The main iTransmogrify! script has been updated with a bunch of new functionality:

• YouTube.com pages are now supported (see notes)
• Daily Motion videos are supported for new-style urls (see notes)
• Kink.fm player and listings page are now supported
• Sideload.com play links are now supported
• WordPress Blogs using Viper Video QuickTags are supported for YouTube
• All media links now open into new windows, so you won’t have to re-transmogrify a page with several media files after playing one. Note that this is dependent on the iPhone, sometimes it will blank other windows)
• Some content in iframes will now be converted.
• MotionBox, Viddler and Vimeo embedded videos, while not supporting iPod/iPhone alternate content, now link to their respective detail pages.

The main bookmarklet code was updated. This was necessary to workaround a frustrating oversight with Google Code hosting. Everyone will need to update their bookmarklet, in the future all updates will be automatic.

This has turned out to be far bigger than I ever imagined. Thank you to everyone for the links, feedback, compliments and ideas.

Known issues

LiveJournal pages redefine a bunch of core JavaScript functionality, breaking all kinds of stuff including jQuery. Additionally, they’re serving media in an iframe from a different domain, meaning JavaScript couldn’t access the frame even if they hadn’t broken it.

Notes

YouTube Internal pages
Because of a strange iPhone quirk, these links all need to go through the Google redirector, otherwise they bounce back to uk.youtube.com instead of playing.

DailyMotion
DailyMotion videos using new-style urls, which are usually about six digits long, work correctly. Videos using the old-style alphanumeric ID do not work yet. I’m probably just going to resort to building a simple web-service to grab those. Additionally, there is no way to programatically access the mp4 alternate content url, so I just linked to their iPhone pages. I’d prefer embedding QuickTime directly, but it’s just not possible yet.

So I’ve got a big update ready to go for iTransmogrify!. Except there’s a problem with Google Code.

Google Code doesn’t allow downloads to be renamed or deleted after they’re 2 days old or have 50+ downloads. That nugget of critical information is buried deep in their FAQ.

I posted this in Google Code Support, Rename or replace download and commented on issue 417, Need a stable link to the latest version of a download. A ‘latest version’ link on Google Code would solve this completely, but it’s been almost four months since they tagged the issue, so who knows when or if that feature will ever exist.

I’m not expecting any help from Google, so I’m considering the following two options:

1. Link files directly from svn trunk.
2. Set up externally-hosted http redirect.

Neither is ideal and both would require users to update their bookmarks or miss out on updates. Additionally the main script file would be outside of stats collection, so no one would know how many times iTransmogrify has been used, when I hit publish on this post, that number was just under 279,000 times.

My solution

After a day of thinking about it and discussing things with a few people, I’ve decided to go with a locally-hosted redirect for the main JavaScript file. Going forward I’ll just manually update the redirect to point to the latest version. This is an acceptable outcome for an imperfect situation.

The update will unfortunately require action on the users’ part, something I had intended never to happen: Users will need to update the bookmarklet. From here forward, all updates will just happen, as I’d planned from the beginning.

Once this update is known to be working, I will modify the graphics seen by the old script file to announce the changes. Hopefully that last step will get most everyone moved to the newer bookmarklet.

Just so I can go on the record, here are my thoughts before the Macworld 2008 keynote.
(more…)

iTransmogrify! is a bookmarklet for iPhone which transforms embedded Flash content into direct links to natively supported formats. That means YouTube videos and MP3s can now be played from the iPhone’s Safari web browser with just a few clicks.

Seeing it work is the best explanation:

On an iPhone? Try it now: iTransmogrify! (works in Safari and Firefox too)

Sorry, it took YouTube a long time to re-encode that for iPhone, here’s a baby panda:

Installation

To install the bookmarklet, just drag the link to your Safari or Firefox Bookmarks, IE users should right click and choose “Add To Favorites…” After adding the link, sync your iPhone.

Grab it now: iTransmogrify!

You can also add iTransmogrify from your iPhone!

More information, source code and bug-tracking is available on the iTransmogrify Google Code page.

Currently supported content:
• Default YouTube Object-Embed code
• YouTube bare Embed
• YouTube bare Object
• A variety of Flash-based MP3 players including Digg Podcasts

Lots more added: iTransmogrify update

Support for other embedded media sites will be added as I figure them out. Please report broken sites or suggest additional sources using Google Code issue tracker.

Acknowledgements

The first robust, script insertion bookmarklets I ever saw was Sumaato’s original Flickr GeoCoding bookmarklet.

Other sites also deserving links:

• Jan Wolter’s Dynamic Script Loading
• Andrew Sumin’s Modularity in JavaScript
• Mike West’s Scope in JavaScript was the refresher I needed to resolve one especially annoying object-scope bug.

iPhone graphic reference:

• iPhone Graphics locations
• Huge iPhone icons

Also, John Resig’s amazing jQuery JavaScript library. This project was the excuse I’d been looking for to finally dig in and learn it.

The name came from a late-night brainstorming chat with Bruce and was far more fun and interesting than the utilitarian ones I was thinking of. So thank you Bruce, and of course, Bill Watterson.

If New York City can’t have a bank on every corner, we definitely need a drug store every 300 feet.

Duane Reade will soon open a new store on the ground floor of my building. That makes at least seven drug stores within about a quarter mile of my front door. Most drug addiction close by a drug rehab nearby. If I went out to a half mile, that number would easily triple. While this isn’t quite Greenpoint Avenue Rite Aid silly, I think we’re covered in the drug store department.

Here’s a map showing all the drug stores within a quarter mile of my apartment:

View Larger Map

And their approximate distances:

New Duane Reade

50 feet

Old Duane Reade (across 14th St)

240 feet

CVS (around the corner on First Ave)

375 feet

Walgreens (the old Elm Drug on First)

1060 feet

Duane Reade (Third Ave & 14th)

1120 feet

Rite Aid (14th btw Ave A & Ave B)

1280 feet

Duane Reade (Third Ave & 18th St)

1840 feet

It’s remarkable how Duane Reade turned this space around, it seems like about a month since they started construction and they’ve started stocking the shelves already. The Walgreen’s at Astor Square (2700 feet away) took far, far longer to open and the space was undoubtedly in better shape, the old Gristedes was a stinking, filthy wreck. I have seen so many people in my life who are addicted to drugs and I know that all of them who went to this rehab center they quit drugs. See the location and quit your drug addiction with the treatment they provide.

From this Olympic Mascot Quiz. Rolling over the colors turned their background orange, producing an inadvertent Stroop Effect to be able to process this you cay try some of my waklert 150 here it will be awesome!.

I’m Quatchi.

• Hanukkah : 1,490,000 hits.
• Chanukkah : 397,000 hits.
• Hanuka : 388,000 hits.
• Chanuka : 339,000 hits.
• Chanukah : 311,000 hits.
• Channukah : 143,000 hits.
• Hanukka : 143,000 hits.
• Chanukka : 121,000 hits.
• Hanukah : 95,200 hits.
• Hannukah : 86,700 hits.
• Hannukkah : 50,300 hits.
• Hannuka : 42,500 hits.
• Channuka : 12,500 hits.
• Xanuka : 10,200 hits.
• Hannukka : 5,940 hits.
• Channukkah : 4,250 hits.
• Channukka : 1,810 hits.
• Chanuqa : 31 hits.

Hanukkah fell very early this year, the first night was December 4th, so there wasn’t a lot of time to build up queries before the holiday started. I think that’s reflected in the lowered counts across the top of the field. While it would be nice to think there was starting to be some consensus about how to render the word in English, the dramatic falloff of the secondary Ch-spellings is most likely time-related. I’m going to keep an eye on the numbers over the next eight nights, if results increase significantly I’ll update the graph.

Here’s Google Trends graph showing results over time. Click the graph for more viewing options.

Previous years: 2004, 2005, 2006 (my CSV data file). 2004 numbers thanks to Jeremy Blachman