bioneural.net » metadata

RDF v microformats v meta headers

Bruce — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 18:24:49 +0000

I've had a hard time "getting" RDF (e.g. how it differs from XML), but this article helps give it context. The semantic web is being built simultaneously from the bottom up and top down. Typifying the bottom-up approach, RDF content is machine-readable at the outset; powerful but complex (with several advantages over microformats), RDF is all about inter-operability. Top-down approaches introduce "metadata sprinkling" to existing content, simple but limiting by comparison e.g. microformats (using CSS class attributes as in hCard), or meta elements (meta tags such as those for geo-discovery). Both approaches are valid, but RDF is hard whereas microformats help "the rest of us" contribute to the semantic web. There may be a collision ahead, however, between microformats and RDFa (sprinklings of RDF embedded in existing XHTML).

CDFinder in the Mac geotagging workflow

Bruce — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:22:38 +0000

From bioneural.net:

Like many Mac users I archive my pictures in iPhoto, largely because I enjoy the tight integration this affords with Apple and third-party apps that might want to use them. Having entered the world of geotagging I was disappointed to discover that iPhoto can fail to show coordinates in EXIF (and when shown, oddly lists them under Exposure), does not recognise location data in IPTC headers, and does not provide any "show on map" facility (even Preview does this). Norbert Doerner of West-Forest-Systems then pointed out that I'd completely neglected archive and retrieval of geotagged images in my "ABC" article. This Mac software critique goes some way to redress that omission by considering the role of CDFinder in a Mac user's geotagging workflow. CDFinder is essentially an asset manager that catalogues any file on any volume (CD-ROM, DVD, USB drive, etc). But media metadata are its speciality, and this indexing powerhouse has recently been extended to handle geotags and provide related functionality. Disclosure: A single user license for CDFinder 5.1 was provided by West-Forest-Systems for the purposes of this review. I have a personal interest in the success of the Geotag Icon. Critique context The review machine was an Intel Mac mini running Mac OS X 10.5.2 (Leopard) with iLife '08. I shoot in NEF format (Nikon raw) with a D70 and JPEG with an Olympus C-70Z. My current media organization is I expect fairly typical: Most of my music is in iTunes; Most of my photos are in iPhoto; the rest are mainly in ...

FeedDemon gets the Geotag Icon too

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

From bioneural.net:

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).

iCab now sports the Geotag Icon

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

From bioneural.net:

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.

Mapping fun with GeoRSS and geo-discovery

Bruce — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 00:26:26 +0000

From bioneural.net:

Continuing the recent geo-fixation trend evident on this site, this article shares the results of a slightly deeper delve into GeoRSS and looks at a great browser add-on that offers auto-discovery of geotagged content in webpages and in some feeds. What is GeoRSS? Wikipedia describes GeoRSS as "an emerging standard for encoding location as part of an RSS feed." It also encodes location in Atom feeds, and rather than the singular "standard" there are actually two variations (GeoRSS-Simple and the more advanced GeoRSS-GML). A third encoding, W3C Basic Geo, is depreciated but still in use (e.g. by Flickr; see below). I happen to use the Geo Mashup plugin for WordPress to geotag articles on this site. As well as adding appropriate metadata tags into the head of location-specific posts, the plugin automatically adds GeoRSS-Simple encoding to my feeds. The GeoRSS-Simple feeds are identified with this namespace declaration in the header: xmlns:georss="http://www.georss.org/georss" Each item in the feed will be marked-up with a coordinate pair separated by a whitespace and enclosed in a point tag. For example: 50.185676 8.464943 And that's it. So what can you do with it? GeoRSS in your blog feed In WordPress you can create a feed for any category or any tag just by putting /feed/ at the end of the URL. This is ideal if you have a dedicated category or tag for geotagged content. In my case I had geotagged content spanning several categories, so I decided to go back and add the tag "geotag" to all my geotagged articles across all categories. This ...

An ABC of geotagging photos on the Mac

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

From bioneural.net:

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 ...

A web standard icon for geotagging

Bruce — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:35:39 +0000

From bioneural.net:

Geotagging (or geocoding if you prefer) is the act of associating your content (blog posts, photos, feeds, etc.) with a geographic location (e.g. via latitude and longitude co-ordinates). Thus tagged authors can "mash" their content together with the likes of Google Maps, or the Flickr Map if photography is your thing. However, co-ordinates are typically encoded within metadata (or microformat) tags making them visible to machines but hidden from people. We have de facto web standard icons to help identify feeds, OPML, and sharing—so why not for geotagged content? Update 29.02.08: Thanks to everyone who gave feedback or otherwise contributed to the process of taking this proposal forward. Comments are now closed and further feedback should now be directed to geotagicons.com, where you can now download the new community-designed geotag icon. The goods I propose a web standard Geotag Icon, to be used freely by any geotagger or geotagging service. Here is what it looks like at 128px: At 32px: And at 16px: Important: These images are not final; this is a proposal. Please do not hotlink to these images. You can download them individually by right-clicking the one you want, or as part of the draft Geotag Icon Development Kit here. Family line-up The family resemblance is obvious: Why not complete the set? Grab the Feed icon, the OPML icon, and the Open Share icon. Update 27.03.08: The Open Share Icon Project offers a free, open, community-driven alternative to the trademarked and brand-linked ShareThis.com icon. Icon specification It should be similar in style to existing de facto web standard icons (hereafter ...

Spring clean your WordPress head

Bruce — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 08:00:42 +0000

From bioneural.net:

If you had viewed the source of my WordPress-generated pages a while ago you'd have noticed that my head elements were a real mess. Now they've been spring cleaned, arranged neatly into related groupings and the needless clutter disposed of. Plugins that use the wp_head hook distribute junk all over the show, offending any sense of order. Luckily your WordPress theme is the key to taking control of your head, through a combination of edits to functions.php and header.php. Removing actions using a functions file Your theme may already include a file called functions.php. If it doesn't you can create one using the functions file found in the default theme directory (which is a bit busy), or copy-and-paste mine (with the K2 bits stripped out for clarity): The real advantage here is avoiding the need to hack any plugins or core WordPress files (an upgrader's nightmare). Let's go through the removal actions in sequence. Really Simple Discovery helps client software discover things about your blog. If you don't use a client and manage your posts directly in WordPress, you don't need to offer such help. The PHP script: remove_action('wp_head', 'rsd_link'); will remove a line from your head that looks something like this: Windows Live Writer is one such desktop blogging client, but supporting it needs yet another line in your head. The script: remove_action('wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link'); will remove a line from your head that looks something like this: The Quoter plugin defaults to inserting comments, JavaScript, and CSS into your head: .commentlist blockquote cite { /* Fix for Kubrik theme */ display: inline; } You ...

Baking SimplePie with favicon topping

Bruce — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 00:17:52 +0000

From bioneural.net:

Having settled on SimplePie as a solution for embedding iStockPhoto feeds, I decided to see if I could use it to parse the latest posts from multiple sites in my OPML file (blogroll if you prefer). Would it really be as simple to cook as it sounded? There were qualifiers, however. I wanted to show only a selection of headlines at any one time. I wanted to vary the order in which the sites were listed. And I wanted to automatically fetch and display the favicon for each site. Armed only with copy-and-paste level PHP know-how, I was going to need help in the kitchen—that much was clear at the outset. Update 18.08.06: Ryan has added error handling for feeds which specify no author; this eliminates most of the fatal errors I was getting with some feeds. If a particular feed doesn't work for you there are several things to try: Is it specified in the page (required for auto-discovery) or must you specify the full feed URL cf. the domain name? Is the feed valid? If a site offers RSS and Atom feeds (WordPress sites do by default) try varying the feed format. Also, specifying the actual feed path rather than relying on auto-discovery should reduce display time. Many thanks Ryan! Link lists Lists of links to other sites are just plain boring. But they can be functional, potentially serving a number of purposes: Bookmarks that the siteowner uses to track sites of personal interest; Serving readers by linking to sites with related news ...

A raw and CS2 workflow for dummies

Bruce — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 20:44:40 +0000

From bioneural.net:

Well, not for dummies—but for non-professional photographers, amateurs, or prosumers (as you like). This article represents my evolving understanding of the options you have during raw conversion with ACR 3.1, and during post-processing in Photoshop CS2 (following nearly 3 years of shooting JPEG, ignoring colour management, and tinkering with Photoshop 7). I like a "one product does it all" solution. I descibe a workflow that will hopefully make sense for most images—assuming that like me you want to work on one at a time, to edit once, and your interest is in capturing what's there and not "faking it". I'll make changes as I discover what does or doesn't work, and acquire new knowledge (maybe even skill?). Your feedback and suggestions would be much appreciated. This is a fairly long article, but there's a graphic summary at the end! Capture and camera settings I decided on a Nikon D70 set to raw + JPEG basic, a SanDisk 1GB Extreme III Compact Flash card, and an iPod photo 60GB with iPod Camera Connector for in-the-field storage (also works with my wife's Olympus C-70Z and my old Sony DSC-F717). As with my previous camera, the only "rule" I try to adhere to when shooting is this one: ...correct exposure means keeping the highlights as close as possible to blowing out, without actually doing so. Some photographers refer to this concept as "Expose to the Right" because you want to make sure that your highlights fall as close to the right side of the histogram as ...