Posts Tagged ‘Google’

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#MusicMonday (SXSW 2010 Edition)

Monday, March 15th, 2010

SXSW 2010 MusicToday the 2nd week of the well-known festival starts and this special is dedicated to its annual “giveaway”: once a year the organization releases an archive of all the tracks that will be played during the music events.

Although those songs are all available via the official site of the , is easier to download them using 2 single files unofficially provided by a Google Sites’ project.

It’s more than 5Gb of free music split in 2 compressed archives: here’s both the direct link for the 1st part and the direct link for the 2nd part. They’ll be automatically extracted after a successfully completed download.

Be aware that those tracks has been recorded by emerging artists, so you might find them “unknown” at all: you can always follow the live events to meet them.

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Improve page/post indexes’ accessibility

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

This is just and addendum to a previous tip about in-page anchors: I don’t know if anyone noticed, but I’ve made some little changes to those indexes.

There’s no more to add, but some hints to make the headings more accessible: I’m trying to get those fucking on , too — and it isn’t “so” easy.

First of all, I made the menus’ layout closer to : it depends on how you stylized them via , so I can only suggest you to have a look at the example (just in the upper-right side of the page).

As you might notice, chose to handle the show/hide toggle link… while I’m preferring jQuery instead. You don’t have to make any change there.

I changed other 2 things you could find useful: the 1st implies to use slugs to replace the existing anchors’ IDs. My previous post suggested as follows:

<h3 id="chapter-1">Chapter 1</h3>
<h3 id="chapter-2">Chapter 2</h3>
<h3 id="chapter-3">Chapter 3</h3>

To be clearer, the above IDs used the same semantic prefix – in these cases, chapter- – with ascending integers to differentiate the anchors. Here’s what you should have after modifying them:

<h3 id="lorem-ipsum-dolor-sit-amet">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet</h3>
<h3 id="ut-wisi-enim-ad-minim-veniam">Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam</h3>
<h3 id="typi-non-habent-claritatem-insitam">Typi non habent claritatem insitam</h3>

I really hope that it helps with the automatic ‘ creation: otherwise, it’s even preferable. Of course, remember to change the anchors accordingly.

The 2nd point I considered is “optional” and lots of people discourage its use: anyway – if you haven’t them elsewhere on the same page – you could add accesskeys to the links.

<div id="toc">
<h4 id="toc-label">Index </h4>
<ol id="toc-toggle">
<li><a href="#lorem-ipsum-dolor-sit-amet" accesskey="1">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet</a></li>
<li><a href="#ut-wisi-enim-ad-minim-veniam" accesskey="2">Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam</a></li>
<li><a href="#typi-non-habent-claritatem-insitam" accesskey="3">Typi non habent claritatem insitam</a></li>
</ol>
</div>

Some browsers could override them by default, but they won’t hurt: just make sure you aren’t using the same accesskey for two or more different links.

Another thing: looking at the Jeff Starr’s blog (a very useful resource you must read) I noticed anchors to go back to the TOC in plain headings. Those are especially useful to avoid mouse scrolling.

<h3 id="lorem-ipsum-dolor-sit-amet">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet <a href="#toc" rel="toc">↑</a></h3>

I suggest you to maintain the rel="toc" in the end of the anchor, because it’s a standard reference. Optionally, it’s possible to handle the link with jQuery to get a better scroll to the TOC — I’ll explain how later.

That’s it for now: feel free to post any questions and/or suggestions in the comments (now open to public guests). For those who cares, I didn’t finish this blog’s adoption yet.

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The Italian Magistracy is worse than China’s

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

Most of us still call it “democracy”, while I don’t: today three employees have been condemned by an Italian court for what happened in 2006. It’s just the 1st degree of a trial that provides 3 and it usually takes more than four years to come to a decision.

I reduced the amount of posts daily published on this blog because I’m currently working on the backend, but I can’t ignore this: I’ll try to explain the situation in few words, hoping to be able to be clear enough.

A group of idiots students recorded a bullying act against a guy affected by the and uploaded the video on : Google removed that immediately after the signaling — but it had appeared on local , yet.

If you’re asking yourselves, those baby-criminals (as we use to call them) wasn’t condemned at all: they just got a suspension from school, while the Magistracy processed Google for privacy violation and aggravated defamation.

Today the decision condemned , and — acquitting : they weren’t directly responsible of what happened, they didn’t know those guys, nor created and/or uploaded that video. But for Italy they’re still guilty.

As I said on Twitter, I’m really ashamed of being Italian. Google can’t understand why it had been processed, as long as it helped our police to identify those students (removing the indicted video): there will be an appeal soon, but I’m very sorry for that.

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WebFinger is (almost) ready for GMail

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

WebFingerSo, profiles got value with the new Buzz social platform: I’ll explain later why and how to avoid amount of updates on to prevent you of being mad for those.

That’s really amazing, but there’s another project started on the Google’s web mail which doesn’t apply to Buzz at all: is a new concept of the finger command for .

If you have both a GMail account and a public profile, then you can access to your personal via WebFinger: in the near future the most common browsers should implement an acct:// protocol to handle its link.

Right now, you could only get an incomplete file to download (at least, from ) using the standard HTTP protocol: here’s mine — have a look at your download folder.

It’s just a useless .part file: you may want to use cURL instead, getting a better output.

$ sudo apt-get install curl
$ curl http://www.google.com/s2/webfinger/?q=acct:foo@gmail.com

Replace foo with an existing GMail alias and you’re done: it doesn’t work with Google Apps, yet. WebFinger is far from being complete, but I enjoyed this idea: it should include public keys and other useful information.

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Share on Google Buzz without plugins for WordPress

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

I’ve already talked about and web sites integration with : now it’s time to implement a sharing link on . It’s really quick and simple.

It seems that someone created a plugin to do so, but isn’t really necessary: Buzz uses to share links and you don’t need anything else, but its .

Let’s see how the should be constructed: the snippet below must be inside — you may always change the functions to get it working outside too.

<a href="http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=<?php urlencode ( the_permalink ( ) ); ?>&title=<?php htmlentities ( the_title ( ) ); ?>&srcURL=<?php bloginfo ( 'url' ); ?>/" rel="nofollow">Share with Google Buzz</a>

That’s it. Of course, the rel isn’t mandatory and you can replace the link’s text with whatever you want: I chose Share with Google Buzz because I found this in the Picasa’s documentation for Buzz.

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How to use WebKit on IE 7+ serving Google Chrome Frame-ready pages

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

I don’t like at all: I don’t use , so I can’t actually know how this blog is displayed. To be sincere, I don’t care much. But lots of idiots users still use it, and I must ensure an accessible site for them too.

There’s nothing to do for older versions (deprecated yet), but IE 7 and above could be fixed server-side with just a line of code — thank to a ’s plugin. It’s called and overwrites existing s to render pages with .

Even if the official documentation is exhaustive, all the other engines are good enough to avoid this: so you don’t need to modify your HTTP headers at all.

I suggest you to implement this workaround just for IE (using conditional comments):

<!--[if IE]>
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="chrome=1"/>
<![endif]-->

Of course, it goes in the head of your page. If you still like to take the advantages coming from headers, make sure to change them accordingly for IE only.

If you’ve ever had a look at the ’s source code, you noticed that it uses a content like IE=EmulateIE7 instead of chrome=1: that’s no longer supported.

I forgot to explain that Google Chrome Frame is an installable plugin, so users must got it on their systems — or this code just won’t do anything.

I plan to explain how to suggest its installation with some hacks later, but if you don’t want to wait any longer it’s all described in the developers’ guide.

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Accessing Facebook Chat anywhere with XMPP

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Facebook ChatSo you want to access … pardon, I mean via : I’m not jocking, it works exactly like the ’s IM. But with less features.

Forget authentication, audio and video support (at least, right now): it’s the same crap without plugins — yet existing for .

I really don’t care about AIM integration: GTalk provides it too, but I’ve never used it and I won’t in the future.

Anyway, I appreciate that freed its chat, thank to the protocol: I already tested it via Telepathy and it works (exactly like using the dedicated Pidgin’s plugin).

Here’s what you need to get started:

  • Account → Jabber or XMPP
  • Username → foo (some clients need the full address, so add @chat.facebook.com if it doesn’t seem to work)
  • Server → chat.facebook.com
  • Port → 5222

I hope you don’t need any suggestion about the password… just remember to de-select SSL and check Ignore SSL certificate errors if available. Logging enables the web interface too.

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Google Buzz and XFN integration

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Google BuzzYesterday presented to the world with a conference streamed on : its full registration is yet available too.

I followed all the launch event with enthusiasm: my fears weren’t confirmed. Google Buzz won’t be a replacement, but it’s better than FriendFeed — I left months ago.

I’m still waiting for Buzz availability in Italy, but its s are yet ready to be implemented (even if it’s not active in your country): let’s see how to integrate them in a web site.

The main feature you’d like to make us of is : it consists in an extension to show off your conversations. Unfortunately, it’s not complete yet.

Anyway, it’s possible to claim sites on your Google profile: as described in the guide, it uses to recognize your ownership via crawling.

First of all, make sure to have added your desired site on your profile: I’ve already done it on mine. You should find it with auto-discovery too… and isn’t really important what kind of documents it provides.

So add the XFN’s profile attribute to your head page element (‘ blogs already have it by default):

<head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11">

Of course, you must own a Google Profile yet: who doesn’t? If you didn’t, choose a username for it and add the next link inside your page head element:

<link rel="me" href="http://www.google.com/profiles/foo" type="text/html"/>

Replace foo with your chosen username: the next page crawling will do the trick. Right now, this isn’t “so” useful: you’ll enjoy it with and possibly when ready.

These lines of code just ensure that your web site is connected with Google Buzz: in the near future you’ll add more, for example to share your blog comments on Google.

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Safer Internet Day 2010: think before you post

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Safer Internet Day 2010Today in the is the : to be sincere, I’m not so convinced on the importance of these events… but its purposes are sharable.

This year the slogan is , focusing social network sharing and UGCs: a funny video on is self-explanatory.

I think that the main goal will be to provide effective filters for children: actually, there’s no real way to protect them against dangerous contents.

One of these methods is the Google’s strict filtering: it’s far from being enough. Another useful resource is a campaign by Kaspersky Lab called Stop Digital Pollution.

That’s all good for prevention, but what about censorship? Most of web filters are no longer maintained and I don’t know open resources.

An interesting article comes from : I think that privacy settings are very important and I agree with Will Gardner, admin of digizen — and CEO of the Facebook’s Safety Advisory Board too.

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Why scheduling posts in the past

Monday, February 8th, 2010

I noticed this by chance: scheduling posts in the past is the fastest way to ping them across services. Feeds update immediately, while publishing live and/or in the future requires some minutes.

I don’t think that this applies just for , because the main advantages come from : it notifies faster with the ’s service — in the form of http://goo.gl/fb/foo.

I didn’t notice any affection for the ’s notes (I use to notify my fan pages), but I’m pretty sure it works for too.

Just “pretty”, because I’m still waiting for this blog to be reviewed as needed by the new claiming method. I don’t like it at all… anyway, you only need to schedule your post some minutes before.

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