Category Archives: Technology

Where Do They Find The Time?

April 30, 2008 – 11:21 am

Clay Shirky recently posted a transcript of his Web 2.0 Expo keynote.
…If you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project — every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in — that represents something like the cumulation of 100 [...]

By Casey | Also posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Politics & Controversy | Comments (0)



ROFLcon Turns Me On To Ustream.TV

April 29, 2008 – 11:07 am

I was amused to learn Nathan was officially at ROFLcon on behalf of his library. I wasn’t representing my work and wasn’t on the lookout for work-related tools, but I found some anyway.
Universities have been anxious to get into live video casting for a while. Our first effort eventually became PBS (NET, ETS and PBS [...]

By Casey | Comments (2)

Anglia Ruskin University Faces Criticism 2.0

April 28, 2008 – 11:17 am

Anglia Ruskin University is in Cambridge, but it’s not Cambridge University. It’s likely that none of us would even know of Anglia Ruskin’s existence if it wasn’t for Naomi Sugai, but she’s not interested in promoting the school.
She’s got complaints, she’s fed up, and she’s taking her case to YouTube.
Well, she took her case to [...]

By Casey | Also posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Politics & Controversy | Comments (0)

2002 Honda Civic iPod/iPhone Install

April 27, 2008 – 6:30 pm

Last weekend, while I was putting an iPod interface into my Scion I did the same thing for my 2002 Honda Civic. Using Ben Johnson’s story as a guide, I bought a PIE HON98-AUX interface and dove in.
Aside from tools (screwdrivers and 8 and 10mm sockets), you’ll need:

The interface adapter
Audio wiring — I used a [...]

By Casey | Also posted in Planes, Trains, & Automobiles | Comments (0)

2004 Scion xB iPod/iPhone Install

April 21, 2008 – 8:55 am

Based on this story about an iPod interface install I purchased a PIE TOY03-AUX aux input adapter so I could finally listen to my iPhone without using the lousy FM transmitter. Sure, I coulda bought a new car, as the manufacturers seem to have finally come to their senses and started including such inputs, but [...]

By Casey | Also posted in Planes, Trains, & Automobiles | Comments (3)



My Flickr Complaint

April 18, 2008 – 10:24 am

Some whine about movies on Flickr, others about the switch to Yahoo IDs, I simply want better rendering of transparent PNGs as JPGs.

By Casey | Also posted in Dispatches | Comments (0)

Flickr Adds Video

April 14, 2008 – 8:22 am

I asked for it in 2004, before YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, or Revver appeared on the scene, and before MySpace and Facebook added video sharing as a feature. Four years later they finally added it. Neil Rickards should get credit for creating the theme of “long photos” (Neil called them “moving photos”). And anybody who was [...]

By Casey | Also posted in Dispatches | Comments (2)

Identity Management Going Commodity?

April 7, 2008 – 8:56 pm

Atlassian’s Crowd SSO and IdM solution has the kind of online pricing you’d expect for word processing software. I don’t know if it’s any good, but it’s a sign that identity management getting boring.

By Casey | Also posted in Dispatches | Comments (1)

Why Can’t I Re-Check Spam With Akismet & WordPress 2.5? (Workaround)

April 7, 2008 – 6:18 am

I recently installed WordPress 2.5 and among the changes I noticed was a loss of Akismet’s ?Recheck Spam? button (or something like that. It didn’t seem like such a problem at the time, but then I got swamped with so much trackback and comment spam that the flood DOS‘d my server. I had to disable [...]

By Casey | Comments (0)

SWIFT: Another Ham Handed Attempt At Social Networking

April 3, 2008 – 9:11 am

All yesterday and this morning I’ve been seeing tweets about SWIFT, so I finally googled it to see what it was about. The service promises to help organize conferences in some new 2.0 way, but it looks to be about as preposterous a social network as WalMart’s aborted 2006 attempt at copying MySpace.
There are some [...]

By Casey | Also posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Politics & Controversy | Comments (0)

WordPress 2.5 Out, MaisonBisson Upgraded

March 30, 2008 – 1:38 am

WordPress 2.5 is out (and the WordPress site got a facelift), and I’ve already upgraded MaisonBisson using SVN. The changes are exciting, and seem to reflect a tradition that’s developing in WordPress of delivering some really revolutionary features in the x.5 release.
The loss of file-based object caching was a bit of a problem, as my [...]

By Casey | Comments (2)

Interesting WordPress Plugins

March 27, 2008 – 6:45 am

WP Contact Manager turns WordPress into a contact manager. It’s a combination of theme and plugins (including Custom Write Panel) that allows you to enter and manage contacts as blog posts (familiar, eh?). Use Members Only to secure access.
TDO Mini Forms ?allows you to add highly customisable forms to your website that allows non-registered [...]

By Casey | Also posted in Dispatches | Comments (0)

Google PageRank Is/Is Not/Is All Machine Generated

March 17, 2008 – 10:49 am

Google’s always been in the awkward position of claiming that PageRank is algorithmic, not editorial, while also explaining that they’re constantly adjusting their algorithms to ensure that PageRank reflects editorial judgments of quality. Here’s a peek inside the machine.

By Casey | Also posted in Dispatches, Libraries & Networked Information | Comments (1)

Geographic Tweeting

March 10, 2008 – 7:42 pm

twittervision and twittermap show new tweets wherever they appear on the map, TwitterWhere let’s you follow tweets at a specific location, and Ask500People has nothing to do with Twitter but does show you global opinion. Live. While you watch (so they say, anyway).

By Casey | Also posted in Dispatches | Comments (0)

WordPress 2.5 Offers Built-In Gravatar Support

March 6, 2008 – 11:48 am

Nobody doubted that full Gravatar support would make it into WordPress eventually. Weblog Tools Collection shows what they look like, how they’re managed, and how theme designers can implement them.

By Casey | Also posted in Dispatches | Comments (0)