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Friday, January 11, 2013
Webilea # 10
Yes, [Dennis! =P] I did go to the Webilea event in Basel on Wednesday [and don't even ask me how I was in Basel on that day...]. I didn't write about it because I'm not sure what to say, haven't quite developed an opinion. It's entirely possible that I was way too distracted and mentally busy on that day... At any rate, I found the topics interesting and the presenters knowledgeable. The venue was nice and the food was great. ;) However I also felt that the presenters may not have been terrible well prepared. Also it might have been more interesting [at least to me] if there would have been fewer presentations, but a more in-depth representation of each topic would have been provided. As it was, it felt to much of a "cram" to me. Anyone I know planning on going to the next one? Labels: Events, Technology, Web Development
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Just a quick rant. At the moment I use my Sony Android tablet more than any other gadget, and probably even more than my notebooks at times [because there is really quite a lot that the tablet is capable of]. Obviously, among the million and one things that I use the tablet for, I do a good deal of web surfing on it also. Given that the tablet has a 9.4" screen, very often I prefer to view the full/normal version of websites rather than the mobile versions. In fact sometimes the mobile versions look rather ridiculous on a screen of that size. However since the device is essentially a mobile device and it runs mobile versions of web browsers, I'm often forced into viewing the reduced versions. Usually there is the option to switch back to normal version, but somehow it doesn't quite stick, and I'm forced back to mobile every time I go back to the homepage, change a language option or do just about anything. A good example of this are social networks like Facebook and Google+, which are currently annoying the heck out of me. And then of course there are websites that don't even have the option of switching back.... *sigh* So is it just me, or is anyone else currently bothered by this? Does anyone else think that this is pretty much a bug that needs to be fixed rather than a feature? Labels: Internet, Rant, Web, Web Development
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Not exactly a new idea, but I get the feeling this one could get interesting/useful. "We are an open community of developers building resources for a better web, regardless of brand, browser or platform. Anyone can contribute and each person who does makes us stronger. Together we can continue to drive innovation on the Web to serve the greater good. It starts here, with you." Check out WebPlatform.org. Labels: Coding, Internet, Technology, Web, Web Development
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Due to requests from friends [since a very long time ago] and some recent developments, I finally sat down and came up with a way of having private content on Verse. The code and the solution itself are somewhat messy, mainly because a Wiki is basically not designed for private content [quite the opposite...]. But well, so far it looks like it works. It is now possible to have private categories, all items belonging to which would be private. Private categories can be accessed by certain user groups. It should be kept in mind though, that this is basically like a lock on a diary. It is simply for the purpose of picking and choosing what content will be shared with whom, but it should not in any way be considered truly secure. So basically don't store your credit card numbers in there please. Now, anyone who wants to use this feature, should tell me to set category[s] and user group[s] for them. Labels: Aasemoon, Coding, Web Development, Website
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So, for a million and one reasons I just created my own URI Shortener. Since we had this discussion with a couple of friends before... well this is for you, it's open so everyone can used it. ;) Labels: Aasemoon, Coding, Programming, Projects, Software, Technology, Web, Web Development, Website
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It was really "interesting" today, when I ended up having to do a bit of an analysis on certain footsteps on my website visitor tracking tools to find out that it's been in fact people, human beings, who have attacked Verse with stupid commercial posts and some other nonsensical twaddle. Oh, and guess what, some of them even went ahead and posted links on Twitter, to the garbage they had posted to Verse. Here's a couple of examples [it might be a bot posting the stuff to Twitter though, of that I'm not certain...]: http://twitter.com/#!/julie86smith/statuses/1207024033464320 http://twitter.com/#!/lutushia/statuses/1298952494260224 Of course the links in the posts now direct to deleted pages... I deleted the contributions of all these users from Verse, and reported them to Twitter. I also made a rather big change to Verse's registration system today. I've changed the code so that it's no longer possible to simply register an account and start using Verse. New users now have to request for an account, and then one of the admins would have to review their request and permit the account to be created, before the user can use Verse. This isn't all that conventional for a wiki system... but oh well, people have to misuse absolutely everything, and you end up having to deal with it. Labels: Aasemoon, Coding, Spam, Web, Web Development, Website
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As I've been going through yet another one of those extremely busy periods, I've been out of the loop with some of the latest developments in the world of social networks and legal patents. So I hadn't read or heard about FB's recent work of art till today. Today I had a conversation with a Good friend, Twain, who kindly brought me in the loop with what's been going on. Apparently, Facebook has been awarded the patent for "Dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network". Check this link, and this link for the full story. Well, I'm honestly shocked at what they seem to be getting away with. Actually, on a second though, I basically don't think they'll be getting away with this. As I told my friend, I think this is very much like stealing a piece of the ladder that everyone is, or wants to be climbing. And a good number of online services out there have in fact been climbing this ladder as long as Facebook has, if not longer. Orkut is an example of a social network that's been providing the news feed for a long while now. There are also services with a more specific purpose that do the same.. Last.fm and Goodreads would be examples. And I could bring a dozen other examples just of the top of my head. So, exactly how does Facebook think that they have a right to be doing this? How is it that they managed to get this patent? Oh well, I think there are reasons I don't get too close to the worlds of business and law. I'm better off with engineering, math and code. Things that make some logical sense... But even though I don't have much of a view on the topic, I have a firm belief that other online services are just not going to accept this. I have a feeling that Facebook has just brought together the ingredients for an upcoming fiasco. Well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see..... Labels: Facebook, Technology, Thoughts, Web, Web Development
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I love OpenID. =) I really do... I guess it's obvious by now. I've always been intrigued by![openid[1]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnBgd5zWOfcFe_o32zsB8WVoS2aA8Kn4caWSyLN3G81ebDvExqymTyTRLecSsP_RQdjCv1gyBuqCSS1pqgd4zU1hg5OW-t_5jWjovevSw7r82mVVQfwnH-4sxbo6rCMWAiK83q/?imgmax=800 "openid[1]") the idea, so much so that a couple of years ago I started serving my own OpenID on Aasemoon.com. Recently I decided it was time Verse supported OpenID, and after a few evenings of playing around with the PHP OpenID libraries, now it pretty much does that. The thing is, I have no idea how well this works. A lot of testing has to be done and I'm certain that there are still tons of bugs... but I guess I'll perfect it in time. =) Also, you can now use your Verse profile as your OpenID, in other OpenID enabled website. So yes Verse serves OpenIDz too now. =) Or at least as far as my testing of it goes.... Labels: Aasemoon, Coding, OpenID, Programming, Projects, Web, Web Development, Website, Weeee =D
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Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Update…
2 things.. I just rebuilt Verse’s edit toolbar entirely… the wiki syntax for using every single available tool on the Verse pages, can now be pasted to the page through the edit toolbar. I guess that makes the whole system much easier to use…. I have created a new music twine… this one is for Sleepthief. Check it out and add stuff if you like… =) Labels: Music, Twine, Web Development, Website
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Saturday, October 10, 2009
Verse News
I’ve been playing with some new options and extensions for Verse in the past few days.. and so far it looks like I’ve came up with a couple of useful new tools that I’m pretty satisfied with. First of all, Verse pages now have a couple of “statistics” lines at the very bottom. There’s a list of contributors, and also a number of the times a page has been loaded, and the date of last edit on the page. The edit pages now include a toolbar… exactly like the one Wikipedia has. Took a rather ugly hack on my template among other things… but it’s neat. You can use it to add some simple wiki syntax. The video embedding tool can now embed more than just YouTube videos. A bunch of other services including Vimeo are also supported now. I re-did the feed reader tool too, from the scratch. Now you can display both RSS and Atom feeds on the wiki pages, including the descriptions. And the way it shows up on the page can be customized too. And of course my favorite new tool which is not even a real extension [it’s more of a template hack], is a very small and simple syntax that allows you to hide a section of the page, and show it with a click on a link. This is specially useful since sometimes a wiki page can get very very long, and if there are a ton of videos posted to a page for instance, it’s better if the entire content of the page doesn’t show up at once. I also did consider having a "next page” option… in fact that’s what I did first. But then that was too bloggie… and I wanted all the sections of the page to be there at the first look, and just hide the content. So this looks like the best solution, and works perfectly now. =) There’s a ton of more new features.. and you can check out Verse’s help page for a more complete list of what tools are available now. ;) Labels: Aasemoon, Coding, Technology, Web, Web Development, Website, Weeee =D
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I just uploaded a load of new music to Melange, which you can find under the 2 new playlists: Intromission and Retrovibes. As you can probably guess, it’s all Demoscene music. =) Enjoy! I also added a few new features to Verse, including a number of new ways of uploading multiple files to the wiki, an automatic image gallery that retrieves all the images inside a category and creates a thumbnail gallery of them, and a calendar extension. Make sure to check’em out! ;) Labels: Aasemoon, Demoscene, Music, Projects, Web, Web Development, Website
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Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Verse
So in case there’s anybody out there who doesn’t already know, in the past week I’ve been busy knitting up a new online tool which I’m calling Verse. It’s a wiki / scrapbook / data collection tool, which in time me and fiends will hopefully fill up with interesting stuff. And if you’re interested in adding content, you can easily sign up and do so. I’ve tinker with the code quite a bit, and there are tons of capabilities that may not be very obvious right now due to the fact that there’s not enough content to display everything, but I have added some information to the help page. Both HTML and wiki syntax are allowed in every page. If you’d like to know how a certain something is done, you can just check out the source code of the page that contains the element you’re looking for. So…. check it out! Labels: Aasemoon, Creations, Technology, Web, Web Development, Website, Weeee =D
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To be quite honest, I've never liked delicious very much, instead I prefer the link directory in my own website. I don't use Flickr in any serious manner, never have, and I just post my photos in my own little private self built online photo gallery. I find Twitter quite useless, and I have an  official dislike for MySpace and similar services. I guess one of my major issues is that I don't like to sign up for 292384 different services, and have 292384 different profile pages, and 292384 accounts, to do 292384 different tasks for me [and often even repetitious tasks!]. I find that my friends and family, as well as all other people that I know and care about, tend to find it quite comfortable to just go to my website, read my blog, have a look at my new links, news, pictures and everything else as it's all in one place. I get the feeling that I'm not a fan of disconnected / decentralized / all over the place data, which is one major reason why I like the whole set of ideas behind DataPortability [hence the "I Support" logo].
Of course I have a Facebook account which I was pretty much forced into signing up for, given that some folks I know only keep in touch that way. But well, I only log into it every once in a blue moon. I have a passionate dislike for what they do [or don't... when it comes to things like Google Friend Connect] with your personal info [yeah... "those"].
In general there are a lot of things that I don't like about current social networking websites. The constant competition among users to add to their popularity scores by going around and randomly adding people they don't know, have no interest in ever getting to know and have no common interests with, bothers me. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy it very much when somebody adds me to their network because of... well... "something", anything other than being just another face in the list. I enjoy getting to know people who like to share something with me very much. But I'm sick and tired of constantly receiving add requests from people who don't even read my profile before pressing the "add" button. What royally boils my noodles though, are the people who send you rude messages if you don't accept their add request. Fancy that! There's also the spam, the chain messages, the conspiracies and cyber bullying that result in people committing suicide and tons of other annoyances. Interestingly enough, yesterday I came across this article that summarizes the best of what bothers me. So instead of writing it all down again, I just direct you to the article.
So, with all of the above reasons, the only social networking capable websites that I seriously use, are the very few very special ones that I find worth it. If you Google my nickname [Aasemoon] you'll see that I've given a try to almost everything that's out there, including some very recent social networking / bookmarking websites like Zigtag, Mento and Myrl, but out of all of that, here's what I actually use:
Shelfari - Although I have had my share of disappointments with it, as I receive too many really annoying spammy messages in there, and therefore I have cut out of all social networking capabilities of the website and I'm just using the shelf [and for that, it's the best].
last.fm - I love this one... just love it... absolutely nothing else like it for the purpose.
 And of course, the most recent addition is twine. This one has impressed the heavens out of me so far. =) I didn't just come across twine. I was Googling for something with the capabilities that twine has, and that's how I found out about it and eventually joined the beta. So far, I love it. I have to confess, my approach to twine has been a very self centred one. Ever since I joined the beta I've been mainly playing with different features trying to find out exactly what twine can be for me. I also have to mention that sometimes I have a way of using tools in ways that I find beneficial for me, even if how I use that tool isn't exactly the intended purpose of the tool [as long as I don't bother anyone else, that is!]. So that's exactly what I've been doing with twine, and here's the result: I'm now using twine as my ultimate social bookmarking tool, my 1 line blog, my image blog, my twitter, my interest profiling tool and a whole load of other things, and in time I'm sure I'll find more uses.
I have created a few twines related to my interests where I and other interested people post relevant links, pictures and all sort of data. That's very cool because I get a chance to have a look at what other people with similar interests are looking into, and I've ended up learning a lot that way. I've also created a public personal twine, where again I and others post all sorts of things... anything that any of the members of the twine might find cool. That's also where I post images, thoughts, notes.... it's very multi purpose. I also have a personal personal twine, that only I can see or post stuff to, and I mainly use it for testing twine related stuff or collecting articles to read later.
Another thing I like about twine is how alive it seems to be. I constantly see changes, improvements, new features and new ideas. I guess a large part of that has to do with the fact that the developers of twine are very open to suggestions from users. I know that there's a lot more that needs to be done before twine goes public, a lot that the users and developers want to have before they can call it ready. But even as it is right now... I'm really enjoying it, and honestly I'm a little surprised with a few articles I've read here and there on the web talking about people's disappointments with using twine. Hey, it's beta after all... come on! I'm only hoping that the day twine goes public, the spam protection capabilities will be fully "there". Other than that... I just want it to go public so that I can show off with my twines. =D ;)Labels: Aasemoon, Blogging, Selected Posts, Semantic Web, Technology, Thoughts, Twine, Web, Web Development, Website
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Thursday, April 17, 2008
OpenID
 It was sometime near the end of 2005 when I first heard about the OpenID idea and concept, and I became and instant fan of it. For someone like me who uses an insane amount of websites and online services, the idea of not having to create a username and password for each one, and not having to fill in the profile each time, was such a pleasant notion. Not long after that I started testing various OpenID providers, including myOpenID, ClaimID and Verisign. So I registered my OpenID, but I didn't use it that much because of a number of reasons. The idea of having an OpenID is very cool, but even today, [about 3 years later], not that many website are OpenID enabled just yet. I mean, for this to really work, it's necessary that some of the major websites start supporting it, and so far they haven't. What's funny is that everybody is now offering to serve your OpenID, but they're not accepting it if you try to login to their service using an OpenID provided by someone else. If you have a blogger profile, your URL is now your OpenID. But you can't login to blogger using an OpenID from Verisign! Obviously everybody likes to advertise for themselves by providing the URL that the user is going to use everywhere, but they don't like to go through the pain of supporting OpenID login. [I have to mention here, for anybody who might not know this, that your OpenID is a unique URL to some info page about you]. The other problem is that, if you already have an account in a website that now supports OpenID, there usually is no way of tying your already existing user info to your new OpenID. Although, I also have to mention that recently I saw a website doing that: aboutus.org. I really have to send a "way to go" to those guys, although mine didn't work so far but at least they're trying. So, it's possible, it just takes some work.
On the plus side, there actually are a good number of websites that have started supporting OpenID [one of my favorites would be legaltorrents.com]. And day by day, more websites add OpenID login pages. That's good news. So recently, I felt there are more places on the web that I can use my OpenID, which is cool.
But then, there was another problem. I didn't like the fact that my ID, contains the provider's URL. I also didn't like it that it pointed to a profile page on the provider's website. I mean if it's supposed to be MY ultimate ID, it has to be MY URL, and pointing to my biggest online profile, which is my website. So I did some digging, and I found the solution to that too. I found an open source PHP application, called phpMyID, which works as your own personal provider. So you can have your own OpenID server, and then with a few steps you can use your own domain name as your OpenID. I set that up a couple of weeks ago, and so far I've had no problem using www.Aasemoon.com as my OpenID. I had a few people asking me how this whole thing works, so I've wrote a few paragraphs about OpenID in general, and setting up your own OpenID server and delegation, which you can view on the Programming & Web-Development page on my website.
So now, I only hope that at some point major online services will start supporting OpenID. Life will get a lot easier that way. =)Labels: Kool, OpenID, Programming, Selected Posts, Technology, Web, Web Development, Website
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Nice. I've been waiting for this almost forever. Hopefully this will solve a whole bunch of JavaScript + FireFox problems.
"JavaScript 2.0, aka ECMAScript 4 will be coming in a future version of Firefox, and with it will come Python-like generators and iterators, among other things. The good news is that Adobe and Microsoft are on the spec alongside Brendan from Mozilla, so there is hope for the language to improve in all browsers in a standard way."
read more | digg storyLabels: Coding, Programming, Web, Web Development
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![openid[1]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh-3Trp3yWH9M1liB6qTS7U_3VFNSsI78TunaVqNyMcYW4Cjzhu55V-XTihB5oKcuwdsTV_n73GzH5sc4Yfh3pK4iV3GYh_abP9nJBirFdDGd1W1Xa92ov-KTcukMF0S8NCfD5/s1600-h/openid%5B1%5D%5B4%5D.gif "openid[1]")
![[Valid Atom 0.3]](http://aasemoon.com/imagez/valid-atom.gif "Validate my Atom 0.3 feed"){kind=small}
