weblog (wiki) - urs @ 20:35:48

ruben [1] posted a patch to the Wordpress "Mingus" release offering the blog-tool to be configured with multiple sites.

[1] http://lingo.com.mx/~ruben/?p=46

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12. August 2004

Get Atom feed statistics via FeedBurner
Weblog (wiki) | Economy (wiki) | XML (wiki) - urs @ 21:25:18

FeedBurner is currently running as a "pre-alpha" platform providing variuos tweaks on your feeds. FeedBurner e.g. turns your Atom feed into RSS, reports statistics or provides services such as the "Mobile Filter":
Mobile Filter

Strips feed to essential items for browsing on mobile feed readers

Purpose
Optimize your feed for mobile devices. Mobile Filter puts your content on a crash diet.

Feed Effect
Creates a summary version of your feed and removes extra information that is only useful to desktop feed readers, shortening feed download size/time/cost over wireless networks.
Thanks to Matt Shobe [2] for giving me good reasons to move from Atom 0.2 to 0.3 ;-)

[1] http://www.feedburner.com
[2] http://www.burningdoor.com/matt/archives/000666.html

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19. July 2004

1grau - an Orkut clone in Spanish?
Weblog (wiki) | Social Network (wiki) - urs @ 23:21:56

Just don't remember how I fall over 1grau, but it looks a bit like "Orkut in Spanish" to me [1] ;-)

[1] http://www.1grau.com/minhapagina_blog.asp?usuario_id=70106958740

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Corporate Blogs at Sun
Weblog (wiki) | Economy (wiki) - urs @ 23:19:17

It seems that Sun has their own platform for corporate blogs including a blog by Jonathan Schwartz, President and Chief Operating Officer of Sun Microsystems, Inc. [2].

[1] http://blogs.sun.com/roller/
[2] http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan

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18. July 2004

Blogging with the SonyEricsson K700i
Weblog (wiki) | Wireless and Mobile (wiki) - urs @ 20:08:05

For as much as 16 months I was moblogging with an upgraded T68m using a pluggable CommuniCam MCA-25 with VGA quality. Then, some weeks ago, I got a T610 for a few Swiss Franks, knowing to step behind regarding the quality of the built-in CIF camera [1] compared to the MCA-25.

Just recently I had the chance to play around with the new SonyEricsson K700i for about two weeks [2]. The K700i looks like the successor of the T610 or T630 to me. The phone is only a little bit bigger than the T610. SonyEricsson added a lot more memory and a new VGA camera with flash light. The phone records also video sequences of relatively unlimited length in the new 3gp [3] format. The navigation with the joystick is a pleasure an the software has some comfortable addons compared to the T610. The phone is pretty cool for mobile bloggers.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Intermediate_Format
[2] http://www.sonyericsson.com/K700
[3] http://www.3gpp.org

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