tijs.org

Alper might have stumbled upon the perfect solution for managing your personal Avatar. After some discussion i am reasonably satisfied that this is a great solution for now that will be easily updated in a backwards compatible way as needed in the future.

Four Starters - » OpenAvatar - Combining OpenID and hCard

This method requires both a personal webpage and an openid but for a lot of target groups (i.e. geeks) this should not be a problem.

Then someone made a joke: why doesn’t Dabble pick colors automatically when customers upload a logo? Discussing it further, we decided we weren’t joking. Our graphic designer Luke was somewhat doubtful, but we thought it would be a cool feature, so we dove in.

The boys at Dabble figured out how to build an automatic color scheme based on an uploaded company logo. Pretty damn neat.

Kathy has a point, i don’t use twitter but Jaiku instead and i find myself checking out the stream way too often. I still think it’s these transitional web apps are great but it would be good to use them for what they are most suited for; sharing your location when your not working. Making meeting up for that cup of coffee, experiencing real life connections, that much easier.

Actiontastic developer Jon Crosby just announced on his development blog he will be releasing Actiontastic 1.0 as an open source project. That is great news for the community and for Jon as it takes his app from “one of the best” productivity tools out there to “the best” in a single swoop.

Actiontastic will most likely thrive and the optional web app companion tool Actionatr will instantly gain a user base that he can monetize.

Today i finished the Jaiku Quicksilver plugin i have been using for a while but never got ready for general distribution. The script works in mysterious ways, or better put; it uses not only Quicksilver but also Plazes to do an update so you don’t have to set the location by hand and can simply type a message and be done with it. This of course comes with a price; you will have to have the Plazes plazer installed to actually use the script. This makes the potential group of users rather small but there are bound to be at least four people out there who find this useful

Install guide!

1. Download the Applescript file
2. Make a folder called Actions in the folder ~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver
3. Copy the Jaiku Applescript into the Actions folder
4. Restart Quicksilver (sometimes it is hard to get it to refresh)
5. Add your plazes username and password to the keychain using the name http://beta.plazes.com (if it’s not already in there)
6. Add your jaiku username and personal key (as the password) to the keychain using the name http://api.jaiku.com (you can get your personal key here). Use the application called Keychain Access for this and the previous step.
7. You’ll have to click yes a bunch to allow the keychain to be used

There is a plazeless version too, follow the same steps as above only leave out the ones where it invloves Plazes.

User guide!

1. Open Quicksilver (command-space)
2. Hit . (period) to open text mode
3. Type your message
4. Hit tab
5. Start typing Jaiku
6. When you see Jaiku appear as the action, hit enter
7. Go check you Jaiku stream to see if it worked!

Version history

• v0.1, 14-3-2007, initial release
• v0.2, 14-3-2007, removed default icon since it can’t be changed yet anyway

Roadmap

• Icon selection
• Maybe get Plazes data from feed (no need for a password)
• Maybe release a plazeless and/or a standalone version (if anyone needs it)
• …

p.s.
The script is ‘run only’ for now since not all of the stuff it uses is public yet. Full code should be available soon so you can go build your own versions. changed files to full source, adapt and multiply!

Google has replaced it’s full API with dumbed down AJAX only widget. The web a little too open for them? Is this as some people suggest already the “Beginning of the end for open web data APIs?“, i hope not… we were just getting started.

…in startup land. I’m posting some of the screenshots in my Flickr stream. Some more to come later, so check it out if you digg that sort of thing.

Pretty damn neat! They just won a 25.000 euro grand so i guess they might actually get the hardware to keep supporting this sort of data live. When you are tracking someone on this site it almost does not feel real…

update: the power of great interfaces; 1.2 million+ photos tagged in 24 hours!

I missed this news when it first came out but appearently a stunning 410-15 US congressmen voted for a law that demands from schools and universities that they block social networking sites. Social networking sites are defined as sites that, among other things, allow “communication among users”. Let that sink in for a minute.

Note the 410 clueless congressmen & women.