I’m pleased to say that my earlier post on Installing IE6 on Ubuntu Gutsy (7.10) needs only a minor modification to work with Jaunty 9.04.

For Jaunty you just need to replace any references to ‘edgy’ with ‘jaunty’ on the ies4linux Ubuntu install page.

The ./ies4linux installer took 15 minutes to complete under VirtualBox (I was running Jaunty Release Candidate for a preview) – slow but…it worked.  Given that IE6 is over 10 years old, this is rather impressive.

Too see wine in action running Internet Explorer 6 on the Jaunty RC, watch this screencast of ie6update that I recorded last night in ProCasts:

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Ian produces professional screencasts (ProCasts), writes The Screencasting Handbook, programs Python, researches Artificial Intelligence (Mor Consulting) and is also a sea-side dweller and consumer of fine coffees.

I’m joing Matt Weston and co. on Saturday morning (9am @ Brighton Station) for the Slack Space (Guardian, Ivan, BeeKeeper) survey there are probably better ways of doing it than this.

Slack Space is all about re-purposing empty buildings so we can do something better with them than let them sit vacant.  The first step is to survey where the empty buildings are…

Matt has suggested using a camera, pen and paper to build a list of locations powered by bikes.  I figured with my iPhone I can go one better – I can take photos, upload with GPS locations to flickr and then expose the location info for easy mapping.  Coupled with the flickr tag SlackSpaceBrighton we can easily aggregate all the locationed-photos on a map.

There is one configuration step required to get the location data into flickr (it could be done on the day as long as you have web access).  Go to Your Account in flickr and then visit Privacy and Permissions and make sure:

1. Hide your EXIF data is No (I think this is the default anyway)
2. Import EXIF location data is Yes (you MUST set this one)

If Import EXIF location data is left to No (the default) then you’ll lose location data when the pictures are uploaded.

Flickr asked me for one more privacy setting when I flicked Import EXIF location data to Yes, I think it was ‘who can see the location in your photos?’ and I left it at the default of ‘Everyone’.

Hope to see you along on Saturday

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Ian produces professional screencasts (ProCasts), writes The Screencasting Handbook, programs Python, researches Artificial Intelligence (Mor Consulting) and is also a sea-side dweller and consumer of fine coffees.

As a part of my efforts with Andy Philippedes at Sussex Uni to get information flowing between the Computer Science dept. and companies in town, Andy has asked Graham McAllister to introduce himself and his work (and new company) in usability design and research for video games.

Over to Graham…

I’m Graham McAllister, a Senior Lecturer in Human-Computer Interaction and a member of the Human-Centred Computing Technology (HCT) research group in the Informatics department at the University of Sussex.  My research is in the area of video games, in particular trying to ensure  that they can be understood and played just as the designers intended.

So if you have ever played a game only to find it frustrating, annoying or even plain boring, my research tries to ensure that this does not happen.

As the UK video game industry grows, and games become more expensive to design and develop, it is becoming even more important to attain the highest quality possible.  To help ensure that UK games studios remain among the best in the world, we have started a spin-out company which focusses on analyzing games from the viewpoint of the player, i.e. can they understand the game, are the goals clear, do they enjoy it?

We’re almost ready to launch Vertical Slice, the UK’s first company to focus entirely on the area of video games usability and user experience.  Our studios are based at the Sussex Innovation Centre on Sussex University Campus, and feature facilities in which the interaction between players and video games can be observed, captured and analyzed.

For further details, please contact me at g.mcallister@sussex.ac.uk

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Ian produces professional screencasts (ProCasts), writes The Screencasting Handbook, programs Python, researches Artificial Intelligence (Mor Consulting) and is also a sea-side dweller and consumer of fine coffees.

I’m rather chuffed to say that our ProCasts has just received an award from TechSmith for our Adblock Plus open-source advocacy screencast.  I’ve blogged a few more details at ProCasts, our video is played 600 times a day and has already won popularity awards in YouTube.

“I liked this screencast for several reasons. Ian made great use of Camtasia Studio’s SmartFocus feature – he used it to focus your attention on certain areas of the screen and show greater detail.

The audio quality is great on this screencast which is important as viewers are generally intolerant of poor audio. The background audio music was a great touch and added polish to the screencast. And, Ian has a great voice for narration! The screencast runs 1:32 and is short and to the point. Perfect!”

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Ian produces professional screencasts (ProCasts), writes The Screencasting Handbook, programs Python, researches Artificial Intelligence (Mor Consulting) and is also a sea-side dweller and consumer of fine coffees.

The latest development at ShowMeDo is a new learning system called Learning Paths.  The Paths are ordered collections of videos and series where individual items are pulled together to make a journey (a ‘learning trajectory’) for the learner to achieve one particular goal.

The Path also allow for dependencies so ‘Fully worked Python Projects’ depends upon  ‘Beginning Python Programming’ and that depends upon ‘Setting up Python’.

At present we have an initial set of Paths and more will follow very soon:

• Beginning Python Programming (15 video series)
  
• Setting-up Python (4 video series)
  
• Intermediate Python Programming (6 series including 2 fully-worked projects)
• Python for Strong Pythonistas (note – only has 1 series at present, we’re requesting more community submissions)
• Full Python Projects (5 fully-worked Python projects including GUIs and web-apps)

The Paths mix our free and Club content, all authors have edit rights so everyone can add the right material to the Paths so they tell exactly the right story.

We’re very keen to see the Paths used, I’ve already blogged about this on the main ShowMeDo Blog.  If you like what we’re trying to achieve, perhaps you could help us to spread the word by blogging or tweeting?

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Ian produces professional screencasts (ProCasts), writes The Screencasting Handbook, programs Python, researches Artificial Intelligence (Mor Consulting) and is also a sea-side dweller and consumer of fine coffees.

Bob and Pat, long-time supporters of Joel’s Business of Software forums, were kind enough to interview me last week on the art and science of creating screencasts that sell your software.

The podcast (mp3) is 42 minutes long, they question me to help MicroISVs and tech companies learn more about using screencasts to demo and sell their software.  I’ve written up a bit about it on the ProCasts blog.

“In show #21 Bob and Pat interview Ian Ozsvald, founder of ProCasts on the art and science, mystery and drama of creating great screeencasts for your startup’s product or web site. Ian generously shares his expertise about how to target your screencast, techniques that make a huge difference, a range of free and non-free tools, ways to improve your video communication abilities and more. If you want to know how to create a screencasts that shines, this is the show for you!”

Would you like a free eBook that covers all of this (and more)? ProCasts’ Little Book of Screencasting is in the works, to receive a notification when we release it send an email to: ebook_notify@procasts.co.uk

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Ian produces professional screencasts (ProCasts), writes The Screencasting Handbook, programs Python, researches Artificial Intelligence (Mor Consulting) and is also a sea-side dweller and consumer of fine coffees.