Web

In the "nice segue from global to local" department, saw this Web 2.0 Map on Richard's Just a Gwai Lo blog and Darren Barefoot's blog.

Seen via gnucitizen.org via planet-websecurity.org: Information Architects Japan have produced a cool looking "Web Trend Map" and blogged about it at: Web Trend Map 2007 Version 2.0. They've made both downloadable and online versions available.

Be sure to scroll down to the Less Japanese Jokes and More Revealing Coincidences sections where you'll read comments like:

"Google has moved from Shibuya, a humming place for young people, to Shinjuku, a suspicious, messy, Yakuza-controlled, but still a pretty cool place to hang out (Golden Gaya)"

"Skype has conquered a place that doesn’t exist."

Susan Mernit posted on this New York Times article: 'omg my mom joined facebook!!' with a quote I simply couldn't resist:

"...unfriend paige right now. im serious. i dont care if they request you. say no. i will be soo mad if you dont unfriend paige right now. actually."

Alex King at alexking.org gives a nice overview of the methods he used for generating income in this post: Building alexking.org 2.0, part 11: Monetization

This made me laugh, though it's also a cautionary tale. 'Ware your choice of domain name:

http://www.grupthink.com/topic/22

Another Drupal website released into the wild:

www.browncoats.ca

The Firefly/Serenity fan group is organized via the Vancouver Firefly/Serenity Meetup Group. The Meetup website has many advantages the group does not want to give up, but Meetup has a rigid format which doesn't lend itself to some kinds of content. In particular, announcements for charity events/sales are awkward because of HTML markup limitations and cumbersome URLs that don't lend themselves to publishing. The group wanted to enhance their web presence without creating a split personality.

The Drupal based Browncoats.ca site displays Meetup information via RSS feeds, leaving the group's two-way membership interaction with Meetup. People visiting the new site can see what's happening at the Meetup site and if they're interested are directed back to Meetup. The Browncoats.ca site provides a location for content that doesn't work well on Meetup as well as providing a nicer URL for promotional purposes.

Seen at todbits.com, the Feds are streaming live video feeds from the House of Commons and other meetings: parlvu.parl.gc.ca. Choices of various streaming rates, audio only, and language (English/French).

The Drupal Aggregator module is somewhat misnamed. It certainly does aggregate RSS/RDF/Atom feeds, but at the core it's a feed reader. I haven't needed to aggregate multiple feeds together, but recently being able to retrieve and display individual feeds has allowed me to add some cool sidebars to my Digital Doodles website.

By simply turning on the Aggregator module, which is a core module so no installation required, and adding the RSS feed from Group42 and another site I contribute to I can retrieve the post information back to Digital Doodles. I've set up blocks to show a list of recent postings in case people visiting Digital Doodles might be interested in stuff I done elsewhere.

The weakness of the Aggregator module is it's display ability. For example, although it automatically creates a sidebar block for each feed you define there's no ability to add anything except a title. The power of Drupal gives themers and programmers a number of options around this.

Bèr Kessels gives an example of using a .htaccess to limit file access to update.php:

Disallow anyone but you, to reach the update files

Always nice having an explicit example handy, so I've added it to the Drupal Compendium.

Northern Voice is one of the few local technology conferences not focused on technology. It's less about the technical fiddly bits of the technology and more about the social stuff enabled by the technology. Anyone that knows me knows I love the technology fiddly bits, but fiddly bits are pretty sterile unless they're doing something. Northern Voice is about the doing something part!

More importantly, Northern Voice has a great energy. Not only have there been good presentations but the majority of the people attending are passionate about what they're doing, creating a nice, positive vibe. And the diversity of people makes for a terrific melting pot. I loved seeing all of the different purposes, methods, ideologies and techniques. My idea hamster got a dose of adrenaline.

I've liked Northern Voice so much I decided to volunteer. I expected to do some general dogsbody type work but found myself somewhat more involved: Dale McGladdery joins the Northern Voice team as webmaster. And I'm having fun.