For my homepage, I swiped Matt Thommes’ PHP to display RSS/ATOM feeds in another page. It took some tweaking (and learning), but I used his structure/framework to get my blog and sms sites to load. This works well, is clear, and allows for a good degree of flexibility.

For the demolition derby Web site, I want to post notices from my sms site that contain the #demoderby hashtag. That way, I can continue to use whatever information delivery methods I prefer (e.g., blog or sms) with it all being delivered to one place for people who want to follow the destruction. At first, I played with the various badges (for StatusNet systems) that exist out there, but I could not get the first two I tried to work and none of them seemed well configured for limiting posts to certain hashtags. The next step was to use Thommes’ PHP structure to use the RSS feed a StatusNet install provides for a given hashtag. This, however, wouldn’t work because–I think–of the URL StatusNet uses for hashtags’ RSS feeds.

After about two hours of total hunting and searching (starting from the badge search), I gave up and decided to add a tweak to Thommes’ code. I essentially include a line that checks to see if a given notice contains the hashtag. If it doesn’t, do nothing and move on to the next notice. If it does, then display the tag. It took me five minutes to do, and should have been how I started. Oh well.

Here’s the tweaked code:

# INSTANTIATE CURL.
$curl = curl_init();

# CURL SETTINGS.
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, "http://sms.jasonkoepke.com/api/statuses/user_timeline/1.atom");
Curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 0);

# GRAB THE XML FILE.
$xmlSMSFeed = curl_exec($curl);

curl_close($curl);

# SET UP XML OBJECT.
$xmlObjSMSFeed = simplexml_load_string($xmlSMSFeed);

$tempCounter = 0;

#Specify the hash you care about
$hashofconcern = "#demoderby";

foreach ($xmlObjSMSFeed->entry as $smsitem)
{
# DISPLAY ONLY 3 ITEMS.
if ( $tempCounter < 3 )
{
$pos = strpos($smsitem->title, $hashofconcern);
if ($pos === false)
{
#We don't want to display non-hashtagged posts, so this if statment has nothing.
}
else
{
echo " id."\">".$smsitem -> published.": ".$smsitem -> title."

";
}
}

$tempCounter += 1;
}

Hope that helps someone, or someone comments the obvious and easier way of doing all this.

The StatusNet install is simple and straightforward. You UL the relevant files to your server and then visit the install path in your browser. StatusNet asks you to fill in several basic fields, including MySQL db info, admin info, and basic about-type info. Once you click Save, StatusNet installs the software, structures your previously created, blank MySQL db, and creates the config.php file using the information you entered on the install page.

After I had filled in the information, I clicked Save and, instead of being greeted by a success page, I saw an error along these lines:
install config.php parse error unexpected T_STRING.

I searched the config.php file for something that might be problematic, but couldn’t find anything. In addition, I did several searches, but again nothing. After about an hour, I tried removing an apostrophe I had put in my StatusNet install name (“Jsn’s”). That did the trick (although I had to delete and recreate the MySQL db and config.php files).

Hope that helps.

I follow Tor development and have been lucky enough to meet and chat extensively with two of the lead developers in the project.

With a little thought, Cuil not being as good as Google at finding what we want online is the least surprising piece of news since people familiar with the situation said JPII was partial to fish on a Friday. In 2008, Mountain View’s all-seeing algorithms in many ways are the web.

It’s easy to identify what happened. When it first surfaced in 1998, Google made sense of the web a bit better than anyone else. It was a useful improvement on existing services. Ten years later, the web does its best to make sense of Google.

The sorry upshot is that barring some unimaginable technological leap no search engine’s results will ever be better than Google’s, at least in the West. And the switch leaves the likes of Microsoft and Cuil (and a dozen other doomed start-ups) effectively attempting to reverse-engineer Google, not understand the information on the web.

…

The people at the vanguard of reverse-engineering Google are not its jealous search rivals. They’re the spammers and SEO consultants. They have driven an ever-closer relationship between the quirks and whims of Google’s algorithms and policies, and the structure and content of the web. It’s a feedback loop that was unavoidable once Google’s early rivals proved unable to respond to its better search results and presentation.

While in Orlando, I heard on CNBC that MySpace.com subscriber growth was 165,000+ per month, and growing significantly. I am defintely bullish on MySpace.com, but I have not seen “active account” numbers reported. For every new band that is created, who knows how many break up, die, or some other way go inactive. And with non-music people joining MySpace.com, how often is everyone active? Inactivity will probably increase, as the buzz dies around the community; how does this impact growth numbers, account numbers, and News Corp’s bottom line?

The same CNBC report, as well as reports elsewhere, began noting parental concerns of the social networking community. While I suspect it is probably one parent in the Midwest who is concerned, the backlash is interesting in that it represent a shift from MySpace.com being on the edge of US culture to being having a more central position; after all, if parents and the mainstream media know about it and report on Web site regularly, it must be well known.

Another sign of MySpace.com’s significance appeared as part of a conversation I had with a friend (KP). He mentioned that, through MySpace.com, he had re-established contact with a friend from a long time ago. That friend now lives in the same city/town/area I do. I mentioned that he should pass on my e-mail address, as there aren’t many young people in the area, and it would be nice to have someone with whom to grab coffee. He told me my best bet would be to create a MySpace.com account, because using its IM features comes off as less weird/stalky then passing a phone number or e-mail address. Reminds me of the comment about Korea’s equivalent to MySpace.com.