Projects

When I’m not working for other people, I often get carried away with side projects and experiments. This category will include all posts related to those projects. Most of them are technical or web-related, but once in a while I’ll even do things IRL!

webpad 2.1 Underway

I have started the planning/initial development on version 2.1 of webpad. This will be mainly a bug-fix and consolidation release, while also bringing webpad up to a point where it will operate with the new default settings on PHP installs.

Once webpad 2.1 is released successfully, work on v3.0 will begin shortly thereafter, which will be a major code-revision, giving webpad a much more stable backend and coding structure, as well as a number of new features to improve its functionality and usefulness as a web-based text editor. I am also considering splitting the code-base into a “Personal Edition” and “Enterprise Edition” (names not finalised!) which would allow me to ficus each version on either single or multi-user environments (respectively). This would also most likely introduce a pricing structure for the Enterprise Edition (Personal Edition will remain free for the taking). I’ll keep you all up to date.

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?

I Lost My Path

There appears to be something dodgy going on with my paths. They aren’t resolving properly, which is causing internal links to be one or more levels (directory-speaking) out of whack.

This is really annoying… until I fix this I can’t really work on the commenting system, and I’m not launching the new Dented Reality website without the ability for people to comment on posts… no way!

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 😛

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.

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!

webpad Needs Some Love

webpad has been sorely neglected, and it is starting to show. I have a bad feeling that it won’t work on a default install of PHP anymore, and there are a number of reported bugs related to the install and configuration process which have done anything *but* go away with time. I think it is getting close to time that I need to re-write the core code for little-ole webpad, and try to bring things up to scratch.

There are also a number of improvements I would like to make to the system at the same time, but priority one will be to bring all of the existing code up to a certain level, then move forward to a new version.

And so… the requirements (as far as I am concerned) for version 2.1 public are;

  1. Re-write of backend code to standardize style/syntax etc.
  2. Ensure that all code is 100% compatible with a default installation (no register_globals being the big one here)
  3. Switch all of the Blogger.com operations over to using the new, inbuilt XML-RPC functions in PHP, rather than the external library it currently uses.
  4. Ensure that all Blogger.com operations still work (their API has been all over the place, so who knows??)
  5. Iron out any bugs in the install process to ensure that the app can be installed with a minimum of fuss.

With that out of the way, I will then look towards a 3.0 release, which should look something like this;

  1. Inclusion of ODBC, PostgreSQL and possibly Oracle plug-ins for authentication
  2. Streamlined setup/install and user management (*large* improvements planned)
  3. Improved support for authentication methods other than WIXAS
  4. Much better file management (directory creation, renaming, deleting etc)
  5. Integration with Blogger Pro, Radio and MovableType if possible (expanded to include template management and better post management)
  6. Ability to load a file from the filesystem via direct request (i.e. http://webpad/?file=/path/to/file.txt) assuming permissions allow it and it’s within the user’s home dir.
  7. Much better mult-user support
  8. Commercial licenses will attract a modest fee (in the vicinity of $USD15), while personal use will remain free