Likemind.orl and Drupal June 19, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Drupal, Events, Coffee, floridacreatives, Likemind.orl, Teaching, open source , 2 commentsIn about 10 hours a group of likeminded folks will get together for good coffee and conversations with friends and strangers. We do this once a month at the Lake Eola Panera Bread.
Likemind Orlando is part of a larger group of events which started in New York with two guys who were having good conversations online, and decided to move them to the coffee shop. Their friends in other cities liked the idea, and now, Likemind groups meet in more than 50 cities around the world on the same day every month.
Chris Scott will now be officiating over Likemind with me, since Alex left and got himself a house and a life on the East Coast (of Florida). Congrats and best of luck to Alex and Kathryn.
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Also coming up in the next few days is the 3rd installment of he Florida Drupal User’s Group. Myself and Mike Anello will be teaching classes on CCK and Views, respectively. You are all certainly invited to check out this event and ask tons of questions - we have left ourselves 4 hours to cover these topics, as each of them is kind of a big deal on its own.
You can get information and directions about how to get to the MindComet offices on groups.drupal.org/florida - the office is in Maitland.
Florida Drupal Group
Saturday, June 21st
1pm - 4pm
MindComet - Maitland
New Drupal Tutorials June 17, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Site News, HowTo, Drupal, Teaching, open source, Programming , add a commentYes, I have yet another blog: this one is all about Drupal. Right now there are exactly 4 posts, but two of them came this week, so there may be an upturn in the posting over there. If anybody out there wants to write some tutorials, I’d be open to that.
The first howto was sort of “scratching an itch”. I got really tired of manually downloading, unzipping, uploading and activating modules when it was time to install a new Drupal site or update an existing one, so I came up with a workflow that gets it all done in record time: Using AWK to Download and Unpack Drupal Modules
The second one was a question delivered to me via chat: How to create a “related pages” block in Drupal 6, but we can’t find any useful modules and my personal recommendation, Panels, is not ported to version 6 yet. Therefore, with some Arguments magic, I bring you (now, new and improved, with 15 screenshots!): Using Views 2 and Drupal 6 to Create a Related Pages Block
In other Drupal news, the Florida Drupal User’s Group is having our 3rd meeting this weekend, June 21st, at the behest of MindComet in Maitland. I’ll be giving a talk about CCK (the Content Construction Kit), specifically using it with Drupal 6, and Mr. Mike Anello will be giving a talk on Views. The whole thing lasts about 4 hours - from 1 to 5 PM. The first two meetings were absolutely worth it, so I highly recommend coming down to check it out, if only for a shorter portion of the marathon.
The next stage for this Drupal Easy project is to build out some wiki pages that outline key Drupal concepts and relate them to each other, wiki-style. It’s something folks have been asking me for ever since the move to Bonnier and the “Drupal Expert” label, so I’m going to see if I can deliver. If that all goes well, there just might be a print version up for sale at LuLu.com as well. No promises, but that’s the plan.
P.S. Not that I want to brag, but Angie and Nate from Lullabot are coming to Orlando this week to train the staff at Bonnier in the use of Drupal. This is the only public mention I’ve made in quite some time, but I’m pretty damn excited to meet the gurus.
Weekend Projects - Lightweight Photo Service May 5, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Web Sites, mashups, interface, open source, Web Services, Programming , add a commentThis is a project I’ve been thinking about for a while, and I’d love to do a hack weekend to get this working sometime.
One thing that’s been a problem with us at Petentials (and many other sites running Drupal) is Photo uploading, sharing, embedding, etc. Aaron Winborn created a great tool called Embedded Media Field that abstracts the hosting of photos, videos and audio files for a Drupal installation - what I’m thinking of doing is writing a custom interface for that module that allows a user to upload the files without leaving the page, and then talks to Drupal to tell it to make a new node for the photo, add it to a gallery, or the same for a batch of images - Aaron’s module does quite a bit of this already.
I was wondering if Menalto Gallery (G2) could help us out here, but that’s really meant to be used as its own system - I really just want to create a REST/CRUD interface we can throw on a subdomain to serve up images and thumbnails, while also generating new thumbnails as needed. G2 has lots of these features, but then we’d have to keep the user tables in synch and I’m not sure we need everything they have to offer.
This is not meant to be a flickr or a photobucket, but the replacement for hosting images in-house. It should be insanely transparent to the users - they should not need to register, have any plugins or enter any extra screens.
My thoughts are the following:
- Use lighttpd or a stripped-down version of Apache with PHP. No database (unless to store API keys and permissions for when you want to update/delete a file).
- All files get served statically - if we hit a 404, redirect to a PHP script which generates the image. Then all future requests are static.
- Once the image is generated, we could host it on S3, Akamai or another CDN? I remember seeing something like this with Gigavox’s podcast hosting solution - I’m going to go check out their screencasts/documentation again to see if they explain it or I can figure it out.
- Make it open source and let other folks use it and hack on it.
- Ability to link to images over the web, or upload .zip .gz files via FTP, or email in images, eventually allow for mobile uploads, etc.
- We’d also want to have support for checking referrers so we can deny certain folks and perhaps serve watermarked images to non-approved sites? I think some of this can be done at the Apache/lighttpd level, and I’d prefer configuration over code in as many places as possible.
The application by itself won’t do anything - you’d need a CMS to integrate it with. My choice is Drupal, of course.
Certainly on the wish list for embedded media field is the ability to integrate this content transparently in the background (see Vox’s media features). Using something like PingVision’s Drupal Markup Engine and a WYSIWIG editor might get us most of the way there. It’s an API that lets you specify custom tags - mostly these can be used to add images, video or blocks inside a node, but there are dozens of uses that have not been invented yet, I’m sure. If the editor can have plugins written (Kupu is the editor of choice for Acquia’s Carbon). I don’t think it should insert raw HTML, but a custom tag so we can abstract the method of storage - just something like [image:13456] or [video:13456] or [audio:13456] or [gallery:13456] at least until HTML5 gives us a standard for implementing this.
One reason why the Embedded Media Field is so great is because if YouTube changes the player, or if they introduce the option to turn off the related videos at the end, or even if you come up with your own .FLV wrapper, like a deep-tagging service, all your calls to videos are made through this tag - it’s an API for HTML code.
If we get an editor that supports this sort of stuff and a module/plugin for major CMSes and platforms, those can all live in one place. Wordpress has support for TinyMCE or the plain-text editor, but it must support others, yes? Another editor that would be high on my list is the YUI Rich Text Editor.
I could probably go on all day, but I think I’ve gotten a decent explanation for this cluster of projects out there.
Blogging Fringe 2008 April 15, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Site News, Blogging, Podcasts, Orlando, Events, Trends, Web Sites, Contributors, OrlandoScene, open source , 2 commentsMy Friends,
As you all know, I’ve done this Blogging Fringe thing for the past two years. Sadly, this year looks like I’ll be pulled in more directions than ever before. I’ve been up until 2AM every night for weeks on end and I’m not sure when this will stop.
At the same time, I really love the opportunities the Fringe Festival presents to show off some great groups in Orlando and Internationally, and introduce the world to our potential.
At this point I have received dozens of press releases from faithful producers who would love a mention on the blog. I’d love to contact them, conduct interviews, post them to the site, get everyone excited and oh so much more, but that’s not going to happen.
Some of you have contributed time to this project before, others are simply friends, but you are all tied to the theatre community and you have proven your interest in making our community something special.
My plan for Blogging Fringe this year is to write a small number of posts on my personal blog and have them automatically re-posted to BloggingFringe.com, and I’m going to open that up to everyone in the world. All the content on the site will be release under a Creative Commons license, meaning anyone will be free to re-post and re-mix the work in any medium for non-commercial purposes This includes all archived content on the site as well.
Getting your content posted is simple. We’ll agree on a keyword, something like “bloggingfringe”, or “Orlando Fringe”, something you will only write on your blog if you’d like the content to be seen, and those posts will be re-posted with a link back to your blog. An example of this is on Liberatr.net where all the posts link to the original home instead of inside the site.
This project has never been about my own personal gain - I’ve sunk hundreds (thousands?) of dollars of my money into creating an environment for patrons and artists to have a conversation, but I believe I’ve fallen short of the mark up until now. Beth will be the first person to say that the Fringe website is not the place she’d like this conversation to happen - that’s one great thing about a site like ours.
All the editorial content on Blogging Fringe - the reviews, videos, audio podcasts, will no longer be called Blogging Fringe, but instead Ryan Price Media, Orlando Scene TV and Florida Creatives. These three websites will just be other first-class citizens of the community like anyone else in the world. If I end up being too busy to post many videos, podcasts or blogs, that will show, because they’ll be lost in the ocean of posts created by the blogging Fringe Faithful.
If I have to I’ll paint the administrator password to Blogging Fringe on a canvas and submit the artwork to Visual Fringe. That’s how open this should be. Anna, what’s the entry fee again?
More news on exactly how to get your blogs re-posted to a public, highly visible website for free coming soon. I hope the Fringe itself, the Orlando Weekly, Elizabeth Maupin, Orlando Arts Blog and others will be proud to include their blogs in the list, because the point is visibility, not exclusivity.
The contents of this email are posted at bloggingfringe.com/2008/04/15/blogging-fringe-2008/ in order to make this information as public as I possibly can. If you’d like to contribute, you can start by posting a link to your blog in the comments! All serious submissions (and some not so serious) will be accepted.
Peace,
Ryan Price
321-441-3964
BloggingFringe.com
FloridaCreatives.com
OrlandoScene.TV
What every small town local bookstore should do April 1, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Markteting, HowTo, Video, Film, Shopping, Trends, Books, Travel, Contributors, OrlandoScene, Teaching, open source, Branding, Storytelling, Love , 2 commentsI jsut finished reading Rent Girl
However Michelle Tea and this book are not the subject of this blog. At least, not directly.
I picked up this indy book at an indy book shop - I was on vacation, visiting Tempe, Arizona, walking to Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, hiking the Grand Canyon, getting yummy sandwiches from the co-op and drinking local beer. And next to the Trader Joe’s in the adobe-colored shopping center (really, they all were) was this little book store, Changing Hands.
Changing Hands Bookstore, Tempe Arizona, corner of McClintock and Guadalupe. There was a café, I think, and there was a section up front with fun games - the kinds of stuff you’d see on the bookshelves of Barnes and Noble next year once they hit critical mass. Like all indy book shops, there was a table near the customer service desk with eye-catching books, new arrivals, and the ever-present signed-or-to-be-signed books. And here was Rent Girl
I only read a few pages on the plane, it was too naughty. I actually couldn’t wrap my head around this book until recently, somehow I feel that by absorbing some women’s media I can try to understand the industry a bit better - things aimed at guys are too easy to understand, low hanging fruit - women’s music, film and books are another beast.
But I digress. I want to plant a seed at Changing Hands in Tempe and Urban Think in Orlando and the Bookmine in Jacksonville, and all the other places where you feel proud buying a naughty graphic novel. This advice isn’t exactly ground-shaking, but I think it makes sense:
Every small town book shop should:
- Print their own books.
- Teach classes about how to print your own books.
- Sell said hand-made and self-published books.
- Sell books by local authors on the internet.
- Show and sell art on the walls.
- Have free and open wi-fi.
- Record video/audio podcasts with visiting authors.
- Have a space in-store and online for customers to have a conversation, either about books or what happened on last night’s LOST.
- Be a place where you want to come to read a book.
- Be a place where you would hang out with your friends.
- Be the first place you want to visit when you get off of work.
- Have space for local groups to hold meetings.
In London I saw a store that only sells Chess and Bridge supplies. They’ve got the largest selection of that stuff you’ve ever seen - no big box store could compete. And on the same block is a store that only sells Flutes. I’m told there’s a store on the other side of the river that only sells French Horns. Granted, in a big city there is a need for places that specialized, but I think even a small town book store can take some tips from these places.
I saw another place that was a grocery, bookstore, gift shop and restaurant all in one. They wouldn’t let me take pictures in there, it was so unique. They press their own olive oil.
In a certain way, Stardust Video & Coffee here in Orlando has achieved so much of what’s on my list, but the utility of the store, renting movies, was not lucrative enough for them, so they opened up to being more cafe-and-performance-space than video rental space. They’ve recently added a second stage with a strict “no dry-humping” policy, and they also sell hard liquor in addition to their amazing selection of beers, decent wine, tea, coffee, baked goods and original food.
I suppose if there was a local printer, they could achieve something similar without needing to do the actual printing themselves, but I guess that’s part of the point of the bookstore, yes?
As a “video and coffee” establishment, I don’t see where Stardust is the last word on video other than the selection, but I always felt like I wasn’t smart enough to rent there, that the right to rent a film was reserved for someone with a more cultured taste than I. However, the Thursday night Broken Speech Poetry Slam or the local rock shows they have are completely accessible, and I’ve played drums on stage at Stardust many times. Maybe that’s just partly attributed to my training as a musician, but why do I feel I’m below the film?
I guess I’m trying to encourage these book shops to become the Third Place that we are all craving here in Orlando right now. In the land of corporate coffee, the local coffee shop has evolved, mostly in order to survive. I think the local bookstore has a few more steps to take before they’re all grown up.
Which bookstores have you noticed fitting into their niche?
…continued…
This is an old meme I found via Tara Hunt and Pinko Marketing. I’ve been trying to describe local media (or at least the goals of the media I’ve been trying to produce) and what’s supposed to be for sale at Petentials and similar sites. The point isn’t to sell 24,000 of an item priced $1 but 1,000 of an item priced $24, let’s say.
Boutique (from my mac dictionary): French, literally ‘small shop,’ via Latin from Greek apothēkē ‘storehouse.’ Compare with bodega .
Some people are getting my reference to boutique mixed up with luxury brands. Personally, I wouldn’t be caught dead with Louis Vuitton bag and I’m sure most Boutiquers wouldn’t be either. The difference, as the diagram suggests (and there are many more differences than I quickly plotted in this image) is the motivations for buying. I said, “Bought for connection” because, as Sanford commented in the previous posts comment section:
“People go out of their way to purchase certain goods - like moleskine notebooks - or buy cheese from specific vendors because it broadcasts something about who they are. This statement can be personal/internal, shared with a small audience…”
The “small shop” concept is the feeling I got at Villandry in London - it was right in the heart of downtown, near the international embassy district, but instead of being generic, they were hyper-specialized. It was the kind of place you’d bring your aunts and uncles who were visiting town, to show off the awesome places that can grown up in your backyard, and they’d sit back and go “I would never buy anything in here, but I’m in awe of the place.” That’s how I feel at Stardust, that’s likely how some folks feel in the front room at Dandelion Communitea, or the co-op area at Infusion Tea in College Park. What does it all mean? How did these people come to create this art, or this custom stationery, or eco-friendly teacups, or press their own olive oil? Why are there hundreds of movies I’ve never heard of, and how in the hell can they organize them by country and director instead of genre? Who does that?
Boutiques do that. The perfect local bookstore would do that.
Take a look at people who use open source software, you’ll find the same aesthetic. Hand-made, personalized, specific, and powerful in the hands of a well-informed user, but you don’t need to be the guy who wrote it to use it or change it. You think there should be a French translation? That’s up to you. A sixth checkbox? Hack it in, contribute it to the repository. Make this the best tool for you, and therefore the best tool for folks who know where to look.
I could go on all night. Maybe I’ll go on this weekend at BarCamp. But I don’t title it “indy bookstore”. What is it?
BarCampOrlando Downtown April 5th and 6th, 10AM - 6PM
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Podcasts, Orlando, SEO, Music, Links, Events, Video, Coworking, Trends, Standards, floridacreatives, mashups, Graphics, OrlandoScene, Teaching, open source, BarCamp, PodCamp, Storytelling, phone, Web Services, Social Media Events, Social Networking, Programming , add a comment
BarCamp Orlando is a weekend for all types of creative folks to come together and share with each other. The event is dubbed an “unconference”, a format which derives power from the people instead of the event organizers or the presenters. Everyone has an equal opportunity to get on stage and speak, teach or lead a discussion, playing off of the idea that at any given conference, the people in the audience have more knowledge collectively than the presenter(s) on stage.
This second installment of BarCamp will be held over 2 days, Saturday and Sunday, April 5th and 6th, in downtown Orlando at the Wall Street complex, from 10AM - 6PM each day. Registration is free, and a registration promises a shirt and lunch on the sponsors of BarCamp, businesses who are passionate about the technology and media communities of Central Florida.
Saturday is the designated “Dev Day”, playing host to everything from web programming to robot building and video game development and everything in between. iPhone hackers, guys with soldering irons, the latest technologies, and plenty that haven’t been realized yet. Every 30 minutes, both venues will have a different talk going on, so if you’re feeling lost in the jargon, apply the “rule of 2 feet” and check out what’s happening in the other room!
Sunday is dubbed “Media Day”, and is the place for storytellers, journalists, writers, designers, filmmakers, musicians, 2D and 3D artists, podcasters, bloggers and social networkers to show off their work, share their tricks or talk about the state of the industry. From 12 to 1 we will be talking about the “Past, Present and Future of Media in Central Florida”, hoping to give our community a sense of our story, and where we’re headed.
Registration is free, and the event runs from 10AM - 6PM both days with a lunch break at 1PM. The event will be housed in Slingapour’s and One-Eyed-Jack’s, with Wall St Cantina acting as our “hallway”. There will be projectors and microphones, chairs and a space to speak. All you have to do is write your name on the whiteboard and you get 20-25 minutes to share your passions with a group of energetic, engaged geeks and creatives. I would not use the words “captive audience” to describe the BarCamp crowd, because they all want to get involved.
Visit www.barcamporlando.org today and register for Dev Day, Media Day or both days. Wall Street Plaza is at 18 Wall Street Plaza, Orlando, FL 32801 - barcamporlando.org/where has a map to the venue and information about parking.
The 80/20 Rule and Win-Win-Win March 21, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Markteting, Podcasts, Links, Quotes, Video, Trends, Entrepreneurship, open source, Love , 2 commentsGary Vaynerchuk talks about a secret that he thinks is at the core of much of his success.
Reposted from: The 80/20 Business rule…..heck Life - my 2 minute take on life
Many folks who were at Future of Web Apps in Miami had nice things to say about Gary V’s talk. I’ve also seen some other really nice videos by this guy on the web, and probably bookmarked them on my Ma.gnolia - check the RSS or link over there to check my bookmarks.
I can’t say that Gary has all these ideas himself, and he does credit Kathy Sierra and Tara Hunt at the beginning of his video (google those people if you don’t know who we’re talking about).
Right, I don’t think all his ideas are too super-original, but he has a very large and very rabid audience, and he understands how he got them, and he also presents it in a very down-to-earth manner. There is no barrier to entry for Gary unless you’re afraid of spelling his name or people from New York.
I also like how he tells us not to channel Calacanis (or whoever), but just to be ourselves and do it really well and look out for other people.
If you look at your seemingly selfless (my brother would say altruistic) efforts in the ways you are benefiting yourself, the other person and those around you (or you, your partners in business and the community, or you, your fellow artists and the people who enjoy your art), you’re going to have not only success, but a great feeling about how you got there.
Win-Win is not enough, you have to look for Win3. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, true, but if you paid attention in physics, there is always a release of heat or some byproduct of the reaction. If you can find the way to set up a reaction with a happy byproduct, everyone wins.
Take Hydrogen Fuel Cells. They last longer, they’re sustainable to produce (I think), and the waste product is water. The customers are happy because of the small powerful battery, the business should be happy because they’re not working with a limited supply of something like oil, and the people of the world should be happy because there isn’t a battery rotting in the ground.
Open source is the same. When everyone is giving 80%, expecting 20%, the products are amazing, the community is healthy and the users of the products are happy. Win-Win-Win.
I can see this especially given my new situation with Petentials. We have all been giving so much for so long, but it’s getting so easy to do things now, our vision is getting really razor-sharp, we’re having a napalm-like burst of awesome ideas, and we can see the next plateau.
Things are just going really well right now. I have my complaints, but if there was nothing to reach for, I think I would lock myself in my apartment and curl up in a ball for lack of something to do. I am addicted to this stuff, and I’m starting to see the rewards.
Drupal Easy January 23, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Site News, Career, Podcasts, HowTo, Drupal, Video, Liberatr, Web Sites, Facebook, Teaching, open source, Branding , add a commentA while ago, Charlie and I were talking about how we could share our love of Drupal with the rest of the world. Our natural desires to create original content and extend the reach Cervo Systems helped us develop the idea for a website, a podcast and a community around making Drupal accessible to people with no knowledge of programming.
Welcome Drupal Easy to our family.
Today, I answered the first question on the site, about pathauto aliases and XML Sitemaps. I hope we keep getting some mid-level questions like this, but also some much simpler questions.
I have a screencast planned for the near future that compares Drupal against industry standards for security. This will hopefully be the sort of thing PHP haters and team leads will be able to use to understand that Drupal is awesome.
One day in the future, I’d also like to come up with a coherent set of lessons we can sell in a video book format.
I also have a Facebook page which currently has 8 random fans attached, and that’s actually how I got the first question.
I think this is going to be lots of fun, and maybe help us make a little cash once we get that part of it going. Who knows?
Open Handset Alliance November 7, 2007
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Video, Trends, Standards, open source, phone , 1 comment so farIt’s not exactly the same as Bug Labs, but Google posted it on their YouTube channel… is that why they’re calling this a G-phone?
What would it take to build a better mobile phone?
A commitment to openness, a shared vision for the future, and concrete plans to make the vision a reality.
Welcome to the Open Handset Alliance™, a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies who have come together to accelerate innovation in mobile and offer consumers a richer, less expensive, and better mobile experience. Together we have developed Android™, the first complete, open, and free mobile platform.
We are committed to commercially deploy handsets and services using the Android Platform in the second half of 2008. An early look at the Android Software Development Kit (SDK) will be available on November 12th.
Apple drops price of iPhone by $200, gives cookies to the losers September 7, 2007
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Podcasts, Trends, VOIP, itunes, open source, Miro, Songbird , 3 commentsI heard about this yesterday when Apple announced their new line of iPods, including a device that does almost everything the iPhone does except make calls, dubbed “iPod Touch”. Today, Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to everyone who’s already bought an iPhone that says “tough crap, I’ll give you $100 gift card, go away, you bother me.” Obviously, the tech bloggers have something to say about this.
Here’s my response to Jeremy Harrington’s Thoughts on iPhone Price Drop:
My personal opinion is that they lowered the price of the iPhone so they would sell FEWER Touch units… if they are the same price, but one makes calls and the other is a portable hard drive, which one is of more value to you? I bought a Sony Mylo a few weeks before the original iPhone announcement because it makes Skype calls, and it came with a free year of T-Mobile HotSpot… as far as I know, yesterday’s announcements didn’t mention anything about free access at Starbuck’s. For that reason alone, the Mylo was worth it and continues to be a superior device, because I can make VOIP calls with it. I’m sure the next rev of Mylo will have touch and lots of the things that make the iPhone so great right now. I waited on iPhone, and now I’ll wait for a touch/wifi device with a camera (does Touch have that?) that can make VOIP calls, and there will be another giveaway like a free year of wifi because they’ll have to keep up with Apple.
Granted, there are a lot of benefits with buying an iProduct. The synching, the media, the iTunes store, the podcasts… still, I will call attention to my post of a few days past about Miro and Songbird. If you don’t like to, how you say, “pay for media”, you’ll like that Miro and Songbird can do everything iTunes can with the same ease of use and the same download price… free. On top of that, you’ll know that if you want a new feature, you can send a message to the guys and girls that design the software and be heard.
Jeremy said it pretty well:
Apple has become a consumer product business, and the exemplary customer satisfaction they tout in their marketing and interviews took a hit yesterday. If they keep this up they will be a big consumer electronics business like they wish to be, the kind everyone hates.
I hope this doesn’t happen, but it looks like the way things are going.
