Now here’s a new curious story: how I tried the flex switch.

When you need most your mobile phone

I was riding my bike back home with my good old Motorola C650 when I dropped it without knowing that.
It turned out it was smashed by some vehicle some time later and a man doing jogging found it.

Crazy enough he tried to use it, but nothing was showing up on the display.

Hey, what the hack is this story about? That’s insanely out of topic!!

Yes, I know, but if you want the real thing, you’ll have to read thru this…
So: finally the wise man put my SIM back in his phone and called the “home” contact.
Yep, I definitely answered. I wasn’t even aware I had lost the phone! Anyways to cut it out my phone came back into my hands! Thanx Marco!!!
I guess it wasn’t much of a gain, keeping a not working mobile!

I was really happy because I got back my 15EUR worth of calls on my SIM and the phone, though broken, seemed still usable.
After a cose look, it seemed the display was broken, so i thought: just try to place a call just to be sure a display switch will do the trick.
Nope, the phone does not place nor receive calls: I don’t think that a new display is a good idea!

But…. BUT! Hey, I got that nice E700 back in my closet, waiting for an extreme repair!!!

The real thing
I decided it was time to get my E700 back to work, so i ordered a new E700 flex (without displays) and I tried to unsolder the main display and to solder it back on the new flex.

Failure
Yep, I failed!

First of all the external display: it is just stitched on the board. I don’t know you, but i’ve seen tens of electronic caluclators and the always have this absurd way of stitching the display or the solar cells: that’s the same on the external display.
The bad thing is that you’ll never get your stitched contacts back! They just get disintegrated

No problem, the main thing is the internal display, or i’ll never be able to use my phone again.
Well the display has a nice soldered couple of contacts for power, so with wathever solder you have, you’ll be able to detach that.
The real problem is when you try to unsolder the data contacts: impossible, you risk to end up with a cut out piece of plastic.

Well I wanted to try anyways, so I started soldering everything and found a decent status to test: nothing. Pure black (except for the white backlight leds).

Conclusion
First: don’t even think of doing that if you don’t have the right tools

Second: even if you have the right tools be aware that anything could go wrong (expecially with the stitched external display). For the internal display here’s what may go wrong (in order of probability):
- wrong unsoldering: contacts broken
- wrong soldering: solder may damage your phone
- defective flex: you might to the thing perfect, but something’s not working

Third: you could just simply buy a complete display spare for less than 15EUR and just connect it (after having read my guide on dismounting the phone )

Happy bidding! Can’t wait to try my spare…

Related posts

• Samsung E700 finally working (0)

The day after the deadline, i was quite surprised to see a dozen more apps, with nice and rocking features, so I just stopped hoping of a reward for my gadget.

Now it turns out that the DH guys were so impressed with the efforts everybody put into this competition, that decided to give a $100 DreamHost credit to every participant!

Notice the Account Service Credits payment method, revealing the source of the $100

So, even if $100 credit is not a grand-prize, I have to admit I’m very impressed by this move: thank you to the DH guys!

Related posts

• DreamHost API contest: DH PS Charts (1)

Anyway, it turned out that if you can’t write in Objective-C (and here please allow me to be a bad boy: if you really can’t, i would suggest you go doing something different than a programmer), you may now write iPhone Apps with HTML and Javascript, for a mere $99 using this NimbleKit by VolnaTech.

The whole story feels like it doesn’t fit at all to me!
Having just noticed that you may write DHTML fully featured apps using OpenLaszlo or some DHTML libraries/toolkits, it just p*ss me off to see that if you want to make money, you must buy this $99 tookit (seems to me a kind of a bluff).

Hey, I mean no offense to the VolnaTech guys: they’ve been very smart and very hard programmers to make this possible. And I see nothing wrong in making money from your hard working, especially if we’re talking about the iPhone App Store (you can make thousands from iBeer!).

But please, let me explain these simple facts:

• iPhone does not support Flash (among the thousand other missing features), and this is ok, cause Flash may be so nasty with CPU, battery and users, that it’s not a very bad idea. But this make one think: why that? Something to do with the fact that you will buy Apps?
• to develop something for the iPhone you must pass thru a Mac, thru a $100 fee and thru the Apple approval (yes, we’re good guys and do not want to jailbreak). Seen the above doubt?
• iPhone Safari has a native support for DHTML

Now, the only really missing thing for making a DHTML app on iPhone is the offline mode (with the local data storage): otherwise one may just make a 320×240 web page with almost anything possible in it and the result will be exactly the same app as a real one.
Well, given that i don’t know if a DHTML Safari app can handle multi-touch (sure there is a way), of course I don’t know a way to interface the GPS and the Webcam with a web-page (but who knows… maybe there’s a way)

Well, I do not have a Mac (so don’t have XCode and the iPhone SDK), but my idea is: make a simple iPhone App FOR FREE (and even if it’s not for free, jesus, not for $99, but $7.99!).
Make this App in this way:

• a builtin webpage server
• one Safari frame
• a virtual XML storage
• something like a JavaScript API for interfacing iPhone hardware

This will make it possible to:

• write a DHTML application
• add an XML file for keeping data of that (read-writes will be done on the local storage someway)
• wrap it in a special XML/ZIP/manifest/wathever
• deliver it to our DiPhone (DHTML-iPhone) App for offline execution and local storage

Easy eh? …and almost free too!

Now i guess Steve is not paying me for this… (well, maybe he read my previous idea)

P.S.
Ok, for the moment you might just try to make an online DHTML app (without GPS, webcam and local storage) and I belive it will work great

Most Commented Posts

• Apple MOVs with codec m2v1 unreadable under Windows (73)
• Poor man’s repairing a Samsung E700 mobile phone (18)
• Ning + OpenSocial = OpenShame (3)
• Complotti senza Mortadelle (2)
• DirectX dopate (1)

Here’s an example

If you would like to add it to your page, you may use the direct XML here:
http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/111847852952011179828/dhchartplugin.xml

Or use the Google Gadgets page: Add to my iGoogle

And I hope I can place in the top 5

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• Not the winning, but the taking part… and win! (0)

Briefly (go and read the full article, if you like), it’s a patent proposal addressing common problems of kiosks, applied on the media distribution (iTunes based).
I won’t go into the details of the patent (they have great ideas for sure), but it seems there’s too much effort for very little coming out of that. Let me explain…

First, kiosks never made it in the real world (if you need internet, you bring your netbook, BlackBerry or wathever it’s your mobile device), second if you planned to take a plane, it sounds quite unusual to put a movie on your player the minute before flying (hey, you planned that! It’s not a bus or the subway: get your media ready player while you’re filling your 24-hour bag )

Second I don’t see why you need to access iTunes, but not to your mail. The opposite may be true: you access the (paying) airport WiFi for your mail and… “hey, what about this new song in iTunes”

So my mind kind of wanders and think: why pay thousands for a patent on kiosks, when you just need to re-program a common hot spot to get the thing done.

Project fonTunes

copyright Mindsuburbian 2009

• Get a Fonera 2 for making hotspots
• Connect an HD to the Fonera 2
• Hack/reprogram the Fonera 2 for adding/editing functionalities
• Write a new app with the developer kit that downloads movies and songs to the HD
• Set up an authentication method so that you can encrypt the connection on the fly (for passwords and credit card info)
• Let the non-paying users go only to “fonTunes” for free
• Let the paying users go both to “fonTunes” and the internet

Steve, if you read this: I may sell my idea for the price of a couple of patents

Related posts

• Apple App Store restrictions (0)
• Fonera Zombie Antenna (0)
• My Dream Laptop? (0)
• Some JPG files cannot be open (JPEG8BIM and Adobe on Mac) (1)
• Apple MOVs with codec m2v1 unreadable under Windows (73)

Ning yesterday announced they are close to release Ning Apps: that is an interface to OpenSocial Apps for the hard to please Ning network-owners.

That is a very nice idea, which is exactly in line on what they announced when they disabled REST APIs in favour of OpenSocial.

Unfortunately, even if this is a great piece of news, I have to admit that, after a brief check they did not very much for the developer him/herself!

• They made it possible to install OpenSocial pre-made apps like a charm
• There is a new documentation page with a comprehensive and detailed example stack
• Now there’s even a Ning specific method, to call general Ning variables (readonly)

Yes, they’re making a nice job implementing more OpenSocial features as possible, but well no, there is still no way to access all the Ning data (i.e. profiles data, custom answers) or any way to edit them.

The only “write” funcions are:

• Write profile activities
• Send a message to another member
• Saving app-restricted persistent data

Something like a relief for Ning developers, but not that much after all.
You might be very enthusiastic if you’re getting all this for free, but I bet the paying network-owners are not that impressed after all

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• Ning + OpenSocial = OpenShame (3)

Well, it seems recently i’m not very amused by the tools and sites i find online.
No, it’s not me

This time it happened with Ning. We have a network (no commercials, for now) and would like to add a very little tiny banner. Easy, eh?
Well, not so fast: the banner have to be shown only if the user is logged in and if he/she answered a multiple choice question with a definite answer (the other answers will lead to no banner or a generic one). This is because the user will be eligible to a free subscription and services on another website.
Yep, we’re not giving free beer to anyone
So, that is a requirement for the partner site to give us the service: we filter the users, we get the service. No filter, no service!

First thing I thought: eham… Ning? I’m not very confident, but I know they’re smart guys and made two (wow!) APIs.

1. REST and XML APIs
2. OpenSocial APIs

Now, in March they completely disabled REST APIs and WebDav features because they want to concentrate on OpenSocial: Ning platform updates. So option #1 is no more.

The OpenSocial APIs are really a nice idea: you write an app/widget and it works all over the OpenSocial-compatible socialnetwork platforms! Great!
Well, not so fast!

First, Ning didn’t implement a lot of features, just the minimum.
Second, even with the whole of the APIs, there is no way to recover user data of the custom questions (yes, the custom answers ) and moreover, there is no API to automatically recover the whole user base (in case one would like to export the data periodically as a feed and/or use it for an external app).

Ah, and forget to put OpenSocial apps on your home page (it’s not permitted)

“They want to concentrate on OpenSocial”

?!?!?

The only way to recover user data is to download a CSV file from the admin panel: yes manually!

So I decided I had to hack this

The only way to do that automatically is to use the cURL library to simulate the click of a real admin, but unfortunately the admin panel is so sophisticated, that it’s not just a matter of retrieving the login webpage and the export page.

The admin panel seems to work like this: since the extraction of the data could take much time, there is an AJAX procedure polling the server and the polling is the way the server dedicates time to this action (so if you do not poll, you don’t get the extraction). When the extraction is done, one may download the CSV file from a specified link.

Jee, i had to sniff the communications to get the protocol right!

Here is the request sent by the AJAX function on the admin browser:
POST /main/bulk/exportMemberData?xn_out=json HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.cpm
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; it; rv:1.9.0.8) Gecko/2009032609 Firefox/3.0.8
Accept: application/json, text/javascript, */*
Accept-Language: it,en-us;q=0.7,en;q=0.3
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8
X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest
Referer: http://www.example.com/main/membership/listMembers
Content-Length: 51
Cookie: xn_visitor=a111111-111-111-1111-11111111111; __utma=11111110.2111111111111111110.1111111111.1111111111.1111111111.1; __utmb=111111111.1.10.1111111111; __utmc=11111111; __utmz=11111111.11111111111.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none); xn_id_example=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA*QAA*4ZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAv-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA*qDaE_; xn_shared=GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA*QAA*4AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAeAAA*rA0NniIQ__
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: no-cache

counter=2&xg_token=81111111111111111111111111111110

Well, I can’t post the reply because it’s gzipped, but the content is:
({"contentChanged":50,"contentRemaining":1})

So basically, one shoud call the same URL (www.example.com/main/bulk/exportMemberData?xn_out=json) in POST mode, with an increasing counter number and it receives the above reply every time. It’s time to stop when the contentRemaining variable is zero (0).

After that, you just open the url www.example.com/main/membership/downloadMemberData with a cURL call and you get the updated file.

So, summarizing:

1. Setup cURL
2. Call www.example.com/main/bulk/exportMemberData?xn_out=json with POST data counter=0&xg_token=81111111111111111111111111111110
3. Examine the reply and if contentRemaining is != 0, increase counter and recall the #2
4. Repeat #2 and #3 until contentRemaining==0
5. Call www.example.com/main/membership/downloadMemberData and save the CSV to file

Be aware that:

• if you do not run the extraction procedure, the file can be downloaded, but it will be obsolete
• the extraction takes quite a long time, even with a relatively small number of users
• the procedure refuses to update if you call it too frequently (it will return contentRemaining:0 even if some data is changed (I tried changing my profile)

Of course all the above operations must be done offsite with a script or an executable (you can’t do that on the network webpage itself with Javascript for example), so who does not have a different host to run the scripts on, well, its f*cked.

After that, you may use a Javascript on your Ning nework to get the current userid from the ning.CurrentProfile['id'] variable and pass it to your script via AJAX, JQuery or simply as a parameter of an iframe src url.

Here’s an example:
<iframe id="myframe" style="display: block;" scrolling="auto" width="150" height="200" frameborder="0" name="myframe"></iframe>
<script type="text/javascript">
document.getElementById('myframe').src = "http://external.example.com/banner.php?r="+ning.CurrentProfile['id'];
</script>

Hope this helps some desperate network owner and: thanx Ning…

P.S. This hack is given as is and it’s not guaranteed it will work forever.

Update 2009-07-16
As requested I’m uploading the PHP functions to operate as suggested above.
Happy downloading ningcsv.
Please note that no guarantee is given for this file.
The original piece of code is actually copyright by the firm i work for, but i prefer not to mention it for privacy metters (in case you would like to sue that! ).

Related posts

• Ning getting on track for OpenSocial (0)

• Wrote to the FON support, after checking the knowledge base
• Started searching around if someone noticed the same behaviour

After a couple of days i got no answer from FON (they claim to answer within 24hrs) and found noone with the same story, so I just gave up and selected my Fonera for my test expendable device

I documented a bit on the DD-WRT project, so to be prepared on what i could obtain, and I actually found the the Fonera has two antennas and they are operational!
One may just solder to a connector to the second antenna contact, like shown in the image.

Unfortunately the FON firmware can’t see that and will never use a second antenna, so the only choice is to install an alternative firmware: DD-WRT.

So i begun this Zonera Zombie project:

• I studied the second circuit and it seemed straightforward
• I desoldered the antenna from the ant2 contact
• Resoldered the antenna cable to the ant1 contact
• Hard reset the Fonera to the original firmware (v.0.7.1r1) pressing the reset button at the bottom of the case for 20 seconds (less tha 15 seconds and the reset wouldn’t stard and more than 25 seconds will just soft reset the fonera)
• Enabled SSH with the HTML injection trick
• Enabled redboot
• Installed DD-WRT v24SP1
• Enabled diversity, which lets you choose which antenna use for TX and which for RX, then selected the second antenna for both RX and TX

And that was it! When i connected the external antenna it started working like a charm!
You might want to install the thinclient software for letting FON see the fonera online and that’s it!

So why write now?!?
Well you know, I got another not-working fonera a couple of days ago and, guess what? It has the exact same behaviour.
Why the heck nobody ever tried to use the Fonera without the antenna and notice the behaviour?

I did the same Zombie revival and it worked!
“Ahahah, it lives, it lives!!!”

Hey, I know a lot of ppl with a not working Fonera and suggest you try that on yours!

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• Apple patents make me wander (1)

I then came up with my ideal Transformers Laptop, which is pretty nice (well, don’t look at the drawing! ) for a all-purpose laptop.
3 parts, 3 CPUs, multiple uses:

• detachable multimedia LCD
• home server harddrive
• main book (works without the other pieces), fully featured when needed

Well, go there and spit your idea!

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• Apple patents make me wander (1)

Facts:

• I received an email at our office with some nice new artwork, made on a Mac with Adobe something CS3
• I saved the files
• I tried to open them in any kind of imaging software (and yes, I tried GIMP!)
• Finding that the file couldn’t be recognized I thiught it could be compressed or corrupted, so I opened it up on an hex editor and found strange header and footer data (namely i could recognize only the JPEG8BIM and Adobe Photoshop Machintosh strings
• I googled around and mate 2+2: Apple is not compatible with Windows…

The strange thing is that even a soooo standard JPG file is modified under MacOSX (found that it could be because of the Mac Finder…)

Solution
Since after around 0×80 bytes here it comes the standard JPEG header, well… why not try and trash the byted before?!?!
… And voila!

Well, it’s not very funny, cutting 128 bytes from every picture it comes from a Mac! So I made this nice command line utility for Windows users: StripMacHeader.
Please be aware that it doesn’t make a formally correct JPG file, as it doesn’t try to strip the garbage tail of the file: you will have to open the file after stripping and resave it, to have a real JPG file.

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• Apple patents make me wander (1)
• Apple MOVs with codec m2v1 unreadable under Windows (73)

Yes, Apple is not close enough to OpenSource and portability as one might need/desire.

One of my collegues downloaded his video camera clips to his Apple iMac with Leopard, using probably iMovie (or iLife??) and produced a lot of MOV clips who he sent to me in a zip file.

When trying to open them under Windows, I couldn’t happen to view a single frame: I tried VLC, WMPlayer and, of course, QuickTime Player. No use.

I found anyway that:

• The audio was hearable
• The video had the codec fourcc name of: m2v1

I googled around and found that this must be an Apple codec encapsulation for MPEG2 videos.

So I tried to extract the raw streaming with MP4Box (using the GUI YAMB) and got a perfectly viewable mp2v streaming (.m2v).

That made me think: why the raw data is an m2v, but the fourccs are m2v1?!?!

Since I do not have time to investigate the MOV file format and, well, not knowledge at all, I tried the newbie method: search for m2v1 in the binary file with an hex editor.

Found 2 occurrencies: m2v1 and ‘m2v1′
The next obvious step was to try to change them to the real m2v fourccs: mp2v
Et voila! The mov played flawlessly in my VLC player (and others).

So I wanted to contribute and made a very skinny command line app for win that could change the fourccs for me.

Beware: this does not check for anything! Just changes up to two occurences of m2v1 to mp2v (anyware in the file).

Enjoy m2v1_to_mp2v

Update 2008-12-19

Yep, if you followed the comments, there’s another case where mp2v is not the right FourCC code, so I made an m2v1_to any FourCCs

m2v1_to FourCC

You must specify the fourcc destination code and you may add as many files as you like (also using jolly char): this enables you to run the tool on an entire directory with
m2v1_to -m2pv *.mov
Enjoy even more

Update 2009-06-17
As many ppl here are having this issue and no solution seems to be released (except mine) we are having a wide range of cases: I’d like to specify here some more cases and their solution, just to prevent other ppl asking the same thing in the comments

BIG NOTE: be aware that your clip file must be writable, otherwise the patching might seem ok, but nothing has been actually patched at all! So first of all do a right click -> properties and un-check the read-only tick

Then, if you’re trying the first tool:
- put everything in a folder like C:\clips
- open a cmd window (Start -> Run, enter “cmd” without quotes, click Ok)
- at the prompt, cd \clips
- run the command with
m2v1_to_mp2v clipname.mov
- check the results

The results must be something like:
m2v1 to mp2v: opening clip1.mov…Parsing…Done!
Patching…second patch…
Done!

If not, that means that the file is not in the expected format: i.e. you will have to check manually (more below)

Yes, you might also want to just drag your file on the tool name, but in that way you’ll never be able to see the output (you might want to do that on known cases)

Now, provided that every test should always start from the original file, here some cases we’ve raised/solved in the comments:

1. The file might be patched correctly, but for some reason Windows Media Player is still unable to read it: i suggest you give a try with VLC (VideoLanClient)

Moreover if you want to use the file in your favorite videoediting software, you’d better first check in that. Or you might try with a different editing software: it might be that WMP does not read it, but opening the clips in an editing software, you can just re-encode (export) them in a more suitable format! Many software can do edit MOV files, but not everyone, so please just check (if you have them available, you might try Adobe or Ulead – the first two coming into my mind)

2. The file might be in a slightly different format: try to use the second tool specifying -mpg2 at the prompt as the FourCC patching code.
As stated in the usage lines (run the file from the command prompt and you’ll see this):
* m2v1 to FourCC
* by Marco Abiuso (2008)
* Changes up to 2 occurrencies of 'm2v1'
to specified FourCC code in a binary file
Usage: m2v1_to - [ ...]
…you should just write
m2v1_to -mpg2 myckip.mov
Yes, somebody tried mpg2 as the FourCC code and it worked!

It might be the case that the file is encoded in even another format: you’ll have to discover that, for example loading the file in VLC and checking the media streams information (in the current version of VLC: Tools -> Media Information or Ctrl-I while viewing): that should really give m2v1, but just double check to be sure.

Again: check that the software return signs of patching in the output, if not: the file has not been patched.

3. If none of the above works, you’d better use a nice binary editor (like Hex Editor Neo Free or XVI32) and try to find the original FourCC code. The FourCCs are very near the word Apple: just check all the occurrencies and you’ll find somewhere a human readable string with the word Apple in it: look at some four characters code and write that down. We will try to check that if you post it in the comments.

Here what appears “graphically” on my hex editor:

See those m2v1 and ‘m2v1′ strings around the center of the image? Gotcha!

Be aware that the word Apple will never appear if the file was not edited/created by a Machintosh! In that case the problem might still be the same, but we will have to check case by case.
Now I hope it’s more clear to everybody

Related posts

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• Apple patents make me wander (1)
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So i decided i don’t like the Goole search personalized with the firefox logos.

In order to substitute that one, you will have to create a new search engine in the search bar with the original url, and remove the modded one.

The fastest way is:

1. Open your folder

C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins

and edit with a text editor the file google.xml

2. Search for the line

and change the url in the last double quotes to:
http://suggestqueries.google.com/complete/search?qu={searchTerms}

You may also want to remove the “dynamic parameters” part:
<Param name="rls" value="{moz:distributionID}:{moz:locale}:{moz:official}"/>
<MozParam name="client" condition="defaultEngine" trueValue="firefox-a" falseValue="firefox"/>

In this way you will have Google ad the default search, but with the “original” Google style.

Advanced version

1. Install the search engine in your Firefox

click to install now

2. Insert about:config in your browser url textbox and filter by browser.search. Then set browser.search.defaultenginename as “Google Original”

3. You might want to go to “Manage Search Engines” by clicking on the down arrow of the search engine bar and reorder the list with Google Original as first and Google (by firefox) as last (or second)

4. Enjoy the original version of the Google search engine

Hacking the hack
You would probably want to personalize the search engine or create a new one.
The trick is:
1.To have a javascript function to add the new engine:
AddEngine Javascript source

2. To have a source file for the engine specs
Google search sourcefile

and an icon
Google search icon

3. Then you make an HTML file with the javascript and the link to execute the addEngine function:
<script src="http://www.mindsuburbia.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/addengine.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<a href='#' onClick="javascript:addEngine('Google Original','http://www.mindsuburbia.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/google.src', 'http://www.mindsuburbia.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/google.gif'); return false;">click to install now</a>


4. You will notice that in your profile folder in

C:\Documents and settings\\Application Data\
Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\\searchplugins

you have a corresponding xml file like this

which would just make the magic (without anything of the above) after restarting Firefox.

Most Commented Posts

• Apple MOVs with codec m2v1 unreadable under Windows (73)
• Poor man’s repairing a Samsung E700 mobile phone (18)
• Ning + OpenSocial = OpenShame (3)
• Complotti senza Mortadelle (2)
• DirectX dopate (1)

• Magpie RSS Parser
• YouTube RSS Feed
• GoogleMaps API
• Geonames RSS to GeoRSS

and cook them with the right community passion and you may get a real bomb dish!

I wanted to make a proof of concept that we can build a new service starting from popular ones, so popular that now they are a classic, like YouTube: i’ve created Video by Location. A place where you can find videos on a GoogleMaps map.

The project is still in a beta phase, as you can’t add feeds nor submit your videos, but the community serves as a filter for locations that the Geonames.net service is not able to get right (mostly because they are not on Earth! ).

Please go there from time to time, to report bad placed videos and to find some curious ones, or just to see what’s happening to this project!

Most Commented Posts

• Apple MOVs with codec m2v1 unreadable under Windows (73)
• Poor man’s repairing a Samsung E700 mobile phone (18)
• Ning + OpenSocial = OpenShame (3)
• Complotti senza Mortadelle (2)
• DirectX dopate (1)

L’unica funzione che me l’ha fatto preferire ad altri è sempre stato il fatto di avere più sottolivelli di bookmark.

Oggi il Web2 è letteralmente fissato con i TAG (vedi del.icio.us o furl.net): non è assolutamente possibile categorizzare tutto con un elenco di tag. Per quanto questa caratteristica renda perfettamente lineare l’organizzazione, non rende giustizia alla non-linearità e complessità degli argomenti reali.

E’ perfettamente naturale che un argomento, es. Cucina sia categorizzabile sotto Libri e sotto Accessori per la casa. Con i vari sistemi di tagging io mi ritrovo i siti di accessori per la casa alla stregua dei siti di libri… che non ha senso!

L’unico altro sito web che permetteva una categorizzazione del genere è spurl.net, ma sfortunatamente è seriamente bacato

Oggi invece Yahoo Bookmarks è stato rivoluzionato:
- completamente AJAX
- Bookmark This a Go Go
- Accesso non lineare al proprio archivio di bookmark
- perfettamente Web2-tagged
- ricercabile
- con anteprime miniaturizzate del sito
- riordinabile con un click

Un bel lavoro, ragazzi!

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• Decuplicamento dello spazio (da 20GB a 200GB)
• Raddoppio della banda di trasferimento (da 1T a 2T)
• Adeguamento degli incrementi settimanali (+1GB di spazio a settimana, +16GB di banda a settimana)

La cosa è esaltante. Se pensate che per una piccola cifra lo spazio sul mio hosting è maggiore del mio HD, viene voglia di usare DreamHost anche come storage personale

Ed ineffetti lo confermo: a breve preparerò uno spazio per i miei file (magari cifrati o protetti da password) tra cui: file personali, foto e backup importanti (profili, OS, etc).

Insomma, ormai quello che io chiamo online computing è praticamente alle porte (ma già ne avevo parlato) :

• Calendario online, grazie a Google per potersi organizzare anche fra amici/colleghi
• Documenti di testo e fogli di calcolo, per la produttività personale (Google o AJAXLaunch
• Tutto lo storage che vuoi a prezzo abbordabile, comprensivo di programmi web installabili con un clic (Gallery, WordPress, phpBB e molti altri)

Quindi preparatevi perché fra poco il PC servirà solo per applicazioni di alto livello, mentre tutto il resto sarà dato per scontato direttamente con la connessione Internet : bisognerà abituarsi all’idea di avere disponibile il proprio archivio di produttività (sia software che dati) in qualsiasi momento e in qualsiasi parte del mondo.

Come dire: non potrai più mettere la scusa che hai dimenticato a casa gli appunti

Most Commented Posts

• Apple MOVs with codec m2v1 unreadable under Windows (73)
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• DirectX dopate (1)