Planet Raw

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wiki transcript: 03-14-07 buy shirts! replay commentary! buy the songs

By Carol Smith, Open Source Team

Cross-posted with the Google Open Source Blog


Today at FOSDEM I was proud to announce Google Summer of Code 2012.

This will be the 8th year for Google Summer of Code, an innovative program dedicated to introducing students from colleges and universities around the world to open source software development. The program offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source projects with the help of mentoring organizations from all around the globe. Over the past seven years Google Summer of Code has had 6,000 students from over 90 countries complete the program. Our goal is to help these students pursue academic challenges over the summer break while they create and release open source code for the benefit of all.

Spread the word to your friends! If you know of a university student that would be interested in working on open source projects this summer, or if you know of an organization that might want to mentor students to work on their open source projects, please direct them to our Google Summer of Code 2012 website where they can find our timeline along with the FAQs. And stay tuned for more details coming soon!


Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

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Android: We've covered the free Aviary online image editor several times—it is robust enough to work for most people who want to tweak their photos but don't require a full version of Photoshop or GIMP. They've just released a plugin for Android that brings the same functions to your phone or tablet so now you don't have to transfer the image to your computer before editing. More »

Programming as collaborative reference (extended abstract and slides) by everybody's favorite PLT tag team, Oleg and Chung-chieh, from the Off-the-beaten track workshop affiliated with POPL 2012:

We argue that programming-language theory should face the pragmatic fact that humans develop software by interacting with computers in real time [hear, hear]. This interaction not only relies on but also bears on the core design and tools of programming languages, so it should not be left to Eclipse plug-ins and StackOverflow. We further illustrate how this interaction could be improved by drawing from existing research on natural-language dialogue, specifically on collaborative reference.

Overloading resolution is one immediate application. Here, collaborative reference can resolve the tension between fancy polymorphism and the need to write long type annotations everywhere. The user will submit a source code fragment with few or no annotations. If the compiler gets stuck -- e.g., because of ambiguous overloading -- it will ask the user for a hint. At the successful conclusion of the dialogue, the compiler saves all relevant context, in the form of inserted type annotations or as a proof tree attached to the source code. When revisiting the code later on, the same or a different programmer may ask the compiler questions about the inferred types and the reasons for chosen overloadings. We argue that such an interactive overloading resolution should be designed already in the type system (e.g., using oracles).

This past week 19 new mashups were added to our mashup directory and 30 different APIs were used to build them. Some of the newer or less frequently seen APIs include Clicky, CloudMine, Ergast, Idescat, Library of Congress Prints & Photographs, PubNub JavaScript Push, SHOUTcast Radio and Teambox. The most often used APIs this week are DonorsChoose, Google Maps and LinkedIn. And the most commonly used types of APIs were Music (6 APIs, 6 mashups), Social (3 APIs, 3 mashups) and Internet (3 APIs, 3 mashups). The list below shows which APIs were used by which mashups:

 Amazon eCommerce used in Bestalia

 BBC used in Now Playing on BBC Radio

 BBC Music used in Now Playing on BBC Radio

 Bit.ly used in QuickResu.me

 Clicky used in QuickResu.me

 CloudMine used in Real time simple SMS Voting App

 DonorsChoose used in Cash4Books.net, EveryBlock classroom fundraisers, NCAA Fund the Future

 eBay used in Bestalia

 Echo Nest used in Now Playing on BBC Radio

 Ergast used in More Than F1

 Facebook Graph used in Now Playing on BBC Radio

 Google Chart used in Color Hexa

 Google Earth used in Golf Guide

 Google Fusion Tables used in Golf Guide

 Google Maps used in Golf Guide, New York Metro Card Usage, Rome 2 Rio

 HotelsCombined used in Rome 2 Rio

 Idescat used in PobQuiz

 Last.fm used in Now Playing on BBC Radio

 Library of Congress Prints & Photographs used in LOCPix

 LinkedIn used in QuickResu.me

 MusicBrainz used in Now Playing on BBC Radio

 Nexmo Wholesale SMS used in Real time simple SMS Voting App

 PubNub JavaScript Push used in Real time simple SMS Voting App

 Rovi Cloud Services used in TotalGuide G2

 SHOUTcast Radio used in SHOUTcast D.N.A.S. Status

 Songkick used in Now Playing on BBC Radio

 Teambox used in TodoToday for Teambox

 Twitter used in Observatorio de marcas en twitter (España)

 Wikipedia used in Time Machine

 YouTube used in Time Machine

Mashups of the day:
And each day there is one mashup selected to be Mashup of the Day. Here are last week’s winners:

 Color Hexa

 EveryBlock classroom fundraisers

 LOCPix

 Now Playing on BBC Radio

 QuickResu.me

 Time Machine

 TodoToday for Teambox

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A vacation can range anywhere from a dream to a nightmare. While some of that depends on circumstance, there's plenty you can do to make your travel easier, more efficient, and more fun. Here are our top 10 favorite tips, tricks, and hacks to help make your next trip really great. More »

Steve Cottle has done a great job live-blogging my wrap-up talk at the Tech@State event. Thanks, Steve!

I was the guest on Tummelvision a couple of nights ago, which is podcast tumble-tumult of persons and ideas. It doesn’t get much more fun than that. Thanks, Heather, Kevin, and Deb!

The Berkman Center has posted the video of my book talk. Look on the bottom left to find the player and the links.

KMWorld’s Hugh McKellar has posted his interview with me.

And NYTECH has just posted a video of my talk there on Jan 25. The talk is about 45 mins and then there’s a lively Q&A. Thanks NY TECH!

Brandeins has posted an interview with Doc Searls and me about Cluetrain. (They translated it into German.)

According to a survey publishsed in Science [abstract][Slashdot] scientists are routinely pressured to include superfluous references in their papers in order to boost the Impact Factor of the journal publishing their paper. The Impact Factor is (roughly) a measure of the importance/influence of a journal, based on a two year average of how often its papers are cited. Careeers are made by publishing in high Impact Factor journals.

This sort of corruption (which I talk about a bit in Too Big to Know) might seem like an inevitable imprecision in how we gauge something as vague as “infuence” if alternatives were not becoming available. Services like Mendeley can provide real-time readouts of which articles are being read and commented on. Google likewise can see how often articles are being linked to. Facebook can see how articles are being passed around social networks, some of which are quite expert. It would of course be good to have measures not gated by commercial entities. In any case, institutions of knowledge are currently relying upon an instrument that was always too blunt and now known to be corrupt.

If you break the handle on your favorite kitchen knife you will probably either look forward to shopping for a new knife or wish you could give your trusty knife a new handle yourself. For those who'd rather fix what they have, you can remove the pieces of the old handle with a hacksaw and then you can cut and attach a new handle. More »

Black Pus is the many-armed beast of a solo project from Brian Chippendale, one of the most distinct musicians and visual artists of our time. If you're not already familiar with the sounds of Black Pus, you may recognize Chippendale's many-armed drumming style and masked mic-in-mouth vox from his duos Mindflayer and Lightning Bolt. A co-founder of the storied Fort Thunder artist collective, Chippendale still lives in the Olneyville neighborhood of Providence, in a former mill building where lately he seems to be writing a new Black Pus song almost every night. So while we're wrapping our heads around 2011's Primordial Pus (Load Records) -- not to mention the limited edition CD-R series of Black Pus 1, 2, 3, 4 and 0 -- there's already a seventh Black Pus album ready to pop.

This live set on Marty McSorely's WFMU program is a special treat because, though he is a prolific musician, Black Pus doesn't tour nearly enough to quench our thirst for Pus. The set was expertly engineered by Ernie Indradat, and the interview covers recent collaborations with Björk and the Flaming Lips. Chippendale also talks about how he assembled such a unique setup, including an oscillator pedal that was originally a gift from Shinji Masuko of DMBQ. When Marty McSorely asks "What is Brian Chippendale's Black Pus?" Chippendale responds that it's reggaeton. He goes on to elaborate on a range of influences from the free jazz assault of Peter Brötzmann's Machine Gun to the unpredictable rhythms of Sightings and Black Dice (who started out as a hardcore band in Providence around the same time as Lightning Bolt).

<object data="http://freemusicarchive.org/swf/playlistplayer.swf" height="160" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="600"> <param name="data" value="http://freemusicarchive.org/swf/playlistplayer.swf"> <param name="flashvars" value="playlist=http://freemusicarchive.org/services/playlists/embed/album/10965.xml"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="sameDomain"> <param value="http://freemusicarchive.org/swf/playlistplayer.swf"> <param name="src" value="http://freemusicarchive.org/swf/playlistplayer.swf"> </object>

In some circles, Brian Chippendale is known as much for his fine art, comics and graphic novels as for his music. His visual style can be experienced as part of every Black Pus and Lightning Bolt release. And, as those of you who are on the WFMU swag mailing list may have heard, Brian Chippendale designed an awesome Biker T-shirt for WFMU's marathon which begins later this month!

For more, check out the Black Pus blog, which just debuted this trippy surrealist video for "I'll Come When I Can," off Primordial Pus:

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“I’ve been working on the M-80 for a long time. I designed it for somebody who was playing at a club, working with a label, about to be signed, or had been signed. I wanted to build a “workingman’s” guitar for a new generation of players. That guitar evolved from many years of seeing things in guitars that I like or dislike. A lot of designs on that guitar are my gut-level reaction to what I see people playing, my playing, and what players tell me they like and dislike – or find comfortable and uncomfortable.

 “There’s a lot of design in the M-80 that doesn’t meet the eye. For example, the body comes from a shortened Mustang guitar. If you put a longer-scale Neck on a Mustang, you have to shorten the body so it feels right. I placed the strap buttons, so that when the guitar is hanging, it feels familiar. Let me put it this way … I’ve got 25 years in the business, and the M-80 is the accumulation of 25 years of designing and building guitars for the world’s most discriminating players.” – Todd Krause

Bertram

© 2012, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

I heard the following from my brother-in-law (pictured). Reminds me of recent developments in higher education all too well.

<bold>William Brown</bold>
Traditional Woodcraft song arr. by Stan Kelly © 1961 Heathside Music

Well, a nice young man was William Brown,
He worked for a wage in Liverpool town,
He worked from six till eight at night,
Turning a wheel from left to right.

Chorus:
Keep that wheel a-turning, keep that wheel a-turning
Keep that wheel a-turning and do a little more each day.

One day the boss to William came
And said, "Look here, young what's your name,
"We're not content with what you do,
"Work a little harder or out you go."

So William turned and made her run
Three times roung in the time of one,
He turned so hard he soon was made
The Lord High Turner of his trade.

William turned with the same sweet smile,
The goods he made grew such a pile;
They filled the room and the room next door
And overflowed to the basement floor.

The nation heard of the wondrous tale,
His picture appeared in the Sketch and the Mail;
The railways ran excursions down,
And all to look at William Brown.

But sad the sequel is to tell;
He turned out more than the boss could sell;
The market slumped and the price went down,
Seven more days and they sacked young Brown.

The moral of the tale is plain to tell:
If you wanna lose yer job, just werk like HELL!

• Government policy – a spotter’s guide | Government Digital Service
  I've been trying to get my head around what (government) policy actually is in the sense of "policy development", and it seems the gov.uk folk have come up with a pragmatic definition - "statements of the government’s position, intent or action" - that will shape the area of the gov.uk website describing govt policy and actions around it under the following headings: The issue, problem or opportunity, and gov’s aims Actions, what govt is doing/will do/has done to address problem or seize opportunity Background, how policy has developed to date, why govt has chosen this course and rejected other options, including evidence Engagement, who govt has asked/is asking/will ask, when and how Impact, who benefits or is otherwise affected Bills and legislation, the legal framework in which this policy is operating/how policy might change that legislation Partner organisations, what govt and NGOs are involved, and in what capacity Related news, speeches, publications and consultation

guitarz.blogspot.com - Guest blog by Olivia Lennox:

Olivia Lennox is a professional writer and amateur singer/songwriter. Her day job involves writing on behalf of a premium sofa retailer and a number of travel blogs, but her real passion lies in strings and vinyl.

© 2012, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Ferris has extended its claws to allow the pastebin at http://paste.kde.org to be mounted. Since bash doesn't know libferris at all, without fuse you can use ferris-redirect to pipe information into any file that libferris can use as shown below (-T truncates like ">" in bash).

mkdir /tmp/test
cd    /tmp/test
date > df1.txt
cat df1.txt | ferris-redirect -T pastebin://kde.org/new/foo
...
 http://paste.kde.org/199754/

If you just have one file, then the "new" directory itself will act as a target too:

echo anyone, anyone... | ferris-redirect -T pastebin://kde.org/new
...
 http://paste.kde.org/199760/

And because everybody knows that key protected pastebins are the new red, the following will need to have "goodkeyhere" on hand to read the data back...

echo this is secret, dudes | ferris-redirect -T pastebin://kde.org/private/goodkeyhere
...
 http://paste.kde.org/199772/35847813/

The final directory is the "list" which contains virtual files allowing you to get a paste through the virtual filesystem. Of course, you could just fcat the http:// URL for the paste, but a nice tree is a nice tree.

fls  pastebin://kde.org/list/
... 199700
fcat pastebin://kde.org/list/199700

For a while it seemed like I was going to lose my dingy but exquisitely-located office on The Main. So I was going around town, looking at offices for rent. This one was actually pretty nice, if too far downtown.

I normally try to make pictures look like what I saw, but this is a product of egregious ex post facto manipulation.

Twitter is now reporting the real number of retweets in the Twitter API, which means we now know how crazy the retweet counts go on celebrity tweets. And did Newt Gingrich lose in Florida because he didn’t have an API!? Plus: 6 new APIs.

Twitter Operating At Full Retweet Count Capacity

As the social network most known for brevity, Twitter is saying more now that it uncapped retweet counts.

Twitter visualization service TwitSprout has a list of the most retweeted:

Did Newt Gingrich Lose Florida for Want of a Better API?

That’s the question asked at TechPresident:

Salon’s Sasha Issenberg has a great story outlining one narrative about Newt Gingrich’s loss in Florida: He inspired a group of tech-savvy volunteers, but gave them no way to plug in to the campaign.

6 New APIs

Today we had 6 new APIs added to our API directory including a random video discovery service, web hosting management services, futures exchange, billing systems licensing service, original works copyright service, unofficial imdb service, . Below is more details on each of these new APIs.

Flyhour API: FlyHour is a web site where users can be shown Youtube videos randomly to aid in music and new video discovery. Users also have the option to filter the videos shown by specific country, within a certain category (like music, comedy, sports, news, technology, etc.) and to only show videos with a set number or more views. The FlyHour REST API gives developers this functionality and allows it to be integrated into their web sites or applications. With the API, a user can request to get a video from among their favorites or request to get a random video depending on country, views and category.

Hetzner API: Hetzner Online is a web hosting provider and data center operator. The Robots API gives developers programmatic access to all of the server hosting functionality offered by the service. This includes retrieval and entry of information about servers, IP addresses, resets, LANs and more. The API uses RESTful calls and responses are formatted in JSON and YAML.

ICE Trading & Technology API: ICE operates regulated exchanges, trading platforms and clearing houses for global markets such as agricultural, credit, currency, emissions, energy and equity index. ICE offers a suite of API for accessing the ICE futures and OTC markets. The APIs allow developers to route orders, access market data, capture real-time trade data and do post trade processing. Access to the APIs requires prior approval from the provider. Full documentation is not publicly available.

LicenseCube API: LicenseCube provides licensing services and technical advice to clients. Users can select from Control Panels, Billing Systems, and many more software licenses. The LicenseCube API lets developers integrate the service with WHMCS, Ubersmith or their own web sites and applications in order to automate licensing needs. Full documentation is not currently available.

Myows API: Myows is a web site that allows freelancers and other creatives to manage their copyright and protect their original work from illegal copying. The site lets users create proof of authorship as well as provide various means of deterrence against theft. With the API users can list original works flitered by given parameters, return info on orginal works, download original works and more. The API uses RESTful calls and responses are formatted in XML and JSON.

Stochastic IMDb API: The Stochastic IMDb API is an unofficial service that lets users access IMDb programatically. The service, updated daily, is a web-based script that parses the IMDB datafiles and exposes an API to retrieve information from them. With it users can query the database to find television shows. It uses RESTful calls and responses are formatted in JSON.

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It's a sad fact of life that over time, all of our computers get a little bit slower. Before you start shelling out for a new machine, take some time this weekend to perform some maintenance tasks, upgrade a single piece of hardware, or even overclock your machine for a little speed boost. More »

Everyone has a cloud strategy these days. Of course, when you hear about clouds, you hear questions like "Are we talking about IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS?" This assumes an enterprise-centric view of clouds that is belied by what Robert Scoble calls the game of games. Facebook, Google, and Apple are most selling clouds in various guises and see their cloud strategy as a key to their future.

The problems with these "personal clouds" is that they have no operating system. An operating system is what makes your personal computer personal. Without an OS, it would be a special purpose appliance that does specific things (like run an office suite) but not others (like play a game). There are certainly those who wish that was the norm, but for now, at least, we have general purpose computers that run a variety of applications and can be configured according to the dictates and wishes of their owners.

[An aside for those of you getting ready to comment: yes Facebook allows apps and is an app platform, but they are ancillary to the experience, not core. The core experience is still very much a Facebook-determined thing.]

The user-focused clouds we see today are special purpose. You can't customize them much or make them do something their builders didn't envision in the selection of applications that they offer.

In contrast a personal event network is like an OS for your personal cloud. You can install apps to customize it for your purpose, it can store and manage your personal data, and it provides generalized services through APIs that any app can take advantage of.

Poland thinks twice about passing ACTA, Google will no longer use CDMA devices as developer units, and a new study begs the question, "Do iOS apps crash more frequently than Android apps?" More »

It’s important to note at this point that we didn’t have to start with our experimentally-justified axioms. Maxwell’s equations suffice to derive all the physics we need.

In the case of Faraday’s law, we’re already done, since it’s exactly the third of Maxwell’s equations in integral form. So far, so good.

Coulomb’s law is almost as simple. If we have a point charge it makes sense that it generate a spherically symmetric, radial electric field. Given this assumption, we just need to calculate its magnitude at the radius . To do this, set up a sphere of that radius around the point; Gauss’ law in integral form tells us that the flow of out through this sphere is the total charge inside. But it’s easy to calculate the integral, getting

or

which is the magnitude given by Coulomb’s law.

To get the Biot-Savart law, we can use Ampère’s law to calculate the magnetic field around an infinitely long straight current . We again argue on geometric grounds that the magnitude of the magnetic field should only depend on the distance from the current and should point directly around the current. If we set up a circle of radius then, the total circulation around the circle is, by Ampère’s law:

or

Now, we can compare this to the last time we computed the magnetic field of the straight infinite current by integrating the Biot-Savart law directly and got essentially the same answer.

Finally, we can derive conservation of charge from Ampère’s law, with Maxwell’s correction by taking its divergence:

The quantity on the left is the divergence of a curl, so it automatically vanishes. Meanwhile, Gauss’ law tells us that , so we conclude

or

which is the “continuity equation” expressing the conservation of charge.

The importance is that while we originally derived Maxwell’s equations from four experimentally-justified laws, those laws are themselves essentially derivable from Maxwell’s equations. Thus any reformulation of Maxwell’s equations is just as sufficient a basis for all of electromagnetism as our original physical axioms.

Wired's Garth Sundem sat down with the Robert Bjork, director of UCLA's Learning and Forgetting Lab, to discuss how you can best "[pack] things in your brain in a way that keeps them from leaking out". What he learned? A lot of our basic assumptions are wrong. More »

You've no doubt seen the split keyboard that iOS 5 brought to the iPad, but it turns out it has a few hidden buttons on the edges. Here's how they work. More »

Many carriers these days are blocking apps from the Market, like Google Wallet or Wireless Tether. Droid Life shows us a super easy way to install them on your unrooted phone. More »

The Daily App Deals post is a round-up of the best app discounts of the day, as well as some notable mentions for ones that are on sale. More »

The newest version of Skype lets you initiate IMs and video chat sessions with Facebook users, even if they aren't running Skype. It also includes group screen sharing, a push to talk feature, and HD video for certain webcams. More »

This week we snagged a few more gigabytes of free Dropbox space, skipped out on unnecessary fees, made better use of our personal domains, and more. Here's a look back. More »

I love Arduino but its lack of wireless bugs me. And it sucks that WiFi Shields for the Arduino cost as much a cell phone. I want something cheap. Turns out, small, cheap WiFi routers like the Asus WL-520gu can run the DD-WRT Linux firmware and act as serial-to-network gateway for [...]

In the past we've highlighted an astonishing array of useful books that covered topics ranging from bioremediation to underground home building to fermentation. These books are tools because they not only help us learn but also put knowledge to use.

Help us fortify our library of useful books by submitting your favorite text for a particular subject including an explanation of why you think it's essential. We want to feature that dog-eared book that you wouldn't lend to a friend for fear you wouldn't get it back. It can be the best beginner's guide, or a slightly more advanced technical manual detailing materials or techniques. If you can, please include scans of pages that we can use to illustrate the book's content. This has been done before but never with any insight or explanation of what makes the book useful or cool.

What's the essential book for carpenters? Metalsmiths? Landscape designers? Tailors or seamstresses? What about information design? Or sous vide? Tanning or taxidermy? Home brewing? Car repair? Bicycle frame building? The list goes on and on.

Every trade and hobby has their own bible, and we want to identify and collect them all in one place so that others may benefit.

Submit your recommendation (or request) here, post it in the comments below, or feel free to email it to editor@cool-tools.org.

-- Oliver Hulland

Sample Excerpts:

Examples of the kind of books we're looking for:
The only fly fishing guide you'll ever need: The Curtis Creek Manifesto
The mushroom forager's bible: Mushrooms Demystified
The best book on breadmaking: The Bread Baker's Apprentice
The essential cook book: How to Cook Everything
The ultimate bike repair manual: Barnett's Manual

The UNDFND One Bag looks like a designer messenger bag, but is far more dynamic and modular than you'd expect. The majority of the bag is modifiable, allowing you to transform it into the bag you need right now, rather than switching your gear in and out of a variety of different containers. More »

<iframe frameborder="0" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Ro31wHE15mA?fs=1&amp;feature=oembed" width="459"></iframe>

 

 

No comments necessary, just watch this clip. Thanks to the folks at Norient for posting this a while back. 

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twitter.com/themisoproject — story telling through visualisation sounds interesting!

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