BarCamp London 8: Real time notifications

Tim Nash @tnash — http://codingfutures.co.uk & http://timnash.co.uk

More details may be available on lanyrd

• HTTP not designed to be real time
• PayPal postbacks are a pain the butt
  • don’t use the recommended system
  • just return 200 and make a call to a standard fetch transaction
• XMPP is just XML underneath
• Favourite: XMPP PubSub
  • publish ATOM in a message
  • though doesn’t have to be ATOM, but helps if it’s XML
• implementations: OpenFire (Java) & EJabbard (Erlang)
• avoid BOSH & similar (XMPP over javascript) unless you have no choice
  • i.e. if you need to do the final step to an AJAX front end

BarCamp London 8: The Future of TV

Simon Maddox — @simonmaddox

Simon gave a brief intro into how he watches television shows (I missed the beginning, but part of his setup involves using plex on his iPad and on his screen at home). He then invited a discussion which centred around whether TV would move totally to online streaming in the future, or whether the broadcast model still had some life left…

• coming soon: YouView (Project Canvas in a box)
• how do I find out what I should watch next?
  • often it gets a series or so in before I hear about it…
• where’s the last.fm for tv?
• some TV is funnier with the commentary on twitter (e.g. x-factor)
  • have to watch that live to experience it properly
• sports are also something people want to watch live
  • but there are not enough broadcast channels to cover all the matches…
• can’t ignore those without digital…
• olympic games will be a big test and a switchover
• does broadcast save money over streaming?
  • possibly at the moment
  • but being solved and won’t be so much of problem in the future
  • e.g. bittorrent being modified to support streaming
• perhaps the biggest change will be content producers
  • big players (ITV etc) may get smaller
• would like to have pay-based or advertising
  • Disney DVDs with non-skippable adverts are taking the piss
  • also problem with DVDs that treat customers as pirates
• older people may be afraid of giving away information
  • may be afraid of a personalised EPG
• sidereel.com — personalised EPG
• music industry revolution has been going for 10 years and is still not finished
  • TV industry revolution is going to take longer

BarCamp London 8: British Sign Language

@lallyd http://www.learningbsl.com

More details may be available on lanyrd

• learning level 2 at the moment
• Deaf with big D is about how you would like to communicate, not about hearing
• some words look similar but mean very different things…
  • facial expression / shitty
  • black / prostitute
• dialects also differ across the UK
  • you can have a northern accent in BSL…
  • “live” (asin “I live in…”) in London is stroking shoulder
  • in Blackpool, the same sign means “toilet”…
• vowels are RH pointing at fingers on LH
  • i.e. A is RH pointing at thumb; U is pointing at pinkie
• computer: screen LH, RH typing
• engineer: two hands together as cogs
• please and thank you use the same sign, but different lips
• resources:
  • learn how to flirt in BSL: http://videojug.com/tag/british-sign-language
  • BSL music videos: http://youtube.com/user/lovesbth

BarCamp London 8: A Beginner's Guide To Whisky

Billy Abbot @cowfish

Billy’s Booze Blog

Slides available via lanyrd

• Colour comes from the cask
• Grain whisky has other grains as well as malted barley
  • also distilled in fractional towers
  • comes out much lighter
  • often used as the base for other products
• whisky flavours change mostly due to tradition
• campbeltown do briny salty whiskies
• master of malt — sell 3cl sample jars so you can try before you buy a whole bottle
• many distillers are teetotal
  • including half the staff of one distillery
  • don’t need to drink to check the whisky — can nose it
• Richard Paterson is chief taster of Whyte & Mackay
• Port Charlotte — bought by Bruichladdich
  • had a lot of stock which was boring
  • doing experimental things with it
  • Port Charlotte is very peaty
• nosing:
  • stick your nose in, move it around a bit
• taiwanese whisky comes out black as it evaporates so fast
• watering down changes flavour
  1. partly reveals flavours amongst very strong flavour
  2. also has a chemical change
• can get whisky barrel speakers!
  • a Japanese company will do so…
• biggest single malt market in the world is… France!

BarCamp London 8: One year running it all on the cloud

Alistair Hann — runs Zoombu

More detail may be available on lanyrd

• started off running a dedicated host, LAMP stack
• started using flexiant (FlexiScale)
• moved to AWS to have images (flexiant didn’t have them -- though it does now)
• use ElasticFox to manage instances
• elastic IP can be moved from machine to machine within a few minutes
  • useful for IP-restricted services
• zoombu have four servers running continually
  • 1 front end
  • 1 Java services
  • 2 MySql servers
• failures can be grim — make sure you have redundancy
  • backups of EBS volumes
  • backups of images

BarCamp London 8: giffgaff - getting what you want from Mobile network APIs

Heather Taylor @giffgaff & Vincent Boon @vincentboon

• starting to open APIs
• giffgaff is:
  • SIM only
  • 100% online
  • mutual — give & take
  • no call centres — only 16 full time staff!
• “goodybag” data is currently completely unlimited, no fair use policy!
  • have agreed a charge with community for when they do start to charge
• customers generally get an answer from community in under 3 minutes!
• current plan for APIs (steps 1 & 2 pretty much done!):
  1. info services: read-only >
     • balance
     • goodybags
     • points
     • call records
  2. get services:
     • order SIM
     • top up
     • purchase goodybag
  3. non giffgaff
     • status update
     • share links
     • email/SMS
• working with O2 Litmus and HashBlue guys to integrate their work (giffgaff is an MVNO on top of O2)

BarCamp London 8: Windows Phone 7 & app development

Jess Meats

More details may be available later on lanyrd

• Marketplace purchases
  • can link to an existing Live ID with a credit card
  • or can register card details on the phone
• development kit for phone
  • get templates for visual studio & expression blend
  • get an emulator (includes IE mobile)
• visual design all done in XAML
• can use Expression Blend for design
  • allows you to drag & drop and design animations visually too
• when registering as a developer, have to go through XBox Live…
  • in order to sign up to terms and conditions
• app submission:
  • testing happens overnight
  • if there are test failures, get a report in the developer dashboard
  • problems may happen with GeoTrust…
  • need a notary to sign and stamp a physical document
  • getting paid requires you talking to US Embassy in London…
• @simonmaddox: SDK works in Fusion, but not Parallels
  • requires a VM inside a VM
• can register a device for development
• sync to Google only gets main calendar at the moment
• background processes can now put things on the lock screen (recent change)
  • as before, can also change the home screen tile and put toast notifications in the status bar

BarCamp London 8: wheelmap.org

Holger Dieterich — @holgerd

More details on lanyrd

• http://wheelmap.org — find wheelchair accessible places to eat & drink
• Made by http://sozialhelden.de — Social Heroes
  • one of the founders is in a wheelchair
  • problem is not how to get somewhere, but how to find somewhere suitable
  • is there a step? is the toilet accessible?
• databases in Germany have 30,000 places, but they’re not so easy to use (mostly commercial)
• had a wheelchair tag in OpenStreetMap before they started, but only about 5,000 places were tagged
• now have about 18,000 places in germany
  • 300-400 places edited a day!
• website finds your location by IP and offers you places to edit/add
• also an iPhone app
  • using OpenLayers to display
• CloudMade is good, but is read-only and not updated regularly (once a month!)
  • want to have immediate update
  • don’t yet have immediate, but 3 minutes is close
  • OpenStreetMap itself is sometimes down (for three days at one point), so had to implement caching and their own intermediate API
• also approaching companies to share their data…
  • they’re really scared… so talking with Berlin government to convince them
• having slight issues with OSM community as wheelmap data is added anonymously by a pseudonymous user
  • but it’s better that data gets added
  • and there’s no real chance of spam since the data is added automatically