Hi - I’ve just released an update to the bugzilla reports extension for MediaWiki - see BugzillaReports @ MediaWiki. We use this internally and find it very useful for generating slice and dice reports of our activities. Feel free to give it a try and contact me if you have any questions.
I just discovered the benefits of creating custom Firefox search plugins the other day, having hooked up a Firefox search plugin for our internal MediaWiki which I shared with my colleagues. The search plugin integrates with the MediaWiki apis which can be used to provide suggestions. This suggestion functionality is pretty neat, since it allows you to quickly scan what pages are available on your wiki (without hitting the search button) and then select what you’re looking to go directly to your chosen page. A quick click-to-install link can also be provided for your team. Follow the steps below to find out how.
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/"
xmlns:moz="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
<ShortName>my wiki</ShortName>
<Description>my wiki</Description>
<Image width="16" height="16">data:image/x-icon;base64,
(put your base 64 encoded image here)
</Image>
<Developer>Ian Homer for bemoko</Developer>
<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
<Url type="text/html" method="get"
template="http://wiki/index.php?title=Special:Search&search={searchTerms}"/>
<Url type="application/x-suggestions+json"
template="http://wiki/api.php?action=opensearch&search={searchTerms}"/>
<moz:SearchForm>http://wiki</moz:SearchForm>
<moz:UpdateInterval>8</moz:UpdateInterval>
</OpenSearchDescription>
where http://wiki is the base URL to your media wiki installation.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en" dir="ltr">
<head>
<title>search engine loader</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<script type="text/javascript">
function addEngine(engineURL) {
if (window.external && ("AddSearchProvider" in window.external)) {
window.external.AddSearchProvider(engineURL);
return false;
} else {
alert(error_opensearch_unsupported);
return true;
}
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<div id="wrapper">
<a onclick="return addEngine('http://host/searchmywiki.xml')">
install my wiki search engine plugin
</a>
</div>
<body>
</html>
… now even less excuses for people to say that they “can’t find it on the wiki”.
I’m really pleased with our new website. It gives the clean design and warmth that gives you an idea of what bemoko is all about. We’re all really up beat about the next few months and we’ve had some fantastic feedback on what we’re doing. Thanks to all those involved so far.
If you haven’t had the chance to meet up with us, feel free to get in touch and say hello. We’re normally at the momo london events and I’m personally at the MEX conference in a couple of weeks. Really looking forward to that especially having been awarded one of the momo scholarships.
I’ve been pretty impressed with the Google Reader which I started using a few weeks ago, especially since it bridges over to the mobile service so cleanly. The mobile site hasn’t got the most flashiest of interfaces, but it is real sticky and genuinely useful. Now why do I think it is so good? Because it does what I want it to do:
So I’ve got into the stage of configuring my feeds and reading trends at my mac and reading the news on my mobile, playing each medium to it’s strengths.
It’s not all rosey though. Some feeds provide lots of content, but others just provide a sentence relying on a click through to the main site. The click through experience is appalling, whether or not I go through google’s own transcoder. Most sites are not mobile ready and just take too long to load and the google transcoding UX is hit or miss as to whether the content I want is on the initial page of the transcoding. At least google give me the choice of which one I prefer - I’ve opted for the transcoded version (for the time-being), but to be honest I don’t click through often, since the experience is typically poor. Also, if the feed doesn’t provide a decent amount of content, then I’m starting to remove them from my reader. I actual would encourage feed providers to include with a decent body of content with the ad (text or image) embedded. I don’t mind seeing the add in the middle of content that I’m enjoying reading. As a service provider myself this does throw up some challenges for analytics :).
I took a quick look at the iPhone AJAX UI which gives you an idea of UIs we may all head towards. It was only partially compatible with my E61i though. Furthermore we can only move towards such UIs if it ready does improve the UX - i.e. not slow and not unnecessary eye-candy that distracts from my primary ask - I want to read relevant news.
Good work Google & thanks.
At last Vodafone is providing more attractive data tariffs. It had to be coming, and the sooner the better. There’s still better rates on the market, but it’s great news for me (I’m with Voda UK) and the 17million other subscribers. The barrier of entry for mobile web usage in the UK is dropping.
Some projects do seem be run from the point of view that the user is simply an irritant. That’s why it’s been so refreshing to see MomoLondon and OTA paying particular attention to the user experience (or UX) over the past few weeks. Highlights include Future Platforms’s inspirational astronomy case study led by Tom Hume and Bryan Rieger; Steve Ives on UE testing for Taptu; and Scott Weiss’s pearls of wisdom. I’m also looking forward to continuing the discussions at the MEX conference in a few weeks, thanks to being offered a MoMo sponsorship placement. The mobile device, being pitched as being the device to enable the user at the point of inspiration, is ironically constrained by the input interfaces which restrict that inspiration. The iPhone is pushing the standard, but it’s only early days and it’s not exactly mass market yet. These constraints and barriers are dropping, but they won’t drop quickly, and they won’t drop at all if service providers do not apply due care and attention to the UX.
A few reoccurring themes emerge:
The mobile device is so user focused. You know your user - location, direct billing - and the interface limitations are such that your UX mistakes are amplified. The mass market has not yet started using the mobile web, snubbing it as fiddly and ineffective. If you want food for though enjoy the debate following ReadWriteWeb’s mobile web baiting “Is the Mobile Web Dead?” blog. These complaints, although justifiable, are more often than not based on the constraints of the mobile, cost confusion and the limited services that are available. This situation provides a great opportunity for the industry. When we can tear down the constraints and when we can apply the appropriate attention to the user experience, the uses will come flooding.
I’m a big fan of wikis and MediaWiki is my flavour. It’s a rock solid platform and has never let me down. I’ve picked up lots of best practices, patterns, tips & tricks and little hacks over the past few years and I’ll be sharing them with you over the next few months on this blog. There’s no better place to start things rolling than with a list of my favourite extensions. Extensions are what bring the MediaWiki to life and really allow you to take control of your Wiki content:
One thing that always amazes me is the quality of both the MediaWiki core and the extensions provided by the community. It’s always a pleasure to come to either install a MediaWiki system, install extensions or upgrade the stack. It all just works and when I slip up (as I occasionally do) - it invariably tells me what I’ve done and what I need to do.
I’ll continue with this MediaWiki series in a few weeks time. Please let me know if there’s any particular areas you’d like me to cover or perhaps any use cases or samples you’d like me to run through.
According to the BBC, gaming on the mobile platform is about to take off.
Being from the ZX Spectrum generation, I have been constantly amazed at the way the processing power has increased to allow sophisticated games to run on smaller and smaller devices. In the early days I remember trying (not all that successfully it has to be admitted) to program various games on the Spectrum platform.
Moving from coding in BASIC to machine language made a massive improvement to performance, but you could feel you were stretching the kit to its limits for relatively basic games.
I remember going to arcades and marvelling at the graphics and power of dedicated games machines, it seemed almost impossible to imagine being able to play games of that quality at home.
Now, of course, you can play the old arcade games in a browser window on pretty much any standard PC. There seems no difference between arcade machines now and games platforms like the PS3.
Putting the games onto a mobile platform seems to limit you to the equivalent of Spectrum games against the arcade machines again. Try playing Call of Duty 2 on the Sony Ericsson K800i - you are moving stick men around a 2D landscape with limited sound and graphics. Whilst even the ability to do this on what is, essentially, a low powered computer is impressive, todays games will require a large increase in power.
Screensize is another obvious limitation - I’ve attempted Lemmings on the K800i as well, but it is not well suited for small screens and small keyboards - a lot of the game revolves around timing and getting the cursor over the minute lemming at the right time and pressing the right key is definitely an art. The new generation of larger screen devices will no doubt help in this area (Lemmings would be good with the touchscreen devices!)
The phone does open up one avenue not available to most PC gamers though; and this is Wii style motion sensitivity. The phone is ideally suited to this form of control (although you may get some odd looks whilst playing the games).
So, it’s still early days for mobile games, but unlike when I was programming on my Spectrum, I have no doubt we will soon have PlayStation quality games to play on the train home. It may make commuting almost enjoyable.
After my major disappointment with the F700, not wanting to be phoneless, I had to choose a different handset quickly. I had originally compiled a shortlist of the iPhone, F700, Nokia N95 (8GB), Sony Ericsson K850i and the Nokia N82.
A colleague of mine was seriously happy with his Nokia E61i but after a trouser test it created a bit too much packet sag for me. I could just buy tighter fitting trousers but thought a different phone choice would be the best way forward.
I’ve been a fan of Sony Ericsson’s for a while, had a K750i for a couple of years and loved it. It even filled in ok when my digital camera broke when on holiday in
So, that left the Nokia’s, N95 or N82. These babies are packed with goodies. How to choose, the N95 causes some minor trouser problems and who really needs a double slider, also lacks a Xenon flash. I also noticed it has one external speaker, the N82 has 2, stereo, does that really matter? No, but makes you feel good.
So I have an N82. The best bits are:
What’s not so great:
I also have a suspicion it’s killing off my Bluetooth headsets. Had two so far that have worked for three weeks then will not stay connected. Spooky.
Conclusion – overall this is a great device, there is a lot packed into a good trouser sized package. I’m seriously chuffed.
I discovered widsets early last year and found it a really enjoyable interface to access my favourite news feeds. It’s been out of beta since last November and has since been polished up well. What impressed me most yesterday was the ease in which I could create a new widget for this bemoko blog and get it published. I had 20 subscribers to the widget within the hour. Many thanks to those early adopters (and of course the Widset developers for making it so easy).
An alternative approach is the Wordpress mobile plugin provided by Andy Moore. As with all Wordpress plugins the installation is easy beyond belief. 5 minutes and our blog was optimised for the mobile. Andy does a stunning job in the mobilisation - all in one php and a great light weight device detection. Do take a look at the PHP code that does it all (wordpress-mobile.php) for a little inspiration.
So how would I access mobile feeds? I’m not too sure whether I prefer the Widset approach or delivering direct to a standard mobile browser. They both have their strengths. The Widset UI is smooth, looks impressive and is responsive, but it does require the user to download and launch another app. The browser route is more lightweight, accessible to more users without an installation and gives extra flexibility to the service provider - you’re not confined by the Widset box. I’ll try both for the next few months and let you know what works for me both as user and a service provider.
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