<CONTENT /> v.4

Click here for the ClassCaster audio.

Elmer talking for length, goes for 8:42. Recorded via SIP softphone.

BetaNews | Study: Searchers Use Multiple Engines
“58 percent of Google users use a second search engine, the lowest of the top three search engines, while 70 percent of MSN users and 71 percent of Yahoo users turn to another of the top three.“

Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report
“…you can do something about the part where they mess with your website, adding links you didn’t create.

Namely, you can download this script from Threadwatch, install said script on your server, and link to it from the of your web pages.“

Much has been said elsewhere about the antics of the new Google toolbar, but at least you can fight back.

Click here for the ClassCaster audio.

John is at Rutgers::Newark today and he’s going to do a quick demo of what we have for ClassCaster. Should work just fine:)

MapPoint Developer Center: MapPoint Web Service Technical Articles: Consuming MapPoint Web Service in PHP
“Learn how to consume MapPoint Web Service by using PHP and the NuSoap toolkit. This article is accompanied by sample code that illustrates how to implement a simple proximity-locator application.“

The sample code looks pretty straight forward. Of course MapPoint costs money to use…

GROKLAW

“WIPO is offering free online courses starting next week in what lawyers like to call “intellectual property“

CALI has thought of doing this sort of thing, but as a serious of lessons, not so much as a complete course.

freshmeat.net: Project details for mod_vhs
“mod_vhs is an Apache 2.0 Web server module allowing mass virtual hosting without the need for file-based configuration. The virtual host paths are translated from any database supported by libhome at request time from MySQL, LDAP, PAM, or a system password file.“

This may be of use for Harolds little project:)

Click here for the ClassCaster audio.

The New York Times > Technology > For a Start-Up, Visions of Profit in Podcasting
“The primarily amateur Internet audio medium known as podcasting will take a small, hopeful step on Friday toward becoming the commercial Web’s next big thing.

That step is planned by Odeo, a five-person start-up that is based in a walk-up apartment in this city’s Mission District and was co-founded by a Google alumnus. The company plans to introduce a Web-based system that is aimed at making a business of podcasting - the process of creating, finding, organizing and listening to digital audio files that range from living-room ramblings to BBC newscasts.“

The guys behind Odeo are Evan Williams and Noah Glass, responsible for Blogger and AudioBlogger respectively. Seems like they may be up to something that looks to tie the various pieces of podcasting together, at least that’s what Dave Winer thinks. It is intersting to see all of this energy in this space even as I managed to push out ClassCaster.

Oh, but wait, I haven’t exactly explained ClassCaster yet. Well here’s the pitch: grab a phone, dial a number, record a lecture or an analysis of something for your class, hangup, go to your blog and listen to it. All done with Asterisk, VoicePulse DID, MetaWeblog API, and 67 lines of PERL. It is nice and it works. No it needs a pretty dress:) We’ll tie it to our database and offer it up to CALI members and release the idea into the wild…

BoleyBlogs! - Paul L. Boley Law Library
“The Federal Judicial Center’s already solid Federal Judges Biographical Database continues to expand and improve.

The databases provides updated “information about all judges who have served on the U.S. District Courts, the U.S. Courts of Appeals, the Supreme Court and other life-tenured courts since 1789.“

InfoWorld: IBM, Zend lift PHP in development deal: February 25, 2005: By Ed Scannell : APPLICATION_DEVELOPMENT : APPLICATIONS : NETWORKING : WEB_SERVICES
“Hoping to spur its open source development strategies, IBM (Profile, Products, Articles) has announced a deal with Zend Technologies (Profile, Products, Articles) to create what it believes is the first integrated programming solution using the Web-based PHP language. IBM also committed to delivering at least 30 existing software projects to open source developers.

The agreement with Zend calls for the integration of two open source technologies, namely IBM’s Cloudscape database and Zend’s PHP development environment. The combined technologies will create Zend Core for IBM, which will serve as an “out-of-the-box” PHP development and production environment that allows corporate users to develop, deploy, and manage open source applications.“

Copernic Desktop Search 1.5 (beta) review by PC Magazine
“A powerful and flexible desktop search tool. CDS 1.5’s search-as-you-type gets fast results, with search refinement available for content-specific data fields. It’s an excellent choice and the very best choice for those using Windows 98 or Me, or e-mailing with Thunderbird or Eudora. We wish it indexed files contained in ZIP archives, though.“

Firefox Gets Major Security Makeover
“The Mozilla Foundation last Thursday rolled out a major security update to fix several known cross-site scripting and domain-spoofing vulnerabilities in the upstart Firefox browser.

The nonprofit foundation said the new Firefox 1.0.1 was rushed out to provide a temporary fix for the IDN (International Domain Name) bug that was first flagged earlier this month.“

Click here for the ClassCaster audio.

Click here for the ClassCaster audio.

Library Stuff - Make Your Own Search Bookmarklet
“The other day, my aggregator led me to a tool that allows users to create their own search bookmarklets. With the click of a button on the browser, you can search almost any engine. I made two. One for LS and the other for my home library.“

Scripting News: 2/24/2005
“AP supports RSS. Welcome! “

Gibson Digital Guitar - A packet of MaGIC powder
“The digital pickup is built right in, and it sends a digital signal to a breakout box (called BoB) which converts to analog. Makes sense.

Then some lights started to go on. You can output a single analog signal made up of all six strings. Or, you can output two groups of three strings (hi-lo split). Or, you can output each string individually. Anyone with six guitar amps will be trying out some wild spacial effects that would put a sixties stereo guitar to shame.“

All made possible by the open source spec MaGIC that is intended to handle lots of audio and control data in real-time using plain old cat-5. I hope this cathes on.

InfoWorld: Microsoft to unveil new IM, video conferencing tools: February 24, 2005: By : APPLICATION_DEVELOPMENT : APPLICATIONS
“Company Chairman Bill Gates will attend a live event in San Francisco, along with Anoop Gupta, Microsoft’s vice president of RTC, according to a Microsoft representative in the U.K.

The executives will lay out their strategy for the division and show off new technologies, the representative said. Simultaneous launches will take place in London and other cities, with Gates and Gupta broadcast over a live link, possibly demonstrating Microsoft’s new video conferencing tool, the representative suggested.“

Click here for the ClassCaster audio.

Click here for the ClassCaster audio.

Click here for the ClassCaster audio.

Click here for the ClassCaster audio.

Click here for the ClassCaster audio.

Click here for the ClassCaster audio.

Library Stuff - iPod Shuffles @ Your Library
:Booker from The Centered Librarian notes that the South Huntington Public Library (here on Long Island) has started to circulate iPod Shuffles to audio books preloaded in them.”

This is not so surprising when one notes that the iPod Shuffle homepage says “Play MP3, AAC and audiobooks” right there in the features.

Microsoft Confirms IE Phishing Flaw
“Software engineers at Microsoft Corp.’s security research team have confirmed the existence of a bug in the Internet Explorer browser that opens the door to URL spoofing attacks.
The flaw, which has been widely reported on public mailing lists, can be exploited by a malicious attacker to spoof the URL of a pop-up advertisement and has been confirmed on a fully patched system with Internet Explorer 6.0 and Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2.”

[teknoids] Bounty for XML-RPC implementations (LONG)

I thought I’d try this as a way to stir up any developers out there in teknoids land and get some needed reference implementations to help folks use the CALI web services API.

Apple Refreshes iPod Mini and Photo
“Apple updated their iPod lineup today. They added a $249 6GB iPod Mini and reduced the price of the 4GB model to $199. They’ve also dropped the gold color from their line up and made the remaining three colors more vibrant. The “silver” iPod Mini remains unchanged – it still matches the aluminum used in Apple’s other products.”

The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > Basics: Bloggers Add Moving Images to Their Musings
“People can now transmit photos and video taken with hand-helds or cellphones directly to the host sites. Several free services are available, including SnapNPost.com, TextAmerica.com and Buzznet (buzznet.com). You create an account, choose a gallery address (for example, www.snapnpost.com/your-username/), and provide some information about your phone model and wireless service to configure the service. TextAmerica provides a premium service for $50 a year that lets you secure your gallery with a password.”

The article goes off on vid and pics but deosn’t mention audio. Is posting phone pics the nexct step for ClassCaster?

Slashdot | New Open Source VoIP PBX
“It looks like Asterisk isn’t the only open source PBX game in town anymore. sipX, as the name implies, is a SIP-only PBX project released under the LGPL. A noteworthy feature is the inclusion of an out-of-the-box web-based management console. Read more about the release over at Voxilla.”

I’ve been working with Asterisk quite a bit the past few weeks for a little project that CALI will soon launch. This /. piece is good because the comment do a nice job of mentioning other Linux PBX projects and discussing the features of these compared to Asterisk.