technospeak

There are 143 posts filed in technospeak (this is page 7 of 8).

my upcoming.org events in the sidebar

Upcoming Eventsi’m starting to really dig those social web-apps.

one the last discoveries of mine is upcoming.org [1]. upcoming. org is a social event calendar driven by people like you and me. people can manage their events there and i have a neat way of showing some of my upcoming stuff i’m planning to attend or just got in my date book.

in addition to that, i can subscribe to events for a certain city i like (as in “bern“, “zürich“, “tashkent” or “trachselwald“). or subscribe to events of a certain person, no matter city they take place. the subscription is possible as an rss-feed or as as a ical-calendar-file. so if you like, you can add the calendars of your buddies to your ical and see what events they go to and take part or start to stalk them :-)

i’ve started to add some venues and events in bern and hope this starts to catch up in my ‘hood :-)

and i also thought this might be a nice way of “collecting” the people that want to come to certain meetings. let’s see if it starts to take off a bit more. if you add yourself to upcoming.org, send me a note and we can start to share our events…

which leads me to the title of this post: “… in the sidebar” [2]. since the events can be shown to any site with the upcoming.org badge, i’ve added my next 5 events to the sidebar. with some css-tinkering it also looks like it belongs in the sidebar. so if you want to see what i plan to to in the next few weeks, then you can now peek there (but i’m not gonna tell you stuff that i plan to visit the einstein exhibit with nina this weekend, so no stalking me…).

[1] which got bought by yahoo yesterday, which made every news-site post about that, which made me tinker around with it a bit more. so it’s actually a re-discovery, i can’t remember when i first encountered it. what i know is, that i encountered it much later than b. (just look at my or his user number…).

[2] time for all you rss-feed-readers to visit my site

technorati tags: , ,

trusted computing

no matter how you think about trusted computing, you should take a look at that really nice street-art-styled movie [1] from lutz vogel [2] and benjamin stephan. you can either watch it directly on the movie-site or download it here in different formats and sizes or (maybe preferred to all the people involved) leech it with your desired bittorrent-client through this file.

definitely worth those three and a half minutes!

[via pia] [3]

[1] cc-licensed

[2] check out lutz vogels other other short films and projects, they’re all rather brilliant!

[3] i’ve wanted to write that, since we first met :-)

hardcoded blogroll

i was annoyed that my sidebar loaded extremely slow. now i finally found some time to fix this. i hardcoded the blogroll[1] into the template, so there are no external files loaded anymore. i used blogrolling.com for that service, so it was a bit of a chore to get that data off their site.

i exported my blogroll into an opml-file. then i opened that file in my favorite text-editor, subethaedit and “search & replace”d until i could just paste the resulting code into my template. so now you have a much spiffier sidebar on my blog (if you visit it and don’t just pull the posts via rss…)

now i just need to get that validation right, but that’s a task for another free hour, now i’m off to see crimen ferpecto, which is hopefully gonna be good for a laugh or two.

[1]: technically it’s not a blogroll, ’cause some of my friends don’t blog, hence it’s called friendly bits.

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my phonebill puzzles me [update]

today i just got my sunrise mobile phone-bill, and i was quite puzzled by one item on it. i’ve used gprs three times this month (not a hardcore user, am i…).

twice [1, 2] to send a moblog-post from switzerland resulting in a total data rate of 248 kB, and once [3] to send a moblog-post from spain which was 113 kB heavy.

the thing that now puzzles me, is that i actually paid less for my data in spain, although i was roaming with Telefonica there.

in switzerland i paid 0.02 CHF per kB, which results in a price of 20.50 CHF per MB (!!!).

in spain, i paid 0.0116 CHF per kB, resulting in a price of 11.90 per MB, which is nearly half the price i pay in switzerland. and remember, i was roaming with my swiss phone on a spanish network, so i surely didn’t pay the least expensive price there.

ain’t that unbelievable? guess it’s time to look into other options for sending that occasional moblog from my phone. sunrise do you hear me? data is much too expensive with you!!!

do you have any tips to lower my phone bill?

update: bitflux-chregu has some remedies. see his comment here.

technorati tags: ,

a new gadget

Axok, i admit, i could also have bought a really long (but marginally less expensive) cable, but i has got me an airport express from ricardo [1].

now i can play all my tunes [2] over my bad-ass stereo with b&o loudspeakers, much better than the puny logitech speakers :-) and if i’d actually had a printer, i could print wireless, but that’s another story. now i just need another wireless enabled gadget to fully use this new one.

[1]: i prefer using it to ebay, it seems less scam-ridden…

[2]: currently 2624 songs, 11.21 GB

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NetnewsWire

i finally decided that it’s worth upgrading NetnewsWire to the full version, mostly because of the searching feature and the bloglines synching. i just downloaded the demo now, which will work for 30 days from now on. anoyne else want to pay for that nice piece of software? because when we pay more than one license, then each one pays 5$ less, which makes it worth that post.

leave a comment or send me an email so we can license-pool…

technorati tags:

technorati tags

oh, and if you’re wondering why my tags are not working (e.g see the tag:emmen, which i pinged some days ago): technorati has some problems accessing my site:

curl -O https://habi.gna.ch/blog/

% Total – % Received – % Xferd – Average Speed – Time – Curr. Dload – Upload – Total – Current – Left – Speed

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – –:–:– – 0:00:07 – –:–:– – 0

curl: (23) Failed writing body

after getting in touch with adriaan he found out that the problem is not ecto-based, but more on the technorati site.

technorati-support wrote something like:

maybe he has some kind of referrer blocker or User-Agent blocker that is hosing the spider and curl

i just love it, when i have no idea what could be b0rked. i guess i misconfigured something with my .htacces-file that helps me with my image-leechers and serves them this image. i hope b. is able to figure out what went wrong…

i’ll keep you updated.

freeflux.net opened

have you ever thought that you need to start a blog, but you don’t have access to a server (or friends who can spare some place)? then you should check out freeflux.net, which just opened some days ago. check out the entry page to see the important things. the most important is on top: it’s free :-)

and the other goodies are: based on the bitflux cms, open source, highly tweakable and supposedly fun.

[via bitflux]

technorati tags:

this blog is now gravatar enabled

to make posting comments a little bit more rewarding i implemented gravatars on this blog.

two days ago i commented on an entry over at urs’ blog and some fancy image turned up next to my comment. i’ve seen that already turning up on different blogs (e.g. moblg.uk and blog.ch).

the code with which i implemented it is shown below for your abuse and modification.

<MTComments>

<div class=”comments-body”>

<$MTCommentBody$>

<span class=”comments-post”>

<a href=”<$MTCommentURL$>”>

<img src=”<$MTGravatar default=”https://habi.gna.ch/blank.jpg” size=”40″$>” alt=”gravatar” align=”left” />

</a>

posted by: <$MTCommentAuthorLink spam_protect=”1″$><br />

on <$MTCommentDate$><br clear=”all”>

</span>

</div>

</MTComments>

i made it so that every person gets a gravatar, even it there’s none registered (for example, see peters comment here). if your gravatar is missing the pictures gets replaced by blank.jpg. the gravatar is linked with the url or the (spamsafe) email link of the person that left a comment.

so, ladies and gents, if you want your picture to show up in the comments, then step over to gravatar and register yours.

thanks, goodbye.

a bunch of new feeds

i just returned from the matt blogg+birthday meet which was really nice and interesting. it was really nice connecting the faces to the bits and bites, talking about tagging vs. keywords, map orientations and stuff like that.

i actually suspected to stay around an hour or so, but in the end i turned out to be home around ten at night.

guys and gals, it was really interesting to meet all of you, and i’m surely gonna add some more feeds to my news-reader.

btw: if you want to see the appropriate images, then go to my blog.ch-meet-tag on flickr. (so please tag your images accordingly, so they show up as a whole bunch under the general tag blog.ch-meet.

k700i and isync (or k700i & isync :-)

yesterday i went to prolong my contract with my mobile phone provider, so i was able to cheaply get a new mobile phone. after looking at the different mobiles compatible with isync i decided (mostly for monetary reasons) to get the Sony Ericsson K700i.

after trying to sync it with my computer i nearly gave up, because isync always crashed on me in the middle of the syncing process. after countless tries, deleting preference files, rewriting some preinstalled bundles and stuff like that isync notified me of a “duplication warning” with one contact i have in my address-book: the godfather of my sister is in my address book as: Renner Prename & Prename Wife.

that puny little ampersand made my isync crash every time. after i’ve edited the contact to “Renner Prename1 Prename2” everything worked like a charm.

just in case anyone out there has the same problem and is trying to find a solution…

Btk700Inow i just need to get file transfers going, that’s also a thing that doesn’t work. the transfer starts just right, but then dies with the error seen on the left. i can send files from the phone to the mac, but not the other way. really weird!

anyone any suggestions on how to remedy that situation, ’cause i’d really like to use a cool .mp3 as a ringtone…

rfid implant

you might have seen that flickr photoset which was linked from boingboing last week. a guy implanted a rfid chip in his hand to do different stuff with it, like opening a door lock, or starting his car. sounds crazy? it is, but it’s that kind of stuff i like. just imagine how cool it would be to touch the handlebar of your bike and it’s unlocked in that very same moment. no fiddling with keys and anything.

privacy concerns? not really, because the implant cannot be read if more than some inches away, which is surely the distance one would notice

now shannon posted an interview with Amal over at the bmezine. go and read it, it’s enlightening (or think what you want of it).

new badge [update]

i’ve added a new badge to the collection on the lower left: GeoURL

if you click on the badge, your browser is taken to the geourl-page, where you can see all my neighbors in meatspace (i just love that expression!).

hello b., hello urs, hello guido not hello fsp!

update: i stumbled over the link on the bottom of arnis blog (which seems to be dead), that’s how i noticed that geourl relaunched, it’s more a coincidence than investigative bloggin…

i want one of those new powerbooks [update]

the newest revision of apples powerbooks features an accelerometer, that detects if you drop the powerbook and parks the hard disc heads (a thing already found on older ibm-machines). now a guy figured out how to tap into the accelerometer and use it to display all kind of funky stuff (e.g. a window is fixed in space, while the powerbook rotates). this led another guy to program a python script whith which you can control itunes. just give your powerbook a mild slap on the head and it switches to the next song. i see some really funky stuff coming up for those powerbooks….

[via fscklog]

update: someone already did program a game for the tilt sensors. let the fun begin.

[via the unofficial apple weblog]

address book apple-script

the powerbook blog linked to a nice hint on macosxhints.ch (features german translations of osxhints.com, but also original german hints).
you might have seen that you can click on any label in a contacts detail (e.g. work address, telephone, etc) to get a nice menu to do things with the data (get it in huge letters all over your screen, look for the map, print label, etc.).
since the release of panther coders can add to these menus with little apple-script-effort. the script mentioned in the hints adds an european map search, but i wanted to alter it to use the excellent map.search.ch. after downloading the nice applescript i changed it to this point:

using terms from application “Address Book”
on action property
return “address”
end action property

on action title for thePerson with theAddress
return “mit map.search.ch anzeigen”
end action title

on should enable action for thePerson with theAddress
return true
end should enable action

on perform action for thePerson with theAddress
tell application “Address Book”
set z to zip of theAddress
set c to city of theAddress
set s to street of theAddress
end tell
tell application “Safari”
set browser to make new document
tell browser
set URL to “http://map.search.ch/” & z & “-” & c & “/” & s
end tell
end tell
return true
end perform action
end using terms from

so, to use the script, just open script editor, paste the code above (or FAR better, just click here1), save as “script” in ~/Library/Address Book Plug-Ins/ restart your address book and have fun with the address label.
it should work with all swiss addresses, if it doesn’t send me a note and i’ll try to fix it…
oh, and i forgot to mention: the whole thing only works for os x.3!

1that link took me ages!