October 2008


Identity management and Jabber and Knowledge management and Military and Mobile computing and Networking & telecommunications and Social networking and Technology and The Web23 Oct 2008 at 14:42 by Jean-Marc Liotier

I have become a user of Brightkite, a service that provides situational awareness in the geographical context. Once its relationship to user location information sources such as Fire Eagle improve, it may become a very nice tool, especially in mobile use cases where location reporting may be partly automated.

But even if they add technical value in the growing world of geographically aware applications, theses services are actually not innovative at the functional level. For example, in the ham radio universe, APRS is already a great system for real time tactical digital communications of information of immediate value in the local area – which includes among other things the position of the participating stations. And there is also TCAS, which interrogates surrounding aircrafts about their positions, and AIS which broadcasts ship positions and enables the entertaining Vessel Traffic Services such as the one provided by MarineTraffic. All these radio based systems broadcast in the clear and are not satisfying the privacy requirements of a personal eventing service. But that problem has also been solved by the Blue Force Tracker which even though it is still a work in progress has already changed how a chaotic battlefield is perceived by its participants.

“Where am I, and where are my friends ?” is not only the soldier’s critical information – it is also an important component of our social lives, witness the thriving landscape of geosocial networking. Geographic location is a fundamental enabler : we are physically embodied and the perimeter of location based services actually encompasses anything concerning our physical presence. So we can’t let physical location services escape our control. Fire Eagle may be practical for now, but we need to make geographical information part of the basic infrastructure under our control and available on a standardized, open and decentralized basis. The good news is that much thoughts have already been invested into that problem.

Physical location is part of our presence, and as you may have guessed by now, this means XMPP comes to the rescue ! We have XEP-0080 – User Location, an XMPP extension which is currently a XMPP Foundation Draft Standard (implementations are encouraged and the protocol is appropriate for deployment in production systems, but some changes to the protocol are possible before it becomes a Final Standard – as good as a draft standard RFC and therefore good enough for early adopter use). It is meant to be communicated and transported by means of Publish-Subscribe or the subset thereof specified in Personal Eventing via Pubsub. It may also be provided as an extension of plain vanilla <presence/> but that is quite a crude way to do it compared to the Publish-Subscribe goodness.

The rest of the work is left to the XMPP client. Of course, the client can show them on a map, just as Brightkite currently does. But I can also easily imagine an instant messaging contact list on my PDA where one of the contact groups is “contacts near me”. I would love to have Psi do that…

Arts19 Oct 2008 at 19:07 by Jean-Marc Liotier

There was the Discovery Channel commercial, and then its graphical interpretation by XKCD while it went strongly viral with a heap of covers of wildly varied quality. The music was a bit tame to my taste so I was wholly taken by this punk rock rendition of the song with the XKCD lyrics by talented XKCD fan Sober. This puts me in a great mood – don’t you love the whole world ?

Economy and Email and Jabber and Social networking and Technology and The Web17 Oct 2008 at 8:17 by Jean-Marc Liotier

Some people notice I am quite dogmatic about open networks. And they are right : to me, open is everything and the rest is details. But even my zeal has its limits : I don’t gratuitously shove tools in the face of people who can’t use them in practical conditions. I have been advocating jabber among my technically minded friends since 2001 and running my own server since 2003, but it took Google joining the XMPP network in 2006 to actually make it a viable option for pushing open instant messaging to the masses of people I don’t want to support myself. Before that I could understand the necessity for joining proprietary networks and run multiprotocol clients to reach people I could not decently drag to Jabber or IRC. But now I can tell them that getting presence information and instant messenging from me is just a Google account away – and since it is a mainstream service offered by an established and well known service provider they can hardly anymore label me a techno-excentric for using it. So – no I will not join your proprietary instant messaging network.

Today we have the same situation with social networking. And while the technological prerequisites for open microblogging have been almost there for a while, they have not yet cristalized into something that can be fed to the masses. That day will come – and we are all pushing toward it. Until then, I have a Facebook profile. But soon I know that I’ll be able to tell the world that my social networking tool is my blog, or whatever other tools I fancy moving to and from thanks to data portability efforts. And it’ll be easy for others to do the same because interoperable services will blossom at the hands of mass-market providers – maybe even Facebook if they ever reach enlightenment. And when that is about to be ready for massive adoption, you know where I’ll be – and you know where I’ll not be anymore !

To me there is an element of religion in those choices. But the techno-apathetic average user can make the same choices out of pure self-interest. If there are a number of comparable offerings on the market, one of which lets the buyer choose between different suppliers and move between them at will, you can bet that the one-time cost of moving away from the proprietary offering will be more than offset by the future value of the open solution. If we look at the history of technologies, examples of such migrations are plenty. Let’s just take e-mail for example : what is the current weight of closed mail systems ? They still exist, but they are insignificant niches and many of them use e-mail for notification…

Free software and Technology and Unix16 Oct 2008 at 0:09 by Jean-Marc Liotier

Stumbing on an article by about why Free software and open formats are increasingly important as our lives are turning digital, I was suprised to read the following :

If I haven’t convinced you yet that Linux is going to take over the appliance world, I strongly suggest you look at Sony’s web site. There you can find a page full of television models going back to 2003, all of which run on Linux (for those essential moments when you must have the source code to your television, naturally).

Sony is such a big group that the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing – so I am not surprised that Free software is being used, although Sony‘s attitude toward it has had both highs and lows in the past.

Free software on a television is quite intriguing. Some of those televisions not only run the kernel, but also well known user environments such Bash, Busybox and Freetype. Would they be powerful enough to run a thin client with RDP or X11 ? Could they even run a media player ? I would not be suprised : as far back as 2003, Sony President and Chief Operating Officer Kunitake Ando said that “the TV will replace the PC as the center of online entertainment, running on a Linux-based platform for connected home electronics devices. If Sony implements that vision with adequate hardware running Free software, Sony televisions may one day be a tinkerer’s device of choice for the home entertainment projects that currently most often use a dedicated computer to display on the television screen.

Identity management and Social networking and The Web15 Oct 2008 at 20:12 by Jean-Marc Liotier

With the profusion of tools, our online presence is all over the place… Here is a quick tour of where fragments of me can be found. I’m focusing on tools – I won’t list mere static pages (of which I still have a few dusty instances in various aging places). The goal of this article is to draw a quick taxonomy of the tools I’m using.

My original content publication outlets :

Places where I echo my own content web feeds, track people and engage actively:

Places where I track people and participate :

Places where I infrequently participate :

Places where I just echo my own content web feeds and/or status messages in case people there are tracking me there :

Not only is this list not exhaustive, but I have not even bothered to count the forums and blogs where I lurk or contribute comments. Don’t think that I’m a normal user though : maintaining a watch over online tools is part of my trade, so I’m the sort of person who’ll create an account on every site in sight if just to take a look at it.

But in any case, the profusion is food for thought about meta-tools.

Social networking and Systems administration and The Web15 Oct 2008 at 13:03 by Jean-Marc Liotier

While FriendFeed is the efficient geek hangout, it is Facebook that provides the social middle ground that bridges the gap between early adopters and the mainstream. What makes Facebook useful is that it attracts mainstream users and entices to publish content – something most of them would never do anywhere else. As Regular Geek puts it : “These are people who thought AOL was the internet“. They only visit a few mainstream sites and to them the Web is almost as read-only as dead tree media. That Facebook manages to turn them painlessly into content producers makes it useful for keeping in touch with everyone who does not know what web feeds are. Be aware that even though Facebook is not a dedicated photo sharing site, it beats them at their own game : with ten billion pictures posted, it is now the site with the most pictures shared.

But with mainstream users comes much cluelessness. Those are the people who mindlessly click the default option on every pop-up dialog in sight and then bring you malware ridden computers for healing while wondering why it is so slow and whether they should buy a new one – all they get from me nowadays is a kind word, an Ubuntu CD and offer to install it. Those users have shown time and time again how the path of least social resistance leads to a torrent of application spam.

Some applications such as are a useful addition to the social framework – among them I particularly like Friend Wheel. Many other are just games or even purely decorative trinkets but they should not be dismissed offhand: they have an important role in evangelizing social tools and in promoting use, and they have the social role of fostering playful interaction that reinforces social links. But if you look below, you’ll probably conclude that the quantity of shiny fluff is a tad overwhelming – this is the list of applications that my Facebook account blocks… And it was gathered in less than two years of activity !

  • Absolut Vodka
  • Addicted to NCIS
  • Addicted to Two and a Half Men
  • A la Antillean
  • Alice Blind Test
  • Amazing Wishlist
  • Animated GIFTS
  • A quel(le) star ressembles-tu le plus physiquement?
  • A quel X-Men ressembles tu ?
  • AREPAS and Venezuelan Food
  • Are you a great lover ?
  • Are You Lucky?
  • Are you Moroccan?
  • Are you romantic?
  • Art
  • ATTACK!
  • aWizard
  • Bathroom Wall
  • Be a Billionaire!
  • Because You’re Special
  • Become Rambo
  • Best Friend Contest
  • Best Match!
  • Best Wishes
  • Birthday Alert
  • Birthday Calendar
  • Birthday Cards
  • Blackjack
  • Bless You
  • Blow A Kiss
  • Books iRead
  • Booze Mail
  • Borat / Ali G Photos, Quotes and Trivia
  • Bowling Buddies
  • BrainFall.com Quiz Results
  • BrewSocial
  • Bubble Town
  • Bumper Sticker
  • Bumper Stickers [Photo Gifts]
  • Call Me on Skype
  • Card for Africa
  • Car IQ
  • Cat Breed Collection
  • Causes
  • Chanel Gifts ?
  • Characteristics
  • Check Your Dudeness
  • Chinese Horoscope
  • Circle of Friends
  • COMINGSOON
  • Comment finirez vous ?
  • Comment s’appellera l’homme de ta vie ?
  • Comparaison
  • Compare People
  • Coolest Friends
  • Coolest Person Contest
  • Crushes
  • Cute vs Sexy
  • Define Me
  • Delux Christmas Tree
  • Denzel Washington
  • De quel arrondissement parisien ètes-vous ?
  • Do people secretly hate you?
  • Drunk Survey
  • ePresident
  • Es-tu fort en histoire ?
  • Etes vous un minimum cultivé ?
  • Etre Marseillais
  • Eurosport – Liste des 23 pour l’Euro 2008
  • Family Guy – Blue Harvest
  • Family Tree
  • Famous Christian Quotes
  • FB Addict – are you hooked on FB?
  • FFR Supporters
  • Fine Wines
  • Flirtable
  • Fortune Cookie
  • Free Gifts
  • Fresh Prince
  • Friend Hug
  • Friends For Sale!
  • Fun Cards!
  • Funnest Person Contest
  • Funny Cards
  • Fun Toys
  • Genius Test
  • Gifts Gallery
  • Good Morning
  • (Green) What fruit are you?
  • Growing Gifts
  • Guerre des gangs
  • Hatching Eggs
  • hello kitty
  • High School Trivia Test
  • Holiday Shoppe (Christmas Tree)
  • Hotness
  • Hot Potato
  • Hottest Person Contest
  • How gangsta are you?
  • How Indian Are You?
  • how smart are u?
  • How stupid are you?
  • How will you die?
  • Hug Me
  • Hug Me
  • Hugs
  • Hug Time
  • Iframer
  • iLike
  • Instant IQ Test
  • IQ Test
  • IQ Test (Advanced Level)
  • is cool
  • iSmile
  • Japanese Foods
  • Japanese Sweets
  • Jedi vs Sith
  • Jetman
  • Jeu de Séduction
  • JungleBook
  • Kisses
  • Kisses!
  • Kiss Me
  • Knighthood
  • Language Exchange
  • Likeness
  • Likeness UNRATED
  • (Lil) Green Patch
  • Local Picks
  • Love Friend
  • LX Champions League
  • LX College Football
  • LX World Cup Football
  • Mario Kart RPG
  • Meet New People
  • Mesmo TV
  • MeteoSun
  • MindJolt Games
  • Mood Ring
  • Most Creative People
  • Most Eligible Singles
  • Most Gorgeous Person Contest
  • Most Wanted Valentine!
  • Mountain Climber
  • Movies
  • My Angels
  • My Aquarium
  • My Boxofun
  • My Drunk Friends
  • MyFlirt
  • My Hebrew Name
  • My Heroes Ability
  • My Music
  • My Personality
  • My Questions
  • MY SEXY FRIENDS
  • MySpace
  • MySpace Link
  • NAB Smart Cookies
  • Name Analyzer
  • NBA Challenge
  • Nicknames
  • Nova Music
  • OneTrack
  • Optical Illusions Challenge
  • OUIFM
  • Owned!
  • Passe Ton BAC !
  • Personality
  • Photo Quizzes
  • Pieces of Flair
  • Pillow Fight
  • Pillow Fight!
  • Pink Ribbon
  • Portrait Chinois
  • Pour quelle boîte Corse es-tu fait(e) ?
  • Pour quelle époque êtiez-vous fait(e)?
  • Pour quelle ville êtes-vous fait(e) ?
  • Pour quelle voiture es-tu fait(e)?
  • PrayLive
  • Premier Football
  • Pro League Rugby
  • PuzzleBee Jigsaw Puzzles
  • Q??l Pa?f?? E? T? ?
  • Que fuyez-vous le plus ?
  • Quel alcoolique êtes vous?
  • Quel chroniqueur du grand journal êtes-vous?
  • Quel écrivain êtes-vous?
  • Quel est ce défaut chez toi qui fait craquer les hommes?
  • Quel est ton degré de connerie??
  • QuEl EsT tOn MeC IdEaL???
  • Quel est ton niveau d’anglais?
  • Quel est ton niveau sexuel ?
  • Quel Festival es-tu?
  • Quel genre de pute es-tu ?
  • Quel joueur de rugby etes vous?
  • Quel joueur du PSG 2007-2008 es-tu ?
  • Quelle citation êtes-vous?
  • Quelle couleur es-tu?
  • Quelle desperate housewife êtes-vous ?
  • Quelle icone glamour es-tu?
  • Quelle ligne de métro êtes vous?
  • Quelle mec te correspond ?
  • Quelle paire de chaussures de créateur êtes-vous ? (pour filles)
  • Quelle princesse de Walt Disney êtes vous?
  • Quelles Vacances VIP es tu?
  • Quel Maman est tu ?
  • Quel mannequin es-tu?
  • Quel méchant de Disney es-tu ?
  • Quel nageur connus es tu ?
  • Quel personnage de desperate housewives es-tu?
  • Quel personnage de FRIENDS es-tu?
  • Quel personnage de KAAMELOTT es-tu ?
  • Quel personnage de la Révolution êtes-vous ?
  • Quel personnage des BRONZES êtes-vous ?
  • quel qualité êtes-vous?
  • Quel séducteur (trice) etes-vous ?
  • Quel sorte d’enfant étais-tu?
  • Quel sous-vêtement êtes-vous?
  • quel star es tu ?
  • Que pensent les autres de toi en secret?
  • Que vas tu faire de ta vie ?
  • Quizzes
  • RAYMOND DEMISSION !!!
  • Rock Paper & Scissors
  • R U CUTE!
  • Save An Alien
  • Say Happy New Year!
  • Say-it-with-Flowers
  • SceneCaster
  • ScoreMe
  • Secret Admirer – CRUSH on ME (PERFECT MATCH)
  • Send Beer
  • Send Chocolate
  • Send Diamonds
  • Send Good Karma
  • Send HOTNESS
  • Send Love Hearts
  • Send Luck
  • Send Sunshine
  • Send Teddy Bears
  • Send Tiaras
  • Send Tux
  • Send Veggie Tales
  • Sexiest Person Contest
  • Sexy Friends
  • Sexy Pillow Fight
  • Sexy Poke!
  • Shots!
  • similaire
  • Six Degrees
  • Sketch Me
  • Skiers vs. Snowboarders
  • Slayers
  • Slide FunSpace
  • Smiles
  • Snowball Fight
  • Snowball Fight!
  • Social Profile
  • Sparkey
  • SpeedDate
  • SpeedDate
  • SpeedDate
  • SpeedDate
  • SpeedDate
  • SpeedDate
  • Sports Fan
  • Status Competition
  • Stickerz
  • Sticky!
  • StyleFeeder
  • Sudoku
  • Suomi-ilmiö
  • Superlatives
  • SuperPoke!
  • Super Slot Machines
  • Super Wall
  • Sweetest Person Contest
  • Tarot
  • Test ton niveau de culture
  • Texas HoldEm Poker
  • The Brain Game
  • The Legend of Zelda Fan
  • The Official 100 Question Geek Test
  • The Sex Compatibility Test
  • The Unofficial Desperate Housewife Quiz
  • The World’s Smallest Political Quiz
  • Top Friends
  • T.O.T. Effect
  • Tower Bloxx
  • Travel Brain
  • Traveler IQ Challenge
  • Trend Setter
  • True Match
  • Truth Box
  • TuneSocial
  • Twirl
  • Twist me!
  • U.S. Citizen Test
  • Vampires
  • Wanna Dance?
  • Water Globe Gifts
  • WC 2010 Euro Predictor
  • We’re Related
  • WereWolves
  • What Beer Are You?
  • What Color Is Your Heart?
  • What Does My Birthday Mean?
  • What Drink Are You?
  • What flower are you?
  • What football player are you?
  • What Is Your Ideal Job?
  • What is Your Secret Sexual Fantasy?
  • What is Your Supermodel Personality?
  • What kind of candy are you?
  • What Kind of Cat Would You Be?
  • What kind of hair best suits you? (for girls)
  • What Kind of Mom Will You Be?
  • What Lost Character Are You?
  • What Mythological Creature Are You?
  • What serial killer are you?
  • What song are you?
  • What’s Your Stripper Name?
  • Whats you true name? (Girls only)
  • What type of person do you attract?
  • What type of warrior are you?
  • When will you get married?
  • Which Disney Princess Are You?
  • Which Disney Song Describes Your Life Right Now?
  • Which Fashion Designer Would You Be?
  • Which Festival best suits you??
  • which F.R.I.E.N.D.S character are you???
  • Which Friends Character Are You?
  • Which Grey’s Anatomy Character Are You?
  • Which Hot Celeb Are You?
  • Which Rockstar Are You?
  • Which Sex and the City Character Are You?
  • Which Simpsons Character Are You?
  • Which WaterAid Country Are You?
  • Who Has The Biggest Brain?
  • Who is Watching You ?
  • Who’s Online
  • Who’s the Coolest Cat?
  • Will you KISS me?
  • Winnie the Pooh
  • Word Challenge
  • Word Twist
  • YES or NO?
  • Your Birthday
  • You’re a Hottie
  • You’re Cute
  • Your Sexyness
  • YouTube Video Box
  • Zombies

You too can escape this minor pantheon of horror – and you can do it without the tedium of blocking each application as it spams your Facebook newsfeed. As you may know, Greasmonkey enables the customization through JavaScript of the way a webpage displays. Auto-Block Facebook Apps is a Greasmonkey script that will block application invitations sent to you by Facebook contacts. After the facebook profile page is loaded, it finds all the applications that your friends have invited you to and blocks them. Whenever you need you can go to the Facebook applications privacy controller and unblock the ones that you find somewhat valuable. With applications spam out of the way, Facebook will remain the neat social watering hole that makes it valuable for interaction with non-geeks.

Africa and Books and Military14 Oct 2008 at 1:55 by Jean-Marc Liotier

I just finished reading The Chopper Boys: Helicopter Warfare in Africa” by Al J. Venter, Neal Ellis and Richard Wood. The contextual introductions will feel like fluff if you are already familiar with Cold War era conflicts in Africa, but it does not matter as the core of this book’s value more than makes up for it : the chapters covering operations in Rhodesia’s and South-Western Africa are gems. First hand testimonies paint captivating tactical vignettes with a substantial level of technical detail. This book provides unique insight in those pivotal development of heliborne operational doctrine in the countrer-insurgency role.

From my French perspective the Chadian and Algerian conflicts seem skimmed over, but I don’t mind as enough French sources have them well explored. On the contrary, I had seldom found such impacting accounts of the airmobile units that operated alongside such legendary troops as the Koevoet or the Selous Scouts – so the Southern African bias is more than welcome. After a read, jargon such as G-car, K-Car, dakadaka, paradak, fire force, Golf bomb and reaction force will feel familiar, along with impressive pieces of hardware such the Puma, the Alouette or the 20 mm Matra MG151 among others whose specific scope of employement is unveiled.

The use of helicopters to emplace small units as blocking forces (“stop groups” in South African parlance) reminded me of Bear Went over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan” edited by Lester Grau. The contrast between the swiftness of Southern African operations and the blunt Soviet air assaults that most often occured in Afghanistan is not without interest.