I have a Canon PowerShot SD 1000. It is a small but powerful little camera, and some Canon camera users have gotten together to create CHDK, free software to modify how your Canon PowerShot cameras operate.
I first heard about CHDK last May when I still had a PowerShot SD 410. It wasn’t clear if I could get CHDK to work with the firmware on my old camera, so I never got around to testing it. Later, my old SD 410 died, and I upgraded to the SD 1000, which clearly works with CHDK.
However, it wasn’t all that simple to get CHDK working on my camera. The way CHDK works, is that you install some files on the memory card which changes the operation of the camera. The SD 410 used a Compact Flash (CF) memory card that I could plug into my HP C 3100 printer, and the memory card would act as a disk on the computer the printer was connected to.
The SD 1000 uses the Secure Digital (SD) memory card. I have an eight gigabyte Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) card. Unfortunately, the printer cannot read the high capacity card. I can connect the camera, with the card to my laptop using an USB cable. However, the driver doesn’t allow me to place the sort of files I need in the appropriate directories.
However, I also have a Motorola RAZR V3xx cellphone. I’ve put two gig microSD card in the Razr, and have an adapter to use the microSD card as a regular SD card, and that card works in my printer.
The first thing that I did was put a file named ver.req in the root directory of the memory card. Ver.req is an empty file that tells the camera to allow the user to do a Version Request to determine the firmware version in the camera. My camera was running version GM1.02A. This version on an SD 1000 camera can run the Allbest build #50.
So, I downloaded that build, unzipped the file, and copied the files into the appropriate locations on the memory card. Then, when I started up the camera in playback mode and went to the menu, which had a new option and the bottom of the list to do a firmware update. When I attempted to do the update, it asked if I wanted to update from firmware version 1.0.2.0 to 1.0.1.1. It is worth noting that CHDK does not really update the firmware, and instead runs as a memory resident program, so this is safe to do.
With the update installed, the camera works basically the same as it did before, except that there are new options on the display and new functions that can be run. As an example, it displays how charged the battery is. That, in and of itself, makes the program worth it. It provides many options for overriding settings. For example, you can use higher shutterspeeds, ISO settings, use the zoom while filming video and even read text files off the memory card, play a few games, and run any scripts you’ve written.
I haven’t written any scripts yet, nor have I tried taking advantage of any of these new features yet, but I look forward to it.
Since this is a memory resident program, you need to reactivate it each time you start the camera. This is nice since it makes it less likely for you to turn the camera into a brick. For me, right now, however, it has a downside. I can only use the new features when I’ve taken the microSD card out of my cellphone and placed it into my camera. In addition, you need to be careful about moving the card from the cellphone to the camera. In some cases, the memory card will end up locked. To avoid this, it is best to turn off the cellphone before removing the memory card.
So, the next step is to get a new SDHC reader so I can install these files on an SDHC card. If this works, I’ll start using the features all the time.
It is pretty satisfying to be able to install some extra software and get new features on a digital device that you have, especially if it is open source and extensible. Now, if I can only find ways of doing this for my Motorola RAZR V3xx, my 2001 Toyota Prius, the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 4200 set top box, or many other random digital devices around the house, I can have even more fun.
]]>I have a Canon PowerShot SD 1000. It is a small but powerful little camera, and some Canon camera users have gotten together to create CHDK, free software to modify how your Canon PowerShot cameras operate.
I first heard about CHDK last May when I still had a PowerShot SD 410. It wasn’t clear if I could get CHDK to work with the firmware on my old camera, so I never got around to testing it. Later, my old SD 410 died, and I upgraded to the SD 1000, which clearly works with CHDK.
However, it wasn’t all that simple to get CHDK working on my camera. The way CHDK works, is that you install some files on the memory card which changes the operation of the camera. The SD 410 used a Compact Flash (CF) memory card that I could plug into my HP C 3100 printer, and the memory card would act as a disk on the computer the printer was connected to.
The SD 1000 uses the Secure Digital (SD) memory card. I have an eight gigabyte Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) card. Unfortunately, the printer cannot read the high capacity card. I can connect the camera, with the card to my laptop using an USB cable. However, the driver doesn’t allow me to place the sort of files I need in the appropriate directories.
However, I also have a Motorola RAZR V3xx cellphone. I’ve put two gig microSD card in the Razr, and have an adapter to use the microSD card as a regular SD card, and that card works in my printer.
The first thing that I did was put a file named ver.req in the root directory of the memory card. Ver.req is an empty file that tells the camera to allow the user to do a Version Request to determine the firmware version in the camera. My camera was running version GM1.02A. This version on an SD 1000 camera can run the Allbest build #50.
So, I downloaded that build, unzipped the file, and copied the files into the appropriate locations on the memory card. Then, when I started up the camera in playback mode and went to the menu, which had a new option and the bottom of the list to do a firmware update. When I attempted to do the update, it asked if I wanted to update from firmware version 1.0.2.0 to 1.0.1.1. It is worth noting that CHDK does not really update the firmware, and instead runs as a memory resident program, so this is safe to do.
With the update installed, the camera works basically the same as it did before, except that there are new options on the display and new functions that can be run. As an example, it displays how charged the battery is. That, in and of itself, makes the program worth it. It provides many options for overriding settings. For example, you can use higher shutterspeeds, ISO settings, use the zoom while filming video and even read text files off the memory card, play a few games, and run any scripts you’ve written.
I haven’t written any scripts yet, nor have I tried taking advantage of any of these new features yet, but I look forward to it.
Since this is a memory resident program, you need to reactivate it each time you start the camera. This is nice since it makes it less likely for you to turn the camera into a brick. For me, right now, however, it has a downside. I can only use the new features when I’ve taken the microSD card out of my cellphone and placed it into my camera. In addition, you need to be careful about moving the card from the cellphone to the camera. In some cases, the memory card will end up locked. To avoid this, it is best to turn off the cellphone before removing the memory card.
So, the next step is to get a new SDHC reader so I can install these files on an SDHC card. If this works, I’ll start using the features all the time.
It is pretty satisfying to be able to install some extra software and get new features on a digital device that you have, especially if it is open source and extensible. Now, if I can only find ways of doing this for my Motorola RAZR V3xx, my 2001 Toyota Prius, the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 4200 set top box, or many other random digital devices around the house, I can have even more fun.
]]>Each time a user clicks on an Entrecard, they receive a credit, as does the person whose card is clicked on. A user can click on up to 300 cards for every blog that they have in the system. There is also a limit to the number of clicks that can come from a single IP address. Currently, there are 3 million such clicks a month. In addition, to place a card on another person’s site, you need to buy an ad slot. Currently, the price rises exponentially based on the number of ads in queue. Unknown sites cost two, four, eight, or sixteen credits. Well know sites go for thousands of credits. The person whose site the ad runs on gets 12.5% of the revenues.
]]>Each time a user clicks on an Entrecard, they receive a credit, as does the person whose card is clicked on. A user can click on up to 300 cards for every blog that they have in the system. There is also a limit to the number of clicks that can come from a single IP address. Currently, there are 3 million such clicks a month. In addition, to place a card on another person’s site, you need to buy an ad slot. Currently, the price rises exponentially based on the number of ads in queue. Unknown sites cost two, four, eight, or sixteen credits. Well know sites go for thousands of credits. The person whose site the ad runs on gets 12.5% of the revenues.
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Various suggestions are offered on how to monetize the site. The first suggestion is “Credit Transfer Tax: millions of credits are transferred daily through Entrecard. If you charged $1.00 for every thousand credits transferred, you'd be rich.”
Well, not exactly rich. For every million credits transferred, you would make $1000, do depending on how many millions of credits per day you are talking about, it ends up being some multiple of $30,000 per month. That should be enough to keep an early stage startup burning through money too quickly.
However, how much of that is the six million credits paid to people clicking, and however much is paid on advertising revenues? If you include that, I’m probably transferring at least a thousand credits a day. That means I would be charged at least a $1/day to use the system, or $30/month. If I were to be hit with that, I’d leave. It just isn’t worth that much. If there are other transfers, and the charge was on that, it might make sense.
The second idea is to have 25-33% of the ads be to paying clients. With 80 million Entrecard impressions each month, that could be 20 to 25 million impressions. Depending on the CPM charged this could be beneficial.
Currently, Entrecard is making about $2000/month. While it isn’t described where that is coming from, my guess is that it is advertising revenue. The site is currently getting 3,250,000 visits per month. At that rate, it would seem like the CPM rate for Entrecard must be around sixty-two cents. That is over four times base CPM rate that Facebook charges for their ads. At a CPM rate of sixty-two cents, for 20 to 25 million impressions, that could bring in around $15,000 per month. This seems like the most reasonable approach.
Option three is to implement a credit exchange. “If you built an exchange where people buy and sell their credits exclusively through the site, and you take a commission, you would make a ton. “ In a lot of ways, this seems like a variant of the first option which would handle the issue of credits from Entrecard better. Yet there are a few problems here. People are likely to rebel and find ways of working around the system. However, to the extent that a voluntary system that was easy to use were set up, this could be beneficial. Personally, I would like to see credits handled by a third party. There were a few at the gaming show, and connecting to a large micropayment system, ideally one that connects into the gaming world could be beneficial. However, that would probably cut into the profits.
The fourth option is to place a listing fee for items in the market place. There isn’t a lot of business done in the marketplace right now, and if there was a listing fee, I suspect the market would be even less likely to gain traction. There would also be the concern about micropayments. The suggested listing fee was something like twenty-five cents. Instead, using Entrecredits, ideally tied into a micropayment system as talked about in option three would make more sense. However, I don’t see this bringing in much revenue.
So, the only option that seems all that viable is to bring in outside advertising into the system. There are various issues that this would raise. Would the users have the choice about which ads would be displayed? Who would do the marketing to bring in clients? It might make the most sense for Entrecard to investigate a deal with a site like BlogAds or Chitika.
With this, let’s say there is $20,000/month in total revenue. I don’t know what the current expenses are, but that should be enough to cover server expenses and the expenses of a few employees. If things were run on a shoe string, the company could grow organically and build a track record of being able to meet expenses while growing. This would make the company more valuable for investors some point down the line, perhaps when the markets are a little more stable.
Of course, this doesn’t address any immediate cashflow needs that the company might have. Yet to address these needs, it might be better to find angel investors willing to put up enough to tide the company over until it is profitable. Finding a bridge loan or a small business loan might be another good option.
It seems like this should be a viable business if approached properly. That said, there may be other issues, I don’t know about. There are areas where I think the company is not performing well right now, particularly in terms of pricing ads, making sure that the Entrecard credits are stable and less prone to hyper-inflaction, and thinking about how community is built and maintained. However, that is a completely different set of issues.
So, if you’ve got the money, think out the plan and see what you can do with Entrecard.
]]>So, the question of nomenclature: How do you refer to a person on a remote micro blogging system? Typically, users are referred to with an at sign prepended to their username. The problem is that @bob might be one person on one system and someone completely different on a different system. So, to clarify, people have been kicking around ideas of how to refer to people at other systems.
Personally, I like the format @username/system e.g. @ahynes1/identica Concerns are to keep the name short. After all you only have 140 characters to deal with in an SMS message and putting in full qualification can eat up valuable message space. Others have suggested using the at sign as a separator between the username and the system, e.g. @ahynes1@identica To me, that looks cumbersome and kludgy. On my cellphone, where spacing is harder to differentiate, I would be confused about whether this were to the user ahynes1 on the identica system, or to two people, ahynes1 and identica.
Another reason I like the @username/system format is that it fits nicely with XRIs which fit nicely with OpenID 2.0. @username/system is an accepted shortcut to xri://@username/system which can be accessed via the http protocol as http://xri.net/@username/system The at sign is an indicator of a company, which isn’t great. Registering a company in XRI costs $55/year, which is pretty excessive. Nonetheless, I thought it would be nice to register @ahynes1.
A long time ago, I registered =aldon.hynes. I never ended up using it much, other than for some software testing and as a forwarder so people could send me email without knowing my current email address.
As OpenID 2.0 came along and started supporting XRI logins, I found that I could login to identi.ca using =aldon.hynes. I thought that was pretty cool and changed my OpenID delegation to point to my XRI registrar. Unfortunately, many sites do not yet support XRI based OpenID logins, but it seems to be growing.
So, to test things out a little bit, I registered @ahynes1. Initially, I was going to use 2idi.com, since that is where I have =aldon.hynes registered. Unfortunately, for some reason, they wouldn’t take my credit card, so I checked out some other services and found that 1id.com took Paypal and would gladly take my money.
The next step was to set up a few forwarders. I set up @ahynes1/identica to point to http://identi.ca/ahynes1 and @ahynes1/twitter to point to http://twitter.com/ahynes1. So, for any microblogging site that takes @username/system and uses it as an XRI reference, at least my name will resolve in both Twitter and Identica.
With that, I then tested an added benefit. Would @username XRI references resolve properly in OpenID? I logged into Identi.ca as =aldon.hynes and added @ahynes1 as a valid alternate OpenID. So, now I can log into my Identi.ca account by using the OpenID @ahynes1 Pretty cool.
Now, there are people that have voice concerns about XRI. Why do we need XRI if we already have URIs? For me, XRIs are how we identify resources. URIs specify a transport to get to the resource. So, =aldon.hynes, or xri://=aldon.hynes identifies me. http://xri.net/=aldon.hynes is how to get to my identification information over the http protocol. Nice and clean in my name.
The other issue is pricing. $55/year is very steep for registering an XRI corporate domain. I can register a corporate DNS domain for something like $10/year. If XRI is going to take off, the pricing structure will have to change. At $12/year for an individual I-name, it is still a tad expensive, but a little more reasonable.
So, Identi.ca, OpenID and XRI work nicely together. It will be interesting to see where things go from here.
]]>So, the question of nomenclature: How do you refer to a person on a remote micro blogging system? Typically, users are referred to with an at sign prepended to their username. The problem is that @bob might be one person on one system and someone completely different on a different system. So, to clarify, people have been kicking around ideas of how to refer to people at other systems.
Personally, I like the format @username/system e.g. @ahynes1/identica Concerns are to keep the name short. After all you only have 140 characters to deal with in an SMS message and putting in full qualification can eat up valuable message space. Others have suggested using the at sign as a separator between the username and the system, e.g. @ahynes1@identica To me, that looks cumbersome and kludgy. On my cellphone, where spacing is harder to differentiate, I would be confused about whether this were to the user ahynes1 on the identica system, or to two people, ahynes1 and identica.
Another reason I like the @username/system format is that it fits nicely with XRIs which fit nicely with OpenID 2.0. @username/system is an accepted shortcut to xri://@username/system which can be accessed via the http protocol as http://xri.net/@username/system The at sign is an indicator of a company, which isn’t great. Registering a company in XRI costs $55/year, which is pretty excessive. Nonetheless, I thought it would be nice to register @ahynes1.
A long time ago, I registered =aldon.hynes. I never ended up using it much, other than for some software testing and as a forwarder so people could send me email without knowing my current email address.
As OpenID 2.0 came along and started supporting XRI logins, I found that I could login to identi.ca using =aldon.hynes. I thought that was pretty cool and changed my OpenID delegation to point to my XRI registrar. Unfortunately, many sites do not yet support XRI based OpenID logins, but it seems to be growing.
So, to test things out a little bit, I registered @ahynes1. Initially, I was going to use 2idi.com, since that is where I have =aldon.hynes registered. Unfortunately, for some reason, they wouldn’t take my credit card, so I checked out some other services and found that 1id.com took Paypal and would gladly take my money.
The next step was to set up a few forwarders. I set up @ahynes1/identica to point to http://identi.ca/ahynes1 and @ahynes1/twitter to point to http://twitter.com/ahynes1. So, for any microblogging site that takes @username/system and uses it as an XRI reference, at least my name will resolve in both Twitter and Identica.
With that, I then tested an added benefit. Would @username XRI references resolve properly in OpenID? I logged into Identi.ca as =aldon.hynes and added @ahynes1 as a valid alternate OpenID. So, now I can log into my Identi.ca account by using the OpenID @ahynes1 Pretty cool.
Now, there are people that have voice concerns about XRI. Why do we need XRI if we already have URIs? For me, XRIs are how we identify resources. URIs specify a transport to get to the resource. So, =aldon.hynes, or xri://=aldon.hynes identifies me. http://xri.net/=aldon.hynes is how to get to my identification information over the http protocol. Nice and clean in my name.
The other issue is pricing. $55/year is very steep for registering an XRI corporate domain. I can register a corporate DNS domain for something like $10/year. If XRI is going to take off, the pricing structure will have to change. At $12/year for an individual I-name, it is still a tad expensive, but a little more reasonable.
So, Identi.ca, OpenID and XRI work nicely together. It will be interesting to see where things go from here.
]]>Major media outlets didn’t have a lot of information about Gov. Palin when it was announced that she would be Sen. John McCain’s running mate. As people dug in, one story that received some attention was the $100,000 investigation into alleged abuse of power by Gov. Palin in actions to get her sister’s ex-husband fired from the State Police. This investigation has led to the subpoenaing of Gov. Palin’s emails.
As a general rule, emails of elected officials are considered part of the public record and are subject to Freedom of Information requests. However, many people have separate email accounts that they use for personal business, or perhaps sometimes, to keep sensitive work related messages off of the work servers.
In the case of Gov. Palin, it was her personal Yahoo! Account that hackers claim to have compromised. A small amount of information has been released from the claimed attack, and none of it appears particularly incriminating.
So, what do we make of the claimed attack? One question is whether or not people believe that the attack actually happened, or if this was a carefully created hoax. Everything released so far looks probable, but it is unlikely that we will ever know for sure.
Another question is who did the attack and why. Reports are that the group ‘anonymous’ is claiming to have done the attack. The group first came to fame for obtaining and releasing information about the Church of Scientology. Given their propensity to attack notorious groups with extreme religious beliefs, it is easy to see how they might target Gov. Palin. However others claim that the group anonymous is also known for attacks on high profile women. This might provide a different motivation for the attack.
What are the privacy issues involved with the attack? First, I think it is fair to say that anyone who uses email, especially email service like Yahoo or Google needs to keep privacy issues in mind. Whether or not the attack actually happened and whatever the legalities or justifications of the attacks, email remains fairly susceptible to being read by people other than the intended recipient.
How do we understand the privacy issues? To the extent that the emails in Gov. Palin’s Yahoo Account is considered part of the public record, it may be an inappropriate method of gathering public information, which might even raise issues about whether or not the information can be used in an investigation or legal proceeding. This could also explain why the only information released so far is not particularly incriminating.
Yet what are the larger aspects of this? Will it get more people focusing on the privacy issues around email, or what emails by Government officials should be considered part of the public record? Will it get more people looking at the issues of whether or not Gov. Palin abused her power in her efforts to get her sister’s ex-husband fired? Given the geeky nature of the latest developments, it may catch a lot of attention of technology oriented sites, but we’ll see if it goes beyond that.
]]>Major media outlets didn’t have a lot of information about Gov. Palin when it was announced that she would be Sen. John McCain’s running mate. As people dug in, one story that received some attention was the $100,000 investigation into alleged abuse of power by Gov. Palin in actions to get her sister’s ex-husband fired from the State Police. This investigation has led to the subpoenaing of Gov. Palin’s emails.
As a general rule, emails of elected officials are considered part of the public record and are subject to Freedom of Information requests. However, many people have separate email accounts that they use for personal business, or perhaps sometimes, to keep sensitive work related messages off of the work servers.
In the case of Gov. Palin, it was her personal Yahoo! Account that hackers claim to have compromised. A small amount of information has been released from the claimed attack, and none of it appears particularly incriminating.
So, what do we make of the claimed attack? One question is whether or not people believe that the attack actually happened, or if this was a carefully created hoax. Everything released so far looks probable, but it is unlikely that we will ever know for sure.
Another question is who did the attack and why. Reports are that the group ‘anonymous’ is claiming to have done the attack. The group first came to fame for obtaining and releasing information about the Church of Scientology. Given their propensity to attack notorious groups with extreme religious beliefs, it is easy to see how they might target Gov. Palin. However others claim that the group anonymous is also known for attacks on high profile women. This might provide a different motivation for the attack.
What are the privacy issues involved with the attack? First, I think it is fair to say that anyone who uses email, especially email service like Yahoo or Google needs to keep privacy issues in mind. Whether or not the attack actually happened and whatever the legalities or justifications of the attacks, email remains fairly susceptible to being read by people other than the intended recipient.
How do we understand the privacy issues? To the extent that the emails in Gov. Palin’s Yahoo Account is considered part of the public record, it may be an inappropriate method of gathering public information, which might even raise issues about whether or not the information can be used in an investigation or legal proceeding. This could also explain why the only information released so far is not particularly incriminating.
Yet what are the larger aspects of this? Will it get more people focusing on the privacy issues around email, or what emails by Government officials should be considered part of the public record? Will it get more people looking at the issues of whether or not Gov. Palin abused her power in her efforts to get her sister’s ex-husband fired? Given the geeky nature of the latest developments, it may catch a lot of attention of technology oriented sites, but we’ll see if it goes beyond that.
]]>Yesterday, I wrote a little bit about the Personal Video Recorder (PVR) that I purchased yesterday for a project that involves recording parts of the Democratic National Convention coverage. Today, I tried moving the connection back into the office. In the process, I was asked if I wanted to update the software on the video stick.
The software uploaded relatively smoothly, but it took a few tries to finally get the new version loaded and configured. However, when I did, it managed to find lots of digital stations. So, I believe I can now get the HD broadcasts I couldn’t get before. In addition, I managed to reconfigure the wiring and I can load watch and record the television from my office.
I’m sharing some of the videos I’m recording and I spent a bit of time nailing down the best format to use. The Pinnacle PCTV stick supports ten different formats:
DVD 640x480 It takes 47M per minute. Great quality, but too big. DVD LP 640x480 28M per minute. Again, very good quality, but too big. SVCD 640x480 19M per minute. Okay quality, also too big. VCD 321x240 10M per minute. Okay quality. This is my second choice for formats DivX Home 720x480 31M per minute. Very good quality, but too big. DivX Portable 352x240 7M per minute. Okay quality. This is the format I like best. DivX Handheld 144x176 1.5M per minute. Okay quality. Small screen. Not bad for the space. Mpeg4 PSP 320x240 6M per minute. Poor quality. Mpeg4 Ipod low 480x352 12M per minute. Poor quality. Mpeg4 Ipod High 320x240 12M per minute. Poor quality.
Recently, one person noted that my welcome message said that previous blog entries were listed on the left. Well, they were, until I upgraded to Drupal 6. Then, I moved things around a little, so the list of articles are now on the right.
Another person commented asking if I knew that I had two different comment systems running. Yes, I know that. I actually wrote a bit about it in this blog entry. I may end up pulling SezWho soon. It slows down the site and doesn’t seem to work very well. I’ve contacted SezWho Tech Support and they were going to look at the issues, but that was a while ago, and I haven’t heard anything since.
I should also note that I dropped a lot of underperforming widgets. My site has always been a bit slow because I like to test out any widget that comes along and I’m always slow to remove them. These widgets slow down the site. Now that I’ve removed them, the site may be a little faster.
I was asked if people who pledged to give me EntreCard credits had followed through and some have, some haven’t. Yes, the tiara was small, but it was all that I had. Yes, the girl standing next to me is my daughter Fiona.
Also, today, I received my first real Shelfari spam. A lot of people feel that Shelfari is spam in and of itself. Miss Anita Weluha wanted to know if I liked the same books as she does. She also wanted to know if I could help her transfer $5 million.
I also received an email from Twitter, letting me know that Sen. Barbara Boxer was now following me. I wondered if this was really part of her organization, or if it was some random spammer. Later, I received an email from “Friends of Barbara Boxer” highlighting her new Twitter account.
Now, its time to get back to paying closer attention to the convention and all the coverage.
]]>Yesterday, I wrote a little bit about the Personal Video Recorder (PVR) that I purchased yesterday for a project that involves recording parts of the Democratic National Convention coverage. Today, I tried moving the connection back into the office. In the process, I was asked if I wanted to update the software on the video stick.
The software uploaded relatively smoothly, but it took a few tries to finally get the new version loaded and configured. However, when I did, it managed to find lots of digital stations. So, I believe I can now get the HD broadcasts I couldn’t get before. In addition, I managed to reconfigure the wiring and I can load watch and record the television from my office.
I’m sharing some of the videos I’m recording and I spent a bit of time nailing down the best format to use. The Pinnacle PCTV stick supports ten different formats:
DVD 640x480 It takes 47M per minute. Great quality, but too big. DVD LP 640x480 28M per minute. Again, very good quality, but too big. SVCD 640x480 19M per minute. Okay quality, also too big. VCD 321x240 10M per minute. Okay quality. This is my second choice for formats DivX Home 720x480 31M per minute. Very good quality, but too big. DivX Portable 352x240 7M per minute. Okay quality. This is the format I like best. DivX Handheld 144x176 1.5M per minute. Okay quality. Small screen. Not bad for the space. Mpeg4 PSP 320x240 6M per minute. Poor quality. Mpeg4 Ipod low 480x352 12M per minute. Poor quality. Mpeg4 Ipod High 320x240 12M per minute. Poor quality.
Recently, one person noted that my welcome message said that previous blog entries were listed on the left. Well, they were, until I upgraded to Drupal 6. Then, I moved things around a little, so the list of articles are now on the right.
Another person commented asking if I knew that I had two different comment systems running. Yes, I know that. I actually wrote a bit about it in this blog entry. I may end up pulling SezWho soon. It slows down the site and doesn’t seem to work very well. I’ve contacted SezWho Tech Support and they were going to look at the issues, but that was a while ago, and I haven’t heard anything since.
I should also note that I dropped a lot of underperforming widgets. My site has always been a bit slow because I like to test out any widget that comes along and I’m always slow to remove them. These widgets slow down the site. Now that I’ve removed them, the site may be a little faster.
I was asked if people who pledged to give me EntreCard credits had followed through and some have, some haven’t. Yes, the tiara was small, but it was all that I had. Yes, the girl standing next to me is my daughter Fiona.
Also, today, I received my first real Shelfari spam. A lot of people feel that Shelfari is spam in and of itself. Miss Anita Weluha wanted to know if I liked the same books as she does. She also wanted to know if I could help her transfer $5 million.
I also received an email from Twitter, letting me know that Sen. Barbara Boxer was now following me. I wondered if this was really part of her organization, or if it was some random spammer. Later, I received an email from “Friends of Barbara Boxer” highlighting her new Twitter account.
Now, its time to get back to paying closer attention to the convention and all the coverage.
]]>This is a cool device. It is like an oversized USB Memory stick, with a mini USB port on the side and a coax connection on the end. The software is stored on the stick, and there is about 2 gigabytes of memory on the stick that can be used for recording onto.
There are a few different options for setting this up. The first option was to use an antenna that comes with the device, or connecting up to a rooftop antenna. My first pass was to connect the supplied antenna, but that did not give me any usable signals.
The second option was to use my cable connection. Since I was planning on doing this in my office, I installed a cable splitter just before my cable modem and tried connecting that way. It claimed to have found something like 69 different channels, but I couldn’t get any of them to play. It may be that this is because I was in a rush and didn’t spend enough time trying to figure out how to get it to work.
The third option was to capture from a Cable or Satellite Set-top box using either composite video or S-video. I got the S-video to work, which was a relief. However, I hadn’t figured out the software well enough to figure out how to record off of the S-Video channel. I suppose I could get the Remote to do that for me, but I hadn’t set up the remote.
Hopping back to the first option, I tried taking the channel 3 output from the cable set-top box and feeding it into the PCTV stick. This worked well. However it meant that I needed to watch the same channel on the TV as I was recording on the PC. That is a viable option, but not as good as I was hoping for. I tried shifting around the connection in different places, between the set-top box and the DVD/VHS player, between the DVD/VHS player and the TV. Finally, I found that I could successfully split the cable signal coming into the set-top box and get the analog channels on the PCTV stick. This is the best since it allows me to record on one channel on the PC while watching a different channel on the TV. I also found that I could take the S-Video output from my DVD/VHS player into my memory stick. This will make it easier for me to take some old VHS tapes and digitize them and store them on YouTube, Blip.TV or other sites.
With the wiring working a bit better, I went back to see if I could get any of the digital signals to work. This would be nice, since the PCTV stick supports digital HDTV, but our regular television is an old analog SD TV, so we can’t watch digital HDTV channels.
Unfortunately, I still couldn’t find and HDTV stations. I’ll try that again a little later. I’ve been told that Cablevision does weird stuff with their HDTV signals which makes it harder for people to pull them in without a set-top box.
Now that the basic functionality was working, my next test was to record shows using the stick. There are about ten different formats that can be saved, using various resolutions of DivX, MPEG 1/2 or 4. I’ve set up a bunch of recording sessions to see what the resolution looks like for each of these as how much space they take up. Once this is done, I’ll start testing various things that can be done with the files in these different formats.
I did end up installing DivX and Quicktime on my laptop so I can view the files in different format. This is also supposed to work with the Windows Media Center, so I may try working with as a future test.
So, initial impressions are that you can turn a PC with Windows XP or Vista into a Personal Video Record fairly easily for around $100.
]]>This is a cool device. It is like an oversized USB Memory stick, with a mini USB port on the side and a coax connection on the end. The software is stored on the stick, and there is about 2 gigabytes of memory on the stick that can be used for recording onto.
There are a few different options for setting this up. The first option was to use an antenna that comes with the device, or connecting up to a rooftop antenna. My first pass was to connect the supplied antenna, but that did not give me any usable signals.
The second option was to use my cable connection. Since I was planning on doing this in my office, I installed a cable splitter just before my cable modem and tried connecting that way. It claimed to have found something like 69 different channels, but I couldn’t get any of them to play. It may be that this is because I was in a rush and didn’t spend enough time trying to figure out how to get it to work.
The third option was to capture from a Cable or Satellite Set-top box using either composite video or S-video. I got the S-video to work, which was a relief. However, I hadn’t figured out the software well enough to figure out how to record off of the S-Video channel. I suppose I could get the Remote to do that for me, but I hadn’t set up the remote.
Hopping back to the first option, I tried taking the channel 3 output from the cable set-top box and feeding it into the PCTV stick. This worked well. However it meant that I needed to watch the same channel on the TV as I was recording on the PC. That is a viable option, but not as good as I was hoping for. I tried shifting around the connection in different places, between the set-top box and the DVD/VHS player, between the DVD/VHS player and the TV. Finally, I found that I could successfully split the cable signal coming into the set-top box and get the analog channels on the PCTV stick. This is the best since it allows me to record on one channel on the PC while watching a different channel on the TV. I also found that I could take the S-Video output from my DVD/VHS player into my memory stick. This will make it easier for me to take some old VHS tapes and digitize them and store them on YouTube, Blip.TV or other sites.
With the wiring working a bit better, I went back to see if I could get any of the digital signals to work. This would be nice, since the PCTV stick supports digital HDTV, but our regular television is an old analog SD TV, so we can’t watch digital HDTV channels.
Unfortunately, I still couldn’t find and HDTV stations. I’ll try that again a little later. I’ve been told that Cablevision does weird stuff with their HDTV signals which makes it harder for people to pull them in without a set-top box.
Now that the basic functionality was working, my next test was to record shows using the stick. There are about ten different formats that can be saved, using various resolutions of DivX, MPEG 1/2 or 4. I’ve set up a bunch of recording sessions to see what the resolution looks like for each of these as how much space they take up. Once this is done, I’ll start testing various things that can be done with the files in these different formats.
I did end up installing DivX and Quicktime on my laptop so I can view the files in different format. This is also supposed to work with the Windows Media Center, so I may try working with as a future test.
So, initial impressions are that you can turn a PC with Windows XP or Vista into a Personal Video Record fairly easily for around $100.
]]>This is another player in the http://openmicroblogging.org/ space. (Note: As I write this post, the OpenMicroBlogging page simply says, “It works!” instead of pointing to the protocol definition that used to be up there.)
OpenMicroBlogger.com runs an instance of the software you can find on openmicroblogger.org which uses the OpenMicroBlogging.org protocol. Confusing? Yeah. I wished they had used different names the way Identi.ca and Laconi.ca did.
What is nice is that it supports federation, including interoperability with Laconi.ca
Other things that are nice is that it supports OpenID. Unfortunately, it didn’t like the delegation of my OpenID from Orient Lodge to my XRI based OpenID at 2idi.
What was nice is that when I set up a new account there, it set up a new OpenID account at e-cred.org. One the one hand, I would have much rather had my OpenID redirection work, but if that isn’t working, at least setting things up to go to a new OpenID server, instead of having a completely separate authentication system seemed good.
I haven’t looked closely at the e-cred.org server, but it looks nice and I’m wondering if it supports attribute exchange and if they might end up allowing custom attributes. As an example, I’ve been looking to see if we could come up with an OMBprofile attribute for OpenID. With that, and getting OMB sites to support the attribute, when you remotely subscribe to an OMB stream, you could simply use your OpenID profile making for one less URL to remember.
In terms of the federation, it seems to work okay with Identi.ca, but I had problems getting it to work with my Laconi.ba based server.
So, this federation stuff, enabling users of one microblogging site to follow users of other microblogging sites is pretty cool. But what if you use a legacy microblogging site, like Twitter that doesn’t support interoperability? Well, http://bridge.kshep.net provides a gateway between Twitter and Identi.ca. It would be nice if it provided a bridge between Twitter and any open microblogging site, whether those sites are laconi.ca instances or openmicroblogger.com instances. I’m sure we’ll get there.
I have not set up the bridge yet, because I’m concerned about feedback loops, or at least duplicate entries. I may get around to tweaking my network so I can plug in the bridge, but I may try to set up my own OpenMicroBlogger.org instance first.
I’ve mentioned Rejaw before. However, yesterday, I had some good discussions there. It is still very early there, but its looks like it is about to jump the chasm from being just an innovators playpen to being an area for the early adopters. I think it may have blown past Kwippy.com, yet another microblogging site that hasn’t seemed to jump that chasm yet.
chi.mp is currently in alpha, and I haven’t gotten my invite yet. Besides having an interesting URL, it is focused on open standards, like OpenID, Oauth, Attribute Exchange and Atom. They are saying the right things. It will be interesting to see what they can deliver.
Also coming across my transom this week was an invitation to play with blip.fm. As best as I can tell, it is trying to play in the last.fm or Pandora space. Personally, I really like using the Pandora/last.fm mashup. It will be interesting to see how blip.fm fits into this landscape, and if any sort of interoperability emerges.
I’ll play with this a little bit more later.
http://xoost.com
Xoost is an interesting idea. Social searching. Do a search on Xoost. Find out what other people similar to you are searching on, shared interests, which pages they found most interesting, something like that.
It is in beta, by invitation. I’m not sure that there are enough innovators on the list yet to obtain critical mass and make the searches particularly interesting, but the idea is fascinating.
Other’s have encouraged me to check out URTurn.com. When I checked recently, I was told that it was down for repairs and upgrades. There slogan is that ‘Every Click Counts’. I’ll try to remember to check back.
Nurien
Okay, this will end off my list for today. Nurien is another virtual world system. It is supposed to have very good resolution and physics. I’ve seen a video, but that is about it. The video looked very impressive, so I look forward to a chance to explore that in more detail soon.
So, that pretty much catches me up on some of the new technology that has been catching my eye. What’s been catching yours?
]]>This is another player in the http://openmicroblogging.org/ space. (Note: As I write this post, the OpenMicroBlogging page simply says, “It works!” instead of pointing to the protocol definition that used to be up there.)
OpenMicroBlogger.com runs an instance of the software you can find on openmicroblogger.org which uses the OpenMicroBlogging.org protocol. Confusing? Yeah. I wished they had used different names the way Identi.ca and Laconi.ca did.
What is nice is that it supports federation, including interoperability with Laconi.ca
Other things that are nice is that it supports OpenID. Unfortunately, it didn’t like the delegation of my OpenID from Orient Lodge to my XRI based OpenID at 2idi.
What was nice is that when I set up a new account there, it set up a new OpenID account at e-cred.org. One the one hand, I would have much rather had my OpenID redirection work, but if that isn’t working, at least setting things up to go to a new OpenID server, instead of having a completely separate authentication system seemed good.
I haven’t looked closely at the e-cred.org server, but it looks nice and I’m wondering if it supports attribute exchange and if they might end up allowing custom attributes. As an example, I’ve been looking to see if we could come up with an OMBprofile attribute for OpenID. With that, and getting OMB sites to support the attribute, when you remotely subscribe to an OMB stream, you could simply use your OpenID profile making for one less URL to remember.
In terms of the federation, it seems to work okay with Identi.ca, but I had problems getting it to work with my Laconi.ba based server.
So, this federation stuff, enabling users of one microblogging site to follow users of other microblogging sites is pretty cool. But what if you use a legacy microblogging site, like Twitter that doesn’t support interoperability? Well, http://bridge.kshep.net provides a gateway between Twitter and Identi.ca. It would be nice if it provided a bridge between Twitter and any open microblogging site, whether those sites are laconi.ca instances or openmicroblogger.com instances. I’m sure we’ll get there.
I have not set up the bridge yet, because I’m concerned about feedback loops, or at least duplicate entries. I may get around to tweaking my network so I can plug in the bridge, but I may try to set up my own OpenMicroBlogger.org instance first.
I’ve mentioned Rejaw before. However, yesterday, I had some good discussions there. It is still very early there, but its looks like it is about to jump the chasm from being just an innovators playpen to being an area for the early adopters. I think it may have blown past Kwippy.com, yet another microblogging site that hasn’t seemed to jump that chasm yet.
chi.mp is currently in alpha, and I haven’t gotten my invite yet. Besides having an interesting URL, it is focused on open standards, like OpenID, Oauth, Attribute Exchange and Atom. They are saying the right things. It will be interesting to see what they can deliver.
Also coming across my transom this week was an invitation to play with blip.fm. As best as I can tell, it is trying to play in the last.fm or Pandora space. Personally, I really like using the Pandora/last.fm mashup. It will be interesting to see how blip.fm fits into this landscape, and if any sort of interoperability emerges.
I’ll play with this a little bit more later.
http://xoost.com
Xoost is an interesting idea. Social searching. Do a search on Xoost. Find out what other people similar to you are searching on, shared interests, which pages they found most interesting, something like that.
It is in beta, by invitation. I’m not sure that there are enough innovators on the list yet to obtain critical mass and make the searches particularly interesting, but the idea is fascinating.
Other’s have encouraged me to check out URTurn.com. When I checked recently, I was told that it was down for repairs and upgrades. There slogan is that ‘Every Click Counts’. I’ll try to remember to check back.
Nurien
Okay, this will end off my list for today. Nurien is another virtual world system. It is supposed to have very good resolution and physics. I’ve seen a video, but that is about it. The video looked very impressive, so I look forward to a chance to explore that in more detail soon.
So, that pretty much catches me up on some of the new technology that has been catching my eye. What’s been catching yours?
]]>One thing I mentioned on the show was the demconvention room that I set up on FriendFeed. It is aggregating social media from various people going to Denver, including Jen as well as many of my friends around the country. Please check the room out, and if you know of people who will be using Social Media in Denver, please let me know so I can add their material to the feed into the room.
With BlogTalkRadio, besides saving an archive of the show, which should be up soon at the link above, there is also a chat. I don't believe the is saved, so I've saved it here below the fold.
We will have this show again next week to check in on how everyone is doing with mobile social media as they prepare for Denver, so if you have things you would like to share, please let me know.
]]>One thing I mentioned on the show was the demconvention room that I set up on FriendFeed. It is aggregating social media from various people going to Denver, including Jen as well as many of my friends around the country. Please check the room out, and if you know of people who will be using Social Media in Denver, please let me know so I can add their material to the feed into the room.
With BlogTalkRadio, besides saving an archive of the show, which should be up soon at the link above, there is also a chat. I don't believe the is saved, so I've saved it here below the fold.
We will have this show again next week to check in on how everyone is doing with mobile social media as they prepare for Denver, so if you have things you would like to share, please let me know.
<!--break-->
]]>********** To send a private message, type:
your message here
JJust:Hi Aldon! I'm "here" anyway...
Aldon Hynes:Hi... I'm going to call in in a few moments and get everything set up
Sheilamc7:hey there
Sheilamc7:well that waseasy enough
Aldon Hynes:Hi. Sheila.. Looks like we lost Jen...
Sheilamc7:uh oh
Sheilamc7:your live now
Sheilamc7:yeah!
Sheilamc7:what kind of cell phone do you have jen?
Sheilamc7:easy easy on an iPhone
Sheilamc7:twitteriffic has an app (at the ap store)
Aldon Hynes:Hi Guest....
Aldon Hynes:(Can you identify yourself)
Sheilamc7:hi
Sheilamc7:very distracting
Sheilamc7:eh?
Sheilamc7:im is good for snark!
Sheilamc7:we'll have to archive the chat too
Sheilamc7:talk about quik, too
Sheilamc7:jen, are you also taking a mac laptop to denver?
JJust:yup re mac
Sheilamc7:kewl
Sheilamc7:so then, to share video from denver, would you post to YouTube?
Sheilamc7:maybe think of your "video posts" as "a show"
JJust:id thought of that yeah
Sheilamc7:do we know who was credentialed fr. CT?
JJust:mnl
Sheilamc7:oh yeah, then there's UStream.tv
JJust:i mean mln
Sheilamc7:i've used that -- very cool
Sheilamc7:easy, too
Sheilamc7:are you taking Cam (the son) with you to Denver?
JJust:hell be in hs!! jr yr v imptnt
Sheilamc7:yes, of course
Sheilamc7:ahhh
Sheilamc7:thankx
Sheilamc7:jen, do you have a mobile me account (was .mac)?
Sheilamc7:jott is like uterz too
Sheilamc7:and has an iPhone ap
Sheilamc7:how about Twitterphone to call in tweets?
Sheilamc7:heee
Sheilamc7:i'll cross post to my blog for you jen
JJust:no re mobile me...thx re x-post
Sheilamc7:we should set it all up in advance, maybe test it too
Sheilamc7:yes, it's hard to keep up with you aldon!
Sheilamc7:but fun to try!
Sheilamc7:looking at your friendfeed demconvention now
Sheilamc7:neat
Sheilamc7:to each his own experience; now we have to get jerry weiner to tweet!
Sheilamc7:heeeee
Aldon Hynes:Hi BTR Morgan...
Sheilamc7:"basic human need for affiliation"
Much has been written about post-broadcast politics, networked politics, or any other number of phrases about the political process moving beyond the thirty second soundbite on the evening news. Obama’s use of the Internet has been compared to JFK’s use of television. JFK understood the new medium of television and used it to his advantage, just as Obama has understood the new medium of the Internet and used it to his advantage. Yet campaigns remain very top down organizations, with control centralized.
Perhaps the most highly controlled and centralized traditional media extravaganza remaining in politics is the national conventions. Yet, slowly, even these are changing. The Obama campaign has moved his acceptance speech to Invesco Field to allow 75,000 people to participate first hand.
How participatory will this be? The Associated Press reports,
Enter the 75,000 people who will have to come hours early for Obama's acceptance speech to get through security, most carrying cell phones. As they settle in their seats, campaign aides will be on stage asking them to text message their friends and use call sheets to get people to register. "There will be a lot of idle time. We put idle people to work," Hildebrand said.
While there are concerns about the bandwidth available in the stadium, this is a great start. However, I would like to see it go much further. Why only use text messages from the attendees of the acceptance speech? The convention is four days long. There are lots of interesting things that take place during those four days, much of it away from the convention floor.
Sure, the DNC has credentialed a record number of bloggers to cover the convention, making sure that there are bloggers covering each state. Yet what is really needed is to take the message from both Gov. Dean and Sen. Obama about empowering people to be the change that they want to see.
Every delegate should receive information ahead of time about how they can use all aspects of social media, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, and so many others, from their cellphones at any point during the convention. They should be encouraged to publicize their social media accounts so their friends, family, neighbors, constituents, and anyone else they can get to listen.
Slowly, but surely, I’m contacting delegates and getting them to think about how they could do this. Please, consider doing the same.
To continue this discussion, Tuesday evening, 8 PM Eastern time, I will host a BlogTalkRadio show about Getting Democrat Delegates to Denver to Use Social Media. Please consider listening and if you have some ideas to share, calling in.
]]>Much has been written about post-broadcast politics, networked politics, or any other number of phrases about the political process moving beyond the thirty second soundbite on the evening news. Obama’s use of the Internet has been compared to JFK’s use of television. JFK understood the new medium of television and used it to his advantage, just as Obama has understood the new medium of the Internet and used it to his advantage. Yet campaigns remain very top down organizations, with control centralized.
Perhaps the most highly controlled and centralized traditional media extravaganza remaining in politics is the national conventions. Yet, slowly, even these are changing. The Obama campaign has moved his acceptance speech to Invesco Field to allow 75,000 people to participate first hand.
How participatory will this be? The Associated Press reports,
Enter the 75,000 people who will have to come hours early for Obama's acceptance speech to get through security, most carrying cell phones. As they settle in their seats, campaign aides will be on stage asking them to text message their friends and use call sheets to get people to register. "There will be a lot of idle time. We put idle people to work," Hildebrand said.
While there are concerns about the bandwidth available in the stadium, this is a great start. However, I would like to see it go much further. Why only use text messages from the attendees of the acceptance speech? The convention is four days long. There are lots of interesting things that take place during those four days, much of it away from the convention floor.
Sure, the DNC has credentialed a record number of bloggers to cover the convention, making sure that there are bloggers covering each state. Yet what is really needed is to take the message from both Gov. Dean and Sen. Obama about empowering people to be the change that they want to see.
Every delegate should receive information ahead of time about how they can use all aspects of social media, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, and so many others, from their cellphones at any point during the convention. They should be encouraged to publicize their social media accounts so their friends, family, neighbors, constituents, and anyone else they can get to listen.
Slowly, but surely, I’m contacting delegates and getting them to think about how they could do this. Please, consider doing the same.
To continue this discussion, Tuesday evening, 8 PM Eastern time, I will host a BlogTalkRadio show about Getting Democrat Delegates to Denver to Use Social Media. Please consider listening and if you have some ideas to share, calling in.
]]>Make sure you keep a back up copy of your installation. Then, install laconica050 and laconicadepends01 into your laconica directory. Copy over your config.php file. You should note that there are a bunch of new options in the config.php, so you may want to take the options you set in your config.php and copy them into the config.php.sample file and save that as your new config.php file.
Copy over any theme you have created. Copy over the avatars that have been created.
The database has changed a lot from 0.4.4 and earlier. Instead of trying to come up with all the alter statements necessary, I took a script that Evan had written and generalized it to work in my environment.
#!/bin/bash
export DB=$1
export SCR=$2
export USER=$3
export PW=$4
export HOST=$5mysqldump -u $USER --password=$PW -h $HOST -c -t --hex-blob $DB > $DB.sql
mysqladmin -u $USER --password=$PW -h $HOST -f drop $DB
mysqladmin -u $USER --password=$PW -h $HOST create $DB
mysql -u $USER --password=$PW -h $HOST $DB < $SCR
mysql -u $USER --password=$PW -h $HOST $DB < $DB.sql
It worked very nicely for me. However, just to be safe, I did take a backup copy before I ran the script, separate from the backup copy that gets created at the beginning of the script.
With all of this in place (once my 0.5.0 version was properly in place), everything started working nicely. New features include hashtags, which I’m a big fan of, and I’m glad to see incorporated into the site. I’ve gotten SMS working, at least for sending out notices. Incoming SMS probably won’t work well because of how email is configured on my shared host.
One other problem that I had, which I’m not sure if it was because of the failed initial upgrade, or something else, but the public timeline didn’t show any of the entries prior to the upgrade. This wasn’t a big concern for me, and for more active sites, most people would never notice.
I’m still having problems with people being able to remotely subscribe to my microblog. When I turn on database debugging, it works, but when debugging is off, it doesn’t work. Go figure.
The next thing that I was thinking about was adding TwitterFeed like functionality. Twitterfeed checks RSS feeds and submits a summary to Twitter. To my surprise, Twitter Feed has been modified to support Laconica. What is even better is that it supports any server running Laconica, so, I’ve set it up to send the RSS feed from my blog not only to Twitter, but also to identi.ca as well as my personal Microblog.
Another very interesting development is the translation tool for laconi.ca. I haven’t played with that yet, so I don’t have any details.
So, after a few minor problems, the 0.5.0 upgrade went very nicely. I’m interested to see how it goes for any of the other Laconica sites. Please leave your notes in the comments.
]]>Make sure you keep a back up copy of your installation. Then, install laconica050 and laconicadepends01 into your laconica directory. Copy over your config.php file. You should note that there are a bunch of new options in the config.php, so you may want to take the options you set in your config.php and copy them into the config.php.sample file and save that as your new config.php file.
Copy over any theme you have created. Copy over the avatars that have been created.
The database has changed a lot from 0.4.4 and earlier. Instead of trying to come up with all the alter statements necessary, I took a script that Evan had written and generalized it to work in my environment.
#!/bin/bash
export DB=$1
export SCR=$2
export USER=$3
export PW=$4
export HOST=$5mysqldump -u $USER --password=$PW -h $HOST -c -t --hex-blob $DB > $DB.sql
mysqladmin -u $USER --password=$PW -h $HOST -f drop $DB
mysqladmin -u $USER --password=$PW -h $HOST create $DB
mysql -u $USER --password=$PW -h $HOST $DB < $SCR
mysql -u $USER --password=$PW -h $HOST $DB < $DB.sql
It worked very nicely for me. However, just to be safe, I did take a backup copy before I ran the script, separate from the backup copy that gets created at the beginning of the script.
With all of this in place (once my 0.5.0 version was properly in place), everything started working nicely. New features include hashtags, which I’m a big fan of, and I’m glad to see incorporated into the site. I’ve gotten SMS working, at least for sending out notices. Incoming SMS probably won’t work well because of how email is configured on my shared host.
One other problem that I had, which I’m not sure if it was because of the failed initial upgrade, or something else, but the public timeline didn’t show any of the entries prior to the upgrade. This wasn’t a big concern for me, and for more active sites, most people would never notice.
I’m still having problems with people being able to remotely subscribe to my microblog. When I turn on database debugging, it works, but when debugging is off, it doesn’t work. Go figure.
The next thing that I was thinking about was adding TwitterFeed like functionality. Twitterfeed checks RSS feeds and submits a summary to Twitter. To my surprise, Twitter Feed has been modified to support Laconica. What is even better is that it supports any server running Laconica, so, I’ve set it up to send the RSS feed from my blog not only to Twitter, but also to identi.ca as well as my personal Microblog.
Another very interesting development is the translation tool for laconi.ca. I haven’t played with that yet, so I don’t have any details.
So, after a few minor problems, the 0.5.0 upgrade went very nicely. I’m interested to see how it goes for any of the other Laconica sites. Please leave your notes in the comments.
]]>