Monthly Archive for October, 2005

Podcasting problems!

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 28/10/2005
in Podcast and Technology
. 10 Comments

One of the biggest problems with podcasting is the space and bandwidth podcasts consume. There are a number of ways around this, but none are perfect.

In my how-to post about podcasting, I mentioned that it was possible to use the Internet Archive to host your podcast and video blog files free. The problem with that solution is that at the time it took over 24 hours from submission of a podcast to having it approved.

In the comments of that post Pete Prodoehl mentioned that Ourmedia.org provided a service where files submitted to them would be added to the Internet Archive in a matter of minutes. This service seems to have broken down though. The last two mp3 files I submitted to them disappeared, never to surface in the Internet Archive.

So yesterday, I was trying to upload the mp3 recording of my RSS for non-techies talk. Not having any luck with Ourmedia.org, I decided to try the Internet Archive directly again and this time it was far faster than previously.

It still took roughly 12 hours from submission to approval but at least it worked unlike the Ourmedia.org service and I now can point people to the recording.

UPDATE:
I forgot to mention I tried Odeo as well but I was unable to find how to upload an mp3 through its interface.

Intelligent photo searching coming soon!

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 27/10/2005
in Search Engines and Technology
. 2 Comments

Michael Arrington, of TechCrunch, has the first review of Riya on his site.

What is Riya? Riya, formerly known as Ojos, is facial recognition software - basically, if you upload you photos to Riya, it will ask you the names of people in the photos, and quickly start to recognise them in more of your pictures so you get a searchable index of all your photos of people.

Riya also allows for tagging of pictures and parts of pictures, so you could tag your dog’s picture with his/her name, it recognises text in pictures and it allows you to open your pictures for friends to tag and search also.

This sounds like it will revolutionise online photos - intelligent search has always been missing from photos.

Riya is, as yet, unavailable to use - it is in Alpha testing still. There is a learn more series of pages on Riya’s capabilities on their website and the option to register your interest. I did. Watch this space!

Microsoft follow Google into Book Search

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 27/10/2005
in Search Engines and Technology
. 0 Comments

I had a much longer post prepared about this but I lost it when I had a server crash (due to my playing around with my .htaccess file!).

Anyway, according to the BBC, Microsoft are following Google’s lead into the Book Search arena.

MSNBC’s report states that Microsoft are teaming up with Yahoo! and the Open Content Alliance and they hope to:

sidestep hot-button copyright issues for now by initially focusing mainly on books, academic materials and other publications that are in the public domain… to let users search about 150,000 pieces of published material. A test version of the product is promised for next year.

Google’s Print project, on the other hand, promises to index millions of books and to remove from the index any books whose author requests they do so.

In terms of usefulness, a search index of millions of books will be orders of magnitude better than one with a mere 150,000 books - now if only Google can overcome the silly legal objections.

IT@Cork blog

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 26/10/2005
in IT@Cork and Technology
. 1 Comment

I created an IT@Cork blog today.

The blog is run out of WordPress using Michael Heilemann’s K2 theme.

The blog will be for members of the IT@Cork Steering committee to discuss events, the conference and also to solicit ideas from the membership for ways to improve IT@Cork moving forward.

There’s very little in it yet apart from two posts I put up but hopefully this will grow pretty quickly!

RSS for non-techies talk

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 25/10/2005
in IT@Cork, Podcast, RSS and Technology
. 8 Comments

Apologies for the light posting today but I was busy preparing the RSS for non-techies talk for IT@Cork for this afternoon.

A copy of my presentation is now available for download here (2.74mb pdf).

I recorded the talk and I will update this post with the address of the mp3 version of the talk in the next day or two.

UPDATE:
Ok you can now download a podcast of this talk here (10.5mb mp3). For some reason this particular podcast isn’t showing up in my iTunes subscription - anyone else having this problem?

Sky News Live at Five team starts a blog with bugs!

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 24/10/2005
in Blogging and Business blogging
. 6 Comments

The Sky News Live at Five program has started a blog - welcome to the world of blogs Jeremy and the Live at Five team.

However, the blog could stand some improvements (from a technical perspective) - for instance:

  • (the site doesn’t conform to web standards,
  • it doesn’t allow trackbacks or pingbacks,
  • it doesn’t allow comment authors to include the address of their own blog (if they have one) and
  • worst of all, it publishes commenter’s email addresses (when you Preview a comment), even though it states

We ask you to tell us your email address when you contribute, so we know you’re serious, but this won’t be published on the site.

Still, it is good to see a large news organisation dipping their toes into the blogosphere - as Fr. Ted might have said “Up with that kind of thing!”

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