Fred's blog

I'm toying with the idea of implementing a distributed social networking system. I want to get control back to my contacts and personal data!

To do this, here are the requirements I see for the system:

1. personal data and contacts are kept and controlled by each users.
2. information should be available differently to contacts and contacts of contacts than to others. So we can call one version restricted and the other one complete.
3. information should be searchable.

Interesting components to implement the system are:

• openid and/or gpg could be used to authenticate the users.
• foaf could be used as a standard format to store data and exchange data.

Requirements lead to the following points:

• To satisfy point 1, the data could be published on the personal web site of the user.
• The data could be in FOAF format to satisfy point 3.
• Point 2 is the more complex. One idea could be to publish on the web only the restricted version that will be searchable by search engine. Then we need a way to handle the complete version of the data. We could use an email automate for this or a web service or a kind of web proxy that will act for the user. Anyway what we need is an agent that will act for the user to answer requests from contacts and contacts of contacts. I have to think more to find what is the best way to go.

Some news on the development of http://hardware4linux.info/:

• You can now rate Fingerprint readers, Cameras, Webcams, Scanners and Laptops. The classification of these components is based on heuristics so report any error to me.

• You can now use direct links based on hardware info if you need on your web sites for PCI and USB components. For PCI, you can use the following url: http://hardware4linux.info/pci/<xxxx>/<xxxx>/<xxxx>/<xxxx>/ and for USB: http://hardware4linux.info/usb/<xxxx>/<xxxx>/.

• An RSS feed for the comments is now available.

Mon amie Pascale vient de lancer un site d'information sur le commerce équitable en Ile de France: http://equitecho.org/. Vous y trouverez:

• des dossiers,
• le recencement des différents acteurs,
• le calendrier des évènements à venir.

Some news on the development of http://hardware4linux.info/ :

• You can now navigate in the association between kernel modules and devices.
• Display the names of OEM manufacturers for PCI devices.
• New version (0.8) of the collector.

And the current stats in term of Linux distributions:

• Ubuntu 7.04 : 36 systems
• Debian lenny/sid : 22 systems
• Mandriva Linux 2007.1 : 17 systems
• Mandriva Linux 2008.0 : 11 systems
• Gentoo Gentoo Base System release 1.12.9 : 10 systems
• Debian 4.0 : 7 systems
• Arch Linux Duke : 6 systems
• Gentoo Gentoo Base System release 1.12.10 : 6 systems
• Mandriva Linux 2007.0 : 6 systems
• Arch Linux (Duke) : 3 systems
• Fedora Core 5 : 2 systems
• Ubuntu 6.10 : 2 systems
• Ubuntu 7.10 : 2 systems
• openSUSE 10.2 : 2 systems
• Arch Linux 0.8 : 1 system
• Debian 3.1 : 1 system
• Fedora Core 6 : 1 system
• Frugalware 0.6 : 1 system
• Gentoo Gentoo Base System release 2.0.0_alpha3 : 1 system
• Mandriva Linux 2012 : 1 system
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 4 : 1 system
• Scientific Linux SL 4.4 : 1 system
• Slackware 10.2.0 : 1 system
• Slackware 11.0.0 : 1 system
• Ubuntu 6.06.1 : 1 system
• Zenwalk 4.0 : 1 system
• Zenwalk 4.6 : 1 system

Thanks to all that have uploaded systems!

I'm working on a new site to lookup and report hardware compatibility with Linux distributions. I'm in the early development stage. Only the reporting layers are done. I need help to validate that this is working correctly on various hardware and Linux flavors.

If you want to help, just try to report your system. You have to do the following steps:

• create an account on http://hardware4linux.info/accounts/register/
• install an LSB package from http://hardware4linux.info/server/download/
• launch /opt/hardware4linux.info/bin/hwreport /tmp/report
• upload the generated file to http://hardware4linux.info/server/upload/
• report me any problem (crash, upload problem, missing hardware, wrong hardware category, ...)

Any feedback welcome.

To use the photos from email2photo.net in Thunderbird, you have to install the MessageFaces plugin and configure it to use a Local folder to lookup photos. Then use the following script to download the photos to the local folder.

Quick start info for the script:

• mbox2photo.py dest ~/MessageFaces # configure the local folder to store the images
• mbox2photo.py add ~/.thunderbird/avgp3z8c.default/Mail/Local\ Folders/Inbox # add the mbox to be checked (you can add multiple ones)

Then start downloading images:

• mbox2photo.py

I have only tested the script under python 2.4.3 and Linux, let me know if it works for you.

I'm working on a new web service called email2photo to allow social networking sites to associate an email address to photos. The idea is to humanize the Internet!

If you are interested to use this service for your site, just read the details of the API at http://email2photo.net/api/.

While working on gptg I wanted to be able to phone to the club by clicking on the tel link. To be able to do this I had to do the following in firefox:

• open the about:config page
• add the Boolean property network.protocol-handler.external.tel with a value of true
• add the String property network.protocol-handler.app.tel with a value of /usr/local/bin/phone-call

And phone-call is a simple shell script that is calling twinkle my SIP client:

#!/bin/sh

exec twinkle --immediate --call "`echo $1 | sed s/tel://`"

# phone-call ends here

My goal is to have at least 10 members in each country around the world to spread the use of the site.

But I have a chicken and egg issue to solve with http://www.gptg.org/: to have more members I need more golfs and to have more golfs I need more members...

If you have any idea to spread the use of http://www.gptg.org/, contact me.

Here are the benefits for registered users:

• home page.
• a map with the golfs where you have played.
• invite other members to play.
• store your golf scores.
• add or modify golf clubs and courses.
• send messages to other members.
• publish your reviews.

These come in addition to the non-registered services:

• search engine.
• info on golf clubs and courses.
• maps.
• weather forecast.

I'm currently working on a social network site for golfers. If you want to beta test, just create an account on http://greatplacestogolf.org/ and play arround. Comments welcome!!!

Here are the features:

• See maps for your courses. You will see a map of all the places you have played on.
• Fiind partners on each course around the world.
• Reviews of courses.
• You can add your prefered courses yourself.
• Soon management of your golf partners to be able to organize rounds quickly.

Technical features:

• implemented in django the web framework in python.
• Google maps.
• Rss feed of the reviews.
• Review and profile are entered in wiki syntax (textile).
• Use of the hatom and hcal microformats

For example, here is the map of all my clubs:

While my check isn't integrated in rpmlint, I'm distributing lsbrpmlint as a standalone package to be installed after rpmlint. Feedback welcome.

• tar ball
• binary package

Here is the changes since the last patch:

• check cron files and profile files
• check package name against the list at lanana.org
• load the InitScript and Tags checks

I'm not sure this is a good idea to test against lanana.org names because one can want to register later and there is some delay in the registration. Alternatively I could only check for name coherency between the different files and directories. WDYT ?

I would also need a way to change the level of the report on other checks from warning to error and also from error to warning without changing the source. I need to think more about this.

I don't know why but this golf season was very bad. I lost one point of index :-(

And to crown it all, I broke my driver this summer. I play now with a Callaway X460 but I need to be more familiar with it ;-)

I have updated unison spec file to fix a buildependency.

Built a python-numpy spec file.

I'm proposing my help to the open source projects that want to distribute their software as binary packages. The idea is to demonstrate that the LSB is a viable way to deliver binaries for the open source projects. The LSB isn't reserved to proprietary ISV! Contact me at flepied at gmail.com and I'll help you with LSB packaging.

I had to setup my free.fr SIP phone to be able to join a phone meeting in 30 mn. Having lost my password and having no SIP client of choice, it was a challenge! Hoppefully I remembered a discussion with one of my co-coworker about twinkle (thanks Paul!). So I downloaded an src.rpm from Cooker (Mandriva Linux development version) to be sure to have a well integrated and up to date package for my Mandriva Linux 2006 system. The package was at version 0.8 so I dowloaded the 0.8.1 version and rebuilt the package (using this spec file for those interested in rebuilding on Mandriva Linux 2006). I requested a new password from my SIP provider (free.fr) and I was just in time for my meeting!

For those interested, I use the cooker.sh script to speed up my download and recompile from Cooker.