Posts

So — PortaBlosx

I was thinking, blosxom is very cool, but I’d like to be able to do a few things in regards to getting something on my blog when I am out and about;

  1. Be able to post from anywhere (i.e. I want a web-based interface of some sort)
  2. Be able to post from my Palm (I built AvantBlog for this reason, why not have AvantBlosx? 🙂 )
  3. A nifty little dialog-thingo allowing me to make quick posts (very similar to the Palm version) would be nice as well, something I could bookmarklet easily.

So I had a look around, and the first one appears to be pretty much available already, care of PHPetal. After that tho, there doesn’t appear to be a simple, clean interface available that could be hacked to use on Palm and as a simple little bookmarklet dialog.

My idea is basically to just provide the person with a very simple interface, at this stage it would consist of a select box containing a recursed listing of their blog directories, and a textarea where they could enter their post. As per blosxom, the first line would be used as the title, and I would either make up a filename based on the title, or just generate one from a timestamp.

What do you reckon?

PHPetal is pretty cool

I think (can’t remember already – it’s been a long day!) I found this one care of a lead from the blosxom mailing list, but here’s a cool, web-based application which operates very similarly to the “PortaBlosx” idea that I am still thinking of working on. It’s called PHPetal and basically just provides a one-page interface to posting to your blosxom-powered blog. It looks pretty funky, although it’s a bit “heavy” for converting to a Palm version I reckon, so I will keep thinking about my own, simple version.

And Then It Was Live!

Yes, I finally got my new site live, and it all appears to be working, including the new and fancy, blosxom-driven “Notes” section.

This has taken quite a bit of work to get live, but I am quite happy with the way that things have turned out. The main addition(s) that I want to make at this stage are writebacks on my Notes section, so that I can hear what you guys out there have to say about things, rather than this being a 1-way only information device 🙂

Keep an eye out for the ability to comment on my postings here in the nearish future (hopefully!). When I get it working, it should also allow for trackbacks, so you can register comments on my posts on your own blogs if you like

Where Are You Stanford?

Lisa Chan from Stanford emailed me, wanting to know if we could work together on building a search log analyzing system. I emailed her back with a stack of the details of stuff that I was planning and haven’t heard back… I wonder why not? Maybe she’s taken my ideas and is off building it without me?

UPDATE: I still haven’t heard from Lisa 😛

Trudging Along

Work on my site is coming along. I have added in blosxom v1.1, which went pretty much without a hitch. I had to modify my template slightly, but that was more because of my dodgy custom handling, rather than anything to do with blosxom itself.

I’ve been spending some time on the projects section, getting the project pages up to scratch and re-formatted; it’s looking pretty good. I am taking a few of the old projects offline, because they don’t have any documentation, don’t work anymore, things like that 🙂

I’m not going to put a date on when the site will be live, but given the current progress, and the list of things to do still, I would estimate about 2 weeks. Here’s the current list;

  1. Projects Sections
    1. Blogger API (functions, classes + meta)
    2. phpMassMail (also requires some work to make it 4.2+ compatible, and re-format documentation to include)
    3. JSSearch (would like to get some more information/documentation/examples included)
    4. JSValidate (want to update this to include the ability to open a popup window rather than an alert – optional)
    5. Client work and websites
  2. Contact Form
    1. Layout/design
    2. Contingency design
    3. Processing/handling
    4. Result/output page
  3. Search System
    1. Layout/Design (of the results, as well as extra options, defining manual entries etc)
    2. Processing system (integrating my manual results with Google/XooMLe’s results)
    3. Management of my manual entries (and a decent name for them 🙂

So there we go. That’s what I’ll be working on in the near future. And for those interested, I will be creating a custom search system, which integrates Google‘s results for within my website (using XooMLe) with a selection of manual “Top Picks” or “Best Bets” which I have selected for certain terms. I have the rough idea planned out already, just need to implement it in code. I will probably make the code available for download once it’s complete as well, so keep an eye out for that 🙂

That’s all for now – time to get back to life.

She Wants The World… And a Search Log Analyser!

Just kidding, but I got some details back from Lisa C, and she appears to have some very specialised requirements for her system. I have suggested that it might be better if we work together to develop a “base system” which would include the complete logging functionality, and then she can customise and/or extend the reporting/analysis interface as required.

I think this approach should work quite well, allowing me to collaborate on a logging module, and to refine the database schema, then develop a generic, “useful-across-the-board” analysis interface, which should be capable of being extended easily. Metabase, here I come.

No DOLA

That’s annoying — last week I got a call from DOLA, asking if I would be able to come in early next week (this week) to talk to them about doing some IA work for them.

I had to turn them down, because I am now working at AdultShop.com, which is taking up nearly all of my time, and I simply wouldn’t have had time to dedicate to the job. I asked them what they were doing anyway, and apparently they wanted me to work on the information architecture of their entire suite of websites and online applications – bugger!

Client Education Library for Information Architects (CELIA)

Aim:
Provide a collection of resources which will help Information Architects to educate potential and existing clients about the importance and relevance of Information Architecture and strategy.

Contents of Collection:

  • Diagrams
  • Quotes
  • Statistics
  • Case Studies/Examples
  • Online Resources

A search facility would be available, allowing you to hunt down certain things, as well as all widgets being categorised carefully and fully browsable. I’d like to be able to give everything a “permanent URL” within the collection as well, so that people can link back to it’s entry, and “reference” their resources properly, thus keeping authors happy(er) about the fact that their work is being used by other people in a relatively generic format.

We have response

Well, I thought they were silent, turns out I just needed to put the idea of CELIA to the whole AIfIA membership to get a response.

After being sparked on by a discussion on the [aifia-members] list, I posted about CELIA and had some reasonable responses. One of them was from James Robertson, of Step Two, an Australian Knowledge Management and CMS company based in Sydney – so he has offered to be a part of it, and this can be Australia’s biggest contribution to the community yet!