Paul Scott on 2010-06-04 10:25:57 Comments (2) Tweet this

Instead of doing a follow Friday tweet (or 6), I have used @anywhere to enable folks to follow people from my site. Hover over the Twitter usernames to get the hypercard that allows you to follow these great people:

@cazpi
@dkeats
@charlvn
@jdtangney
@wesleynitsckie
@thebrianmanley
@capetown
@brandmonday
@karitz
@hennokruger
@smikobus
@corrie206
@alastairotter
@kmf
@janbraai
@nnenna

Much easier and cleaner yes?

Paul Scott on 2010-10-09 18:03:26 Comments (2) Tweet this

How to blog to your Wordpress or Chisimba powered blog by mobile phone

Most modern blogging software uses a standard for sharing posts called the MetaWebLog API. Wordpress and Chisimba (www.chisimba.com) both use this standard to allow communications between blogs, both with posting of new content as well as editing and managing your posts with some pretty neat desktop utilities.

So far, however, this API hasn't really been available as a mobile endpoint, which is why I decided to do something about that!

In South Africa mobile XMPP is pretty ubiquitious in the form of the really popular MXit application. MXit uses pretty standard XMPP stanzas to communicate with other XMPP services (like Google's GTalk) which is compatible with the system.

In order to blog via your mobile phone, you will need an Instant Messaging (IM) client (like MXit) or simply use your desktop or web client that you would normally use for instant messaging. Steps are as follows:

1. Open up your client and add chisimba.mxitpress@gmail.com as a contact

2. Register your blog by typing in register:yoururl.tld endpoint username password as a message. e.g. register:myblog.com /xmlrpc.php admin mypass. Remember that the username and password should be the details that you would normally use to log in to your blogging software to post a new article. For WordPress blogs the endpoint will be /xmlrpc.php and for Chisimba blogs, it will be /index.php?module=api

3. Once registered, you will get a message saying that you are now registered and are able to blog. Whenever the urge overcomes you, simply open up your mobile IM client and type a post. Posts are split into title and post content, so format it as title#content. e.g. This is my title#Some content that I would like to share with my readers...

That is it! Mobile blogging in 3 easy steps!
Thanks to @exmi and @dkeats on twitter for their help in testing!

Paul Scott on 2010-10-12 08:38:48 Comments (1) Tweet this

Semantic Herbaria

So @dkeats and I have been talking about Semantic Herbaria for quite a while now, and while I am doing a lot of work in this area, the idea has not been fully realised yet. As a start to it though, I have another pretty fun idea that will start creating the basis for it, as well as collecting linked data from users.

So the idea is as such:

1. Approach the National Botanical Gradens
2. Create a simple QR code to label each different species of plant in the gardens
3. Put up cheap little laminated signs with the QR code attached at the plant sites.
4. Have users scan the QR codes and add in comments, additional pictures, observations etc
5. Provide visitors to the gardens with some cool botanical info and images of the plant in different seasons etc
6. Use a Chisimba back end on a web server that serves up mobile pages of the data, as well as providing a decent web interface for casual browsers on the web.

Could be fun and a good way to create some additional interactive education whilst enjoying the gardens! Win for everyone!

Now, who do I speak to to get this done?

Paul Scott on 2010-10-15 06:55:21 Comments (2) Tweet this

Follow Friday post

I don't often do a Follow Friday post, and when I do, I prefer to use the built in Chisimba @anywhere functionality to give myself a little more breathing room than the standard 140 chars, so here it is:

@hennokruger - good chats, good geek
@charlvn - one of the biggest geeks I know
@diekloon - WordPress and blogging geek
@dkeats - Chisimba geek and one of the most intelligent people I know
@cazpi - Photo geek and mom
@byronrode - photo and design geek. Also a genuinely awesome dude
@thebrianmanley - Semweb geek, thinker, great fun
@sznq - SEM and SEO, becoming geekier
@rubygold - all round geek, news geek.
@wesleylynch - head geek at RealmDigital
@weblearning - eLearning geek
@corrie206 - super geek
@HilzFuld - marketing geek, fanboi
@sbestbier - beer drinking geek and undergeek to @wesleylynch
@exmi - Blogging geek that helped test MXitPress on WordPress
@jdtangney - Old school uber geek (greybeard and legend)
@arcainus - BOFH geek
@ramereth - BOFH uber geek
@sheltren - OSUOSL geek
@gchaix - eLearning geek