Here’s a video introduction on how to add some components of the new Friend Connect set of services from Google to your web site.
You can get more information on Friend Connect here and see some more examples of how Friend Connect can be used here.
Recently rolled out alpha version .04 of SanAntonioNews.com, an experimental local news site. This version of the site takes the lessons in RSS feed splicing and blending learned in alpha version .03 and plugs them into an open source publishing platform. I chose WordPress as the platform for this version mainly to see how it holds up as a lightweight Content Mangement System. So far so good.
For the template and CSS, I started with the Identification Band Quadruplets 4 Column WordPress Theme and modified from there. Even though the modifications made to the original design were somewhat significant, many thanks are in order to the author of the Quadruplets theme for sharing his work. There currently seems to be pretty slim pickings to choose from out there as far as four column WordPress templates go. His work proved to be a very helpful starting point.
On a related note, if you think you might be outgrowing your blogging platform and are thinking about a more robust CMS, take a look at OpenSourceCMS.com, a site that lets you try out many CMS platforms in one place. OpenSourceCMS.com isn’t related to the The Open CMS Project, which is an interesting JAVA XML based open source Content Management System.
Have been spending some time with the recently released Flash Lite 2 Upgrade for Flash Professional 8 and the associated Flash Lite 2 Content Development Kit. Here are some initial takes.
First, on the upside. Flash Lite 2.0 is nice step forward in the tools available for the development and distribution of content for mobile devices. The addition of some Actionscript 2.0 capability is reason enough to cheer. The CDK may be a little lean, but I found what is there to be laid out well and was more than enough to get me started. If you can make your way around Flash for building web applications or developing web content, the transition to Flash Lite 2.0 is easily within reach.
Now for some downside. If you go through the supported devices list one can’t help but notice that a relative lack of compatible mobile devices and carriers still lingers for Flash Lite developers focused on the US market. Nokia and Sony do offer Flash Lite 1.1 and 2.0 supported devices for GSM based US operators, but shouldn’t Flash be farther along on the mobile platform by now?
Well, a little good news was released this week that could mean some optimism on this front may be in order. Adobe and Verizon Wireless announced a new agreement to have the Flash Lite player pre-installed on new Verizon devices. Hopefully this will spur Sprint and Cingular to follow along quickly.
Have you ever wondered why adoption of the Flash player for mobile devices has been so slow in the US? I got a hint on a possible answer during the Q&A time at one of the mobile application development panels at SXSW. During an exchange it was implied that one possible reason for the slow adoption of Flash Lite on the mobile platform is an apparent desire by Macromedia/Adobe to negotiate a license fee to pre install the Flash Lite player on mobile devices. Google the topic and it appears I was probably slow in developing an awareness for this line of thought. Others have been pushing for a solution to this for quite a while.
Hmm. Imagine how the desktop development tools market might look today if back in the 90′s Macromedia had tried to charge a license fee to install the Flash plug-in on the desktop platform. Would Flash be anywhere close to having the dominant installed base that it does on the desktop platform? Or would we have been spared all those spinning, flaming Flash corporate logo animations and Flash intros? (of which I am guilty of building my fair share of as well)
I’m always curious about the desire to tinker with a business model just because the distribution platform changes. Hopefully this week’s announcement signals that this impasse between the tool maker and the device maker has been bridged and that more announcements are soon to come.
Bottomline is that Flash Lite 2.0 is worth a look for Flash developers with long term plans to build, aggregate or repurpose content for distribution on the mobile platform.
Released alpha version .03 of the experimental local news portal SanAntonioNews.com.
The site is focused on exploring the new tools for RSS feed blending, splicing and remixing. Version .03 adds a modest new jobs section which supplies a listing of the 25 freshest job postings in San Antonio.
Rather than doing a RSS remix of several San Antonio employment related RSS feeds to accomplish this step, decided to try using one of the job opportunity aggregation sites. My two current favorite search engines operating in the employment space are Indeed and Simply Hired. Went with Simply Hired to provide the RSS feed because I thought their RSS implementation was currently a little stronger than Indeed. A few months ago I might have said Indeed was the stronger player in that niche, but I think Simply Hired has made up ground.
With Simply Hired doing all the work aggregating and splicing new San Antonio job listings into a unified RSS feed I was able to skip the step of using feedblendr or another tool like it to splice and remix the feed. Sweet.
So on to the next step – the RSS to javascript translation for getting it into HTML format. This time used feed2js to convert the feed into javascript. feed2js is another great tool built on the opensource MagpieRSS platform.
Have started work on v.04 which includes some slightly more ambitious offerings.
Do you sometimes wonder what motivates voters and politicians to make the choices that we/they do? Are we/they even aware when these forces come into play. It feels like there is something there for an interesting story, so have been researching it a little further.
During this hunt for information was revisiting concepts known as the availability cascade and the availability heuristic.
Similar concepts are familiar from bschool, but it had been a while since I spent any time with them. Best recent example I ran across of these forces in play was described in a recent Op-Ed from Holmes Jenkins at WSJ.
Here are a few excerpts from his piece:
The Rational Herd
A handy idea for making sense of the modern world is the idea of an “availability cascade.” It employs economics to explain how people come to hold faddish beliefs, even when those beliefs are at odds with other beliefs they hold or information they possess.
While researching our documentary on Op-Eds, had the pleasure to meet recently with Bruce Davidson from the Express-News Editorial Page.
Thanks for your time Bruce. I’m always grateful when people take time out of their busy day to help.
Instinct tells me there is an interesting story there that needs to be told, and so far instinct has been the driving force behind the project.
But instinct isn’t enough to greenlight something on, so the research and development continues. Have been a little stuck at how exactly to tap into that story so that it captures the passion for ideas that has been displayed on Op-Ed pages for centuries.
How do you translate all that writing into a video based story that will engage the audience for this type of material?
tags: op-eds; documentaries;
While researching the pros and cons of setting up a fictional company website as part of a publicity campaign for a screenplay, I was introduced to a new phenomena (at least to me), the blook.
Blog + Book = Blook
Thanks Alan for the tip.
Am doing research to verify that the real world science in my screenplay “id” is at least conceptually possible.
Along this journey I was fortunate yesterday to get to visit with Dr. Borries Demeler at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio.
Dr. Demeler is developing Ultrascan, a very interesting software package that helps to analyze what is happening to molecules when they are experiencing up to a million g’s while spinning in an ultracentrifuge.
He also heads the bioinformatics core facility at the center — equipped with a 44-processor Beowulf configuration.
Many thanks Borries for your time.
While working on a scene for our animation project, an animator asked, “can we really use that?”. He was referring to a still shot of Meet The Press where we were compositing our animated character into the scene.
Craigslist has proven to be a pretty good hub for attracting some creative talent. Our blind ad for a writer for an animated political comedy turned up what looks to be a pretty decent, and large, crop of candidates.