Hailin's Weblog

WordPress.tv is a popular blog hosting collections of WordPress videos, including WordCamp videos, tutorials, etc. It’s the visual resource for all things WordPress.

WordPress.tv has just integrated with dotSUB to provide translation for some popular videos.  To help translate your most favorite videos into your language, you can create a dotSUB account, then visit WordPress tv project to begin translation.

Technical details on how the integration works:

Once a new video is added to the dotSUB WordPress tv project, all the translation is done by volunteers  using dotSUB toolsets.  dotSUB then provides an external public API to access its translation metadata and translation texts.

The API  has the following form:

http://dotsub.com/api/user/{dotsub_username}/media/{dotsub_external_reference}/metadata
where dotsub_username is username one created for your video project at dotSUB, and dotsub_external_reference has to be the guid of the corresponding WordPress.com video.

For example, the public APIs for a WordPress.tv video “Adding categories and tags to your posts” ( guid 1UKXOM9q) are:
http://dotsub.com/api/user/wordpresstv/media/1UKXOM9q/metadata
http://dotsub.com/api/user/wordpresstv/media/1UKXOM9q/captions?language=eng

WordPress.com video player queries the above API URLs and integrates the translation texts. 
Watch this particular video clip below:
done

Configuring dotSUB external reference

In order for the video player to locate the correct API URL, the external reference has to be configured correctly as the guid  of each video.

It takes the following steps:

Step 1.
Select  your video within dotSUB project space. Click “Video Properties” tab, then Click “Edit Video”.

View the screenshot

Step 2.
Find out the guid of this same video within WordPress.com blog media library. The guid is the portion of the shortcode without brackets. Eg: if the shortcode is [wpvideo 1UKXOM9q], then the guid is 1UKXOM9q
Enter the guid into text field “External reference”, then click Save. All the other fields such as video title, year of publication are for dotSUB internal use, thus not required for the integration to work.

View the screenshot

Step 3.
The change will take effect in about 12 hours because the internal video information is cached for 12 hours.  To force it to take effect immediately, clear the cache, then check the video info again. Eg:

http://v.wordpress.com/wp-content/plugins/video/video-xml.php?guid=1UKXOM9q

 (of course replace the guid with your specific ones).

 If you see <dotsub_metadata> and <dotsub_caption>, that means cache is cleared, your dotSUB configuration has been applied successfully, and the translation will be displayed by WordPress.com video player.

It’s a joy watching tiny seeds growing into three feet tall tomato plants or lush vegetables…

WordPress.com is on CNET 2009 Webware 100 winners list.  

Within the Social & Publishing category, the winners include Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Bebo, Meebo, Hi5, etc.

Last night I had an opportunity to listen to piano concerto performed by Leon Fleisher,  one of the greatest virtuosos. The music was certanily fantastic, but one thing that touched my heart most is the motivation for this performance. 

 Leon was flying back from an overseas trip when he heard that the homeless situation in Sacramento was devastating.  He was moved and called California philharmonic and volunteered for a fundraising performance, raising money for the homeless people in Sacramento area.

 The needy will not always be forgotten,  nor the hope of the afflicted ever perish.

I was delighted to receive a book from my great uncle, professor Dai Zhizhong, who is a famous mathematician. The book is on valuation theory, a branch of group and field theory.  The book was written by him  last year when he was 85 years old.

In 1940s, uncle Dai was the teaching assistant of another world famous mathematician, professor Chen Xingsheng. Chen served as vice president of the American Mathematical Society (1963-64) and was elected to both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1975 and the Wolf Prize in 1983.

I remembered visiting uncle Dai when I was 13 years old. I was really a country boy and he was the president of Jiangxi University at that time.  I was very nervous and looked at him with great admiration.  When I went to college,  he wrote me a letter encouraging me “百尺竿头，更进一步”, meaning every success in the future.  Once I asked him “shall we work on things only when we have strong motivation in them?”  He replied “what would you do at times when you don’t have motivation?”.   When I flipped through his book last night, I realized that for every theory he proved, it could take months or years of hard work.  Nothing is more true in the saying “there is no shortcut in climbing the science mountain”  when it comes to math.

About 250 WordPress fans attended WordCamp Shanghai ; About 100 at WordCamp Hong Kong.  I gave a speech at both events, and enjoyed interacting with some of the smartest, most handsome, or the prettiest users and developer in Asia!

Some photos I took during the events

Additional Photos: Shanghai  Hongkong

Media RSS is an RSS extension for syndicating multimedia files in RSS feeds.  I just added this feature to WordPress.com video feeds, so that videos are more searchable and their feeds are more accessible in all browsers and readers.

Here is an example: http://drhailin.wordpress.com/feed/ contains the following section of code:

<enclosure url="http://hailindev.videos.wordpress.com/IBMQsAT4/video/fmt_std" length="2954752" type="video/mp4" />

<media:content url="http://hailindev.videos.wordpress.com/IBMQsAT4/video/fmt_std" fileSize="2954752" type="video/mp4" medium="video" isDefault="true" duration="29" height="300" width="400" >

<media:rating scheme="urn:mpaa">PG-13</media:rating>

<media:title type="plain">my Caption for Palace </media:title>

<media:thumbnail url="http://hailindev.videos.wordpress.com/IBMQsAT4/thumbnail/fmt_std" width="256" height="192" />

<media:player url="http://v.wordpress.com/IBMQsAT4" width="400" height="300" />

</media:content>

WordPress’s international appeal is evident in its amazing user endorsements from four corners of the earth. In April, there will be two WordCamps in Asia: WordCamp Shanghai and WordCamp Hong Kong.  

Check it out if you are nearby, we’d love to meet you there!

Better spend your time reading than watching TV. According to a recent research study, readers create movies in their minds. Children who read more are smarter and do better academically. I am so happy that we didn’t have a TV at home when I grew up.

When my nephew David was four years old, I was a college junior in Beijing.  That year grandma accompanied him to travel to Beijing to apply for a visa to visit his dad, who was pursuing PhD in mining engineering at Virginia Tech.

Time sure flies.  13 years later, my brother Dr. Wu is a well recognized scientist in his field.  In 2004, I earned the very first PhD in computer science in University of Denver’s 145-year history.

David is graduating from high school this year, and has been accepted into CalTech, Stanford, Columbia. I wish he would choose Stanford, because it’s just the best.  I once attempted, unsuccessfully, to get into Stanford MBA program myself, despite the fact that I scored 740 (98^th percentile) in GMAT.  Well, it’s all history, and as long as David is at Stanford, that should give me a good reason to visit the beautiful campus over some weekends!