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Open Share Icon from idea to Google

Bruce — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:27:23 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

You know a concept has merit when it's picked up by Google. Google have adopted the Open Share Icon (OSI), the product of a creative partnership that I'm proud to have played a part in. This is something to celebrate: you don't need highly paid professionals or deep pockets to pull off a good idea: you just need plain-old enthusiasm and an unmet need. Here is the story of how the Open Share Icon (OSI) came to be. The Google toolbar—now with OSI A proposal On 20 March 2008 I read that Shareaholic had been threatened by ShareThis.com over the use of the Share Icon in their functionally similar Firefox extension. After discussing this with David Hall and Icerabbit we agreed that next day I would write to Jay Meattle, entrepreneur at Shareaholic, to seek confirmation this was so—and to float the idea of his involvement in an alternative icon project. Having recently proposed and completed the design of the Geotag Icon we were game to be involved ourselves: If you needed assistance with the vector graphics, moral or other practical support, I know of at least a couple of volunteers ;-) Iteration after iteration Things moved quickly: we didn't wait for a response. David, Icerabbit and I exchanged an enormous number of design candidates within the space of a few days. Most of our designs involved hands: Our final selection came down to stylised "seeing hands", which we described in the design note I sent to Jay on 24 March as follows: We just couldn't help ourselves ...

Geotagging on WordPress.com

Bruce — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 08:08:38 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

WordPress.com has introduced geotagging of user profiles and posts. Location is input manually via an integrated Google map or automatically via GPS, the W3C Geolocation API, the Google Gears Geolocation API, or guesstimated from your IP address. The geodata are recorded in posts via the geo microformat plus geo.position and ICBM meta tags, and in feeds via GeoRSS and W3C geodata standards. More here; where's the geotag icon?

Share Twitter locations using Google Maps

Bruce — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 13:44:25 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

With my tweets integrated into WordPress the next challenge was to integrate my Twitter location with my custom Google Map. This recipe uses a WordPress theme functions.php file and the excellent Geo Mashup plug-in for WordPress. One advantage of this method is that you don't need to add custom location tags to each tweet (as you do for example here using Pipes). This method simply reads the location as set in your Twitter profile until you change it (and tweet again). The code given here tested on Geo Mashup 1.1.3 and WordPress 2.7.1. Setting your location in Twitter You can manually update the text of your Twitter profile location on the web via Settings > Account > Location, but an easier way to do this is via a location-aware client such as Tweetie or Twitterrific for iPhone, either of which can optionally update your profile location in conjunction with a tweet: Alternatively if you want to update your location without tweeting use a client such as Sparrow for iPhone (which will simultaneously update Fire Eagle to the same location): Note, however, that the following code extracts your location from the Twitter user timeline so you do need to tweet before this method will reflect your new location. You should be aware of the potential privacy issues around real-time location sharing via services such as Twitter, Yahoo!'s Fire Eagle, and Google's Latitude. Best to keep your location approximate if you publish it at all. A function to get your location from Twitter Create the following function in the functions.php ...

Google should rename to Geogle

Bruce — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 12:30:09 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

Google seems to be in a geo-frenzy, with the recent release of Google Latitude, and a Google Earth update that supports GPS receivers (formerly a 'Plus' feature; works with my NMEA-compatible GlobalSat BT-335) plus historical imagery, ocean floor topography, Martian and annotated virtual Earth tours. Now Google Labs offer Location in Signature, the IP-based auto-detection of your Gmail posting location. Not without potential downsides for the dishonest (see example) although it can't tell if you're in the bathroom or lounge; in my testing it had a 16km inaccuracy—making cell signal triangulation on my iPhone 2G seem useful.

Geotagging comes to Nikon ViewNX

Bruce — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 12:19:13 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

Nikon ViewNX 1.2.0 is a free download (56.6MB .dmg) and doesn't require a Nikon (e.g. works with iPhone images). Manual geotagging is limited to placing a pin on a Google Map (you can't search the map). ViewNX recognizes automatically geotagged images (embedded at capture, added via a track logger, etc.) and handles geotagging of Nikon's raw (NEF) format as well as JPEG. To view location metadata (indicated by a globe icon), select an image and click it's pin to reveal an info window. Reverse geocoding is not performed and any existing IPTC headers are ignored.

Add a geo field to iPhone and Address Book

Bruce — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 10:24:13 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

Both the Mac OSX Address Book and Contacts/ Phone apps on the Apple iPhone support a custom "geo" field. You can use this field to store GPS coordinates that will open a Google Map when right-clicked on Mac or tapped on iPhone. The reverse geocoding in Google Maps isn't always perfect; this gives you the option to store a more accurate location alongside a human-readable address. Creating a geo field in iPhone Contacts If you have an existing contact with address details in the iPhone Contacts app, tap on the address to launch Maps: Maps will place a pin at the approximate location of the address for that contact: Tap the blue and white arrow on the tag to see the Info screen, then tap the Share Location button at the bottom left: In the mail message body note the GPS coordinate values and jot these down: Go back into Contacts and edit the address to which you want to add the coordinates. Tap the plus icon to add a new address: Tap the address type button at the bottom right of the next screen: Now select geo as the address type: Enter the coordinates you jotted down earlier into the first field: After editing the coordinates should display underneath the existing address: Tapping these coordinates on the iPhone will launch Maps (although you may notice odd pin labels—not sure why that is). After sync you should see the corresponding geo field in Address Book under Mac OSX: If you don't have an existing Contact address you can of course start with ...

Google Latitude

Bruce — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 10:55:46 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

Google Latitude, functionally similar to afore-mentioned Fire Eagle, allows computer and mobile phone users to upload and share (or hide) location updates manually or automatically—which are plotted on a Google Map. Latitude for iPhone is "coming soon". No word yet on integration with the Google Maps API. Rumour has it that location-awareness is coming to Mac OSX 10.6—potential for another Apple-Google partnership?

CDFinder update will please geotaggers

Bruce — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:30:22 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

I previously reviewed CDFinder, an asset manager that specialises in metadata, and looked at its potential role in the Mac geotagging workflow. The freshly-squeezed version 5.5 brings a few bug fixes, general enhancements, and of particular personal interest improved support for GPS-related functions. This post considers finding geotagged images, integration with other mapping services, integration with other geo-aware applications (via contextual menu modules), copying GPS locations, displaying KMZ files on your Google Map mash-up, and finding nearby images via your website. Finding geotagged images One option is to use the new GeoFinder. Click your way around the map, acquire a position from Google Earth, choose from a pre-set location or add a custom location to discover images within a custom radius of your starting point: Alternatively right-click any geotagged image (automatically badged with the Geotag Icon) for access to other images in your catalogue based on common IPTC header information or EXIF data: Integration with other mapping services CDFinder allows you to view the location of the current image using Google Earth or a good number of online mapping services (Flickr, Panoramio, MapQuest, Google Maps, SmugMug, WikiMapia, Woophy, OpenStreetMap, Geody, and Yahoo! Maps). You can also upload directly to Locr (account required): Integration with other geo-aware applications A number of Mac applications include contextual menu modules that let you access functionality by right-clicking an image in the Finder, for example. In the following screen capture the GPS-Info CMM and GraphicConverter modules are loaded: In terms of workflow you might add Automator actions or batch-process geotagged images using GraphicConverter ...

Geo Mashup implementation guide

Bruce — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:06:46 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

Geo Mashup is one of my favourite WordPress plug-ins (and no, that's not just because it adopted the Geotag Icon). It neatly integrates geographically-relevant blog posts with a custom Google Map displayed within your own site. The Maps API in turn allows those willing to dirty their hands with a little JavaScript the option to pull in geotagged content from external sources, including photos (e.g. from Flickr, Panoramio, Picasa Web Albums), content from other blogs (via GeoRSS feeds), and placemarks from Google Earth (uploaded KML/ KMZ files, even with network links). What follows is an implementation guide, sharing some usage tips and the code used on bioneural.net. The code given here applies to Geo Mashup 1.1.1 and WordPress 2.6.2. Geo Mashup 1.2 was released on 19.03.09. Some of the code here may require modification. Installing the plugin Download Geo Mashup here, expand the ZIP archive and upload the geo-mashup directory to /wp-content/plugins/ on your web server. Log in to WordPress as Administrator and activate Geo Mashup from the Plugins tab. Once active there will be a new Geo Mashup tab under Settings, and you'll need to visit this to enter your Google Maps API key (if you don't yet have one, click the Get yours here link). Don't worry about the other options at this stage. Creating a map page The tag reference gives you the choice of two types of tag to use with Geo Mashup. Shortcode tags are added to posts or pages on a case-by-case basis. Template tags on the other hand involve adding ...

Gearing up for SSL to WordPress with Safari

Bruce — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:19:01 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

A friend brought an impending WordPress security exploit to my attention, in the form of a CookieMonster. Your data might be at risk if you administer your blog from a public Internet connection (e.g. WiFi in a café). Securing your authentication cookies with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) provides a defensive countermeasure for your admin loggins, and WordPress.com users now have a checkbox to "Always use HTTPS when visiting administration pages". That checkbox is absent in self-hosted WordPress 2.6.2, but here's how to enable HTTPS and accelerate your admin sessions using Google Gears via Safari. Lock up all your cookies with a secret key You may have already defined a SECRET_KEY to secure the cookies that store information about your visitors, a feature introduced in WordPress 2.5. If you didn't do this visit key generator 1.0 and copy the output into your wp-config.php file after the opening PHP tag, so it looks something like this (don't use this one):