I've written a tool that functions as a specialized iPhone interface
for Commons. It is quite rudimentary at the moment, but with support
might develop into something. I note that there is currently no
"official" commons.mobile interface AFAIK.
The URL is:
http://toolserver.org/~magnus/iCommons.php
As most of you don't have an iPhone (yet;-) I'll prefix my demo links
with an iPhone simulator. Note that the annoying scrollbars that
appear occasionally will not do so on the iPhone itself.
The entry page shos the Picture of the day (with description, en only ATM):
http://www.testiphone.com/?url=http://toolserver.org/~magnus/iCommons.php
All pages have a clickable "Wikimedia Commons" header that will lead
back to this page.
Also, all pages have a search box at the bottom. As this uses the
opensearch API, it seems to be limited to a single word...
Green links will lead to external pages (Commons and others), normal
blue ones stay within the tool.
Try searching for "Alexandria".
(This search even found one of our videos, but as video thumbnails are
/still/ not rendered in the requested size, it broke the layout; so,
no videos for you...)
Click on the title link or the image itself, and you go a special
description page.
The description has a larger thumbnail, and all kinds of details about
the image.
This uses my "Commons API" [1], which eases my data parsing considerably.
My Commons API also recognizes images with a location, and will add a
Googlemaps link to the description page:
http://www.testiphone.com/?url=http://toolserver.org/~magnus/iCommons.php?m…
The next step would be categories, obviuosly...
Feedback, please!
Magnus
[1] http://toolserver.org/~magnus/commonsapi.php
http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/186182.html
(a friend who is a Unix sysadmin so is used to finding his way around
annoying crap that doesn't work, but was beaten by the old version of
the form)
Quick Guide for How To Upload Your Own Pictures:
1. Create a Commons login. Say something about yourself on your user page.
2. Upload your stuff. Pick one of the "Own work" options.
3. Fill in some categories, etc. (wikitext, same as on Wikipedia).
Would that be worth putting in above or in place of one of the huge
walls of text presently on the upload form?
- d.
Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis support for the HTML5 <video> element has
landed in Firefox Minefield nightlies (3.1a2-pre). This is *big news*
because it means a standard way of displaying video in web browsers
will be available to all without being stuck with Flash. And Theora is
the only accepted format on Wikimedia Commons.
See:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2008-July/045036.htmlhttp://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/?p=492http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2008/07/theora-video-backend-for-firefox-lande…
What we need is people to test this. So please download a copy of
Minefield, test it thoroughly on Wikimedia Commons video, beat on it,
thrash it, report bugs. There's plenty.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Video
You need to load the video, click "More …" and it'll give you the
option. Wikimedia would very much like to make it a first option
rather than a last one, but first it needs to be better (more
functional and stable) than loading Cortado with Java.
Apple and Nokia tried some truly disgusting FUD around the topic and
successfully got the words "Vorbis" and "Theora" taken out of the
HTML5 spec, but Firefox adoption means 20% of Web users in short
order. So we can leave them to play catchup per business needs. "You
got a Nokia? No wonder you can't watch that Wikipedia video, Nokias
suck."
- d.
