Tag: technology/Archives

Playtagger- Mod

The Delicious Playtagger seems to be gone, for now, maybe forever– possibly due to Yahoo! revisions to the Delicious service. Here’s a quick fix (version 0.1; check back: will write a better one later): playtagger_mod.zip

This uses the same Delicious audio player (playtagger.swf) and images (stop.gif, play.gif), with a revised JavaScript (playtagger_mod.js). It lets you store the files locally. (Also adds a class to the image: “mp3” for CSS styling, courtesey Consuming Experience. Plus you could create your own play/stop icons.).

To get ‘er goin’:

  1. Unzip playtagger_mod.zip and upload to your site the folder: playtagger_mod
  2. In the file: playtagger_mod.js.
  3. Change the variable at the top: playtagger_url.
  4. from: http://YOUR_DOMAIN.COM/PATH_TO_FOLDER/playtagger_mod/.
    to the URL of your uploaded /playtagger_mod folder (needs trailing “/”).

  5. In the <head> of any files you want the Playtagger- Mod to work, place:
    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://YOUR_DOMAIN.COM/PATH_TO_FOLDER/playtagger_mod/playtagger_mod.js"></script>

    (Again, replace http://YOUR_DOMAIN.COM/PATH_TO_FOLDER/playtagger_mod with the URL of your /playtagger_mod folder.)

Should be good to go. The Playtagger- Mod script looks adds a little Flash audio-player mext to any mp3 links on your page. Looks/works like this:
Specialist “Laser” Lawrence (2:08; audio: Jake Warga, Iraq: Soldier’s Soundtrack.)

UPDATE: Playtagger- Mod is now working in the wilds of the great WFMU’s Beware of the Blog.

iPhone Antenna

We have an exclusive pic of the new Verizon iPhone. Regarding the “death grip” dropped-call problem, Verizon’s Chief of Antenna Design announced, “We’re taking no chances”:

Antenna for Verizon iPhone

via Stonetip.

Shibboleet

Funny ’cause it’s too true, the latest xkcd, “Tech Support:”

Wondering about “Shibboleet”? So was I. The answer comes from the CSMonitor.com, “Shibboleet: XKCD’s clever code word explained:”

“Leet” (more often “1337”) is half-joking hacker code for elite, or skilled. A leet programmer or gamer is at the top of her game.

“Shibboleth” comes from the Bible. It’s the Hebrew word for an ear of corn, but requires a true native accent to pronounce properly. Because the word was so difficult for foreigners to say, shibboleth became a code word for early Israelites, a dead giveaway that someone was an interloper. Now, shibboleth is a catchall term for any custom or belief that sets one group of people apart from another.

Achtung iPad

The revus are in…

“Hitler responds to the iPad”

I thot f’sure Obama was gonna tell us last night that “Everyone gets and iPad.” A jobs and edu stimulus all in one.

Future Grook

PRESENCE OF MIND

You'll conquer the present
    suspiciously fast
if you smell of the future
    -- and stink of the past.

—Piet Hein, More Grooks 1968

Grooks | Wikiquote | Wikipedia | AppreciationAmazon

DREAM INTERPRETATION
Simplified.

Everything's either
concave or -vex,
so whatever you dream
will be something with sex

LILAC TIME

The lilacs are flowering, sweet and sublime,
     with a perfume that goes to the head;
and lovers meander in prose and rhyme,
trying to say --
          for the thousandth time --
     what's easier done than said.

via Technology360.

Keitai Shosetsu

Keitai is Japenese for cell-phone, shōsetsu for novel; so keitai shōsetsu is “cellphone novel” (also “thumb novel”): a new lit genre started by young .jp girls. Their novels are posted to a media-sharing site as a series of text messages, which millions of .jp-teens download and read on their mobile phones.

Readers rapidly respond, and sometimes suggest. Some authors have used the best suggestions to alter their plots. Quite a few of these cell-phone serials have evolved into successful paper novels, selling 100K’s and even 1M’s of copies. Readers often purchase not the paperback but the hardcover as a momento of their literary interactivity. Half of the Japan’s half the top 10 fiction bestsellers of late have started as keitai shōsetsu.

The New Yorker interviewed author Mone:

Mone started posting her novel straight from her phone to a media-sharing site called Maho i-Land (Magic Island), never looking over what she wrote or contemplating plot. “I had no idea how to do that, and I did not have the energy to think about it,” she says. She gave her tale a title, “Eternal Dream,” and invented, as a proxy for her adolescent self, a narrator named Saki, who is in her second year of high school and lives in a hazily described provincial town. “Where me and my friends live, in the country, there aren’t any universities,” Mone wrote. “If you ride half an hour or so on the train, there’s a small junior college, that’s all.” Saki has a little brother, Yudai, and a close-knit family, a portrait that Mone painted in short, broad strokes: “Daddy / Mom / Yudai / I love you all so much.” Before long, however, Saki, walking home from school, is abducted by three strange men in a white car: “—Clatter, clatter — / The sound of a door opening. / At that moment . . . / —Thud— / A really dull blunt sound. / The pain that shoots through my head.” The men rape her and leave her by the side of the road, where an older boy from school, Hijiri, discovers her. He offers her his jersey, and love is born. More…

6 Yrs in SV

The Silicon Valley correspondent for The Economist looks back on “Six years in the Valley:”

Jaron Lanier, a Valley pioneer, saw behind the Web 2.0 totem of “collective intelligence” an insidious “digital Maoism” that suppressed individuality. Linda Stone, a former Apple and Microsoft executive, observed an unhealthy trend towards “continuous partial attention”, as people spent less time focusing on a single thing or person because they were constantly scanning so many other things—from Facebook to e-mail and their phones—for fear of missing out on some social opportunity.

Perhaps most dangerously, Web 2.0 still had only one business model, advertising, and the Valley was refusing to admit that only one company (Google) with only one of its products (search advertising) had proved that the model really worked.

Add to that, from the same issue, “Internet companies: The end of the free lunch—again:”

Now reality is reasserting itself once more, with familiar results. The number of companies that can be sustained by revenues from internet advertising turns out to be much smaller than many people thought.

I, for one, hope to never hear the word “monetize” again.

via Tech360.

1234567890 Day

“It’s time to party like it’s 1234567890 – ’cause it is! On this Friday, Feb 13 at exactly 3:31:30 PM (PST), Unix time will equal ‘1234567890’.”
http://www.1234567890day.com/

Tomorrow at 6:31pm EST unix timestamp will reach 1234567890 and the nerdy will giggle with glee.

Salud!

US Airways Audio

NPR screenshot of interactive map“We lost thrust in both engines… We’re going to be in the Hudson.”
–pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger

The FAA released audio recordings related to the successful river landing of US Airways Flight 1549. Communications are between pilots and air traffic controllers at LaGuardia tower, Teterboro tower, and the New York Tracon (Terminal Radar Approach Control).

Map, transcripts, audio edits at NPR: “FAA Releases Audio From US Airways Crash

FAA Air Traffic Control: USAirways 1549 (AWE1549), January 15, 2009

999 Call- Having Baby

This English 999 emergency operator’s got a cool head and mad skilz:

Op: Tell me exactly what’s happened.

SL: Er, um, I think I’m having a baby right now…

She then talks SL right thru her birth. The Guardian posted a recording of the “999 Call: Birth” (10:06 mp3):

Op: Right, OK, get on the floor, OK?

SL: Yes [cries out]. It’s the head. It’s out.

Op: OK. Is the baby crying or breathing?

SL: I can’t tell. [Groans in pain] Oh my God. [Gasps] I can just feel the huge lump in between my legs.

Op: OK. OK, with each contraction, place the palm of your hand-

SL: Oh God. Yeah.

Op: Against your vagina and apply firm but gentle pressure to keep the baby’s head from delivering too fast and tearing you…

Complete transcript, w/ pic of mom & baby, at The Guardian999 call transcript: The Birth.”

NPR Story Timelines

You can now trace a subject in NPR stories over time with the new NPR / SIMILE Timeline (connects NPR’s API with MIT’s Simile Timeline). Scripts courtesy of John Tynan, poet w/ a piano and a python code-book — a dangerous combo.

You create the timeline with a search term; then you can scroll thru the months, or click the story-titles for summaries and links. For instance, there seems to be a recent spike in NPR stories on “lipstick” — maybe Revlon announced a new color:

Matryomin

The Matryomin is a theramin-like instrument housed in a Russian doll. Here’s an all-Matryomin Japanese ensemble doing Dvorak’s #9 “Going Home” theme:

Dipity Timelines

The Internet Meme timeline in a previous post is from an outfit called: Dipity “the easiest way to tell the stories of people and topics you care about.” They’ve got other apps to make timelines based on search term: TimeTube for YouTube,Tickr for Flickr, and Archaeologist for Digg. For instance, here’s YouTube vids found with the search term “hearvox” — the tag for HV-productions:

NPR API Query Generator

In response to Catherine’s comment:

One easy way to use the NPR API Query Generator is to:

Build the Query for NPR Stories
1. Check Fields> Output Format > HTML Widget (this will allow you to see the results).

2. Under the tab: Control, try some Search Terms, Dates, Number of Results, and any other tabs, Topics, Series, Fields, etc, to get the content you want to display.

3. Click the button: Create API Call button (the query url will appear in the Generated API Call box.

4. Now click the button: Run API Call. The results will show in the Output box, as they would on a webpage (if you have HTML Widget) checked.

5. Alter the Control> Search Terms, Dates, etc., and repeat the Create API Call and Run API Call, until you get the results you want displaying in the Output.

Get the API Call (Query URL) for NPR Stories
6. Now check Fields> Output Format > Javascript Widget.

7. Click the button: Create API button.

8. Copy the query URL from that appears in the API Call box.

Insert the NPR Stories Into Your Web Page/Post
9, Paste your query URL, and your API Key, into this Javascript code:
<script type="text/javascript" src="PasteYourQueryURLHere"></script>

10. Paste the above js code, with your query URL into your web-page or blog-post.