[MG] Crossforum theatre map - projecting a Vilfredo feed

Mon Jan 10 04:34:55 EST 2011

Hi Michael,
Ok, let's get technical.

As you know Vilfredo has a number of rooms. which provide the space
for different groups to meet, as well as to have space that can be
tied to geographical places or to give privacy. Rooms are not
advertised, so if you use a weird name for the room, like
"dbwixwxwnj", no one will ever find it, unless you give them the
direct link.

Each room has an rss feed. The adress of the rss feed is:
http://vilfredo.org/rss.php?room=[Name of the Room]

So the room Vilfredo (where we discuss enhancement to Vilfredo itself)
will have the rss feed:
http://vilfredo.org/rss.php?room=Vilfredo

The only exception being the common room, which is at
http://vilfredo.org/rss.php without any name of the room.

The rss feed has several extra elements right now.

Over and above the usual we have:
vga:status
vga:shorturl
vga:room
vga:numberProposals
vga:twitter
vga:generation

The status will tell you if it is in the voting or proposing stage.
The shorturl is the url that uses bit.ly to link to the page
the room is the room where the question is asked
the number proposals is the number of proposals that has been asked to
vote among
the twitter is a phrase that should be published through twitter
(@Vg2A) for the question. Right now we are only publishing questions
from the common room.
and the generation is obviously the generation that is running.

The rss is automatically fetched from yahoo pipes, and modified to be
then pushed into twitter.
What happens here is that the vga:twitter is substituted to the title,
and the the result is pushed into an rss to twitter service, that
pushes it into twitter.

The address of the pipe fetching the rss feed is:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=bb6f972cba035e3a319ef7841f2a1ee2

The pipe can run for any room, and even for any other version of
Vilfredo, as it has two inputs, the room name, and the website
address.

The rss after running through the pipe is then available for everybody.
For example the address for the yahoo pipes rss for the room Vilfredo is:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=bb6f972cba035e3a319ef7841f2a1ee2&_render=rss&room=Vilfredo&site=vilfredo.org

I think it would be a piece of cake for you to go to this yahoo pipe,
clone the pipe (just click on the clone link) and change it so that
you can have the rss as you want it. Provided you don't need any extra
information this is probably the best way to proceed.

We are right now thinking about doing two things:
1) all the rooms that are all in CAPITOL LETTERS should be public, to
the point that all of them should appear in the official twitter page.
So we can have a SPANISH page and an ITALIAN page, and a BELGIUM page
and an INDONESIA page, and an ENVIRONMENT page. ANd there is no need
for the person to advertise it.

2) [and this I don't know if it is possible] It is important that no
one should have rights over a page. I don't want a situation where the
first person that writes in a page gets possession of it, or similar.
But it is useful if some pages were linked to some localities. For
example the page ITALIA, should be linked to Italy. And ROMA to Rome.
Now, I wonder if there is an automatic way to do it. Maybe there is a
service offered by yahoo or google that given a name gives you back
the coordinates they assume that name refers to. It might be often
wrong, but sometimes right. If this is the case, those coordinates
would end up being really useful for the geoforum.

On 10 January 2011 05:45, Michael Allan <mike at zelea.com> wrote:
> In reply to Pietro and Thomas,
>
> I'm keen on Pietro's idea of a question-state/vote-state feed, and
> hopeful we can move on it.
>
> Pietro Speroni di Fenizio wrote:
>> We should have a system on Vilfredo where who asks a question can
>> define a [geo]position for it.
>>
>> And who answers (or votes) a [geo]position for them. ?Every time a
>> person votes or writes a proposal the question [geo]position should
>> light up. (remember that at this time proposals or votes are
>> anonymous, we cannot give away the [geo]position of the voter). ?And
>> then when a question is moved on, all the [geo]position for the
>> people who have voted should be available and the geomap should
>> decide what to do with this information. Like you click on the
>> question and the other positions appear, maybe linked. Or when the
>> question is moved on the proposals all light up briefly. And so on.
>
> Vilfredo already has a newsfeed I think you said? ?Maybe we can put
> its news items on the crossforum stage and project them on the map.
> We'd need question IDs embeddable in each item and (when permitted)
> user IDs. ?Can you provide those?
>
> The geospatial meta-data (location and so forth) needn't be added
> directly to Vilfredo. ?It can be added externally using the common
> pollwiki. ?The pollwiki has semantic capabilities, so it can easily
> tag a Vilfredo question with meta-data. ?That way, if the same
> question happened to pop up on another vote-server (or another
> instance of Vilfredo), then the two could share the same meta-data.
>
> I think we could code this pretty quickly, if others agree it's a
> positive direction.
>
>> Also it would be good if the system makes some sort of automatic
>> video (or just renders it somehow) for a certain time. For example.
>> What happened in the last 24 hours? And I see the video and find
>> out.
>
> Thomas had the related idea of a replay facility where you could
> re-position the feed at any point in time, and run it forward or
> backward at varying speeds. ?His idea of an "after-glow" effect for
> map spotlighting was tied to that.
>
> Thomas von der Elbe wrote:
>> Would it be difficult to have a button at the bottom of the map,
>> which links to the ohter map (the 3-dimensional one) and back? ?It
>> would make its future functionality even more clear.
>
> I guess you're right, we need a map-switching control ASAP. ?Where to
> put it raises the bigger question of control layout in general, which
> is something of a problem. ?Maybe the "control mask" is part of the
> solution, but I'm not sure:
> http://zelea.com/project/votorola/a/crossforum/theatrePlan.png
>
> Or maybe we shouldn't think about it too much. ?Just float a
> transparent control panel somewhere on the screen as a temporary
> stop-gap? ?(I agree it's a priority.)
>
> Meantime, here are some demo links and bookmarklet controls that might
> be helpful: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/a/crossforum/#demo
> http://zelea.com/project/votorola/a/crossforum/#control
>
> BTW - Conseo and I have merged code, so I'm looking at getting his
> live diff feed projected on the map, too.
>
> --
> Michael Allan
>
> Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
> http://zelea.com/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Start : a mailing list of the Metagovernment project
> http://www.metagovernment.org/
> Post to the list: Start at metagovernment.org
> Manage subscription: http://metagovernment.org/mailman/listinfo/start_metagovernment.org
>

Originally posted to the mailing list of the Metagovernment Project:
http://metagovernment.org/mailman/listinfo/start_metagovernment.org