subsphere.co.uk

I spent a bit of time updating the Quadrophobe website yesterday, using the fantastically flexible Wordpress platform and a number of plugins to bring together content from Flickr, provide a nice interface into upcoming gigs and performances and link off to their other digital identities (MySpace, Facebook and Last.fm). The band seem really pleased with it (which is nice :)) and hopefully it is simple (yet powerful) enough that they’ll be able to run the day-today functions of the site. Next addition is a Flash MP3 player for the band, so people can listen to the tracks on their website.

Check it out: www.quadrophobe.com

As part of the site I got round to uploading some photographs I took at the JackFM Next Big Thing competition a week ago to my Flickr account.

Twice this week I have seen a weird car driving around Wantage. A black Astra with a 5ft odd pole on top with what looks like 8 cameras pointing out in all directions. I commented at the time to family “wouldn’t it be cool if that was Google Street View, like they have in the States” and low and behold yesterday Google go an announce Street View for the UK!

Unfortunately on one occasion I was making lunch in the kitchen and the other time I was driving, so wasn’t able to snap a pic, but here is a pic from a quick image search…

So, look out for the mighty Wantage which is presumably just behind the top 25 UK cities to be added to Street View. In particular, look out for me in my kitchen window and sat behind it in my silver Astra at the traffic lights on Portway

Spreading like wildfire through Twitter and the social web yesterday were rumours, then confirmation, that YouTube and the Performing Rights Society (PRS), who collect money on behalf of record labels and artists whenever their music is played, had fallen out over licensing negotiations.

The dispute further highlights how traditional national bodies are finding it increasingly difficult to operate in the global village of the Internet, which has had a particularly profound impact on the way we ‘consume’ music in the last decade. Understandably each of these regional organisations don’t want to miss out on their slice of the pie, but bizarrely seem intent on destroying the very thing they are trying to embrace engulf at every turn. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve just syndicated my Facebook status updates onto my blog here; you can see the most recent in the bar to the right.

Finding the RSS feed letting my export my status updates from Facebook into Wordpress wasn’t particularly clear cut though, and props go to Andy Walters for his post on where to find the right feed.

How to add your feed…

The link can be found on the Minifeed page, where you can filter by the sort of stories you are interested in, the URL to the page is: http://www.facebook.com/minifeed.php?filter=11

At the bottom of the story types under “Subscribe to these Stories” there is a ‘My Status’ link, right click this and you will have the RSS link to your Facebook status updates to use in any application you like (Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, to name but a few) which supports importing RSS 2.0 feeds.

In Wordpress, you can add the feed as an ‘RSS Widget’ in any widgets-enabled theme.