Geotagging blog posts
Does anyone know if there is a way to add geotags into blog posts via any of the weblog API's?
Another thing that we need to figure out is how to add those tags into blog RSS feeds. The goal is to get Planet to become aware of the location of each post, so we can create a map of them.
I found this plugin that does something what I want, but there's still some research to be done to make this work..
Edit: Looks like the above mentioned GeoRSS plugin for Wordpress actually does encode the coordinates to the feeds, which is neat. Now, does anyone know a way to actually adding the location information in the first place, by using a blog API that Gnome Blog can use? There's a nice UI in Wordpress web editor itself, that can be used to set location, but I want GeoClue to set it automatically for me.
Gee, I wonder…
You'd think most blogs have a "post has more than n links => I think this is spam!" -filtering now and the morons wouldn't bother, but I was wrong..
Testing maemo-blogger…
This post comes from the N770 with the native tool. Hmm. (edit: Looks like it worked 
) Testing blog tools is kinda awkward when you are syndicated in at least two planets.. Sorry about that
Hmm.
I think I would like to see at least a few things implemented, here are some suggestions:
- It's nice that I can add images to the post. I am not sure if it works with my Wordpress installation though. But it would be nice if I could set a predefined maximum size that the images get scaled to. Apply a slight unsharp mask sharpening afterwards too for the nice crisp look..
- It would be sweet if posting the blog would not freeze the whole UI, but would rather show a spinner animation and would tell me it's going to take a bit of time..
- I think "source view" could be accessible via a menu, it feels a bit too prominent in the UI right now. I'd rather just use the wysiwyg view most of the time - the source is a last resort and the tabs take one line off the screen.
- It should wrap the lines (though I know this must be planned, it's very early version anyway so its a bit unfair to complain )
All in all, it worked, so that's nice.
Gnome website and CMS questions
So, the Gnome website apparently needs a new engine.
Henri wrote a nice analysis and commentary of Midgard CMS and how it would work for this case. Check it out.
I think we should also think a bit deeper here: we could possibly have some CMS-like functionality on the desktop as a method of sharing information, perhaps calendars etc. It would be nice for example, to be able to use something like zeroconf/bonjour (or whatever the "hey, I can see people in the same LAN! -stuff is called) and have a nice "My public stuff" -webpage generated by the desktop. I know this example is not particularly great, but since Midgard uses some Gnome components already, maybe there's something we could think of.
And maybe if we use it on gnome.org, there might be some interesting components on midgard side and some desktop tools on gnome side to make it easier to share information?
Quick maps
Stumbled on this pretty nice site which lets you plot stuff on a map, using the google maps API and lets you either link to the map (like this) or embed it on your own site (let's see how this works, below - and whether planet likes it or not..)
Edit: Ok, looks like planet does not include the embedded iframe, perhaps it's a wise move to avoid abuse.. it would have been nice though. Jeff, maybe you can have a look at it sometime? For everyone interested who is reading this through planet gnome or maemo, click the post title above to see the embedded map as well. For those interested, it's our flight route we had on saturday while visiting the annual pilots' fly-in in Jämijärvi, Finland. Some photos of the event can be found here. (heh, I used *all* my blog categories in this post, except for "work", since I am on vacation, of course.. 
)
This would have been handy during Guadec, for the ice cream case. So much easier than taking screenshots and using the Gimp to plot stuff on the map..
Now, what if this was combined to some "friends" -system so that everyone who was a member of the "guadec" group could have added their own interesting notes and tags on the map? That would have been very interesting...
Free web services
Luis, I agree with you - we need to have free alternatives too. But the small, open web service lacks one important aspect - the other people you know and love. I think the reason most people are excited about Flickr, for example, is because it is of course easy to use, but also that it is so easy to share your own photos with it. You have an account, and most of your friends do too. All that is left is a matter of finding their usernames and checking the "friend" checkbox. Or like at Guadec, someone just added a group and came up with a tag, and people started tagging their photos with it - so it was possible to follow the feed from everyone.
Yes, we do need free services. But it would be very important that we get this social part right. The services need to network somehow, and also they need to somehow link to those big ones. It's about people communicating, after all things.
This is what we do with planet gnome, it networks our blogs, of which most are free software, using a common API and protocol (RSS). This way we can share our ideas together. Otherwise it won't work. We need a way to "planet" our galleries and files too. But the stuff needs to also link with the Big Company's service, because our non-geek friends use that for now.
Testing..
Lets see whether this plugin works any better for geotagging..
Also, this was interesting.
Now we also need a way for the blog to remember my location, so I dont have to specify it for every post separately. Ideally of course, my desktop would update it through a xmlrpc api..
Wordpress and Geotagging
I found a Wordpress plugin that does geotagging of posts. I need to see how well it works and whether it tags the RSS feed with location as well. And whether there is an xmlrpc interface to set the location and whether it is possible to do it via the blog api - then my compute could do it automatically for me when I write a post from gnome blog applet or from the Nokia 770..
Then we can hack planet to support it with interesting ways - including the almost realtime hacker plotter. Am I the only one who thinks this stuff is cool?
GUADEC Photostream
So in my mad blogging spree, i started to add some photos to the GUADEC Flickr group. Check it out, it has quite a bit of content already. And also, add your pics too, and comment away
No major disasters in sight
I think the talk went quite well. Some of the interested folks didn't show up, which is understandable, when we remember their merry state at the party last night (don't worry, I still love you ) - besides, we had a quite interesting talk with Jeff and Glynn about this at the famous ice cream bar yesterday, before the party. (By the way, the guy at the bar looks more happy every day, and there are still varieties we haven't tried. Try the Roquefort icecream btw, if you are not easily scared, it rules.)
Anyway, interesting chatting around the subject, also with Robert of Telepathy fame. I think we need someone proficient with dbus and python/whatever and maybe sqlite to do a simple position service (freedesktop.org, maybe?) that can use either user input ("select city"), gps data from gpsd, plazes.com integration or some other future way of specifying location, holds the current location in a warm and fuzzy place and provides a simple API for applications to query for it. It should also log tracks with some sane interval so that one gets a "track record" of locations. The philosophy here would be: Give them the tools, they build cool stuff we never even dreamed about.
For those of you who werent in the talk, two food rations for the brain:
- Imagine if the world map of hackers in planet gnome was realtime? Like, currently we'd see this neat concentration of little dots in this little town of Villanova i Geltrú in Spain.. I would love that kind of stuff.
- Imagine searching "the presentation I wrote in London" with Beagle.
Wouldnt that rock? Interested folks, come talk to me and Henri. Check our photos in the program guide.
Update: Henri also blogged about the talk and also has the slides up for download for interested people.
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