i’m sorry, i just don’t know

I’m not a programmer.  I’m a novice mash-upper.  I needed to figure out how to gather, aggregate, and publish the blog posts of community members to my existing website.  My constraints:  I couldn’t just set up a wordpress blog to do it.  I had to display this aggregation in our existing community website.  And, my current site did not support any additional forms.  So here’s how I did it…

1. We have a Society website up built on Wild Apricot that lets me set up members only pages.  I set up a “Submit your Blog” page there.
2. Since Wild Apricot has no API (boo!) into their data, I had to find an external form service, enter:  Wufoo.  The free account lets us build up to three forms.  They store the data (which I’m not concerned about because it is publicly available blogs) which we can access via an online API.
3. I manually (here’s the clunky part) add the feeds to Yahoo Pipes which publishes them out as one aggregated RSS feed.
4. This feed gets turned into a widget by me and Widgetbox.
5. I copy the code for the widget into my community site, and everything is right in the world.

Why a community site is good for an Association…  We want to be clear that we support collaborative engagement around issues relevant to our industry.  Only our MEMBERS can contribute to the conversation.  People are motivated to do this because it builds their online reputation- a powerful motivator as can be seen by the popularity of Web 2.0 apps that support online identity development and social presence (think Facebook- a multi-billion dollar company).

Adobe Photoshop Express is a streamlined, browser-based photo editing and sharing site that currently gives you 2GB of storage just for signing up. You can browse through other people’s galleries already. The editing capabilities are pretty good for the average human. Of course, there’s no comparison to the actual Photoshop, but who uses all of those features anyway? (Other than my lovely designer friends.) Here’s what it can do…

Widgetbox is an online repository of widgets for your website.  My favorites:

• Target Firefox Adsense - This widget only shows your firefox adsense to IE users.  So don’t bother your readers who are brilliant enough to use practically anything other than IE.  Besides, it’s only IE users who click on ads, right?
• Google Site Translator - Let people translate your site into their language.
• Meebo me - Chat with people on your site.

You can also “widgetize” your own blog or site to share with others, and produce or find iMix widgets that let you play mixes of music on your site.

All of my flickr images are licensed under Creative Commons, and it’s always fun to see where they end up.  Thanks Dave for leaving me a note and letting me know where and how you’ve used my photo.

There was a Star Trek episode where Geordi La Forge (the blind, but brilliant engineer) was kidnapped by smallish round people who looked like weeble-woobles.  They took him because, in their own words, “You’re smart.  You make things go.”  Good job Creative Commons. You made my picture go.  (and please don’t tell my that I like Star Trek.  He already thinks I’m a sci-fi nerd because of Firefly).

In our business (which can be characterized by altruistic words such as free, open, access, and education for all) we often argue that people should just give it up (the content they authored) for online access. That works for us, and makes sense in the academic world, but maybe it doesn’t make sense every where else.

The writer’s guild in Hollywood is on strike. They are fighting to have Viacom (for example) ante up for content they write that gets distributed online. Viacom (for example) gets millions of dollars of ad revenue from that content. The writers get nothing. It may just be me, but I think the writers’ approach (see video) is far superior to the approach of brutal union bosses from the twenties and thirties.

video source

is a Firefox plugin for Facebook users that will give me way too much control over what I can do with my Facebook profile.  Changing skins, site layouts, how I work with images… it’s too much for my brain to handle today.  I’ve had it open as a browser window for a couple of days now… not ready to make the plunge, but unwilling to just tag it and forget it in my del.icio.us account.  I’m not sure what my problem is- it will be pretty cool.  So, as a compromise, I’m blogging about it.  A blog post gives it a bit more weight than a del.icio.us tag and perhaps I’ll get over my wierdness and install it this afternoon.

Brian Dettmer carves into books revealing the art inside.  It’s spectacular.

Watch them both to maximize the your viewing enjoyment.

Video A

Video B

The Open U of the UK is holding a competition… remix their materials and in return, win an ipod, some recognition, and stickers. What I love about this is how active it is. Universities publishing opencourseware materials generally put their materials out there and then move on to more content publication. This is a call to engage with existing materials. This is an approach that says…”It’s already out there, use it, and if you do something cool, we’ll give you stuff that you’ll like” (who wouldn’t want stickers?) . Love it. http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn/get-started/get-started-educator/competition.php

On NPR this morning there was a piece on these guys who have a website where New Yorkers can submit conversations they hear on the streets, trains, and subways of New York.

What’s cool about this is…

• It’s language based so there is some interesting stuff for me around discourse analysis possibilities
• It’s real quotes from real people overheard by other real people shared with you and me (also real people). I’d love to do a social network analysis and/or geographical map of these conversations and how they get from where they occured to my laptop in Logan Utah, and the number of people who connected with them along the way. Of course, me blogging this means it’s now connecting to all of you, my blog readers… all 7 of you.
• It’s hella funny.