steve purkiss

I’ve just cancelled my broadband service from Virgin after only one week. Why? Because today I woke up to find my ‘unlimited’ service had been throttled because I apparently used it too much. I’m now getting less-than-dial-up speeds and the service is all but useless to me.

When I phoned up to order, I stated to the sales guy that I used 60-100Gb per month and asked if that would be a problem, to which he said ‘no’. I now find, only a week later, that according to them, it is. So I check their Acceptable Use Policy, to which they supply no figures whatsoever as to what is acceptable use. So how are you supposed to know?

After spending many hours, nine phonecalls, and 24 hours without service when I swapped over because Virgin ‘forgot’ to do something to enable my line, I have had it with them and apparently am going to receive a MAC address so I can change back to my old supplier, enta.net reseller ukfsn.org (whose profits go to funding Free Software projects). I never had any problems whatsoever with them, and whenever I phoned support they didn’t put me on hold for ages and they knew what they were talking about - I wouldn’t have changed in the first place if it wasn’t a cash situation - it’s £34.99pcm for 2Mb unlimited from ukfsn.

To top it all, I checked the webmail and found that they’re charging me £44.99 for a £14.99pcm service - I phoned Virgin again and there’s a set-up charge which I was not informed of either - I have complained to them about that too and requested a refund as at no time did they tell me this.

On top of all the stories in the news this week about them not supporting net neutrality, it has not given me much good to say about Virgin.

I’ve just read Social Media expert Jay Deragon’s fantastic post over at Social Media Today entitled “Are We Contained and Controlled?”

Certainly the best blog post I have read this year, and I don’t want to spoil the enjoyment of reading it first hand by adding or commenting, just share the link with you. As the first commenter says “Profound”.

Thanks Jay, this is a wonderful piece of writing.

seesmicsidebar.com is now live, so please refer to that site for sidebar related issues.

I will be moving the sidebar posts from here over to there so I can reclaim my blog!

There’s been quite a few changes to my unofficial seesmic sidebar lately, including the ability to add links to your videos!

Once you’ve posted a video, you’ll see an “add link” link by your post in the sidebar, click that, enter the URL and click the add button. That’s it!

If there’s a link attached to a post, you’ll see a green “link” link by the side of the post, click on that and the link will open up.

You can only add links to your own posts, and currently you can only add one link. Also, the link will open up in a new browser window until I get the open in new tab code working.

Also new is the timelines so you can see all the usual timelines - public, friends, inbox (including private DMs), and sent.

Testing and feedback welcome!

Just a little note to let you all know that my unofficial seesmic sidebar now automatically refreshes - you need never miss a [video] conversation again!

My database updates every minute so there’s only a slight delay from videos being posted to them appearing in the sidebar. I believe seesmic will be creating a push mechanism soon, so there may be further improvements.

Still to come:

- view threads
- post/reply to posts
- stats (videos posted, etc.)
- iPhone UI
- much, much more!

seesmic du jour is the daily show produced by video discussion site seesmic, and today’s episode features the seesmic sidebar!

The feedback I’ve received so far on the sidebar is great, so I’ve decided I’m going to re-design my website/blog. I’m going to have different sections for the projects I’m working on as the sidebar seems to be taking over at the moment

So keep your eyes out for a new site soon… meanwhile, here’s the seesmic du jour featuring yours truly:

It’s been a while so I thought I’d update you on current developments in my unofficial seesmic sidebar.

I’m now using the iPhone UI so once release it should work on your iPhone and iPod Touch There is a Flash player in development for these but there may be some ways around this by converting the video format.

Also in development is the recording function, and a full search of all videos right from the very beginning of seesmic. You’ll also be able to get some stats, like how many videos you’ve posted, and set up a block list so you’ll only see videos from people you want to see.

I’ve made a video to show you the latest dev version, so click below to play:

In true open source style, I’m releasing early and often so here’s v0.1 of the seesmic sidebar - save it somewhere then double-click on it to install in your browser of choice:

Click here to download seesmic sidebar v0.1

At the moment it lists the latest 50 videos and you can refresh whenever you like. You can also select to see all languages or just one, e.g. ‘en’ for English only - it will hide other languages out of that 50.

To play in the internal sidebar player, click either the thumbnail or title. There’s an ‘flv’ link to download the flv file of the video. There’s also a ’seesmic’ link which will open up a new tab in your browser and play it within seesmic, although currently it doesn’t work the first time - you will need to click the toolbar icon twice to reload the tab (or CTRL+Shift+S twice) then it will work from then on. As soon as I work that one out I’ll fix it!

I’ve submitted the extension to the mozilla site so you should be able to download it from there soon too. It works for Firefox, Flock, and all OSs. Feedback and ideas more than welcome, just post a comment or email me at (steve@purkiss.com) steve (at) purkiss (dot) com.

Here’s a little demo, sorry about the bad graphics:

Rather than having to keep switching windows or tabs, I thought it would be a good idea to have a seesmic sidebar, so today I started building one.

It works on Firefox and Flock web browsers over *all* operating systems, and I’ll release a version soon once I’ve ironed a few issues out. Then I’ll add more basic features and stuff people request.

Here’s a demo:

It’s rough + dirty, but it works!

We’re on the hunt for a cafe. Here’s an update I recorded on Seesmic: