Ben Sutton

Google have released a new browser plugin that lets users enter virtual 3D rooms. As hard as I resist I can’t help but give it a try. Join me below - hopefully the embedded widget works:

FriendFeed is a useful way of bringing together many of the second generation web platforms. Once you are signed up you can provides the application with account names for popular sites such as Facebook, Twitter, del.icio.us and Digg, as well as blog feeds. With these details it provides an extremely useful service - it aggregates information provides by these sites. For example, if I comment on a post on Digg it will automatically sync the comment on my feed.

When you think of this in the context of a community it provides a common way of sharing information. Blog posts can be commented on from one site and Twitter comments can be followed up with a single click. Another useful feature is that you can create rooms for various interest groups, helping seperate information. For example, I created a radio room. Feel free to click through and have a look if your interested. Many people are using the site to follow conversations on Twitter - something hard to do with the Twitter alone. Well worth a look if you subscribe to many services and would like to bring them together.

Just a quick post to let people know what we’ve been working on the past few months. D-STAR is a digital voice and data protocol for amateur radio. Its Wikipedia page is fairly comprehensive. Its an enjoyable mode mainly due to the ease of communication with other people around the world.

During the past few months we have set up D-STAR repeaters in Folkestone and Ashford. I helped set up the gateways. The standard configuration of a gateway is to run Cent OS and the G2 software distributed by Icom. There are many aspects to experiment with including DPRS, a digital positioning system similar to APRS and low and high speed data communication. Both GB7FK and GB7DX are connected to the K5TIT worldwide network via their respective gateways. Activity on the repeaters can be viewed on their last heard page.

There are many other D-STAR repeaters on the air around the UK. I plan on writing a fair bit more on specific features of D-STAR - let me know if your interested. In the mean time, if your near a gateway and want to give me a shout I can be reached via M0TUX on GB7FK port B.

Due to popular demand I have created separate pages and feeds for each language that is currently used on Planet Ham. The front page and main feed contains all of the subscribed blogs. On the right hand side menu you will see a new section called ‘Languages’. From here you can click the links to read and subscribe to feeds written in your preferred language. If you or someone you know has a ham radio related blog please let them know about Planet Ham.

If you notice any glitches or have any further ideas for the site please let me know.

Brian, G3OJZ, has produced some excellent UK maps for UI-View and other APRS applications. We make good use of the APRS mode here in the south east of England with several repeaters/gateways and many users broadcasting their home and mobile positions. There are many fun applications (I usually get a text message when I pull into a McDonald’s car park) as well as more serious uses such as for emergency communications groups such as RAYNET. For more information about our local network and APRS in general visit the MB7USK’s website.

I’ve been neglecting Planet Ham a little lately as life as got a bit busier than usual. An email today triggered me to update the software behind Planet Ham to the latest version. This will fix some of the odder problems such as mangled Blogger blogs and images not appearing.

One question that has been raised is whether non-English feeds should be split off onto a separate page. I’m happy mske this alteration as the balance between non-English and English feeds is beginning to tip. Any ideas on how I could best acomplish this? For example, a page for English feeds and another for everything else, or a page for English feeds, Italian feeds, Russian feeds, etc? This is an issue I’m looking to address in the mythical Planet Ham 2.0, but, as my circumstances have changed, that could be some time off.

My current thought is to seperate into italy.planetham.com, etc. All ideas welcome! Please click through to my blog and comment away.

73s for now.

Just a quick note to let you know that I’ve added the option to subscribe to Planet Ham’s feed by email. If you would like to try it out click on the Subscribe to Email link on the Planet’s right hand menu bar.  The service is provided by FeedBurner, so it should be reliable.  Please let me know if you have any more ideas for the site.

Planet Ham has recently celebrated its first birthday. In the space of a year the site has gained 25 contributers and according to Feed Burner 500 readers. In 2007 I’d like to see these numbers double, so that the site can become a key reference point for the daily happenings of the amateur radio community. Therefore, I ask that you mention Planet Ham in some way - perhaps a post on your blog or a paragraph in your club newsletter. If you know of anyone who might like to syndicate their blog, let me know.

Thank you to all that blog about amateur radio. For me its an insight into the projects and achievements of others around the world - another method of communication that forms our community.

Today, Google announced a new service called Co-op. The service allows you to create a customized search engine based on a set of parameters, including the ability to:

• Search set of restricted sites
• Allowing certain sites to climb higher up the set of results
• Customize the search and results pages
• Allow contributers to submit relevant websites

To try this out, I set up a custom search service for Planet Ham. Now when you use the search engine on the site, or the direct link, the results returned favor the the websites on the blog roll. Over the next few days I will add more sites about our hobby. This should provide more relevant results than the run of the mill Google search.

Hopefully, with a bit of tweaking, it will become a useful resource. If you’d like to contribute, please feel free to volunteer using the link on the search engine front page.

Since I moved house, I have been looking at ways to get myself onto the HF bands. The downsides: I have a tiny garden, and don’t have money to spend on antennas. So … I’ve been looking at the possibilities. One option is an vertical mounted on the side of the house. The problem with this is that I live in a mid terranced house with houses packed around me. The chances of getting planning permission for a large vertical are slim, and I would like to use as many bands as possible.

So, to start with, I’d like to try an antenna in the attic. I only intend to run low power to hopefully avoid causing any QRM problems with my neighbours. I’ve had a read of G4ILO’s site which is fairly inspirational. Does anybody else out there have any suggestions? Any advice, pointers or experiences on constructing a QRP, low profile, low cost, wide band HF antenna would be greatly appreciated! (I realise that compromises will have to be made).