May was a month of brick lane curries, a new art exhibition (silent city), mini golf and a bunch of other blurry stuff.

June was a good month (on the whole apart from hackers and google caffeine?!?), did incalculable amounts of coding, new site rollouts, tennis, monopoly, booked new york flights and some other stuff. Wrote a lot, drank a lot of wine, updated a bunch of auction2post sites because eBay updated their api (for the better) – standard summer month.

I started 4 draft posts across these two months but none seemed to stick, it’s not like the months were dry, posts boning csharp just didn’t fit, I was going to post csharp iis and multisql management code, a nice project I wrote to datamine from ebays new api and I was thinking of digging out my seo hub php based hub and rewriting it as a multi threaded windows app, but yeah sometimes stuff just doesn’t seem to hold enough value.

As ever though projects continue to crop up and evolve. I am working on a stupidly simple file system snapshotter after an incident with a second hacker, I will probably post about ripping data from the Nike app on the iPhone, if it isn’t up already somewhere else. Also I will make a quick program to save the top 20 wallpapers from reddit to a folder so windows 7 can automatically show me new epics (theres even an rss!) if know one else saves me the effort. Unless that is, all this stuff gets superseded. Mostly it’s just me biding my time and making broader plans

Look out for possible random posts on business intelligence, the stock market and brain architecture too, as they seem to keep cropping up.

I can see applications ranging from replacing my SEO QUAKE’s list parameter check to many many web marketing, analytics, data crawling and recording processes, all of which you could do in ms.excel, yet more accessible here. This isn’t a big deal, but landed on my lap this morning so here’s the share

The question then comes after you have 30 wordpress blogs on the go, various niche market’s blogged too or personal sites about cats or what have you, what then? Updates then. WordPress do update fairly regularly, they aren’t the slow moving behemoths some other companies are because they are open source, and that’s a good thing. Anyway maintaining 30 copies of wordpress is actually a lot easier than it sounds, an update is usually nothing more than 10 minutes uploading the new wordpress files over the old ones via FTP. But say you had a little project where you wanted to create a few more wordpress blogs. For the sake of this post lets say you wanted 90 blogs. 90 WordPress blogs installed on an average web host (I suggest 1and1) is not a big deal. It can be as big a deal as you make of it but in your pursuits and interests online its potentially likely to crop up.

You can run 90 wordpress blogs (or 1000 etc.) from 1 instance of wordpress. That is 1 wordpress folder on your host serving to 90 blogs at blogsite1.co.uk, blogsite2.com etc. thats nothing new – I am sure the quicker off the mark or longer in the tooth of wordpress users have been doing it for a while, but somehow I missed this up until I got past the 30 blog mark and so I thought its about time I looked at the option of hundreds of wordpress-blogs running from 1 folder, a project has come up. The reason this works by the way is the wonderful way (take not web developers) that wordpress splits its config files and its database. The only file in the wordpress files you upload to your blog that contains any site specific data is the config file, which pulls everything from the database.

On the preface there are both good and bad things about doing this with word press, here are the pro’s and con’s as I see them pre-project.

Pros

• Single central wordpress folder  – 1 wordpress folder to update periodically
• File size – rather than using up 4mb per wordpress install, this method uses 4mb per x number of wordpress installs, although space isn’t an issue really in current web hosting
• Plugins and themes only need to be copied once – they can effectively be shared
• Easier to backup – backing up files of wordpress blogs is pretty pointless apart from wp-content (uploaded images, themes, etc) – putting all your blogs in one basket means backing up the whole lot is a breeze, 1 folder not 90!
• WordPress database is seperate – you could potentially run all the blogs from 1 database too – (capacity dependant) – as wordpress allows table prefix’s
• Adding a blog can be automated – replicating the first wp database from an install can mean tons less setup work

Cons

• Permalink structure may have to be the same? *not 100% on this one and havent tested but there may be issues with permalink setups across multiple blogs as htaccess is shared*
• Other .htaccess differences – because you will effectively only have 1 .htaccess file for all domains pointing to this folder, this puts all that custom .htaccess code out of the window
• Flip side of themes being easy to install is that editing one theme will lead to all blogs using that theme to notice the change, fine if your blogs are stable in design but multiple versions of the same theme will be required if you want to tweak these on a blog specific level, which could make for a messy confusing setup if not through through
• If you are running a network of blogs and want to stay under the radar or just want the sites to be as different as possible – by nature of single resource they will leave footprints unless you are aware and make sure you do things like rename folders for themes non-sequentially etc ( or maybe don’t be paranoid :p )
• Centralising the files for all domains/sites/blogs does mean this folder on this box does then become a single point of failure, loose/break this and the whole of your blog network/project is down. Probably not such an issue with stable hosts these days
• As previous point if you do update, change a file or accidentally delete anything it does effect every site – its a risk but not a big one just be careful!

Limitations

• Unsure about .htaccess but presume custom rewriting becomes a pain as all sites share a file
• There will be a limit as to how many blogs you can run off a single install. It’s probably thousands though – if you had 30,000 sites for example – the file which points the install to the right database tables would become bloated

How to run tens, hundreds or thousands of wordpress blogs from 1 instance – install wordpress once for hundreds of blogs – without MU.

1. Install wordpress into a folder on you hosting (download latest from wordpress.org and then upload via FTP/copy across network)
2. Get your database details together, you will need Database Name, Database Username, Database Password and the Database host for each of the databases you are going to host wordpress tables in
3. Install a single blog using the normal method – point a domain at the folder, go to that domain and follow the wordpress wizard, entering your database connection details and this blogs title.
   1. Go through this newly installed blog and commit any changes that you will want duplicated throughout the new installs – delete the “hello world” post/default wp links for example.
   2. Imagine this like creating a ghost image for a network of pc’s – you want to make a bare bones default wordpress setup so you can replicate this onwards without having to redo it.
4. Happy with  your ghost blog setup? go to your phpmyadmin (assuming you have it) and export all the tables for this blog into SQL.
5. Open that SQL into your favourite text editor, in this case I am using Dreamweaver because I like its find+replace.
6. You will need to do several find + replaces here, but by doing this you can literally clone a wordpress installation – (works as at 2.9.1 anyway) – this is great for mass distribution (This is quicker than installing and can be automated)
7. For example if your site was “harrysblog1.co.uk” with a title of  “Harrys Blog 1″ then do a find and replace for “harrysblog1.co.uk”, switching out the new domain to be added, same with title’s, users, post’s etc. This way you could clone a wordpress site and switch out words…you can change the table prefix this way too.
8. Run this newly modified SQL on whatever mysql database you want to run the blog from (could be same one if you mass replaced the table prefix’s)
9. Alter your wp-config.php file very simply:
   1. Open it up and put a bit of logic which basically says “what domain am I loading from, ah this one – use this DB and this table prefix” – This logic can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be – I kept mine short and sweet with literally:

*note this is just how I did it, there are other ways – the code works but was just to test the theory – when upscaled to a network of xxx or x,xxx sites this is automated quite easily

*note2 I am having to cut this post short but if anyone has any questions or wants to know more/help on replicating wordpress or multi blog – 1 wordpress instance installs let me know in the comments

References

Striderweb – this post pretty much explains the theory, a bit like this post – but I actually happened across it after writing the post – well worth reading if your going to do this – Stephen Rider has made a great plugin that will do everything you want it to do as above, I winged it and just modified the wp-config which simply worked in my case so personally I didn’t use it, but no doubt its probably worth a try if  you want a more deep solution.

Initially I would break down the challenge into two components. Technically getting the video from DV tapes and DVD’s onto home computer screens, iPhones, iPods, projection screens or whichever selected medium would be one. The second would be the contextual additional options. The scope for digital interpretation, communication, connections and display are countless.

The technicality of presenting video online is now an established practice. Example websites need not be named, for their popularity is well known, however despite the huge number of video’s present on these websites, quality is not a depth assured, this has allowed website’s such as TED to secure a wonderful foothold for providing higher quality (depth of thought not number of pixels) video. While TED is worth noting in this case (the people behind TED would perhaps be an excellent collaborative option) it is also important that it be distinguished from the possibility of this archive, of which there is no other comparative example on-line.

Not to dwell on the finite steps within the technological process I would concentrate this example into a summarised plan of 3 steps. 1. Digitalise all video in as high a resolution/audio quality as is feasible, taking care to maintain a proper method of file storage. 2. Process video – depending on the theory of display this could entail community based transcribing and translation, face tracking, tone mapping, automated or again community sourced segmentation or several other processes. 3. Encode all video for its intended output, depending on the intention this could be 1080p full hd video’s for download/streaming/youtube, higher resolution video for elsewhere or mp3′s for audio versions.

I think it would be important in this instance to not get caught up in the technological solution before deciding on the second component, the theory behind this archives display. Hans Ulrich Obrist has probably already considered many options, within the article it states a “system of tags” and a wonderful phrase “The archive is a polyphonic novel of more than 1,000 protagonists”. Tagging could work quite well but the question of who and how remains. These could be generated from the transcription of all the videos, something that could be tasked to a community to do digitally or by Hans himself or a third party such as end user’s viewing the video interviews. I think tagging broadly speaking will be a necessity in this project, however with such a unique collection I believe there are a variety of options to differentiate the final outcome of the archive online.

Whichever other process’s were performed on the video archive to provide a link or communication between interviews later on I would without a doubt get the video’s transcribed. This would add a depth to the archive enhancing features such as searching as well as providing opportunity for interlinking, communication and a larger array of display choices (the archive could then effectively be available on e-book reader’s, phone’s, subtitles for the deaf etc.) As aforementioned I would propose that this be done via crowd sourcing. Providing the video’s openly on-line and early-on in the project while asking viewers to transcribe what is said within the video they are watching (or even a small clip to maintain a higher attention span and therefore overall accuracy) could allow for a financial saving in transcribing coupled with a positive discussion about the proposed on-line archive by the contributors. This has been proven to work in a number of different scenario’s online and based on the depth of quality of the interview videos there would be more than sufficient interest to power this intention, in fact it may even provide a path to a much quicker transcribing (if a large enough community is built around the task) of the archive as a whole, especially into a number of languages.

From transcribed data a whole host of options are available, providing “similar interviews”, creating discussion groups from interviews, tagging and combining video’s. The transcribed archives could be coupled with other processed data such as face tracking. The interviews could be processed to record the facial expressions of the interviewee’s as they address different topics, acting as an “Expression tag” you could then similarly create different connections, suggestions and comparison’s using these. A web of similarities and dissimilarities could form an interesting navigation and experiment into the archive.

Similarly the video audio could be utilised to the benefit of the project, mapping sound-bites to text or even facial expressions. Perhaps visualised in-line with the video or just tone mapped to provide similar talks or a more interactive navigation. The interviews could also be available as mp3′ files for download or online listening, for the enjoyment of the blind or for people to listen too on their mp3 player’s or mobile phones.

Another possible pursuit would be to break the video’s down, segmenting the archives into smaller chunks might provide more options for viewing the material, communication between interviews and more. This again could be done through crowd sourcing of the task or by using audio mapping to distinguish breaks. This would completely depend on the length of the interview video.

There are, of course, numerous considerations and possibilities for a project like this, providing a way for users to access the archive that is both relative to the archive itself and conceptionally creative would be a great, fulfilling challenge. In just thinking about the idea for around an hour I have come up with a lot more ideas than I can fit in here, how about a new type of “rating” system that identifies the least viewed interviews and shows them on top of the page, therefore creating a cycling effect ensuring that the viewers on the whole as a crowd see the huge variety present? perhaps a single page with several segment’s of different interviews all pertaining to one topic all displayed and ready to click, draggable video frames that immerse the viewer in the interview? I would love to work on such a project.

The reason this post really sparked was this post on pico projectors and what pico projectors might be like in 2015. I think pico projector’s (tiny projectors that will fit in your hand but produce a projection pretty much the quality of your old tv, anywhere @ 50 inchs) will get huge. I don’t doubt for one minute that MVIS stock will be the first sign of this in the coming months (the microvision showWX is going to be the worlds first mainstream big selling pico – prediction) and this will be only the start for developing display technology. Over the next 5 years visually representative technology will blossom. We will see embedded pico-projector’s slot into city planning, home design, products such as laptops (netbooks), mobile phones, games systems, camera’s. Within lcd little growth will happen but we will likely see some sort of “ultra hd” – probably double current full hd (1080p), while embedded pico’s will feature a whole host of new resolutions, by 2015 we will definitely see full hd pico’s. This development of display technology will usher in a new age of advertisements, coupled with Augmented Reality and revolution amongst the Operating Systems.

Which brings me nicely to Augmented Reality. AR. Currently there is much buzz around Augmented reality, which I believe really is the sudden sci-fi geek realisation that technically the technology to fully provide AR is out, its been out for more than a year. Smart phones with knowledge of where they are and decent digital cameras have been around longer than the iPhone. It seems once this dawned on people everyone made a mad rush to make something AR, regardless of what it is. As a result magazines, advertisers and marketing companies largely came first (presumably they had the quickest fluid funds to pay for AR.) This marrs the technology a bit if you ask me but perhaps as AR becomes more meaning based this will change. My jury is out on AR but I think it won’t be as big a deal as everyone is making out it will be.

Business will change, or rather some business’s will change the way they use technology. You always get early adopters but I believe a good proportion of companies that operate around creative, co-operative ideology will gear up more technologically as the younger generation come into professionalism. We will see different technological assistance of work in the workplace. Board meetings will not only be worldwide (like now via Cisco tele-conferencing) but they will be assisted by interactive technology, touch and display will play large parts in this technology, beyond the Microsoft surface table and towards the science fiction of minority report. Data will be housed, represented and communicated differently. A few years ago usb sticks and solid state drives didn’t offer an easy solution to copying files, network speeds were a 100th of what they largely are today, there was no cloud. As data management and storage develop as too will the way we use it. We will probably have identifiers rather than storage in 2015. e.g. rather than copying a file to a usb stick you will simply instruct your interface to relate that data to a physical object, a soundwave (a word/phrase perhaps?) or a time of day or place, provided you can prove who you are you could then recieve it. You could carry a 200gb file with you in your wallet or on your fingernail, as the likelihood is that 200gb file will be stored centrally in what people now call the “cloud” (but will probably be a server in london or a main city) and you will simply use a relation to prompt whatever interface into providing you with this file.

There will be hurdles in achieving universal centralised data but by 2015 there will be a huge proportion less of personal computing power stored in the home. The google OS is perhaps a sign of a branching of operating systems, but I don’t see google dominating the operating system market. Microsoft have become a lot stronger over the last 18 months but the real truth of it is that neither of these developers seem to be truely embracing all of the technology developments happening. Perhaps this lag in uptake is natural, Microsoft does show some promising signs but is held back by business concerns, google seems to throw itself into the ideas without checking they are in the right direction, linux, well linux is linux. By 2015 I predict there will be at least another major world provider of what we currently refer to as operating systems. The whole concept needs re-exploring from the ground up, even starting again beyond the google os. Touch for example, AR and improved options for display are all completely ignored by all of the aforementioned operating systems, Microsoft is the only developer that even references these things but is yet to truly develop a commercial option.

Search will change too. The last few years has seen a huge uptake worldwide in searching for things which in turn has pushed marketing, sales and online business into a whole new age. It’s also cemented new business models such as affiliate marketing, search based advertising and more grey area web production. The long tail has well and truly become a reality, many successful business people spend their days driving traffic from long tail search into successful sales. This will continue but it wont settle in a single routine for long. Affiliate marketing will take to interactive media more as this becomes more integral in everyday life, search will some how adapt to a new more astute audience that is used to getting good search results fast and who quickly picks up trends and becomes integral members of up and coming online phenomena such as reddit, twitter etc. Beyond real-time, search will need to integrate much more with outside sources, new operating systems and the work out the best way to catalogue and express the ever expanding online data and how it is created and used.

HTML 5 is on its way too, this will be a major improvement but it wont be the last the web sees pre 2015. By 2015 I believe that the “internet” as we know it, a vast linked store of webpages will be a very different beast. Microsoft (XBOX), Apple (iPhone), Sony (Ps3) – these are all well known, global brands and they are all investing / operating in the new world of applications. Pioneered by Apple and the iphone the idea of segmented approved tools that are properly ordered was a (very apple) genius idea. Bringing a (standard) apple simplicity to what was previously a confusing and avoided world of software for a lot of people. Microsoft, Sky, Sony and other huge technology developers did not miss this success. In the coming years slowly these companies will target specific software/hardware at every possible market audience. By 2015 every member of your family will be buying something digital. Expanding on the segmented digitally providable media of the iphone app, television programs, games, music, films and books will all be available at the click of a button, tap of a screen or utterance of a command (and payment systems such as xbox subscriptions and ps3 accounts will remove the actual money part of the transaction further accelerating digital sales.) This new availability of media will be supported by webpages, but the web-pages are much more likely to be totally interactive, 3d integration is already in browsers but we will see more of this as well as individualised experiences. Imagine every web-page you accessed could (based on rules of privacy) know your name, interests etc – the web could be a much more interactive environment. By 2015 though I think the web could be on its way to new pastures, gone with the current ideal of “pages” accessed by address. An OS with search integrally built in could remove the requirement for a browser, content could be constructed on the fly and applications/services/movies/experiences could replace pages as we know them, with the situation that web pages changing from a square, box of a screen to a multi surface vivid world that we live in, there is no doubt in my mind that the OS and the web “page” as we know it will adapt to a new medium.

We are living in a time which is the true beginning of technology adoption, 2015 might bring a few or all of my predictions into reality, it could just as likely bring thousands more. Social adoption will drive these things forward and in return the technology will hopefully create a more co-operative, fair and equal world society.