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Twitter-OAuth-PHP

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 01:56:12 -0500

This documentation is for TwitterOAuth library verision 0.1.x.
If you are using trunk (0.2.x) these instructions will be wrong!

Try it out live: http://twitter.abrah.am

Twitter OAuth is in beta and could change at any time. Feel free to contact me with bug/questions. A full TwitterOAuth lib will be released soon. Currently the code is hacked together and should not be used in production without proper testing.

Index

Definitions

Consumer: the application you are building. registered with twitter. Sometimes referred to as application

User: the user using your application.
Token: there are several different sets of tokens usually in key/secret pairs.
Consumer token: the token pair Twitter gives you when you register an application.
Request token: the first token pair Twitter returns. used to build an authorize URL used to request the access token.
Access token: unique to user. Used to access users data.

Get the code

Pull code from http://github.com/abraham/twitteroauth

git clone git://github.com/abraham/twitteroauth.git

Process overview

This is a very simplistic overview of authenticating with Twitter's OAuth.

Build TwitterOAuth object.
Request tokens from twitter.
Build authorize URL.
Send user to Twitter's authorize URL.
Get access tokens from twitter.
Rebuild TwitterOAuth object.
Query Twitter API with new access tokens.

Process

For this example we will be using the the index.php from the example folder and it will be located in the web root.

public/index.php
public/twitteroauth/

Go to https://twitter.com/oauth_clients and register a new application. Fill out what the form. For a callback URL we will be using http://example.com/index.php. Once registered you will get a consumer key and a consumer secret. Those go in index.php

Now we create a TwitterOAuth object. The class constructor chooses HMAC-SHA1 as the signature method, and builds a OAuthConsumer object with the app consumer key/secret.

$to = new TwitterOAuth($consumer_key, $consumer_secret);

With that object we use curl to request a token from twitter. The API URL we hit is https://twitter.com/oauth/request_token. getRequestToken() pulls the tokens from twitter, parses it into an array, and creates a new OAuthConsumer object.

$tok = $to->getRequestToken();

Save the tokens for when the user returns from Twitter.

Set up the authorization URL. This is the URL the user will visit to tell twitter the application can access their data. https://twitter.com/oauth/authorize is used.

$request_link = $to->getAuthorizeURL($token);

Once the user tells twitter yes and returns we request the access tokens. The access tokens can be thought of the users passwords and will be used to authenticate as them for future API calls. https://twitter.com/oauth/access_token is used.

$tok = $to->getAccessToken();

At this point you can check https://twitter.com/account/connections and the application should be listed.

Build a new TwitterOAuth object using consumer key/secret and access key/secret.

$to = new TwitterOAuth($consumer_key, $consumer_secret, $user_access_key, $user_access_secret);

Now to interact with the API as the user to verify their credentials. This should return their profile. You can now save the access key/secret as being associated with the returned user info.

$content = $to->OAuthRequest('https://twitter.com/account/verify_credentials.xml', array(), 'GET');

To send a status update change the API URL and add a key/value array.

$content = $to->OAuthRequest('https://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml', array('status' => 'Test OAuth update. #testoauth'), 'POST');

There you have it. Basic interaction with Twitter's OAuth beta. To run other commands just change the API URL and array() keys/values in the last call.

Links

My website: http://abrah.am
Twitter: http://twitter.com
OAuth: http://oauth.net
Twitter API docs: http://apiwiki.twitter.com
Twitter API discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk
Fire Eagle OAuth docs: http://fireeagle.yahoo.net/developer/documentation/php_walkthru

Tags: twitter access token oauth key

South London's Brixton Village Supports Community-Oriented Businesses

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:30:09 -0500

An initiative in South London has been working to develop a cooperative community atmosphere by uniting small businesses and entrepreneurs with local citizens since October 2009. Utilizing twenty previously unoccupied stalls in the Brixton market, organizers at Space Makers Agency offer young creative-based businesses three months rent-free to simultaneously offer people imaginative new spaces and foster links to the community. Treehugger reports:

[Space Makers Agency] have been working with the local communities, property owners, local authorities, policy-makers and others to create new ways of "of thinking about the spaces in which we live, work and play. Our approach is to start with what is already there: the stories of a place and the people who live there. Then our role is as a catalyst, bringing out the possibilities which were already present in a situation and making connections which might not have been obvious.

Among the shops taking residence in Brixton include vintage clothing stores, a photographer, a childrens puppet show, and a candy store. With a growing number of empty storefronts in a growing number of U.S. cities, a similar investment in community and creative entrepreneurship certainly seems like it could be possible. What metropolis do you think would be a perfect candidate for a Brixton Village-like experiment? Photo by B. Alter via Treehugger

Tags: brixton community businesses local makers

The iPad and publishers: A survey of early reaction

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:42:05 -0500

What really jumped out to me as I looked over the iPad's feature set is that the device is clearly built for media consumption. Movies, music, books, news -- the bread and butter content that keeps iTunes humming. That's good for Apple, obviously, but it also creates an interesting opportunity for publishers. They've got a new distribution mechanism and a new canvas.

With that in mind, I decided to filter the barrage of iPad coverage through a publishing lens. What follows are intriguing ideas culled from all sorts of sources. Most revolve around content applications the iPad may provide.

There's no way I'll catch all the good stuff -- there's just too much out there -- so please use the comments area to post links and commentary that grab your attention, publishing-related and otherwise.

Ebook pricing could get interesting

The iPad's release portends a price-point battle between Apple and Amazon. That's ebook pricing, not hardware.

The Wall Street Journal says Apple is pushing book publishers to set two ebook price points, $12.99 and $14.99, with Apple taking its customary 30 percent cut from any sales. They key word in all this is "set." The big kahuna of ebooks, Amazon, controls its pricing. Most bestsellers are parked at $9.99, which is below what Amazon pays a publisher for a title. Amazon is subsidizing its low price point.

But that's the present. The future is a different matter. The thought is that Amazon is taking a short-term loss on ebooks so it can solidify its position as the dominant channel. Once it owns the ebook market, Amazon can ditch the subsidy and force publishers to renegotiate pricing.

That's the fear, and Apple appears to be playing to it by giving publishers an option: get a measure of pricing control through Apple, or make more with Amazon but pray they don't rewrite the rules later. (Apple could always rewrite rules, too ...)

What's really interesting about this -- and kind of bizarre -- is that the binary Apple-or-Amazon thinking obscures an important point: mobile devices already offer publishers plenty of pricing options.

What about e-reader applications?

Steve Jobs famously quipped a couple of years ago that "people don't read anymore." Well, I guess Apple changed its stance on that one. The new iBooks app -- and accompanying store -- is a big ol' cannonball in the ebook pool.

Early discussion on a back-channel publishing list I follow has focused on how Apple will treat its new ebook competitors. Will established applications, like Stanza and the Kindle app, be removed? Kirk Biglione, co-founder of Medialoper, thinks competitors will remain in Apple's universe. Just don't count on sharing titles across apps:

Look for books to be added as a new media type in the device media library. The other reading apps may be able to co-exist as long as they don't access books stored in that library. So, for example, you probably won't be able to use Stanza to read iBooks. [Note: Kirk gave me permission to post his comments.]

One thing to consider here: Past inquiries from the Federal Communications Commission may soften Apple's competitive instincts. At least for a while.

Of course, FCC heat doesn't preclude Apple from a little friendly rivalry. Digital Trends picked up on the backhanded compliment Jobs gave Amazon during the iPad presentation:

... [Jobs] basically told the online retailer that we'll take it from here.

The reading/viewing experience

Apple has already shown what it's capable of on the music and video front, so I'm curious to see how it handles the book experience. Early word is positive from folks who've had a chance to demo the iPad. Here's Gizmodo's take:

It's an optical illusion, but just seeing the depth of pages makes the iBook app feel more like a book than a Kindle ever did for me. The text is sharp, and while the screen is bright, it doesn't seem to strains the eyesbut time will tell on that.

The iPad is backwards compatible with existing iPhone applications. That seems useful on first blush, but Joshua Topolsky of Engadget called out a big issue with "old" apps:

It's kind of silly looking. A lone app in the center of a black screen.

More to come

I'll be adding to this post in the coming days as more analysis bubbles up. Again, please use the comments to point out interesting or informative links you come across as well.

Tags: apple amazon ipad pricing ebook

How 'The Hidden Brain' Does The Thinking For Us : NPR

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:42:51 -0500

Shared by Kristopher
After making a silly mistake, it's not uncommon for a person to say, "Oops I was on autopilot." In his new book, The Hidden Brain, science writer Shankar Vedantam explains how there's actually a lot of truth to that.

Our brains have two modes, he tells NPR's Steve Inkseep conscious and unconscious, pilot and autopilot and we are constantly switching back and forth between the two.

"The problem arises when we [switch] without our awareness," Vedantam says, "and the autopilot ends up flying the plane, when we should be flying the plane."

The autopilot mode can be useful when we're multitasking, but it can also lead us to make unsupported snap judgments about people in the world around us. Vedantam says that when we interact with people from different backgrounds in high-pressure situations, it's easy to rely unconsciously on heuristics.
'The Hidden Brain' book cover

The Hidden Brain
By Shankar Vedantam
Hardcover, 288 pages
Spiegel & Grau
List price: $26
Read An Excerpt

3-Year-Old Bigots?

Racial categorization begins at an extremely early age. Vedantam cites research from a day-care center in Montreal that found that children as young as 3 linked white faces with positive attributes and black faces with negative attributes.

"Now, these were children who are 3 years old," Vedantam says. "It is especially hard to call them bigots, or to suggest that they are explicitly racially biased or have animosity in their hearts."

Vedantam says the mind is hard-wired to "form associations between people and concepts." But he thinks that the links the children made between particular groups and particular concepts were not biologically based those judgments came from culture and upbringing.

"We tend to think of the conscious messages that we give children as being the most powerful education that we can give them," Vedantam says but the unconscious messages are actually far more influential.

He says that for every 50 times a year a teacher talks about tolerance, there are many hundreds of implicit messages of racial bias that children absorb through culture whether it's television, books or the attitudes of the adults and kids around them.

"And it's these hidden associations that essentially determine what happens in the unconscious minds of these children," Vedantam says.

'Take Back The Controls'

In American society, colorblindness is often held up as the ideal. And though it's a worthy aspiration, Vedantam says it's a goal that isn't rooted in psychological reality.

"Our hidden brains will always recognize people's races, and they will do so from a very, very young age," Vedantam says. "The far better approach is to put race on the table, to ask [children] to unpack the associations that they are learning, to help us shape those associations in more effective ways."

Most of us think of ourselves as being conscious, intentional, deliberate creatures. ... I have become, in some ways, much more humble about my views and much less certain about myself.

- Shankar Vedantam

Going back to the autopilot analogy, Vedantam says it's not a problem that the brain has an autopilot mode as long as you are aware of when it is on. His book, The Hidden Brain, is about how to "take back the controls."

So if the human psyche is just a big constellation of conscious and unconscious cognition which thoughts represent the real you?

"Most of us think of ourselves as being conscious, intentional, deliberate creatures," Vedantam says. "I know that I think of myself that way: I know why I like this movie star, or why I voted for this president, or why I prefer this political party to that."

But doing research for this book changed all that, Vedantam says.

"I have become, in some ways, much more humble about my views and much less certain about myself. And it may well be that the hidden brain is much more in charge of what we do than our conscious mind's intentions."

Science writer Shankar Vedantam says we often function on autopilot without even knowing it. His new book, The Hidden Brain, explores how unconscious biases color our decisions even when we think we are acting rationally.

Tags: vedantam hidden autopilot children brain

80Legs, 50k Computers and a Web Crawler

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 22:03:26 -0500

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

You need a pile-o-data fast and you got nowhere to get it other than surf, bookmark and beg for interns to copy and paste for you. Where do you turn? Your IT department? Your hackery skills and your shared GoDaddy hosting account for bandwidth? Nah.

80Legs is ready to run a couple miles with your pile of data on their shoulders. You get to pick it up and work with it as you see fit.

Did I mention that they are now offering this as a free service? Well, up to a certain point it is free but for the many is plenty of room to get what they're looking for.

80Legs offers a unique service that will crawl the internet on your behalf and gather data from the links that you provide. They then take this unstructured data and make it available for further refinement to the customer.

Their value proposition lies in the ability to deliver this service efficiently and affordably. Like I said earlier, it would be difficult if not impossible for an individual run a service to crawl 100,000 pages quickly. 80Legs is offering this as a free service now and it's all powered by a 50,000 computer network.

The ability to put the data collection into another companies hands allows developers to think about what to do with the data. By freeing up developers more can be done with the data that is returned to them as they have time to think about new algorithms to run across the dataset.

An example of this would be simple search. Developers with more time could work on creating new layers to search that make it more valuable to the end user. Whether it is integrating advanced search functionality or returning results contextually depending on the page that a user is currently searching from.

If you're interested, the free Basic specs are below. Plus and Premium are listed on their blog.

80Legs Basic Plan:

Free to use
Normal crawling speed (up to 1 request/second/domain)
Access to 80legs Web Portal
1 job running at a time
Up to 100K crawled pages per job
Low priority in 80legs job queue
No recurring jobs allowed

[Via VentureBeat]

Ready to Dig WordPress?

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:46:18 -0500

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

If you're just starting out or a WordPress hack from way back, the new book from Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr titled Digging Into WordPress could be a good addition to your shelf.

Coyier and Starr have been plugging away on WordPress installs for a few years and now sharing their intimate knowledge of the blogging platform.

The book comes in two versions spiral bound and PDF. The spiral version looks beautiful and the PDF, if anything like the sample, should please with its colors and page layout.

The real question about this book is the $67 price tag for the spiral bound version. Is it worth it?

Yes, slices of tree with pretty ink aesthetically pleasing. Yes, it will lay completely flat on a surface next to a computer, unlike traditionally bound computer books. No, it won't every question you have about WordPress. I'm not sure anyone or any book could do that.

If I were in the market for a WordPress book I would take a different approach to justify spending the money on this book consulting. Not that I would buy it and become an instant WordPress consultant. Nor should you, unless you're already a Social Media Expert and have it all figured out.

I mean consulting in the sense that you are getting the best that Coyier and Starr have to offer because their names are on the line with this publication. If the content is not good or they don't add value to solve your WordPress conundrums their names will be mud.

This book should be viewed as an insanely cheap consulting session with two guys that really know their stuff and can prove it with their client work. At $67, you're already halving the rate for most WordPress gurus worth the money and getting two for the price of one 24 hours a day.

They're also offering an affiliate program for those interested in helping sell some copies and to put some extra bucks under that mattress. Check it out if you're into that whole affiliate thing.

I have no material connection with the publishers of this book or am a part of their affiliate program. All links are to standard pages. I am basing my opinion on a sample chapter (PDF) that is available from their sales page.

URL Graffiti From Engadget

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:36:42 -0500

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

For those of you unaware, Engadget put on a new face this week and restructured the way stories are found on their site. As part of this new design they began sculpting links with a technique that I'm dubbing URL graffiti. Say what?

They are engaged in a brilliant new system of taggery that shows the maturity of blogs that have thousands of items of content and want to gain the value that they often represent. One method that they have chosen for this is filtering with user chosen tags (graffiti) attached to the end of a tag URL. Example: http://www.engadget.com/tag/att,3g,sony

Why is this brilliant?

It shows a step forward by Engadget and their designers to finding solutions to create value from the long tail. For the public and their own writers there is now an ability to treat all of this content as a reference system. You could also call it a knowledge base, library or archive. Whatever your chosen term, this simple approach to content filtering is hot.

What does it mean?

Access to an entire body of work via multiple tags can begin to yield better search results without forcing a user into a situation where they need to use an advanced search' feature. These are usually blocks of form elements that easily overwhelm a user's sense that they can find what they are looking for with ease and underwhelm them with your information architecture skills.

Take the full example URL above with graffiti as an example then click these three links with varying tag graffiti on the end of them in succession:

http://www.engadget.com/tag/att // All ATT tagged content
http://www.engadget.com/tag/att,3g // All ATT and 3g tagged content
http://www.engadget.com/tag/att,3g,sony // All ATT and 3g and Sony tagged content

As the results wane you are given a better picture of content within Engadget's archive that meets the tag requirements. In this purest form it is advanced search functionality without the mess.

How to use it?

I found this feature because Engadget was already using it in posts. Their writers can use it to create a better picture of previously written content for users that click through. It can also be used by them as a an internal search capability for research on a topic. When you have multiple authors the chances are high that at some point there is another post or a few within the corpus that is similar and a can be used for reference.

In this current iteration this feature for users is a bit limited. Users can tack on their own graffiti to the URL and get results for these topics, but it is more of a command line interaction. It is powerful but not very user-friendly.

How can URL Graffiti from Engadget be improved?

This is a powerful system for content filtering that needs just a few tweaks and can become a ridiculously valuable to the publisher and to users.

Autodiscovery feed added to page
Link to this feed in the top section
Ability to add a .rss or .xml' to query for feed access
Button to change tag search to OR' instead of And' to increase results pool
1. Currently all searches are AND'
2. Ex. ATT and 3g and Sony
3. New would allow ATT or 3g or Sony
Text input box with URL graffiti loaded in it for editing to add new tags
Number of results displayed on page

Below is a comp of some of these changes added into the interface. By no means is it perfect but it is a good start to adding some additional value to users. Click the image to see full size.

For your next client or startup keep this URL graffiti approach in mind as an efficient way to solve content filtering. If it is built in from the beginning you can ensure that you are creating a continued value, even if diminishing, for your content. Let your users throw some graffiti on your work.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

URL Graffiti From Engadget is a post from: TechStartups.com

Tags: advanced search , command line search , engadget , Engadget redesign , engadget tags , Information retrieval , search functionality , taggery , URL graffiti , Usability

Tags: engadget graffiti content url att

WordPress 3.0 Wish List

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:06:29 -0500

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

With the imminent release of WordPress version 2.9 on the horizon and my subsequent lack of excitement, it only seems fitting to put together a wish list for the next version. It is even more fitting since Raanan (@raanan) asked, What's on your wishlist for 3.0 ?

I partially answered that question in the comments with the following:

Semantic integration with Zemanta or OpenCalais
1. This would be like having a librarian with a fancy masters degree in categorizing everything on the planet riding shotgun with you while you write.
WordPress recommended vocabulary for categories
1. This could mirror NYT Open Linked Data RDF or other semantic tools
Image upload and modal window to open in advanced mode for properties control
1. This could be a combo of both tabs but something more powerful from the first time the window opens so that users don't need to perform multiple actions to add padding or custom links to images
Feed only choice for publishing posts
1. This doesn't have to be authenticated and would work by same rules with tags, categories, etc. to syndicate for apps or widgets
2. Imagine being able to use WP as a CMS to manage the data that is delivered to mobile apps on the iPhone, Android, Blackberry or Palm as one standard

In addition to these four I have some more wishes for this list

The return of horizontal navigation to the administration panel or the option to choose vertical left side or horizontal suckerfish style
Integrated gallery function for display in themes
1. Yes, there are plenty of plugins to do this but some of that code like the integration of the fabulous WPTouch mobile theme into central codebase would be huge
WordPress.org installs that allow for gravatar uploads through profiles
1. Hook this into the .com API and welcome these users into the fold
2. This could turn out to be a great way to make them familiar with the .com platform
3. But mainly so users can swap them on the fly with their own installs
Content libraries from media companies
1. Stock photos, video, quotes
  1. A new API component to allow multiple third parties to supply this content

I'm sure that over the next few weeks I will think about this some more and come up with a couple other ideas. But for now, what's on your wishlist for 3.0 ?

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

WordPress 3.0 Wish List is a post from: TechStartups.com

Tags: Android , calais , iPhone wordpress , mobile blogging , opencalais , wordpress 2.9 , wordpress 3.0 , WPTouch , Zemanta

Tags: wordpress list mobile users wish

How To Get Inspired

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 19:09:57 -0500

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

I am a huge fan of unconventional problem solving and taking approaches to situations that aren't populist. Doing so often requires inspiration from another source unrelated to the matter at hand.

Finding that inspiration is as easy as looking around for a place to stand that you have never stood before. A simple change in perspective is all that it can take to trigger something within you.

Example: A Place To Stand

About twice a year I to get some inspiration I stand in a different place online. Since I spend most of my time in front of a computer and the ambient transiency in my space is pretty static I'll stand on the corner of internet and Jeff Bridges dot com and visit his latest posts.

Bridges' website is an exercise in the basics of human communication with static images and image map links to other content but the simplicity is amazingly effective. Why? Because the web has come become a complicated mess of information and displays that vie for attention while Bridges keeps it simple. The site is art.

The effectiveness is deduction of distilling a message down to a graphic is reminiscent of something that Madison Avenue creatives would crank out for a print campaign. With simple copy in the images that he creates they're easier to grasp than a Tweet. The visual tapestry that Bridges creates is linear like a blog, textured like a painting and conversive like asking your grandmother about her past.

What Bridges has done with his personal site is so far from the norm that it has taken me nearly 250 words to describe. I should have done it with an image instead!

Whether you are planning your next startup, in the middle of one or looking to do a site redesign it is helpful to find the right sources of inspiration. Often they are at the very edges of your comfort zone and occasionally just beyond it. Let them gestate and the assimilate them when the time is right.

Photo credit: Screen shot from www.jeffbridges.com

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

How To Get Inspired is a post from: TechStartups.com

Tags: comfort zone , how to get inspired , image map , insipiration , Jeff Bridges , madison avenue

Tags: bridges stand inspiration simple image

PHP simplexml_load_file for Photos

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:37:22 -0500

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

While I'm riding this photo wave I thought I would throw out a post for the coders in the house. I am an unabashed supporter tow things RSS and Flickr. When they are both put together they make a magnificent pair.

To demonstrate why they are such a great pair together I put together a bit of code that can make working with Flickr photos a breeze. It is the same code that I wrote that made its way into the self-hosted life streaming software SweetCron.

It is written in PHP but those that do real coding for a living can take a look at it and get the concept pretty quick. With that being said, I will make even easier by pointing out that due to a good naming convention that Flickr uses to organize photos by size it is possible to access all of them quickly without using the full tokenized API. Which, btw, requires more pings to get the same data the feeds offer.

We'll use the PHP function simplexml_load_file to get access to the photo goodness that is resting in the feed. The RSS feeds from Flickr are in a standard format so the code below will work with any of them. However, it won't work for the Atom feeds. I'm sure you could get crazy and figure out an Atom hack if you wanted. Good luck.

Here's how it can be done with PHP and a Flickr user feed:
$feed = simplexml_load_file("URL_to_Flickr_Feed");
// Check to see if the response was loaded, else print an error if ($feed) { $results = '';
// If the response was loaded, parse it and build links foreach($feed->channel->item as $item) { $media = $item->children('http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/'); // Photo Thumbnail $sPhoto = $media->thumbnail->attributes(); $url = (string) $sPhoto['url']; $width = (string) $sPhoto['width']; $height = (string) $sPhoto['height']; // // Photo Medium (500 px wide standard) $mphoto = substr($sPhoto, 0, -5); $mphoto = $mphoto . "m.jpg"; // Photo Large (original size) $lPhoto = $media->content->attributes(); $lurl = (string) $lPhoto['url']; $lwidth = (string) $lPhoto['width']; $lheight = (string) $lPhoto['height']; $lphoto = substr($lPhoto, 0, -5); $lphoto = $lphoto . "o.jpg"; // echo $sPhoto; // thumbnail url echo $mphoto; // medium size url echo $lphoto; // large size url } } else { echo "Broken Feed"; }

Hopefully this will give someone a jump start in how to transfer large images quickly, say between a photo journalist and an editor half a world away without having to make any other tools than a special XML feed from the Flickr feed. Literally for the $24.95 yearly fee to use Flickr Pro it could be used as a global syndication system.

In the right hands this way of working with Flickr feeds could yield great hacks for devices like the Chumby. Take it one step further for use in digital picture frames as playlists that can be embedded or run from memory cards. I'm just saying these are possibilities.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

PHP simplexml_load_file for Photos is a post from: TechStartups.com

Tags: api , digital picture frames , flickr feeds , flickr rss , php simplexml_load_file , RSS feeds , sweetcron

Tags: flickr feed lphoto url gt

Google Reader and The Osmotic Learner

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:59:40 -0500

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

User: Taminania
Location: Norway
Occupation: Psychologist

These sound like the character sketch for the lead in a science fiction piece about some dystopian future. Maybe a future ruled through a bot-mediated reality? Sorry, just had to touch on yesterday's post about that.

The information above is true in fact. She is a social psychologist in Oslo, Norway that goes by the user name Taminania on Google Reader. And she shares about 20 blog posts on average from her subscription list daily. I have never met or spoken with Taminania but she is a rock star in my world. A smart rock star.

She isn't the leader of a rogue group fighting for survival in the aforementioned dystopian world. She is a passionate psychologist that seeks out high quality content online in her field then shares it online. In this sharing process the door opens wide to accept her recommendations, nearly tacit, that allow those that come across her Google Reader shared feed enlightened.

In every example of the site that I have built to capture and continue filtering her shared feed, and that of about 59 others, I talk about her shares. By filtering the master feed that Taminania creates through daily user activity I am able to glean what I find most valuable and let the rest flow on by.

Example:

I have created a group called Taminania Science. Where I filter down the entire content database to shares from Tamihania, from any publisher and with the keywords augmented, brain, reality, science, research.

Which currently yields the following results:

Compare this list her current (as of this moment) full Google Reader shared feed:

Of all the links in the first list above I am not subscribed to a single of the publishers. I don't need to be to get the value of their content. However, I do need a guide like Taminania that has an understanding the topics and the drive to sort the quality content from these publishers. The other thing I need is the software to make it happen. In this case I built it for myself and would love to publicly release it. But in the current version it doesn't scale very well and has a tendency to crash my server. Who can make this happen for everyone?

The answer is simple Google. What I have created are features and an automated advanced search that pulls from a pool of data. My pool is currently 43k items. Google's slightly larger. By a factor of 10k or more I am sure.

What I am able to learn from Taminania's shares in what is clearly not a dystopian reality comes to me from as close to osmosis as a human can get when it comes to information. In this version of the story we are all learners and we are all teachers. The only problem is that we don't have the tools we need to teach.

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

Google Reader and The Osmotic Learner is a post from: TechStartups.com

Tags: dystopian future , dystopina reality , google reader , google reader shared fed , oslo norway , osmosis learning , osmotic learner , psychologist norway , science fiction , taminania

Tags: google taminania reader shares shared

Flickr Desktop Uploadr for Photos

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:11:14 -0500

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

If you're a Flickr user and not a Flickr Desktop Uploadr user, you should be. It is the hidden gem of the heavily trafficked site and best friend of frequent uploaders.

The Flickr Uploadr for desktop use have gone through changes over the years. It's reached its current maturity at 3.2.1 after being plagued with upload crashes, double uploads and copy loss for images. This version doesn't suffer likes its predecessors . . . well, not as much.

There still are occasional crashes but the Uploadr handles restarting better and will load up the last batch of photos for upload with their copy intact on restart. I've found this to be a more frequent issue if I am trying to upload photos to Flickr from a throttled internet connection with slow speeds. Cough, Time-Warner Road Runner, cough.

With that said, I've found the Uploadr the easiest way to get batch photos online with titles, descriptions, tags and grouped the way the I want them with privacy settings. Here's a peek for the uninitiated:

With the ability to create groups like this and see them in left hand column I am able to more effectivley tell a story about each image as it relates to one another. To be honest, it is kind of fun to be able to create a narrative about a photo set that can be shared with viewers.

You'll also notice in the Description' box that the copy begins with two characters *^'. Well, as an added bonus of using the Flickr Uploadr to get photos on Flickr, I also use it as a front-end to insert photos on my own blog and to also send links to them on Twitter.

With the use of the magic API, RSS, I have two separate crontab scripts running that read my personal Flickr RSS feed and look for these two characters. The * tells the script to take the title and description and add them as posts to my personal blog. The ^ tells the script to grab the title and URL of the image on Flickr (shorten it), then send it on to Twitter in my personal Twitter account. The special characters are a control mechanism that allow me to filter or choose additional syndication for my photos.

I'm going down a geeky path here and will pull back a bit. The Flickr Desktop Uploadr isnt' something that is brand new or undergone a massive revision lately. What it is to me an many others is a powerful tool built as an add-on to a service to make it more valuable.

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Flickr Desktop Uploadr for Photos is a post from: TechStartups.com

Tags: flickr desktop uploadr , flickr ftp upload , flickr uploadr , magic api , photo uploader , road runner , road runner cable internet , road runner upload speed , shorten url

Tags: flickr uploadr photos desktop upload

Ebay Partner Network and Transparency

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:15:52 -0500

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

What I am about to say is because I have been a long time member of the eBay affiliate program, now called eBay Partner Network. It is also of value to anyone that is starting or currently responsible for managing an affiliate program for a company.

My affinity for their brand is the result of being a partner for over three years, my wife being a seller on eBay for nearly ten years, API ease of use and the ability to earn revenue consistently for three years as part of the partner network.

But try as they might, eBay has not driven me away from the partner network . . . yet. They transitioned the program from Commission Junction to an internal program two years ago. The metrics and other monitoring tools suffered as eBay had to get their affiliate legs underneath them. No longer could an affiliate view the extensive reports for click monitoring, referrals, purchases, week to week comps, etc.

Then eBay transformed the program most recently from their CPA (where a partner was paid if their link resulted in a sale) program to a CPC program. This isn't your average CPC program with prices set per click it is based on an algorithm that calculates the quality of the clicks from a given link on a 24 hour basis and assigns them a monetary value.

With this most recent transition to CPC and a program controlled by an algorithm (see: bot) eBay developed a Transparency Team. This team has the task of reaching out to partners that have links that aren't performing in a manner that matches the eBay partner agreement (see: fraudulent).

This is a great idea in theory. However, this team wouldn't need to exist if the eBay partner network returned to the same type of reports that Commission Junction used. Instead, when reinventing the wheel, eBay eliminated any useful monitoring for partners. Thus making participating in their program as opaque as it can be. Metrics that provide a payout, ranking or trip the algorithm to send an automated email stating that a partner is somehow engaged in fraudulent activity are nonexistent.

Ebay has removed any substantive accounting for themselves in the process of monitoring or payouts, the crux of a developer or user becoming an affiliate. Hiding reports from users that are accustomed to them as part of other vendor programs.

The problem is a that is a basic customer service issue that has not been addressed by eBay. Reporting, prompt replies and useful feedback data would allow partners to build better programs that meet eBay's standards and can be crafted to drive more quality traffic to eBay.

This example says it all:

Two months ago I was contacted by the eBay Partner Network Transparency Team (see: bot generated email) stating that in their quest to be transparent I should do the same and that I was failing as a large percentage of my links weren't sending referrer data. Meaning that they don't have a record from these links of the website where the link was displayed and clicked on.

Fair enough to ask me about the links. Not fair or right, accusing someone of not being transparent when all of the click data is hidden away. Not fair is waiting two months to reply back with meaningless data stating that eBay is right. See below:

Ebay sure is right that I have a high non-referrer rate and that bots are removed. I guess I should stop questioning their authority . . . sure. I'd do that if I knew what the criteria were or what bots are being removed. Because for nearly two years they didn't remove a single bot from click data.

I've requested more data from the Transparency Team like IP addresses and user-agents of those clicks. Since I can't track the click that is actually going to eBay without breaking the user-agreement with eBay I will be at their mercy to figure out if the clicks are coming from mobile devices or and some proxy bot that has a lust for finding its way to eBay auctions. Maybe the bot master was blocked by eBay for not being transparent enough when scraping their auctions.

Ebay, this isn't how to be transparent or run a valued affiliate program. If my experience hadn't begun with your program on Commission Junction I wouldn't have such high hopes for how the current partner network could operate. As an affiliate, I want to make money, but I also want eBay to succeed.

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Ebay Partner Network and Transparency is a post from: TechStartups.com

Tags: affiliate programs , Commission Junction , CPA affilaite , CPC affiliate , customer service , eBay affiliate program , ebay partner network transparency , ip address , transparency

Tags: ebay program partner affiliate network

Sell Photos Online With Fotomoto

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:16:55 -0500

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

It's time to drag Fotomoto back onto the stage after months of maturing and talk about selling photos online. More specifically, Fotomoto's solution to facilitate the selling of digital photos as prints to anyone that wants to buy them.

A single line of Javascript code is the solution that Fotomoto offers to publisher as the solution to allow them to sell photos online. This single line of code has a powerful algorithm running behind it to sort out the images that are on the publishers site and determine which is a photo that should be for sale. That way the publisher's site logo or other graphic headings don't end up for sale.

Fotomoto adds a few text links below the salable photo that are connected to a shopping cart. This shopping cart opens in a modal box on the publisher's site. Developers take note of how to create a cohesive user experience by allowing shoppers to stay onsite to complete the purchase process.

When a publisher is logged in to Fotomoto they have the ability to set pricing for photos based on the size and type of item being printed. There are other options that you would expect in a photo sharing site and others that you might not. Like the ability to track the sales of prints and a mini-CRM tool that allows the publisher to communicate with a buyer. This introduction of community into a sales platform is a welcome addition to the rather spartan offerings photo sites. Ahem, Flickr.

Fotomoto is solving a problem that professional photographers have had for a long time how to effectively capitalize on a digital marketplace. With the advent of cheaper, better cameras there is finally a critical mass of photographers, both professional and amateur. And with a larger source of photos worthy of being printed, expect more sites like Fotomoto to popup or the long standing photo sharing sites to step up with their own plugins to allow anyone to sell photos online.

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Sell Photos Online With Fotomoto is a post from: TechStartups.com

Tags: amateur photography , critical mass , crm , digital photos , digital prints , flickr , fotomoto , Javascript , professional photography , sell photos online

Tags: photos fotomoto online sell photo

How to Win Mind Share in Online Battles

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:14:37 -0500

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

I was asked to review a scenario for a friend this morning that deals with competition for mind share in an ongoing row between disparate entities. Ahem, feuding like Hatfields and McCoys as Waylon Jennings would say, and they're doing it primarily online.

Most of us choose to go about our business online without causing confrontation. You might not choose to be involved in a situation like this.

However, if you are put in this position tactics for a remedy are below:

Make sure all of your sites where dynamic content is being created on have RSS feeds
Make sure the sites are being indexed by Google . . . and recently cached by going to Google and typing in site:blogdomain.com blogdomain.com being the site URL
Most of the sites below (I was furnished with list including Topix and Blog Catalog to mention a couple) require registration and some code editing to claim the sites. Register with them and follow their protocol for submission into their directories for partner programs and additional synidcation
Create a press release(s) that contains links, not just copy, but links to the RSS feeds from clients site(s). Example, For more information on this ongoing issue subscribe to: http://www.blogdomain.com/rssfeed. The popular outlets have wide syndication
Use this tool from Google http://www.google.com/sktool/# and enter your sites and the sites of the competitor into it. Disregard the pricing listed on the page for AdWords and focus on the keywords. Compare the the keywords of your competitor with those of your sites and adjust accordingly in all digital communications. Organic search is king.
Next use this too from Google https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal once your keywords are set to see how you are doing
Depending on the blog or site platform you should have the ability to create keyword RSS feeds. Do this. Robots like structured data and favor feeds. Most, if not all, Google real-time alerts come from RSS feed links back to the source site.
Commenting on local (this is a regional battle for mind share) blogs with links to client site(s) and feeds is another way to increase chances of indexing and more favorable search results

If I were fighting this battle or one like it these are exact steps that I would take. So dear reader, if we ever lock horns, we may duel to a draw since you have my playbook.

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How to Win Mind Share in Online Battles is a post from: TechStartups.com

Tags: google keyword tools , Hatfields and McCoys , mind share , mindshare , organic search robot , structured data

Tags: google sites site mind share

PayPal X Developer Network Same as it Always Was

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:18:12 -0500

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

Like you, I've been a member and user of PayPal's service for years. They were early to the game and grew accordingly with a product that made buying online drop dead easy. With an exit to eBay they were integrated into a powerful money minting machine.

They also joined a culture of apathy and disdain for those that help them line their pockets developers.

Like their acquirer, PayPal continued to build a mediocre developer community, foster it with partial code samples, limited information and limited support. Now in kindness to PayPal they did begin providing better support a few years ago and are pretty good when it comes to engaging developers on the message boards offering solutions a problem that has plagued eBay for years.

Visit any eBay developer board and you'll find replies that focus on posting in the wrong thread topic instead of offering a solution. It shows the developers that they aren't a priority.

I was looking forward to the release of the brand spanking new PayPal X Developer Network. Hoping that my previous experience wouldn't hold true and that there would be a renewed focus on the developers that are integrating the PayPal gateways and API's into their platforms. But they let me down.

The new developer community site is plagued with broken links, the same old code samples and forums that stopped loading threads on October 28. The intention is there but the execution is hit and miss.

I can forgive them this time, though. Because it appears that their intention is to focus fully on their API implementations and integrate the legacy products like IPN and PDT into a more standardized solution.

Which will help PayPal as it moves toward working with developers to create a wider range of solutions like mobile and in application micro-payments.

Something else of note with the new PayPal X Developer Network is the improved site IA. Thank you to the person(s) that restructured the information and worked with the UI person(s) to highlight what developers want most . . . documentation.

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PayPal X Developer Network Same as it Always Was is a post from: TechStartups.com

Tags: eBay affiliate program , eBay API , information architecture , paypal API , paypal IPN , paypal PDT , PayPal X Developer Network

Tags: paypal developer developers network x

Learning When You Least Expect It

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:04:13 -0400

By Guest Author, David Cosand (@davidcosand)

About the author:

Prior to becoming an elementary school teacher, David Cosand was an advertising media production geek.

He lives in Southern Oregon with his wife and four children.

Sometimes, the best learning happens when you're not looking for it.

You can bury yourself in books, immerse yourself in information, and attempt to lodge lecture after lecture in your long-term memory, but there's not much guarantee all of that content is really going to stick in a meaningful way.

It's when you are in the middle of doing actually solving a real-world problem that all of those nuts and bolts of life often drop into place or rearrange into something that makes sense. Something that will get the job done. Something that looks suspiciously like learning.

As a fifth grade teacher in a public school, I'm hard-pressed on all sides to make sure my students are learning. Heck, we've got all sorts of standardized tests to prove I'm doing my job. The most exciting moments in my classroom don't happen at the end of a state achievement test, though.

They show up when my students are collaborating, communicating, integrating, and innovating using the same technology tools that real people in the real world use. When the stuff of the school day lines up with the substance of life, the learning kicks in.

Some tech tools are created with education in mind. Jeff O'Hara's (@zemote) Edmodo is a perfect example. It takes what's great about microblogging and remixes it especially for students.

Other apps find their way into the classroom at the hands of tech-hungry teachers looking for something fresh. Animoto, VoiceThread, Glogster, Wikispaces. They're natural fodder for the classroom whether education was their initial focus or not.

It makes a lot of sense for non-education start-ups to include educators in their target audience. As Malcolm Gladwell might put it, teachers are natural connectors, mavens, and salespeople. When we find a great tool, we can't shut up about it. We post links in our Twitterfeeds and blog about it until, pretty soon, the whole Ed world has heard of it.

When you craft that next innovation that will set the world on its ear, remember the teachers. Your original thinking and creativity just might propel my students into a new level of learning. Whether they're looking for it or not.

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Learning When You Least Expect It is a post from: TechStartups.com

Tags: distance education , Edmodo , education software , elearning web 2.0 , Jeff O'Hara , Malcolm Gladwell , zemote

Tags: learning education world students looking

Are You Leaving Links On The Table?

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:12:26 -0400

By Senior Editor Kris Smith (@croncast)

I bet that over half of you are not getting up from the poker table that is internet traffic without all for your Google, Bing and Yahoo chips. Google, Bing and Yahoo being denominations for the valuI am sure that you are leaving these links on the table for the player next to you.

Let's get you to the traffic cage with every last link chip that you deserve to cash in!

Today, I'm going to give you two tips on how to make this happen so that you don't look so green.

1. Ditch the query string in your site search URL. Turn http://domain.com/?query=TakeMyMoney to http://domain.com/search/PayMeSucka

2. Tweak your search page title from Domain.com Search Results' to include the term searched for. Like Pay Me Sucka | Domain.com'

That's all you need for now. Go figure out how to make it happen or get your web nerd on the phone and tell them, I need to you to go to dubya dubya dubya dot techstartups dot com and read this thing about leaving links on table. I don't even know what that means. Do you? They'll hook it up.

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Are You Leaving Links On The Table? is a post from: TechStartups.com

Tags: Bing , Google , internal search , onsite search , search query , search query string , Search Results , Yahoo

Tags: search table query leaving domain

Google Reader Got Updates? Don't Even Get Me Started

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:34:53 -0400

By Senior Editor Kris Smith

You can only neglect your users for so long before they leave you. The same goes for lovers. And I, was in love with Google Reader once.

Then one day I realized Google Reader wasn't loving me as much as I loved her. So I walked out. We see each other, maybe once a month or so, for short periods of time while we trade feeds.

Reasons

At first she didn't accept my privacy when I wanted to put authenticated feeds in the system. Then she wouldn't allow me to have my shared items back when I asked for them. I wanted all of them . . . but she only gave me 20 at a time. What about the thousands of items I had shared with her? Enough. I couldn't take it any longer. I had to do something about it.

Solution

Two years ago I began caching my Google Reader shared feed so I could access to all the items. Back then Reader hadn't added any features around sharing like search. But I had it once I was storing the items. What I had created then was a strange knowledge base that I could now query to find content that I found of value and had filtered for myself.

Value

Quickly, I added about 10 more shared feeds from friends and other people that I respected online. After about two weeks I had forgotten about Google Reader and found myself hanging out with my new friends . . . well, hanging with their knowledge bases. Here I was capturing tacit knowledge from some of the people I respected the most for their minds.

Filtering

What was now stored for my querying pleasure was content from the best publishers on the planet filtered by the sharpest people I could find. I began to build other tools around the data like grouping by publisher, sharer, keywords and gobs of new feeds.

I built tracking around it to see how robots traversed the feeds since the actual data was locked in a password protected site. Which turned out not to be that big of a deal since the title links were directed back to the publishers.

By adding new user controlled filtering mechanisms on top of pre-filtered data that was pouring into the system, it became much easier to produce pages and feeds for topics that interested me.

Here are a couple of feeds to demonstrate what I am talking about:

Keyword: http://www.filome.com/key/1/micropayments.rss
Group: http://www.filome.com/group/ksmith/1/Taminania_Brain_Science.rss
Sharer: http://www.filome.com/1/robdiana.rss
Likes: http://www.filome.com/likes/1/08100556675301148205.rss

What Reader is Doing Now

Since we broke up, she's been adding features but they are all at the feed level and not down to the individual publisher post level. The Bundles that she allows you to create are feed based. Instead of receiving 1 or 2 items of an interesting topic from a few publishers you get all the items in those feeds . . . many more than 2. It's like being in a forest and finding a twig that you want and your date cuts down 10 trees and hands them to you saying, Look, I got your twig. Happy now?

Where Reader is Going

For fear that they are going to be crushed by Facebook and Twitter, Google appears to have put some emphasis on the Reader team and either given the resources or freedom to improve the system. I would even venture to say that members of the Blogger team might be instrumental in some of these improvements. She should look to her friends for support during difficult times.

Where Reader Should Be

I'm gonna break it down nice and easy.

1. Grouping content at the individual post level
2. Feeds for everything
3. Portability of all shared/liked items from the day a user signs up
4. Content shopping cart
5. New UI 85% of web users don't read feeds. Get pretty.
6. Open up as a hub for syndication
7. Give publishers real metrics about subscribers, sharers and likers
8. Allow publishers to create community around these users (within Google)

I am still in love, but I have better things to do

My favorite part of her is still the shared feeds. Like perfume they remain long after she has left the room. They add value to the ecosystem and to the lives of those that have access to them. And since Google Reader is sitting on this massive mountain of filtered and expertly curated data, they should use it as their greatest asset in the coming walk-off with Facebook and Twitter.

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Tags: content filtering , content shopping cart , Facebook , google reader , google shared items , grouping , real-time rss , shared feeds , Twitter

Tags: feeds reader google shared items

Zemify Your Content With Zemanta

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 22:35:47 -0400

By Senior Editor Kris Smith

The semantic web is well on its way and one of the startups that has taken an early lead is Zemanta. They have taken a unique approach to linked data and the science that powers their ability to create structured content from it. They aimed their service at publishers, not the IT crowd.

Typically, semantic technology companies rely heavily on their colleagues with computer science degrees not the actual publisher. They will deliver products as API's or server side solutions with a hefty price tag. Zemanta has created the right relationships with CMS and blogging platform owners to integrate their tools within administration sections.

They offer AJAX'ed out components in these platforms that reads from the main content box as a publisher types a post and updates linked content like photos, links and tags that are appropriate for the post. By doing this it allows the publisher to focus on their post and actual release content faster.

The core of their service is to intelligently eliminate the need for the publisher to start research from ground zero. They offer points of direction inside the administration interface to guide the publisher to resources quickly. I am most impressed with the way that Zemanta handles tags and the relationships between them.

Zemanta does offer an API, I have used it in the past. The API returns data quickly and an even more robust set than the plugin style for CMS's. A sample request returns maps, categories, links, excerpts and more. The only problem that I encountered was one that all semantic companies have right now, context and sentiment for breaking news.

Semantic services rely on hefty algorithms that need sample data to create the links between data and develop sentiment. As a result of this issue, it makes it very hard to implement solutions that work with real-time data and syndication of that content. Most times, once something has hit a feed or been released to a partner site it cannot be updated with linked data. I've been told it is something that the Zemanta team is working on.

Zemanta makes it easy to Zemify your content in WordPress, Drupal, Movable Type among others and possibly Blogger in the future.

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Tags: AJAX , api , blogger , CMS , Drupal , linked data , Movable Type , semantic web , structured data , WordPress , Zemanta , Zemify

Tags: data zemanta content semantic publisher

Links in Print: Story of a Beautiful Failure

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:37:01 -0400

In January 2009 we were invited to take part in a paid pitch for the print redesign for the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger. All in all five agencies took part in the pitch. We were the only UX oriented agency. The story of a beautiful failure. We put all eggs in one ...

Tags: failure part beautiful pitch print

Links in Print: The Story of a Beautiful Failure

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:37:01 -0400

Nutrition and Violence

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:48:11 -0400

Publisher - Deric Bownds' MindBlog
First shared by - tamihania
syndication+ 2 | Search 1 | Shares 1

In the Sept. 25 issue of Science John Bohannon describes work of Oxford's Bernard Gesch and others studying prison populations for evidence of links between nutrition and violent behavior. Two previous studies have shown that prisoners given nutritional supplements committed ~35% fewer violent incidences than those given a placebo, and a more ambitious study of over 1,000 prisoners in three U.K. prisons started this spring. The article offers a summary table which I pass on here:

violent prisoners given nutrition fewer

Tags: given prisoners violent nutrition fewer

Protect little eyes from the computer screen

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 17:40:12 -0400

Publisher - Readtwit
First shared by - tamihania
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@twitterbo wrote:
Protect little eyes from the computer screen ... http://short.to/r4zc

Protect little eyes from the computer screen

With September comes the resumption of school work, homework, research projects and classmate communication, so it's important to note that the average North American child now spends one to three hours per day with his or her eyes on a computer screen. As a result, many leading pediatric eye doctors believe that the startling increase of nearsightedness (myopia) in children worldwide is a direct consequence of avid computer use.

In fact, children using computers before their visual systems are fully developed are at the very heart of the public health problem called computer vision syndrome', says Bijan Minbashion, vice president of operations for Hakim Optical, retail eye care specialists. A study at the University of California reports that 25 to 30 percent of computer-using children need corrective eyewear to work with the equipment comfortably and safely and similar studies in Asia report that first-graders with myopia has increased from 12.1 to 20.4 percent since 1995. In the last three years, myopia is reported to have doubled to 34 percent in seven- to nine-year-olds.

To guard against early damage to your child's eyes, consider these tips:
Schedule a comprehensive eye exam as your child enters kindergarten, including near-point (computer and reading) and distance testing.
Schedule an eye exam before school begins every year.
The recommended distance for children between the monitor and the eye is 18-28 inches. Any closer risks eye strain.
Be aware of behaviour that indicates problems such as eye redness, frequent rubbing of the eyes, unusual posture, or complaints of blurriness or eye fatigue.
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eye computer eyes children screen

Tags: eye computer eyes children screen

Before, Meanwhile and After the BIG BANG -- (M-Theory)

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 12:08:14 -0400

Publisher - tamihania's YouTube Activity
First shared by - tamihania
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I favorited a YouTube video: Introduction to the M-Theory. Video Montage from "Parallel Universes" (BBC/TLC 2002) an episode of the great BBC series "Horizon": - http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2001/paralleluni.shtml Links to Wikipedia: M-Theory: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Theory Superstring Theory: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstring_theory Supergravity Theory: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supergravity 11 spatial dimensions: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11th_dimension Quantum mechanics: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics ---------------------------------- Amon Tobin's myspace (more music): - http://myspace.com/tobinamon More infos about Amon Tobin: - http://www.ninjatune.net/ninja/artist.php?id=1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amon_Tobin

theory wikipedia wiki en amon

Tags: wikipedia theory wiki en amon

How Did New York City Become the Pot-Arrest Capital of the Country? -- New York Magazine

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 15:34:04 -0400

Shared by Kristopher
noticing many more bloggers and sites adding their keywords to their feeds as links for search back into their site. this page came up for the keyword George Washington. right on. now they just need to add the links to the rss feeds to get that structured data exposed to the bots and away they go :).

On the one hand, marijuana is practically legalmore mainstream, accessorized, and taken for granted than ever before. On the other, kids are getting busted in the city in record numbers. Guess which kids.

Tags: kids links york city feeds

Court Denies Sanctions For Defendant's Failure To Preserve Web Links

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:12:46 -0400

In Ferron v. Echostar Satellite, LLC, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 66637 (S.D. Ohio July 30, 2009), U.S. Magistrate Judge Norah McCann King denied plaintiff's renewed motion for the imposition of discovery sanctions for defendants' failure to preserve embedded images and web links.

Tags: web links failure preserve sanctions

Wabash Getting Up to Speed on New Media

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:43:35 -0400

Howard W. Hewitt - Social media isn't a new term. Blogging, Facebook, and social networking may be foreign to many people but the concept of individual journals dates back years. It's just that publication is now instant with the internet.

What's happening across the country and around the world is really nothing short of a revolution.

For instance:

If Facebook was a country, it would be the fourth largest in the world. Boston College did not issue e-mail addresses to its freshmen this fall. The startling numbers indicate a seismic shift in the way we communicate.

If you have four minutes to spare, watch the fascinating YouTube video at the bottom of this page. Or, click the icon on the right and you can go to our Wabash YouTube page and check it out.

Student bloggers have told the real story of Wabash, student-to-student, as an effective recruiting tool. We've learned about the world as our students study abroad, participate in immersion learning trips, or go fly fishing in Montana.

We've actually had Facebook pages for a couple of years. The current king of social networking sites is just four years old. Check out our Wabash page by clicking the icon at left.

Or, check out the College alumni page that icon over there, on the right ->

One line keeps coming back to me from an August seminar on social media and higher education. I'm paraphrasing For years people sought out news, now news finds people. For years, high school students looked for a college, now colleges look for students.'

If you buy the basic concept you'll quickly realize a passive approach to communication no longer works with this generation of incoming college freshmen or the next.

It's a fundamental change in the way young people communicate. Wabash students, as others across the country, have to be reminded to check their email. They're communicating largely via text messages or perhaps Facebook.

For those at the College charged with marketing and recruiting the new students, this is not an insignificant challenge. The glossy brochure is no longer enough. And to rely only on printed material might be foolish.

You will now find links to six different social mediums across our website with established Wabash College branding and content. We're going to use students in many of these efforts to present the content in a peer-to-peer manner.

Our student bloggers are going to get more prominent play on our pages as we emphasize student voices.

The College has strong participation on Linked In a business-oriented social networking site. We have two sites! The Alumni site has more than 1100 members. Check it out by clicking on the icon at right. Career Services has a Linked In page that's much newer.

We'll be writing more about social networking and how we're using it throughout the year. Social networking may or may not be a communications revolution, but ignoring it is a communications blunder.

Tags: social college students wabash page

7 Japanese aesthetic principles to change your thinking

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 08:30:36 -0400

Exposing ourselves to traditional Japanese aesthetic ideas notions that may seem quite foreign to most of us is a good exercise in lateral thinking, a term coined by Edward de Bono in 1967. "Lateral Thinking is for changing concepts and perception," says de Bono. Beginning to think about design by exploring the tenets of the Zen aesthetic may not be an example of Lateral Thinking in the strict sense, but doing so is a good exercise in stretching ourselves and really beginning to think differently about visuals and design in our everyday professional lives. The principles of Zen aesthetics found in the art of the traditional Japanese garden, for example, have many lessons for us, though they are unknown to most people. The principles are interconnected and overlap; it's not possible to simply put the ideas in separate boxes. Thankfully, Patrick Lennox Tierney (a recipient of the Order of the Rising Sun in 2007) has a few short essays elaborating on the concepts. Below are just seven design-related principles (there are more) that govern the aesthetics of the Japanese garden and other art forms in Japan. Perhaps they will stimulate your creativity or get you thinking in a new way about your own design-related challenges.

Seven principles for changing your perception
Kanso () Simplicity or elimination of clutter. Things are expressed in a plain, simple, natural manner. Reminds us to think not in terms of decoration but in terms of clarity, a kind of clarity that may be achieved through omission or exclusion of the non-essential.

Fukinsei () Asymmetry or irregularity. The idea of controlling balance in a composition via irregularity and asymmetry is a central tenet of the Zen aesthetic. The enso ("Zen circle") in brush painting, for example, is often drawn as an incomplete circle, symbolizing the imperfection that is part of existence. In graphic design too asymmetrical balance is a dynamic, beautiful thing. Try looking for (or creating) beauty in balanced asymmetry. Nature itself is full of beauty and harmonious relationships that are asymmetrical yet balanced. This is a dynamic beauty that attracts and engages.

Shibui/Shibumi () Beautiful by being understated, or by being precisely what it was meant to be and not elaborated upon. Direct and simple way, without being flashy. Elegant simplicity, articulate brevity. The term is sometimes used today to describe something cool but beautifully minimalist, including technology and some consumer products. (Shibui literally means bitter tasting).

Shizen () Naturalness. Absence of pretense or artificiality, full creative intent unforced. Ironically, the spontaneous nature of the Japanese garden that the viewer perceives is not accidental. This is a reminder that design is not an accident, even when we are trying to create a natural-feeling environment. It is not a raw nature as such but one with more purpose and intention.

Yugen () Profundity or suggestion rather than revelation. A Japanese garden, for example, can be said to be a collection of subtleties and symbolic elements. Photographers and designers can surely think of many ways to visually imply more by not showing the whole, that is, showing more by showing less.

Datsuzoku () Freedom from habit or formula. Escape from daily routine or the ordinary. Unworldly. Transcending the conventional. This principles describes the feeling of surprise and a bit of amazement when one realizes they can have freedom from the conventional. Professor Tierney says that the Japanese garden itself, "...made with the raw materials of nature and its success in revealing the essence of natural things to us is an ultimate surprise. Many surprises await at almost every turn in a Japanese Garden."

Seijaku ()Tranquility or an energized calm (quite), stillness, solitude. This is related to the feeling you may have when in a Japanese garden. The opposite feeling to one expressed by seijaku would be noise and disturbance. How might we bring a feeling of "active calm" and stillness to ephemeral designs outside the Zen arts?

LINKS
Read more about The Nature of Japanese Garden Art by Patrick Lennox Tierney at Bonsai Beautiful dot com.
Japanese Aesthetics (Stanford Encyclopedia).
Enso: Zen Circles of Enlightenment (book)

Tags: japanese garden design zen principles

Yahoo!'s use of personal name not confusing as matter of law

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 02:14:00 -0400

Stayart v. Yahoo! Inc., 2009 WL 2840478 (E.D. Wis.)

Beverly Stayart searched her own name and didn't like the results. She got links to pornographic websites, online pharmacies promoting sexual dysfunction drugs, and an adult-oriented online dating service. She sued Yahoo! and other defendants, including the operator of AdultFriendFinder, for false endorsement under the Lanham Act and state-law privacy violations. The court dismissed the Lanham Act claim and surrendered jurisdiction over the state law claims.

Stayart lives in Wisconsin and was previously employed by several major financial institutions in Chicago, attaining the position of Vice President. She's involved in animal protection and genealogy research throughout the world. This includes an internet presence; her periodic posts on one genealogical website have generated almost 17,000 hits during the past three years. (Okay, I'm sorry, but: on the internet as a whole, that's tiny. My stats look more impressive than thatif you've never seen any others.) And two of her poems appear on two Danish websites (they support the preservation of baby seals).

Stayart alleged that she was the only Beverly/Bev Stayart on the internet, and that she had never engaged in a promiscuous lifestyle, or other overt sexual activities, which are repugnant to her and her community. She alleged that her name had commercial value because of her humanitarian endeavors, positive and wholesome image, and the popularity of her scholarly posts on the Internet. The search engine defendants, she alleged, knowingly used her name on false snippets in results by (1) repeatedly linking Plaintiff to the advertising of Cialis by an online pharmacy; (2) repeatedly linking Plaintiff to six separate websites playing pornographic videos containing computer spy ware; and (3) repeatedly linking Plaintiff to a website captioned Free Streaming Porn--HOTTEST DAILY PORN' displaying 27 hardcore pornographic photos. She asked Yahoo! to stop linking her name to these search results. Yahoo! replied: We do not aim to judge web content for appropriateness or censor materials that we find offensive or inappropriate. Instead, we present information as it is reflected on the Web, allowing you to draw your own informed conclusions about what you see.

Stayart also alleged that Various (which operates AdultFriendFinder) used her name on a website advertising its service. She typed her name into altavista.com and got, among the results, jewellery-makin-doorway.orge.pl/bev-stayart.html. This went to an Under Construction site that stated Meet AdultFriendFinder members near Janesville [Wisconsin]-- Over 20 Million Members and displayed five graphic images of fully or partially nude women, accompanied by the age, nickname and city of residence of the women.

Under Iqbal, though a court must accept all well-pleaded facts as true, the claim must still have facial plausibility. And a plaintiff can plead herself out of court, which was what the court determined had occurred here.

False endorsement means that consumers are likely to be misled about a person's sponsorship or approval of a product or service.

In order to have prudential standing under the Lanham Act, Stayart needed to allege at least an existing intent to commercialize her identity. This she didn't do. Though she alleged that her name has commercial value, her complaint is really about distasteful associations. That emotional desire to prevent others from using her name doesn't create Lanham Act standing. Her correspondence with Yahoo!, attached to the complaint, further indicates that her concerns are with privacy and reputation, defamation and demeaning associations. But the Lanham Act does not create a false light tort claim, absent commercialization.

Stayart relied on Doe v. Friendfinder, which refused to dismiss a false endorsement claim against AdultFriendFinder. But Doe didn't address prudential standing in its decision.

The court went on to reach an independent ground for dismissal, lack of likely confusion as a matter of law. [A] commonsense reading of the complaint demonstrates that there could be no likelihood of confusion. The complaint explicitly disavows any association with pornographic materials, sexual dysfunction drugs, or sexually-oriented dating services. This contravenes likelihood of confusion, so Stayart pleaded herself out of court. (Query: before 1999, would Bob Dole have had a claim? He'd never previously been associated with sexual dysfunction drugs, so wouldn't it have been just as implausible that he'd be a pitchman for them?) No one who accessed these links could reasonably conclude that Bev Stayart endorsed the products at issue.

Stayart argued initial interest confusion against AdultFriendFinder. But on the internet, initial interest confusion depends on relatedness of goods and a consumer's level of care. Given that Stayart's identity is completely unrelated to AdultFriendFinder's services, initial confusion won't facilitate free riding on another mark's goodwill. Without a meaningful effect on the market, confusion is of little or no consequence under the Lanham Act. The type of person looking for information about Bev Stayart would not be fooled into using an online adult-oriented dating website. (I'd add in to find her at the end of that; the court might be surprised to find outjust as Stayart might bethe non-Stayart-related interests of the type of people looking for information about Stayart. I'd be willing to bet that even genealogists and animal rescuers sometimes like to meet adult friends!)

Next, a puzzling CDA discussion. The court commented that if Stayart successfully stated a false endorsement claim under the Lanham Act, it would probably fall under the CDA's intellectual property exclusion. But, it continued, one of the fatal flaws of that claim is that Yahoo! didn't use Stayart's name in connection with its own goods or services. It just included snippets from third-party websites and didn't create the content of which Stayart complained. So the proper analysis is vicarious liability/contributory infringement under the Lanham Act.

Under settled doctrine, Yahoo! can't be held liable for failing to remove the search results even after Stayart complained. It didn't control the third-party websites, which fact defeated both contributory and vicarious liability. (That's a shortcut on contributory liability analysis, but not particularly troubling under the circumstances.) The only way Yahoo! could control the results would be to change its algorithm, which goes to the heart of Yahoo!'s role as an interactive computer service. Because ordinary search engines play no part in developing any unlawful searches, Yahoo! should be entitled to immunity because it acted as an interactive computer service, even though Stayart's claims are nominal intellectual property claims. Immunizing Yahoo! doesn't contravene the CDA's IP exclusion because Stayart doesn't have a valid IP claim.

Comment: oh, my. Look, I like CDA immunity generally. But what's weird here is not the court's willingness to use CDA reasoning on an IP claim despite the IP exclusion; what's weird is the court's failure to notice that IP secondary liability doctrine itself incorporates the tech-promoting rationales underlying the CDA. Well, trademark does much more than copyright, these daysbut it's trademark doctrine that's at issue here! There's no need to bring in the CDA! And that last bitthis analysis only applies because Stayart doesn't have a valid IP claimmakes this whole excursion even more obviously useless.

The court then said that matters were less clear with respect to AdultFriendFinder. The site is in some ways interactive, but Stayart's complaint relates to the banner ad associated with the bev-stayart.html URL. AdultFriendFinder's role in the creation of the banner ad content was unclear, so the court couldn't grant it immunity at this stage.

The only claims that remained were state-law claims. Given that the dismissal was on the pleadings, ordinarily a federal court should relinquish jurisdiction, unless it is so obvious how the claims should be decided that the plaintiff should be put out of her misery rather than involving state-court resources. Defendants argued that Wisconsin requires a name to have commercial value in order to maintain a right of publicity claim. But some variations of the appropriation tort, which Wisconsin may recognize, require only commercial use plus bruised feelings. (Doesn't Yahoo! get out of this even if AdultFriendFinder has to proceed in state court? Under what theory is Yahoo!'s use commercial? If it's using snippets from other sites, how can it possibly be distinguished from the New York Times using Stayart's name in a story?)

The distinction between appropriation and the right to publicity (based on commercial damage) is also relevant to CDA immunity. The latter is an IP claim. (Implicit holding: to the extent Stayart is bringing an appropriation claim, Yahoo! is immune.) Plus there's the Perfect 10 versus Friendfinder split over whether state IP claims are preempted by the CDA. Since this is an unsettled issue of federal law, the court couldn't conclude that there was an obvious resolution of the state law claims. Even though the Court already held that Yahoo! was entitled to CDA immunity, the Court cannot say with certainty that a potential right to publicity claim under Wisconsin law is without merit, meaning that the intellectual property exception could save Stayart's claims. Also, AdultFriendFinder's CDA status is unclear, leaving it potentially vulnerable under either a misappropriation or right of publicity claim.

Tags: stayart court yahoo claim under

Sex Offenders Banned from Social Media Sites

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:46:41 -0400

Should sex offenders be allowed to use Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and other social networking sites? Illinois Governor Pat Quinn (pictured) thinks not, and this week signed into law a bill that bans all registered sex offenders in his state from using social networks.

This sounds satisfying on first listen after all, why wouldn't we want to take every possible measure to prevent the horrendous crimes of sex offenders? But many legal blogs are pointing out that the legislation is overzealous and possibly unconstitutional.

Peeing in Public? You Might be a Sex Offender

Salon points out that in 13 states you'll be added to the sex offenders register for urinating in public (in two of which, only if a child was present), while 29 states required registration for teenagers who had consensual sex with another teenager. In other words: it's not just child molesters and rapists who would be banned if such laws became accepted.

Then there's the problem of implementation: who is going to keep an eye on the thousands of registered sex offenders to see if they're using Facebook and Twitter? Surely there are better ways to spend police time than tracking the web habits of someone who had sex in high school?

NYTimes.com is Banned, Too

Other blogs, like Technology Liberation and Hacker Journalist, point out that the broad definition of social networking websites essentially bans these people from the web as a whole banned from posting a resume on LinkedIn, banned from reading the New York Times (or any major newspaper) online because it lets you set up a profile. The description reads:

Social networking website means an Internet website containing profile web pages of the members of the website that include the names or nicknames of such members, photographs placed on the profile web pages by such members, or any other personal or personally identifying information about such members and links to other profile web pages on social networking websites of friends or associates of such members that can be accessed by other members or visitors to the website. A social networking website provides members of or visitors to such website the ability to leave messages or comments on the profile web page that are visible to all or some visitors to the profile web page and may also include a form of electronic mail for members of the social networking website.

In short, punishing rapists and sex offenders may feel satisfying, but this isn't what the bill does: it'll likely affect those who committed far lesser crimes, prove unenforceable, and may even be unconstitutional.

Tags: sex members social web website

Google Reader Updates: Share News on Twitter, Facebook, and More

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:47:19 -0400

Today confirms that Google's not giving up their quest to become more social media friendly. Earlier today they introduced a series of new iGoogle features that make it more of a social network than a start page, and just now they've released an update to your Google Reader to turn it into a social distribution utility for news on the web.

Google Reader Send To is the new feature that you're likely to love instantly. It's the feature we've wanted from our reader since Twitter became our favorite place to share interesting links. In fact, with Send To you can set your settings to send posts to almost every social site that matters: Blogger, Delicious, Digg, Facebook, MySpace, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and obviously Twitter.

Once you configure your favorite social sites to send to in settings you can even add your own custom destinations you'll notice that you can then select the send to button at the bottom of the post and pick your final destination.

Google Reader has also introduced a few less social, but more practical ways, to engage with their feed aggregator. They've added a better way to quickly subscribe to the feeds from people you follow, and also given you an easier way to mark items as read in bulk. So now you can select the Mark all as read drop down to fine tune your preferences and only mark items older than a day, a week, or two weeks as read in one easy click.

Google Reader is starting to blossom, and we're a big fan of the new social additions. Share your thoughts on the refreshed Google Reader in the comments.

Reviews: Delicious, Digg, Google, Google Reader, MySpace, StumbleUpon, Twitter, blogger, facebook

Tags: google reader

Tags: google reader social send twitter

Facebook Updates Are Now Searchable; Not What Most Users Joined For

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:20:34 -0400

Publisher - ReadWriteWeb
First shared by - BrandonMendelson
syndication+ 3 | Search 1 | Shares 1

Facebook is really flexing its muscles today. First it acquired radically innovative social network FriendFeed and now it has announced that it's opened up search across all status messages, notes and shared links that users have marked as public. (Don't worry, yours aren't public unless you changed your own settings.)

Searching across all users, whether you know them or not, requires a couple of clicks - but the availability of the feature marks a dramatic turning point in the history of Facebook. For months the company has been pushing users towards being more public and less private. This is why.

Sponsor

Google still can't index the contents of Facebook, because Facebook is positioning itself as a major competitor to Google. There is no RSS feed available for searches, even updates marked public are only public within the walls of Facebook, not on the open web at large. Developers can't build innovative new applications on top of the new Facebook search. It's a walled garden - why would you ever want to leave when Facebook can fill all your needs as a user?!

No one really gets what they want here except for self-promoters, voyeurs, marketers and presumably the advertising department at Facebook.

There's something creepy about this. We've asked before if Facebook is a cult and we've discussed how its privacy moves represent an agenda that praises privacy but doesn't support the kind of privacy people experience in real life. (You share different things with different people, depending on the context.) You probably joined Facebook because you thought it was a secure place to converse with friends and family. It may still be, but the company sure would like it if you'd please lift the lid and let the world search and view those conversations.

Discuss

facebook public users search privacy

Tags: facebook public search users privacy

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Facebook Updates Are Now Searchable; Not What Most Users Joined For