wa page 37 - Dave's Blog

Search
My timeline on Mastodon

Linking to or Embedding a Portion of a Video

2009 Jun 19, 10:12

I'm excited by HTML5's video tag as are plenty of other people. Once that comes about and once media fragments are adopted, linking to or embedding a portion of a video will be as easy as using the correct fragment on your URL thanks to the Media Fragments WG who has been hard at work since the last time I looked at fragments.

However, until that work is embraced by browsers, embedding portions of videos will continue to require work specific to the site from which you are embedding the video. On the YouTube blog they wrote about how to "link to the best parts in your videos", using a fragment syntax like '#t=1m15s' to start playback of the associated video at 1 minute and 15 seconds. Of course if you want to embed part of a Hulu video it will be different. Although I haven't found an authoritative source describing the URL syntax to use, you can follow Hulu's video guide on linking to part of a video and note how the URL changes as you adjust the slider on the time-line. It looks like their syntax for linking to a Hulu page is to add '?c=[start time in seconds](:[end time in seconds])' with the colon and end time optional in order to link to a portion of a video. And the syntax for embedding appears to be "http://www.hulu.com/embed/.../[start time in seconds](/[end time in seconds])" again with the end time optional.

For more sites, check out the Media Fragments WG's list of existing applications' proprietary fragmenting schemes.

PermalinkCommentshulu technical media fragment wg url youtube video html5 uri fragment

Mostly Moved Into New House

2009 Jun 19, 8:07

New House ExteriorThe weekend before the previous, Sarah and I moved our belongings into the new house and spent a lot of time packing and unpacking, and now we're officially living there (interested Facebook friends can find my new address or just ask me). The Saturday of the previous weekend Sarah's family came over for a half house warming and half Sarah's birthday celebration which was fun and served to force us to do more unpacking and forced me to take trips to Home Depot, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc. On Sunday, Sarah and I went out to her favorite restaurant and she opened her gifts that I had to hide to keep her from opening before her birthday. Happy Birthday Sarah!

While at Home Depot I had trouble finding what I was actually looking for, but I did find everything I needed to terminate the Cat5e cables that are wired in the house. Each room has a wall plate with two RJ45 sockets, both sockets wired to Cat5e cable. One of the cables per plate was already hooked up to a standard phone service punchdown board and the other cables per plate were all hanging unterminated next to the punchdown board. So now I've terminated them all with RJ45 connectors and hooked them up to my hub, wireless router, cable modem, etc. I had the same sort of fun setting all that up as I did playing with model train sets as a child. Hopefully no therapy will be required to figure out why that is.

PermalinkCommentspersonal2 train address sarah house new-house birthday

IE6 denial message for Momentile.com on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

2009 Jun 15, 4:46"This was such a fun project - this is what users of Internet Explorer 6 see when they visit Momentile." Funny image. There's just two things I don't like about this: (a) it makes me feel sorry for IE6 when the only thing anybody should feel in relation to IE6 is the urge to upgrade to IE8 and (b) I hate it when websites get all preachy and try to convert you to another browser.PermalinkCommentshumor webdesign ie6 ie browser comic

Video: Project Natal invades Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

2009 Jun 12, 12:37"Last night on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Microsoft's Kudo Tsunoda brought along his baby, Project Natal, and let Jimmy Fallon, John Krasinski, and Stephen Moyer go to town. The footage has made its way onto Hulu and while these are pretty much the same demos for Ricochet and Burnout Paradise that we saw at E3 last week, they're still impressive."PermalinkCommentsvideo humor videogame natal xbox360 jimmy-fallon

Analysis of the Green Dam Censorware System

2009 Jun 12, 12:20"We have discovered remotely-exploitable vulnerabilities in Green Dam, the censorship software reportedly mandated by the Chinese government. Any web site a Green Dam user visits can take control of the PC. According to press reports, China will soon require all PCs sold in the country to include Green Dam. This software monitors web sites visited and other activity on the computer and blocks adult content as well as politically sensitive material."PermalinkCommentscensorship china hack security internet greendam

Paleo-Future: Robots vs. Musicians (1931)

2009 Jun 12, 9:16"This ad from the March 9, 1931 Simpson's Leader-Times (Kittanning, PA) is in no way subtle. The consequences of using recorded music at theatre performances rather than live musicians are, "Monotony in the theatre - corruption of taste - destruction of art." Yikes."PermalinkCommentsvia:ethan_t_hein music advertising technology robot copyright

Why we link: A brief rundown of the reasons your news organization needs to tie the Web together - Publishing 2.0

2009 Jun 12, 9:02"Because linking to sources and resources is the key gesture to being a citizen of the Web and not just a product on the Web...If, on the other hand, you want to embrace the traits that make blogs, Twitter, and so many other online communication tools a vital part of the daily life of your readers, your news site shouldn't feel like an endpoint in the conversation. It should feel like the beginning."PermalinkCommentsvia:sambrook journalism news internet web article link

OpenSearchDescriptionToHTML Tool

2009 Jun 10, 3:36

I've made an OpenSearchDescriptionToHTML XSLT that given an OpenSearch description file produces HTML that describes that file, lets you install it, or search with it. For example, here's a Google OpenSearch description that uses my OpenSearchDescriptionToHTML XSLT.

I had just created an OpenSearch description for WolframAlpha at work and was going about the process of adding another install link to my search provider page so that I could install it. Thinking about it, I realized I could apply an XSLT to the OpenSearch description XML to produce the HTML automatically so I wouldn't have to modify additional documents everytime I create and want to install a new OpenSearch description. While I was in there writing the XSLT I figure why not let the user try out searching with the OpenSearch description file too. And lastly I made the XSLT apply to itself to produce HTML describing its own usage.

Incidentally, I added WolframAlpha at work to replace my FileInfo search provider for the purposes of searching for information about particular Unicode characters. For instance, look at WolframAlpha's lovely output for this search for "Bopomofo zh".

PermalinkCommentstechnical xml wolframalpha opensearchdescriptiontohtml xslt opensearch

Ceci n'est pas un Bob: The Zone of Essential Risk

2009 Jun 10, 12:17"Bruce pointed out in his return email that while the fraud pattern was a good match for escrow, the transaction size wasn't: since the item exchanged in the eBay transaction he highlighted was sold for only $500, the price of an escrow agent would have been hard to justify. He's right."PermalinkCommentsblog security economics article bruce-schneier Bob-Blakley ebay

High Five Escalator at Improv Everywhere

2009 Jun 4, 11:08"For our latest mission, Agent Lathan gave out 2,000 high fives by standing next to a subway escalator during the morning rush. Five additional agents spread out along the adjacent stairs, holding signs that prepared commuters for the upcoming high five fun."PermalinkCommentshumor improv-everywhere high-five escalator video youtube nyc subway

E309: New Super Mario Bros Wii, the trailer

2009 Jun 3, 3:40The New Super Mario Bros for the Wii looks cool. I always wanted the multiplayer featured here in the previous games.PermalinkCommentsfor:hellosarah mario wii nintendo video videogame

frontline: the persuaders | PBS

2009 Jun 2, 5:11"THE PERSUADERS: What's going on in the world of today's marketers and advertisers? What are the new and surprising methods they're using to decipher who we are and what we want? And where is this taking us?"PermalinkCommentsvideo advertising business propaganda documentary pbs psychology marketing

Who you calling boring?

2009 Jun 2, 4:00"A notice was sent out by the real estate department with the provocative subject line Campus notification - Building 7: Marking Boring Locations."PermalinkCommentshumor english language boring

The Artvertiser

2009 Jun 2, 12:51"The Artvertiser is an urban, hand-held, augmented-reality project exploring on-site substitution of advertising content for the purposes of exhibiting art." There's some videos on the site of their prototype software. I've got a similar idea I want to try with my G1.PermalinkCommentsvideo art design advertising aug augmented-reality

The Ultimate Lock Picker Hacks Pentagon, Beats Corporate Security for Fun and Profit

2009 Jun 1, 3:21"Marc Weber Tobias can pick, crack, or bump any lock. Now he wants to teach the world how to break into military facilities and corporate headquarters."PermalinkCommentsvia:boingboing hack diy business politics security video lockpicking lock crime wired

What happened to me and the new girl (or: "The girl who cried Webmaster") - The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

2009 Jun 1, 2:03Wow, read this without expectations of what its about. This is the second identity-theft/Internet/personal-relationships story I've read. It makes me think we need VeriSign to do cert verification for personal relationships but then I must remind myself that this must not be very common...PermalinkCommentsvia:swannman identity identity-theft story psychology web blog joey-devilla

A Brief History of Microsoft's Live Search's New Domain Bing

2009 Jun 1, 11:07
Logo for bing! from 2003 via The Wayback MachineLogo for BING* from 2006 via The Wayback MachineKimberly Saia's flickr photo of the Microsoft bing search logo.
When I heard that Live Search is now Bing one of my initial thoughts was how'd they get that domain name given the unavailability of pronouncable four letter .COM domain names. Well, the names been used in the past. Here now, via the Wayback Machine is a brief, somewhat speculative, and ultimately anticlimactic history of bing.com:

The new name reminds me of the show Friends. Also, I hope they get a new favicon - I don't enjoy the stretched 'b' nor its color scheme.

PermalinkCommentsmicrosoft technical domain history search archive dns bing

Infrared patterns and paint to screw with tourist video/photos | Brad Ideas

2009 May 29, 9:17"Anyway, the idea is to find techniques, be they arrays of bright infrared LEDs, or paints that shine well in infrared but are not obvious in visible light, and create invisible graffiti that only shows up in tourist photos and videos."PermalinkCommentshumor graffiti ir ir-paint magic tourist photography

Infrared Goggles for $10, inexpensive IR filters, SCIENCE HOBBYIST

2009 May 29, 8:49Howto on goggles that block out everything but the small range of IR that's barely visible. "INFRARED GOGGLES FOR UNDER $10, A Human IR Vision Experiment, Sept. 14, 2002 Bill Beaty"PermalinkCommentsir infrared hack howto science photography diy hardware light

Big Mess o' Wires - BMOW 1

2009 May 28, 1:12A homemade CPU and computer. I love the primary colors on the mess of wires. The close up shot is lovely.PermalinkCommentshowto diy hardware computer electronics cpu homemade maker-faire
Older EntriesNewer Entries Creative Commons License Some rights reserved.