There were many mac/*nix users out there that were a little disapointed to learn that our license fee was being used to build and support a Microsoft only software app for 7 day on demand TV catchup, the BBC iPlayer. Our optimism for a cross-platform system was somewhat bouyed by this bbc article, in which Mr Highfield stated

The BBC’s proposed iPlayer service, offering catch-up TV via the web and cable TV, would be re-engineered to work with Apple Macs.

So, they had listened to the comments, questionairre feedback and the 10 downing Street epetition then? I wonder. Hmm, let me see there is a new article today saying that the BBC Trust has approved the BBC iPlayer. Little mention of mac/*nix in that article though. Lets dig a little deeper into the report. Arh, right then, theres the little gem I was looking for:

seven-day catch-up television over the internet, which relies on digital rights management licensing provided by Microsoft, was required to be made available to users of Apple and Linux operating systems within a reasonable timeframe, which the Trust proposed should be two years

TWO YEARS!?! You have got to be kidding me. This is unacceptable. Full stop. If a suitable DRM system is not in place for a cross-platform system, then the whole iPlayer needs to be delayed until such time as a solution is found. What sort of competetive edge is this going to give Microsoft based systems, if for two years a user sees the iPlayer is only available in Windows??

Boo to the beeb.

Technorati tags: bbc, iplayer, mac, apple, linux, drm

Blogged with Flock

I have long wanted one geocoding solution that was able to handle UK addresses. Although many solutions exist, I have yet to find one API that can handle all addresses; well tonight I stumbled across a solution, one that as far as I can see is legit and simple - using Yahoo Pipes.

The full pipe can be viewed here, but the power of it comes by utilising xmlhttprequest and JSON output; in otherwords your own geocoding API. So here are the steps I took, I am sure you could probably streamline it even further.

1) Create a simple xml json file and pop on your server (or use mine mine).
2) In Pipes, create a Fetch Feed Data module pointing to this xml json file.
3) Add a Location Input module.
4) Use a regex module to replace the lat,lon etc xml node content objects with the location module output.
5) Output as JSON and there you have it, your own geocding API that works with UK addresses.

Here is the javascript code I use to query an address and return the lat/lon using Pipes as the engine asynchronously:

function geocode(address){
var addr = encodeURIComponent(address)
req = new XMLHttpRequest ();
req.onreadystatechange = getaddressResponse;
req.open("GET","http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?location="
+addr+"&_id=omPLHX3y2xGrjcwzdbq02Q&_run=1&_render=json",true);
req.send(null);
}

function getaddressResponse(){
if (req.readyState == 4) {
if (req.status == 200)
{
var results = eval("(" + req.responseText + ")");
var resultset = results.value.items[0];
var lat = resultset.lat; //eg returns "56.575849"
var lon = resultset.lon; //eg returns "-3.231635"
var street = resultset.street; //eg returns "Mountain Street"
var city = resultset.city; //eg returns "New York"
var state = resultset.state; //eg returns "CA"
var postal = resultset.postal; //eg returns "94104"
var country = resultset.country; //eg returns "United Sates"
var quality = resultset.quality; //eg returns "40"

}
}
}

You can add &_callback=insert-function-name to the pipes url for cross-domain calls, but you know I have NO IDEA what the hell that means or how you use it.

Not too sure how long Yahoo will allow UK addresses to pass through the Pipes engine, will have to wait and see……

technorati tags:geocode, uk, pipes

http://homepage.mac.com/agell

technorati tags:mac, leopard, osx

Blogged with Flock

So this months tiscali internet outage happened today (yes it seems tiscali borks up at least every month now). This wasn’t the normal few hours though, so decided to ring up and see if it was a fairly major network outage and when it was likely to be fixed. The following conversation snippet is priceless; well I chuckled anyway:

….start up conversation, internet is down etc….

Tiscali Call Centre: OK, sir, we will try and see if we can guide you through this.

Me thinking, ok I have tried everything you’re going to suggest but lets go through it anyway.

Tiscali: What version of Windows are you using?

Me: I’m on a Mac.

Tiscali: Sir, Which version of Windows are you using?

Me (speaking slowly and clearly): I’m on a Mac.

Tiscali: Sir, I need you to tell me which version of Windows you have installed on your computer.

Me: I have an Apple Mac computer.

Tiscali: And which version of Windows does it have?

Me: I HAVE AN APPLE MAC COMPUTER, it doesn’t run windows, it runs OS X.

Tiscali: Long silence…..

Me: An Apple Mac computer……

Tiscali: OK, sir I’m going to have to put you on hold for 30 seconds.

Me thinking lots of hand waving for supervisor or madly looking for the Mac manual.

2 minutes…….

Priceless, absolutely priceless. The end of it all was fairly bizarre though, must be the sheer presence of the mac manual she found!.

Tiscali: Sorry to keep you waiting sir. OK, let’s guide you through this.

Me thinking, arh ok they found a mac manual!

Tiscali: Is  your computer turned on?

Me:  Wait a minute, just wake it from sleep

Oh, internet is now working!

You see, on a mac ‘it just works’!!

technorati tags:mac, tiscali

Blogged with Flock

A glorious spring/Easter day yesterday in Edinburgh - what better backdrop to a thouroughly well organised and enjoyable Refresh Edinburgh conference.

The day was kicked off with the entartaining Turnbull brothers behind Googlesightseeing, Meri Williams followed up with a talk on Project Management (actually really quite useful for us coding geeks who probably do all the things we shouldnt do with a project), and then I gave a quick talk about Flock.

Andrew Cavers took up my slack, with an enjoyable talk about his site edinburgh menus; as someone who has struggled with UK geocoding I completely sympthise with and understand his geocoding approach.  Brian Suda introduced, you guessed it, microformats. It was a slight shame that the conversation started to go into the accessibility of the title attribute used for his geo example but he handled it well.

I missed John Sutherland’s talk as I had to pop out for fiv mins, but upon my return listened to Dan Champion’s presentation on Revish, the most interesting/thought provoking thing for me was the whole moderation issue and good luck to Dan with his site. And finally, a good talk from the guys behind groopit. With all the social networks banding about the place, groopit seems to have found that all important niche, cemented by a fellow ‘parent’ in the audience as this is the sort of network early teens need (well, it’s what us parents want them to use).

The biggest shoutout though has to go to John and Matt for organising the whole thing; thouroughly, thouroughly enjoyable and a pleasure to be a part of.

Technorati tags: refreshedinburgh, flock, googlesightseeing, microformats, revish, groopit

Blogged with Flock