RobSog

Start a YouTube video at a point you choose

Say you’re on Skype with a couple of your chums, and you’d like to point them to a YouTube clip to illustrate an point you’re putting forward. Specifically: that watching a 1970s German football fashion show (the proper version), with shoeless dancing models, all cut to some swinging Latin beat – is a good way to make you feel better on a Monday morning; and you’d like to cut to the chase and not waste their valuable time. A tall order methinks. Well fret no more, for here’s how...

Deep linking on YouTube
Find a video on YouTube of 1970s German football fashion show (the real version) with shoeless dancing models etc., etc... Start the video and then pause it at the point you think your fellow interlocutors need to start watching; in other words, getting straight to the action and missing out all that unnecessary preamble.

Make a note of the time.

Now add the following string to the end of the original URL: #t=XmYs – substituting X for the minutes and Y for the seconds of where their viewing pleasure beings (for times beginning in the first minute, add a zero for X). Piece. Of. Cake. And now a demonstration.

Footnote: a replay of the video starts the clip from the beginning. Sheisse! A booking to the hacker from Hamburg.

Jumping on the bandwagon

I am, are you? iTunes back up for Mac users from Bandwagon.

Hyperlinks makes hierarchies translucent

'Community is no longer for geeks and early adopters, and has probably been mass market for quite a long time.' Complete Tosh

Will Google Earth run on a Mac?

As of today – yes. Download and play. It's just dandy.

Sony side up / boycott Sony

Credits Cartoon | Title of post: Cardboard spaceship | Story summary: Wired | T-shirt

BBC archive blow-up

Looking forward to this maturing into another way to loose several days staring at a screen ;o)

'Ever wondered what's in that archive? Who looks after it? It turns out there's a huge database that's been carefully tended by a gang of crack BBC librarians for decades. Nearly a million programmes are catalogued, with descriptions, contributor details and annotations drawn from a wonderfully detailed controlled vocabulary.

I'm the lucky developer who gets to turn this hidden treasure into a public website. No programme downloads yet, but a massive searchable programme catalogue.'

Link Matt Biddulph

Bum notes?

Chapeau to Hamish for this link pointing to the puchase of digtial music files and 'your ownership.' Read, absorb and then muse on the possibility of having to buy another format of your digital files for whatever piece of kit is around the corner. Snafu I say.

DRM: the low down >

For how long?

Podcasting and iTunes

Just started using iTunes new Podcast corner, and in particular I'm going through the recent segments from IT Conversations. I'm in the middle of cropping, touching-up and colour-correcting a huge bundle of pictures for a new book Malcolm and I are designing, so in an effort to keep me sane, I've been listening to Paul Graham, Peter Norvig (Director Search Quality at Google) and other tech luminaries riffing on their specialised subject(s).

The whole IT Conversations idea about presenting talks (albeit it without supporting visuals – sometimes a good thing?) from conferences I'll never be able to attend is such a good idea. Must throw some coppers into their 'tip jar.' However, not all the posts are formal presentations. Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing fame (amongst other things – damm this man knows a lot of stuff) is a good listen, though I'm not sure how he can keep up that machine-gun chatter for that long without chemical aids.

And the book I'm working on? Well here's a potential typographic treatment for the cover using Jeremy Tankard's quirky Shire Types for the title, though this might change on further reflection. Why use Cheshire for the titling font? Well it just seems to nicely reflect the dramatic landscape of that part of Kernow. Will post alternatives if any come to mind (mine or your's for that matter).

WiFi and flower boxes

Nicholas Negroponte on WiFi and a economic model to sustain 'universal availability':

Think about it. If you put a flower box outside your house, you're first of all using your own money to buy the flowers. You're hanging it out there. You're doing it for your self-esteem, for the beauty of looking out the window and seeing the flowers, of decorating your house and making it look well. But it also, if everyone on the street puts nice flower boxes out, makes the street look nicer. It happens a little bit on Beacon Hill, it happens a lot in European cities.

Now the theory of flower boxes, if there is such a thing, could be taken to WiFi. I put in a WiFi system in my home for my own use, but it radiates out into the street. There's no incremental cost for me to let other people use it. There really isn't. ... If everybody does that, then the entire street has broadband. Every park bench has broadband, every convenience store has broadband, and so on.

So it you've got a flower box, please leave it open. I do . . .