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Mass Video Conversion Using AWS. How to use S3, SQS, EC2, ffmpeg and some Python to bulk convert videos with Amazon Web Services.

# 3rd April 2007, 11:44 pm / amazon, aws, ec2, ffmpeg, python, s3, sqs

mail rail on Flickr (via) Photos of the Royal Mail’s private underground railway, sadly closed in 2003.

# 3rd April 2007, 11:02 pm / flickr, royalmail

Ext JS. Jack Slocum is building a business around his excellent Ext JavaScript library (which can now run on top of YUI, jQuery or Prototype). The library itself is LGPL, but you can pay for a commercial license and support.

# 3rd April 2007, 10:11 pm / jack-slocum, javascript, jquery, prototype-js, yui, yuiext

Lawrence Journal-World Marketplace (via) While other newspapers complain about competition from the internet, my former employer is embracing it. This is why local newspapers still matter.

# 3rd April 2007, 10:15 am / jeff-croft, lawrence, ljworld, marketplace

Ekranoplan! Crazy awesome Soviet “ground effect” vehicle, visible in dry dock on Google Maps.

# 3rd April 2007, 10:04 am / bill-humphries, ekranoplans, google-maps, soviet

phpsh. An interactive shell for PHP, developed at Facebook and written mostly in Python. Facebook are really pushing their open-source stuff at the moment.

# 3rd April 2007, 9:43 am / facebook, php, phpsh, python

The problem with pixels. IE7 lets users resize pixel-based fonts. Is it finally time to stop avoiding pixel sizing in CSS?

# 2nd April 2007, 2:11 pm / css, ie7, wilson-miner

The RADAR Architecture: RESTful Application, Dumb-Ass Recipient (via) Dave Thomas points out that REST expects smart clients, but browsers are dumb (only really support POST and GET). His suggested fix is to build a pure REST service and then drop in a server-side application proxy that sits between the browser and the REST backend.

# 2nd April 2007, 10:42 am / dave-thomas, http, rest

Don’t buy Parallels in a box. If you buy a boxed retail copy of Parallels Desktop in the UK (as I did) you’ll have all sorts of problems with your license key. Buy it online from the US website instead.

# 2nd April 2007, 10:35 am / parallels

Mailhook. Free e-mail address to HTTP POST bridge—just provide a script URL and you’ll be given a subdomain; any e-mail sent to an address at that host is then posted to your script.

# 31st March 2007, 11:21 am / email, mailhook

Flickr content filters (via) You can now upload illustrations and screenshots to Flickr without risk of being NIPSAd, provided you label them as such.

# 30th March 2007, 3:45 pm / flickr, nipsa

Triplr. Ultra simple GET-based web service for converting RSS / Atom / RDF / Microformats+GRDDL to HTML / ntriples / RDF / RSS / JSON / Turtle. Small pieces, loosely joined.

# 30th March 2007, 3:30 pm / atom, grddl, html, json, microformats, ntriples, rdf, rss, semanticweb, triplr, turtle

“Obsessed with putting ink on paper” (via) Fascinating essay from the authors of Lilypond describing the challenges involved in writing software to typeset music.

# 30th March 2007, 3:04 pm / lilypond, music, typography

robotlab juke bots (via) Decommissioned industrial robot arms reprogrammed to act as super precise DJs.

# 30th March 2007, 11:13 am / jukebots, matt-webb, robotarms, robotlab, robots

From Pixels to Plastic. Awesome talk given by Matt Webb at ETech, on the emerging culture of Generation C, cheap hardware prototyping and physical extensions to the online world.

# 30th March 2007, 11:09 am / etech, generationc, hardware, hardware-hacking, matt-webb

Spinn3r Launches Today. An API to the Tailrank blog index, so you can index the blogosphere without having to build your own spider / spam filter.

# 29th March 2007, 2:34 pm / api, spinn3r, tailrank

Hack Day 2007—get your diaries out. Yahoo! UK and the BBC are hosting a public hack day on the weekend of June 16th/17th at Alexandra Palace, complete with a concert from a “top secret” band. The US hack day surprise performance was Beck.

# 29th March 2007, 2:24 pm / bbc, hackday, yahoo

Introducing the Yahoo! Mail Web Service. 101 pages of documentation—this thing is huge!

# 29th March 2007, 2:47 am / api, yahoo, yahoo-mail, ydn

DjangoKit. Early preview release of a tool that lets you package a Django application up as a fully contained OS X application. When Leopard ships with PyObjC this kind of thing will be even easier.

# 29th March 2007, 12:50 am / django, djangokit, leopard, macos, pyobjc, python

Snipperoo now supports OpenID. It’s a really clean implementation, and they’ve given it prominent placement on their homepage.

# 28th March 2007, 5:05 pm / openid, snipperoo

PyPy 1.0. The fascinating Python implemented in Python project reaches 1.0, and now includes a JIT compiler. It’s still not recommended for general use though.

# 27th March 2007, 11:48 pm / pypy, python

cmemcache. Python extension for libmemcache which provides more than twice the performance of the pure-Python memcached client. Supported by Django development version.

# 27th March 2007, 1:51 pm / cmemcache, django, libmemcache, memcached, python

Applied Web Heresies: ETech 2007. Phil Windley’s notes on Avi Bryant’s ETech tutorial, which shows how ideas from Avi’s Seaside framework can be ported to other languages.

# 27th March 2007, 1:15 pm / avi-bryant, etech, phil-windley, seaside

How to beat Google, part 1. Rich Skrenta with 12 steps to taking on Google in the search engine space, including some great insights in to smart UI design.

# 27th March 2007, 12:02 am / google, rich-skrenta, search-engines, ui

Metaprogramming JavaScript Presentation. Adam McCrea demonstrates some incredibly elegant DSL -style JavaScript based on chaining method calls together.

# 26th March 2007, 7:45 pm / adam-mccrea, dsl, javascript, metaprogramming

Sigourney Weaver To Narrate Planet Earth. The Discovery Channel have replaced Sir David Attenborough’s narration of Planet Earth with Sigourney Weaver. Outrage!

# 26th March 2007, 2:56 pm / david-attenborough, discoverychannel, planetearth, sigourneyweaver

The Athena Framework. CERN’s ATLAS particle accelerator experiment is scriptable with Python.

# 26th March 2007, 2:43 pm / athena, atlas, cern, particlephysics, python

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