Announcing RSSCloud Notify for Windows Live Writer

I’m developing a project this year around the RSS Cloud protocol.

As a starting point, I’ve written a a short and sweet WLW plugin.

I’ve got it installed locally (eating my own dogfood), mainly cause useful in testing my system once its written.

This may be a bit of a contradiction in terms since wordpress.com already supports RSSCloud (you’ll see a RSSCloud tag in my feed if you view source. It gives the details of the wordpress.com aggregator).

By default it will use Dave Winer’s test server as an endpoint so make sure you change your settings before use.

Its available at codeplex here: http://rsscloudnotify.codeplex.com/

The source is in the repository if anyone wants to look at it.  Its not quite ready for prime time yet.

The Kindle as a digital textbook (in reply to @joshchandler)

Now that the kindle is finally coming to the UK, my opinions of it are a bit more pointed.

First, I have a huge library of books The one drawback of this is that it takes up large volumes of space. So the kindle does have one major advantage for me personally. And i don’t have any problem with dead-tree printing. The downside is that none of those books are going to be on my new kindle.

Second, Josh Chandler’s post specifically highlights the use of the Kindle in collage and universities. This was a major selling point of the Kindle, and later of the Kindle DX. Being a programmer, the DX is my only option if i want it for textbooks. And the DX is expensive (if I’m only buying a few textbooks, I’m better of buying the dead-tree versions). Aside: a Zune-like subscription service would be much better.

Third, the kindle has Newspapers and blogs, plus any PDF you care to email to it. This has obvious advantages. I enjoy reading the paper every now and again. And i have a few e-books that i could see myself emailing to the kindle. Nasa, for example has a great library of Histories that are available on the web for free. Those that aren’t in PDF, I point acrobat at the address and acrobat downloads them. There’s my e-book. So again, another use I have for the kindle.

Forth. How does the Kindle handle PDF DRM on my existing e-books?? I already have a few technical books in PDF that I bought. Will i be able to use them on a Kindle??

Now the PDF standard is actually capable of far more that most people actually use it for. PDF is built for this kind of digital textbook use case. Its annotation tools, for example are second to none.

Does the kindle use this format?? No. Does it use the openPub standard that Google’s e-books are available in?? No. (as a programmer this offends me greatly). As a result, all the hype about the DX being used at Princeton etc actually has come to nought. Students rarely use it. Why?? Annotation. Remember I can WRITE, CIRCLE, HIGHLIGHT, DOODLE (and so on) on a dead-tree book.

The Kindle could do much more as a digital text book. Remember the Apple iTablet is a-coming and ,as things stand right now, given the choice between a dedicated dead-tree replacement, and a fully fledged computer/personal media player that also is a dead tree replacement and does everything the Kindle does, better, you know where I’d be going.

Coincidentally, me and my fellow students are picking honours year projects. One suggestion I made was to take the diagrams and so on from the smartBoards (they must have an API, surely), and merge them with the PDF version of the notes. (PDF has an API). Seriously, how great would that be?? Currently I draw all that stuff on my laptop (Kudos to which ever genius laid out the Ribbon in Word 2007, BTW). So what my lecturer is doing on the board magically appears on my PDF. Tie that with a kindle and you have instant student heaven/nirvana. 

If Amazon is serious about the ability of the Kindle to make a splash in the student market, these are the kinds of things it needs to be thinking about. Apple is so successful with its products because they make them indispensible. Amazon needs to do stuff like that to make the kindle indispensible for the serious student.

So it has the POTENTIAL to be the perfect digital textbook.

Will Amazon see that???

Why I said that.

(me being modest as ever )

Those of you who follow my twitter stream would have seen the above tweet a few hours back.

I’ve been finalizing what I’ll be doing for my honours year project (Computer Science) and that’s what the tweet is referring to.

I’m penning this post because it comes down to one thing: knowledge.

I took up RSS reading about 5 years ago and never looked back. Over that time I’ve spent countless hours read blogs covering every corner of the tech world. If i hadn’t spend that time, I would not have the foggiest idea what to do for my project.

While all my fellow students are sitting there going “aw shucks” (or, in the funnier version “eh, whats up doc??” ), I’m planning in detail.

So I’d like to thank everyone of the authors of the blogs I follow for their time, dedication and inspiration. It would be impossible to name them all here.

More recently, twitter has become a valuable resource in connecting with other devs and getting questions answered. Those devs I correspond with regularly, you know who you are. And I thank you.

As academic restrictions permit, I may or may not be able to share project details.

In the mean time, back to work.

PS. For those of you following my work on whs2smugmug, I will do what I can in between. Note I have set up a twitter feed (whs2smugmug) and a friendfeed stream (here)

How the Zune will save the Music Industry (or why I want one)

I must say, upfront, that i think the Zune HD is an excellent device. While admitantly below par when compared to the iPod Touch or the iPhone.

There are still weak points, like the mobile browser being IE6 based ( IE6 has more holes than Swiss cheese).

But the Zune is not simply pure hardware. The Zune Pass you can purchase ($15??) gives you essentially unlimited music (plus 10 free tracks a month that are yours to keep forever).

That is the key to the Zune succeeding big in the world. Think of the implications for your music listening habits.

The Zune will scan your music library and download tracks that complement it. Automatically. No human input required. No Passwords, nothing. Nada. This is great for music discovery, not to mention indie bands and labels whose work may not be as well known.

Andy Ihnatko  made the point on last weeks episode of Macbreak Weekly that instead of simply being restricted to 30 second previews per track of an album, Zune Pass allows you to just download and buy the whole album. I had that situation just the other day. I was trying to figure out if I should get the soundtrack to 500 Days of Summer (great movie BTW, but I digress) from iTunes. If I had Zune Pass, I could get the whole thing and only then decide if I like it. I could then make that my 10 free tracks for the month.

Talking of which, that episode is a must listen since it centres on the Zune HD.

Also available on the Zune are TV programs and movies, although the catalogue is far smaller than the one on iTunes. I’m not totally sure whether this is included in the Zune Pass, but lets assume for a minute, that it is. Since it should be.

See at the moment I’ve bought 3 seasons of The West Wing on iTunes. All of which were a perfectly reasonable £19.99 each. Now season 4 is £34.99. I’d like to buy Season 4, really. But that is too darn expensive. I can rent a few movies every weekend for a month for that price. If I had a Zune Pass, this would be a different story completely. You see i really DON’T want 60 West Wing episodes taking up space on my Hard Drives. Apple can have them back. But I do want to continue watching the series. A Zune Pass would let me do both of those things.

I’m sure that both Apple and the Record Labels and the Studios would love for me to continue spending money. But as long as prices are that high, my money isn’t going anywhere. What would you rather have, a burst of income once in a blue moon, or a steady, albeit lower than usual, income stream??? Multiply that by  millions of millions of subscribers and you’re sitting on a friggin’ fortune.

As I said on Twitter earlier, make it easier for customer to spend their hard-earned cash on things they actually want to buy. I want to buy music and that 4th season of the West Wing, really, but i want a Zune Pass. Or an iTunes Pass. Something.

It goes without saying that this will deter many MANY (illegal) casual file sharers. The benefits of a Zune pass are extraordinarily compelling.

I suspect that the music industry  and the studios are dragging its heels on this. Let the Zune go global, and let iTunes do something similar.

Fans every will thank you.

PS. Apple. I want wireless syncing with my iPhone. Now.

Windows 7, Part 2 – Norton Internet Security

Just  quick note to say that Norton Internet Security 2009 now works perfectly on Windows 7.

Symantec just pushed out some updates:

 

And if you are using iTunes, remember to exclude the iTunes Music folder or else you won’t be able to save your iTunes library.

Apple v Google

Apple’s rejection out-of-hand of the Google Voice App has the interwebs all a flutter with rumours and speculation, not to mention fury as well.

Although I’m in the Uk and therefore locked out of a GV account until its released here, I’m looking forward to using it soon. Its no accident that I’m especially looking forward to using it with my iPhone, or i was in any case.

The reason why this is causing such an uproar is that the target market for GV users just happens to overlap rather significantly with that of the iPhone.

The fact is though, Google Apps for Business does not get enough attention these days. In fact, there has been a spate of articles on how Google Apps for Domain falls down when it comes to being a valid option for businesses.  My hope is that Google integrates GV into the suite, giving clear value and functionality for the business user (read: me).

I envision a number of use cases where this could work.

• Imagine, via GV, a Google Wave, document, spreadsheet or presentation open magically when you answer the call. Not only are you talking to the person, you can collaborate in real time)especially rue of Google Wave).
• Google Contacts will give caller identity a whole new meaning, even if the callers aren’t already in our address book.
• In fact, Since this is really a domain oriented service, imagine being able to ring contact.yourdomain.com and getting through to reception????

The fact is that Google is positioning Google Apps for Domain to be its integrated business offering.

Microsoft has Office Communication server, which requires built in telephone networks. But has none of the integration opportunities that Google Apps for Domain has.

In fact, it would be worth the money.

If true, the fact is that Apple is obstructing Google’s business plans. No wonder the FCC and the net-neutrality lobby is up in arms.

And if this eWeek article has any truth to it, its because Apple wants to built a similar service for Mobile Me. Its not too far fetched to imagine, and makes logical sense.

Depending on Apples implementation of it (keeping 9n mind the debut of Mobile Me), it may just tempt people away from Google Apps for Domain with GV.

But apple, seriously, if you are going to start acting like this to pre-empt the competition, remember one thing: Out-Innovate Google and you’ve won. It would be a shame for Apple to start acting like Microsoft in the 1990’s.

And what if it was AT&T???? that i can’t answer. But AT&T’s reputation is so battered and bruised with iPhone users, that they may all jump ship to Android and Pre. And even more are going to be jailbreaking to get the app.

This is a state of affairs that benefits no one.

See. I like my iPhone. A lot. Every day I discover some new feature or app that makes it even better. When el Jobso gave his blessing to this device, you can see why. And they have thrown that all away with this one stupid decision.

Or have they??

Apple have a very definite reason for doing this.

I can’t wait to see what it is.

@DaveWiner, SUP and pubsubhubub

Dave Winer has been suggesting alternatives to Google’s pubsubhubub and Friendfeed’s SUP.

Both of these methods are aimed at making the polling of RSS feeds more efficient.

Neither of these protocols use RSS. Which, come to think of it, is really strange. The RSS protocol has been around for a good number of years. Its well understood. and built into most Blogging software and CMS software. Not to mention RSS readers everywhere.

Dave Winer made a good case for prior design as a, well, design method. The idea being that things should be designed from the get go to be backwards compatible.

Those of you watching my Twitter feed will see that I fired off a few tweets to Dave saying that RSS can do the job in and of itself.

Consider. All we are really saying is that we should have a single feed or resource detailing what blogs  or feeds have changed in the last x number of minutes/hours. The idea being that you then go and poll only those feeds. Thus drastically cutting the number of requests you have to make you check ALL the blogs/feeds in the directory, or that are in your RSS reader.

So RSS basically details a number of entries, including title, link, author, date, etc. These entries typically refer to blog posts, and the like.

So assuming your software knows that directory y is a hub for x number of feeds, by checking y’s RSS feed, you can determine what blogs have updated because they are in Y’s RSS feed. Any blogs that are not in the feed, have not updated. There is a date element in the feed as well, which could be used as well.

This requires simple changes in the logic of the software, rather than the support of an entirely new protocol. I think everybody wins here.

Update on WHS2SmugMug

Back in January i said I’d get back to writing this Windows Home Server Add-In.

Its now June, 6 months later.  For 3 of those months my camera was back at Nikon being repaired. So I took exactly zero pictures during that time. Its now back and I’m bracing myself for the flood of pictures. I carry 26Gb’s worth of memory cards with me, so I nearly always end up over doing it.

Which brings me to the Add-In. I’ve set up a Codeplex page here. And I’ve made a few check-ins. This is not even pre-alpha code. Let me explain.

A few weeks ago, I asked, via Twitter,  Omar Shahine if I could use his Smugmug Uploader code. now I’m a great fan of the Uploader. I’ve used it for every single uploaded to SmugMug.

So Omar kindly emailed me his code.

So what you will find in the Check-ins, should you be brave enough to take look is Omar’s back-end code sans any UI as part of a WCF service. The WCF service is hosted by a Windows Service (imaginatively called “UploadService”). My plan ( cunning or not) is to have the UI in the Console communicate with the uploader process via WCF. There are other methods, but WCF gives me incredible latitude when it comes to moving data back and forth.

So the Home Server Console tab will simply be a UI for uploading stuff. Instead of Remoting in and using Omar’s uploader. This is an intermediate goal.

My ultimate goal is actually to have a “Smugmug” folder and under it a folder for every Smugmug Album in your account. the above mentioned service will monitor those folders for changes and replicate those changes to Smugmug.

So I’m building now with such a convoluted architecture with a view to where i want to get this Add-in to.

So hopefully I can get the Add-in working soon.

I’m a pretty good test case for this, but I will need testers for it.

Watch my twitter account or my FriendFeed account for updates

PS If you’re asking why I’ve not moved blogs yet, I’m waiting for the next Oxite Release first.

Apple Tv – How It Fits In…..

So i got me an Apple Tv last week, more on impulse than as part of any rational thought, as such things go.  i was planning on getting one, but only later this summer.

But such is life….

So its sitting there on my Tv cupboard, replacing the DVD player that does not work any way…. surrounded by my impressive collection of DVDs. Which do me no good sitting on the shelf instead of on my Apple Tv hard drive….

The solution to this is, of course to back up your DVDs to disk. I use DVDShrink 3.2 (the last version ever released), or DVD Decryptor. both of which leave you with a folder full of .vob files ( usually  a VIDEO_TS folder).  This will strip copy protection from the files.

These files do us no good. Apple Tv will not take .vob files. But, and I must admit my irritation here, Windows Media Center does ( serves me right for being a turncoat ).

So the next step is to use Handbrake ( for Mac and Windows) to take your backed up files and turn them into Apple Tv readable m4v or mp4 files. These files can be read across iTunes, Apple Tv, and your video capable iPods and iPhones.

Now this conversion process is eyewateringly long. I’ve resurrected an old laptop ( Intel Celeron M 1.4 ghz, 256Mb RAM). The average time is about 10 hours – at 4.3 frames per second. My 3ghz Pentium 4 with 2Gb RAM is actually only slightly faster, confusingly enough. in any case, i need the desktop and no the laptop, so the old and busted laptop is doing the conversions.

The 10 hours conversion does not bother me much. I set it up to go in the morning, and its usually almost done my the time I’m back home in the evening.

All this media is being stored on my Windows Home Server, with a normal install of iTunes being the server. I’m not sure if Firefly Media Server will work with Apple TV, but if it is, I’ll install that instead.

Finally, I use MetaX 1.0 for Windows (theres a Mac version, too) to add in metadata – pic, sypnosis, direcots, actor, etc…. This is amazingly useful and saved me loads of time….

Now my music library is full of duplicates (my fault for leaving the “Copy to iTunes library” option on when i import stuff), So I’m slowly going through it and deleting the duplicates (and saving space at the same time).

My Photos are spread across a hundred folders, so i have to get some sort of organisation going so i can sync them to Apple Tv and show them off on my Tv .

I have SageTv running on the same server. Their conversion process for Apple Tv takes just as long and won’t work – sigh. If I could just get Sage to save the files in m4v format, i could sync my recorded tv directly to my apple Tv without any (hours long) conversion in between.

Update 14-10-09: The latest version of SageTv does indeed convert to m4v perfectly. Works wonders, but the time is still rather long. I reccomend turning off everything, defrags, AV runs (and temporarily, backups) if you have a long queue of files to convert. Right now I have 16 files to convert all of which are about 2- 3 hours long. Usually two a day. So for this week, I have turned off the defrag passes. SageTv actuall scales its CPU usage remarkabely well in these situations.

If i could, i’d have uploaded everything to EC2 for encoding

Thanks to the guys over on Friendfeed for help with this.

Dvd backup software thread: here.

Metadata thread: here.

Designing a new Blog Header

So I’m designing a new blog, as per my previous post.

I’m NOT a graphic designer. But I am a photographer.  And I get the fact that the design of the blog has got be linked to the content.  My point being that a landscape or a nature scène looks out of place when you’re discussing the finer points of programming languages or social networks.

On the other hand, you can’t always predict what you’re going to blog about ( at least in my case), so you want to be general in some way.

If you’re following me on Twitter or Friendfeed, you’ll see that I’ve been posting alot of the stuff I’ve found on web design in general.

So, brimming with inspiration, I’ve gone off and trawled through my photo archives for something relevant.

So here are a few that I’m thinking of using in a big way,  as the header, footer, or both (i.e. cutting the picture in half):

Engineering:

 

Nasa:

Bright Spark:

All the images you see here are on Smugmug.

Let me know what you think.