Programming

For those of you who aren't too familiar with MPEG Surround, you can read about it here - in a nutshell, it's the latest open standard for audio compression.

Developers of software that use the MPEG Surround will have to pay licensing fees as outlined here - it's done per unit outside of PC software which probably means that mobile phones and MPEG players, such as the ever popular iPod, will pay the per unit fees.

PC Software is divided into 'consumer' and 'professional' licensing, and fees vary based on whether a PC application is 'consumer' or 'professional'; distinguishing between the two should be interesting...

Because of these fees, it is severely unlikely that any software using the MPEG Surround standard will be available at no cost; open source/Free Software may still be possible but will likely also be unavailable at no cost unless either someone sponsors the software or end-users (you) pay for it.

Is the licensing worth paying for? Via Licensing seems to think so - and it is their business:

Access is the goal. Sophisticated technology is the result of cooperative development and collaborative standarization efforts.

This is especially true in the area of multimedia distribution and broadcasting, in which multiple industries participate in the creation, distribution, and consumption of content.

Via Licensing is in business to provide streamlined access to patents that are necessary to implement foundational technologies on which products are built. Via Licensing develops and administers patent licensing programs, or "patent pools," on behalf of innovative technology companies and for the convenience of licensees. { Read more }

• Drupal: Content Management System.
• Google Analytics blog
• Google Webmaster Central Blog
• Inside Adsense
• Official Google Blog
• Yahoo Search Blog

Nobody Fugazi has a wide range of experience in and out of Second Life®. He runs Your2ndPlace.com, and is the author of 'Making Your Mark In Second Life: Business, Land and Money' (O'Reilly Publishing). He runs Your2ndPlace.com, where he writes about SecondLife related issues, and makes space available for others to do so as well.

He has an inworld office, where some of his work can be found. It is located within Second Life at Enlightenment (50,129,601). He has some of the stuff he has made online at his SLExchange Store.

Nobody Fugazi is listed as a SecondLife Consultant by Linden Lab, and brings a wealth of experience in many regards. You can find out more about his real world experience in his Official Bio.

Within Second Life, he mixes with different groups and has a reputation for being honest and straightforward. he enjoys helping people, creating things (especially things not seen before), connecting Second Life and the internet. One such example is the simple SLFeed module which can be used to show RSS feeds from the Drupal content management system in Second Life.

He can help you with your Second Life presence through building and scripting, which includes connecting internet and Second Life content in meaningful ways. Content management in 3 dimensional environments connected to content management in 2 dimensional environments is something he is particularly interested in, and something which he is constantly experimenting with.

Things he has done include:

• Close Guantanamo Bay event (ACLU); some building and scripting as well as security.
• International Fund for Animal Welfare Presence/Event
  • Included multimedia, custom builds, scripting, and the first baby seals in Second Life.
• Nonprofit Technology Network Event/Presence
  • Included multimedia, custom builds, scripting and coordination with a real world event (Mixed Reality)
  • The build was designed with a '3d web browser' feel, with objects of the build used as contextual hyperlinks.
• Clark 2008
  • While apolitical, I'll do political work. This simple structure was paid for by someone interested in Wesley Clark running for President of the United States in 2008.
• Connecting Second Life and the Internet through the SLFeed module for the Drupal Content Management System

If you require consultation, you can IM Nobody Fugazi inworld, though emailing at cndATknowproseDOTcom is the most dependable means of communication. { Read more }

It's about that time. For a period, I was in a tunnel of work where every approaching light was a train, and fortunately a difference in philosophy has permitted me more time (and I made a record leap to other paying work - less than an hour). As such, Drupal 5.1 upgrades are finally coming to KnowProSE.com.

These upgrades shall, hopefully, go well on Sunday, 29 April 2007. By then I'll have one editor happy and another beginning to beat me with keyboards and mice.

I'm also planning on changing the theme somewhat, as I'm kind of tired of the way the site looks. As I wrote to someone recently - when I draw, stick figures cringe. Thus the changes will mainly be with colors and such.

The upgrade will bring some more efficiency to the site, and will also maintain the existing site structure without harming any small furry animals. There may even be new and wonderful features.

Work toward integrating Drupal with SecondLife will continue - the beta testing of certain in world controls has worked out pretty well, though there are synchronization issues I am still beating with a stick here and there.

'If all goes well, there will be no trains in this tunnel', he said while desperately looking for some wood to knock on while tossing salt over his shoulder...

At Trellon¹, I've finally gotten a chance to install Drupal 5.0 - only to find out that while I was working, they snuck Drupal 4.7.6 and Drupal 5.0 in on me. This site uses some modules from 4.7.x which are yet to be ported. While I may not appear to be doing much, I'm getting ready to port this site to 5.x because of all the features it comes with. That said, I've been working with a Drupal 5.0 site on a development server.

The 5.0 administrative pages and workflow takes some getting used to for those that have used Drupal for a while - but it may be more intuitive for fresh eyes. I know that I've spent a good bit of time looking for things in the navigation menu which, at the least, aren't made active by default. This means a cleaner menu, but it also means power users may twitch a little with the switch. It grows on you, so it isn't so bad.

The real fun is Converting 4.7.x modules to 5.x, which involves - at present - 44 changes in the way things have to be done to work with Drupal 5.0. It doesn't mean it is difficult. The more complicated a module, the more involved it is to upgrade. I expect that it will take about 2 weeks of module development on my own time to get KnowProSE.com to 5.0. Maybe they'll be up to 5.2 by then.

Overall, I'm having a lot of fun with Drupal 5.0 on the development server at work and looking into the module upgrades for KnowProSE.com. There's also some integration with SecondLife that I'm working on which is pretty fun as well - and hopefully useful.

Build once, use many. :-)

¹ KnowProSE.com, of course, houses my own thoughts and so on - and isn't affiliated with Trellon in any ot { Read more }

Chat logging can be a handy thing for meetings and so forth within SecondLife. The problem, of course, is that not everyone wants to have their chat logged - and by Section 4 of the Community Standards of SecondLife:

Disclosure
Residents are entitled to a reasonable level of privacy with regard to their Second Lives. Sharing personal information about a fellow Resident --including gender, religion, age, marital status, race, sexual preference, and real-world location beyond what is provided by the Resident in the First Life page of their Resident profile is a violation of that Resident's privacy. Remotely monitoring conversations, posting conversation logs, or sharing conversation logs without consent are all prohibited in Second Life and on the Second Life Forums.

The key word is consent. So I looked all over for a chat logger which met the community standards (not to mention just plain good taste). I did find one SL Chat Logger, but again - it didn't ask for consent.

This is beta code - and it is at version 0.1 (the plan is to release updates via comments on this page, at least for a while). If you find bugs, feel free to fix them and let me know, or plain let me know. To report a bug, please copy and paste some text of the bug and note how it can be recreated in IMs to Nobody Fugazi in world, or comments here.

The code, upon being touched by the owner, starts logging chat. The first time a person within chat range says something, it asks their permission to log their chat. If they decline, the script ignores anything they say from then on (until the script is reset, when they will be asked again). If they accept, their chat is logged.

Touching the logger again will cause logging to stop and the text, formatted in HTML, to be sent to chat - where, using History, you may copy and paste to your heart's content. { Read more }

From the Atlassian Blog:

...San Francisco, CA (Business Wire) January 9, 2007 - Linden Lab®, creator of the highly successful Second Life® virtual world, has selected Atlassian JIRA for bug and issue tracking for their open source development community. JIRA, the world's most popular Java-based issue tracker, is used by over four thousand organisations in more than 60 countries, including many open source projects...

...JIRA is an extremely flexible tool for managing tasks and issues associated with any project. While most JIRA customers use the application for bug tracking, many, including Linden Lab, use JIRA to manage other business-related tasks. For over a year, Linden Lab has leveraged JIRA internally as a collaboration and knowledge sharing tool between employees. As Linden Lab CEO, Philip Rosedale, reported in a case study published last year, "Now, on your first day of work at Linden Lab you're given your login, your JIRA login, and your first task, which is to log into JIRA." (full case study available here)...

So, JIRA will be what we will be using to manage the SecondLife viewer project. Will it also manage forks? Probably not.

Still, it is interesting that JIRA was selected. It is almost open source (see here, bottom of page) - but I don't know which open source license is being used for some people but hasn't 'leaked'. That licensing structure is worth considering; I didn't think it possible to have an open source license applied selectively. I've always seen the proprietary license used selectively. Eyebrow raised, considering...

Whatever the licensing, it does appear that JIRA will be up to the task. { Read more }

Making a cup of coffee in the kitchen, my thoughts drifted to SMS - a method by which one cousin and I keep in contact regularly since it tends to get through even when the infrastructure in Trinidad and Tobago doesn't quite come up to par.

Then I thought about the people I work with, and how we all stay in touch on IRC.

So then I thought - well, wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to use IRC on a mobile phone?

A search, and a find - jmIrc. Instead of just texting and waiting, texting and waiting - and even texting one person and relaying what someone else texted you... an IRC ability might be pretty handy for quick meetings between more than one person.

I'll have to play with this sometime this week. Of course, I probably should pay my phone bill before they cut off my service. :-)

This is definitely MobileActive fodder - and may even have implications when considering something like SecondLife. Sure, the full graphics interface might suck - but meetings in SL might be attended in an IRC fashion on a mobile phone... and that could be a step toward other things...

Definitely something worth discussing.