iknowthe.net | Internet and Ecommerce Consultant

Times Online Paywall statistics

Emma Kane — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:39:05 +0000

This graph has leaked out of somewhere and purports to show the effect of the Paywall on the time online website. Allegedly. If its real, and it may well be, then the paywall isn’t working. Personally, I’d pay if it wasn’t so relatively expensive – there’s nothing in the Times for me I can’t get for free elsewhere…

No news is Good news..

Emma Kane — Mon, 17 May 2010 12:40:43 +0000

I now have an office in central Oxford, just by the station, which is very handy for London clients wanting to meet up in Paddington. That aside, the complete lack of blog updates demonstrate how busy I have been, with some very interesting new Ecommerce clients, plus I’ve been doing some Internet video streaming, SEO and Google Analytics consultancy. As well as the obligatory social media work. As ever though, any question, thoughts or comments do get in touch.

Google heal thyself

Emma Kane — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 23:46:09 +0000

So, Google appears to be failing to close its HTML tag () tag on its homepage, Google.co.uk. nOOb error.

I mean, this is the Google Homepage…Get it vaguely right guys, even if it doesn’t validate.

Check it out yourself, but here’s the source as of 23:44, 24th March 2010, http://www.google.co.uk.

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Arduino Twitter LCD

Emma Kane — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 21:14:47 +0000

Not that I’m busy or anything, but I saw this, this, then this, then this and decided I HAD to build a twitter enabled door sign /office messaging system.

With a little help, as I’m a python noob, I have this up and running.

I’d been wanting to play with Arduno for a while, and do have some minimal electronic skills, so off to ebay I went.

I bought an Arduino Duemilanove and a Sparkfun Serial 16×2 LCD, and some wire.

I soldered the wires on to the Serial LCD (it has a slot for a 3 pin JST connector – couldn’t find one in Maplin).

You then connect the VVD pin to the 5v pin(I had the 5v version of the LCD), GND to GND and RX to RX.

Upload the ardino code using the arduino interface from http://www.arduino.cc/

Code below - it isn’t auto updating yet, but it will be – EDIT now it is, improvements welcomed. LCDDoorsign.zip

This does occasionally stop working with a peer reset connection error – presumably an issue on the twitter api side – I need to way to stop this halting everything / automatically restart the script…

Here’s a video showing the sign in action…

Nice modifications would be to do this on a massive screen and let it include @ so people can tweet to your sign.

Or include an PIR / Proximity detector and auto tweet when triggered. Endless possibilities – but this is what I wanted.

Mine will be going on the wall outside Oxford Digital Media’s offices in Oxford.

Enjoy, and huge thanks to everyone who came before.

You’ll need py-serial and py-twitter installed on your computer to run this.

Arduino Code – stolen from http://dawes.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/twitter-to-lcd/

#include

#define txPin 2

int incomingByte = 0; // for incoming serial data

SoftwareSerial LCD = SoftwareSerial(0, txPin);

// since the LCD does not send data back to the Arduino, we should only define the txPin

void setup()

{

Serial.begin(9600);

pinMode(txPin, OUTPUT);

LCD.begin(9600);

}

void loop()

{

if (Serial.available() > 0) {

// read the incoming byte:

incomingByte = Serial.read();

LCD.print(incomingByte,BYTE);

}

#include
#define txPin 2
int incomingByte = 0; // for incoming serial data
SoftwareSerial LCD = SoftwareSerial(0, txPin);// since the LCD does not send data back to the Arduino, we should only define the txPin
void setup(){ Serial.begin(9600); pinMode(txPin, OUTPUT); LCD.begin(9600);}
void loop(){ if (Serial.available() > 0) { // read the incoming byte: incomingByte = Serial.read(); LCD.print(incomingByte,BYTE); }}

Adapted code from http://dawes.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/twitter-to-lcd/ – to make it actually run

#!/usr/bin/env python

# encoding: utf-8

“”"

TweetLCD.py

This twitter-to-LCD script implements two functions for displaying

text on a Sparkfun Serial LCD.

scrollText – allows long lines of text to be scrolled along the top of the

LCD pageText – allows long text to be paged up. First the top line is

written, then the bottom line, then the lines shift up, and more text is

written on the bottom line.

Created by Andrew M.C. Dawes on 2009-12-18.

Some rights reserved. License: Creative Commons GNU GPL:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/

“”"

import serial

import time

import threading

import twitter

SERIALPORT = “/dev/tty.usbserial-A800ep5H” # this is my USB serial port YMMV

def pageText(textString, sPort):

botLine = “”

cursor = 0

for letter in textString:

# print letter, cursor # this is for debugging

sPort.write(letter)

if cursor > 15:

# I’m printing in second line so keep track of what I write

botLine = botLine + letter

# print botLine

# page the bottom line up to top, clear bottom, and write

if cursor == 31:

# print “cursor wrap”

sPort.write(‘\xFE\x80′) # wrap to start of first line

sPort.write(botLine) # what was on the bottom (now on top)

sPort.write(” ”)

sPort.write(‘\xFE\xC0′) # skip to beginning of second line

botLine = “”

cursor = 15 # reset to beginning of second line

cursor = cursor + 1

time.sleep(0.05) # set this delay to a comfortable value

# The quick brown fox jumped over t|he lazy yellow dog.

#letter: t

#sPort The quick brown f

#botLine ox jumped over t

#cursor 31

def scrollText(textString, sPort):

cursor = 0

firstPass = True # test whether this is the first 16 characters

for letter in textString:

if firstPass == False:

sPort.write(‘\xFE\x18′) # scroll left one spot at each letter

# print letter, cursor # this is for debugging

sPort.write(letter)

if cursor == 15:

# I’m printing the last visible character

sPort.write(‘\xFE\x90′) # jump cursor to 2nd column of 16

# once the first row is filled, we need to scroll

firstPass = False

if cursor == 31:

sPort.write(‘\xFE\xA0′) # jump cursor to 3rd column

if cursor == 39:

# start over, there are only 40 characters in memory

cursor = -1

sPort.write(‘\xFE\x80′) # original character address

cursor = cursor + 1

time.sleep(0.5) # adjust this to a comfortable value

def main():

sPort = serial.Serial(SERIALPORT, 9600)

time.sleep(0.1)

sPort.write(‘\xFE\x01′) # clear the LCD screen

while(True):

time.sleep(0.1)

sPort.write(‘\xFE\x80′) # goto 0 position

api = twitter.Api()

status = api.GetUserTimeline(user=’doorsign’, count=1)[0]

# textstring = “11111111111111112222222222222222\

# 33333333333333334444444444444444″

textstring = “” + status.text

#scrollText(textstring, sPort) # choose one of these

pageText(textstring,sPort) # two options

time.sleep(2)

sPort.write(‘\xFE\x01′) # clear the screen (in preparation to repeat)

sPort.close()

threading.Timer(3, main).start()

if __name__ == ‘__main__’:

main()

time.sleep(20)

Google Buns

Emma Kane — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 09:13:06 +0000

“Come on,” said Moon-Face. “Come and eat a Google Bun and see what you think of it.”
Soon they were all sitting on the broad branches outside Moon-Face’s house, eating Pop Biscuits and Google Buns. The buns were most peculiar. They each had a very large currant in the middle, and this was filled with sherbet. So when you got to the currant and bit it the sherbet frothed out and filled your mouth with fine bubbles that tasted delicious. The children got a real surprise when they bit their currants, and Moon-Face almost fell off the branch with laughing.

I’m reading The Magic Faraway Tree to my 6 year old – and was surprised to find this mention of Google Buns. Enid Blyton was ahead of her time. If you missed out on these as a kids – they are really good books!

Backup mail.app to gmail

Emma Kane — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:43:32 +0000

http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2010/01/upload-your-email-to-google-apps.html Just when I want to upload all my archived email to google, they come up with a free app.

ipad

Emma Kane — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:42:49 +0000

Google Personalised Search

Emma Kane — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 17:28:51 +0000

Some info on the new personalised search from Google and some good analysis from searchengineland.

Play.com email disaster – an etailers nightmare

Emma Kane — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:12:20 +0000

The BBC are reporting that play.com have accidentally sent thousands of emails out, each detailing someone else’s order details.

Play have spent the day fielding emails and calls from angry customers, and apparently described the incident as a “massive problem.”
Ouch. What not to do with your customers data.

Great post on above the fold content

Emma Kane — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:34:24 +0000

Over at econsultancy. Put important stuff above the fold. Even nowadays.

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