Twitter Follower Wonderwall

The übercool @bnox hopped over 1000 twitter-followers yesterday and posted her wonderwall of twitter-followers on her blog.
It was generated by a script by Walter Higgins. Cool! Only one thing: I noticed it had only 700 peeps on it. (Actually, I miscounted so thanks @StefaanLesage for the recount )
It's stupid things like this that bug me (litteraly)
I'm conditioned by my job of course: when I see a software bug I automatically switch to "Can we fix it? YES WE CAN!" mode.
I created a little script that gets your followers and displays them in a grid. It turned out to be piece of cake thanks to Twitter's excellent API.
Here's the script if you want to make your own Wonderwall or adapt it.

<%
twitterAccount = "steffest"
twitterPass    = "******"
twitterUser    = "Bnox"
page=1
colcount=1

response.write("<h1>"&twitterUser&"</h1>")
response.write("<table><tr>")
twitter_getfollowers()
response.write("</tr></table>")

function twitter_getfollowers()
	twitterurl = "http://twitter.com/statuses/followers/"&twitterUser&".xml?page=" & page
	set objXMLHTTP = Server.CreateObject("MSXML2.SERVERXMLHTTP")
	objXMLHTTP.Open "GET", twitterurl, false,twitterAccount,twitterPass
	
	objXMLHTTP.Send
	Set objXML = Server.CreateObject("MSXML2.DOMDocument")
	bAns = objXML.loadXML(objXMLHTTP.responseText)
	
	if bAns then
		set objItemNodes = objXML.DocumentElement.SelectNodes("user")
		if objItemNodes.length>0 and page<50 then
			for each oNode in objItemNodes
				user_name = ""
				user_image = ""
				if not oNode.selectSingleNode("screen_name") is nothing then user_name = oNode.selectSingleNode("screen_name").Text
				if not oNode.selectSingleNode("profile_image_url") is nothing then user_image = oNode.selectSingleNode("profile_image_url").Text
				response.write("<td><a href="#"http://twitter.com/"&user_name&"""><img src="#""&user_image&""" border=""0"" width=""48"" height=""48""></a></td>")
				colcount=colcount+1
				if colcount>15 then 
					response.write("</tr><tr>")
					colcount=1
				end if
			next
			
			page=page+1
			twitter_getfollowers()
		end if
	end if
	
	set objXMLHTTP=nothing
	twitter_getfollowers = true

end function
%>

USB LED graphic equaliser

Another demo of the LED-matrix screen.
This time I created a program that monitors the audio levels of your PC and renders a graphic equaliser or a simple VU meter on the LED-panel.
Of course the scrolling text is also still present.

Twitter on a tiny LED display

As a small exercise in my progress towards to ultimate tweetshirt, I created an interface for a 8x8 LED matrix display.
It doesn't do much at this moment: a program runs on the PC, fetches your latest tweet and controls the USB attached LEDs to show it as scrolling text.

Twappy Twistmas !

Instead of sending out mass emailings or Christmas Cards,
This year I decided to give everyone (and especially my fellow tweeple) a nice christmas hat as present.
They're yours so ... enjoy !

Click on your image and a very Twappy Twistmas !

Tweetshirt video

Tweetshirt

Yesterday I gave a demo of my TWEET-SHIRT at Barcamp Gent.
A tweetshirt is a web connected t-shirt with an embedded display that can be configured through a web interface to diplay a.o. live Twitter feeds, Flickr pictures, custom texts ....
Every t-shirt has a web-interface that allows one to configure what is shown on the display.
www.tweetshirt.net

Big fun!
The demo was done with a prototype I just finished the day before, pieced together with old cellphone parts, a 2,5 inch video display and lots of duct tape.

It still has some design flaws, mainly the heat produced by the display (it's comfortable the first 10 minutes but it actually gets VERY hot).
Also the battery drain is excessive: I walked around fully wired with a 9-volt battery in my pocket and used about 4 of them during 1 day.

It's a concept, but it's a concept I want to take further so I gues I'm on the lookout for hardware partners or other interested partners to get this thing to a finished wearable product.
Thanks bnox for spreading !

I started the project as a real-life case for the use of Flash (Lite) as development platform for mobile devices. So everything (including the webinterface) is written in flash lite (meaning you can also control your T-shirt with any flash-lite enabled mobile phone)
Everying runs both on the mobile device as in standard websites, so you can just as easily put the widget on your site as some form of twitter/flickr display.


Below are the slides of my presentation. (also made in Flash lite - just click to proceed)


These kind of ideas have a "networked" way of growing, So thanks to Dorien for the inspiration, Clopin for the slogan and also maeseele for a very cool add-on idea: (the X-ray:  connect a mini-camera at the back of the T-shirt, so you'd have a see-through effect when looking at the front display.)

DutchDogs meeting 2008: Smokey bars go web2.0

I went to Amersfoort this weekend for a DutchDogs meetup. (Nothing to do with dogs, btw, it's a Tom Waits thing)
Following an excellent tradition, the Place to Be was the Borra Pub/Theater (Wonderfull place)
Filled with casual live performances, the top of the bill was the first ever live performance of 2 people that knew eachother only from the internet, where they've recorded a whole buch of excellent covers.
He calls himself Waitswatcher, She calls himself Vamosbabe.
Do yourself a favor and go check out their work - it's amazing.
This was the first time they met eachother in person.
The atmosphere was really electric when they took the stage: everybody had huge expectations and - wauw - did they meet them!
I can safely say this was one of the best live performances I ever experienced, not that Waitswatcher played flawlessly, not that Vamosbabe was never out of sync but because of how 2 exceptional nice people played with their heart in such a friendly atmosphere ... very very very impressive.
(Oh and offcourse Waitchwatcher plays the guitar like a dream and Vamosbabe's voice is from heaven ... that helped too :-) )

Several people from the audience recorded it - including me - and to keep things in the spirit of internetsharing: here's a video I mixed together from various sources.
Most of the video Is recorded with my mobile phone
The audio is recorded by Rune with a MiniDisc recorder
Some parts are mixed in from this video from Bjorn, recorded with a small digital camera.
Both guys I've never met before so: thanks for sharing !

Pitches and speeches

Wauw - What a great speech that was - the Obama victory speech.
You can rewatch it here and reread it here.
Although he's probably not written it himself, clearly Obama has a way with words and a gift to inspire people with his ideas.
That's a gift, and something the world can use, an inspiring leader, and probably one of the main reasons he won.

It's not a gift that I have :-)
"I'm a developer - I don't do pitches (very well)" I tweeted some time ago at FOWA, when I was picked as 1 of the 3 winners for the Adobe AIR competition that had to present their idea to a expert-panel and to the public.
The video recording of those presentations are now online.
A bit shocking to see yourselves one stage - especially with such a cruel English accent - but well - it was fun :-)
The video is here.

My app-idea came accross a bit incomprehensible I'm afraid. I just wanted to cram everything in that one minute. (Big mistake BTW)
It was an idea I woke up with that morning and turned it in a few minutes before deadline, but actually it was just a variation on the little ideas I build for myself all the time: bridging the gap between your PC and the world around you, allowing you to have a two way interaction between your PC and its environment.
That's also why I like the Tikitag project that much: it's another method of interaction to add to the chain: moving RFID-tagged objects around the place to trigger actions on your PC (thus linking a physical object to the web)
Voice recognition, X10 control, webcam controls ... all methods of interaction with the real world around you, thus enriching your experience.

The Relocally thing - As I dubbed it - is another example: what if you could enrich the way you access your online social network by allowing trusted accounts a controlled access to your PC to trigger some event.
Like when you send a tweet with a link to a music file, and that file would be played instantly on the PC's of your connected contacts.
Or what if you (or someone else your trust) could control your (PC based) video recorder - or your lights - or your ... whatever ... by tracking messages from Twitter, facebook, Netlog ...
For example it could listen for colours and adjust the lighting accordingly (probably more suited for public places that what to give the audience some form of interaction)
The though behind this is always the same: make sure all devices are connected to the web in one way or another and are able to receive input from the web, and you'll have a whoppingly cool system that brings the web in your home without being tied to a computer all the time.
Relocally would then enable your remote friends to interact with your environmental experience - and if that would enrich your experience ... why not ?

And then that Richard Moross guy spoiled the moment a bit by asking how I would monetize the app ...
Excuse me ? Monetize it? No thank you, why would you want to monetize on an idea that's about social experience ?
Djeez.

Anyway - probably AIR is not the right platform to build it on because it still has very limited access to the host (e.g. it can't spawn new processes) and probably this idea will end up in one of my homebrewn domotica/automation setups, but still ...
To borrow some Obama words:
    So let us summon a new spirit
    This is our time:
  Can we build it?     YES WE CAN !

Choice? Not if it's up to Apple

This is exactly why I stay away from all things Apple:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2901
(In short: Apple says 'njet" to Opera to release their browser for the iPhone and iPod Touch.)

The ever eloquent Dave Winer states:
'The biggest bug in the whole thing is the company that makes it.
The web was designed as an open system. That means the user has a choice of software he or she wants to use to browse the web. Even when it was at its peak of monopolism, Microsoft never went so far as to prohibit the installation of the competitive browser on Windows, they just bundled one with the OS.'

"Choice"
A word that is on everyone lips on the 4th of November election day, yet it's not a word that's part of the Apple vocabulary.
You have the choice to vote with your money - and that is why Apple will never have a single cent from mine.

More Clouds

Big Splash today: PDC2008 - the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference - took off with the anouncement of "Windows Azure" - Windows in the cloud - as they called it.
Ok, sounds good, but is it really windows in the cloud ? seems more like a bunch of windows services in the cloud.
Undoubtly it's very cool to host your .net apps - but what about all the other cool stuff you can do on windows - like installing your favourite apps as cloud-desktop-backup, or running your own virtual server on top of it to fiddle around with ?

Apparently Dave Winer is exploring the same paths as we speak:
His Day 1 - Day 2 - Day 3 quest to try out Amazon EC2 and a call for VPS hosting with a wealth of suggestions in the comments.
His conclusion seems to be to go for amazon - but to me - no matter how you slice it - it still is less expensive to hire some dedicated servers in a well-connected datacenter ...

Can't wait to see some commercial pricing for the Windows Azure platform - I bet it won't be cheap, but for hosting a large .net application - it might just be the thing.
Maybe someone at Cloudcamp has some more onfi on this.

In the meantime - something enirely different.
This must be one of the coolest and craziest things I've seen *EVER*

Insane !

Victory at AuctionArt

The Battle was Fierce,
But with Cunning Patience and Stamina - I was able to achieve Victory in the first ever web 2.0. AuctionArt .
AuctionArt is an initiative of Belgian artist Jan Leenders, who is also running the Twit2Art project. (see previously)

But what a Devious Counterstrike: Auction Art #2 seems to be a sequel (and in my case, a very true one)
Only one solution: Gentlemen, place your bids !

FOWA londen 2008 - Roundup