Archive for the ‘review’ Category
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CampEd12 – Why you should of been there
Just a quick review of CampEd12. It was great, the events were great. It had a great feel. The food and beer was great. The weather was pretty good and the company was fantastic.My thanks to Helen Daykin, @Dughall, and Bill Lord for organizing such a splendid event and to everyone that attended it.
CampEd all the fun and laughter you need.
Read about CampEd12 and Plan to attend CampEd13
Related articles by other folks..
http://drbadgr.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/science-at-camped12/
http://alexbellars.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/camped12/Image courtesy of Dughall
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Review of Pearson Developer tools
Image via Wikipedia
Today I was introduced to the idea that Pearson are going to be releasing some of their content via an API.
Just to get this point out of the way, this content isn’t free or open as is put beautifully by John in his article.
API’s for the less technical among us are things that allow web sites to access content from other websites, an example of an API usage is the UK snow day maps, that uses the Google Maps API to provide the ability to overlay the snow onto the map.
None the less Pearson have bought up several companies that have made fantastic content so they have the ability to really provide some great material via their API. With that in mind I figured I’d give their API a blast!
After first login you are taken to your “My API trends page” — Ideally it would take you to a “what APIs are available and how to use them”. You have to click “APIs” to get to this page and that’s really where the dissapointment begins. Only 3 APIs are currently listed.
The APIs available are:
London travel guide…
FT Press (< 20% of the FT Press articles are available)
The Longman Dictionary…A minor bug is the bullet points under the API options tell me I haven’t logged in yet when I have.
So do I need any of the above APIs or can I not get more mature ones elsewhere?
Google Maps and Open Street maps have way more reviews and travel info than the London travel guide and the reviews are far less likely to be biased.
There are thousands of finance and business blogs I can refer to that already have APIs and/or I can do a simple Google search API request with the “site:” flag set.
Dictionary.com provides a fantastic free API, has done for years so Pearson will gain nothing trying to compete with that.So why should you use Pearsons developer API? You shouldn’t, not yet, but you should get familiar with their methods because in time they will be adding resources you will actually want to use that no one else can provide. I applaud Pearson for this step in the right direction and I beg them to release some educational resources that aren’t available elsewhere in a better format.
Related articles
- Pearson Provides Its Travel, Financial and Dictionary Content as APIs (programmableweb.com)
- Stand Well Back – Media Giant Pearson Releases Developer API (techcrunch.com)
- Publishing company Pearson wants people to mash up its content, open-sources API (thenextweb.com)
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Being part of an open source project isn’t just for geeks.
Since 2009 I have been working on an open source project, the project is called Etherpad and it’s goal is to provide an open collaborative document editing platform. When I first “joined up” I thought I could just help by fixing bugs and writing guides about how to deploy the software but this role quickly evolved.
I found myself taking on various roles and I thought I should share how diverse open-source projects are and the skills required in the hope to encourage more people to get involved even if your background isn’t in programming or software development.
Community and awareness
Maintain the project website
Organize community events
Watch out for etherpad mentions on social networks and via web based alerts(Such as Google alerts)
Promote community awareness via social networks, video sharing websites.
Engage with new developers to encourage them to join the cause
Provide accomodation for community events
Create explanitory and tutorial videos
Establish relationships with competing projects
Ensure the project can recieve donationsDevelopment
Provide anonymous usage statistics about software usage
Provide a framework for development focused discussions
Decide on the project goals and mission statement
Develop the project, programming and graphics design
Review code submissions
Test new codeCompliance
Ensure legal compliance
Organize conservancy membership -
Crayon Physics Game in the Primary Classroom
Crayon Physics is a download/install game, I received it as part of the humble indie bundle which cost me ~$5 for 4 games. There is a windows, mac and linux version.There is no right or wrong answer to any of the puzzles and each buzzle is really bite size making it ideal for learning about shapes and space &forces. The design is perfect for kids and even at 20$ I think it’s a bit of a bargain.
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Orange to Orange [ISP] connectivity
Orange have a problem where you can’t connect from one Orange ISP customer to another. It appears to spur from when Orange “upgrade” your line.
This is a problem if:
a) Your friend is hosting a game you want to join [Terraria in this case]
b) You want to remote desktop to your home from your friends house.
c) You need to do any form of connectivity between yourself and your friend/family/other orange customer.Is it really an upgrade if it causes problems?
Many people have said the Orange upgrade is actually a downgrade, I haven’t noticed any difference in speed or latency, check out the orange problems forum if you have this issue.What are Orange doing about it?
It looks like nothing. I don’t think they have the ability/knowledge to fix this, I think they have to depend on subcontactors/BT so they are probably waiting on a response from the Cisco guys there.What can you do about it?
Orange aren’t actually providing a service that falls inside their own T’s and C’s[needs citation] so you are within your rights to ask for a refund but you will need to be able to show evidence of inter-connectivity failing.Should you leave Orange?
That’s up to you. I’m not going to. I’m going to email orange customer support, show them evidence of the failure (in the forms of route failures) and inform them I will be requesting a refund for the months where my internet connectivity has failed.How can you test if this is the problem?
Contact me and I will give you some tests that you can run.
