As usual, it's coming up to the Third Thursday of the month and it's time to let you all know that once again, we'll be having a bit of a bite and chat with like-minded tweeps, peeps and n00bs about all things social media and maybe a bit of general gadget craziness.

We meet every Third Thursday of the month and have a bit of a meal or pizza at Paparazzi, at 12.30pm. You don't need to be an expert or an addict, and we encourage everyone and anyone to come and join us and have a chat with like-minded people. We held an evening event on Friday 11th May (just last week!) which was really well attended, bringing a great mix of people together which included teachers, Manx speakers, geeks and very good friends.

So if you use Twitter or Facebook, come join us and introduce yourself. If you use social media professionally or professionally casually, we'd love to meet you.

Hope to see you then!

It seems that my Taggloo (http://taggloo.im) experiment has been sufficiently successful to warrant some determined effort on producing a site that I would be happy to launch and have people use. After collecting some ideas from some Manx speakers and adding few of my own ideas, I've developed the site and am happy to publish the site for wider use. I've even had some positive feedback for my very limited design skills!

Taggloo, as the site says, is a means of bringing learners and seasoned speakers of niche languages together to help keep the language living. Taggloo is Manx Gaelic for "speech" and as such is designed to be an informal aid to existing resources that may be available, rather than a definitive or technical language resource. Currently, the site only has Manx Gaelic, but it is designed from the outset to support other languages.

My aim for the site is for to create a Social Dictionary. This will be achieved by aggregating electronically published content such as Tweets, blog posts or You Tube videos and by encouraging users to get involved by submitting their own interpretations and uses of words, or their own words. I've been learning Manx Gaelic long enough to understand that spellings, pronunciation and meanings of words can vary between dictionaries, contexts and even regions of this small island. So called "dead languages" are often still living, evolving and growing through use in the community and this includes the internet community.

Ultimately, I want to answer a key problem I had in trying to access useful Manx content in an electronic format, by opening the dictionaries and enabling opportunities for users to leverage this data. Users can access this data either by using the web-site or, using the comprehensive API, via mobile phone "apps" or even applets embedded in other web sites. 

The site currently performs basic translations, though this will be extended over the coming weeks as I find time to introduce my intended improvements. Here's what is on my roadmap so far:

• Community content aggregated from Twitter, blogs and You Tube.
• Language use "in the wild" drawn from such community content added to translation results to show context within sentences and discussions.
• Uploadable media items, including a subset of Manx Gaelic vocabulary to prime the collection of user-submitted media.
• Submission of words missing from the dictionary by expert speakers and learners alike and rating of community submitted content.
• Submission of comments regarding people's individual understanding of word meanings and uses, providing a very personal interpretation on language use.

How can you contribute?

The site is intended to be open from the outset and this includes accepting users' comments and suggestions on how to improve the site. I've set up a UserVoice forum to collect users' impressions. Maybe you have new languages in mind, or have a killer-feature in mind. Or, perhaps there is a bug on the site that needs to be fixed!

Any and all feedback is welcome, and you can submit your suggestions and queries at http://taggloo.uservoice.com.

 Test

It's been a while since we last did an evening Tweet-up for the Isle of Man Social Media Club and we've had enquiries so let's do it again!

These evenings are a great way for people who can't make our usual lunch-time meetings at Paparazzi to attend and catch-up and meet their tweeps in a rather *ahem* informal atmosphere. Whether you're a social media guru or a n00b, you're more than welcome to join in. And you don't even have to "check-in".

Same deal as usual. Due to the excellent service and support from The Velvet Lobster coffee shop on the last tweet-ups, we're going to stick with what we know and start there for their Jolly Friday home-made cocktails and a bit of a bite. Following that, we can decide on the night. Guys and Dolls has re-opened if you fancy a bit of kitsch 80's pop or maybe the more mainstream music at Bordello's may be more to your taste.

So here's the deal. We need to track numbers for the venues so in my true form, I keep a spreadsheet. If you'd like to join us, let me know by commenting on this post, or contacting me using the links on the right and I'll make sure you're on the list.

Hope you can make it! Velvet Lobster, Friday 11 May at 6pm onwards.

While we try and keep a relatively memorable frequency of these throughout the year, feel free to arrange something with your fellow tweeps outside of these events. We'd be more than happy to help promote your own events. Drop us a line by contacting either myself (using the contact links on the right) or Owen.

I woke up at silly o'clock this morning and for some reason went straight to my Windows 8 laptop and started making Manx notes for our last class.

In our last class, we were taking the fragmented Manx we've been learning over the past months and shunting it together. So "Ta mee maynrey" and "Ta mee cummal ayns Rhumsaa" could be turned into something meaningful and worth saying, "Ta mee maynrey cummal ayns Rhumsaa". We also stretched this further, saying why we felt happy living in Ramsey; "Ta mee maynrey cummal ayns Rhumsaa er yn oyr de vel eh yindyssagh" (I am happy living in Ramsey because it is wonderful).

So with these phrases buzzing round my head, I decided I'd come up with a means to help me remember the glue for these phrases:

• er yn oyr - because
• s'liklee - it is likely
• er lhiam - I reckon
• dy vel eh - that it is
• nagh vel eh - that it is not

Ren mee jannoo pabyragh coonee son gynsaghey Gaelg er yn oyr de vel he beggan dooillee cooniaghtyn shoh!

Based on Adrian's notes, I put some sentences (that would fit) on PowerPoint slides, with colour coding for highlighting the "glue" between the fragments of the sentence and what they mean. I've followed a friend's advice who has been helping me by printing them all off and pinning them around my house.

I've created a little file area for my Manx work on my SkyDrive and you're welcome to have a look in and see if it helps you. Both a PDF version and the original PowerPoint version is there if you'd like to take the file and improve on what I've come up with. And with Office Live, you do not even need Microsoft Office or even a version of PowerPoint to edit it!

Taggloo, my experiment with Manx translations is proving to be surprisingly popular. Even at this very early stage, a select few people are using it regularly and are providing me with excellent feedback.

I thought I'd just have a quick look at the analytics I'm collecting on the usage of the site (not personally identifiable) this morning. Bearing in mind that this site is an experiment, I was surprised by the results. I was further pleased by the correlation of translations with work we're doing in class.

At the time of writing, in the first month of use the site has had over 1,200 queries, which will be sourced from both the web-site and clients using the API, such as the Windows Phone 7 application.

The most popular word is the English "because" . This is particularly interesting as it is exactly what we're learning in class at the moment. This word has a complex structure in its Manx form, with one translation being "er yn oyr". Literally, "on the reason".

The second most popular query is for the Manx "poyll faarkee", which is "swimming pool" in English. Some queries are clearly unexplainable!

By far, the most popular platform for conducting queries is the Apple iPhone web browser, with over 450 individual requests. This is probably due to most of the users who I've asked to try out the service having Apple devices and maybe will serve to encourage some kind soul to volunteer to write an iPhone client.

The Windows Phone 7 application accounts for over 150 requests, not bad for the 13 downloads this application has obtained so far. Due to the current lowly position of Windows Phone 7 in the smartphone space and the very niche community of Manx speakers who may be involved with this experiment, I'm obviously not expecting this download figure to be high!

This weekend was spent working on an improved index and rebuilding the current word lists to match it. This will serve faster and more accurate lookups and paves the way for further additions to the served content in the future. Having had such surprisingly good feedback, I just wish I had the time to get stuck into the other ideas I have. It's all very exciting, I'm working towards a social, living dictionary. Who needs Google Translate?

Ta mee screeu ayns Gaelg  son yn chied traa as t'eh foddee feer agglagh! Ansherbee, ta mee gynsaghey. Beeym ginsh shen dhyt eddyr mychione yn shiaghtyn shoh chaie aym.

Jeheiney, ren shin goll dys Nerin Twoaie son jeeaghyn lught thie. S'mie lhiam Nerin Twoaie agh cha nel mee geearree cummal ayns shen er yn oyr dy vel eh feer political. Foddee ayns feed bleeaney (1). Ren shin goll dys droghad ayns Carrick-a-Rede as fakin Yn Giant's Causeway (ren Finn McCooil jannoo!). Cha ren shin fakin Yn Titanic, agh neemayd goll reesht. :)

Ren shin goll dys valley er Jelune as ren mee ram cadley. Va mee feer skee. Cha ren mee gobbraghey, neesht! Jemayrt, ren mee goll dys obbyr reesht. S'mie lhiam obbyr. Ta obbyr feer interesting nish :).

Noght, ren mee goll dys Bar Shorys son cloie Scabble ayns Gaelg. V'eh feer vie as gynsagh mie. Ren mee cloie marish Brian Stowell, v'eh feer interestingal (2)! Atreih, cha nel mee skee nish son cha nel mee cadley. :(

Mairagh (Jerdein), neeym goll dys obbyr reesht as goll dys Jerdein Trass son jinnair marish Ellan Vannin Social Media Club. T'eh feer vie as ta shin loayrt rish ram sleih. Ta mee jeeaghyn roym lesh fakin uss ayns shen!

Jesarn, neemayd goll dys Thie Vannanan son gynsagh Gaelg reesht. Gaelg abboo! Er lhiam dy vel shin gynsagh "er yn oyr" shiaghtyn shoh.

Ansherbee, ta mee goll as jeeaghyn Takeshi Kitano er DVD nish. Heeym shiu!

(1) Not sure of lenition here.

(2) It's a Gaelic twist to add "-al" to English words to Gaelic-ise them if you're unsure of the word or there is no direct translation.

With Owen off to sunny climes, it falls to me to host this week's Third Thursday as part of Isle of Man's Social Media Club social activities. And how appropriate having just launched my new blog design!

If you're unfamiliar with the format, we hook up over a quick pizza (or salad if you're that way unclined) at Paparazzi at 12.30pm on the Third Thursday of every month. This month, that's the 19th April. No complications are involved, pay for your own meal and drinks and we welcome anyone to join whether you're a Twitter expert or are wondering whether to join the rest of the family on Facebook.

If you are familiar, get your friends and colleagues down and spread the word!

We get a variety of people attending, of all IT/social media skill levels and persuasions from über-geek to public relations professionals. You're bound to find someone to chat over your thoughts or gain insight on the various ways and means you can use social media either personally or professionally. If you can't stay for the full hour, just drop in and say "Hi!".

Hope you can make it!

I have been meaning to apply a new design to my blog ever since I transferred it to WordPress last year. However, my knowledge of PHP is limited to what PHP actually stands for and therefore it was difficult to allocate very much time to it, let alone apply new designs.

With the development of Taggloo and learning Manx, I felt it was time to develop some improved presence, and this is the result.

Since the revitalised Windows Media Centre user interface, and then Windows Phone 7, I have become a big fan of the Metro user experience. It is super simple, smooth and is an experience that is easily portable between the "three screens" of Windows Phone 7, Windows 8 and XBox 360. The design applied to this blog was drafted quickly on the back of a piece of paper in the office as the idea hit me. What I have ended up with is a slick and distinctive result that I feel is sincere to Metro's philosophy of clean lines and content-first.

The blog runs on the Umbraco Content Management System, and is affording me the opportunity to re-assess the CMS for other projects I may become involved in. It feels like a very mature product, if a little difficult to grasp at first and not entirely suitable for the non-technical user. However, it feels like where Sitecore is, in terms of the importance attached to XSLT. The intricacies of Umbraco notwithstanding, once I'd figured out the XSLT structure, I was away!

The blog would not be possible without the help of Andreas Heinakroon, who very kindly adapted my back-of-fag-packet scratchings to an all singing, all dancing HTML template that could be applied to my blog, complete with winking tiles. Until I worked with Andreas, I thought I could come up with designs - at least mediocre ones! How wrong I was! Never underestimate the power of a good designer. I would definitely check out his blog, for a refreshing outlook.

Also, thanks to Owen Cutajar, who hosted my blog on his WordPress platform while I continuously prevaricated in trying to get a new design sorted and the necessary time to devote to learning PHP and WordPress specifics.

The Isle of Man branch of the British Computer Society had a fascinating presentation on open data and mash-ups on Friday. The talk was given by Prof. Robert Barr OBE, and the gist of the session was that data should flow freely to the people in a useful data structure, yet also that the open-ness should be considered with attention to commercial considerations such as intellectual property and the benefits to the wider economy.

While listening to Robert, it struck me that I am in my very own battle for the extraction of data that should be more readily available. As you may know, I am learning Manx. As part of this, I am generating my own revision notes, references, blog posts and the like that may someday see the light of day. Part of this work is the development of a Manx language dictionary for Windows  Phone 7.

To achieve my goal, I needed a copy of the Manx dictionary. Having asked around and researching myself, I gathered a number of links to existing on-line resources. These ranged from PDF formatted documents to fully indexed dictionaries. The PDF version (English to Manx, Manx to English) was unsuitable because it would be difficult to accurately extract the words from the PDF "printed page". The RoadLingua and FreeLang dictionaries appeared promising, and the dictionaries appeared to be out of copyright. But these were encoded in proprietary dictionary file formats. So ironically, even though the dictionary was "open", the software needed to be reverse engineered to access the dictionary, itself a violation of copyright. So it was that I was left with the remaining two options that may prove to be useful. These were the Phil Kelly dictionary and the Faragher's. These were, however, only HTML sites. Between the two, Faragher's seemed the best, as it provided value-added content such as use of the words within sentences and Manx phrases - ideal if you are interested in the many idioms in use in Manx Gaelic.

So it seemed that I would need to use the Faragher's site as a "back end" to my application, essentially screen-scraping the site for translations. And indeed, to accomplish this, I would be best served if I wrote my own web site, which acted as a bridge between my Windows Phone 7 application and the dictionary itself. This would double my work, but the reasons were various; the extended platform on a server would allow me to parse the HTML from the site more reliably and by caching words as they were requested, I could - over time - create a reliability buffer in case the original site was to fail. I set about the task and have just launched the site in a very early form of initial testing (take a look, at http://taggloo.im). This was particularly challenging, as the HTML from the Faragher's dictionary is flakey at best. However, by inserting that middle layer, I could hide this trickery from the user.

All this, because the dictionary was not available electronically in an indexed form. And this resonates with Robert Barr's point about open data. Open data should not only be open, but also be usefully formatted to allow for its use. An unindexed dictionary is hardly a dictionary! More frustration was in the encapsulation of the indexed dictionary within copyrighted software which was quite closed! I approached RoadLingua about how they would feel about releasing the file formats to their dictionary but I received no response.

So it was with great surprise and relief when I realised that by navigating to an unpublished URL (that should have been concealed from internet users) I could extract the entire Faragher's dictionary from the site, and put it to my own use! So, after playing with MySQL scripts in order to format them into T-SQL, I now have two 50,000 word dictionaries, one for each direction (Manx to English, English to Manx). Am I going to keep this to myself?

No. I've checked about copyright, and I'm informed that this is not an issue, certainly in the spirit of expanding the availability of Manx learning resources. So, as part of my Taggloo project, which already has an effective and reliable API for XML and JSON consumers, I'm going to make the entire database available for use by other applications (maybe mobile phone applications, competing with my own) and web-sites (it becomes possible to "embed" Manx dictionaries on even the simplest of sites). Although the final API has yet to be defined, and there will likely be changes to it in the coming weeks, this data will obviously be free for use by anyone and everyone (subject to fair use - ie. not crashing my server), the API will ask for one thing: the opportunity to record the words being indexed. This itself, over time, will create a second rich data-set. What words are people regularly using? Do these correlate to students' progress in classes, or do the translations point to any cultural significance such as house names, which are regularly seen in Manx, yet seldom understood?

I have many plans around this project, with further data-sets springing from them, and adding further depth to what will hopefully become reliable and rich data-set containing both formal dictionary content and community contributions. This complements the already available learning resources for the user, particularly those found at LearnManx.com. I'll be blogging about them very soon, hopefully in line with an exciting new blog design.

First there was the browser wars, when you went to sites that refused to work in your browser due to some arbitrary decision by the developer and success was determined not by competition and features, but by courts in the US and Europe. Now, there is the mobile phone wars, which are equally religious and as such have protagonists equally unable to step back and think about the user rather than their own beliefs when recommending the "best phone".

Next, there will be the TV app wars. All the major TV manufacturers have started thinking and working on ways to connect your TV to the internet, and enhance your viewing experience by publishing content from both their own portals and content from others such as LoveFilm, YouTube and BBC iPlayer. Panasonic have Smart Viera, Sony have their Internet TVs and Samsung have their "Smart TVs".

But that's only pre-market gadgetry, there's also the post-market kit in the form of set-top boxes and integrated hardware in games consoles. Apple TV aims to extend the now well known and adopted iTunes platform and push its space into the living room. The Sony PS3, Nintendo Wii and Microsoft XBox 360 have all got their own services and ecosystems that extend their software into your everyday life rather than limiting itself gaming.

The problem is the market place is currently fragmented, arbitrary and proprietary. When buying a TV, you are asked to make your purchase decision with regards to internet content (which is a significant domestic purchase) based only on trade relationships between the TV manufacturer and the content provider. Want LoveFilm? Then Panasonic TVs are no good. Want iPlayer? Then Microsoft's XBox 360 is no good. Buy a Panasonic, which can serve YouTube content, but you already have an XBox 360, which can also serve YouTube content. Now you have duplication. Whereas previously you had multiple players vying for the same market, we now have multiple players vying for converging - but separate - markets. And that provides one key feature to the user: confusion and doubt.

Meanwhile, Samsung have their own application platform. XBox 360 has just launched (or rather re-launched in a more obvious format) its own app marketplace. So you have a YouTube app for your Samsung TV, your XBox 360 and your Android phone. I guess you never can get enough of cat videos, no matter where you are. These application marketplaces are fundamentally incompatible. Your app from Microsoft will not work on your Android phone, or even its own Windows Phone 7 line. Features are also dependent on trade relationships. LoveFilm only recently launched on XBox 360 despite being available on "selected" TVs and the PS3, and BBC content was taken out of Windows Media Centre for some reason while the XBox 360 is the only console that it continues to be unavailable for - based only on the BBC's stance that the content should not be confined to users with a paid XBox Live subscription. I struggle to see their logic. TV License holders have paid for the content, but I have also paid for Apple users to have their content, too. Such grandstanding is inconsequential to Microsoft, but the user is given a second-rate experience.

There is hope. Ubuntu TV is hoping to launch and gain ground in TVs, which could create a more open marketplace using an established operating environment. Windows 8 and Windows Phone 7 will ultimately converge so could conceivably execute the same code. Download it for your phone, and you have it on your PC. And with rumours of a Microsoft set-top-box in addition to the XBox 360, the same execution environment is possible (think WinRT/Silverlight and HTML5/JavaScript). Like your smartphone, it depends to a large extent on your ecosystem at home. And if your ecosystem doesn't fit the trade relations content providers have made, tough luck.