bioneural.net » webdev

Twitter release per-tweet geotagging API

Bruce — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:19:52 +0000

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

Twitter's geotagging API is official. There is now a checkbox to enable geotagging in your Twitter account settings; enabling this option allows third party applications to annotate individual tweets with location data. Developers could previously integrate only profile location with the Google Maps API as here.

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 ...

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):

Fire Eagle from Yahoo! aids location sharing

Bruce — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:32:51 +0000

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

Fire Eagle is a free service from Yahoo! that provides a conduit for updating a centrally-stored current location, permitting delivery of location-aware services by means of an API allowing developers to resolve and share user location across various applications. Care has been taken to address privacy concerns by keeping choice in the hands of users, who can update their location manually or automatically from "anywhere". For example, Fire Updater on your MacBook might put you in a London hotel, while subsequent telemetry from SearchQuest GPS on iPhone tells your mates which pub to find you at; at least one WordPress plug-in is in development.

Publicizing WordPress post revisions

Bruce — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:26:22 +0000

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

WordPress 2.6 introduced post revisions, a form of version control that allows you to review or revert to previous editions of a post or page on your WordPress blog. The value of this feature has generated some debate, largely because it's "on by default" with no easy toggle to disable it. The thing is notification of post revisions is private, within the admin interface. So how do you make the date of last editing public? One of my pet hates is undated web content; if there's no date I'll often move on without reading the page content. Sometimes you can glean the date of first publication from a post permalink, as in this example (day and name, in Settings > Permalinks): http://www.bioneural.net/2008/08/02/first-track-logger-for-iphone-released/ There are two problems with relying on this method alone: Did you first publish on August 2 or February 8? There are different ways of interpreting dates; It's only the date of first publication, not the date the post was last revised. Clarifying the date of publication One option is to time stamp the publication date in your theme (as many WordPress themes do), which introduces a little more flexibility to deal with the first issue by specifying the name of the month to combat ambiguity: A simple code snippet for this would be: Published by on Consult the Codex for options that allow you to customize the display of date and time formats in your theme. Showing "last modified" dates I've searched the Codex and the Forums for a means of getting the date of the last ...

Customizing WordPress feed content

Bruce — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 20:38:12 +0000

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

When I last looked at customizing feeds in WordPress, it was all to do with being able to offer a summary and full text feed simultaneously—making use of WordPress' flexible feed URL syntax and a .htaccess file. In this post I look at modifying the actual contents of the feed using a functions.php file (which may already exist as part of your current theme). Just as WordPress provides a number of hooks for adding or removing actions in your theme header (see here), so to do the core files that generate your feeds. Editing the core files is however discouraged (it makes upgrading a pain), and although you can build your own replacement feed templates an easy alternative is adding a few lines to your theme's functions.php file. As a perpetual PHP beginner I feel obliged to warn you that use of the following code is at your own risk. If there are any PHP/ WordPress experts reading this who can improve on my code please make yourself known ;-) Removing WP version info Somewhere, a while back, I read a tip about not including the WordPress version you are running in your template header—potentially allowing hackers to identify you as a target if you haven't kept up-to-date. It's easy to remove if present. For example, in the K2 theme just delete the following line from header.php: From bioneural.net:Mac-based web developers...]]> ... http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ Rendered in a feed reader humans will see this: The Creative Commons icon is hopefully recognisable and links to the correct license; the link to bioneural.net ...

Web developer widgets

Bruce — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:42:29 +0000

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

Mac-based web developers may yet find a use for Dashboard. SeeSS is a CSS property reference detailing inheritance, CSS compliance, Safari support, possible and default values, examples, plus an informative description [screenshot]. PHP Function Reference provides offline access to the PHP manual, a cheat sheet, and an interactive date formatter [screenshot].

RDF v microformats v meta headers

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

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

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).

Clinical knowledge architect for hire

Bruce — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 08:34:04 +0000

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

Dr Bruce McKenzie is now available for freelance consultancy as a clinical knowledge architect, addressing the unmet need for usable knowledge resources at the point-of-care in UK general practice. General practitioners (GPs) make more decisions in a day than a typical business executive, and these decisions cost not just money but potentially lives. It's challenging work, and you can but hope your decisions are based on good information. The problem is information overload and access to what you need when you need it: there's just too much and it's too hard to find in the context of a 10 minute consultation. As a GP for 10 years I can relate to this. I also have informatics knowledge and experience, and this puts me in a position to offer you solutions that are built the way a doctor would design them. The fact is information doesn't become knowledge by itself. After careful needs assessment raw information must be broken down and reconstructed into a usable form as part of a design process that draws upon both the art and science of information architecture. In other words it's a creative process, but it also necessitates solid technical insight into the context in which a knowledge resource will be used. With my primary care background, grasp of medical informatics, passion for writing, and practical experience in delivering concise clinical guidance for use at the point-of-care, I am now available for freelance consultancy as a clinical knowledge architect. Experience in primary care Ten years experience in several general ...