Month: October 2003

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24: Too much of a good thing?

Mom taught me that moderation was usually the wise choice, and that even a good thing good be spoilt by too much of it. For the past couple television seasons, the one “good thing” that I made a point of watching was Fox’s 24. The first season was innovative and intense. Jack Bauer saved the president and his reputation. In the second season, the show’s “hook” (each episode is one consecutive hour of a single 24 hour period) grew tired, and the perils of Jack’s daughter Kim brought moans of disbelief. Season three begins tonight at 9pm on Fox (the first episode commercial free again… sort of). But will it prove to be too much of a good thing? Will I end up with that feeling of regret at having eaten too much at the company potluck (or worse)?

I’ll check it out. In spite of the campiness of Kim’s peril-prone misadventures; despite the predictable hourly cliffhanger; I’ll watch (for a while) and see. I have to. Besides, I need to find out why the president didn’t die when infected with the flesh-eating virus in last season’s final episode.

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Another Room 5 Production

Room 5, for those who don’t know it, is what we affectionately call the home office. A church we used to attend had a room by the same name, and the choir stored their miscellaneous junk in there. Our Room 5 served a similar purpose when we first moved here. That, plus the fact that it was the fifth bedroom helped the name to “stick.” Today, Room 5 now works pretty well and only suffers from occasional project-related clutter. Room 5 is home to three computers: Sparky, Monster and Sparkle, and occasionally my laptop from the office. Needless to say, it’s a good place to be on chilly winter days, but not so good on hot summer days.

At any rate, I’ve finally starting putting together the pieces of what a friend suggestion should be called Room 5 Productions; a switchboard for the collection of sites I’m involved with. I don’t have a clever domain (yet), but I have setup BigBlueNetwork.

Along with the new network hub, I’ve installed phpAdsNew. This has to be the most incredible open-source ad serving system I’ve ever seen. In fact, I’d say this system rivals the commercial systems I’ve seen from companies like FastClick and Commision Junction. To top it all off, it has better documentation than I’ve seen for many commercial applications. If you’re at all interested in setting up your own ad server, do not hesitate; do not waiver; do not delay. Just use this software.

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Image Gallery, Part II

The test is working well enough at MessengerMods that I’m going to slowly begin opening it up to a larger audience. Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from going there now, but I haven’t done anything to really publicize it yet. I’d like to get a bit more content in there to see the site first. I’m also still working on the layout. Yes, there will be some form of advertising in there, but I’ll try to keep it as non-invasive as possible (i.e. Google AdSense).

The good news is that 4images Gallery is a champ! Very full-featured, very easy to install and run, and very easy to modify. I still have some things to learn about it, like creating different sized thumbnails for emoticons versus display pics, but I’m ready to say this package is the one. Highly recommended!

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An Image Gallery Experiment

One of the projects I’m working on involves a sort of image gallery. It will allow people to submit their own images, rate images, and track the most popular, either by download or rating. I could spend a month writing a system, or use one of the various image gallery systems already available. After searching around at HotScripts, SitePoint forums and a few other places, I finally decided to start by testing 4images Gallery.

4images Gallery is free for non-commercial use and uses PHP script and mySQL for the database. The program looks very solid, and my only hesitation in using it was that the system is developed by a German company and finding English-language support takes a bit of work. Not much; just a bit. In the end I had to download the core scripts plus an English language pack. I copied all the files to the free web site I setup up at www.1and1.com (an excellent deal available only through the end of this year).

Once the files are copied, you simply run the install.php and answer the prompts. You’ll need to know your mySQL database host name, database name and password, and setup an initial admin account for 4images. In literally a minute or two it was up-and-running. Very easy.

I was immediately able to create categories and upload images. But oddly, the thumbnail images weren’t getting created. I little investigation into the admin console and I found you first have to select which component the script should use to hand the image manipulation tasks. Once that was set, I was able to quickly and easily generate thumbnails.

You can supposedly integrate this to a small extent with Invision Power Board, but it really only amounts to sharing the membership directory. 4images can be skinned, but it does not leverage IPB skins.

Curious? Check out my test site and help me out by posting something, then leave some comments so I know what you love or hate about it.

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Blogs and Knowledge Management

One of the more interesting seminars I attended at KM World dealt with the opportunities to use blogging behind the firewall. Of course, blogs such as this one tend to ramble, but a well-focused, topical blog can provide two things that help employees deal with info glut: human filtering that gleans the really valuable nuggets from all of the information on a subject, and contextualizing that information with storytelling and personal perspective.

Blogs are easy to create, even easier to maintain, and can bridge the gap between adhoc communication such as email or instant messages, and structured knowledge stores.

This got me thinking. With all of the excellent tools on the market, many of which are free and/or open source, why not create an entire knowledge management system built using free components. Blogging software, forums, news and content management systems and RSS feeds could all become part of a KM package that even small companies or low-budget non-profit organizations could afford to implement.

What do you think? Am I out to lunch? In left field? Up a creek without a paddle? Let me know.

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Do you know the way to San Jose?

For the next few days I’ll be in San Jose, well, Santa Clara actually. I’m speaking at probably the biggest knowledge management conference around: KM World.

Putting aside the corporate buzz factor surrounding knowledge management, what KM is really all about is building subject-focus communities and helping the community members connect, communicate and collaborate. It’s a form of virtual community-building. There are many ways to do this, and knowledge management is a way of codifying the process.

I’ll be presenting on Tuesday, October 14th at 3pm. If I see or hear anything noteworthy, it’ll find it’s way here.

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Converting a Sony DV Camera to a Webcam

Those who have known me for a while probably know I have a couple of webcams I run over on BigBlueBall. I’ve used a number of cams over the years, including several Logitech webcams, an Intel and even a cheap-o off-brand cam. If you think all webcams are the same, you are wrong. Generally speaking, as in the rest of life, you get what you pay for.

Case in point. My cheap-o camera gets used at work. If you look at Webcam #2, you can see the colors appear yellowish. I’ve tried and tried to adjust this, but that’s the closest I can get it to accurate color representation.

In contrast, my Logitech cam generates an image with much truer colors. It’s also a little more “crisp.”

Never one to be content with the status quo, I wondered if I could put my usually idle Sony DV camera to work as a part-time webcam. I’ve used the DV cam to encode and edit video before, bringing it directly in through the camera’s Firewire connection. But could it be used as a webcam? Actually, yes. There’s a nifty program called WebcamDV that lets you treat any DV cam with a Firewire connection as a regular webcam. You can use the camera in either camera or VTR mode (if you want to broadcast a recording).

Keeping the camera from going into standby mode required a little research. The solution? Pop-open the camera as if you were going to change tapes, and leave it open. It never leaves standby. Now I just have to figure out how to protect it from dust.

Are the results worth the effort? Well, the picture quality is phenomenal, even in low light. You can zoom or even apply effects. Using the DV cam as a webcam generates better images with accurate colors and fine detail. Back on the webcam page, check out Webcam #1 and compare it to Webcam #2. Click the image for a full size version and the difference will be clear.

Using WebcamDV your camera can be used by pretty much any software that would normally use a webcam, including instant messengers, NetMeeting, Paltalk, and others. If you’ve got a DV camera, put it to work.