Duncan Mac-Vicar P.

Aprovechando la Web

La cantidad de información en la Web hace que sea difícil manejarla. En el último año la explosión de los sitios sociales hace que no solo fluya información aislada sino tambien mucha información respecto a personas, muchas de las cuales pueden ser de nuestro interés.

Las personas utilizan su computador de forma muy ineficiente, en general porque están acostumbrados a utilizarlo por repetición. El error más común es hacer tirar información hacia nosotros o empujarla hacia otros, en vez de dejar que la información venga a nosotros en forma automática. El problema es que es difícil explicarle a cualquier persona como hacerlo de mejor forma, debido a la cantidad de siglas (xml, rss, etc) que aparecen. Este es mi primer intento.

Por ejemplo. Mantener contacto con personas. Me gusta saber en que están y ver sus fotografías. También me gusta que vean las mías.

Google Personalized Homepage es una versión personalizable del buscador. Permite añadir modulos con información, de modo que podemos utilizarla como página de inicio. Existen cientos o miles de módulos diferentes para agregar.

El módulo más común es añadir un “feed”. Muchos sitios web permiten extraer la información separandola de la presentación. O sea podriamos extraer la lista de noticias de nuestro periódico y colocarla en nuestra página de inicio. Cuando hayan noticias nuevas, estas aparecerán automáticamente.

Ahora, añadir sitios con noticias uno por uno, hará que la página personalizada este pronto llena de módulos, por lo que es mejor utilizar Google Reader ( tour ) para manejar las subscripciones a “feeds”, asi luego en vez de insertar el “feed” en la página, insertaremos el modulo de Google Reader y podremos ver todas nuestras subscripciones en un solo módulo. Luego es más sencillo, ya que no tendremos que añadir módulos cada vez que agregamos un sitio con información, sino que solo lo agregamos en Google Reader, y el módulo de Google Reader mostrará todas las subscripciones.

Otro módulo interesante es el de Flickr, que nos mostrará las últimas fotos de nuestra red de contactos y amigos.

Pasos:

• Abrir una cuenta en Flickr, es una cuenta Yahoo, por lo que si ya se tiene una no es necesario.
• Agregar a los amigos a la lista de contactos de Flickr.
• Ir a google homepage, suponiendo que tenemos una cuenta de Google. Identificarse.
• Agregar el módulo Flickr. Configurarlo con nuestro username.
• Agregarel módulo Google Reader. Para agregar subscripciones ir a Google Reader.
• Otros módulos interesantes son Calendar (muestra un resumen de Google Calendar ). El clima, Notas, GMail, para ver los correos nuevos.
• Abrir una cuenta en del.icio.us, un manejador social de bookmarks (favoritos), lo que permite tener los bookmarks siempre a mano desde cualquier computador y compartirlos con otra gente. Asi mismo, se puede poner un acceso rápido en el browser para agregar sitios.

Nuevas subscripciones son fáciles de encontrar, es básicamente una dirección web. Muchos blogs y sitios tienen un enlace o ícono que dice RSS o Feed. Por ejemplo, la subscripción a mi blog es http://duncan.mac-vicar.com/blog/feed/.

Enchulando el sistema.

La gente que utiliza Linux goza de programas llenos de características sociales y otras no tan sociales pero que valen la pena. Sin embargo muchos de estos programas están disponibles para Windows o disponen de equivalentes.

• Firefox para navegar. El cual se puede “enchular” con numerosas extensiones. Por ejemplo para transferir archivos entre amigos (una especie de Kazaa privado), esta AllPeers.
• Por el lado de los reproductores de música, SongBird es a iTunes lo que Firefox es a Internet Explorer. Una alternativa libre y mejor. Para los que envidien más a amaroK en Linux que al iTunes en Mac, quizás Musikcube es una mejor opción.
• Democracy Player es para ver videos y TV vía Internet. Subscribirse a “feeds” con Videos. Ver y descargar YouTube y otros, y también ver videos y películas locales.
• Para descargar torrents, hay dos buenas opciones. La minimalista y la llena de opciones.

Esa fue una lista de software interesante para Windows.

No olvidar que siempre se puede dar el paso completo adelante. Probar Linux hoy es posible sin instalar nada, simplemente bajar la imagen del Live-DVD, quemarla, e iniciar el computador con el DVD adentro.

Participando

Ahora lo que nos queda es publicar nuestra información en la Web para que otros la puedan consumir. La mejor forma de hacer esto es además de poner fotos en Flickr, tener nuestro propio blog. Dos lugares donde se puede obtener un blog gratis es Blogger de Google, y Wordpress.com.

Espero que este “post” haya sido útil. Espero que después de esto no se le ocurra mandar 20 fotos de 2 megas cada una a cada uno de sus amigos vía email, o que cada mañana tipee una y otra vez las direcciones de sus sitios de noticias para ver si hay algo nuevo. Deje que la información venga hacia usted en vez de perder tiempo corriendo trás ella. Si alguien quiere sus fotos, que se subscriba a su “feed”.

Interesting stuff

• 20 must have Firefox extensions
• Give a look what NetBeans is doing with rails
• Look this nice C++ web application toolkit ( Look here for an idea on making a YaST ui with it )

Look how journalists do logic math:

Novell has issued a joint press release with Microsoft, in which HSBC, a customer of joint technology from the two companies, claims that Windows has a lower total cost of ownership than Linux.

This comes from:

In the release, Matthew O’Neill, group head of distributed systems for HSBC Global IT operations, states that the bank’s existing Linux environment is more expensive to maintain than its Windows environment. “Some will be surprised to learn that our Windows environment has a lower total cost of ownership than our current Linux environment.”

So he concludes:

Although it is unclear at this time which Linux distributions the bank is using, the fact Novell is associated with a statement that claims Linux has a higher total cost of ownership than Windows will surprise and anger many in the open-source community.

So, because HSBC has a complex and more expensive Linux environment, you can conclude the TCO of Linux is higher than Windows.

This is the most funny simplification of life I have heard since the joke of measuring a cow’s volume:

A mathematician, an engineer and a physicist sat around a table discussing the best way to measure the volume of a cow. The mathematician suggested the use of geometry and symettry relationships of the cow, but his idea was rejected for being too time-consuming. The engineer suggested placing the cow in a pool of water and measuring the change in the height of the water, but this idea was considered impractical. “It’s easy,” said the physicist. “We’ll make an assumption that the cow is a small sphere, calculate the volume, and then blow it up to the actual size.”

HSBC hasn’t claimed Linux has a higher total cost of ownership than Windows. They claimed THEIR environment has. That includes lot of variables are not mentioned.

• How many versions of Windows are in the Windows environment?
• How are both environments maintained?
• etc

“will surprise and anger many in the open-source community”. Come on. The reasons why Linux is better are far away from stupid and simplistic TCO calculations.

Participating in a opensource community has lot of advantages, you get to know really cool people. You learn lot of new things… but also strange anecdotes happen.

Some time ago I was talking with Will, and we both remembered one of the most funniest (now) things ever happened in #kopete irc channel. We laughed a lot, until Will told me. “I still have those logs somewhere”. I said “Really! I think it is time to blog them.

April 3, probably 2003 or 2004. I was in Chile by then. It was sleeping time for Europa. In the channel you can see Sean Egan, GAIM’s lead developer, and myself. Until….

The following takes place between 5 am and 6 am… Events ocur in real time.

(more…)

Yahoo added geotagging features to Flickr. That means you can say where the photo was taken using Yahoo maps.

Some cameras have a gps device built in that add the geo location in the picture file itself. If not, here and here you can find how to use a normal gps device to tag your photos easily.

Robert Schiele posted:

Anyone with a good suggestion for a usable blogging tool that also allows adding pictures without clicking hundreds of buttons for each? This and the fact that some features of the crappy web frontend of Blogger did not work at all were the reasons I did not post recently and why I will make all this here less frequent and shorter.

I use the Firefox addon Performancing which is started with a click in Firefox status bar. Is simple, can be configured for multiple blogs, supports WYSIWYG editing (I have that disabled, as I use Markdown in my blog), and supports adding images either by url or uploading them to ftp. Give it a try.

Sometime ago from a comment in Slashdot I found my self in this website Shelley the Republican. You can find a lot in the Wikipedia article, where you can find also links to the articles about Linux:

Linux Being an European threat to America [1], caused a disturbance among the GNU European community, as expressed in some European message boards . [2]

The article claimed that Linux was based on Marxist and Communist principles, as well as used by notorious terrorist Osama Bin Laden. The article also claimed that the Operating System was extremely insecure and vulnerable to security exploits.

The site is a bit exagerated. The writing style is intentionaly intolerant and ignorant, using missinformation like facts and giving stupid and ignorant opinions about topic the writer has no idea about, like Linux.

It could be easily a satire. But as Einstein said:

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe. -Albert Einstein

So another website was created, Shelley Uncovered, which tries to reveal the stupiness of every post in Shelley’s blog. But now they report Tristan, one of the writers of Shelley’s blog is threatening with suing. Wait, wasn’t it a satire?.

To be honest I dont’t know. I do think it is exagerated and obvious. Hackers are communists, Punks ans Gothics are satan fans. Linux is a treat to the USA economy. Google is evil. Linux is stolen (from SCO) and ilegal code. Of course she does not know the 2 most important Linux companies are american. She doesn’t know also about the SCO case or the Linux source code license. Also, U2 is black metal

An ignorant with opinion, that’s the easy way to make the complete world angry, hehe.

But tiemsche wrote something interesting in Shelley Uncovered:

Don’t waste your time, man! Seriously!

Shelley’s blog is too exaggerated to be real. It is so obvious they make small little mistakes (like saying “In Flames” is a Finnish instead of a Swedish band) to provoke people so they vent all their anger.

Really, I think Shelley is 20 year old computer geek from Germany that listens to Heavy Metal and spits on the church who makes a laugh about people like you who take it all serious and start a critical blog about it. You are doing them a favor with this. I do not think that you are peeve in Shelley’s eyes which is probably your intention. Reaction like yours is exactly what they are seeking for.

Do you really think she would have allowed a link in her comments if this wasn’t all a fake? When I first read Shelley’s blog I was just like you. I was about to start in which I would tell her that she is nothin but a stupid bi***. I did some research and found there is another Shelley at http://shelleytherepublican.blogspot.com/ who is stupid Republican as well but who is less provoking. I guess this Shelley is the Original, the one you are complaining about is a parody, it is irony.

It is up to you what you do in your leasure time but just consider my words for a moment.

While others say:

Don’t belive these people who say it’s a satire… I’ve been doing some research too and Shelley is on all kind of serious Republican web rings.

She even has a GOP site: http://shelley.gop.com/ and appears to be on the Republican National Committee: http://www.gop.com/Blog/BlogProfile.aspx?nickname=shelley

Just because her opinions are unpalatable, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t real. And just because they get facts wrong that doesn’t mean they aren’t in earnest. i mean, look at George Bush. When has he ever got his research right, but we take him serious enough.

So, what is this?

My old homepage was a mixture of handmade php pages and the blog was powered by blogger

However I wanted to mix my old KDE blog, with this one, and provide feeds to planet-like aggregators based on categories. Yes, I don’t like the idea of my weekend photos to appear in a tech-aggregator. And blogger does not yet support categories, and every day it seems to suck more.

After playing with wordpress and the markdown plugin, it became confortable enough to switch. And with the help of a simple script I found in the net I was able to convert most pages to the simplistic markdown. I was sick of using html to write posts. Not because WYSIWYG editor are not good, but I want to store my posts in a more human readable format.

Let’s see how it goes.

It has been long time since I blogged. Mostly because I was not at home and when I was I did not feel like doing something in the computer other than listening music.

I had to do a quick visit to the States because work, and then my brother came from Paris to my place to spend Christmas together. I showed him Nürnberg and then quick trips to Prag (my 2nd time, and the third is coming…) and Berlin for new year.

I got a hard disk based mp3 player. The cool thing is that it can play ogg files and also works as a standard usb-storage device.

It has its problem though. Like most player, the jukebox database is completely proprietary. Emailing the company did not work as it was a rebranded product. Emailing the original makers resulted only in getting ignored.

After playing with khexedit for a while I was able to figure the simple fixed field length format of the binary database. I wrote a test program using Qt and Taglib (thanks Scott, it rocks, so simple…) to recreate the database for my collection. I haven’t however yet figured the index files. Also, I have no idea how to read the FAT short names so I have to mount has VFAT to copy and keep the nice names, but as MSDOS to generate the database and see the shortnames the player stores in the database. Once I figure out the indexes, it should work. If it does, I plan to write an amaroK media device plugin (no idea how to resolve the mount issue here).