Jake Marsh Is Awesome. OMFG. » General

Accomplished. Now We Wait…

Jake Marsh — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:36:52 +0000

Now we play the waiting game...

Quack.

Jake Marsh — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:04:01 +0000

So I've got some cool stuff coming out soon. Will say much more soon, but for now just be advised they involve the App Store, and the iPhone. Woot.

How MySpace Invented Twitter

Jake Marsh — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 04:00:30 +0000

Twitter has been getting quite a bit of press lately. It's being heralded as one of the coolest, newest, hippest ways for people to communicate and keep track of their friend's lives and activities. But where did this idea come from? Did the guys who started that "pet project" at ODEO just wake up one day and say "Great Scott! I've got it!" and go to work creating Twitter?

Well yes actually, but I think its important to note that the idea has been around on the 'net for quite some time, and it's first incarnation just might surprise you...

Way back in the early days of social networking, during the Friendster and Orkut's first years, sending messages to people on the internet was widely considered to be frivolous. Email and Instant Messaging (ICQ anyone?) were our primary forms of communication, and most social networking sites simply provided ways to list your email and and IM screen name so members could get in touch with you. It wasn't until about 2001 or 2002 that developers started building full featured private messaging systems into some of the web's most popular sites. Friendster got the treatment as did Ebay. However, something was about to come along and change everything.

When MySpace launched their "Bulletins" feature way back in 2003, the world got their first taste of pointless, one-to-many, broadcast style messages that could be sent out to all of their friends at once. We were familiar with away messages, we'd been using them inside instant messaging clients for years. We were also familiar with the ever-so-annoying "Forward to my entire address book" functionality of email (Which, consequently, allowed lolcats to takeover the internet). But now, we had this amazing fusing of the two ideas. A user could click a button, type in some text or html code into a form and blast that message out to everyone they were "friends" with on MySpace.

The concept took off in a big way, becoming the site's most-used feature. Users were posting bulletins about everything from homework procrastination to concert fliers to haircut previews. MySpace then took bulletins a step further giving them a place on the homepage. Now, every time you logged in you'd see your friends' most recent bulletin posts in a list right there in the sidebar of your MySpace homepage. Any of this starting to sound familiar?

We now have a list of messages, from only the people you're friends with, displayed for you to constantly hit refresh on, right there on your homepage. It would take 3 more years for Twitter to come along. Their innovation on the concept? Limiting the messages to plain-text and 140 characters in length. They also hooked up the concept to an SMS interface, allowing users to "text" in their messages. This allowed for users to be always in touch with their friends, no matter what type of phone they had or where they were in the world.

There's no question that Twitter has changed the face of social media forever. MySpace and Facebook have both made these status-update style messages a core part of their offerings. However, next time you reach for that "Tweet" button, take a second to remember where the idea came from, and whether or not it’s a smart idea twitpic that new haircut you just got.

10 Sci-Fi Gadgets We All Wish Were Real

Jake Marsh — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:10:14 +0000

Over the years, Science fiction, be it on television, in books or films has given us an array of amazing ideas for gadgets, gizmos and technology. Some of these have come to fruition, such as satellites, microwave ovens and whatever Kirstie Alley used to lose all that weight. However there's a number of (sadly still fictional) gadgets that we'd all love to have around the house...

THE STAR WARS X-WING

How convenient would it be to have your trusty X-Wing at hand, R2 unit and all, available at anytime for you to hop in a jet off to Dagobah? Also, it would certainly beat the congestion on the highways to and from work every morning. And as an added bonus, should a Death Star appear in orbit around the planet, at least you'd be able to go and do something about it on your lunch break.

THE MEN IN BLACK "NEURALISER"

Ever had one of those days you'd just love to forget? Yeah, me too. Like the time you accidentally called your boss "Mom" in front of the whole office. Or how about that day in high school when you fell on your ass in front of the entire girls dance team? The Neuraliser would be just the thing you need to get rid of that pesky memory. It would also come in particularly handy when used on others. Ever had a bad date? Go ahead and "flashy-thing" your way to a do-over. Just don't use it too much, you might put someone's mind out.

STAR TREK'S TRANSPORTER

Okay, all jokes aside, the Transporter would revolutionize not only travel, but life as we know it. All we'd need is a tubby Scottish engineer to monitor the controls and in a fizzle of cheap special effects, you and your family are transported to Orlando for your two weeks in the sun, luggage and all. However, if you're going to be traveling to any dangerous destinations, I do advise that you bring a stranger or two along, and make sure they wear a red shirt, just in case anything bad happens.

THE MATRIX'S "HEAD PLUG"

"I'm going to learn Kung Fu today." That's about all it would take to be the next Bruce Lee. We'd have to make sure the system ran off the Mac OS though however, otherwise you'd have to dismiss a million pop up ads about "Hot Babes" and "Penile Enlargement" every time you wanted to learn a new skill. Also, pirating software would be especially dangerous. One clever up-loader could rename a file and your medieval combat your flying lessons could turn into classical ballet pretty quickly.

THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY'S BABELFISH

Language is often the barrier to so much. Take out that barrier and anyone could experience any part of the world with ease. Slotted into the ear, it instantly translates any language into a language that the host can understand perfectly well. I don't really have a good joke for this one, so just imagine I said something about it translating the world into lies and nonsense for politicians.

BACK TO THE FUTURE'S DELOREAN TIME MACHINE

This one's pretty straight forward. It's a freaking time machine! You could re-live history first hand. You could travel to the future to see what type of wonders humanity has come up with. You could even travel back a few years and be there for the moment when after six years of presidential life, George W. Bush finally learned how to spell his own name! (Oh and as an added bonus, it’s a flying car, that runs on trash, take that Al Gore!)

THE LIGHTSABER

I don't know about you, but personally, any chance I had to use a sword made of a giant laser, I would. From carving up the turkey on Thanksgiving all the way to simply opening your mail, the lightsaber is the perfect way to make sure nobody ever pissed you off again.

THE HOLOGRAM MESSAGING SYSTEM FROM STAR WARS

Forget video chat, I want actual chat. Honestly, you think that by 2009, engineers would have at least started trying some stuff. Plus the business opportunities are incredible (I'm looking at you porn industry).

KITT FROM KNIGHT RIDER

We've got GPS. We've got voice-control. We've got hydraulics. We've got iPods. We've even got iPhones that will do what we say when we tell them. Now where's my autonomous talking car? Even if not for the weapons and gizmos, having a car in which you could take a nap and be politely woken up by Mr. Feeney when you got your destination would be worth any price.

THE INVISIBILITY CLOAK FROM HARRY POTTER

Now I know this one isn't *technically* a gadget, but I think everyone will agree its worth a mention. Invisibility has always been my top-5-desert-island super power, and having it in the form a cloak where I can make other things invisible, is probably the best form I can imagine.

That's just a few of the sci-fi gadgets I'd love to have in my rec-room, how about you? Hit up the comments and let me know what fictional gadget you hope we get in the future!

Screen-Scraping With CSS Selectors in PHP

Jake Marsh — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 01:36:55 +0000

When it comes to programming techniques, screen-scraping can be a complicated and annoying thing to deal with. I've dealt with it quite a bit in various projects, most recently my TV Library plugin for boxee. I use PHP to accomplish most of my screen scraping and its got a pretty great arsenal. However, if ease of use and simplicity is your goal, the built in tools and techniques won't be much help, they can be pretty convoluted and confusing. That's why I'm going to recommend a library called phpQuery.

phpQuery is, among other things, a PHP port of the JavaScript library jQuery. You front-end developers out there may already know where I'm going with this, but in-case you don't know, jQuery is known for many things, but is probably best known for its incredible support of CSS Selectors. CSS Selectors allow you to select HTML elements using the same syntax you'd use to style elements in a CSS Stylesheet. (Some of you more experienced readers will no-doubt be jumping to the comments section to complain about how I'm not even mentioning XPath, well I think XPath is overly complicated and can be extremely confusing to beginners. CSS Selectors are far more approachable. Also, I am of the mindset that if at anytime we can standardize on some type of well-tested technique in web development, we should.)

There could be entire books written about what CSS Selectors are and how to utilize them best, so I'm not going to go into too much detail here. If you want to learn about all the intricacies of CSS and jQuery style selectors, first look here: jQuery Docs: Selectors, and if you're still confused, a simple Google search will likely yield all the information you'll need. But for now all you need to know is this: this is the easiest way to screen scrape anything. Ever. phpQuery will let you turn this:


',$start) + 8;

	$table = substr($content,$start,$end-$start);

	preg_match_all("||U",$table,$rows);
	foreach ($rows[0] as $row){
	    if ((strpos($row,'|U",$row,$cells);
	        $number = strip_tags($cells[0][0]);
	        $name = strip_tags($cells[0][1]);
	        $position = strip_tags($cells[0][2]);
	        echo "{$position} - {$name} - Number {$number} 
\n";
	    }
	}
?>

Into this:


 tbody > tr'] as $player) {
			$player = pq($player)->find('td')->getStrings();
			print "Player: #" . $player[0] . " - " . $player[1] . " - Position: " . $player[2] . "
\n";
		}
	}
?>

Much nicer right? Yeah I thought so too. Give it a shot and let me know how it goes for you in the comments.

iPhone OS 3.0 Internet Tethering (How To Enable)

Jake Marsh — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:31:02 +0000

Disclaimer

BIG BOLD NOTE BEFORE TRYING THIS: This (very simple) guide is for those who are in the United States and on AT&T. (Basically non hacked, legit iPhones that have been correctly and legally upgraded to iPhone OS 3.0 through the developer program. ALSO: Please do not yell/hate/twitterhate/complain/spam me about this not working for you, it worked for me, and I think the process is pretty standard as long as you have AT&T, are on a legit iPhone plan and are running 3.0

Steps

Plug your iPhone into your Mac (I assume this works the same on PCs, but I only use Macs, so your milage may vary.
Download this file: http://thejakemarsh.com/ATT_US.ipcc.zip, and unzip, put it somewhere easy to find, like your Downloads or Desktop folder.
Go into iTunes, select your iPhone in the Source List on the left.
Hold down the option key (that's the "alt/option" key) and click "Check For Updates" - you should get a file chooser dialog.
Find the ATT_US.ipcc file on your harddrive (Wherever you downloaded and unzipped it to), select it and click open.
You should see a progress dialog saying "Updating Carrier Settings..."
Your iPhone may hang for a split second, but once its done, unlock your iPhone and go to "Settings > General > Network > Internet Tethering"
Flip the slider to on.
If you've done it correctly, your iPhone will momentarily disappear from the Source List in iTunes and a new "Network Interface" dialog will appear.
Allow it to do its thing and if everything has gone according to plan, you should be able to disconnect from all other internet sources (Wifi, ethernet, etc) and still browse around and do whatever you like.

I haven't gotten it to successfully work over bluetooth yet, but if you wanted to try just pair your iPhone like any other mobile phone (using the "Bluetooth" panel in System Preferences) then click the cog icon, and click the "Connect to Network" option. I got an error every time I tried this, but it may work for you. Let me know

Please post your results in the comments as I'd like to find out as much as possible about all of this.

Thanks!

Oh and to entice you, here's some screenshots of it working

Screenshots

TV Library Featured On CNET TV

Jake Marsh — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 16:42:23 +0000

TV Library 0.1: Miss Hulu On Boxee? Here’s your fix!

Jake Marsh — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Where this a will, there's a way:

So with the recent news and events about Hulu content being taken off of Boxee because Hulu's content partners can't get their heads out of their butts and realize we don't live in 1993 anymore, I've decided to release an ALPHA, repeat, ALPHA version of a plugin/feed for Boxee that I've been working on in my spare time.

My plugin is not a replacement for Hulu per say, but rather an additional way to watch all your favorite TV Shows online. It contains a large enough selection of content that it will hopefully hold you over until Hulu returns to Boxee. The videos play from many different sources all over the web.

Some of the sources are: Veoh, YouTube, Google Video, Tudou, 56.com, Guba, Hulu, MegaVideo, YouKu, Tu.tv

NOTE 1: Not all of the videos inside this plugin will play, the sites listed above work just fine, but most others just aren't finished yet.

NOTE 2: A lot of the vids will play automatically, if they don't for some reason, press play a few times and the vid should start up.

Continue reading by clicking this link for the installation/usage instructions:

TV Library 0.1: Install How-To Instructions/Options

- OR -

NOTE: These steps apply to people using Boxee on Mac OS X only

Download this zip file: tvlibrary.zip

Extract it into a folder called "tvlibrary"

Move this new "tvlibrary" folder into this folder: /Username/Library/Application Support/BOXEE/UserData/apps/

Find the "sources.xml" file and open it in a text editor. It can be found here: /Username/Library/Application Support/BOXEE/UserData/profiles/username/sources.xml

Look for the "SOURCES" block and add this into it:

[sourcecode language="xml"] TV Library app://tvlibrary/ false [/sourcecode]

Save the file, quit Boxee, re-open Boxee.

Go To Video > Internet and run your new option.

The main view of shows inside the TV Library plugin. (NOTE: A LOT of the interface is UNFINISHED, INCOMPLETE and plain 'ol DOES NOT work. This is because TV Library is a hobby project so far for me and I haven't had time to put everything I want into the plugin just yet. It WILL be very polished and full-featured once I'm done. I'm only releasing it early (now) because of the recent Hulu/Boxee developments.)

A show's view in TV Library, again like I said, working but obviously unfinished.

An episode's view in TV Library, again, unfinished.

Final Design Screenshots

But so you don't lose faith in my l33t hack3r skills, here's some screen shots of what the app/plugin WILL look like once its finished:

Show Page

Episode Page

Open Boxee and go into Settings > Media Sources & Applications

Click "Add Source Manually"

Give the source a name, i.e. "TV Library"

For the source's url, put this exactly: "rss://thejakemarsh.com/boxee"

Check the "Video" option.

Click Done, you should see a "Media Source Successfully Added" notification.

Open up Video > Internet and click on your new option.

The "Big List" Of Shows (NOTE: The list can hang for a few seconds upon the first load because of the sheer volume of shows in the list. The plugin/app version of TV Library does NOT have this performance problem.)

The view inside of show, the list of episodes.

The view of a single episodes and its list of ways to watch it.

Please let me know your thoughts, love, suggestions, hate, support requests (which I'll do my best to answer), etc. in the comments of this post or just @reply me on twitter, I'm @jakemarsh. Thanks for supporting television over the internet, and thanks for trying out my plugin.

Epic TJM Tattoo Adventure!

Jake Marsh — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 06:16:17 +0000

So tonight was the best night ever, I was hanging out with some of my best friends ever, they play in this band called "THE HIT" (http://myspace.com/thehitrock) and we got a sudden inclination to go to the tattoo shop. Then, epicness ensued.

Here's the result.

Then my buddy @colinstevic got my logo tattooed on his leg.

The ULTIMATE test of friendship!

Here's what it came out like, he's a little bloody because he just got done.

Here's another shot.

Tonight ruled, I hope your nights were just as awesome as mine.

Unsilent Night 2

Jake Marsh — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:23:03 +0000

This show ruled. You wish you had been there. Props to all my buds who were involved. Good job dudes.