I first emailed their tech support address. I asked if I could just use PPP on a Mac. This is the response I got:

“Regarding your concern, we suggest you to reload PeoplePal Toolbar.”

I wrote back saying I just wanted to know about PPP and Mac support. I got this back:

Regarding your concern, we would suggest you to first connect to PeoplePC Online service using the PeoplePC dialer and then try accessing Internet explorer and Outlook Express.

That route was clearly a dead-end. I decided to just try it. First, I tracked down a local access number. You get a list here. (I had erroneously been looking for them in the support documentation.)

The rest turns out to be remarkably simple. Your username is simply your PeoplePC email address (username@peoplepc.com) and your account password.

With these three items in hand, PPP dial-up works flawlessly.

That red line on the right of this photo is a single strand of fiber optic cable…

It has the same bandwidth capacity as all these bundles of copper:

Feed43 is the first to impress me. It is fairly powerful allowing you to match any number of different elements on a page and then create a custom template for output. The interface is also excellent. You do need to read the documentation, but after about 10 minutes I was creating RSS feeds to my exact needs.

The Feed43 developer is committed to keeping the service free and make money by having a premium service with extra features. The only down sides that I’ve run into so far is that the feed only gets updated every 6 hours which his fine for pages that rarely change, but much too infrequent for pages that get updated constantly throughout the day. The regular expression matching is also a bit limiting. Instead of full regex support, it has reduced matching to a handful of tags. So far, I’ve been able to make it work, but on nastier pages that need complex matching, I suspect youd’ run into a dead end. For instance, I don’t how it deals with greedy matching.

Here’s a few screenshots of the process to make a feed of the Brattleboro Reformer front page news headlines:

Step One: Enter a URL

Step Two: Write the (ir)regular expression to match your elements (title, link, description)

Step Three: Extract your elements and verify you’re getting what you expected.

Step Four: Make an output template. This one is quite simple, but you can get as fancy as you wish… putting multiple matched elements in the title, link or description.

Step Five: Preview your handywork. Optionally give the feed a pretty name, password protect it, etc.

Step Six: Subscribe in your feed reader of choice.

The solution of embedding the original filename in the Exif data won’t work anyway since I can’t easily add the Exif tag to the photos I’ve already uploaded to Flickr.  So it looks like a regular Flickr tag will be the best solution for now.  While it is a little verbose, I think I’ll tag them with the above formatting for easier parsing and clarity.

By the way, the Flickr Creative Commons page was finally fixed a couple days ago.

It is going to be a mult-phase process. So far, in the past couple days I’ve migrated over 6500 photos in over 300 albums from gallery to Flickr using the gallery2flickr script. It fails to export the album title and description, so I had to take care of that with my own combination of scripts, Flickr API, and some kludgy TextWrangler find and replace.

One thing I haven’t taken care of yet is addressing the fact that when you upload an image to flickr, the original file name gets blown away. I can understand them changing the name so that all photos follow a convention, while avoiding name collisions, but there really should be a metadata field accessible via the public API that stores the original filename. My planned solution is to add a tag for each photo in the form of, “original_filename_IMG_123.jpg”, where IMG_123.jpg is the original filename. Another alternative that I haven’t looked at is the possiblity of stuffing the original filename in the EXIF data and seeing if it is maintained. I’ve never played enough the EXIF to know how straight forward that is.

The next phase, and the key to my even considering using Flickr is to use the Flickr API to put the photos on redjar.org, hopefully without the viewer even really knowing that they are hosted by Flickr (beyond the API requirement that there be a link back to the photo on Flickr).

I’ve looked at a couple projects that do just this including f*gallery (no CMS dependencies but also not very advanced and not being actively developed), FAlbum (Wordpress plugin) and this Flickr module for “CMS Made Simple” which is the closest to what I’m after, but of course is tied to “CMS Made Simple”. However, none of them go quite far enough. I don’t even want the image src to use flickr.com, I still want it to be a redjar.org URL. Why? Because I am absolutely sure, that in a few years, the next Flickr will come along that will make Flickr’s offering look rediculous, and I’ll want to switch, hopefully without breaking URL’s.

By the way… strangely, after my Flickr account reached 100% of the 2 GB per month upload limit, my uploads just kept chugging along. Weird, but I’m not complaining.

For many months now, maybe I even have a blog post about it, I’ve been wanting a web application that would basically be Filemaker for the web, combined with Wiki like collaboration and versioning. Everyone I’ve tried to explain this to looks at me funny. Either because it is just a stupid idea, or because people don’t see the brilliance of the concept. I think I’ve finally convinced Seth it is a good idea, but he has his own brilliant ideas to spend his non-existent free time on.

Somewhat encouraging is that there seem to be a couple projects circling the idea, but don’t quite get what I’m after.

What am I after? How about an example. Imagine you want to build a collaborative dictionary where anyone could add new entries, or edit existing entries. You could take the Wiktionary approach by using pure wiki software. This has the benefit of ease of collaboration and every edit is saved so you can revert vandalism etc. However, what if you wanted to have a clean xml version of the data so that you could use the dictionary from other outside applications? Each entry is just a big blog. Pulling out the distinct elements (word, definition, pronunciation, etc.) is not clean.

The alternative implementation is an Urban Dictionary route. Building a custom application from scratch. The downside to this approach is that there is a bunch of coding infrastructure that must be done. In addition, making the app have flexible access control and extensive versioning make the coding much more complicated.

My proposed solution is a web app that allows a user, through a web browser, to create a new database, define columns, types etc. (basically PHPmyAdmin). Then define access control roles (ex. anyone can add a new entry, or edit old entries) with all revisions saved. Finally they can define views/layouts. So they can provide a HTML template and a stripped down XML view.

Other possible uses?:

• Television and Radio schedules
• An open collaborative Internet Movie Database or CD database.
• Database of geo-locations
• Events calendar
• A plain old Wiki
• To-do lists

No programming required. Obviously it is a very complicated application, but all the pieces exist on their own. Just need to put the following projects in a blender:

• WikiDB
• MediaWiki
• phpMyAdmin
• base.google.com
• WikiCalc
• Ning

One interesting thing that I came across in the photos themselves is the vehicle that was used to take the store front photos (see photo). It appears to be nothing more than an SUV with a video camera on top. The photos are used in Amazon’s A9 map. I find them useless in most cases. The photos are head-on and very tight which gives you a very limited view of the building. They really should taking the photo at an angle and with a wider angle lens. All that trouble they’ve gone through, you’d think they’d try to do it right.

Joshua started his, “presentation” by, “well, I didn’t prepare anything” which is never a good sign. From there is was pretty much all question and answer which is good, except the questions from such gatherings are often a mixed bag.

David Weinberger has a write up about the session.

Why does the project not ever seem to mention Project Gutenberg and the sub project Distributed Proofreaders. I understand that the IA project is different in many ways, but it is a real bummer that PG doesn’t get props, and isn’t involved in the project. I would imagine they could provide some valuable insight, and with Distributed Proofreaders, some valuable resources.

My other thought is one that has been rattling around in my head for a while. Internet Archive is a incredibly cool project. Kahle’s vision is to build a modern day Library of Alexandria to preserve important cultural knowledge. In his presentations he always mentions the need to store the data in multiple locations around the world to avoid the library of Alexandria’s fate (destroyed by means that are not quite clear). It turns out that culturally significant works are already being preserved, and in not just one place, but 10’s of thousands of copies all over the globe. Is it librarians doing this work? Nope, it is the “pirates”. If any work has significant cultural value, pirates will make copies. In a x hundred years when the IA is a faint memory, researchers will come across some pirates ancient hard drive full of DivX movies. And of course, the pirates have a huge advantage over Libraries, Internet Archive, Google print, etc. They don’t have to go through the politics and details of copyright and the DMCA.

To add context, it would be cool to use the link provided by populicio.us, grab the linked page and include the actual page content in a derivative RSS feed.

After a lot of conflicting opinions, I’m fairly certain that this service only uses my allocated monthly minutes. When I logged into Verizon Wireless, my account says that “National Access” is enabled. I didn’t pay anything extra for it.

There are many good instructions on the Web, I used a recent how-to from Engadet. But here is my basic set-up (running Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger) with Verizon Wireless, a Samsung A670 phone in the greater Boston area. My phone has a “1X” icon in the upper right which I think is important for connecting at the higher speed.

• get USB Data cable ($22 from Radio Shack, I bought it locally so I could just bring it back if it didn’t work)
• connected phone to Powerbook with the cable. Initially nothing happened. After turning the phone off and back on and quiting the system preferences it appeared.
• Set the phone up as a new network device.
• Set the Modem type to “Verizon Support (PC 55220)”. First I tried the Verizon_Wireless_STD_Driver which I downloaded from the web as instructed from the directions I was following. However, the modem would connect and then immediately disconnect. The Verizon Support driver was included with OS 10.4
• Set the Account Name to: myphonenumber@vzw3g.com
• Set the password to: vzw
• Set the Telephone number to: #777
• Connect.

The obvious downside is that Corin and I only have 500 daytime minutes to share each month. No where near enough if I were to connect every day on the commuter train to and from work. However, Verizon allows unlimited calling minutes to other Verizon phones, AND they provide additional phone line for $10 a month. I’m curious if it is possible to get another mobile phone, connect it to my Internet connected server at home. Then, instead of using Verizon as the ISP, dial the other cell phone from my laptop, and connect to the Internet through my home cable connection. This would allow unlimited internet connectivity.

A couple issues have already sprung to mind. How to get the recieving phone to pick up (can the OS control this?) and the other is keeping the phone charged. I was surprised to see that the USB cable I got does not charge the phone when connected to the Powerbook.

Direcway isn’t quite out of my life forever yet. I have to cancel the service. Because their service sucks so bad, they require customers to enter a 15 month service agreement. I’ll be canceling before 15 months has elapsed which means a lovely $300 fine.

My morning commute on the train is also making Verizon’s EVDO service look very appealing. But even after they dropped the price from $80 a month to $60, it is still too price considering I’d only be using it for an hour a day. I’m keeping my eye open for people on the train that are regulars and always have their laptop out. Then thinking of proposing that we split the cost and we set up an adhoc network with the EVDO laptop sharing the network.

A couple days ago I actually sat next to a business man who pulled out a laptop, then pulled out a PCMCIA card with an antenna sticking out of it. I asked him if it was a EVDO card and he said he wasn’t sure. Apparently the IT department had just given it to him that day.

He plugged it in, connected to his office via a VPN, and seemed to have uninterrupted connectivity the whole way home.

Film synopsis:

Blogumentary explores the many ways blogs are affecting our media and politics. Personal political writing is the foundation of our democracy, but mass media has made us into passive consumers instead of active citizens. Blogs return us to our roots and reengage us in democracy.

The film features interviews with Jeff Jarvis, Joe Trippi, Rebecca Blood, David Weinberger, Dan Gillmor, John Hinderaker and many more. The film also explores the personal side of blogging, including a BBC blogger injured in Iraq and a friend’s suicidal blog post. Whatever your familiarity with blogs, Blogumentary offers a fresh and compelling look at how blogs are changing the way we communicate.

Seth has also been wanting to try rails, so we purchased Agile Web Development with Rails. Now we just need the time to read up and try it out. I got it installed on my Powerbook and started playing with it this weekend. I only managed a couple hours, but so far it looks like a refreshing way to develop web apps.

Two weeks later, the application has been released, but I haven’t had time to try it myself. Outlining isn’t exactly glamorous and the OPML editor isn’t very polished yet, but it looks useful for several types of applications.