admin's blog

Tumblr is a great idea - the hosted service lets you sign up for free and then create a blog that is essentially comprised of different types of content - text, photo, quote, link, chat, audio and video.   Your tumblog can be posted to quickly and re-themed using their provided ones or custom html; all editable within their web interface so there's no need for ftp'ing files etc...

Okay, so its yet another blogging tool.  What's so great about that?  Well, asides from the fact that it has different content types to segment views by them (something not in the de facto wordpress standard approach), tumblr's unique in letting you import rss feeds automatically into your tumblr site!  Cool eh?

Drupal heads reading this will no doubt instantly say "Whatever man, Drupal can do that in a second!" and they're right; it can.  We recently took a stab at building out a site to do everything that tumblr does for Flavorpill in NYC using Drupal 6 and some contrib modules.  Ultimately, we wanted a site that lets anonymous/public users contribute as well as logged-in ones, all submitting the same types of content.  The main benefit of registering on-site was keeping track of your posts with a profile page that features a User Tracker.

Development time was short and we were really aiming at making a site which people could use easily - so we skipped making some crazy implementation of Flashvideo or Kaltura and just allowed 3rd party video embeds through a single field (for URL or embed code) via the Embedded Media Field module.

Here's the quick module over-view for anyone who has been pondering what they need to make Tumblr using Drupal.

First up, install Drupal 6 and the following modules:

• CCK - lets you define the seperate content types etc...
• Pathauto - gives you flexibility etc through semantic URLs
• Embedded Media Field - works with CCK to create fields which accept video or audio media from 3rd parties; automagically embeds and provides interface for display options
• Gravatar - displays avatars based on users' email addresses
• Imagefield - create field in content types which can accept image(s) and store locally
• Imagecache - automatic ad-hoc image resize rules with multiple displays
• Date
• TinyMCE - a pretty solid option as WYSIWYG editor for general public/basic user options
• Views + Panels - create the dynamic displays of content per content type etc...
• Captcha + ReCaptcha - safeguard the site from spam-bots... Recaptcha provides enough security for accepting public content submissiosns withou moderation
• Fivestar - simple/instant jquery content rating.

Of course, the beauty of using Drupal to build a site like this is that you're afforded scalability; meaning that you can always add features to the site and go far beyong the basic set of tools tumblr offers people.

Now, on this implementation we didn't build in the automatic rss-to-node functionality, but that could easily be afforded by the FeedAPI module.

To view the site we built a la Tumblr, please head over to:
http://www.whatisinnovation.com

This video got cut and released a little while back to announce our friends at JUMA's Spring-Summer 2010 collection's launch. Inspired by our May 2010 Studio Series podcast episode, JUMA chose to soundtrack the video with Neon Indian's excellent 'Summer Heat.'

I really enjoy how rough the video is - right from the over-exposed footage to the use of pause-motion overlays and quick scene-cuts.

Often cases it can be useful to display a larger version of an image to the site user when they hover their mouse over a thumbnail on your site (a simpler interface than the magnification idea I've blogged about). 

There is a ton of javascript floating around out there on the Web which you can use to do this but I've just come across a cool drupal module (Hover Preview for Imagecache) that integrates cleanly with imagecache; allowing you to choose a hover relationship between any two imagecache presets on node field displays as well as in Views!

For a long time it seems newspapers have been crying out for the blood of pseudo-journalists who use the web to publish rapidly, and often case, without adequate research, grammatical acumen and so on. This is why it was so bloody refreshing to have just came across something which exemplifies the need for Newspapers to maintain their relevance in the 21st century through innovation and the welcoming embrace of technology.

The Guardian newspaper has initiated an 'Open Platform.' The embedded slideshow in this post will lead you through it but basically, they've created Application Programming Interfaces (or APIs) to their wealth of content online! This means that the public can create web tools and spaces that feature content from the Guardian online - using that content as their main crowd-draw, more easily than ever before. A fantastic example of the platform in use is a site called 'What could I cook?' - it pulls in recipes from the Guardian, displaying them alongside other/local content with the cited author being the Guardian.

The ramifications of this embrace of technology are huge; should enough sites use the platform, the Guardian, by way of its leveraged content base, will become an essential source for other people's business models and communities online. Whether a direct business model is forthcoming through this approach remains to be seen but for now, I think its a clever gambit for an age-old business to maintain relevance in today's technocratic society.

Lightboxes have become a de facto standard for displaying larger-than-thumbnail images to site viewers over the past couple of years.  They work pretty well for this function but there are instances when you may want to display details in an image that would require it to be large yet contained within a small area.

We just added a magnification/zoom function to a client site which I thought I'd share - the idea was to let clothing shoppers of the indie label JUMA be able to see the fine detail on garments whilst shopping online.  We had already implemented the Views Slideshow module to provide an interface where people could hover over thumbnailed images to instantly view a larger version (see the left side of the image above) but wanted to add a third level of enlargement.

After doing some best-approach research this morning I found two solid ways to do this using modules powered by javascript which are easily available. 

One option was commercial and the other free, but the real decision for us came down to the commercial one because it played nicely with Views Slideshow - that module is Magictoolbox.com's Magic Zoom.  Both this and Cloud Zoom offer essentially the same functionality - they create an image display option (for cck image fields per content type and in Views) and Magic Zoom can automagically override the display site-wide of a specified imagecache preset.

Both solutions are easy to implement and offer some cool customization options to help you aesthetically integrate the magnification window into your themed site but we found that Cloud Zoom would only load the first item in a View Slideshow list of nodes.  For anyone not using Views Slideshow I'd highly recommend checking out Cloud Zoom.

This friday we'll be launching a new monthly series of talks with colleagues in the (new) media industry.  For the inaugural session, the event will be a round-table discussion about Online Identity. 

We will be tossing ideas around the table on how individuals and organizations can maintain a harmonious identity across varied platforms on the Net and it should be quite a fun time.

Here are the participants:

• Qasim Virjee - Design Guru's Principal
• Behrouz Hariri - Graphic Designer
• Jaime Woo - Social Media Strategist/Consultant
• Lee Dale - Founder/Director, Say Yeah!

* The event will be held in the Alterna Boardroom at the Centre for Social Innovation and run just 2 hours from 2 - 4 PM.

Afterwards, attendees are welcome to join the participants for drinks at the People Downtown party being hosted at Tequila Bookworm on Queen St W.

NOTE: If you can't make it, don't fret - we'll be filming the talk to upload next week as an episode of designguru.tv

We are accepting donations from attendees and you can RSVP using the widget below:

Thursday February 25th, 5:30-10:00pm
@ the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto
215 Spadina Ave, Suite 160

RSVP: http://lessigtalktoronto.eventbrite.com

A Wireside Chat with Lawrence Lessig

6:00pm - 7:30pm
Professor Lessig will deliver a talk on fair use and politics in online video from Harvard Law School in Cambridge, MA/USA - we are projection-screening a live hi-def stream of the talk.

This is a talk about copyright in a digital age, and the role (and importance) of a doctrine like “fair use.” Fair use allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, and is essential for commentary, criticism, news reporting, remix, research, teaching and scholarship with video.

As a medium, online video will be most powerful when it is fluid, like a conversation. Like the rest of the internet, online video must be designed to encourage participation, not just passive consumption.

Discussion Panel

7:30pm - 8:15pm
Picking up on Lessig's talk our panel will share takes on participatory media culture and the changing nature of content ownership and usage in the Digital Age.

We will also be joined by videoconference for an address by Kaltura co-founder Dr Shay David.

w/ McLean Greaves / Zoomer Media,
Mark Surman / Mozilla Foundation,
Brett Gaylor / RiP A Remix Manifesto + EyeSteelFilm

Moderated by: Qasim Virjee - Principal, Design Guru

& Social

8:15pm - 10:00pm
Attendees will have a chance to mingle with panelists and each other over refreshments.

PRESENTED BY:
Design Guru & the Open Video Alliance

EVENT SPONSOR:

 

 

Personally, I love the concept of rubbing an on-screen item to 'heat it up' and then share it across social networking websites/platforms etc...

More information can be found @ Bonnier's website.

This is the first episode of designguru.org's new series of first-person interviews and event footage featuring interesting people we know relating how they use technology.

In the interview, Mark Kuznicki (remarkk.com) details some experiences gained through his work establishing and developing the changecamp.ca platform, which aims to address issues of citizenship and the nature of government in the 'age of participation.'

On a snowy morning walk to the office today I came across a Grand & Toy delivery truck parking - immediately I noticed their advertisement on its side and am intrigued by the campaign it referenced; Grand & Toy is now offering online customers 48 hour delivery - in attempts to bundle their delivery commitments better and relatively do a better job of impacting the environment less.