Monthly Archive for May, 2006

Page 2 of 5

The photo must link back to its photo page

Published on May 18, 2006 in Web2.0. 3 Comments

I was doing it anyway, but now Flickr is pissing me off:
Flickr: linking is obligatory

Eventhough it is true:

The Flickr service makes it possible to post images hosted on Flickr to outside websites. This use is accepted (and even encouraged!). However, pages on other websites which display images hosted on flickr.com must provide a link back to Flickr from each photo to its photo page on Flickr.
from Flickr terms

isn’t it weird to give two options, and more or less say that the second one is illegal? “Good morning sir, you can park your car over there or right here. Unfortunately, in the second case I will have to give you a fine. Have a nice day!”

Maybe this would be a better user interface:
Flickr: embed picture (corrected)

MP3s and DJing: Numark toys

Published on May 18, 2006 in music. 1 Comment

There will always be DJs that won’t play anything unless it’s vinyl, but for those who embrace the MP3 revolution (iPod, Traxsource, CD ripping, FinalScratch), there are some interesting hardware concepts being developed now, especially at Numark:
(because of Numark’s antiquated use of frames and bad redirects on their site, I can’t include deep links to individual products. Go to the homepage and click on ‘products’. Numark: get a real web designer!)

iPod DJ

Ion: 2 x iPodImagine two iPods: while the left one is playing, you prepare the next song on the right. At $200, the Numark iDJ is an affordable baby-step towards iPod DJ-ing. Since it does not have pitch control, it cannot be considered a real DJ tool, but it’s charming. When you throw a party, people can bring their own iPod and blast their Celine Dion collection through your 500 Watt speakers. This is the gizmo Bart Becks has got at home!
Numark also sells it under the “Ion” consumer brand for $170.

Numark: iDJ2The iDJ2 is a bit more serious: it uses the iPod as an external disk, not as a (line-out) music device. This means that: yes, you have pitch control, yes, you can play and mix 2 songs from the same iPod and yes, you can add other external hard-disks with MP3 files. You can even record your DJ set onto the iPod (and ‘scratch’, for those who are into that). Unsurprisingly, it is a bit more expensive: $600.
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Barcamp Brussels: get ready!

Published on May 16, 2006 in Belgium and Web2.0. 1 Comment

Barcamp Brussels
Those of you that will join us on Barcamp Brussels, these is what you need to do to prepare yourselves:

  • your talk should be shorter than 30 minutes, aim for 15-25 minutes. So no reading 50 slides! It will take you maybe 5 minutes to explain your topic, which leaves you with 15 minutes of talking or conversation. If you finish early, no one will mind. In the other case, someone from the organisation will stop you just before the lynching starts.
  • check what you need to bring: it might be just a Powerpoint on a USB stick, or your laptop with a preconfigured list of bookmarks (step 1, step 2, …) or just a blank piece of paper.
  • your itinerary: if you’re driving, check How to get there, if you want to car-pool, check the Car pooling page.
  • we would like you to arrive between 9h and 9h30, so you have time to fill in your slot and enjoy a coffee

Detailed schedule of the day here!

If you’re coming: is your name on the attendee list (if it’s not, there might not be enough food for you)? is your talk on the topic list?

Lies, damned lies and Google trends

Published on May 16, 2006 in Google, RSS and science. 2 Comments

Yesterday I was browsing through my freshly arrived Tufte book “The visual display of quantitative information“. One example of “garbage in, garbage out” that he gives is the London Stock Exchange index (which went way down one year in Dec) and the solar radiation in that same year (which obviously also went down in the winter). Plotting both lines in the same graph gives the impression of correlation (Stock Exchange went down because of lack of sun).

Now take a look at this chart:
Google Trends: RSS

This seems to imply that, since the term “RSS” is more searched for than “blogs”, that RSS is more popular than this whole “blogs” thing, right?

And this is exactly what was written in businessweek.com. It was cited by socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com, who -to their credit- added the wise remark that:

To be honest, I do think that RSS is as important as I said above, but in terms of use frequency it’s also got the semantic advantage of only having one tense. People will write about and search for blogs, blog and blogging for example – but RSS is a one-term wonder.

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