After having found my favourite webservice for collecting data all that was left to integrate it into this website was a php script which is run by cron to collect and save the most recent twitter entries into the local database periodically and another short php script which shows the twitter posts from the local database.

I like the result very much and this is just the beginning. Many custom extensions to the script are easy to realize (like custom syntax for sorting twitter postings into categories, etc.). If anybody is interested in the sourcecode of the PHP scripts please drop me a short note or comment this post and I’ll upload and publish the code under GPL.

Oh… I almost forgot to show you the final result. You have to visit the

» history link

in the main navigation.

After registering and playing around with your new identity (e.g. at test.mojogroup.at) you might come back and try it on this wordpress installation too. I enabled OpenID support some weeks ago.

Mozilla Firefox 3 integration is just around the corner and even Yahoo announced some beta coming soon. Even WordPress is featuring easy integration via plugin.

Looking forward to new possibilities of abuse and web destruction but maybe this thing is kind of going to relieve our multi account password brain safe.

In those mentioned few hours I gave my online representation new clothes and fooled around with some new wordpress plugins. When browsing slashdot, reddit and digg I clearly could not resist the new Firefox 3 Beta 2 which can be downloaded here.

I cannot remember if I was testing some Firefox 3 Alpha or Beta 1 release some weeks ago but at that time I removed it from my system after less than 10 minutes. This time it’s a completely different story. Even though that most of the plugins do not work anymore (at least at the moment) the new core features are overwhelming.

My favourites are

• the new location bar,
• a download manager with minor changes,
• an improved bookmarking system/bookmark manager,
• and improved application preferences.

I am sure there are other new things as well (besides better memory handling and an interface with an overall quicker response behaviour) but I only used it for one hour or so and yet alone those impressions let me remove Firefox 2 and switch to Firefox 3 instantly.

One of the most important plugins (AdBlock Plus) already supports the nightly build 3.0b3pre… so no problems here. The “remember domain mismatch” plugin seems to be obsolete due to improved certificate handling. Maybe you happened to surf any website (usually company webmail frontends via https) which did not have a trusted certificate. I constantly was annoyed in Firefox 2 that I had to press the OK button every time I went to such pages. Now the browser gives you the ability to trust the certificate permanently (via a new thing called “add an exception”). From now on you can store “security exceptions” permanently. Surely you should know what you are doing if you do permanent security exceptions but I think it’s a huge step forward in a browser to trust it’s users abilities.

The great thing about the location bar/bookmarking thing is maybe something you have to experience yourself. There is a new small “star” icon in the location bar which lets you add the current URL to the “Smart Bookmarks” with one single click. If you click it again you already can chose a target bookmark folder for the current link or… wait a second… here it comes… you can TAG it. Yep. Bookmark tagging. Just great. You do not have to think about folder hierarchies for your bookmarks anymore. So there are multiple ways to navigate through bookmarks. Just type parts of the URL into the location bar and your bookmarked favourites are on top of the browsing history with matching URLs (now including the favicons in the dropdown list which itself is very very nice). Or you browse by tag by entering the tag name into the location bar. Or you just simply browse your beloved folder hierarchy.

Oh… and now a thing I missed for a long time already: a nice tab in the preferences which is labelled “Applications”. There you can sign any application you want to any supported content type/extension. And in the Extensions/Themes dialog there is now a new tab too » “Plugins”. Times of “about:plugins” seem to be over.

My installation almost passed the Acid2 test (and I guess the final version will pass it without any problems) and on my system (currently Mac OS X Leopard) it is the clear winner on that test in comparison with other browsers (recent stable versions of firefox, safari and opera).
Will try it on my debian sid box tomorrow maybe but as for now I am quite happy (and I am sure the web developer plugin will be available soon). A big Thank you goes out to the pepole contributing to the Firefox project (type about:credits into your Firefox location bar). And of course to the friends of firefox too.

MPX now supports Multi-Touch! Watch this video and see what he means…

Click here to view the embedded video.

I can’t wait until the new features have found their way into the core X server. It might take some more months but I think they are already working on that. Let’s hope for the best.

As a sidenote: This piece of software was developed on a Ubuntu machine but I know that he also likes to work on MacBooks. Maybe we will see some Mac OS or Windows port some day too. I myself currently operate on three different platforms (windows sometimes for work, mac and gnu/linux at work and home) and it is so great to have most of the everyday applications on all of the three platforms. That is why I want to thank all those ingenious developers out there who make such great software which enables us (the not so ingenious people) to focus on our tasks in our convenient working environments.

Update: …and he did it again. This time right at the front page (and on digg and gizmodo and …..).

Ogg Vorbis is a professional-grade media format. It’s like MP3 but better—and it respects your freedom. When you see a file with the Ogg extension – musicfile.ogg – Play it!

Now you might think why should you switch to Ogg Vorbis if you are already so familiar with MP3?

The use of MP3 is restricted by patents, while Ogg Vorbis is not. Unlike MP3, there are never any licensing costs for using Ogg Vorbis, and you do not have to worry about anyone suing you for using it without a license. You might have heard about Microsoft’s recent loss in a $1.5 billion suit over their use of MP3.

These patent lawsuits might never affect you directly, but they create a culture where creative and skilled individuals cannot develop multimedia software without fear of being legally attacked. Using Ogg is one way to support them in their efforts and to encourage a better culture.

Most of my digital music files are in the MP3 format at the moment but I can assure you that the usage of Ogg is not different than using MP3. You simply use your favourite music player and add the files to your playlists. The difference for you is that the file does not end with .mp3 but with .ogg.
On my GNU/Linux system Ogg-Support is already pre-installed so I simply can play the files without any additional effort. On older Windows Systems you might want to go to playogg.org and download the VLC mediaplayer which is able to play Ogg files. Or you might download a plugin for your favourite mediaplayer software (e.g. a Plugin for WinAmp mediaplayer).
Eventually you have done a similar procedure already when you taught your workstation to play DIVx video files. After installing the Plugin/Codec you enabled your PC to play Ogg Vorbis constantly.

This is also a way to contribute to the open source community. You do not have to be a programmer or experienced PC user. It is enough if you demand open source alternatives to be used in standard products. That is already enough. Every additional help is very appreciated but this supports already a change. If you are ready to try something new you also can look out for music devices which are Ogg enabled. There are lots of them out there and they are not more or less expensive than anything else. It also is OK if the device play MP3 and OGG. That way it is an easy transition which does not force you to convert your existing music collection to the free standard.

Recently I got excited over panorama images. As my cameras lack fisheye lenses and image stitching software I am using an open source cross-platform solution called hugin. I use hugin as frontend which allows me to use auto pano and pano tools and finally create nice tif images which can be easily used with enblend to create the final stitched image. Then as a last step I use gimp to crop the image and adjust levels, brightness, contrast, etc. At the beginning (as hugin and tools seemed quite troubling and complicated) I used the pandora combine plugin for gimp which worked nicely but as I was looking for more precision I finally figured out how to use the more advanced solution.

To celebrate hugin and tools I created a new page dedicated to panorama views where I will put the newest panorama views from time to time. The gallery uses some JavaScript (tested in Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera) to present the images nicely. The raw files of the images can be found here.

Now it is time for something completely different. Let me introduce you to something which I think was, is, and will be very important in the future: inter humanity. Do not be afraid. It is not some spiritual plan to save the world or anything. It is just some codex/charta/guidelines I want to write down and improve with the help of others. Before it is too confusing let me point you to my inter humanity pages where you can read on. Have a nice day.

PS: Did I mention that we are going to Paris next wednesday. Expect some gallery update within the next two weeks.

PPS: Is it just me or did you too realize that I keep announcing things within designated time ranges too often?