Whenever you write something with http://www.xyz/ in it, or x.y@blah.com most computers recognise that this is a web address or an email address and turn them into an active link - clicking on them will open the web page or launch a new email message.
In Twitter, and in similar programmes, adding # in front of a word does two things. It turns the word into an active link (clicking on it from within Twitter or Twitter app will take you to the search page containing all instances of that hashtag) and it also collects up all instances of it that can be shown together (ie aggregates the tweets containing the hashtag).
This means that other aggregators, such as WTHashtag (What the Hashtag) or Twapperkeeper - examples below, can take the feed and present it on their page (ie syndicating the content on another page) - this is basically what RSS feeds do. RSS generally stands for 'really simple syndication'.
Examples
Twitter search, for #ADA2010 tag which corresponds to the American Diabetes Association conference tweets (note that # is expressed as %23) http://twitter.com/home#search?q=%23ada2010
wthashtag for ADA2010 (note that it picks up the #tag but removes the # from the URL)
http://wthashtag.com/Ada2010
Monday, 28 June 2010
Sunday, 27 June 2010
Puzzling inability to access wifi - hoping it's short lived
Neither my Acer Aspire One notebook nor my iPhone can connect to my wifi. In the case of the iPhone it persists in asking for the password, I put it in, it connects, a few seconds later it boots me off and asks again. With the notebook it connects by itself as and when it feels like and the connection persists for a few minutes. When I try and refresh the available wireless networks it fails to spot my Home Hub.
When I connect the cable up to the notebook the speed is fine (8mbps) and all works well, but it's a bit annoying being tethered.
Things that have changed recently are that I've signed up to something or other with BT that means my Broadband speed might increase, so possibly they are 'doing something' with my line. I happened to be out overnight earlier in the week so switched off the home hub for about 36 hours, can't imagine that's made any difference as I've done this before.
There's also been at least one Windows update in the last week which is a lot more likely, from previous experience, to muck things up.
I'm not sure if I should try and do anything - watching and waiting might be the better option at the moment.
Kind friends have suggested I tweak the channel on my wifi card - I've actually no idea how to do this and, in a rare Google fail, I've not found the instructions. But I'm not sure that tweaking my laptop will help as I'd also have to do something to my iPhone and I've really no idea how to configure that.
During the five minutes or so in which I've written this post I've had the pop ups telling me that I'm connected with an excellent signal and then telling me that it cannot connect to my preferred network.
Immensely frustrating!
HomeHub-related suggestions most welcome.
When I connect the cable up to the notebook the speed is fine (8mbps) and all works well, but it's a bit annoying being tethered.
Things that have changed recently are that I've signed up to something or other with BT that means my Broadband speed might increase, so possibly they are 'doing something' with my line. I happened to be out overnight earlier in the week so switched off the home hub for about 36 hours, can't imagine that's made any difference as I've done this before.
There's also been at least one Windows update in the last week which is a lot more likely, from previous experience, to muck things up.
I'm not sure if I should try and do anything - watching and waiting might be the better option at the moment.
Kind friends have suggested I tweak the channel on my wifi card - I've actually no idea how to do this and, in a rare Google fail, I've not found the instructions. But I'm not sure that tweaking my laptop will help as I'd also have to do something to my iPhone and I've really no idea how to configure that.
During the five minutes or so in which I've written this post I've had the pop ups telling me that I'm connected with an excellent signal and then telling me that it cannot connect to my preferred network.
Immensely frustrating!
HomeHub-related suggestions most welcome.
Dettol kills extremophiles. Fact. (Maybe)
Here we go. Another blog post to put down some thoughts before complaining to the Advertising Standards Authority about a strange claim made by Dettol in a recent advert.
I didn't get the exact phrasing but it seemed to be along the lines of bacteria can survive in lava so some of them are a bit indestructible but fear not, for Dettol can get rid of them on your kitchen surface.
I have some questions that I want to investigate, before having a formal whinge, which are...
1. Can bacteria survive in lava?
Lava's pretty hot (quite a bit hotter than those hydrothermal vents I think?) so I wouldn't be surprised if they'd struggle to survive in the sort of lava that's pumping out of an active volcano. Equally, bacteria have turned out to be fairly flexible in the range of environments they can surve in and Wikipedia has a long list of the various 'extremophiles' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophile), so maybe they can.
Of course, lava's only hot for a short time. It soon cools (and as an interesting aside the rate at which it cools determines the type of volcanic rock it produces). Cool lava can presumably contain the sort of bacteria that like to live inside rocks; apparently these are called endolithic bacteria. I don't know though if the bacteria move in at a particular temperature, or if they manage fine at any temperature of lava, even at its hottest.
2. How common are these bacteria? Do they live on my kitchen surface?
I'm assuming the sorts of bacteria that like living in volcanic rock aren't the same ones that I'll find in my kitchen. It doesn't particularly matter if Dettol can kill these bacteria if the bacteria are nowhere to be found in my flat. Question 2b is 'can Dettol kill lava-dwelling endoliths?' which is not a question I expected to be asking myself when I woke up this morning.
3. Is it appropriate for Dettol to draw these inferences from 'badass' bacteria? (See Youtube comments)
@medtek and @jdc325 have kindly sent me a link to the original advert so I can check the exact phrasing and amend this blog post later (those dishes won't wash themselves...)
Dettol Complete Clean Advert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCOSFTugYZM
Clearly they are implying that some bacteria are 'tough' and require firm handling, but I thought the tone of the ad was a bit overkill. Question 3b is 'how effective is soap and water at getting rid of surface bacteria?'
I didn't get the exact phrasing but it seemed to be along the lines of bacteria can survive in lava so some of them are a bit indestructible but fear not, for Dettol can get rid of them on your kitchen surface.
I have some questions that I want to investigate, before having a formal whinge, which are...
1. Can bacteria survive in lava?
Lava's pretty hot (quite a bit hotter than those hydrothermal vents I think?) so I wouldn't be surprised if they'd struggle to survive in the sort of lava that's pumping out of an active volcano. Equally, bacteria have turned out to be fairly flexible in the range of environments they can surve in and Wikipedia has a long list of the various 'extremophiles' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophile), so maybe they can.
Of course, lava's only hot for a short time. It soon cools (and as an interesting aside the rate at which it cools determines the type of volcanic rock it produces). Cool lava can presumably contain the sort of bacteria that like to live inside rocks; apparently these are called endolithic bacteria. I don't know though if the bacteria move in at a particular temperature, or if they manage fine at any temperature of lava, even at its hottest.
2. How common are these bacteria? Do they live on my kitchen surface?
I'm assuming the sorts of bacteria that like living in volcanic rock aren't the same ones that I'll find in my kitchen. It doesn't particularly matter if Dettol can kill these bacteria if the bacteria are nowhere to be found in my flat. Question 2b is 'can Dettol kill lava-dwelling endoliths?' which is not a question I expected to be asking myself when I woke up this morning.
3. Is it appropriate for Dettol to draw these inferences from 'badass' bacteria? (See Youtube comments)
@medtek and @jdc325 have kindly sent me a link to the original advert so I can check the exact phrasing and amend this blog post later (those dishes won't wash themselves...)
Dettol Complete Clean Advert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCOSFTugYZM
Clearly they are implying that some bacteria are 'tough' and require firm handling, but I thought the tone of the ad was a bit overkill. Question 3b is 'how effective is soap and water at getting rid of surface bacteria?'
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
Making job recruitment a bit easier - suggestions
A short blog post arising because of my frustrations with the world not being as I would like it to be...
The English language affords us many words to get our points across but in the field of job vacancies its expansive repertoire might be more of a hindrance. As you may know, I run the @scicommjobs vacancies listing and have been collecting vacancies pages for employers of science communicators for the last seven years (http://is.gd/1KPor). Periodically I look at these pages to see if any new jobs are being advertised - many are also advertised in the mainstream media as well as certain mailing lists, but many are not.
In Jo World there would be an agreed word, perhaps 'jobs' and all websites would set their search engines so that searches for vacancies, recruitment, opportunities, 'work for us' and 'work with us' would all point towards 'jobs' and not return 'page not found'.
Secondly, all organisations would have a dedicated jobs page, possibly a sub-page of 'About Us' which most organisations already have. Some organisations advertise their jobs in the news section which is fine, but I can't see that it's a great deal of work to have a permanent page (even if it has nothing on it for ages until a vacancy appears).
Thirdly, let's pipe some RSS feeds from vacancies pages. I'd love to be able to send organisations' feeds to my blogpost* linked above so that when I look at it, the new jobs ping up - saves a bit of clicking. I think the benefits of this go beyond telling people there's a job that they may or may not want - the RSS adds content to the world, with your brand on it.
*I'm not actually sure if this is possible in Blogger, though it works quite well in Wikispaces http://skepticmedia.wikispaces.com/Events - I didn't add the Glasgow event (at time of writing one is coming up on 30 June), I merely added the widget that will update an RSS feed when a new event is posted.
Fourthly - and I accept that I might be on my own on this one - have an archive of all your job descriptions so people can see the range of jobs that your organisation has (even if not available) and can see, well in advance, the sorts of skills and experience required for a job that they may be interested in. This last point is primarily why the ScicommJobs Posterous exists - I've taken matters into my own hands ;-)
I think any or all of these would make it a little bit easier for people to find out about jobs, and to set up automated systems (reading RSS feeds) to keep an eye on what they're interested in.
The English language affords us many words to get our points across but in the field of job vacancies its expansive repertoire might be more of a hindrance. As you may know, I run the @scicommjobs vacancies listing and have been collecting vacancies pages for employers of science communicators for the last seven years (http://is.gd/1KPor). Periodically I look at these pages to see if any new jobs are being advertised - many are also advertised in the mainstream media as well as certain mailing lists, but many are not.
In Jo World there would be an agreed word, perhaps 'jobs' and all websites would set their search engines so that searches for vacancies, recruitment, opportunities, 'work for us' and 'work with us' would all point towards 'jobs' and not return 'page not found'.
Secondly, all organisations would have a dedicated jobs page, possibly a sub-page of 'About Us' which most organisations already have. Some organisations advertise their jobs in the news section which is fine, but I can't see that it's a great deal of work to have a permanent page (even if it has nothing on it for ages until a vacancy appears).
Thirdly, let's pipe some RSS feeds from vacancies pages. I'd love to be able to send organisations' feeds to my blogpost* linked above so that when I look at it, the new jobs ping up - saves a bit of clicking. I think the benefits of this go beyond telling people there's a job that they may or may not want - the RSS adds content to the world, with your brand on it.
*I'm not actually sure if this is possible in Blogger, though it works quite well in Wikispaces http://skepticmedia.wikispaces.com/Events - I didn't add the Glasgow event (at time of writing one is coming up on 30 June), I merely added the widget that will update an RSS feed when a new event is posted.
Fourthly - and I accept that I might be on my own on this one - have an archive of all your job descriptions so people can see the range of jobs that your organisation has (even if not available) and can see, well in advance, the sorts of skills and experience required for a job that they may be interested in. This last point is primarily why the ScicommJobs Posterous exists - I've taken matters into my own hands ;-)
I think any or all of these would make it a little bit easier for people to find out about jobs, and to set up automated systems (reading RSS feeds) to keep an eye on what they're interested in.
Saturday, 19 June 2010
Using IRC (internet relay chat) at conferences, to save hashtagged tweets
About 15 years ago I was a fairly regular user of IRC, at a sort of 'advanced amateur' level on one of the several #London channels; I forget which network though. I really enjoyed it, learned quite a lot about computery stuff and enjoyed the company (both on- and offline) of the chums I met there. I don't remember suddenly stopping using it, but as soon as I got going on Twitter I was reminded of it, and of the similarities.
The main difference though is in effort in getting started - Twitter is exceptionally easy to sign up to and get going, the work comes in connecting with people. With IRC you need to download a client, set it up and join a channel. There are a few commands you need to use as well - it's not difficult but requires a smidge more effort and is a shade geekier than Twitter. I've just used freenode for the first time - it wasn't in the list of available networks so I had to work out how to add it myself, again not difficult but a slight barrier to wider use.
I know that people use IRC as a backchannel at conferences, as well as Twitter, I just don't know if people have been IRCing at any of the conferences I've been to. I'd peg the Science Online ones in London as being likely candidates, but certainly on a much smaller scale if so. Possibly there are certain types of conferences, events or sessions that use IRC - not that surprisingly the #sciencehackday event is using it. The people who whizz high altitude balloons upwards also discuss matters geeky on their freenode channel. Possibly IRC is destined to stay outside the mainstream, unless there are lots of web-based IRC clients I don't know about (familiar only with Pirch and mIRC).
When I entered the #sciencehackday channel I noticed that a bot (robot) was sending anything from Twitter containing the hashtag #scihack to the channel. I thought that was rather clever and wondered if it was something that could be used to save hashtagged tweets from a conference - a topic I've blogged on before:
Following conference hashtag tweets in real time and saving them for later
and TweetNotes - tool for archiving hashtagged tweets at events and conferences etc
I also wondered if it is as straightforward as setting up 'What The Hashtag' (wthashtag) or TwapperKeeper to record a series of tweets. Apparently setting up an IRC bot probably requires a bit of programming knowledge and I may be some time, trying to understand the suggested instructions here http://github.com/tommorris/twittertoirc
To me IRC as a backchannel is analogous to using FriendFeed - with FF it is possible to set up a room in which the search results for a hashtagged tweetstream are posted in real time and which people who are already signed up to FriendFeed can read and comment on, as well as adding their own comments (these aren't pinged back to Twitter).
In that sense IRC and FriendFeed are almost identical but the big difference is that FriendFeed seems to strip out author details meaning that you've no idea who's posted a tweet if it's come via the Twitter RSS. IRC certainly wins here, although the interface isn't quite as pretty.
I see someone else has had similarish thoughts to me:
Wanted: an IRC bot to gateway to a twitter backchannel - http://ideas.4brad.com/wanted-irc-bot-gateway-twitter-backchannel
The main difference though is in effort in getting started - Twitter is exceptionally easy to sign up to and get going, the work comes in connecting with people. With IRC you need to download a client, set it up and join a channel. There are a few commands you need to use as well - it's not difficult but requires a smidge more effort and is a shade geekier than Twitter. I've just used freenode for the first time - it wasn't in the list of available networks so I had to work out how to add it myself, again not difficult but a slight barrier to wider use.
I know that people use IRC as a backchannel at conferences, as well as Twitter, I just don't know if people have been IRCing at any of the conferences I've been to. I'd peg the Science Online ones in London as being likely candidates, but certainly on a much smaller scale if so. Possibly there are certain types of conferences, events or sessions that use IRC - not that surprisingly the #sciencehackday event is using it. The people who whizz high altitude balloons upwards also discuss matters geeky on their freenode channel. Possibly IRC is destined to stay outside the mainstream, unless there are lots of web-based IRC clients I don't know about (familiar only with Pirch and mIRC).
When I entered the #sciencehackday channel I noticed that a bot (robot) was sending anything from Twitter containing the hashtag #scihack to the channel. I thought that was rather clever and wondered if it was something that could be used to save hashtagged tweets from a conference - a topic I've blogged on before:
Following conference hashtag tweets in real time and saving them for later
and TweetNotes - tool for archiving hashtagged tweets at events and conferences etc
I also wondered if it is as straightforward as setting up 'What The Hashtag' (wthashtag) or TwapperKeeper to record a series of tweets. Apparently setting up an IRC bot probably requires a bit of programming knowledge and I may be some time, trying to understand the suggested instructions here http://github.com/tommorris/twittertoirc
To me IRC as a backchannel is analogous to using FriendFeed - with FF it is possible to set up a room in which the search results for a hashtagged tweetstream are posted in real time and which people who are already signed up to FriendFeed can read and comment on, as well as adding their own comments (these aren't pinged back to Twitter).
In that sense IRC and FriendFeed are almost identical but the big difference is that FriendFeed seems to strip out author details meaning that you've no idea who's posted a tweet if it's come via the Twitter RSS. IRC certainly wins here, although the interface isn't quite as pretty.
I see someone else has had similarish thoughts to me:
Wanted: an IRC bot to gateway to a twitter backchannel - http://ideas.4brad.com/wanted-irc-bot-gateway-twitter-backchannel
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