Technical Ramblings

Earlier, I mentioned how I was going to be switching to Flickr for Image storing. Although this is still the case, I’m waiting a bit until I do: I want to write some tools for generating RDF for me personally before I spend the money on it, I think. There’s already some work being done: Masahide announced a flickr2rdf service of his own, but it’s generalized, and I want to do something a bit more specific. I want to be able to describe people in the description, and have a tool which automatically extracts it. Not quite “Natural Language Processing”, something I’m sure that Arnia will chide me for, but something along those lines. Maybe even just using n3 in HTML Comments? Wonder how the API deals with that…

However, in the meantime, I’ve installed Gallery2, and I must admit, it’s very nice. I’ve been working in the module framework, and I’ve been able to extract exif information and include it in an RDF RSS Feed. Next step is to go back through my steps and look at all the changes I’ve done, then export it so it’s a usable format for the developers, and integrate it into their RSS 2.0 development. Triples, triples everywhere!

Once I’m sure my Gallery is in a usable state, I’ll release the work I’ve done on it. For the time being, I’m making sure that I have something I’m willing to switch to before I publicize it.

Hope everyone has a good weekend!

One of the biggest things that “irks” me when I’m commenting on some other weblog that I seldom read is that I will most likely never see any response to what I write, even if one is directed at me. For this reason, I often write my own posts, expecting that with Trackback, the original author and subsequent commenters will be able to see my thoughts as well as reply to them.

However, occasionally I don’t want to write a full post, yet I still think that the discussion is worth having. For those times, I really wish that more weblog software packages would support notification of comments, preferably via email. LiveJournal has implemented this since long before I had an account, and the discussion I’ve seen, even on the most minor topics, are gigantic in comparison with the discussions you can find between commenters on most weblogs.

I understand that the cultures are different, and I understand that the goals of each are different, but this is one practice that I definitely miss from my old tools. For that reason, I have installed a wordpress plugin which allows you to ask for subsequent comments to entries to be mailed to you.

I hope that this will allow people, if they desire, to continue threads of conversation longer, and breed more communication between commenters to the site. I certainly know that to me, seeing more talking back and forth among people in comments has always been a great way for issues to be raised that might not seem “Deserving” of a fully thought out response in the form of a new post.

My major concern at this point is with spam: will people who comment find themselves innundated with spam? I hope that I can work with wordpress to keep spam to a minimum, thereby protecting those who receive those emails as well.

The next thing that I’m interested in is threaded comments. However, I’m pretty sure there’s not a “simple” plugin for those, and I do know that threading comments introduces a variety of issues, from display issues to conversion of a tree format to a SQL database. We’ll see. At the moment, I’d like to hear your thoughts on whether allowing people to receive notification of new comments is a good thing or bad thing. Also, since it is new, feel free to let me know how it works in your opinion. You don’t get copies of your own comments at the moment: something I still haven’t decided whether I’m going to change or not.

I’m an open minded kind of guy. There are a lot of services out there, and even though some of them aren’t open source, it’s possible that they may do what I want them to do. One of those services is Flickr, a photo sharing service.

Flicker does a lot of very nifty things: updates from anywhere, advanced annotations, including an extremely easy to use Javascript interface for annotating regions of images, and posting to blogs directly from the service. However, that’s not the coolest aspect of the service, in my opinion.

Flickr provides a relatively advanced, full featured, well documented API – a way to get pretty much any information you might want out of the site without screenscraping. (LiveJournal, in comparison, strongly discourages screenscraping, preferring that you use services listed on their bot-friendly services list. However, the data afforded through these interfaces is extremely limited to the point where it’s unusable for most advanced tasks.) Through this API, you can retrieve all the information you want about the people and photos available through the service.

This is especially interesting to me as an RDF nut because it means that I can use Flickr’s nice interface and handy annotation tools – and at the same time, I can convert the data, via the API, to an RDF format that I can use for all the things I’ve been describing in my Image Description posts.

The limits a free Flickr account places on you are kinda strict: relatively small upload limit, given that I prefer to store full size images in the photos I already have in my personal gallery. I’d immediately set Flickr aside months ago because there was no way I could use it to store all my images. However, upon review tonight I discovered that an annual Flickr account during their beta period is only about 45 USD. Included in this is:

• 1 GB monthly upload limit
• Unlimited Storage
• Unlimited Bandwidth

In addition to a few others, listed at their upgrade page.

It’s a case where I can build lots of tools and do lots of work myself, and get exactly what I want… or I can use flickr, pay a pretty minimal fee, and get 90% of everything I want with no effort, plus an additional bit of work to get that last 10%. I’ll probably still keep things locally (if for no other reason as a backup should flickr ever go poof), but move my primary photo gathering to be flickr based.

I think I know which way I’m going to go. Once I do, I’ll keep you all updated on the progress I have with RDF.

LiveJournal has been bought by Six Apart. After reading what Brad, Mena, and Six Apart have to say, I’ll admit I’m not too concerned. In fact, while browsing the site, I stumbled upon a lively community post discussing casinos not on GamStop UK — just another reminder of how diverse the interests are among LiveJournal’s user base. I do wish that I could still be involved in the Development effort at LiveJournal: I have a lot of things that I’d like to see done there. However, that door closed a while ago, so I’ll just have to deal with whining about it ;).

Current Mood: Optimistic, from Mena
Company FAQ, from 6A
Press Release, From 6A
LJ FAQ, from Brad.

According to Brad, they’ve finally got Trackback code going. Of course, we’ll see how long it takes to actually get anything done, since the entire office is moving.

Congrats to LJ and 6A. Hope for the best for both of you. It seems that my options from my previous post are looking like they’ll be Option 1, possibly with a leaning towards option 2 – and that’s something I’m happy about. So, Thanks.

Typepad exports RSS 1.0, as well as FOAF. LiveJournal exports limited FOAF information because that’s really all I could squeeze out of it the first time around, when bandwidth and load time was a major concern. I wonder if with the possible buy out of LiveJournal by SixApart, some of the LiveJournal specific XML formats will change to RDF…

For example, the Latest Images from LiveJournal is an XML format… it might be interesting to see this as an RSS feed, especially RSS 1.0. Perhaps the creation of feeds for the LiveJournal photo gallery option…

I can see a lot of room to expand the semantic content that LiveJournal emits, and I wonder if Six Apart might be in the right place to do it. As far as I’ve seen, they’ve seemed interested in doing so with Typepad. Does anyone know if something similar runs through more of their work? I’d love to see more RDF coming out of LJ. It’s a large data source and so much of it goes untapped because getting anything into the development process is very difficult.

Mm, LiveJournal sized image annotation stores… advanced semantic web development at its finest. Now that’s something I’d love to see. Imagine being allowed to check which LiveJournal users were in a photo, and then having that data emitted as RDF… allowing searches over it, finding photos with more than a certain number of people, photos of places. Geolocation. The UI isn’t hard, it would just be a bit of hackwork to get it together.

If there’s one thing I hope for, it’s that this leads to quicker turnaround on LiveJournal development time. Whether it’s with volunteers or not, I’d be willing to double my annual cost if it meant I got to see new features within a year, rather than three. That kind of interface would bring such a boost to the semantic web…

Now I’m tempted to build an external tool myself, just to demo how cool it would be.

Since it seems that the news about LiveJournal and SixApart becoming one really is true, I’ll toss some more thoughts out there. Someone will probably read through all these posts eventually, especially if they want to avoid another snafu like the one that Movable Type’s licensing changes caused.

Despite all my praises of LiveJournal and the effect that it’s had on me and that I’ve had on it (in my own small way), there are a number of things which could definitely use some work to get up to “snuff” on a customer service level. User interface has never been a strong point for LiveJournal, and although with the addition of some new developers in the past year it has improved greatly, it is still not nearly as easy to use in many respects as something like Typepad.

Here’s what I expect to see, if Six Apart decides to take an “active” role in continuing the development of LiveJournal as a seperate service from its currently existing products, while still maintaining a position as “stewards” more than corporate whores:

• Implementation of some “basic” parts of site usage for “weblog” type users: I expect Categories and Trackbacks will make their way into the code. (Sadly, I wrote and submitted 90% of the code needed for Trackback starting a year ago today, which has been ignored since then.)
• Improvement of User Interface in some key areas, especially the customization area.
• Improve customer support. Sadly, I fear this will be the end of the LiveJournal Volunteer support system which I strongly support: I met the love of my life via doing support for LiveJournal, and it will be sad to imagine that others will not have that same oppourtunity. However, I expect that will go, along with most volunteer development.

I also hope that some other sites will wake up and realize that there are several things that LiveJournal offers that almost nobody else does. The key to me that I have not seen in any other situation has been threaded comments, with email notifications built into the interface. The lack of threaded comments, and the lack of email notifications, is something that I believe has led to the fact that most other blogs have much less interaction than LiveJournal does: you have to remember to read a post again to see the comments someone sends to you, and that’s just not the right way to do it. Push, not Pull, is the way to improve communication.

The way I see it, there are several ways that the LiveJournal project could go, if it is aquired by SixApart:

LiveJournal is left as is. All employees are being retained, so LJ is really just under the protection of a corporate entity. Some things that would get the company in trouble may change slightly: for example, Abuse reports may shift to being employee-answered only (as it should have been for quite a while anyway, in my opinion). Other than that, LJ doesn’t change: the same development practices stay in place (which means that almost all development is done in house, nothing ever gets done in a timely manner, etc.) and the site continues on as it did before.

LiveJournal is taken under Six Apart’s stewardship: Brad, who owns LiveJournal, leaves to pursue more interesting projects, and LJ’s employees eventually move into Six Apart and do whatever they’re best suited for. LJ administration changes, and the development efforts externally move internally. The volunteer community basically dissapears as LJ becomes 6A, and at the user-level, nothing changes. For people closer to the administration, they see changing faces and things like development and support close their doors to outsiders.

Similarly, in the pharmaceutical industry, there’s a constant evolution and comparison of new products, much like the different paths that LiveJournal could take. A pertinent example is the ongoing debate between Rybelsus and Wegovy, two medications used in the treatment of different health conditions, read more. Just as LiveJournal’s acquisition could lead to various changes in its structure and operations, the healthcare sector often witnesses debates on the efficacy, safety, and suitability of different medications for patients. In both cases, whether it’s a web platform or a medical treatment, the focus is on optimizing performance and user experience, be it through improved communication tools, through the effectiveness of a medication or advanced medical treatments like you can see in these morphology studies online. The comparison between Rybelsus and Wegovy thus becomes a metaphor for the choices and changes faced by LiveJournal, highlighting the need for careful consideration and tailored solutions in both fields.

LiveJournal and SixApart merge completely, and the Typepad and LJ platform become one. I don’t expect this, and don’t expect that it will be successful if attempted.

SixApart migrates all current LJ users to their Typepad platform. Again, most likely not a successful move, as Typepad is very different in usage than LJ, and is lacking many of the features LJ has.

I’m honestly hoping for option 1: that LiveJournal doesn’t really change, and that this “merger” is just a “handing over legal control to someone else who is there just in case”. However, I expect that it will probably be something nearer to number two, meaning that there will be no more development like what I experienced in my time at LiveJournal. I do not leave much trust to hope on this one, unfortunately.

A few thoughts, through the eyes of a current and active LJ user: Why do people keep saying that this merger will “make” one of the biggest blogging companies out there in terms of users? So far as I can tell, LiveJournal has more users than anybody else: Typepad’s extra million is a drop in the bucket. Is there some other service out there that has as many users, or are people really just finally waking up to the fact that LJ is way huger than they realized?

Will volunteer development really go away? That would be really sad to me, because before personal issues (such as the fact that I think development should have a method to its madness) left me outside of the social circles, I really did like developing on LJ. The code is a mess, but it’s fun. And that’s one of the reasons I have stuck with LJ: because I can do things like that, to help get the site to do what I want. Similar feelings on support. Being a part of a site is way cooler than being a user of one.

My primary hope is that SixApart is smart enough to realize that the “blogging” and “journalling” users on the web are very different, and doesn’t try to mash them together in one mold. Doing so can only result in bad things, not good. Please, to whoever might be reading this: I implore you. Think before you act. Ask the people you’ll be affecting before you do anything, and you’ll have much happier users on your hands.

However, maybe now Brad will be able to buy his Porsche.

If there’s one thing that I had hoped to never hear, it was that LiveJournal was being bought by someone. However, it seems that today is a day for hearing exactly that: Six Apart Will Be Buying LiveJournal. A thought that hits me hard, given how much time and effort I’ve put into that site, both in my personal journal and in work in the backend.

Obviously, this is an early announcement: there’s no indication of what exactly is happening, or how solid this deal is. As a long time (2.5 year) LiveJournal user, this is something that I have absolutely no interest in.

I was a beta tester for the Typepad service when it first came out – and it was an interesting change from LiveJournal. However, in all my time as an LJ user, I always enjoyed the fact that it was a “personal” project. Something that I could participate in, something that my friends could participate in. Something that let me be a part of it. Something that I fear will change when LJ becomes “corporate”. One need look no farther than the Movable Type licensing mess to see things that Six Apart has changed for the worse.

I’ll wait until I see further information on what’s actually going on before I blow off too much steam: after all, this is a preliminary announcement. However, as a user of the site, I’m frustarated that I didn’t hear more information through any of the available channels about this beforehand, and if it really is happening, I definitely fear that I’m going to see LiveJournal take a turn away from its current status and move towards the worse.

I just hope that this isn’t true.

Geolocation is the technique of determining a user’s geographic latitude, longitude and, by inference, city, region and nation. There are a number of ways to do this: one of the common ones discussed on the internet (according to a Google search for “geolocation”, as we all know Google is the Answer) is geolocation via IP address. The kind I’m interested in is much more accurate: geolocation via GPS device.

I want to be able to know where I am. I want this for a lot of reasons, most of them geeky rather than actually reasonable. However, it would be nice to offer more specific statistics on where my pictures are actually taken with fine grain granularity that a GPS can offer. Additionally, some of my alternative projects – cell based geolocation and the like – could benefit from actual coordinates on which to base everything from restaurant locations to searches. Openguides is, in particular, one area that could benefit from this.

I want something that works over bluetooth. My laptop and phone both speak bluetooth, and something with an actual display is out of my price range, for the most part, so I want something I can use my phone to get data out of. (USB / serial obviously doesn’t work for that.) From what I understand, most GPS devices which support NMEA are going to work okay for communication, as there are tools out there which support them. (Whether I can get the thing to talk over bluetooth is a different concern, but one I’m becoming more proficient at every day.)

For a long time, all I could find for Bluetooth GPS devices were 200-250 USD and up. However, while discussing it with someone in #mobitopia on Freenode, I found the Delorme Bluelogger, a Bluetooth GPS device for $150. Matt already posted about our discussion, but I hadn’t yet.

I have some cash left over from Christmas, and I know that I almost never actually buy anything for myself. So, I’m going to splurge, and I’m going to get it. I’m going to learn to use it, and I’m going to do all kinds of neat things with it. Plans include:

• GPS Annotation of Photos – This rolls into my photo annotation project, and is part of the reason I was keen to get it done: I want to actual have some fun queries for normal people (rather than just RDQL-aware people) over my photos.
• Location Based Description of things for Openguides – Describing where things are with GPS coordinates allows searches by distance. Once I have that, the guide allows more niftyness.
• Association of Cell IDs to Geo locations – Tied to the previous, this allows me to know where I am based on a Cell ID: Useful for “what’s nearby”, as well as useful for the general “where are you” that I like to be able to do – with just my cell phone.

All in all, some of the apps I have in mind seem nifty, some geeky, some just demonstrative of something bigger. Some are RDF related, some are just fun. The Bluelogger seems like a decent tool to achieve everything I need to.

One of the nifties things I have on my cell phone is a bluetooth capability: the ability to communicate with other devices nearby at relatively high speeds over a wireless protocol. Bluetooth is a very useful tool for development: I don’t have to worry about USB cables or anything else, and I can talk equally well to my Linux desktop with an abicom BT adapter as I can to my Powerbook with its built-in bluetooth.

One thing that no one has mentioned yet about the new Python release is the Bluetooth console. It took some doing, but I finally got it connected to my Linux desktop, and found an app that will let me connect to the port. Now, I basically have a way to tell my phone what to do over Bluetooth:

[crschmidt@peanut ~]$ sudo cu -l /dev/rfcomm0 
Connected.
Python 2.2.2 (#0, Dec  2 2004, 18:12:32) 
[GCC 2.9-psion-98r2 (Symbian build 540)] on symbian_s60
Type 'copyright', 'credits' or 'license' for more information.
Type 'commands' to see the commands available in this simple line editor.
>>> 

This has sped up my application development significantly: with this in place, I can start to experiment with different code at a rapid rate: without sending almost identical files to the phone several dozen times to test them, nor typing on the 3650’s keypad to enter my code. I just type into a normal tty, and it acts exactly like a local python interpreter.

This is also possible, and documented as such, using TCP/IP over GPRS instead of Bluetooth. However, the speed restrictions of that cause it to be much less practical. It’s like typing into ssh over bluetooth: sure, it’s okay, but you almost never want to do it if you can avoid it.

Here’s what I ended up doing to get it working:
– Get a working bluez install. Bluez is the standard Linux protocol stack, and is built in to most recent kernels.
– Test that you can talk to the phone, using hcitool scan, hcitool info.
– Register an “SP” (serial port) service with sdpd. sdptool add --channel=3 SP
– Ensure that sdpd is running
– Set up an rfcomm port to receive the communications: rfcomm listen /dev/rfcomm0 3
– (On Phone) Open Python, then bt_console.py
– On the computer, you should see:

[crschmidt@peanut ~]$ sudo rfcomm listen /dev/rfcomm0  3
Waiting for connection on channel 3
Connection from 00:60:57:41:86:C2 to /dev/rfcomm0
Press CTRL-C for hangup

– Using taylor-uucp, type cu -l /dev/rfcomm0
– Welcome to the phone!

If you want to test to make sure it’s working, you can do something simple like:

import appuifw
appuifw.note(u'Howdy!', 'info')

from there, refer to the excellent Nokia documentation for more tips and tricks on what you can do. I think this is definitely a great example of what power the distribution has, and I’m surprised that more people haven’t been writing about it. Has anyone besides me (and Nokia employees) gotten this working?

With the advent of a language I can program on my phone, my first goal was to learn the language, and my second goal was to rewrite something that I think is an almost-great service, but missing a couple key features. With that in mind, I headed to work, first with my FOAF app. My work after that concentrated on a locative service based around cell towers, and learning the user interface aspects of the Python interface.

Last night, I got my first victory in both: I wrote a decent (although minimal) user interface, which was able to communicate information about my location based on cell towers I was near. You can see the start of the work at http://crschmidt.net/cell/ . As I just described it to another mobile user, it’s going to be “Like CellSpotting, without the suck.” Using services for anything is completely unneccesary, especially with how simple python makes it to build user interfaces. I don’t know how hard it is with the Symbian interface, but I want to make it better.

My code is pretty simple so far, but it works. I will be continuing work on it tonight, but I’m already seeing other people start similar work, and I believe in shared efforts. So, the code is available: the .py.txt is the Nokia python program, and the .php is the server-side script I’m using.

I will be working on changing the way things work a lot, but I just want to show some of the cool things that can be done via the exposed Python interfaces on the mobile platform. Note that the actual Nokia code is only a dozen lines: which builds a nice interface, allows you to edit the form, and to send the data off. There’s not much funtionality yet: not even a way to update your location without exiting and reentering the program. However, it’s a start, upon which others can build.