Do you run a Club on Ecademy? Have you got one or more Meetings set up for that club? If so please do the following:-

- Find the meeting
- Click on it to see the meeting detail
- Click on Edit to change the detail
- Scroll down to the Meeting Type and Club fields
- Set the Club from the drop down list
- Hit Submit to save the meeting

I've recently changed the link between meetings and clubs so that it's easier for people to go from your club home page to a list of the meetings for that club. But to do that I need to know which club a meeting is for. It's very hard for me to work this out for anyone who runs more than one club. So unfortunately I have to ask you to do this.

Thanks for your cooperation. [from: JB Ecademy]

Judging by the current poll there's a whole group of people here who don't know about RSS. Let me try to explain. But to hook you in, if you need to track a business area for your job, RSS is absolutely indispensable. It's like having your own personal cuttings service. Anyone who's job includes tracking a business or topic area really should use it.

So what is RSS?

Perhaps the simplest explanation I've found is on the BBC site.

Sites with fairly rapidly changing content, like Ecademy or the BBC, publish their content in an alternate form as well as the web pages. This is the RSS standard and is machine readable. It consists of a short list of headlines, usually with a link to the original article and an abstract of the original.

An application called an aggregator or RSS reader keeps a list of the sites you want to track. This application could be a local program, a plugin for something like Outlook, or another website. Every so often, say once an hour, it works down the list of RSS feeds and collects the latest copy. It then presents the headlines to you in an easily read form. You can scan them quickly and then click on things that look interesting to bring up the original web page that they came from.

So now instead of trying to remember to visit 10 or 20 favourite websites each day only to find they haven't changed, the content comes to you. This means that you can now track 200-300 websites.

Here's the Google directory for RSS Readers. A good place to start is Bloglines which is a web based system. Then you may like to move on to local PC based systems like Newsgator, Amphetadesk or Sharpreader.

To find RSS, look for XML or RSS gifs on your favourite websites. Syndic8 have a very large directory as well. You might also like to browse around this list of popular feeds.

To get another idea of how this works, take a look at Dailenews on Ecademy. It's entirely driven by RSS.

ps. If you are one of the people who described yourself as "Addicted" to RSS, why not add a comment here about the news reader you use. [from: JB Ecademy]

Here's good one inspired by a Slashdot post.

Let's say I buy an Apple iPod or Sony CD MP3 player. Is there any completely legal way in the UK for me to obtain the MP3s to play on it?

Of course reality is that I'll simply rip my CD collection to MP3s. When I hit a CD that has been knobbled so it won't read on a PC, I'll download the copies via Kazaa.

What I don't know is the current status of fair use in the UK. Am I allowed to rip media I have paid for and repurpose it into another form for use on a different style of device? If the media contains copy protection, how far can I go to get round this in order to listen to the music I've paid for.

This is a condensed version of a much larger post I made last year exploring the extent of the laws view of common music sharing issues. [from: JB Ecademy]

If you are a club owner and have existing meetings set up for that club, please edit the meetings and set the club that should be associated with them. [from: JB Ecademy]

We've just made some changes to the meetings system and in the process pensioned off the Events system.

Club meetings are now tied to the club that they belong to. If you run a club and have meetings setup, please edit the meeting and set it to "Ecademy Club Meeting" and set the club it belongs to. Clicking on Meetings on club pages then shows just meetings for that club.

Club, Ecademy Events and meetings you are attending are identified in the meeting lists by a gif to make them stand out.

Meetings can be set to auto-remind attendees by email. In addition the meeting organiser can email all attendees to warn of changes or cancellations

A CSV download of attendees is available to organisers to print labels or attendee lists

A "Print" option is available with a printable page(s) of meeting details and photos of attendees

If you include a postcode with the venue details a map link is automatically created for UK and USA

Meetings are auto-filtered to only show meetings in your country.

Any problems, drop me a line. [from: JB Wifi]

BurnhamsBeat: Social Networking: Partying Like It's 1999 is a VC's take on Social Networking sites. Ecademy got mentioned but he didn't "get" what we're doing. [from: JB Wifi]

I've come across a suggestion for embedding an IM system in Ecademy. Probably Jabber. the problem is that I can't work out what the benefit would be.

Any ideas on what we'd do with an embedded Jabber server? [from: JB Wifi]

We've just made some changes to the meetings system and in the process pensioned off the Events system.

Club meetings are now tied to the club that they belong to. If you run a club and have meetings setup, please edit the meeting and set it to "Ecademy Club Meeting" and set the club it belongs to. Clicking on Meetings on club pages then shows just meetings for that club.

Club, Ecademy Events and meetings you are attending are identified in the meeting lists by a gif to make them stand out.

Meetings can be set to auto-remind attendees by email. In addition the meeting organiser can email all attendees to warn of changes or cancellations

A CSV download of attendees is available to organisers to print labels or attendee lists

A "Print" option is available with a printable page(s) of meeting details and photos of attendees

If you include a postcode with the venue details a map link is automatically created for UK and USA

Meetings are auto-filtered to only show meetings in your country.

Any problems, drop me a line. [from: JB Ecademy]

I've come across a suggestion for embedding an IM system in Ecademy. Probably Jabber. the problem is that I can't work out what the benefit would be.

Any ideas on what we'd do with an embedded Jabber server? [from: JB Ecademy]

BurnhamsBeat: Social Networking: Partying Like It's 1999 is a VC's take on Social Networking sites. Ecademy got mentioned but he didn't "get" what we're doing. [from: JB Ecademy]

Plink have now got a Mobile (SMS) Service. So you can retrieve biographical and some contact information via an SMS call. This is a clever link between SMS and existing data. And another reason to turn FOAF export on from Ecademy so your details are in Plink.

What with Plink, Local-News and AnyRSS, Dom Ramsey is doing some interesting stuff. Somebody give him a job! [from: JB Ecademy]

Further to my blog about Downing Street Says Just got a note from Tom Steinberg who says,

Thanks for the coverage of our new site, but I must make clear that Publicwhip.org.uk is the work of Francis Irving, and FaxYourMP is the work of James Cronin, Tom Loosemore and others. Furthermore, other than suggesting the logo and some of the ideas, none of the work on www.downingstreetsays.com was mine at all - I just help bring it all together. [from: JB Ecademy]

Downing Street Says... is a blog from Tom Steinberg that takes Downing St press briefings and turns them into a quickly readable form. Tom is the guy behind other UK projects like FaxYourMP and Public Whip. As he says "Keep poking the system with a stick".

[from: JB Ecademy]

ZDNet UK - News - EU delays vote on 'Euro-DMCA' : A vote on the EU's proposed directive on the enforcement of intellectual property rights, which has been compared to a draconian US law, has been pushed back to November. This week's European Parliament vote on a proposed law aimed at cracking down on piracy has been delayed until November, amid criticism that its implementation would criminalise many innocuous activities and harm European competition.

This is a glorious can of worms. The BSA ("Promoting a safe and legal world") put together a proposal. They pass it to Janelly Fourtou MEP (google cache) who is coincidentally the husband of Jean-René Fourtou, former top manager of Aventis (pharma), and currently the CEO of Vivendi Universal. Vivendi is involved in cooperation negotiations with Microsoft. She turns it into a directive to the EU and presents it as "harmonising the status quo". So no conflict of interest there then.

There's more on this story in ZDNet, and The Times. To get a feel for what's going on here, consider these words from David Rowan:-

"Because the directive does not define the scope of “intellectual property rights”, it could theoretically let EU states jail millions of ordinary consumers who swap song files, scan photographs or play copy-protected CDs on their PCs. As critics such as the Electronic Freedom Foundation have calculated, anyone who unwittingly infringes copyright — even if it has no effect on the market — could potentially have their assets seized, bank accounts frozen and home searched.

It is easy to see how the proposed sanctions will be used to strike fear in ordinary consumers and legitimate small businesses. There will be well-publicised raids on file-swappers’ homes, without any prior court hearing. Academics who question the security of commercial software will find themselves accused of breaching the owners’ rights. Free-software groups will face legal challenges from larger firms based on unwarranted intellectual-property claims. And over time competition, and consumer rights, will be further whittled away.

Copyright is never an easy subject to get people excited about. But if you do not welcome the idea of a British DMCA, tell your MEP before the vote." [from: JB Ecademy]

WAP, Avantgo Hotspot Directory - )( JiWire - your guide to wi-fi

I've just installed the localcopy of the JiWire hotspot directory. Which neatly gets round the problem of needing to get online to find the nearest hotspot so you can get online.

It also seems to be able to find hotspots based on the first part of a UK postcode which the web version can't manage yet. [from: JB Wifi]

= openBC = is Yet Another Social Network. This time in Germany but bilingual with English. Could be sueful for people wanting to do business in Germany. [from: JB Ecademy]

A bit of fun I knocked up last night. An Ecademy People Collage. It updates every 60 seconds. Click on a picture and it launches the profile page for that person.

The underlying image is collage.jpg. I'm sure someone can work out how to turn it into a screensaver or desktop. [from: JB Ecademy]

Do you get depressed by how bad all the news is? Well for a change, here's some good news.

Goodle Good News [from: JB Ecademy]

Call centers being opened in US prisons "employing" inmates at $130 per week.

The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Companies take call centers to prison : "It's like bringing little islands of the Third World right here to the heartland of America," he said. "You get the same total control of the work force, the same low wages, and it does nothing for the inmates."

This is clearly an idea who's time has come. Take a country with the world's largest prison population. Add in a large dose of protectionism over the horror of white collar jobs being outsourced offshore. Season with the profit motive both for prison management and local corporations. And what do you get, "This is a niche where the prison industry could really help the U.S. economy," said Robert Killgore, director of Inside Oregon Enterprises, the quasi-state agency that recruits for-profit business to prisons.

With the high proportion of Afrcan-Americans in US prisons for drug related offences you do have to wonder about some of the support calls. Or is that last statement too politically incorrect? Similarly for the high proportion of Hispanics out on the West coast and in Florida. Perhaps the US could stem the flow of immigrants across the border by soaking up all the jobs taken by immigrant labour with low risk prisoners on day duty?

The more you think about this the more bizarre it becomes but at the same time entirely logical. The combination of "The War on Some Drugs", "Three strikes and you're out" and similar schemes, combined with for-profit prison management produces the perfect tool for increasing American corporate efficiency by reducing labour costs. While at the same time it keeps the underclass off the streets in a nice controlled environment.

Bwahhahahhahahahh! [from: JB Ecademy]

I think I've got one spare ticket to see Zen TV tonight. £20. If you're interested you'll have to pick it up between 8 and 8:30 outside the doors. Call me on +44 (0)77 5907 2173

Zen TV, Coldcut, AV/DJ Set, Hexstatic, Live, Kid Koala, Compere & DJ Set, Skalpel, DJ Set, Blockhead, DJ Set, DK, DJ Set, VJs - Lucky Cat & Juxta.
The Forum, Kentish Town, London
Doors open at 8pm
[from: JB Ecademy]