Techiedog-blog

I've been aware of Greasemonkey for a while now but only really had a look at hacking with it this morning and seem to have lost several hours!!! All good fun though. For those who don't know: "Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of DHTML ('user scripts') to any web page to change its behavior." Check it out and if you aren't using Firefox (why not??????) get it here . It's my favourite browser of all time and its free!!! Any how, my first Greasemonkey script (such that it is) that does anything remotely useful is: Audioscrobbler Refresher The explanation of what it does is longer than the script itself. And what it does is refresh the audioscrobbler user pages every 3 minutes. So if like me you like to have you audioscrobbler user page open to keep track of your recent tracks and stats but wish you didn't have to keep clicking refresh on you browser well, .... er, now you don't. If you listen to a lot of short punk ...

As a team, Technology Research has been paying a great deal of attention to the importance of the end user in the process of innovation and development. We have witnessed over the last couple of years how companies and organizations such as Amazon and Google have benefited by opening up their innovation process to amateur enthusiasts and how others such as Flickr who have made Web Services API's available for experimentation have added value to their product through enhanced capability, flexibility and functionality developed by third parties . And there are many, many other examples. In concept the hacking, adaption or customization of software is not new. The home computers of the early 1980's practically demanded end-user programming, computer Games 'modding' has been around almost as long as computer games have and the definitive open-source example of Linux shows what can become of enthusiast lead development. What is new is the fact that smart organization...

Imran made an interesting comment on my Digital Will post about an American GI, Justin Ellsworth, killed in Iraq whose family was attempting to gain access to his Yahoo e-mail account. A court has just ruled that Yahoo should hand over the password details to give the family access. There has been a lot of blogging and forum posting on this decision - most that seem to have missed the fact that the email account was apparently being used as a journal - about the rights and wrongs of this. Most opinion seems to be that email is private and as such the next-of-kin has no rights over it. I tend towards suggesting that awarding access to next of kin to things like flickr accounts makes sense - email however is a tricky one. If the case was won in this specific instance because the contents of the account were actually journal entries that Ellsworth had displayed every intention of sharing with his family then the ruling seems fair, but I can see the worries of those concerned about p...

So, we travel all the way to California and bump into a band from Leeds!!! Camera phone pic - sorry! The Music - Caines Bar and Grill, San Diego 13th March 2005.

A conversation with a bunch of colleagues yesterday got me to thinking. We were in our usual free form Socratic Dialogue mode and were discussing the drive to digitisation of personal media and what concept, if any, the general public had of the longevity or persistence of their data. With the human weakness in our inability to empathise with our future selves and the short term focus that a fast moving society engenders, have we really thought things through sufficiently. When I upload my photos to Flickr , I’m just assuming they are going to be there forever or more accurately I don’t perceive of any time at which they won’t be there. If I think about it a little longer I suppose I assume that the Flickr system will ensure a roll with the times and that my pictures will be retrievable and trans-codable into whatever system makes sense as the years go by. The Urban myth would have us believe that the data which ran the ‘69 Moon landing is no longer readable and we’ve forgotten the for...

T-Mobile is trialing WiMax as a method for providing 'high-speed' Internet access on trains. The trial is currently running on Southern Trains' London to Brighton route. "To date, internet access has been connected to on-board Wi-Fi networks through fast satellite links, with slower GPRS connections used as a fall-back when the line of sight between satellite and antenna is blocked. T-Mobile says its WiMax-based set-up, designed and installed by Nomad, will maintain high-speed connectivity throughout the journey." Register article here .

I like the idea of this a lot more than the practice!!!! GNER have equipped more of their trains with WiFi Internet access. As a regular traveler on GNER between West Yorkshire and 'that London ' I finally got around to giving it a go. The free trial ran until the end of January so now access is free in First class (not that I'd be able to test that - though I am intrigued as to whether I can sneak onto the freebie by sitting in the 1st standard carriage) and in the First Class lounge at Kings Cross. If however you work for living you have to pay: £2.95 - 30 minutes £4.95 - 1 hour (60 minutes) £7.95 - 2 hours (120 minutes) £9.95 - 3 hours (180 minutes ) So what’s it like? Well true to form it not quite as simple as it should be, at least on my XP enabled laptop. " Most Wi-Fi enabled laptops automatically detect the wireless network" boasts the GNER - well yes, my lap top did detect the network, it just couldn't access it - that pesky 'Out of Range'...