This uses NetNewsWire to load a particular feed, then an Applecript to find and load enclosures to an iPod. Doug's also got a whole range of AppleScripts for managing iTunes and iPods.
Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes -
From forty.something by way of scriptygoddess, an improved RSS template for Movable Type.
ETC. Indulging my inner geek: Full Posts Comments RSS Template for Movable Type
And here is Christine's kind explanation of RSS from last year (yeah, I'm playing catch up again):
scriptygoddess - How to's: What is XML? And What is RSS? Why Do I Want It Anyways?
This takes any document or RSS text feed, and "speaks it" into your iPod, apparently. Shareware.
Apple - Downloads - iPod iTunes - iSpeak It 1.6
Your Spanish acronym of the day is OVNI - objeto volador no identificado.
Seen flying over a Pemex installation in Chiapas, near Tapachula. It is said that there are often sightings near the archaeological site of Izapa and the nearby colcano of Tacana.
But where are the photos?
Detectan en Chiapas objeto volador no identificado | 2004-08-30 | La Crónica de Hoy
Edición electrónica del Diario de Yucatán - Ovnis y esferas luminosas en instalaciones de Pemex
Terra - Detectan OVNI en Chiapas
Note: These 3 reports are all based on the same Notimex story, but they have some variations in details.
So this is what was happening when I was rafting the Usumacinta last spring.
(In the following quote, substitute "Mexico and Guatemala" for "Peru" and we're getting close.)
BBC NEWS | Technology | File-sharing to bypass censorship
In his vision, people around the world would post stories via anonymous P2P services like those used to swap songs.
They would cover issues currently ignored by the major news services, said Prof Anderson.
"Currently, only news that's reckoned to be of interest to Americans and Western Europeans will be syndicated because that's where the money is," he told the BBC World Service programme, Go Digital.
"But if something happens in Peru that's of interest to viewers in China and Japan, it won't get anything like the priority for syndication.
"If you can break the grip of the news syndication services and allow the news collector to talk to the radio station or local newspaper then you can have much more efficient communications."
From the Technology at Harvard Law site:
Experimenting with BitTorrent and RSS 2.0
Build an RSS feed with one item per .torrent file. Add an enclosure sub-element of item, that looks like this
<enclosure url="http://www.legaltorrents.com/bit/thinner-archives-vol-1.zip.torrent" length="25876" type="application/x-bittorrent"/>
Key point: the length field specifies the size of the .torrent, not the size of the BMO (Big Media Object).
What makes this interesting
First, RSS and BitTorrent complement each other naturally. RSS was designed to report freshly available content, which is exactly where BitTorrent shines. RSS 2.0 enclosures were designed to automate the download process that BitTorrent optimizes.
Second, combining the two should reduce the barrier to entry for small broadcasters. While not a new idea, video blogging has always borne a bandwidth cost. Combining BitTorrent's cost savings with widely available RSS emitting tools should, for example, make it possible for a small group of motivated people across the world to create their own news channel.
Chris Shaw sent this article to me, covering NASA's work in the Peten, Guatemala. Using satellite imaging and on-the-ground studies, they are gaining a better understanding of agriculture and deforestation in the Classic Maya period.
Just back from the march. I'll be posting new clips here, including the Billionaires for Bush thanking all the little people.
UPDATE: Here are two short edited clips of the protests:
Billionaires for Bush (Quicktime - 31MB)
Protest on Seventh Avenue (Quicktime - 14MB)
- In preparation for the RNC, Rev. Billy has been creating demonstrations where smart mobs gathered in public places to recite the First Amendment. On Saturday before the largest demonstration in the city, he led the faithful in six rousing choruses of that basic right.
For your Sunday (and everyday) inspiration, here's a short clip, from St. Marks Church, in the Lower East Side, New York.
Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping - Quicktime clip 8/28/04
Audio is a bit rough. In case you need the text:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
UPDATE: This post was picked up on Cory's site in a post by Xeni Jardin. Thanks, Xeni! And welcome Boing Boing readers!
Also, here is Rev. Billy's site:
Reverend Billy & the Church of Stop Shopping
Seems that, until I get the automated tools to do it, I may have to create at least one hand-coded RSS feed to try embedding enclosures. This is a great tutorial on how to do everything up to that point. And the enclosure part is just another line.
Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ How to Create an RSS Feed With Notepad, a Web Server, and a Beer
Okay, nobody cares, but I'm on a roll. New toys.
iTunes Music Store RSS Generator
Feeds of latest posts with media files. Hmmm...
And here's the developer blog for it:
This one's for Bill.
TheStar.com - Go ahead, make my day: Revenge feels, oh, so good
Via Adam Curry's Weblog, a link to another piece of the puzzle, but I'm still on the trail of the MT version.
This one's from Pete at RasterWeb.
Notes and video from the recent conference. Via Daily Wireless.
Making the Connection: The 2004 National Summit for Community Wireless Networks
Dave Slusher is working on variations on Adam Curry's iPodder: for the Windows platform, for Blosxom users. But still no plugin for Movable Type posting. iPodder will do me for audio and downloads, but it's the pitching, not the broadcatching, that I'm looking for.
Evil Genius Chronicles - Multiplatform it is! 08 26 2004
UPDATE: Dave Slusher wrote with a clarification of my sketchy post:
There are two separate things conflated. I did a port of the iPodder sort of functionality in the form of my get_enclosures Perl script. I also wrote a blosxom plugin to insert the enclosures into the item tag of the RSS feed. These are two completely separate things that don't really have anything in common other than RSS. One enables enclosures to be added to my ordinary RSS feed, the other consumes RSS feeds. It sounds like you are talking about wanting the enclosure functionality but you are referring to it as the iPodder thing, which it isn't.
I don't know anything about MT plugins, but it probably can't be that difficult. The blosxom plugin is really really simple.
The pre-Maya site of Izapa, near Tapachula in Chiapas, has been damaged by illegal clearing of trees and construction nearby.
El Universal Online - Destruyen zonas arqueológica en Chiapas, denuncian
An interview with the founder of Geekcorps, Ethan Zuckerman, who lays out the failure to date of blogging and the internet elite to make a difference in the developing world. Can we rely on "trickle-down" as one member of the digerati assured me recently?
WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Ethan Zuckerman: the WorldChanging Interview
Looking for what others are thinking on the enclosure question, especially related to video. I'll update this as I find other useful links.
Dan Bricklin's recent thoughts regarding online stored audio and IT Conversations
Dave Winer's page of RSS milestones, /technology/formats and protocols/rss
Dave Winer's RSS 2.0 Specification and Howtos/Articles, both from Harvard Law Berkman Center blogs.
From Douglas Engelbart: Email2RSS intial spec
Outside The System: BitTorrent RSS = Broadcatching
Corante > The Importance of... > Broadcatching Roundup - Friday the 13th Edition
The comments on Joi Ito's post BitTorrent public tracker needed offer some hints towards enabling enclosures in RSS feeds.
And here's the BitTorrent client Adam Curry recommends: Azureus : Java BitTorrent Client - How To: Mac OSX
Good links on RSS and BitTorrent here: Dancing About Architecture: RSS Archives
Michael Fioritto's Weblog: Videoblogs on TV
Guide to Ease - Video blogging
DV Guide, brilliant site from Drazen Pantic, who says “Politics happens on the couch."
Also, Drazen's Field-Notes from the Globalization Forefront
Some considerations from the weblog of Lucas Gonze
So all during these last four years that I've been spending off and on in Mexico (after the 20 before that, mostly off), the best minds on the Net have been working on this plan - to enclose video and audio in RSS feeds, so a person could subscribe, then download the good stuff overnight. Here's more of the genesis of the idea, from Dave Winer in 2001, via Adam Curry yesterday.
Thanks to Alfonso for this link to a report on problems at La Parota dam in Mexico - intimidation of local people by the authorities, known damage to the ecosystem.
It's late, but I have to look at this later. A Joi Ito post from last fall when this was all starting and I was looking elsewhere.
Joi Ito's Web: RSS 2.0 Enclosures
The Girls Club farmer's market got a clever profile in the Times today. Nancy Vega got her press moment, famous photographer Dith Pran did the photos, and Nicholas Stein got perhaps his first byline in the Times (he's not in college yet). Cheers for everyone and especially for my wife Lyn who's led this merry movement for years.
The Lower Eastside Girls Club of New York
NY Times Metro - Lyn Pentecost
Today, Mexican President Vicente Fox will tour communities near Benemerito de las Americas, upriver from Frontera Corozal, which have been electrified since June of 2000. These are presumably the result of the power lines visible as you approach Frontera, crossing the ridge at the area known as La Cojolita.
El Economista - Fox inaugurará obras eléctricas en Chiapas
There's some controversy over a 10 peso fee that will be charged all visitors to the waterfront at Frontera Corozal. This is the main point of embarcation to Yaxchilan and other Usumacinta sites, as well as the land and water route to Flores and Tikal. Proceeds will help maintain the small museum in Frontera, but tour operators say it will hold up traffic and will send the wrong message to tourists.
Tabasco Hoy || Cobran entrada a Corozal
Wi-Fi Networking News: VoIP May Reach Underserved in NYC
Yes, in the country and in the world, we hope. But I'm talking about this site, for the moment.
The Usumacinta campaign (to stop the proposed dams that would damage the watershed and flood Maya sites) is at a wait-and-see point. With Mexican President Vicente Fox's declaration in March that there is no plan to build dams on the river, there is cautious optimism that this round of proposals has been fought off. Time will tell. The dam-builders will return in a few years, if history is any indication.
So I intend to start sharing my years of travel and recording in the Maya region, and I'll redesign this site to that end. I'll continue posting news on archaeology, ecology and development from southern Mexico and Guatemala, but I'll make available more of my archive of photos and video. I'll also post reports by my colleagues that have resulted from our efforts on the river. And I'll look into better ways to distribute all of this. It should be a fun project for me, and for all twelve of my readers!
I stopped allowing comments when I started getting comment spam in a big way. That seems to have been solved by MT-Blacklist, so I'll reopen posts to comments. Not that I get many, but it seems like a friendly start to the new plan.
I've finally put an RSS feed button on this site, in the left column underneath Maya links. Drag the orange button into your RSS reader subscriptions column, or copy link location and paste into the subscription entry field, and you'll be subscribed to the headlines of my posts.
Don't know what this is all about?
First, here's a simple explanation of RSS, by Dan Bricklin, for the easily confused, like me. Thanks to Halley for the link.
What is RSS: A tutorial introduction to feeds and aggregators
But you'll need an RSS reader, a program that gathers the headlines for your subscriptions. If you are on a Mac like me:
Ranchero Software: NetNewsWire
Next, a great leap forward, to Adam Curry's iPodder program, which allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds with mp3 enclosures, and have them downloaded to your iPod. His site features a short audio feed, called the Daily Source Code.
Adam Curry's Weblog - iPodderb03
And try the PubSub website, which will create a personalized RSS feed for you, on a topic of your choice - free. They also have links to sources of RSS readers for PCs and Macs.
If you want to bring RSS feed headlines into your own MT weblog, here are some tips:
Learning Movable Type: Displaying an RSS Newsfeed on Your Site
Stay tuned for an explosion of DIY media feeds. Crappy cable TV no more.
HOW-TO use an iPod as a bootable drive - Engadget - www.engadget.com
Muniwireless: Rich MacKinnon on building a community wireless organization
Here's a review of Apple's new motion effects program.
Peter Wiggins looks at the New, Revolutionary Motion from Apple: Intro
Chris Shaw pointed this out to me. One of the many dangers of large dams - vulnerability to earthquakes.
International News Article | Reuters.com
In Mesoweb, a David Stuart paper on the place name of Piedras Negras. It includes photos of the jaguar paw altar before the four carved supports were removed, leaving it to lie on the jungle floor.
PARI Online Publications - The Paw Stone: The Place Name of Piedras Negras, Guatemala
Fahrenheit FBI | Perspectives | CNET News.com
The Federal Communications Commission voted 5-0 last week to prohibit businesses from offering broadband or Internet phone service unless they provide police with backdoors for wiretapping access. Formal regulations are expected by early next year.
But the commissioners didn't give the FBI and its allies at the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration everything they wanted.
The paving of this stretch of road between Mexico and Guatemala, near Tenosique, would help local people - I've seen the mud and it's unbelievable - but it will increase invasion and destruction of the Sierra del Lacandon forest.
PrensaLibre.com - Viven entre el lodo
Click on this photo, from the eastern Peten this spring, to see a larger version.
It's $45 a square foot, but it might be good for a demonstration project at the new, green, girls club building.
PV-TV: A Multifunctional, Eco-Friendly Building Material | Metropolis Magazine
...this amorphous silicon technology has a “three-in-one” functionality: it is able to act as a glazing element, solar panel, and video display screen.
In Mural, a report on a plan to relocate 3,000 residents of "irregular settlements" in the Lacandon forest and the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve. On the same page are links to past stories and to an animated graphic, showing the communities in question and outlining the biodiversity and importance of the region.
mural.com --- Prevén 'sacar' a 3 mil de Montes Azules