Ok, version 1.2 of the VideoPop plugin for WordPress is ready. The new Version allows to add videos by URL or upload. I added more formats and dimensions, fixed some bugs. I hope the crash bug is resolved. Works with WordPress 2.0.

I finally added the B-Sides, a place for short links, notes, findings. Based on the idea of asides I called them B-Sides, funny he ? ;)
asides – besides are semantically very similiar I guess, besides -> B-Sides. Anyway, I just hope the css works in all browsers, mac? The text is supposed to flow nicely around the black header, down the left column next to the posts.

The marriage of reason and nigtmare that has dominated the 20th century has given birth to an ever more ambigious world. Across the communications landscape move the spectres of sinister technologies and the dreams that money can buy. Thermo-nuclear weapons systems and soft-drink commercials co-exists in an overlit realm ruled by advertising and pseudo-events, science and pornography. Over our lives preside the great twin leitmotifs of the 20th century – sex and paranoia. [...]
J.G. Ballard, Introduction to Crash, 1995

I was going to post something about the R&B group Next, which I discoverd through pandora actually. This post would have included a mp3 with part of a song. Well, I thought, try and find out what do you have to do to present 2:00 minutes of that song completely legal on your blog.
 

Being resident of Germany I went to GEMA, the “society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights”. They have a repertoire search, I entered the song, refinded the search by entering one of the writers mentioned in the booklet as “name of interested party”.
The surprising result was a list of 10 full names and the publishing and sub-publishing companies.
I searched for the website of one of the german sub-publishers, which I found and got redirected to www.warnerchappell.com. I registered and filled out a license request for License Type “Multimedia” adding the comment “private, non-commercial blog, 2 Minutes, …”.
I am really curios what they are going to offer me.
 
Read on…

Puuuh, my whole work seems to circle around wordpress right now, which isn’t a bad thing.
Priority has a profile plugin for the MU version of wordpress. It features an interest search/match thingy, like in livejournal. Users my add as many terms as they like and are able to search for users with the same interests and a free search for any interest. This is done, still in the works is a user image function. A thumbnail of that image should show up everywhere the blog is referenced within the site, interest match results, recent posts on frontpage and so on.
 

Next in queue is an image gallery. I ported an image gallery I wrote last year to wordpress already but want to add some extra features. It’s very easy to use, just install the files, add a shorttag to a page and it is ready to go.
You can create different albums and you can choose if the big images should open inline, below the clickable thumbnails, or in a popup window. The feature I want to add is to seperate certain albums from the main gallery page to display them in post or pages. Every album has an id, just insert the id with a shorttag in your post and you could have a little gallery with 3 images that open in a popup window for example.
Those albums can be exluded from the main gallery.
 

Now that I have digital camera I realized I can’t upload videos with my own plugin! :)
The videos are in avi format which the videopop plugin doesn’t support right now. I can’t remember why, it certainly needs to get fixed.
There are a few bugs to fix, one of them is a “needed but forgotten code bug”, and I want to improve server requirement checking.
I hope this will help people to get a better idea why videopop isn’t running correctly on their server.
 
Read on…

Finally I managed to put up the videopop plugin. It’s beta but pretty stable.
This plugin allows you to create links that open videos in a popup window.
More on the VideoPop Plugin page.

I was reading about fair trade yesterday and suddenly the idea of green ecological web hosting came up?
Does it exist? A quick search brought up a few solar/wind energy powered hosts/datacenters in the U.S. and one in Canada. Very surprisingly or maybe not so surprisingly I could’t find one in Germany. Not one! Pretty disappointing for a country where the spirit of enviromental protection has quite saturated the society.
And it’s so easy to switch. Just ask your electricity provider to switch your “line” to eco power. Yes, it does cost more but a I would happily pay (a bit) more for a green host.

Since beginning of this year I come across the term Web 2.0 here and there. But what is this ominous new version of the Internet? Tim O’Reilly tries to explain in his esssay What Is Web 2.0 .

I recently discovered pandora.com. Its ist really WOW.
Enter a song/band name and the flash based player starts streaming in 128 KB/s quality.
The player then determines a similiar song which comes next.
By rating the songs thumbs up/down your “style” of music is refined and the next song chosen accordingly.
Its really really great to discover new music. And its not mainstream music!
You can also share “radio” stations. I just started one with Chemical Brothers

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