Over the weekend I was looking up Maori words for my daughter (Maori for those of you scratching their heads, is the native language of New Zealand where I am from).

I came across http://animations.tewhanake.maori.nz/ and it is pretty fun, I plan on letting the kids play on there this week to see how they respond.

The site has some Computer Generated Animations of people speaking in Maori. Which looks nice, the lady to the left is an example character from the animations.

It reminds me in part of the "Muzzy" series of language learning animations produced by the BBC. which My kids love, despite it being really old hand done animation.

I am hoping that these animations will help my kids (stuck here in the UK with me) and myself to gain some Maori experience.

Time will tell if it has any effect.

Lance

Fanfare Software ( http://www.fanfaresoftware.com/ ) have just released the 3.3 version of their iTest product.

I know a little about iTest and am a big fan. When I first saw what it does I had one of those "OMG! Where was this 6 months ago!!!" moments. (and NO I don't work for them.)

iTest automates testing, if I put it simply.

What iTest does is let you take all your manual test procedures do them once, then be able to run them automatically from then on. So for example if you have something you are developing (as was my case) that is accessed via a TCP connection like Telnet, iTest can run that test for you.

So you capture yourself logging in, going through the menu options etc. Then that becomes an automated test. When it is run, you can check that say a software version is right, that a command returns the right result, etc etc.

iTest lets you pull in your existing Perl/TCL tests too. So it is not a one or the other decision. iTest compliments what you have already done.

The new version adds:
# Intelligent Response Parser (IRP) - Automatically parse common responses, then easily perform query-based analysis of identified values or strings.
# Automatic Response Mapping - Enable IRP analysis criteria to be easily maintainable across several releases, even with software changes
# iTest Assistant - Get step by step assistance and learn time-saving tips across the spectrum of testing and automation tasks
# HP Quality Center - Publish iTest test cases and results to Quality Center and or initiate iTest execution directly from Quality Center
# Call Procedure - Easily add cleanup or other procedures based on certain events or analysis results

and a bit more. They are holding a Webinar on Wednesday the 10th of December if you are interested in seeing it in action. I would, it's really powerful!

With the work I did in the first half of this year, iTest could have saved me hours and hours, no days and days, possibly months! We did a lot (and my client did even more) manual testing of the various components of the solution, iTest could have done it better faster and with great reporting of issues. It would have saved the whole project a bundle of time and money!

So do check it out.

So as I type this Dirk Olbertz is updating Identoo.com to the latest and greatest version of NoseRub.

This is brilliant news as I think that the latest version is a big step forward for this distributed social networking project. Dirk and Daniel have added quite a bit of functionality lately and I can't wait to see them in action.

I won't "blow the whistle", so you'll have to wait for the official post(s) on the NoseRub blog. I moved my installation on this site ( http://www.lancewicks.com/noserub/lancew ) onto the development branch a few weeks ago and it's gone smoothly enough. So I am looking forward to Identoo and other installations being on the same version so the new functionality works.

While I am talking about NoseRub, I thought it might be worth mentioning the services that NoseRub already "understands" along with any site that has a publicly available RSS feed.

Here is a list of the services already able to be aggregated into your activity stream in NoseRub:

23hq
Blip.fm
Blip.TV
Blippr
Blogger.de
Brightkite
Cork'd
Dailymotion
del.icio.us
deviantART
Digg
Disqus
Dopplr
Facebook
Fanfou
Faves
Ffffound!
Flickr
folkd.com
Glugg.no
HemiDemi.com
Identi.ca
iLike
ImThere
Ipernity
Jaiku.com
Joost
kulando
Last.fm
LinkedIn
LiveJournal
Ma.gnolia
Mister Wong (DE)
MoodMill
Newsvine
Odeo
orkut
Ormigo
Picasa
Plazes
Qik
Qype
reddit
Scribd
Second Life
Simpy
SlideShare
StumbleUpon
Twitter
Upcoming
Viddler
Viddyou
Vimeo
wevent
WordPress.com
Xing
YouTube
Zooomr
Zootool

That list only grows! NoseRub is an Open Source project, so you can add services that you use that are not listed. It's easy; it must be I have done it! ;-) In fact here are my notes on what you do: http://www.lancewicks.com/blog/index.ph ... 913-170455

So folks, stay tuned!

Distributed Social Networking - An Introduction from pixelsebi on Vimeo.
The video above ( here: http://vimeo.com/2378501 if you can't see it), is an introduction to Distributed Social Networking by Sebastian Küpers.

Sebastian introduces the topic and describes how Noserub can be used in this context. Previously Sebastian has recorded a podcast with Dirk.

He has also written an interesting article on how to make your Wordpress blog NoseRub compatible.

Anyway... enjoy the video and Sebatian keep up the great work!

I took a look at Animoto this morning, and it's pretty darn cool.

Animoto has been a poster child for cloud computing for a while, they make pretty heavy use of Amazon's AWS services to make their system work.

Anyway, below is a video I created with Animoto, the pictures are from the BBC / Yahoo! Hackday 2007 I attended. It took all of 5 minutes (if that) to produce, excellent tool.



Lance