bioneural.net » opensource

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 ...

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).

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 ...

From Proto.aculo.us to jQuery

Bruce — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 18:31:03 +0000

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

As I recently noted, both WordPress and K2 have migrated from using Prototype plus script.aculo.us to using the jQuery JavaScript library. Prototype is a JavaScript framework, including a library of functions used to build Ajax applications. It's best buddies with script.aculo.us, an add-on JavaScript effects library that extends the capabilities of the former. So where does jQuery fit in? The winds of change WordPress hasn't altogether dropped either Prototype or script.aculo.us. As of version 2.3.2 they're still bundled in wp-includes/js/, but the Codex notes that since version 2.2: Switched to jQuery for core JS, which is lighter and faster. I'm no programmer, but I do understand that loading a smaller function library is kinder on your bandwidth and browser, and that writing fewer lines of script to call those functions is kinder on web developers. K2, on the other hand, stopped bundling Prototype and script.aculo.us as of revision 382. This popular WordPress theme now does all its Ajax magic—Live Search, Rolling Archives, and Live Comments—via jQuery. Loosing weight As of this writing Prototype (1.6.0.1) weighs in at 121 KB. The six core files that make up script.aculo.us 1.8.1 (sound.js and unittest.js are optional) also happen to total 121 KB, making a combined size of 242 KB. If I could therefore use jQuery 1.2.1 (at 45 KB) to achieve the same JavaScript-mediated effects, I'd be using around one fifth of the code libraries I was previously loading. But it's worse than that, because if I retained Proto.aculo.us for custom effects and loaded jQuery for K2, I'd be wasting ...

iWork 08 and support for Open XML

Bruce — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 03:05:19 +0000

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

A 30-day trial of Apple's iWork 08 is available for download, an application suite that "Works with Office". Pages professes compatibility with Microsoft Word, Numbers with Excel, and Keynote with PowerPoint. This includes read-only support for the Microsoft-sponsored Open XML file formats introduced with Office 2007 for Windows. Note that Office Open XML (OOXML) is not the same as OpenDocument format (ODF), an alternative XML-based open-source ISO standard as used in OpenOffice. iWork 08 promises to import and export to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint The iWork apps had no problems opening even quite complicated Word and PowerPoint documents I had made using Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac. It opened my basic Excel spreadsheets too, continuing to automatically sum the columns as I adjusted my figures. As for the newer file formats, you can download "deliberately simple" Open XML sample documents here, including .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx files. The ZIP archive usefully contains screen captures of the file contents as they should appear in Office 2007. Here were the results when I attempted to open them: Pages thinks the .docx file isn't in Word format Numbers thinks the .xlsx file is invalid Keynote appears to open the .pptx file but fails to display actual content Has anyone had success in using OOXML files with iWork 08? iWork otherwise looks very capable, and during my brief exploration I haven't found it lacking compared to my real world use of Office 2004 for Mac. iPhone also supports OOXML. Update: Even the Microsoft Office Open XML File Format Converter for Mac 0.2 (Beta) failed ...

Zotero a boon for online academics

Bruce — Tue, 15 May 2007 08:58:27 +0000

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

Zotero is a free Firefox extension that can automatically capture citation data from the web (e.g. Amazon books or PubMed articles). Integration with Word (Mac and PC) via a macro means it can be used to write scientific papers with formatted bibliographies (not as yet in Vancouver style, often used by medical journals). A great alternative to EndNote ($US240), or the pending OpenOffice Bibliographic project.

Linux-based Palm OS due in 2007

Bruce — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 19:34:25 +0000

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

Palm announced delivery of an open-source Linux-based OS by the end of 2007. They have licensed Opera for web browsing and acquired Chattermail for messaging. Palm OS 5 (Garnet) "support" is to be included in the Linux kernel, hinting at backwards compatibility with existing Palm apps. I have high hopes that the shared 'nix heritage of the new Palm OS and Mac OS X will foster tight integration between these platforms.

Vienna is impressive freeware newsreader

Bruce — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 05:12:37 +0000

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

Vienna is an open source RSS/Atom newsreader for the Mac OS X. I prefer it to NewsFire and put it almost on par with NetNewsWire, neither of which are free. It has the same three-paned layout option as the latter for in-reader browsing which I favour. Highly recommended.

Alternatives to LAMP

Bruce — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 05:12:24 +0000

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

Alternatives to LAMP: The LAMP configuration (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) is familiar to the open source universe. But just because this combination of products is comfortable, that doesn't mean that it provides the best solution for your systems. David Chisnall suggests some alternatives that might make a better match for your needs.