blog.benstones.net

No doubt you’re as stressed out trying to use Mahara as I am, and the thing that was annoying me the most was the fact that I couldn’t embed any sort of audio into my “view”. Mahara wasn’t having anything - native support for mp3 files or embedding a lovely Soundcloud player.

I was resigned to the fact that I would have to just put mp3 files onto Mahara for people to download - which frankly is a crap idea. But, never fear, because your friendly web specialist has found the bug that was restricting embedding Soundcloud and other players into your Mahara view.

Simply follow these simple steps to embed a Soundcloud player, Vimeo video, Flickr slideshow or any other form of embeddable media into your view. (In theory, this could also be used to embed an entire website into your Mahara!)

Embedding nice stuff into a Mahara view…

1. Go to the source of whatever you want to embed into Mahara… I’ll be embedding a Soundcloud player into my view.

2. Then grab the embed code of whatever you want to embed - this can usually be found somewhere around a share button.

On Soundcloud, click ‘Share’ at the top right of your player and then copy the ‘Embed code’ from the box that appears…



3. Now you need to edit the embed code before you put it into Mahara - to do that open either Notepad on Windows (NOT WordPad!!) or on Mac you need to use a program like Taco HTML Editor (NOT TextEdit!!).

I’m using Taco on Mac so the first step is to remove anything that it puts in automatically for you. Then copy the code straight into the document…



4. It’ll look like a mess, but honestly trust me on this one. Within the text, you need to find anywhere were the width of the object is specified - circled in red on the example below.

This bit is really important, Mahara can’t handle the fact that Soundcloud adjusts to wherever you put it’s player - using a width of 100% the player will change it’s width for wherever you embed it. Instead Mahara needs you to specify the width.

If you’re using 2 equal width columns for your Mahara view you need to change the width in all instances to 525 - this is the exact width of my Mahara columns…



5. Now you need to save this file onto your computer in order to upload it to Mahara. When saving, call it something like ‘soundcloud.html’ - making sure that you add the ‘.html’ extension (otherwise you’ll kill Mahara).

Using both Taco and Notepad you need to make sure the file type is set to ‘Plain Text’ and then add the ‘.html’ bit on the end of the name of your file…



6. Next, we need to put it into Mahara - so head to your view and start editing your content. Under the ‘Files, Images and Video’ tab you need to drag the ‘Some HTML’ widget into your view…



7. This will open up a configuration box. Give your block a nice title and then click ‘Browse’ to go and find the soundcloud.html file you’ve just created and saved onto your computer…



This will then automatically upload to your Mahara view and all you need to do is click ‘Save’ at the bottom of the box when it’s finished uploading!

8. And there you have it, one Soundcloud player embedded straight onto your Mahara view! This process can be replicated for anything that uses some sort of HTML code to embed itself into a webpage - so Vimeo videos, the Flickr slideshows and so on…



And there you have it, it’s as simple (ish) as that. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t me advocating Mahara, that’s a pretty hefty work around when Mahara is supposed to be easy to use!

If you’re thinking about using Mahara to send your CV and portfolio off to clients, think again and go have a look at Flavors.me - it will, without all this hastle, draw in content from Soundcloud, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs and a million other places and even make it look all nice. You can see my Flavors page at flavors.me/bennst to see what it’s all about!

PS. sorry the picture’s aren’t overly clear… my fault. Hopefully they illustrate the point well enough!

In a couple of weeks it’s the Student Radio Conference over in Hartforshire, this year sees the return of the Demo Factor to the conference so guess who’s entering his brand spanking, all new, sparkley radio-type demo thinger… yes, me!

Have a listen and I’d love to know what you think. You can leave comments on the Soundcloud player or Tweet me @BennSt…

This time last week we were on the eve of the epic advancement in awareness of Birmingham’s humongous train fails. Tasked with starting an online activist campaign in the three hours of #mc539 last Tuesday, we launched the Bham #trainFAIL project.

The first post on the Posterous blog explains the key objectives of the campaign and our reasons for venting our anger at Birmingham’s cross-city train service provider. I took a leading role in the group, starting with development of ideas through to conception of our online platforms, communications and ideas. My main role initially was to lead the group to the project objectives and then to work alongside and manage the group to achieve our objectives.

The Bham #trainFAIL campaign played on an already existing activist movement on Twitter - we decided to focus primarily on Twitter rather than other social networking platforms as most commuters would be more statistically contained within the Twitter user demographic. Utilising the pre-existing hashtag meant that we could follow and tweet aggrieved Twitterers to ask them to “get on board” with the project.

The success of this was measured by the rapid response gained on both the Twitter and blog almost instantly - within the three hours we had already had two posts submitted from consumers, some exclusive, inside information and a number of tweets, retweets and comments.

For this campaign to have done better, it would have been essential to carry on the legacy of the blog and hashtag. Whilst having the continuous attention of multiple people over the three hours meant the campaign could progress rapidly, as soon as the lesson ended so did the campaign it seemed. The framework for it’s continuation was there - as was the interest in the topic - but unfortunately we did not persue the project. The campaign does however have a legacy, it can be picked back up at any point.

Overall everyone needs to keep tweeting #trainFAIL and tag @LondonMidland in all your angry train-related tweets. Their cold, calculated replies might be callous, but the more people tweet them the more aware they are going to be that their service is poorly managed and run… I’m not bitter at all.

Do you ever go into Topman, see the adverts and models they use, and come away thinking - is it just me, or does everything look like it’s out of the 80s? Retro is still “in” so I’m told, which apparently means that development of fashion has somewhat ceased whilst we regenerate the styles of former years - ironic some would say.

Ironic? Or more new sincerity… the irony of retro isn’t really as ironic as it appears - there is some sincerity in the replication of former styles. Whilst you may look like a bit of an idiot if you do go into Topman and come out looking like Chesney Hawkes, in all seriousness the concept of retro-chic is the appreciation of styles gone by.

But what is this new sincerity business? Well it’s exactly that, the combination of irony and sincerity, whereby there is a lack of irony in something seriously ironic. Quite postmodern, no? In some respects new sincerity is really quite cynical, the ideas have been applied to all forms of art and media by a range of theorists.

Key theorists:
- Epstein, Mikhail (1999) “A Catalogue of New Poetries”
- Yurchak, Alexei (2008) “Post-Post-Communist Sincerity: Pioneers, Cosmonauts, and Other Soviet Heroes Born Today”
- Morris, Jason (2008) “The Time Between Time: Messianism & the Promise of a “New Sincerity,” Jacket 35

This is a reading response to David Parker and Paul Long’s
“‘The Mistakes of the Past’? Visual Narratives of Urban Decline and Regeneration”.

Tim Berners-Lee is credited with ‘inventing the internet’. Revolutions in the last few years have seen the rise of what is commonly coined ‘Web 2.0’ - for the guy who came up with the idea for what was essentially Web 1.0, regeneration on this scale is something almost sacrilegious and unnecessary:

“Nobody really knows what it means… If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along.”

Taken from an interview with Berners-Lee on the topic of Web 2.0, he claims that the regeneration of the original world wide web was simply just a progression in “jargon” and not in reality.

When the post-war concrete architecture that, for Parker and Long, was the original cityscape of Birmingham began to be regenerated for the new and exciting post-modern architecture of Bullring and Rotunda, they saw this as sacrilege and unnecessary regeneration. Apparent forward thinking now which will turn out to be mistakes in the future?

Berners-Lee was convinced that the Web 2.0 wave would die down, but the ideas of procumercy which lie behind the “jargon” have - in reality - stayed strong online. Were Parker and Long really right to say that the developments of Birmingham would be considered mistakes in future years? Will they eventually be seen as outdated? Well, probably. But surely that’s the whole idea of development and, in turn, regeneration - otherwise how do we progress?

“Cities, like most of the lives they enclose, rarely turn out as intended.”

Well who knew that we’d all be blogging, tweeting and interacting online when the world wide web was established? Certainly not Tim Berners-Lee, it’s safe to say.