Here are Rob's Blog entries for April 2005.
Blog entries for other months can be found in the main blog index.
I just had to buy one.
My new iPod is charging up now ready to play with later.
I've noticed that the GPRS connection from my phone seems to be getting slower and slower lately.
I was trying to give a demonstration of a mobile site earlier today and it was taking about a minute a page to download. I'm not talking about really large pages, certainly less than 20k including images.
Interestingly, the demonstration was to O2, and even though I'm not on their network, they were able to explain why things were so slow.
It's down to the increased use of Blackberries. Not the fruit, but the handy mobile email device that are currently all the rage in the business community.
Due to their always online nature, they sap the limited GPRS capacity on offer per cell, slowing down the service for everyone else. This means busy areas such as central London, mainline railway stations etc have very slow connectivity rates. Hopefully 3G will be the silver bullet here that can provide greater bandwidth to accommodate the growth in connected devices.
Time to ban the Blackberry, until the time I get one that is. :-)
I decided the other day to sign up to Google's Ad-Sense program as I wanted to see if I could earn a few extra pennies having relevant advertising on my blog posts.
Unfortunately the email came back from Google today that I have been rejected as I have difficult site navigation.
Now this is something I've suspected for a while, but didn't want to admit to. Reading the email wounded my pride, but it's also been a good reality check.
I have juggled the navigation over the past few months, but kept the basic theme the same so as not to orphan too much content.
Maybe now is the time to embrace a brave new design. The trouble is, I'm not really a designer.
I can find what I want on the site as I know where it is, and how the site is structured. Looking at the usage of the site however reveals most the impressions are referred to from my RSS feeds, or from search engines. There is very little movement on the site once a reader has arrived, though the related links box on some posts seems to be popular.
The content people actually use are the blog entries. This makes sense, as it's mainly old legacy stuff that's not included in the blog, everything else is there. I think it's probably time to make the blog the real focus of the site. Also, judging by my inbox, adding the ability to comment on posts would also be a good thing.
It's time to look at some good A list blogs, and see what they are doing right, and where I'm going wrong.
Expect changes over the coming few months...
Sitting in a Lifeblog debrief earlier, one thing that struck me was that others had the same problem as me regarding wanting to post to multiple blogs.
It seems most would like to seperate a work blog from a personal blog, but unless it's hosted on the same Typepad account for example, Lifeblog doesn't let you do this. From a service point a of view it's a one to one match.
Sitting there, my mind was mulling the problem over, and it would appear that a simple Lifeblog proxy would solve the problem. If blogs are hosted on the same service and accessible by the same username and password, Lifeblog lets you post to different blogs. Why not just build a service that can proxy between various Lifeblog compatible blogs, so you wouldn't have to host them all together.
So how may this work from a technical perspective.
Well Lifeblog posts using a flavour of the Atom protocol. For security it uses WSSE encryption on the posts. This means that the proxy would need to it's own username and password to authenticate against when talking to Lifeblog. The various blogs it would be proxying onto would also need different username and passwords, and proxy would have to insert these as it passes the post onto the relevant blog. We could potentially store all the blogs we're allowing posts to in an XML config file. For example...
<blogs>
<blog>
<name>My Blog</name>
<url>http://work.blog.com/post.pl</url>
<username>robertprice</username>
<password>secret</password>
</blog>
<blog>
<name>My Blog 2</name>
<url>http://my.website.com/post.pl</url>
<username>rob</username>
<password>lifeblog</password>
</blog>
</blogs>
Here all the blogs are listed, along with their name, posting url, username and password. The proxy would take this list and return a localised list of blogs that when posted to, would just pass the relevant data across. So this means there are two areas to break the proxy down into.
First, the list of blogs. This reads the XML and returns a list of localised blogs and posting URL's that Lifeblog can use to upload content.
Secondly, the actual localised posting URL needs to remove the Lifeblog WSSE authentication, and replace it with the correct username and password for the real blog before passing it on to the real upload URL.
It could be as simple as that. Maybe I'll mock something up in Perl to test the theory out.
Anyway, who's to say this just has to proxy Lifeblog. It could alternatively be a gateway that could translate into one of the common blogging API's, instantly opening up Lifeblog to millions more users. Now that would be cool!
UPDATE 23/04/05
Hugo emailed me to say Lifeblog 1.6 can handle some of what I have suggested...
Actually, Lifeblog 1.6 can have post to more than one account, and is available for the Nokia 6630, 6680, 6681, 6682. Unfortunately Lifeblog 1.5 (for 7610, 6670, 6260, 3230) can only post to one blog. And the PC can post to multiple accounts.
I've been lucky enough to have taken part in a Lifeblog trail for Nokia in the UK over the past few weeks.
We were given a lovely new Nokia 6630 phone (that unfortunately we have to return at the end of the trial), equipped with Lifeblog and just asked to evaluate it.
Here are my thoughts, experiences and opinions on using Lifeblog.
Well firstly Lifeblog is really two pieces of software. One part runs on your series 60 based smartphone and the other runs on a fairly high spec PC running Windows. The phone stores your messages, photos, videos, etc until you can sync up with a PC to download them. I'll cover each part separately, then as a whole.
The phone based software is excellent. All content appears in Lifeblog automatically. So I now no longer have to open various different applications to see different content. Lifeblog captures SMS and MMS messages both sent and received. It also captures any photos or videos I take. Content is kept in order, so I can cycle through by day and see all my data in order. This is great at keeping messages in context.
Best of all is the ability to post to a blog directly from the phone handset. Because Lifeblog is so well linked into the way the phone works, it means I can quickly select the content I want to blog about, and get it up on my site very rapidly. Behind the scenes, Lifeblog uses a flavour of the Atom protocol to communicate with the blog. Six Apart's Typepad service is supported by default, but other services are coming on stream now with a Lifeblog plugin available for Moveable Type, and a gateway into Flickr. I was even able to link Lifeblog into my own homebrew Perl based blogging system. Going over my website, you'll probably see the posts I've sent via Lifeblog as I include a little strapline at the bottom of each entry highlighting the fact.
From a social point of view, as I always have my phone with me, I can blog wherever and whenever I like. It's great that the high end Nokia phones have megapixel cameras as the images are so sharp. Lifeblog does shrink the image when posting to the web, but that's just great, it saves me money in data charges. It's amazing to be able just point the phone at something, and know it'll be online a minute a later. I've been showing off this ability to the guys at work to much excitement.
Now for the PC side of Lifeblog...
Unfortunately this is where I've been having some problems. The concept is great, but its current incarnation still needs a bit of work done on it. For example, it won't run on my 1ghz laptop. It keeps asking to update DirectX, even though I'm on the latest version. This is a shame as it's my main machine. However, it will run on my office desktop machine, so I can share my experiences of that.
The PC version of Lifeblog takes over the whole screen when linked in. Microsoft Windows disappears and Lifeblog takes over.
The screen looks beautiful, and has the same timeline experience as the mobile version, though it contains everything that was ever in your handset. It's great being able to scan back and see old message and photos being kept in order. There is also the ability to post to a blog from here as well, though I've not actually tried that, being such a fan of posting from the handset.
It's easy to sync between the PC and the mobile phone. It just uses Nokia's existing PC Suite software to connect up and from there it's just an option on the menu to copy everything across. Very simple. During data transfer, Lifeblog show's you the content coming across in real time on the screen.
Now for the overall take on Lifeblog.
I think it's bloody brilliant. Nokia's concept of a Digital Shoebox works really well. It's a place to keep all that content that may otherwise be lost or backed up in various places all together. As the mobile phone takes a central role in modern lifestyles, the ability to automatically use it as a multimedia diary is very powerful.
The downside is the software needs a powerful PC to run on. This will probably be addressed as the software matures and older computers are replaced. The other side is the cost. I've been lucky at being able to use a full version as part of the trial instead of having to pay for it. The price point is a little too high I'd say at present, but a reduction here would really boost uptake.
There is a free version of Lifeblog available from Nokia that can store up to 200 items. If you have a compatible phone, I'd really urge anyone to give it a try. Beware though, it can be addictive :-)
This review was based on Lifeblog 1.5.
The Animation Art Gallery in London has an Art Of Clone Wars exhibition on at present, complete with a lifesize stormtrooper in the window.
I'll have to pop along there later to check it out properly.
The BBC has been fleshing out it's five year plan (doesn't that sound Stalinist?) for mobile and it's centring with on-demand rich-media content.
Angel Gambino's strategy is to make sure the mobile version of bbc.co.uk is as important as the regular web one.
Mobile access to the BBC Media Player is central to the plan. The BBC's creative archive will be available as well as the current BBC Radio Player. Content on the Radio Player will be available on a seven day free public service basis.
Angel also mentions that she sees location based services growing in importance. Her plans focus on being able to deliver powerful local services using the BBC's existing local TV and radio provision.
So how will the commercial sector respond to this. At present licensing of content for re-broadcast can be problematic. Making available a radio show after it's broadcast open's a barrel of worms regarding royalties. Does the commercial station pay licence fees again to reuse it's own show? How does using a radio player to time shift when Joe Public hears the show differ from Joe Public recording the show themselves to hear later?
Personally I think that commercial and public service media players will become core to the future growth of media companies. They will become the portal into those companies current content and archives, providing a great way to monetise all the content that would may otherwise languish unused outside traditional media.
The growth of mobile communications has been spotted by Gambino and she's right to put so much focus on it. Convergence is happening, and over the next few years the lines between mobile, web, radio and TV will really blur. Mobile is key to this, just think what your phone can do today compared to 2 years ago. Most phones are now mobile media players. You can play and download music, take and view photos, play games, take and watch short videos, listen to the radio, even call your mates.
It looks like Perl on Nokia Series 60 phones is getting closing as Jarkko Hietaniemi has just commited a patch to the Perl 5 Porters mailing list that enables Perl 5.8.x and Perl 5.9.x to work on Symbian smartphones. The message specifically states that it is known to work on Nokia Series 60 phones. The port is copyright Nokia.
I'm now officially very excited! Perl could very soon be running on my Nokia 6630!
A quick delve into the attached README reveals...
The attached patches enable compiling Perl on the Symbian OS platform: Symbian OS releases 7.0s and 8.0a; and the corresponding Series 60 SDKs 2.0, 2.1, and 2.6.
Note that the patches only implement a "base port", enabling one to run Perl on Symbian, the basic operating system platform. The patches do not implement any further Symbian OS or Series 60 (an application framework) bindings to Perl. (A small Symbian / Series 60 interface class and a small Series 60 application are included, though.)
It also seems that the patch allows Perl to be embedded into Series 60 C++ applications.
Since the primary way of using Perl on Symbian is a DLL (as described above), I also wrote a small wrapper class for Series 60 (C++) applications that want to embed a Perl interpreter, and a small Series 60 demonstration application (PerlApp) using that wrapper class. As a bonus PerlApp knows how to install Perl scripts (.pl, or hash-bang-perl) and Perl modules (.pm) from the messaging application's Inbox, and how to run scripts when invoked via a filebrowser (either the one builtin to PerlApp, or an external one).
It's fantastic to see that Nokia are working on getting Perl onto their smartphones. I've jealously looked on as Python developers have had their language implemented, now it seems that Perl could well be nearing an official launch.
A new product called Datasherpa has just been launched by Clickstream Technoligies with the aim of ensuring all pages served by a webserver are automatically loaded with web analytics tags.
They claim their new product eliminates the burden of creating, inserting and testing page tags, and ensures all pages are tracked accurately.
It's a really simple idea, and bloody good one. We've been caught out before at work when a page hasn't been correctly tagged and we've lost valuable traffic information.
It sounds like it would be really simple to build as a mod_perl handler for Apache. The handler would scan each page served, probably using the HTML::Parser module or even just a simple regular expression, detect the closing page </body> tag, and just before that insert the tracking tag corresponding to the virtual host being served.
We use Webtrends at work, and this approach sounds like it should work really well with their system. It may even be worth mocking up a proof of concept quickly.
Those of you who subscribe to my RSS 1.0 Feed now have the full content of the first 5 articles on this website instead of just a teaser.
I've taken advantage of the content:encoded tag provided by the RSS 1.0 content module, to include the full body as encoded CDATA.
The feeds are generated by a Perl script from my backend database. Thanks to the power of the Template Toolkit I was able to write a simple filter to make all the links referenced in the articles absolute so they are easier to follow when the feed is read out of context of the site. It's a very basic filter, and won't win any awards for best practice, but if it helps anyone else, the code is available below.
sub make_links_absolute {
my $text = shift;
$text =~ s[<(.*?)"/(.*?)"(.*?)>][<$1"$baseurl$2"$3>]sg;
return $text;
}
The code is then added into the FILTERS option when I create by Template object, and called in the template by piping to make_links_absolute.
my $template = Template->new({
FILTERS => {
'make_links_absolute' => \&make_links_absolute,
}
});
The other feeds are still headline and teaser only I'm afraid.
I've been playing with XSLT the past few days. XSLT is a really powerful technology for transforming XML data into other formats.
I've taken my RSS 0.91, 1.0 and 2.0 feeds and added a XSL stylesheet to them to produce HTML in the style of my website.
Now when you follow the feed links in the sidebar of the site, instead of getting raw XML (or RDF) you should get a basic HTML page that can be read in your browser.
It was easy to add in the stylesheet, it just needed a simple stylesheet declaration in the XML using the <?xml-stylesheet?> tag. Here's the tag I used...
<?xml-stylesheet href="http://www.robertprice.co.uk/robblog/xsl/RSS.xsl" type="text/xsl" media="screen"?>I've not got round to changing the atom feed just yet, but I'll try to do that when I get a minute.
To see the stylesheet in action (assuming your browser can handle client side XSLT, which most can) use one of the following links...
As you may know I'm quite a fan of Nokia's excellent Lifeblog product, and I'm currently taking part in their UK trail of it.
We had a couple of representatives in from Nokia today to discuss applications from Lifeblog, and one thing Olaf mentioned was of Typepad (the preferred Lifeblog blog system) accepting multiple posts at once.
This is one thing that had never occured to me. I had always asssumed you just posted one item at a time. I had a look at Lifeblog once they had gone, and sure enough, all I'd have to do is to Mark each element I wish to post, then when ready Post To Web.
I checked my homebrew blog's Lifeblog interface, and I saw I had coded it to only accept one entry at a time. Thankfully as it's in Perl it only took me moving the XPath query I was using to get the link into a foreach loop and all the entries magically appeared.
I love the power of Perl and Lifeblog!
Here's the current contents of my tech bookshelf.
Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue (if you count all the Perl spines).
This post is also to test multiple Lifeblog posts work.
The current Mobile Entertainment Magazine has a piece about how mobile content operators have taken a £125,000,000 hit since the introduction of the universal STOP command.
To recap, the STOP command was brought in so anyone receiving mobile content via premium SMS or MMS can just text the word "STOP" to the number the content is coming from to cancel the subscription to the service sending it. The service must also send out a reminder at the end of each month, or after £20 has been spent, whichever is sooner.
For a market worth £500,000,000, that's a drop of 25%, and shows just how many people have inadvertantly signed up for services they don't want.
The worst offenders seem to be the ringtone operators who offer subscription services but offer the first few ringtones for free, then tieing the user into a minimum subscription period at full price. In the US Jamster is being sued for misleading practice for using this very method to catch unwary consumers.
We had our first kick yesterday! It's a strange feeling putting my hand on the tummy and feeling some movement. It makes becoming a father for the first time seem so much more real.
After yesterday's Life Before Birth programme on Channel 4, I'm really tempted to get a 4D ultrasound scan done with my partner.
We had the 20 week scan today.
Everything is normal, a healthy size and wouldn't sit still to have his/her picture taken.
Here (s)he is waving hello!
Here's the view from my window at the Berner Hotel over London.
In the centre of the picture is the Telecom Tower.
I've just got back from a fantastic Levellers gig at The Marquee in London.
I was lucky enough to be on the guest list and have a pass to the aftershow party as well.
The show was brilliant. Far far better than their disappointing show in Cambridge a few weeks ago.
The band was full of energy and seemed to be really enjoying themselves. The set list was full of old classics as well as some excellent new stuff.
Make u Happy, their next single, has really grown on me after listening to it a few times at work and seeing it performed live tonight. With some radio airplay behind it, it should be a hit.
It's great to see the band back on top form again. I can't wait for the new album and for the Snake In The Grass festival in Colchester later this year when they headline. What a beautiful day...
