Flash app dynamically generates charts based on XML formated data or values in a PHP array.
XML/SWF Charts is a simple, yet powerful tool to create attractive web charts and graphs from dynamic XML data. Create an XML source to describe a chart, then pass it to this tool’s flash file to generate the chart. The same tool also accepts PHP sources. XML/SWF Charts makes the best of both the XML and SWF worlds. XML provides flexible data generation, and Flash provides the best graphic quality.
I’m off visiting the good folks at Pepper today. I’ll update this post with photos as soon as they’re available, then look for a pair of posts about how the hardware/software works and what I’d like to do with it later. Until then, here are some related posts: Ultra Portable Computing, Pepper Pad 2, and […] » about 100 words
MIRTs turn red lights green, but merely having one will probably get you in a pile of trouble. More info at i-hacked.com{#176}.
Ross Rubin at Engadget just alerted me to Peerflix
…which can be described on a basic level as eBay meets Netflix. Peerflix resembles many online DVD stores, but it neither rents nor sells DVDs. Rather, it depends on a community of users willing to trade DVDs they have for DVDs they want. There are no subscription fees. Peerflix charges a 99-cent transaction fee and senders are responsible for the postage charge of 37 cents for the mailers that the company distributes. Behold the $1.36 DVD.
Google engineers have got the moon on their minds lately. We all got a laugh at their April Fools Day lunar hosting and research center job opening, but they’ve done themselves one better and several points more serious with Google Moon. Sure, it’s in celebration of the first lunar landing 36 years ago today, but if they’re so fixated on the moon, why not sponsor a space competition?
It would reasonably appear that here in the US, there’s only one map site: good ol’ Google. But until Google adds maps for countries other than the US, Canada, and UK, the rest of the world will have to look elsewhere. Enter the UK competitor: Multimap.com has been serving the world outside the bubble since 1996. From their self description:
Key features include street-level maps of the United Kingdom, Europe, and the US; road maps of the world; door-to-door travel directions; aerial photographs; and local information.
In short, it’s probably the best place to point any random set of coordinates. Example: my story about the Chernobyl tour should probably have included this street map of the region. (Yes, Google will now give me a low resolution satellite photo of the reactor, but photos and maps offer different value for different uses.)
My only complaint is that the service lacks the AJAX features that make Google Maps so great. But that might be changing. A post at The Map Room tells of a new feature for UK regions: a map overlay follows the mouse on aerial photos. Take a look at this example. Nice trick, eh?
Jenny Levine, over at The Shifted Librarian, is telling the latest chapter in her long-running struggle with DRM. Now, I’ve installed a lot of Windows software in my day, so I feel pretty confident in my ability to double-click on an installation file. However, when I try to install [Yahoo Music Engine], I get three […] » about 300 words
[[pageindex]]UPDATE: shout outs to Zach, Cliff, Justin, and Thomas who’ve submitted bug reports. Their feedback has been rolled in to the B4 July 20 release, available now (look for the link below). This is likely the last release before the code gets bundled into bsuite (more details on that later). Changes This documentation supersedes any […] » about 1100 words
Search Engine Watch did a story about how to use Google and Amazon’s tools to search full-text content inside books.
The gist? when you can get to the tools and where they’ve got content, it does a lot to make books as accessible and open as electronic content.
Sort of related: I’ve spoken of Google Print before and there’s more in the Libraries and Networked Information category.
Jenny Levine is talking about an example of The Perfect Library Blog over at The Shifted Librarian.
The posts are written in the first person and in a conversational tone, with the author’s first name to help stress the people in the library. The staff isn’t afraid to note problems with the new catalog, the web site, or anything else. Full transparency — nice. You can feel the level of trust building online. They respond to every comment that needs it, whether it’s a criticism, question, or suggestion. And some of the comments are fantastic. Users are even helping debug the new catalog.
Jenny quotes some examples, go look.
The MAKE: podcast pointed me to gumstix — really small computers built for hacking. Cool.
From O’Grady’s PowerPage{#14723}:
I have no interest in true hacking (i.e. rummaging through people’s private junk) although viewing random unprotected IP cameras around the world in public places and controlling their panning and zoom functions is kind of mind-blowing. There are a ton of fun GHacks out there – like spelling out words in pictures using Google image search, and the Google poetry generator, or the news map generator etc. Check out more than a dozen Google Hacks here.
Sort of related: put an “&btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky” at the end of your query URL to invoke Google’s “I’m feeling lucky” option. This is incredibly useful when using Google to search WorldCat, like this.
Old news from Gizmodo and Wi-Fi Networking News (quoting WiFi NN):
Skyhook has assembled a database of information about 1.5 million access points across 25 major cities in the U.S. by driving every street in every city. Their software records multiple data points per sample for directionality. Fire up their software on a laptop, and it compares the Wi-Fi information it sees with what’s in the Skyhook database, popping out a latitude and longitude within 20 to 40 meters.
Also geolocation related: Monopoly Live: London style.
I’ve been talking about it a lot lately, most recently in a comment at LibDev. In the old world, information companies could create value by limiting access to their content. Most of us have so internalized this scarcity = value theory that we do little more than grumble about the New York Times’ authwall or […] » about 400 words
Stealing from Corante/Copyfight:
It’s a short, one-sentence blog post + a link, à la Kottke remainders. [It’s] to share links to articles, resources, and websites of interest that do not necessarily require paragraphs of context or analysis. Enjoy!
Solar charging backpacks: Juice Bags (news), Voltaic Solar Backpack (news). And, solar iPod charger: Solio (news, news).
I went looking for an old file the other day. As it turns out, the file was from 12 years ago, but that doesn’t seem so long ago now. Anyway, I was amused to find how most of my images from that time were TIFFs instead of JPEGs. Thankfully, TIFFs are well supported now, but […] » about 300 words
Ken (I wish he had a blog to link to) pointed out Bloggers Need Not Apply in the Chronicle Of Higher Ed over the weekend. The story is to some a highly cautionary tale: A candidate’s blog is more accessible to the search committee than most forms of scholarly output. It can be hard to […] » about 500 words
Other than a bit of head scratching after the announcement in June, I’ve been quiet about Apple’s switch to Intel processors. Now, ArsTechnica‘s Jon “Hannibal” Stokes has written some of the most intelligent material I’ve seen since. How’s it work? Hannibal thinks Apple’s relationship with IBM soured to the point where they refused to play […] » about 100 words
Napster — the legal, reincarnated music download site — essentially invented the concept of incumbent campus download services. They loudly touted deals with schools “anxious” to stop the p2p music sharing problem. Trouble is, according to this story at The Reg, it’s not working well. A survey at one client university paints a sad picture: […] » about 200 words
I’ve been looking seriously at metasearch/federated search products for libraries recently. After a lot of reading and a few demos I’ve got some complaints. I’m surprised how vendors, even now, devote so much time demonstrating patron features that are neither used nor appreciated by any patrons without an MLS. Recent lessons (one, two, three) should […] » about 500 words
UPDATE: bstat has been updated. bStat is a hit and search term stats tracking plugin for WordPress. In addition to reporting lists of popular stories and popular search terms, it will report recent comments and a unique “pulse” graph showing the activity for a story or the entire blog over time. The documentation for the […] » about 300 words
UPDATE: bstat has been updated. Beta 2 never went public. This is beta 3. Changes This documentation supersedes any previous documentation. The bstat_pulse() function has been improved and now uses your CSS for appearance. Call bstat_pulse_style() to add my default styles inline if you don’t want to modify your CSS. Also, bstat_pulse() now has two […] » about 1200 words
My dad, who’s called Florida home for quite a while now, emailed me the following about goings on there: The big news here is the struggle to prevent Volusia County adopting the the Diebold touch screen ballot machines. They are bad news, because these Diebold machines do not leave a paper trail and so a […] » about 700 words
We don’t need to hack Google Maps anymore. Now that Google has released a public maps API, we can make more reliable map-dependent apps (which will now have better browser compatibility, thank you). Within a few minutes of signing up for a maps API key I had put together the following of the Nevada Test Site Tour.
Yeah, click the satellite button, scroll, zoom… It’s real.
The API is all JavaScript, but I use a bit of PHP to iterate through an array of points and generate the code that puts the lines and pins on the map.
The most frustrating development with the Google Maps API is that each developer key is limited to a certain hostname and directory. It’s sensitive to things like “maisonbisson.com” instead of “maisonbisson.com” or “maisonbisson.com/post/10594” instead of “maisonbisson.com/blog/” . That’s why this is loading in an iframe.
Thanks to The Unofficial Google Weblog for the tip that the API was released yesterday. As a minor coincidence, Yahoo! also released their maps API this week. Damn.