Two useful YouTube hints

These are both from the unofficial Google blog:

• “Watch Restricted YouTube Videos” - 18 Apr 2008.
• “Download YouTube Videos as MP4 Files” - 13 Apr 2008.

Hat tip to Kevin for the alert about the mp4 enabling. The first I have not tied as yet.

STB using WildSingapore.com and Yesterday.sg feeds

Wild Singapore’s Ria Tan noticed a spike in her readership. Scrutiny of the data revealed the main source to be the Uniquely Singapore website. When she sends me the link and I click to see that Yesterday.sg has also been added to this “What to see” page.

Both webpage owners/editor/community are elated that their feeds are reaching out to an even wider audience and that a government agency realises these logs do provide excellent resources for visitors.

Yes, this is certanly excellent indeed! I did, however, feel that STB, or probably rather their webpage vendor, should have clicked the “Contact Me” link on each page and let these hardworking individual/groups know.

It would have been gracious!

Streetdirectory.com is down for…two days?

Streetdirectory.com has been down at least since 1 Apr 2008. For some time now, I have been making do with what else? Why, Google Maps of course! E.g. finding me at work.

“Virtual Map shuts down street directory site after losing suit,” by Chua Hian Hou. The Straits Times, 03 Apr 2008.

POPULAR online map StreetDirectory.com has shut down, after the company behind it, Virtual Map, lost its appeal against the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) over copyright infringement last week.

The SLA, which originally issued Virtual Map a licence for its maps of Singapore, sued the company in January 2007 for continuing to use the SLA maps even after the licence had expired.

Virtual Map lost it case in the District Court, and was ordered to stop using the infringing materials. It appealed to the High Court, but lost again.

The site was taken down two days ago, said Virtual Map’s managing director Firdhaus Akbar, but the company is currently working with a set of replacement, non-infringing maps, and hopes to bring the site back online in ‘about two days’.

The are based on its own surveys, he said.

The company also intends to appeal to the highest court, the Court of Appeal, to reverse the decision, he said.

An audibly bitter Mr Ackbar, who was interviewed over the phone, said the privately-held company is calling a shareholders meeting either on Friday or Saturday to assess its position.

The meeting will decide whether to continue to provide what he claimed were ‘the best maps in Singapore’, or quit the business here and ‘focus our efforts elsewhere’.

Virtual Map also offers online maps in countries like Indonesia and Malaysia.

Mr Ackbar said his company has spent ‘millions’ putting in value-added data like points-of-interest, on top of the maps SLA had provided.

Alternative online maps are available at sites like the SLA’s StreetMap and Show Nearby.

Field safety call centre

On a field trip with students, I bring along a first aid kit that caters for gaping wounds and the like - serious injuries only. In such instance of the necessity of its use, a taxi pickup or an ambulance rendezvous may be necessary. Emergencies requiring the police can never be ruled out either.

So Tommy agreed to be my “safety call centre” for my mangrove field trip tomorrow. The person manning the “call centre” is someone enjoying a cuppa while we are out in the field. He or she has to be somewhat familiar with the field site, be aware of typical field trip operations and most importantly be decisive in an emergency.

You see, this is the person I may call on to direct emergency services to a pre-arranged evacuation point to pick up a casualty or meet a runner who will direct emergency services to the victim. Presumably if I do need to call on the person, the situation is a complex one requiring my full attention. Alternatively the handphone signal in the area is too weak to support a conversation providing detailed directions to emergency services.

Despite the fact I may be able to rely on Malaysian or Indonesian signals (I can never give up my auto-roam subscription), there are dead zones in which no one’s handphone can make a call out. In such a situation, while trying to send out an SMS through a brief window, a young fit person would be volunteered to sprint away in search of a decent signal. When acquired, all they’d have to do is alert my call centre.

Imagine having to do this for all my field trips over the years. I usually recruit a friend from outside my volunteer circles to do this job. This usually demands a separate recce when a route can bee misinterpreted and I still remember Chien struggling on an unfamiliar bike during a trip to learn the layout of Pulau Ubin in the late 90’s. It was for an event that predated Pedal Ubin or the Journey series.

I had blown up a paper map of Ubin for him in two sections and provided pins to track the positions of groups as we brought the youth around Ubin on bike and foot. These days, Google Earth, Google Maps and the like make it easy to annotate satellite maps for the call center.

And there are other resources - while preparing the route map for tomorrow, I wanted to double check the location of an important petrol station land mark. I chanced upon this mashup by MantaRay on earth.sg, how useful!

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Rambling Librarian to speak in San Fran

One of my buddies, Ivan Chew, has been invited to speak to the Davis Forum at the University of San Francisco.

Davies Forum: “Digital Literacy,” 6:15-8 p.m., Feb. 14 [2008]. Fromm Hall. Speaker Ivan Chew heads the Adult & Young People’s Services (Public Libraries) of the National Library Board, Singapore. For more info, please call (415) 422-4895, email: emsmith2@usfca.edu, or visit:: usfca.edu/artsci/ug/davies_forum/. Open to the public - if you are in SF, you can drop in; it’ll be worth it.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Needless to say (if you know Ivan), he’s been fretting over the talk. its not easy to prepare for such a talk since ideas, actions and anecdotes are scattered in the mind. Especially since Ivan is an enthusiastic practioner and evagelist and not regularly lecturing the topic although he has chalked up a few related talks. However, for each, he agonises over preparation and then conducts a post-mortem with some of us as well as on his blog; so he has amplified the few experiences effectively.

Preparation is also a good exercise that forces consolidation and reflection. The final product bears it out - when he spoke to the Museum Roundtable, I enjoyed the session tremendously. It was clearly evident he had put in a significant amount of preparation and in the process, also formulated some new ideas.

If you want an idea of what he’s up to, Ivan is blogging a multi-post write up about the process. The honours class is very small one, which will be great for a discussion, and the query from Kelly, “a engaged student” is such an encouraging sign.

David Silver, who invited Ivan down to speak, is a co-director of The September Project - “connecting one library at a time”:

“The September Project is a grassroots effort to foster public events in all libraries in all countries in September. September Project events explore issues that matter–like peace, or freedom–and can include book displays, panel discussions, civic deliberations, film screenings, theatrical performances, community book readings, murals, kids’ art projects, and so much more. September Project events are free and organized locally.”

Tooble for browsing and downloading YouTube videos

Found out about Tooble via ArsTechnica review of best indie software at MacWorld Expo 2008.

“Tooble is a straightforward app that allows you to browse and search YouTube videos, then download, convert, and add them to iTunes for your iPod or iPhone. Unsurprisingly designed by a few high school seniors, tooble in its current form is a free download, with a paid Pro version on its way that will include support for many other video sites.”

I paid for Tubesock earlier and it was helpful during last semester’s teaching. But Tooble allows you to browse YouTube for videos - and then download ‘em!

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Pasir Panjang Heritage

I just switched the Pasir Panjang Heritage blog to Blogspot: pasirpanjangheritage.blogspot.com - so glad I finaly sorted this out. Have more than few things to post there which I’ve put off.

It used to be on the Habitatnews server (due to limitations with image hosting) but Blogger is faster now and I wanted some of the new template options, which is only possible when you host your blog on blogspot.

I do wish they’d provide templates with at least a 500 pixel width for text - that would allow embedding Flickr images more quickly as 500 pixels is one of Flickr’s default sizes - and that is convenient for MarsEdit too which can reference your Flickr account for recently uploaded images. Anyway I prefer a 500 pixel image to a miserable 400 pixel width image anyday. Grrr…

If I figured out how to widen the template (think I know but it looks like hard work), I’d shift this blog to Blogger in a jiffy! I hate the restrictions in WordPress which prevent me from messing up my sidebar but only inserting widgets they provide. I miss my Jaiku!

For some reason I am thinking of a dock in Beaufort, North Carolina. I must be tired.

Trying out macness.com’s gsync

In order to sync my gmail calendar with iCal on my laptop and desktop, I am trying out macness.com’s gsync.

I just realised that iCal is able to read my NUS outlook calendar, probably since I set that up as an IMAP account in Mail.

Gwynne introduces me to buzzword - a prettier document sharing site

I use Google Docs extensively, but its so serious.

So Gwynne waltzs in just now and hails buzzword, a flash-based wordprocessor. I’ve not explored it as yet but she says, “hey, its prettier!”

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Greetings earthling!

I shifted over after making my last post at the old site - the server even resisted that post, sigh!

That original site Otterman speaks…(2003-2007) will be left at http://oldblog.sivasothi.com. I won’t import the old posts unless I can find a smart way to do that.

This new blog can also be bookmarked as blog.sivasothi.com, in case I ever shift again in future. The RSS feed is feeds.feedburner.com/OttermanSpeaks.