What I won was a pink Flip Video Ultra, a cute little handheld video camera that shoots 2 hours of 640×480 video onto solid state memory. You then get to transfer it over to your computer by activating the flick-knife like USB connector.

I’ve not had chance to play much with it yet, but I’ve posted a couple of test videos onto Flickr. So far it seems pretty decent – it’s nice and responsive to changes in light, so that makes me happy. It’s also pretty sturdy, and feels like you could chuck it around a fair bit and it would be okay, which is good because I tend to throw things about a bit.

Thanks to the Moo chaps for choosing me as the winner, and I look forward to seeing what they do with the API going forwards.

So, what changed?

Firstly, moo has an API now. Previously if I’d automated the image creation process for the Ten Word Moo Cards that’s all I would have been able to do, and then I would have had to upload them all myself. So, having an API allows me to press a button in one place and magically have a set of cards created for me. Awesome.

Secondly, in his talk, Stefan mentioned that the revenue sharing for cards, stickers etc that people bought would be set at 15%. Now that’s pretty damn high. Not only that, but it will be applied retroactively, since they’ve not actually got the payment stuff working yet.

The final thing that’s pushed me into finally making the cards is that there’s a prize for the best hack on the Moo API that came out of the BarCamp – a little handheld camcordery device. Obviously, I’d quite like to win that.

So, I made a “Ten Word Moo Card Creator”. It takes the best rated reviews from The Ten Word Review (where you can review anything you like as long as you do it in exactly ten words) and creates moo cards from them. If you want to create cards purely based on the reviews that you have written, you type your username into the textbox below. That’s it, simple really.

There are, of course, a couple of caveats. The first is that it might take a little while getting to Moo’s website after pressing that button. That’s because up to 30 images are being created, and each one needs to determine the optimal font-size for the review it contains. We’re not talking hours here, but it might take a few seconds.

The second caveat is that I haven’t set any default text for the back of the cards or set a default crop. The reason for this that if you set a crop then Moo steps straight over the cropping step of its wizard, which unfortunately is also the place where you choose whether you’d like to discard any of the images that you’ve chosen. Likewise, if I set some default text on the back of the card, then Moo seems to take this as a directive that the user wouldn’t want to edit that themselves and puts the cards straight into the user’s basket. In this instance the user hasn’t even been able to see what the cards look like on Moo’s site before they arrive in their basket.

Of course, if I’m wrong about these caveats, and I can add default text to the cards whilst still allowing the user to enter the flow on Moo’s website at the image cropper stage, that would be fantastic.

Overall, the Moo API is pretty easy to use. There are rough edges, but it isn’t a finished thing, and it’s not at a 1.0 release yet, so it’s utterly forgivable (as long as developer comments are taken onboard, and I’m convinced that they will be). Hack around at it like I did, and see what you can make.

Hmmm, I just remembered that I while back I wrote a Moo Sticker Speech Bubble Generator. I should really hook that into the API too, shouldn’t I? One day. One day…

These are the slides I put together for my talk:

If you just want to download the Code, go right ahead. If you want to know more about the project, read the WikiSlurp Project page.

As I write, I’m on the 18:00 East Midlands Trains service from London St. Pancras to Bedford. I’m in a lovely air-conditioned carriage, sat at a table with one other person. I have a power supply to charge my laptop from. The only thing missing is wifi, but if I really need the internet then my iPhone is sitting next to me ready to deliver whatever I want. I’ll arrive in Bedford at 18:38 and then have a ten minute stroll home. So, the commute isn’t bad at all.

As for spending time together, that’s improved since we moved out of London too. I now use the commute home to write code, and then when I get home I get to spend the entire evening with Becca. Previously I would have come in, started coding in the bedroom and then have gone to bed when I was done. Spending time with Becca is much nicer than spending time with code.

That said, I do enjoy coding. So, I use my commute now to code. No distractions, just me and a laptop for forty minutes every day. It might not sound like long, but it’s enough time to solve a problem. In the last few months I’ve put together Is Neil Annoyed By, learnt how to slurp data out of Wikipedia and integrated that into The Ten Word Review, written a presentation about SearchMonkey, created a vCard parsing system that allows friends, acquaintances and everyone else to see different amounts of data about me, and probably a whole load of other things as well. Travelling by train allows me to be quite productive.

That’s why I’ve started to blog here. Up until now I’ve been blogging on Working With Me, but server issues and a general ennui with the domain name have led me to start again. Sure, I’m going to lose the google-juice that was being pumped into Working With Me, but that will come again. It’s time for a brand new start, and I’m starting here.

Over the next few weeks I’ve got several posts lined up. As well as fully formed posts I’m going to be dumping half finished work onto here. The reason for this is that previously I’ve tended to wait to blog about something until it was complete and able to be picked up and immediately used by someone. There’s a place for that, but it was causing me to not release at all. From now on I want to release early and release often. I’m going to post experimental things, I’m going to post unfinished things. Most importantly I’m going to post. Oh yes, I’m going to post.

All aboard The Code Train. Choo choo!