In 2009, Kosso and I petitioned Twitter to allow us to search for Tweets by their "in reply to" ID. The idea was that developers could created a properly threaded view of conversations. Of course, Twitter being ultra-responsive to developers, did absolutely nothing. Skip three years into the future, and App.net is providing all the API goodness that Twitter doesn't. This means that we can…
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Last year, I wrote about how Authentec wouldn't support their fingerprint readers on Linux. I've been chatting to the good folk at Authentec, and they've agreed to release the specification documents! So if you want to code up an interface for the AES2810 or AES2550 you can! A word of note, the best way to get the latest version of these documents is to register for the Authentec Developer…
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When people ask me which QR generator to use, I usually suggest Google Charts. However, recently I've become dissatisfied with its limitations, so I've decided to write and release my own QR encoder. I'm still looking for a catchy name for it (suggestions welcomed) - so for now it's called "QR Generator PHP". It's available on GitHub or you can use it directly. So, how does it compare to…
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Every so often I find a device which - inexplicably - doesn't include Linux support. I've been very impressed with how well Ubuntu runs on the Lenovo ThinkPad X200. Everything worked out of the box - with the exception of the fingerprint reader (AuthenTec AES2810). Now, I know that fingerprint readers can easily be defeated by jelly-babies, but it annoys me when something doesn't work. The…
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I was honoured when David Wood asked me to present at his first "brown bag" lunch lecture at Accenture. Normally I would run through a presentation of this length at several different venues and thoroughly hone it before presenting at a high profile event. As you'll see from the slides and video, it's still a bit rough round the edges. I based this talk on Jonathan Zittrain's excellent Future…
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As I mentioned in my last post about VoteUK, I found the TheyWorkForYou API to be a little lacking when it came to image sizing. I posted a request asking if there was a pattern to the image sizes and, if not, was it possible to have the sizes returned in the API. The "standard" open source reply - "fix it yerself" - was predictably swift. So I did. The source code is remarkably accessible -…
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There are many reasons to love Open Source Software. It's free (as in you pay nothing), it's free (as in speech) and - perhaps my favourite reasons - it's free (as in liberating). By liberating, I mean that one isn't tied down to the product roadmap and release schedule of the developers. If I find a bug, not only can I report it, I can fix it myself. If I can't fix it myself, I can often fi…
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