Sperrobjekt Weblog

DivX Stage6 is a video sharing platform not unlike YouTube. One of the differences is that users can upload their DivX-encoded videos that can be played in the browser using the DivX Web Player. Now, Stage6 even offers some HTML and Javascript code to include any video in your blog or on your web site. The problem is that this code does not validate. Maybe the JS code does, but I have not tried it because, you know, what if JS is turned off ... I just wanted to do it the plain XHTML way.

People have tried to find a solution that validates, but so far I couldn't find one. Until I came across A Smartass Education's code. It seems to build on earlier solutions for inserting Flash and Quicktime movies, so the author seems to have some experience with the topic. I took the relevant parts from their code and put them on a blank XHTML page. And to my surprise, the video plays in Firefox, IE, and Opera, and the Firefox HTMLTidy extension does not give me any errors. Now how great is that? Still, I'm not sure if this solution really adheres to web standards. Basically, what gives me a headache, is putting one object inside another. I'd be really glad if you gave me feedback on this. Here's the code:

And here's what the video looks like (DivX Web Player required):

Update: Markus suggested to add autoplay=false to the original example.

A couple of days ago, I was browsing the web for new applications I could install on my Nokia E60 mobile phone. That's when I came across an app called Fring. Fring allows you to login to services like Skype, Google Talk (Jabber!), and SIP based services (Ekiga!), and to use your phone as client. This gets even cooler because the E60 has WLAN support built in, so, basically, you get a Skype phone anyplace with free Wi-Fi. Unfortunately, unlike in North America, free wireless hotspots are hard to find in Germany.

Anyway, I installed Fring on my phone, started it with my Skype account, connected to my wireless router ... and waited for someone to appear on my contact list. I'm not a frequent Skyper, so I don't have many friends on my list, but today, Johannes went online, and I immediately gave him a call. It worked surprisingly well, although Fring is still in beta, and Johannes was sitting in his kitchen with three walls between his laptop and router. Admittedly, there was a heavy time lag of about one or two seconds, but it's been hard to tell if it was because of his poor signal or because of the software involved. However, it was great to be able to walk into the living room or the kitchen without problems. I sometimes use Skype with my bluetooth headset, which allows me to stand up from in front of my computer, but I cannot leave the room. Now I can, and I decided to share the fun with you.

Fring is a free service, though I don't know if it will stay that way forever. Probably not, but until then, it's a useful little app that remains on my phone alongside the trusty ICQ client JIMM.

When I attended the BarCamp in Frankfurt in April, I found myself listening to Christopher Laux and his interesting plans to create (i.e. to code in Common Lisp) a search engine for blogs. Now, a first beta of his brainchild is online at terraminds.de. The English-language version is still under development, but I'm sure it will take Christopher only a short while until it's up and running. Terramind is looking pretty clean and returns comprehensive hits, as far as I can tell from my couple of tests. However, I'm not sure if the results are sorted by relevance or some other criteria? Would be great if I could at least between relevance and time/recency. Unfortunately, neither of my blogs - ok, this one here is in English and doesn't really belong there - seems to be indexed by his busy spiders; but it will be just a matter of time until my NUMBlog will be found there. Right, Christopher?

I couldn't hardly belive it myself, but after choosing a template for this blog, I had forgotten to attach the hAtom microformat to it. I've just rectified this embarassing situation. Refurbishing my blog has taken me only five minutes this morning. A quick look at the hAtom cheatsheet helped me somewhat. Adding the appropriate classes and rel-bookmark has been a piece of cake. Actually, template designers should catch up on microformats and include hAtom by default.

I created an account at Yahoo!'s Upcoming some time ago. One of the features I like about Upcoming is that events are marked up with the hCalendar microformat. But if you subscribe to the RSS feed of your Upcoming events and include them in your blog's sidebar, all markup is lost, of course. So, I've hacked some new feature into my microformats plugin: It's now possible to subscribe to an events feed and merge this feed with the events that are manually entered via my plugin. The result is displayed in the sidebar with full hCalendar goodness. Check it out in my sidebar, and compare it with my page at upcoming.org. The plugin needs some cleanup 'cause it contains dirrrty hacks, but I will release it soon. I might also include the new and shiny wevent, a German Upcoming clone, and Google Calendar.