Anyway, here’s a couple of snaps of the setup:

I also dove into the fun of the facebook OpenGraph Protocol to make the content easier to share on the social medias:

http://wellihad.joshbarr.com/

It’s quite simple to grab the XML, just point your browser over here – obviously change out the GET string for your own location.

http://www.google.com/ig/api?weather=wellington+new+zealand

This will spit out a nice tidy XML of the next few days’ weather.

Here’s a snippet of PHP for grabbing the weather XML:

<?
	ini_set("zlib.output_compression", "Off");
	header("Content-type: text/xml");
	header('Expires: 0');
	header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
	header('Pragma: no-cache');

	$weather = $_GET["weather"];

	$url = "http://www.google.com/ig/api?weather=".urlencode($weather);
	$file = "_weather_".str_replace( array(","," "), "_", $weather).".xml";

	ob_clean();
	flush();

	// check if a local file less than an hour old is already on file
	if (!file_exists($file) || filemtime($file) < time() - 3600 || filesize($file) == 0){
		ob_start();
		readfile($url);
		$google_xml = ob_get_clean();

		echo $google_xml;

		// save local copy of xml
		$handle = fopen($file,w);
		fwrite($handle, $google_xml);
		fclose($handle);
	}
	else{
	// load local copy of xml
		ob_start();
		readfile($file);
		$google_xml = ob_get_clean();
		echo $google_xml;
	}
?>

In addressing the creation and diffusion of memes, Clay Shirkey celebrates Lolcats as valid cultural production, and even progression – apparently the battle is not getting from Lolcats to forms of ‘higher’ expression, but in motivating observers to engage, even in the inane, the rapid-fire, the crude form. You can watch his video on Lolcats right [here].

Last week we had our first critique session for the Masters programme. I presented an experiential interface – Twitter articulated through spoken word, a strange piece of analog/digital typeface design. Video above documents the setup process.