creeva’s Recently Played Tracks

creeva’s Recently Played Tracks

creeva’s Recently Played Tracks

creeva’s Recently Played Tracks

creeva’s Recently Played Tracks

creeva’s Recently Played Tracks

For those curious which wordpress plugin’s I use on creeva.com, I thought I would post my plugin page for you to check out.

Enjoy:

Add Meta Tags	1.6	Adds the Description and Keywords XHTML META tags to your blog’s front page and to each one of the posts, static pages and category archives. This operation is automatic, but the generated META tags can be fully customized. Also, the inclusion of other META tags, which do not need any computation, is possible. Please read the tips and all other info provided at the configuration panel. By George Notaras.
Add to Any: Share/Save/Bookmark Button	.9.1	Lets readers share, save, and bookmark your posts using any service and browser. [Settings] By MicroPat.
Admin Big Width	1.0	enlarge your wordpress administration. By XoraX.
Admin Management Xtended	1.0.1	Adds AJAX-driven options to some admin management pages with CMS-known functions like toggling post/page visibility without having to open the edit screens, plus changing page order with drag’n’drop. By Oliver Schlöbe.
AJAXed WordPress	1.19.2	A plugin that incorporates the best AJAX WordPress features and wrap them in a single framework–including such features as inline posts and comments, the ability to paginate posts, submit comments, thread comments, edit comments and posts inline. The Admin panel is under presentation tab. Need Help? Visit the Official AWP support thread or try reading the full documentation. By Aaron Harun.
Akismet	2.1.5	Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin. By Matt Mullenweg.
All in One Adsense and YPN	1.62	Inserts Adsense or YPN code in to your blog posts. Ad position can be random or pre-defined. By linewbie.
All in One SEO Pack	1.4.6.8	Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. By uberdose.
Berri Technorati Reactions on Dashboard	2.0	Shows on the Dashboard the Technorati Reactions of your blog. Widget for the main admin page. By Alberto Varela.
Blog Metrics	1.0	Provides blog metrics based on the blog metrics Avinash Kaushik proposed in this post, now with a widget! By Joost de Valk.
Brian’s Threaded Comments	1.5.18	This gives you threaded comments and a “wandering” comment form. By Brian Meidell.
Chunk Urls for WordPress	2.0	This plugin shorten urls in comments so that they won’t break your site. By whoo.
Clean Options	Beta 0.9.6	finds orphaned options and allows for their removal from the wp_options table By Mittineague.
Comments number Restore	1.0	Hyper Cache is an extremely aggressive cache for WordPress. By Satollo.
Dashboard: Draft Posts	1.0.2	Displays draft posts on your WordPress 2.5+ dashboard. By Viper007Bond.
Dashboard Editor	1.1	Allows you to customise the dashboard. By Aaron Harun.
Dashboard Widget Manager	1.3.0	Greatly enhances your WordPress 2.5+ dashboard by allowing widget re-ordering and storage of preferences on a per-user basis. By Viper007Bond.
Different Posts Per Page	1.7.1	Show different number of posts in home, category, search or archive page. By MaxBlogPress.
DJ EmailPublish	1.5	Publish your article to other blog by email. Visit Options/Email Publish after activation of the plugin. By Der-Johng Sun.
Enforce www. Preference	1.3	Provides 301 redirects to queries with /index.php and enforces your use or non-use of www. By Mark Jaquith.
Facebook Comments	0.25	Copies comments from your imported Facebook Notes back into your blog entries. Took Thomas Albright’s version (http://thomasalbright.info/index.php/2007/05/27/thomasalbrightinfo-facebook) and then edited by James Low (http://jameslow.com). Made to work with Feedburner feeds by Aaron Harp (http://www.aaronharp.com) By Adam Hill.
Facebook Dashboard Widget	0.9	Display your friends latest status updates, posted items and/or notifications on your WordPress dashboard. Make sure you enter your feed details on the options page. By Chris Chrisostomou.
FeedBurner FeedSmith	2.3.1	Originally authored by Steve Smith, this plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. By FeedBurner.
Flickr comment Importer	0.1	Add Flickr comments to your blog posts. Configuration Page By Donncha O Caoimh.
Flickr Manager	2.0.2	Handles uploading, modifying images on Flickr, and insertion into posts. By Trent Gardner.
Flickr Photo Gallery	0.93.2	This plugin will retrieve your Flickr photos and allow you to easily add your photos to your posts. Configure… By Silas Partners (Joe Tan).
Fluency Admin	1.1	WordPress 2.5+ only. A rethink of the WordPress admin interface giving it a slightly more modern application-esque feel, inspired by Steve Smith’s Tiger Admin. Firefox, Safari and IE8 only. IE7 soon. By Dean Robinson.
Forgot the Category	0.2.1	Hate forgetting to select a category when you write a new post? I know I do. This plugin won’t let you. By Dan Coulter.
Front Page Excluded Categories	1.1.1	This version uses a comma separated list of *excluded* category ids. By Sean O’Steen.
Genki Youtube Comments	1.2	Insert YouTube comments into your post’s comment By Genkisan.
Google XML Sitemaps	3.0.3.3	This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. Configuration Page By Arne Brachhold.
Instant Upgrade	0.2	Upgrade your WordPress-Installation with one simple click (Go to Manage » Instant Upgrade) By Alex Günsche.
LiveJournal Comments	1.0.3	This plugin displayes a number of comments in posts crossposted to LiveJournal. You can see how if works here. By Alexander Bishop.
LiveJournal Crossposter	2.0.5	Automatically copies all posts to a LiveJournal or other LiveJournal-based blog. Editing or deleting a post will be replicated as well. Original plugin by Evan Broder. By Arseniy Ivanov.
Live Space Sync	1.01	A Live Spaces rpc plug-in By William, priv.
Maintenance Mode	3.2	Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end. Navigate to Options ? Maintenance Mode to get started. By Michael Woehrer.
Meet your commenters	0.9	When someone comments on your blog and writes a comment with his/her URL, is leaving more information than you think. This plugin displays web pages and profiles of those users in the dashboard, so you can add them as friends if you are in the same social network. By Alberto Varela.
MySpace Crossposter	2.0a	A plugin that enables automatic crossposting from WordPress to MySpace. By Roderick Russell.
No Flash Uploader	1.0	Disables the Flash Uploader of 2.5 By Dion Hulse.
NoFollow Free	1.5.5	Remove the nofollow tag from your blog’s comments with a lot of options customizable, per user type removal, per comments count removal etc… Supports multilingual and a Top Commenters sidebar Widget. By Michele Marcucci.
Official StatCounter Plugin	1.0	Adds the StatCounter tracking code to your blog. After uploading this plugin click ‘Activate’ (to the right) and then afterwards you must visit the options page and enter your StatCounter Project Info to enable logging. By Aodhan Cullen.
Ping.fm Notifier	1.0	A plugin that send a notification to your Ping.fm space after you publish your post. By Creeva.
Plugin Central	1.11	WordPress 2.5+ only. Automatically installs and updates WordPress plugins. By Vladimir Prelovac.
Postie	1.1.1	Signifigantly upgrades the posting by mail features of Word Press (See Quick Readme) By Dirk Elmendorf.
Post Template	2.1.3	A plugin that allows you to create post templates in order to save time writing posts having the same structure. When activated, you can check your new template management page and the option page. This plugin makes use of the excellent other plugin “Manage Pages Custom Columns” by Edward Dale. By Vincent Prat.
Reveal IDs for WP Admin 2.5	0.7.5	Reveals hidden IDs in Admin interface that have been removed with WordPress 2.5 (formerly known as Entry IDs in Manage Posts/Pages View for WP 2.5). See Options Page for options and information. By Oliver Schlöbe.
Routes	2.1.6	Adds route-based geographical information to your blog. By Jennifer Hodgdon, Poplar ProductivityWare.
Script Compressor	1.3.1	This plugin compresses javascript files and css files. By Regen.
SEO Friendly Images	1.11	Automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images. Improves traffic from search results and makes them W3C/xHTML valid as well. By Vladimir Prelovac.
SezWho	WP2.1	A plugin that improves community engagement by showing universal web-wide profiles for participants and by empowering the community to rate comments and post. You need a key to use this service. Get your key at SezWho. By SezWho.
SimpleLife	1.2	SimpleLife is a fully configurable simplepie based plugin to produce a lifestream on your wordpress powered blog. Makes use of the excellent SimplePie. Either use the widget or place <?php simplelife(); ?> in a page template. By Kieran Delaney.
Simple Tags	1.5.7	Simple Tags : Extended Tagging for WordPress 2.3 and 2.5 ! Autocompletion, Suggested Tags, Tag Cloud Widgets, Related Posts, Mass edit tags ! By Amaury BALMER.
Social Homes widget	2.2	Adds a sidebar widget containing a subtle list of all your social homes as linked favicons. Current services include del.icio.us, Flickr, YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo, Twitter, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Zooomr, Utterz, StumbleUpon, Digg, LiveJournal, MySpace, Jaiku, Pownce, VIRB°, and FriendFeed. By Elie Zananiri.
Twitter Tools	1.2b1	A complete integration between your WordPress blog and Twitter. Bring your tweets into your blog and pass your blog posts to Twitter. Configure your settings here. By Alex King.
Twitter Widget Pro	1.1.4	A widget that properly handles twitter feeds, including @username and link parsing, feeds that include friends or just one user, and can even display profile images for the users. Requires PHP5. By Aaron D. Campbell.
VideoWarrior	1.0.3	Yet another plugin to include Videos from Youtube and Google Video By Sixtus.
WordPress.com Stats	1.2.1	Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key. By Andy Skelton.
WordPress Database Backup	2.1.5	On-demand backup of your WordPress database. Navigate to Manage ? Backup to get started. By Austin Matzko.
WordPress PDA & iPhone	1.2.1	This plugin helps the users to view your blog in a pda and iPhone browser. By Imthiaz Rafiq.
WordPress Reports	0.87	Generates reports from Google Analytics and Feedburner data By Joe Tan.
WP-PageNavi	2.30	Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.
WP-Print	2.30	Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.
WP-ServerInfo	1.30	Display your host’s server PHP and MYSQL information (integrated into WordPress Admin Style) on your WordPress dashboard. By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan.
WP-SnapAvatar	1.1	This plugin puts the commentor’s website screenshot where there is no gravatar. By Neacsu Alexandru.
WP-SpamFree	1.8.3	An extremely powerful anti-spam plugin that virtually eliminates comment spam. Finally, you can enjoy a spam-free WordPress blog! Includes spam-free contact form feature as well. By Scott Allen, aka WebGeek.
WP Contact Form III	1.4.1	WP Contact Form III is a simple drop in form for users to contact you. It can be implemented on a page or a post. Go to Options -> ContactForm III to configure. Challenge (antispam) mod by Doug Karr. Original script by Ryan Duff By Kristin K. Wangen.
WP Limit Posts Automatically	0.7	Limit your posts automatically. This way you don’t need the use of the more tag. You can limit posts by letter, word or paragraph and apply it to home, categories, archive and search. By Jens Törnell.
WP Security Scan	2.2.64	Perform security scan of WordPress installation. By Michael Torbert.
WP Super Cache	0.6.4	Very fast caching module for WordPress. Once enabled, you must enable the cache. Based on WP-Cache by Ricardo Galli Granada. By Donncha O Caoimh.
Xanga Cross Post	0.6	Cross post your blog entries to a Xanga account By Joe Tan.

]]> http://creeva.com/2008/05/20/what-wordpress-plugins-do-i-use/feed/ 3 http://creeva.com/2008/05/08/nokia-n810-and-me-day-2/ http://creeva.com/2008/05/08/nokia-n810-and-me-day-2/#comments Thu, 08 May 2008 15:02:45 +0000 Creeva http://creeva.com/?p=2789

Why is there a cat pictured in this article?  Did he damage the N810?  No, I just didn’t want to use the stock N810 image again.   Moving on.  Last night was more of a bust then a boom for me.    I had some specific goals in mind and I can’t say I really accomplished them.

The first goal I had was to attempt to upload pictures directly to flickr.  Doing some hunting I found the latest revision of maemo-publishr which supports uploading to flickr and to picasa.   I thought great, this is exactly what I need.  They even have a video demo.

I can say that it didn’t work as well as I had hoped.   The applications was extremely slow before i imported pictures from my external memory card and worse after pictures were actually involved.   I gave up on the application after failing to figure out how to intuitively upload (no I didn’t watch the video at that time, I saw it afterwards to share with you).   I know maemo-wordpy can upload to flickr and I am using that, but I want somethign that handles more bulk uploading so the hunt for that continues.

Before I get onto my next bad experience, let’s move onto a good one.   Using my N810 as my lifeline to my online life, I needed it to integrate with my other online lifeline, email.   After going through and reading reviews I knew better then to use the built in e-mail application.   I knew that if I wanted to use IMAP from my gmail account I had a  choice between Modest and Claws Mail.   Xie had tried out Modest on her N810 when it came in, it had caused memory issues and she stopped using it and doesn’t plan on doing IMAP.   I knew because of that Modest was out.

So Claws Mail it was, after a couple configuration I did get Claws up and working.   It is a bit slow, but I knew that going in, especially using IMAP.   At least I can cache my email instead of holding my full 2 GB e-mail archive on my N810.   Sending is fine.  Overall as an e-mail application I’m quite happy with it.   That’s pretty impressive since the only other e-mail applications I’m really happy with is Outlook and the Gmail web interface.

Claws-Mail screenshot from their web site

Now we’re back to one of the issues I wrote about yesterday, pod catching.   I found out that while I couldn’t activate the function menu in Canola that I could manually hold down the function key and hit the key I wanted at the same time (shift works the same way for these poorly written applications).  With this method I could enter in my podcasts feed and download them directly on to my N810 – goodbye slow memory hog gPodder.   At this point I uninstaleld gPodder and decide that Canola was going to be my choice going forward.

I played more with Canola and I wasn’t aware of the kinetic scrolling.  I sat there like a monkey with the stylus trying to scroll and was extremely frustrated.  I finally figured it out.   I exited it and rebooted after a different application seemed to lock up my N810 – I think it was the maemo-publishr previously mentioned.   When I came back Canola started and said loading for like 3 minutes and when it did load no icons were visible and it couldn’t do anything.   I uninstalled Canola and reinstalled Canola, same behavior.   From their repository I saw an installation clean up utility.  I installed that and it did clean it up.  I reinstalled it and it’s working again.   Unfortunately I need to spend 30 minutes again entering in  all of my podcast URL’s, grrrrrrrrrrr.   Benefit is that Canola can automatically scrobble to last.fm with a plugin.   The plugin is a bit over anticipating though, it scrobbled two podcasts that I haven’t listened to yet.   I have a feeling Canola is going to be a love/hate relationship.

Finally I rounded out the night loading Doom on my N810. I was surprised that we don’t need to load wad files for these cross platform ports, and the game controlled a little bit Metroid Prime-ish, but it’s Doom and it works.   Ironically it works better then it did on the 386 25mhz computer that I first played doom on.

So for day 2′s report I leave you with this youtube video someone did of Doom on the N810.

]]> http://creeva.com/2008/05/08/nokia-n810-and-me-day-2/feed/ 8 http://creeva.com/2008/05/07/first-night-with-the-n810/ http://creeva.com/2008/05/07/first-night-with-the-n810/#comments Wed, 07 May 2008 15:33:00 +0000 Creeva http://creeva.com/?p=2782

A couple days ago I asked the blogosphere should I get an N810 and like the blogosphere normally answers I got nothing back. That’s fine, I’m used to talking to myself on my blog.  However I decided that I would give it a go.   I knew that if things didn’t work out I would return it.   It arrived last night and I thought I would describe what I went through.   It is also interesting that this morning from the blogosphere I got a comment on my article that was crossposted to my vox blog (hey I’m sorry vox users get weird characters).

Hyphn on vox asked:

Nice article. I’m in a similar situation to yourself. I’ve got a Palm TX and an Nokia 770 (& N95 8GB).

I use the N95 8GB for all of my music and podcasts (it automatically downloads them over the air). I have a Palm Infrared keyboard for my TX, which is nice, but the problem is that you just can’t really see the screen when you are out in bright sunshine. – Is the N810 screen readable in bright sunshine?

The N770 is ok, but it’s a bit slow and the lack of a keyboard (of any description) is a killer…. Not sure I can justify the extra 280GBP for another device thought…. (?)

So I’m going to cover this comment in this article.

I’ve never had a keyboard for the TX, I’m a fast on screen keyboard typer.  I knew however when my wife tried out the N800 it wasn’t for me since I’m more active online these days, the keyboard would be essential.  I never really wrote long blog articles on the TX so this is a hope for the N810.  I tried it the N810 outside today and in bright clear sky direct sunlight the screen was washed out but readable.  So I think the transreflective coating they advertise does work as designed.    For thoughts on whether the device is worth money, well I’m going to be writing about the device for the next couple weeks or so, what I find, how I make things work, and some things that people may not know because they are not widely published.   Hopefully yhis will help you make a sound decision.

New Toy

So everyone now knows I have an N810, I also added an 8 GB micro SD card (with mini SD converter card so it would fit).   Xie ‘anthia still feels that I’m going to feel cramped on space.   I unpacked the device last night and imeediatly had it flashed to the newest OS 2008 revision, curse the mobile ubuntu team for not having the port finished and ready to go.   I then paired it with my phone and installed everything that seemed interesting.

After trying to uninstall somethign I discovered that I had the rare N810 bug that sets the internal card read only and corrupts the data.   At this point I reflashed the device, formatted the internal memory card (virtual ram made it so I had to reflash before I hear any comments), and started over.   I had spent so much time installing software on the previous run that I wasn’t going to go through all of that again in one sitting.  Let’s however looked at what I did do.

I went through and chose a theme to my liking, I cleaned out the bundled maps and documentation.  I removed the demo music, video, and images.   I removed the map application and the welcome application.  In essence I stripped down the device as far as possible befoer starting over.    I didn’t need those things, and for map GPS data I plan on using maemo mapper, so I’ll get to that in a future blog article.

So what did I install?

Seeing as I have some guidance from Xie ‘lanthia on what is good and what is not so good, I followed her lead on some of my applications.  The first thing I installed was Pidgin, if you are unfamilar with Pidgin think of it as an IM product similar to Trillian.  It allows you to connect to many other IM networks at once.   The included chat progam bundled with the N810 really is good for gtalk, but what if I wanted more.   Pidgin right now is configured to connect to the following IM networks (some I rarely use) – Gtalk, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and Myspace Chat.   Also I installed Skype, thought I would mention it here while I was talking about IM.   So the N810 allows me to connect six instant messenger networks at the same time.   I’m all about ubuiquitous internet communication, especially when I can talk or broadcast across everywhere from a single point.

Pidgin Screenshot from maemo.org

Next I needed a media player.   I had read that the Canola2 would subscribe to podcasts as well as scrobble tracks to last.fm (last.fm connectivity is important from me in this device’s grand future).   However there seemed to be a bug in Canola2 that wouldn’t allow either copying and pasting a url in to the subscription field, and it wouldn’t allow me to use the function keys, so that ment no forward slashes.   Essentially the data entry for podcasts is broken.    Well this thing is going to keep me from carrying an Ipod around so I wanted some way that was simple to get podcasts on to my unit.  I found a way, but I wouldn’t use simple to be an accurate description, I used the Gpodder podcatcher to handle pulling down podcasts.

Conola2 Screenshot from maemo.org

gPodder Screenshot from maemo.org

The thing that drove me nuts over Gpodder was the fact that I had no easy way to add subscriptions.  Sure they tell you just point to a directory.opml online, but goodluck finding one.  I think I spent an hour on this before I found an article that explained that I could setup subscription in Itunes, export the opml file, put it on my N810, and then subscribe to the correct feeds in Gpodder once I opened the opml file there.   *WHEW*.   Then it seems that gpodder isn’t a fast and responsive application if you attempt to queu two or more songs it hardly moves, so load your subscriptions one at a time for the best response.  I limited it downloading one podcast at a time but that didn’t make much difference.   The last problem with Gpodder was that it doesn’t (rarely) save the podcast in it’s naming scheme, it downloaded most of my podcasts in a 34598745893475.mp3 style format.   These aren’t bob’s podcasts, except for one or two they are all from twit or revision3.   I can say gpodder will work since it will be a set it and let it do it’s thing overnight application, I wouldn’t however recommend living in it.

The next thing I installed was rdesktop.  This allows you to use the windows remote desktop function, so last night I was able to access my Windows 2k3 server from my N810.   The responsiveness was adequate and I can definetly see myself utilizing this.   I use RDP quite often and I think this is a life saver.   If you want to know how to setup and see screenshots, I just found this article on another blog (I figured it out myself).

The last thing I installed before fighting Gpodder to sync my podcasts for the next day was Maemo Wordpy this application is a blogging client (wonder what I want that for).  It allows me to post directly to my wordpress blog, like the test post I did last night before I reflashed the device.  It works, it’s a bit complex and you have to jump to different tabs for more options for you post but it works.  I had to however disable my myspace crossing plugin on my blog because I was getting duplicate post issues.   Wordpy still allows me to post a notification or blog post across about a dozen services (well my blog does all that work).   Wordpy does however support Blogger if WordPress isn’t you cup of tea.

Maemo Wordpy Screenshot from maemo.org

Some of the side things that I discovered last night.

• I can pull pictures directly off my phone, before I had to use esoteric software on windows or ubuntu to get them off via USB, with the N810 it just works via bluetooth (I have a RZR since I’m a cheap bastard and take the free phone).
• The Samba implementation on the N810 allows you to see hidden windows shares by default – good for me, bad for windows.
• Too many large files or directories in a share will absolutely lock up the N810′s file manager.
• The keyboard get’s easier to use the more you force yourself into it, with more training I may not need another bluetooth keyboard for “serious” writing
• Exchange Webmail works in the browser

Tonight’s goals (after I do some automotive repair unrelated to the N810) is to get a mail client working that I like (I’m leaning toward IMAP versus POP3, we’ll see how that goes.   I would also like to get a decent media player that can scrobble my songs to last.fm (who knows it might be great to find one that supports last.fm and pandora).  I did have some problems getting online via my cell phone so I’m probably going to following Xie’s article on how to set it up to properly use t-mobile as an internet connection.   I’m sure I’ll have some other information for you also.

To get an n810 or not is the question.   A few days ago I wrote a couple blog posts from my wife’s new n810.   I have some reservations about the keyboard for “power writing”, but that can be handled by a seperate bluetooth keyboard.   I think that’s not an issue.

Would I use it instead of a laptop – kind of.    Right now through work I have a Mac Book Air for my mobile device.   It’s great, it’s light, it does most of what i need it to do (what it can’t do would require linux or windows so it’s forgiven).    The one thing I run into with the air is the same thing I run into with my normal laptop, accessibility.   For normal computer use they are highly accessible, but if I do make it to HOPE this year or other travel venues it would be MUCH better to not bring a full laptop (if I do take an 810 to HOPE I’ll be accessing the internet through an encrypted Hamachi VPN tunnel to home and using a proxy there to access the Internet – no clear text information is going to be slipping by me – I can deal with the speed hit that will cause).

It’s much easier to have a bluetooth keyboard and an N810 to haul around to these places more so then a full laptop.   WIth a full laptop I need to worry about power (n810 has better battery life), privacy due to larger screen size,  finding a place to sit versus standing and using the n810.    These things are all things that go through my head while debating this purchase.

So yes the N810 would make me more mobile, and be more convenient.   I know for me (extreme power user) it won’t replace a computer or laptop, but for some people (like my sister) I could see this as a 100% computer replacement.   Too much geekery for me it seems.   So then we open up the question, could I live for a week with just the N810?

The N810 isn’t really designed for offline use.    If it has an internet connection that’s great.  I would be able to do most my blogposting and status updates via email so when I hit wifi I could sync up and go.   In alot ways I think this is enough.   To check this I need to menally compare it to my my Palm TX.

I’m not sure that the N810 will fully replace my Palm TX (then again no one said I couldn’t keep it).  WIth my palm TX I use it as an email platform, a web access device, a centralized syncing device, and an ebook reader.   Anything else I use it for is mostly games so that’s not really an issue – IM has always been painful on it do to .

Since the N810 does not have heavy document handling and I don’t think the resolution is quite right for ebook reading (the two thing I think I would keep my TX for)  it does have better web page filtering (my blog almost breaks the TX).   I would also be able to do IM since I wouldn’t be forced to stay on the IM screen like I do on the TX.   Email should be equal or better on the N810 versus the TX, Web Browsing would be better, and IM would be better.   The occasional full need to document editing and e-book reading would mean the TX could sit on the bottom of my bag (and a bluetooth keyboard would work with it – two devices one keyboard).

So theoretically I could replace my laptop about 90-95% with the two devices.   With having a much smaller footproint and ease of use in carrying these devices with me.   Having the N810 would mean that I no longer have to carry an iPod around since it would handle my podcast playing – bonus to the fact that it will auto scrobble to last.fm something that I have never gone working to a level I liked with an iPod and linux.

Movies however I’ll probably still use my palm TX – I can play full divx movies on it without having to re-encode them.   Bonus to me.    This will also have the side effect of saving me battery life on the N810 if the TX is with me.   I don’t watch movies too often on the go though.

Through hackery I would be able to sync my calender on google with my N810 – something that never worked right on the TX.   I would be able to compose music on the N810 (yes it can compose music).   Someone is also working on an instrument tuner – which is something I was going to buy this summer – so I’ll save 30.00 there.     I was going to buy an iPod, but with the 10 GB I can max out on the N810 and the fact that I only really use an ipod for podcasts would mostly make that that a non issue  – so a savings of 150.00 – so far I’ve saved myself 180.00 on stuff I would probably buy this summer.

There is an NES emulator (that works better on then on the TX) and a GBA emulator – this should save me from carrying around my GBA (which I ironically use more then my DS).   I also play RPG’s so the slight frame drop won’t really effect me.    I can use skype which really isn’t to much of an issue for me since I mostly would call my wife and we have free phone calles between us.   With utterz I can use my phone to “call in” blog posts.

I would be able to start geo caching with the N810 built in GPS, I’ve watned a gps for a long time, not for driving directions since I can look at a map easily and I’m able to figure out where I am.   My wife is sometimes jealous of my innate directional sense.   Usually I get way to lost sometimes by actually reading a map, wrongly at that.   I could get a cheap GPS for 90.00 – but that would take my total electronic purchases to 270.00.   We are approaching the N810 price.   (We actually match it if you figure out it would handle my gaming needs – but I already own those devices)

I like the N810′s keyboard versus the N800′s touch screen which my wife tried out first, but it still a small small keyboard and I have bigger fingers then her.   I can enter information quickly enough for a mobile device I can whip out real quick – and 500% faster then I can do on my phones keypad.     If I utilize bookmarks and saved password this should help limit my typing.   The less need I have on this the better.    Once again if I’m going to write a long blog post like this one is becoming i would have to have a bluetooth keyboard.

My tmobile internet connection is very slow on my cellphone, but being able to stop by any mcdonalds or burger king for quick internet access kind of alleviates that concern.   Granted wifi coverage isn’t ubiquitous but it’s common enough that I think I would be fine.

I’m probably going to decide tonight to get one.   Working through this post has helped alot.   I think I started with the fact that this would replace my palm TX, and going through that thought process I don’t think it would.   I think it will however handle the fact if I’m gone for a week or two away from a computer (though I can fathom two weeks away from a regular computer) that I could be just fine in a solely mobile solution without a laptop.    Using the host mode hack on the N810 coupled with the card reader program on the Palm TX means I’ll be able to utilize the Palm TX as a removable storage space on the N810 if I need it with normal SD cards instead of needing a thumb drive that would drain the N810′s power quicker.    This would allow me to throw another 8 GB and make the card switch out very easy for me.

I’ll keep everyone updated on what I decide.

Yesterday on my main blog I wrote a quip on my battle for the search term “creeva” in google and how many hits it brings back.  It flucuates up and down and was more of a joke then anything.   However I started thinking about it a little more deeply last night.

I’m a huge crossposter, I don’t deny it.  My friends can track me down and find me whereever.   I manage to get new readers by utilizing diffferent sources to store my data.   When I wrote a blog post on my main blog, it gets copied or notification goes to many other sites.   The path it takes is that I write an article when I click publish it sends out the article to my myspace, my live spaces account, my vox account, my tumblr account, my suprglu account, my facebook news, my old blogger page, my xanga account, my livejournal page, my multiply account, and a google group for back up (that one is private though).   On top of that livejournal also sends it on it’s way over to my dandelife account.  I’m also copying things over to www.creeva.net which is my by beta testing blog.

If I listen to a song that get’s scrobbled to my last.fm account, upload a picture to my flickr account, digg a story, favorite a video, share an RSS news item, write an article on a blog other then my main (like this article) or mark something down in all consuming; these all get pulled into my main blog, which at that point goes through the data dissemination process all over again.

This is data portability at it’s finast (at least for the content side of the equation) and I work it well.   Some people prefer to go to a single location and that’s fine, that is what I have a main blog for.   Get everything from everywhere all in one location.   Google loves the idea of everything in one place, it’s their whole mantra.   However you will get penalized in Google for having duplicate content.   So my google score will drop theoretically the more places I cross post to that it indexes.

So by disseminating my content to everywhere in the world Google will penalize me in it’s search ratings.   It seems my main blog still gets the most traffic and it’s hits don’t suffer.   So all and all I don’t truly mind.   However I’m sure that sometimes I do suffer when my vox account for example rises to the top instead of my main account.

How can Google truly and actively support data portability when it’s anti ethical to it’s search rankings?  I can understand that it’s an attempt to fight spammers and such, but we all end up hitting pure spam BS blogs all the time.  The crap floats and rises to the top while the rest of things drown in the data deluge.   I don’t think that google necessarily needs to adjust it’s algorithm but in the coming months or years it will need to take it into account.

Original From: Does Data Portability Hurt You in Google?

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Posted By Creeva Murkado to Journey To Get Paid at 4/10/2008 06:29:00 AM

When was the last mp3 song you submitted to last.fm?

Hav you updated all your latest photos into Flickr?

Remembering to digg the stories you like?

Saving your bookmarks to del.icio.us and not locally?

Blogging?

Saving all the movies and books you’ve consumed to allconsuming?

and on..

and on..

Sometimes it’s a juggling game that is a huge pain in the ass.  Some application are doing it right, like setting your status messages across multiple social networks.  Because of this I can directly or indirectly thanks to services that interact with it I use twitter the most and the most regularly.

Though I do look at all the things I’m missing to virtually save by being preoccupied with something else.   I can’t make a determining factor whether it’s a good thing or bad, but with my time wasting normal self I can’t say it’s that good of a thing, if I had a real life it might be.

I’m working on my guilt, but sometimes I feel like the fat kid who got caught walking out of the Cheesecake Factory by his friends from Weight Watchers.

Life Caching:

Life caching is setting up sites that you have complete control over to save data from sites that you only have varied levels of control. Getting all of your meta data in one place. Saving each detail of data in it’s place so it’s saved, used, and recyclable. Life caching is the next stage as the Data Portability Group moves forward. This is not the goal of the Data Portability Group – it is just what their goal enable you to do. The work however is burdened on to you and I can say there is no easy way to do this and some data leakage and loss will always slip through cracks, at least in this stage of the game.

Isn’t this what Life Streaming Accomplishes? How is Life Caching different?

Life Streaming is the step before life caching. While the concepts share alot of overlapping the simplest scenario is that a life stream is a picture in time that does not save your data. A life stream is ephemeral and actual current implementations are very fragile. I have a life stream here. RSS feeds expire so data is lost, companies go out of business so the links it points to is gone, or data just gets missed. But to truly get a better picture of life streaming here is what the life streaming blog says about it:

What is a Lifestream? In it’s simplest form it’s a chronological aggregated view of your life activities both online and offline. It is only limited by the content and sources that you use to define it. Mine is available here. Most people that create them choose a few sources based on sites that track our activities such as Del.icio.us (bookmarking), Last.fm (Music we listen to), Flickr (photos we take) etc…Then you can either find software to host your own, or find sites that provide a platform for you.

Many people have been writing about Lifestreams and the potential value they offer for ourselves and others. Some of those people are Jeff Croft, Jeremy Keith, and Emily Chang. It appears to be a concept that is gaining quite a bit of steam.

I was inspired to create a blog for the Lifestream concept after doing a little research which I wrote about on my blog. Most of the information I found was pretty scattered and there wasn’t a central repository of resources so I thought I should create one. I feel that beyond the self expression of allowing people to track their actions in a passive manner there will be many more exciting technologies that will surface from the backend data aggregation that can occur from people supplying this information.

The rub is that 99% of life streams only save the links of the RSS feeds and do not save the actual data. This is inefficient in design because like I said before data get’s lost for various reasons. Life caching however has the prime goal of saving that individual data for your use and your manipulation. This gives you freedom to do with what you want. Take your data anywhere and everywhere, do with it what you will.

How is this different from the Data Portability Group?

In some aspects, like the concepts of life streaming, life caching shares a few steps in common with the Data Portability Group. What the Data Portability Group means to give is methods and standards that give you tools to do with your data what you will. However, this doesn’t actually mean you will do anything with it or that there will be a standard out of the box configuration for you. The responsibility is on you to act and use these tools that will hopefully emerge.

The Data Portability Group is key for this going forward and allowing you to withdraw your data from the sites that were previously walled gardens. After the garden gates are finally thrown open you have the freedom to do with the data what you will. Please put this power to good use.

Why Do I care?

You should care because this is about you. It is who you are. It does not specifically define you in any ways and most people would understand that it’s a complete picture of you. There are however aspects of you that you may want to share at a later date. The stories your grandmother told you will get fuzzier over time. Hopefully the idea of life caching which is still in it’s infancy will lead to life story archives that the generations after us can learn from. Our grandkids will be able ot mine the data and read the stories you want to pass on.

Will those after you care that you listened to Fallout Boy on June 7th, 2008? Maybe not, but maybe your grandkids will discover similar music tastes with you. It will give them an understanding of who you are. It will also give them ways to identify with you in a way that you could never identify with the pilgrims that came across on the mayflower.

What do I save?

The ideal answer is everything. I would say between the RSS streams I save and the email I collect I am almost up to a 90% efficiency of collecting my personal data online.

To give you an example:

• I save everything I dig.
• I write places I go and stories about them in 43 places
• I write about things I’ve done at 43 things
• I save stories about people I’ve met at 43 people
• I save all the music I listen to that can be tracked with last.fm
• I track all boks I read and movies I watch with with allconsuming
• I save comments I make with cocomments
• I save when and what pictures I’ve uploaded to Flickr, Photobucket, and Picasa
• I save collections of data that I find meaning full with lists of best
• I save the bookmarks I make in del.icio.us
• I save the stories I’ve stumbled upon
• I save the things I’ve shared in google reader
• I save my newsvine articles
• I save my pownces and my tweets
• I save the stories I liked at reddit
• I save the videos I liked an/or uploaded to youtube

This may seem like a lot of data. It is, but it’s also what we deal with in a normal consuming internet fashion. I don’t use the tools that save which applications I’m running and I’m looking for something like last.fm for movies so it’s more automatic – but that will come in time.

Via e-mail I save my phone calls, my bills, banking history- all this can be stored offline and databased in the home. Your own personal Google for yourself should be the end goal of life caching.

Doesn’t this make it easier for companies to mine data about me?

Yes the google monster is omnipotent. Anything you share online can be snagged up and archived away by google. Is this a good thing? Maybe or maybe not. There is no reason you would need to make most of this data public. You could set up to store this data in email archives, private data sites, or personal home encrypted databases. Life caching is not about displaying your life. It’s about having control over it and saving it for a future date.

As the Data Portability Group expands they hope to implement permission controls for the data. This will help prevent against data mining to some extent. The only true answer is that if there are things that you don’t want anyone to know about do not place them anywhere that is publicly accessible or in the hands of any company or person other then yourself.

How do I store and backup the data?

There are many ways. I use WordPress with a variety of plugins to maintain all my data on the site. I also use quite a bit of feedburner kung-fu and gmail filters. The key thing is that I can extract this data into other formats from just those two methods. I could dump it into a personal database or wiki. The tools are only at the beginning of stages to make this useful for you. It is easier to back it up before you lose it then to want it after it is gone.

What Can’t I backup?

In an ideal world there is nothing that you can’t backup. We don’t however live in an ideal world. Mostly the limitations deal with which sites give you some form of access to your data. Some don’t allow you to take friend’s list with you. Other sites don’t allow you to get posts out unless you implement site scraping which could break the terms of service you agreed to.

The limitation is in the tools and the agreements and the Data Portability Group is helping lead the future in developments that will allow you greater access to your own data.

How do you share with your friends?

Beyond having a public blog which your friends may or may not visit there are multiple ways. I have two major RSS feeds coming out my website. The public RSS feed gives everyone a filtered feed of my posts. This way they don’t get spammed with every song I listen to on last.fm or every single story I digg when it happens. This RSS feed then goes and notifies my twitter friends that I’ve posted something new that I find relevant. It also goes out and feeds the stories to tumblr, jaiku, and facebook. It is also the feed that my RSS readers get.

The secondary feed goes to feedburner and gives me a post to email option. This allows me to save via an email archive all of my daily posts so they are searchable through gmail for myself. Users could subscribe to this feed if they asked me, it’s just the amount of data can sometimes be overwhelming and I’ve had a few complaints from a couple of twitter friends.

From my wordpress blog I post to other blog sites. For example when I finish and publish this post it will also be posted at my msn spaces accounts, my old blog at blogspot, vox, xanga, myspace, livejournal, and dandelife. So no matter where you have friended me you can get notifications that I’ve published and posted something.

Finally in some of the message boards I use my signature contains a java script that rotates my 5 newest stories so people can read the headlines and click if they find it interesting.

Do you truly think that this is the future?

Yes, your data is you and part of you is also your data. Hopefully the stories we wish to pass down can be archived, saved, and cached for all to read and consume for generations to come.

Final Notes:

I hope this explanation is relevant for you and that you have interesting in preserving your own data. Each of the links in this article will help you with different aspects of your design. If you have further questions or need some details expanded please leave a comment or contact me so we can hash out ideas and clarify them.

For those heavily interested I would recommend posting and devising ways that you can cache your online and offline life. Work with the Data Portability Group on tools to make this work. The most important thing is to only deal with companies that allow you to do with your data what you want and place it where you need it. Thank and support the companies that do.

Spokeo is one of the latest Web 2.0 services I have tried here is how it works:

First you sign up and it asks if you want to look for friends from your address book (gmail, yahoo, AOL, etc,) it then spends time going through all the addresses and see which services they belong (Amazon, Myspace, Last.fm, Digg, Twitter, Etc.) – at this point it shows you all of their public activity on these services.

You also have the option of linking your myspace, linkedin, or other accounts where it doe the same searching as before. This is interesting since it allows you to track your friends without hunting them all down and searching them out. You know what they are up to without actively going to all these different sites online for hours at a time. You may never log into your normal sites to keep up with your friends, it all coming to you.

Now the scary – you can put in any e-mail address and look up someone the same way. You also receive hits from your address book of someone you may have had one quick e-mail exchange with but no relationship. Because of this you are infringing on their privacy.

More people need to be aware of Spokeo so they understand the implications of their online activities and how easy they are to track and monitor. I’m well aware and have been for awhile, I use teh internet and post information knowing this and expecting it. Other people I know are not nearly as aware.

I would recommend trying it out just to see what you can find. If your worried about your e-mail address becoming part of the beast i would advise to sign up with a throw away e-mail address.

I was thinking and decided google calendar would be perfect for this especially since I only barely use my calendar. Having it auto schedule in past events of what I digged on a certain day or what songs I listened to. Having these in a calendar format that is easily accessible from anywhere that I can use as reference would be a god send to me.

So please Google – allow us a way to import RSS feeds into Google Calendar. I beg of you.

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