bioneural.net » icons

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 ...

New icons in GraphicConverter and iTrail

Bruce — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 06:17:04 +0000

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

Thorsten Lemke's GraphicConverter is the Swiss Army Knife of image editors, and starting with v6.2 uses the Geotag Icon to clearly highlight geotag-related menu options for showing/ setting positions via Google Earth, editing GPS coordinate values, and geotagging photos via GPX files. iTrail, a track logging app for iPhone, now sports new tab bar and padlock icons I contributed to developer Justin Davis (preview). I was impressed by the extent to which the iPhone SDK manipulates white outline shapes with transparency that result in the inactive grey/ active blue icon states that you see.

Geo Mashup for WordPress adopts Geotag Icon

Bruce — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:55:17 +0000

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

Geo Mashup by Dylan Kuhn uses the Google Maps API to search for locations and geocode WordPress posts for plotting on a customized map. Features include display by category, inclusion of post excerpts in pop-up info windows, automatic generation of GeoRSS feeds (example), importation of KML files, and flexible template tag options (e.g. you can write code to create waypoints in RouteBuddy). The Geotag Icon was added to v1.1b3 and illustrates "Show on map" links.

Geotag open source app sports new icon

Bruce — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 20:52:05 +0000

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

Andreas Schneider's open-source Geotag application supports automatic (via GPX import) and manual geotagging (via Google Maps/ Google Earth), and is compatible with most raw image formats. This cross-platform tool requires Java SE 6 runtime—sadly available for 64-bit Intel Macs running Leopard only. The latest release showcases a new icon (preview)—the third David, icerabbit and I (with others) have jointly worked on (the other two being the Geotag Icon and the Open Share Icon).

Pages and searching in WordPress 2.5

Bruce — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 17:07:34 +0000

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

WordPress 2.5 lets you search across pages (non-blog entries) as well as posts. This is undoubtedly a good thing, but if your pages are liable to turn up in site searches you might want to make a couple of changes to stop page content from swamping your results screen and improve appearances if you use category icons. In WordPress search results post content is displayed up to the  tag: The rest of the post continues, but when viewed on the non-single/non-permalink web page such as archives, categories, front page, and searches, the post is shown as an excerpt to the more point. Pages don't usually have a more tag, because there is no excerpt or "teaser" destined for use in a feed. Thus when a page appears in a search results it will display in its entirety. Furthermore, because I'm using the Category Icons plugin, post titles will display alongside the category icon for ease of identification. Since pages don't usually have a category, they will show indented with no icon. Here is a search for "architect", showing an iconless page result occupying the screen: With the addition of  to the top of each page, and the use of an icon for Uncategorized content (assuming all posts are categorised) we get this: Much more usable and informative.

Support the Open Share Icon Project

Bruce — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 08:14:17 +0000

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

A backlash in the face of threats from ShareThis.com/ Nextumi Inc., owners of the trademarked Share Icon originally promoted as "generic", has prompted creation of the Open Share Icon Project—a free, open, community-driven alternative. The Share Icon has become synonymous with the commercial ShareThis brand & widget (registration terms) & even the "Classic" plugin requires publishers to actively opt-out of "sharing" their data to the ShareThis service. The working design of the new open icon features cupped hands passing/ receiving an item ("pass it on") as well as an eye reference ("look at this").

FeedDemon gets the Geotag Icon too

Bruce — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 12:04:09 +0000

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

FeedDemon, purportedly the most popular Windows-based feed reader, automatically detects geotagged feed items. Form version 2.6.1b1 it uses the Geotag Icon as a visual identifier for plotting the location, "hidden" in metadata, via Google Maps. FeedDemon has lots of other great features, including synchronisation with NewsGator Online which I use when travelling (in conjunction with NetNewsWire on the Mac).

Share Icon site updated

Bruce — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:37:58 +0000

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

Alex King has announced a re-design of the Share Icon Project website, adding a showcase along similar lines to that added to the Geotag Icon Project some days earlier. The Share Icon was inspired by the Feed Icon and OPML Icon. The new Geotag Icon, likewise related conceptually and visually, is not listed as a peer but is nevertheless enjoying a strong show of early developer and user support reflecting its obvious utility.

iCab now sports the Geotag Icon

Bruce — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 21:29:58 +0000

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

iCab—the Internet taxi for your Mac—now sports the Geotag Icon. Alexander Clauss' latest beta (4.0.1b39) enables the status bar Geotag Icon when metadata tags are detected in the page being viewed, generating a pop-up that will plot the geotagged location using Google Maps. iCab has a number of other noteworthy features, including full compatibility with the WYSIWYG editor in WordPress (unlike Safari or Firefox as of this writing). David has some screen captures on his site.

An ABC of geotagging photos on the Mac

Bruce — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:30:54 +0000

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

This article considers geotagging photos from a Mac perspective, looking at automatic and manual methods, and explaining terms such as data loggers, track points, waypoints, and routes. It lists OS X software options for connecting to data loggers, converting track log formats, geo-locating photos, and writing that data to EXIF for both raw and JPEG images. It also covers the importance of time synchronization, what you can do with geotagged photos, workflow, choosing a data logger and controlling it from your Mac. Introduction With my blog articles geotagged and mapped, and the launch of geotagicons.com behind me, the next challenge was to consider geotagging my photos in future. Some time ago I blogged about doing this in iPhoto, and although workable for a small selection of images this manual/ best guess option doesn't scale well to 2-3 week vacations when you return with several hundred images and a poor recollection of what was taken exactly where. Before getting started on something (i.e. spending money!) I like to try and gain a reasonable overview of what I'm about to get into. What follows is a summary of my research into the terminology, technology, hardware and software that a budding Mac photo geotagger will want to get to grips with. If you also like to look before you leap then this article may be of service to you. Although written with fellow Mac users in mind, if you're afflicted with Windows much of the article is still relevant. What is geotagging? In a photographic context, geotagging ...