Sidewiki Demonstration

Standard | Posted on September 24, 2009 by Phil

This is a demonstration of some of the key features of Sidewiki, Google’s system for leaving public comments on any web page. I’m paying particular attention to how your Sidewiki comments can be brought into other systems. Your comments automatically appear in your Google profile. You can also automatically post to Blogger if you choose. I also demonstrate entering a Webmaster’s comment, which is given a highlighted prime position at the top of the comments list.

Background

Background information on the development and philosophy of Sidewiki is available on Google’s announcement post:

Help and learn from others as you browse the web: Google Sidewiki

Transcript

With Google Sidewiki you can add public notes to web pages. Sidewiki is part of the Google Toolbar and can be enabled and disabled as needed.

You can vote up helpful notes.

You can find out more about a note’s author by clicking through to their profile.

In my profile you can see the notes I’ve made so far and get an RSS feed of the notes.

Here I’ve got the feed appearing in my blog.

If you follow a link in the feed you get back to the original page where the comment was made.

Here’s where I commented on a BuzzMachine article.

And you can choose to see everyone’s comments – not just mine.

I really like the way the page scrolls to show which text comments refer to.

Comments can be made about snippets of text as well as the article as a whole.

Here I’m leaving a comment about Rapla. An open source booking system that worked well for me.

As soon as I highlight some text an edit button appears in the sidebar.

Bear with me here while I find some text to paste.

And lets give it a nice title.

How about “Implementation at Oxford Medical Sciences Teaching Centre”.

At the bottom of the post you can set up links to your blogger account, and choose whether or not to post automatically. I’ve set up a demo blog so you can see this in action.

Once a comment is saved it can be sent to your social networks. I’m tweeting this one.

You get a pop-up twitter window, and the system generates a draft message for you.

Here it is on my Twitter profile.

If you’re the webmaster of a site you can leave a special comment that will always appear at the top of a page.

I’m setting this up for the home page of my Loosing Site blog. I’m already registered as the webmaster so I’m given an extra checkbox to write as the site’s owner.

My comment is then highlighted green and pushed to the top of the list.

Vene, Vidi, Venue

Standard | Posted on January 2, 2009 by Phil

Time is precious, and so is accuracy. By adding details of 10,000 performance venues to their web application ArtistData have further simplified the lives of musicians, making it easier for them to keep their fans updated with accurate information about upcoming performances.

This has been one of our most requested features. Now when you are adding a show within ArtistData, as you type in the venue name, you will hopefully be greeted with a long list of potential matches.We loaded about 10,000 venues in there to start and will be adding more as you input shows at venues we dont have, so dont worry if the venue you’re playing isn’t in there. If you add the show, we’ll get a note to add that venue!

ArtistData – Bands: Post information once. We publish it everywhere.

This adds an essential piece of data validation to an already useful service that allow artist to update their information in concert database, social networks, calendar widgets and local publications from one central dashboard.

ArtistData – Bands: Post information once. We publish it everywhere. via kwout

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Google Charts – Now With Maps

Standard | Posted on March 20, 2008 by Phil

Google has added a map chart type to its free data visualisation solution. Google charts API creates images on the fly to present data encoded in the image url.

Sample Google Chart - Map of US

The available maps are at continental or world scale, with the exception of the USA where geographical data for each state can be displayed.

Developer’s Guide – Google Chart API – Google Code via kwout

Data for the charts is included as url parameters using ISO Country Codes, RGB color values and simple numeric or string encoding of data values.

Developer’s Guide – Google Chart API – Google Code via kwout

The URL’s are simple enough to construct by (a careful) hand, but are more suited to scripting and code generation.

Tracing the Success of Vector Magic

Standard | Posted on February 21, 2008 by Phil

Originally developed as part of Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence research project, VectorMagic is a web application that traces bitmap images, converting them into line art.

Vector Magic | Precision Bitmap to Vector Conversion Online via kwout

The conversions are of remarkably high quality and are extremely straightforward to produce. A Flash interface guides you through the simple steps of:

identifying the type of image (photograph or logo)

quality level of the source

color pallete selection

Once the selections are made a vectorized image is produced. You are then given the option of going through a troubleshooting process to improve the image quality.

Vector Magic | Precision Bitmap to Vector Conversion Online via kwout

A rasterised png version of the traced image can be downloaded free of charge. As this is now a commercial venture, vector versions can only be downloaded after paying a token.

At the moment VectorMagic is only available as a web service, though a desktop application is in development.

Wiki Professionals Find A Market

Standard | Posted on February 18, 2008 by Phil

WikiMatrix has launched a new service that gives organizations an easy way to find support and consultancy for deploying and running a wiki.

WikiMatrix / Wiki Consultants and Wiki Support – Compare them all via kwout

Consultants are listed by country, service and wiki engine supported. They can also be found via the wiki listings where side-by-side feature comparisons of wiki engines now also show the available commercial support organisations. With the increased use of wiki technologies for public, closed and private sites WikiMatrix’ service is a very timely offering.

Image:HNL Wiki Wiki Bus.jpg – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia via kwout

Where Does All The Time Go?

Standard | Posted on February 10, 2008 by Phil

If you’ve ever wondered where all the time goes you might want to start using Rescue Time to find out.

http://www.rescuetime.com/dashboard_preview

RescueTime: RescueTime : Web-based Time Management Software for Geeks via kwout

This combined system tray widget and web service logs your computer activities throughout the day, classifying the applications and sites you are using so that you can set yourself some process goals.

RescueTime Blog via kwout

Time spent on different activities can be assessed and analyzed to bring your behavior more in line with your goals. After an initial set up period where you tag your regular sites and application the tool just about runs itself.

RescueTime: RescueTime : Product Tour via kwout

The application is currently available in a personal edition and soon will also be available in a team edition that logs and analysis activities for an entire workgroup, allowing comparisons to be made between the work practices of individuals and changes in team practices over time.

RescueTime can be a powerful tool for personal reflection, revealing the extent of distractions, or the degree of overcommitment or under-commitment to certain tasks and processes. Used well it can provide real insights, used badly it can encourage the worst kind of stressful micromanagement.

On it’s own it is an efficient measuring tool. Used to inform a time management practice it becomes an important guide to effectiveness.

Scribus – a Maturing Open Source DTP

Standard | Posted on February 7, 2008 by Phil

Scribus, an open source desktop publishing system, has been gaining popularity and extending its feature set over the past few years.

SourceForge.net: Project Statistics for Scribus via kwout

The program has now reached sufficient stability and capability for the National Library of Finland to recommend its use in brochure production.

The National Library of Finland Recommends Scribus :: Scribus :: Open Source Desktop Publishing for Linux, Mac OS® X and Windows® via kwout

The interface has the look and feel of a professional desktop publishing package. While lacking the exact feature set of Pagemaker or QuarkXpress it is capable, when properly used, of producing good results rapidly.

aqua2.jpg (JPEG Image, 1280×854 pixels) – Scaled (78%) via kwout

One of Scribus’ core aims is to produce high quality PDF files for commercial print production. The extensive list of success stories on the Scrbus Public Wiki shows that its achieving that aim.

Success stories – Scribus Public Wiki via kwout

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