Eliminating advertisements in YouTube videos

 YouTube is a great site. It includes an amazing collection of educational and entertaining content. The only problem is that most videos have annoying advertisements. Google realise that these ads are annoying so they offer the possibility of signing up for a premium account, but since the cost of such an account can be over 150 euros per year most people decide to tolerate the ads.

Luckily one of my students told me about a free hack to eliminate advertisements for free. When you play a video on YouTube you will see that the URL is something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXX where XXX is the unique ID of the video you are watching. If you alter the URL to insert a minus sign - between the t and u in youtube you will be brought to an ad free version of the same video (e.g. https://www.yout-ube.com/watch?v=XXX)

Like all hacks, there are limitations.

1. Sometimes when you try to load a video from yout-ube.com for the first time you will get an error message "cannot locate video". I am not 100% certain why this error occurs. It is probably somehing to do with content caching. However, simply prerssing the "reload" button in your browser (or type ctrl/cmd-R) will solve the problem.
2. When using this service the video will occupy the full screen and so you won't be able to see the "related videos" that you see when you visit the normal YouTube site. Many people will consider this an advantage.

Don't ask me how this works behind the scenes. All I know is the description from their website, but this describes how to use the service rather than describing what happens under the covers. However, I am sorry to say that the site will probably stop working once Google figure out how to block it - there is too much revenue at stake for them.

What is the Strange Weather Hackathon?

The Science Gallery is currently hosting a weather themed hackathon in conjunction with their Strange Weather exhibition. The general idea is that teams will spend two days trying to do their best to answer a challenge related to how we deal with climate change.

For example, I am part of the "Woodville" team and we are trying to answer the challenge "What should I plant so that it will be suited to the expected future climate in my part of the world?". We are leveraging predictions for the likely effects of global warming which means that people will need to plant different crops than were traditionally planted in their area. Our team discussion document is hosted on hackpad. You can click here to see the latest version of the app on our web site (hopefully it will be working by tomorrow evening)..

Is there an App for that Gap

Young people today are very familiar with Apps. However, most of them simply use Apps created by other people and don't realise how easy it is for them to create their own. The Apps4Gaps competition is an attempt to rectify this by offering young Irish people to develop apps which leverage open Data.

The site provides links to the Irish 2011 census data feeds, but the rules seem to allow entrants to use any open data set to built their application. It seems that a number of organisations including the teachers organisations and CoderDojo movement are involved in prompting the contest.

The closing date for registering your project is 31st of January, but you have until 11th of April to complete your entry. The web site is not clear about what the age limit is for young people. I wonder would I be stretching the rules if I entered an application (although I am 51 I feel young at heart).

Tweeting about local weather conditions

I am quite proud of my personal weather station and the fact that it automatically makes reports available through a dedicated page on the Weather Underground site. However, until recently I was embarrassed to admit that the weather station didn't have its own twitter feed. Yesterday, I rectified this situation and I can now boast to my fellow geeks that the station is Tweeting hourly weather reports as @LLweather which is a new Twitter account I created for the weather station. In fact it is one of a large network of private weather stations in Ireland tweeting weather reports with the #iwn hashtag - this should not be surprising because most Irish people are obsessed by weather.

Initially I tried to write a short python script to do the updates, but then I discovered that this feature was already supported by the PYWWS package that I was using to upload the data to Weather underground. There were even clear instructions available on how to configure the software on their web site (I had to upgrade to v12.10 to get it to work).

After I set it up I was surprised to notice that the weather station was apparently giving weather reports about 20-25 minutes into the future. When I investigated I found that the clock on my Tonido plug was running alarmingly fast. I tried to set up the NTP deamon to keep the clock synchronised, but this proved complicated because the plug is running a very old version of Ubuntu. I corrected the time manually and will keep an eye on it until I get around to configuring NTP properly.

[xpost] Who needs to be involved in running a successful "Show and Tell" event for a Hackday

[This article was originally posted to the IBM internal hackday blog, but it is not really IBM specific]

I find that one of the most enjoyable parts of any Hackday is the Show and Tell event  when the hackers get to quickly present a summary of their project. Typically these events involve about 20-30 projects being presented and since it is unreasonable to expect the audience to sit through more than 1-1.5 hours of talks it is necessary to impose a strict time limit on each presentation (typically 2-3 minutes each). When most people first hear about this event format they predict that this will become a chaotic mess. This is a real danger so it is important that the event is very tightly controlled and well planned.

We are currently planning the show and tell event for the Ireland Lab in conjunction with the recent Hackday X. The main organiser was asking how many volunteers he needed to recruit and so I thought it might be worthwhile to list the various roles which are needed to help run a sucessful show and tell event. Don't be scared by the length of the list, it is of course possible for one person to fulfil more than one role during the event, but it is good to clarify exactly what you are asking each person to do and if you are lucky enough to have enough volunteer helpers it is nice to have a job for everyone so that they feel useful.

• Time Keeper: because of the tight schedule this is probably the most important role. We normally use a highly visible clock that can be seen by both the audience and the speaker so that there is no surprise when the time runs out. It is essential that no leeway is allowed because distilling a presentation down to 3 minutes is hard and if any speaker is allowed to over run the allocated time it is unfair to the other speakers whose speaking time will have to be cut even shorter (alternatively all of the speakers will assume that if the prevoous speaker was allowed to run over by a minute it is OK for them and the entire schedule goes out the window). We find that a referee's whistle or some form of a loud gong is a good way to remind speakers that their time has expired.
• Master of Ceremonies: It is important to have someone speak at the start to tell the audience (and speakers) what to expect and they should also speak briefly at the end to tell people about the judging process (see below). The MC can also help the time keeper by subtly stepping forward as each three minute time slot expires to say "thank you x for your presentation and up next we have y" - it is a very brave speaker who will continue speaking over the MC.
• Speakers: Naturally you can't have a good event without speakers, but it is important to check that you know exactly who is going to present (typically people might not want to present their project if they feel they didn't achieve anything to boast about) and in what order. Someone (either the MC or someone else) should make sure that they seek out the next speaker while the current presentation is bing given and get them to stand next to the podium. Since the allocated time is very short, a significant proportion of it can be wasted waiting for the speaker to walk from the back of the room.
• Judge(s): Normally we give out some local prizes (even if these have only a token value e.g. a certificate). This means that you need at least one judge who is taking notes and scoring the presentations. If you have a judging panel of several judges, you need to clarify how they are going to interact. Typically it is a good idea to ensure that the judges turn up anout 15-20 minutes before the show and tell itself starts so that they can discuss judging logistics among themselves.

The above roles are needed for a single site show and tell. However, in the Ireland lab we have a number of different physical locations and so we like to hold a virtual show and tell so that we can have both presenters and audience taking part from wherever they are based. This is a good idea, but it does add some additional logicistcal challenges and so you need some more roles to be filled:

• eMeeting Moderator: someone needs to run the eMeeting. In IBM we typically have a choice of eMeeting servers to use each with their strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes we choose to use an experimental version of the eMeeting service (this is Hackday after all), but if there is any doubt that the service will be working during the show and tell it is a good idea to have a backup plan in place just in case the primaty server is acting up.
• eMeeting Observer: as I mentioned it is possible that the emeeting service will either fail completely or else be working sub-optimally (e.g. noticable delays in updating the screen in the eMeeting). Therefore it is a good idea to assign someone who is physically in the same location as the speakers to also join the eMeeting as a participant so that they can alert the speaker and/or the eMeeting moderator if there is any problem with the emeeting.
• Recorder (optional): It is not ncessary to record the show and tell, but when you have gone to the effort of arranging the event it is a shame to lose it. Most eMeeting tools and/or teleconference services offer a recording service. The recording might need some post-processing, but you can often find that some of the hackers have a dream to get involved in the movie business and would love the chance to practice their skills

Hacking becomes mainstream in IBM

In a large company like IBM, not many employees have a chance to meet and interact directly with the CEO. However, the CEO will act as a role model for all employees about how the should behave and all executive communications are regularly examined carefully for clues to what is considered good behaviors.

In the book "Who says Elephants Can't Dance", Lou Gerstner described about how he was advised to start using email when he took over at IBM because apparently his predecessors got secretaries to read email on their behalf and this did not project a very good image for a leader of a high tech company. In the early 1990s reading email was considered to be leading edge. When Lou was replaced by Sam Palmisano in 2000 nobody questioned whether or not he was using email, because by then it was assumed that everyone would be. However, when Sam was recently replaced by Ginni Rometty the pendulum had swung so far that people have now started boasting about how little email they need to use.

Ginni doesn't look like a typical Hacker,
but appearances can decieve

In the short time that she has been in charge, Ginni has proven her tech credentials by becoming a highly visible user of social media communication tools. All of he quarterly employee messages are delivered on an IBM internal blog and she also regularly uses many of the tools provided by the IBM Connections product.

In a recent update posted to her blog she even went a step further and announced that she was going to hold a "Social Business Hackday" in which she expected participation from all of IBM's 400k+ employees. The exact format of this Hackday is still being decided, but what is clear now is that during a designated day in early September all employees will be expected to come up with a plan for how they can make better use of social media tools in their work. In addition it is expected that they will make concrete steps to implement this plan during the Hackay.

I think this is very significant for a number of reasons:

1. The original Hackday events in IBM were launched without any formal management approval. I think the originators were afraid to ask for approval in case it might be refused. Over the years the reaction to any executive who found out about the events has been mostly positive. However, we have has some feedback that the word Hackday projects a negative image. I think that when the CEO publicly declares her support for the events we should not have any trouble convincing other IBM managers that they are a good idea.
2. In IBM we have always been careful to ensure that participation in Hackdays was as diverse as possible and not restricted to just developers. For example we had prizes for the best hacked business plan and we also even had a semi serious prize for the best hack that didn't involve either Sametime or Connections (because these products are extremely popular subjects for Hackday projects). I think that the Social Business Hackday will increase the participation level even further.

Officially this will be an IBM internal event so I am not sure how/if it will be publicised outside of IBM. However, due to the nature of the event I am not sure that it makes sense to keep it secret (even if we could).

Hack the City

One of he most exciting events planned for the Dublin City of Science 2012 will be happening in June of this year when the Science Gallery will be hosting a series of 2-3 person teams who will be competing against each other to do the best job of "Hacking the City". I know that hacking  is a term that carries negative connotation, but this contest is all about the best form of hacking. To quote the web site:

The goal of the programme is to rethink our cities from the ground up through the spirit and philosophy of the hacker ethos - to bend, mash-up, tweak and cannibalise our city systems, to create possibilities, illustrate visionary thinking and demonstrate real-world examples for sustainable urban futures.

I know you might think that June is a long time away, but the call for registrations has just been released and if you would like to take part, you would be well advised to register your interest very soon because I expect that this event will be over-subscribed.

Fantastic Dublin Science Hackday event indicates that ireland has a bright future

Crochet model of a red Blood Cell

The first ever Dublin Science Hackday was held this weekend in Dublin City University. The event was part of the Dublin City of Science 2012 celebration. This event involved teams of amateur completing challenging projects over a grueling 36 hours. I say amateurs as a compliment because although many of the participants are professionals, they completed in this event purely out of their love of science and technology.

I initially planned to take part in the event myself, but as I got closer to the event the reality of spending 36 hours of my weekend working on a hack began to scare me and I chickened out. Instead I attended the kick-off talks on the Saturday and then gave a few words of encouragement to the participants before I went back to my normal weekend activities. Luckily there was lots of status updates posted to the #dubscihack hashtag on Twitter so I could follow along with the excitement from home. I then returned to DCU on Sunday afternoon to see what had been accomplished. I found the participants very much more subdued (not surprising after 36 hours without sleep), but the projects were very impressive.

You can see all of the details of the projects completed here, of even watch the project presentations on Ustream, but the prize winners were:

• Best use of Government Data went to the YPath project which developed an application for children to track their physical activity.
• Most interesting Use of Data went to the Financial Market Sonification project which produced an audio stream which provides an audio stream that represents a summary of the activity in the market so that traders can have ambient awareness.
• The Hardware Award went to the Aurora Lamp  which used LEDs to project information about the level of the Aurora Borealis activity.
• The Design Award went to Open Stats Wiki developed a cool mobile application to allow fans to use their smartphone record statistics of a match the attended live as the action unfolds. This hack will have a bright future because there are many people who share an obsession with sport and an obsession with technology.
• The People's Choice Award went to The Aurora Orrery project build a visualization of from where on the globe the Aurora activity can be seen.
• Last but not least, the hBest in Show Award went to the Elements Trail project which built an augmented reality layer using Layar. to build a treasure hunt game based upon the periodic table

It is also worth giving honorable mention to:

• Tríona (@triploidtree) completed who the CIYbio project (crochet it yourself biology) which involved  using crochet to build models of things to do with biology (to help teaching). I am not sure if it was useful, but the models were certainly cute.
• μsic developed a cool application that mixed music listening with social networking.
• The intermeter project projected the level of Network activity from the science hackday into a simple amp meter.

I think that Ireland has a very bright future when we have bright hackers like this. Well done to everyone who contributed to the event.

Hello! Hello! Can you hear me?

I believe that telephone based applications offer a huge benefit in terms of ease of use as compared with web based applications. However, many people don't even try to create applications with a telephone interface because they mistakenly believe that it is very hard to do. Now that we are on the eve of Dublin Science Hackday I decided it would be a good idea to tell people how easy it is to develop applications with a phone based interface by describing a simple application I developed myself.
 First, let me explain some of the background for why I developed the application. I used to work on the development of a computer telephony system. We were strong believers in the theory that it was important for the developers to get a good understanding of the end users' perspective of the system and so we encouraged all of the development team to use early builds of the system as much as possible.

Some of the Headphones I Use.

To be totally honest the experience was painful in the early days. Each time I made a call I knew there was a significant chance that the call would not be successful. Not only was there a chance that there was a bug in the latest daily build of the client which I had installed on my machine or in the server code which was also updated regularly, there was also a very significant chance that there would be some problem with the volume settings on my headset. Most headsets have hardware volume controls and/or mute options on the headset and these controls might not be set properly to interact with the volume settings on my laptop's operating system - and because I carried my headsets around in a bag with other hardware they frequently suffered physical damage.
Because of all of these potential problems I often spend the first few minutes of a telephone meeting shouting "Hello! Hello! can you hear me?". If I was speaking to another team member I could expect them to be understanding of this wasted time and/or poor audio quality while I tested several headsets to find which was working best. However, when I was making an important call to someone I wanted to impress, I needed some way to be totally confident that all aspects of my telephony setup were working correctly.
Anyone who uses Skype is probably familiar with the "echo123" virtual user. This is a virtual Skype account that anyone can call and be answered by a pleasant sounding lady who will listen to what you say and then repeat it back to you as it sounds to her. I decided to hack together something similar that could be used with any telephony system. After a bit of searching on the internet I found the voxeo developers site which offeres excellent free resources to anyone wanting to develop voice based applications. Voxeo make their money from providing commercial grade voice response systems to mission critical systems, but in order to convince people how easy it is to develop a user friendly voice interface to their system they give developers free access to their powerful web based development environment and they will even host your application on their test servers so that you can test it out in action.
Voxeo support a number of programming languages including the industry standard VoiceXML. Developing a VoiceXML server is very complex, but the good news is that since Voxeo have done that you don't have to. Developing a voiceXML application is very easy (there are excellent tutorials on the Voxeo site to get your started). I was able to develop my application in under 30 lines of easy to write/understand XML. You can get the full source code here.
The way VoiceXML works is that you specify prompts for the system to play and then you listen for the user to say something (or type a DTMF tone on their keypad). You specify in XML what should be done with the response. You can see I have only one
statement and I use the text to speech function to generate the prompt (it is also possible to record the prompts for a more natural sounding interface).

The only complex line in my code is the one that reads

record name="R_1" beep="true" dtmfterm="true" maxtime="10s" finalsilence="1s" silence="3s

Translated into English this tag means:

• Record what you hear in a file named R_1.wav
• If you hear a DTMF tone, stop recording
• Listen for a maximum of 10 seconds
• If you hear nothing give up after 3 seconds
• If you hear something then terminate when the speaker leaves a gap of 1 second or more

The rest of the application is just instructions to play back the recording to the user (or play an error message if we didn't hear anything). It then loops back to the start so that it gives me time to adjust my headset and see if it sounds any clearer.
Obviously real world applications could get more complex and if you try to recognize  what the user is saying it can get things hilariously wrong when the caller is not a native speaker. But the general idea is not too hard to master. In any case we only need to distinguish between when we hear something so that the "filled" tag applies, or when we hear nothing and the "noinput" tag applies.
If you want to try out the application you can call +1(617)963-0648  to get the version with this source code, or if you prefer the sound of my voice you can call +1(617)500-5332 to hear a slightly modified version where the prompts use a recording of my voice.

The business case for Open Data

I attended a great seminar yesterday organised by the Irish Software Association on the business possibilities for open data. The room was packed and we got some very good presentations followed by an interesting panel discussion. As a result of this discussion I got a pointer to an excellent EU funded research report that there was almost always a new benefit to a government from either eliminating charges for access to public sector data or reducing the price to a cost recovery level. Similarly, a recent report from Deloitte suggests that open data will be one of the main mechanisms that will enable a recovery from our recent economic woes.

I think this is very timely that this seminar was held in the week leading up to the Dublin Science Hackday, because I am sure many of the Hacks delivered at this event will probably use some of the open public data.

Here are two of the three presentations delivered (I don't have soft copy of the slides delivered by Maurice Lynch of Nathean Technologies)

This first presentation was by Dominic Byrne and it describes some of the great initiatives being done by Fingal county council to promote open government data. I must admit I was initially skeptical when I saw the relatively limited number of feeds cataloged on the Fingal Open Data web site when it launched, but time has proven that it was the correct policy to launch with what was available and then subsequently concentrate on improving it. This is a wonderful local initiative, the only concern I have is that we must not let local initiatives like this blind us to the fact that the real power of open data is its global reach. For example, when I looked for a mobile phone application for DublinBikes, I found that there were no applications written exclusively for DublinBikes but lots of applications written for city bike rental schemes which could be configured to work with bike rental schemes in many different cities including Dublin. From looking at the web sites associated with these applications I noticed that many of them were initially developed for a specific city that the developer was familiar with, but then they soon realized that they could easily broaden the appeal of their app by making it configurable to work with similar bike rental systems elsewhere.

Open Data Business Opportunities - Fingal Open Data & Dublinked

View more PowerPoint from Fingal Open Data

This second presentation was by Jonathan Raper, whose company Placr has made a great business out of exploiting Open Data in the UK. Both during his presentation and during the subsequent panel discussion, he shared some of the lessons he learned from the struggle to promote open access to public data in the UK. One interesting story he told was about what happened when the London Transport authority realized that many applications were being developed that relied upon a feed that they had accidentally made public. Their IT department initially wanted to shutdown the feed because the popularity of the application meant that too much load was being generated on their infrastructure. However, the mayor was aghast at this suggestion because he saw that there would be a huge political backlash if these popular applications suddenly stopped working. Someone pointed out that this was really an online equivalent of the ancient legal principle of "right of way".

Irish Software Association/ Open Data Bisiness Models

View more PowerPoint from Jonathan Raper

My first Hardware hack - a stand for an iPOD touch

Stand for ipod touch
Originally uploaded by Brian O'Donovan

One of the problems with my daughter's new iPOD touch is that when she places it flat on the table, she is unable to easily view it while lying in bed. This was causing her to have to hold the device in her hands which was not ideal.

I tried several physical and on-line stores to see if I could buy a stand for holding it propped up. Unfortunately I had no luck so I was forced to build my own from a wire clothes hangar. It might not be as elegant as Steve Jobs would design, but it works and hence I am happy with my handiwork.