Kevin Thompson

This morning I wrote about a script I threw together over the weekend that would allow the user to quickly and easily send their latest Qik video over to 12seconds.tv. I originally wrote this script to fill my need for a way to post 12seconds videos from my iPhone, and quickly found that there were several other people who wanted the same thing. This morning’s release allowed any developer to setup a version of the script on their own web server and transfer their own videos, but I wanted to do something more.

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Recently I found myself wanting to post videos much more frequently to 12seconds.tv, but I couldn’t find an app for my iPhone 2.01 (jailbroken or otherwise) that would allow me to record and email videos (If you’re unfamiliar with 12seconds.tv, it’s essentially a video micro-blogging service, or the visual equivelant of Twitter). The closest I was able to come was recording a video via Qik, which allows you to download an flv of your video immediately after it’s posted, then email that video over to 12seconds to be posted. This process was neither quick, nor convenient, and it required I have access to a computer to download and email the flv. I decided to take a shot at writing a script to download and email the flv for me and within an hour I had a functioning, although buggy, version of the script working.

I’ve taken a few days now to revise the script, and although it’s still a work in progess, I wanted to post a quick how to guide on installing and using the Qik to 12seconds script (which I’m currently calling Syndiqik).

Note: I’m assuming your web server supports PHP and MySQL, and if you plan on using this script with your iPhone, you’ve already jailbroken your iPhone and have Qik installed.

UPDATE: Shortly after I released this script, I setup a hosted version which should be much easier to use and requires very little setup. You can see the hosted version here.

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I’ve got an hour to kill while my car is at the mechanic so I figured I’d try writing a full post from my iPhone via the Wordpress application. In these first two sentances alone I’m already noticing a few complications.

The first issue I’m running into is that although I’ve grown fairly compfortable typing using the iPhone’s vertical on screen keyboard, I’d much prefer the horizontal counterpart (which I’ve only seen in the browser so far). The second problem plaguing me is related to typing in a mobile device in general. I’m catching myself ommitting punctuation, and when I want to correct the ommission or I do remember to add the punctuation, it takes several key presses and at least one alternate screen to enter the punctuation. These aren’t major flaws, and I think they are certainly acceptable given the trade off is the ability to write a full featured article on a mobile device.

While I enjoy the conveniance of being able to write entire posts from my phone, I imagine the most practical use is for either correcting errors on or updating an existing post, or liveblogging.

For the past several months I’ve been going back and forth installing, configuring, and uninstalling various frameworks, blogging platforms, and content management systems, all with the goal of setting up a site to house my portfolio, blog, and resume. I’ve finally decided to stick with Wordpress and it seemed appropriate for my first official post to rehash the steps I took to arrive here.

Initially, I was planning to work with an MVC framework, more specifically CakePHP, which I had seen used to build a custom blog platform by Jonathan Snook. I began building a simple structure in CakePHP, all the while researching alternative frameworks. I eventually came to a point where I felt that CakePHP was trying to introduce a bit too much of its “automagic” functionality and I didn’t have control over certain aspects of my web application (Looking back now I imagine that this was probably due to my lack of experience with CakePHP. If I had taken the time to dig around I’m sure I could have circumvented or integrated CakePHP into whatever it was I was trying to accomplish).

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