Umbraco

Umbraco was my initial and most promising choice for evaluation. At first blush it seemed to have good documentation, flexibility, was open source, permissions structure, and (this is particularly important to me) a growing and active community around it. Umbraco boasted several very enticing features, including revisions, a workflow process, custom document type creation, plugin capability, and the ability to easily integrate custom user controls. Perhaps most important for my personal role in the redesign was that Umbraco didn’t store all of its templating, formatting, and CSS in a database (as many CMS solutions do) and instead wrote to physical files on the server. Changes made in the admin would write to the physical files, and changes to the physical files outside of Umbraco would be reflected in its admin interface.

My optimism started to fade after installing and getting my hands dirty with the CMS. Umbraco is extremely flexible… to the point of almost not functioning as a CMS and more as a framework. Standard features such as predefined document types functionality, blogging, and even a search module weren’t included; these would all need to be developed mostly from scratch. There is a boilerplate sample site plugin that can be installed to learn from, but it is confusing at best. It becomes increasingly clear that Umbraco has been written for the dedicated developer (or at least from their viewpoint) and the time hasn’t been taken to ensure easy understanding from a less programmatic viewpoint. The user interface for the admin is very barebones and somewhat confusing, again defeating the purpose of a CMS.

Umbraco also makes extensive use of XSLT to accomplish much of its content and templating output. This was a large part of the confusion in using the system, as some content seemed to be stored in XML files, while other parts are stored in the database. This led me to questions of how a search feature would work in practice and the performance of storing the data in XML versus pulling it from the DB. The documentation, while prolific, is less than helpful and largely devoid of any sort of standard style guide for ease of understanding.

All-in-all, I can’t recommend Umbraco for the end user, which is ultimately what a CMS is built for. If you have the time and skills needed to develop functionality from scratch, Umbraco provides a nice framework to build upon. If you don’t know XSL/XSLT, it is a requirement to learn it for using the system – even for basic things like outputting a navigation list. The permissions capabilities are standard, but nothing to write home about. The community is active, but it still has a long way to go to achieve the standards of usability and pervasiveness of alternative options, such as WordPress, Drupal, ExpressionEngine, etc.

Sitefinity

Sitefinity is the CMS offering of .NET UI giant Telerik. We already use Telerik’s RadControls product line and are relatively familiar with their methodologies. They offer both a live demo version (without having to register!), and a downloadable trial version. After playing with the freebie web demo to determine basic usability and process, I downloaded the trial and installed it locally.

The user interface and workflow for Sitefinity is much more polished than any of the other CMS options I evaluated, with the possible exception of Drupal. It comes with most of the content types and features that are generally used on websites out-of-the-box, including blogs, events, and even an in-admin email newsletter manager. It has the ability to create custom search modules and RSS feeds without needing to touch the controlling code. This is nice because while the Telerik team has taken the pains to create a module API, Sitefinity doesn’t let you see its source code.

The templating process for Sitefinity is somewhat odd, but I think this lies more in my relative unfamiliarity with the way .NET typically structures and defines “theming” and less with their implementation of it. Nonetheless, I’ve yet to fully understand how one creates a template and the references the necessary resources (like CSS and images). I’m certain the capability is there, and I’m in the process of reading through their 50+ page users manual PDF to discover where it makes its lair.

Sitefinity is currently the front-runner for our system of choice. Non-technical personnel will need to use the system, and the permissions/users structure is granular enough to make this easy to setup. While I have reservations for my personal role in the redesign – namely the creation and implementation of templates and the overall frontend functionality – the admin workflow for editing and adding new content is fairly smooth. Should we need additional functionality (and we will) the well-documented API should be able to accommodate anything we want to do. It’s worth noting that most of the included modules and document types seem to have hard-coded output templates that are compiled into the CMS runtimes; it doesn’t appear that you can edit these, so if you want different markup or functionality than the included functionality, the module will need to be rewritten and provision for that capability included. The $899 price tag is steep especially when compared to the prospect of open source alternatives, but the time has obviously been taken to make the user experience pleasant and useful and build in extensibility.

DotNetNuke

I installed DotNetNuke with less than the normal enthusiam I’ve had for evaluating the other options on my list, largely because of a prior experience with it some years back. Still, I banished this from my mind as unfair and did my best to not let it color my opinions. Much to my pleasant surprise, ‘Nuke turned out to be a worthy (if somewhat eccentric) contender.

Reading through the documentation on developing a theme or “skin”, it quickly became apparent that a lot of thought was put into the engine driving the CMS. This unfortunately hasn’t manifested itself on the admin side of things, as the interface and workflow is a bit too abstracted and becomes confusing. Still, comparing features-to-features ‘Nuke has more capability out-of-the-box than Sitefinity does – but not by much. The skinning process makes more sense to me than the implementation provided in Sitefinity, but both are going to require a shift in both my mindset and workflow compared to my typical fare of WordPress themes.

An important item to note is that DotNetNuke doesn’t really have an admin per se. Instead it operates from the standpoint that, if you are logged in and have the proper permissions, the site is the admin. This doesn’t agree with my personal preferences on the sbuject, but I can see it being easy to use for others who don’t have quite the anal-retentiveness and everything-must-be-separate-and-in-its-proper-placeness that I do. ‘Nuke is currently a close second, largely because of its open-source price tag. While not nearly as user-friendly, its abilities match or exceed those of Sitefinity in the realm of extensibility. I believe the final decision will come down to the numbers and the requirements of our content team; it’s a decision I’m glad I don’t have sole responsibility for.

Kentico

I knew this option was almost certainly out of the running due to its $1999 starting price. Still, they had a web demo to try out free of charge. I was immediately greeted with OMG SO MANY OPTIONS THERE ARE BUTTONS AND BOXES EVERYWHERE!!!!!!!!!!!! To say Kentico is feature-packed would be a grave understatement – I would liken it to taking a drink from a high pressure fire hose. This CMS can do anything and everything, and if it can’t (because I can’t verify that it can because there are so many buttons and switches and levers) then why does it have all those buttons and switches and levers? The user interface reminds me largely of Plesk, which is to say that it is the promise of functionality wrapped in confusion and baked into the flaky crust of enigma.

Kentico can handle the administration of multiple websites and domains, multiple languages, content, navigation, etc from a single admin. It has extensive controls for SEO (namely URL rewriting). It is confusing as hell to edit content and apply themes/skins/styling. Fear it. Kentico is geared at enterprise level needs and packs a lot of punch. I can’t say that I don’t recommend it, but it definitely isn’t for us because of the price and sheer amount of features (and the learning curve associated with them). You may get the vague feeling that night classes will be needed to use the system, and you probably wouldn’t be wrong in that.

Drupal

If you know anything about Drupal, you might find it odd that I’ve included it in this list. Drupal is nominally a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) application, but its development team has taken on the time and headaches needed to make it equally easy to run under IIS and has provided a database abstraction layer to make connecting to a non-supported database as painless as possible. Because of this last item, I thought it would be worth taking the time to evaluate in relation to our needs.

Drupal is nice, it has a lot of capabilities by default and has provision for the creation of custom content types and blogging. The templating capability is easy enough and user interface is relatively simply to understand. I didn’t spend a large amount of time walking through its features because it became quickly apparent that anything it may have had in advantage over Sitefinity or the other options was still overshadowed by the need to write a custom database connector. While not an impossible task, it would take time and testing – an amount of which that would probably come close to the $899 pricetag of Sitefinity when considering the necessary diversion from working on our actual products. Also, it was 5:00 PM on Friday afternoon. Still, it was definitely worth a shot and I would push harder to use this CMS if our infrastructure were less SQL Server-centric.

Some other options that were discarded for various reasons – ranging from infrastructure incompability to install issues to pricing – but that are still worth noting include: AxCMS, Titan CMS, Movable Type (the Enterprise edition contains MSSQL/Oracle connectivity), and Ektron. Like most anything, each of these other options has their own merits and shortcomings. I highly encourage anyone to evaluate these solutions as well if any of the options discussed above fails to meet approval. I welcome comments or experiences that anyone else has had that can better flesh out the pros and cons of the items reviewed on this list.

For my first foray into game reviewing (“professionally” at least), I decided to go to a nice upstart source for indie gaming goodness: the Greenhouse game store. Greenhouse is the brainchild of Penny Arcade authors Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins in conjunction with their partnered game developer, Hothead Games. Greenhouse has becoming a nice front for legitimate indie game development, and I thought it would be appropriate that I chose my first game from its pixel-based catalog.

And Yet It Moves (AYIM from here on out) is an interesting take on the traditional platform adventure/exploration game. The game is developed by Broken Rules, which originally created the game for use on the Wii; since I don’t own one of those (yet) I opted for the PC version. I highly recommend watching the teaser trailer as it will give you a nice feel for the game, and showcases much more of the environments that were available in the demo. The installation and startup interface look nicely polished, which is always a good thing to see as your initial introduction. It doesn’t require any sort of high-end graphic capabilities and is more akin to the PopCap genre of puzzle games in scope. In fact, while the point of the game seems to be exploration, it is done in a manner that involves the solving of puzzles of a directional and topographical nature. Of note is the general slowness of the cursor tracking in the game menus, something I sought to remedy via the control settings and found there was no ability for adjustment.

The puzzle factor of the game is perhaps its most interesting attribute, largely because of the play controls involved in solving the navigation roadblocks presented. The game is entirely keyboard based, having no use of the mouse involved for actual gameplay. Keyboard navigation consists of basic left and right movement with a standard jump action via the A, D, and W keys respectively. But the real novelty comes from the use of the left and right arrows keys to tilt the game axis 90 degrees clockwise or counter clockwise. This is the crux of the game and how the end goal of each level is achieved; obstacles, slopes, pits, etc are placed in your way and you must use the axial movement to change which direction is down. The majority of the demo was spent in freefall using this method for navigation, but interesting results can be attained when executing an axis rotation mid-jump.

Apart from its unique control setup, AYIM is defined by its visual style. The environments consist of platform 3D layers all skinned in a torn or crumpled paper motif, and your character/avatar resembles a notebook sketch brought to life. The animations are relatively smooth, but simple. The visual design is complimented by an eerie soundtrack of low-key music. There are no sound effects apart from the “whooshing” noise that is made when your character meets his demise.

The game is not a sandbox that you are free to explore; it has its limits and dangers. Your character’s death is typically achieved by attaining a critical velocity, upon which your body is shattered into its component pieces. My main complaint about the gameplay is that this magic velocity seems to be too quickly and easily attained, especially while trying to cope with the sudden rotational shifts required. You may also confront doom by falling into one of the “black zones” that border certain sections of the  level map, acting as an “Out of Bounds” device. The game allows for checkpoints that save your progression in each level, but in some cases these points are located a good distance from each other and separated by some complex topographical trials. This makes the game more challenging, but in a manner that hearkens back to the platform arcade games of old. Memory, muscle, and movement repetition are the tools to win the day in many situations, and rarely was I ever at a loss for discerning which direction I was supposed to head.

Overall, I’m left a bit ambivalent as to enjoyment received from the game. It certainly drew me by means of the puzzle factor, but I found myself asking “What is the point?” There is no antagonist, your character is allowed unlimited lives and attempts for each level, and each level basically consists of rotating yourself from point A to point B. I think my goal confusion was further enhanced by the mildly dark mood that the game portrays, a lonely paper figure scrambling his way across landscapes of muted colors and creaking noises. The environment could be described as sublime, but without any sort of inferred underlining meaning.

AYIM does have a multiplayer aspect in the form of web-based scoreboards. There’s no real incentive for submitting your scores and times other than having your name potentially float to the top of the list. In the same vein you may compete in a time trial against a fellow player, either via your local network or over the web. Judging from a quick glance at the scoreboards and user accounts, the game has garnered a fair following in this aspect.

Overall Rating: B

Pros

• Unique directional rotation gameplay
• Easy learning curve
• Lovely hand-drawn and torn paper environments

Cons

• Sluggish menu cursor movement
• Death is easily achieved
• “Multiplayer” feels tacked-on, but this isn’t the games main focus

I’ve been struggling recently with several things regarding my career / web presence over the past months. I’ve done a lot of study on finding a niche and have performed a lot of introspection regarding what I would like to do with my time. I have concluded the following:

• I dislike writing in general. I only like to write about things that I feel passionate for and have in-depth experience and knowledge of.
• Most of the things that I am passionate about and have experience in have already been written about thousands of times over.
• I dislike most of the people in my industry. I think many of them are very pretentious and show this in their commentaries and writings. An exception to this is Karj.
• If I do not contribute something to the web, then I will feel like a failure. It needs to be something personal, something mine. I believe it is important to the purpose of the web (and for my own sanity) that I add to it.
• Since I dislike writing and much of what I am good at has been covered over and over, I become mired in apathy toward producing any sort of content.

So… here I am again. I’ve decided to stab out in a direction that is entertaining for me, encompasses one of my life passions, and something that I feel I can place a personal mark on. I’m going to test drive and review indie games.

For those of you unacquainted with what an “indie” game is… it basically means that it isn’t produced by one of the mainstream conglomerates, like Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Sega, Nintendo, etc. You can liken it to indie movie production or the indie music scene, the story is the same: the little guys making their own way by kicking ass and taking names. The indie game sphere has exploded in just the last few years and there are tons of solo gaming projects being undertaken. Some are in it for the money, some are pure experimentation, many are written in their parents’ basement. These are my people, and I think I can give some objective and useful reviews.

So, for starters I’m going to try and install/download/play online one indie game every week or so (caveat: or so) and write the reviews on this site. If all goes well, I may end up migrating to a dedicated domain.

Feels good to have a plan.

Shira Lazar

Shira has worked for companies such as Yahoo!, AOL, Movies.com, Hollywood.com, and Verizon. Recently, she has been the host & moderator for several tech conferences including Twiistup, Digital Family Reunion, and Girls In Tech.

BigOmaha Guide

Shira started out as the first face we saw at the conference, acting in her role as MC and general host. I’d like to preface all comments I make with a disclaimer that Ms. Lazar may be the most witty and intelligent person on the planet. That being said, she came off as a complete airhead for most of the conference, to the point where you could hear a collective sigh from the audience whenever she took the stage. She tried to participate in the wind-down of whichever speech was currently going on, typically displaying that she knew next to nothing about what was being said. I suppose that Shira fulfilled the role of MC admirably, but her demeanor and commentary was in stark contrast to most of the obvious professionalism being exhibited by the other participants.

Micah Laaker

Micah leads User Experience for the Yahoo! Open Strategy, helping developers/publisher build inside the network and expand Yahoo! off-network. His work includes My Yahoo!, the ACLU pizza film, an MF Doom music video, 2 technical manuals, Tall Tales illustrations, the SVG-powered BattleBots site, and hip hop powerhouse music label DefJam.com.

BigOmaha Guide

Micah started his speech saying that “this is all going to be about my ego.” Everyone laughed; if only we knew that his statement were true. Another disclaimer: from his commentary, I do feel that Micah would be a neat-o guy to hang out with and trade stories. However, his presentation lacked… everything. I don’t know really what it was supposed to be about – ostensibly info on how awesome all the work that Yahoo! has been doing for its developer network to make it easier to use their powerhouse to drive data to your site. That would have been a nifty presentation. Instead, we were treated to the professional life story of Micah Laaker… which would have been appropriate as an introduction, but not as the bulk of the presentation.

Micah went through and did relatively thorough explanations of his childhood, his early starts into creative design, and eventually a lot of talk about his big break: DefJam.com. The meandering path eventually lead to talks about all the awesome things you can do with Yahoo!’s services, like Pipes, but with the caveat that Micah didn’t really understand a lot of the inner workings and that it was very technical and boring. And in conclusion thank you for your time. That was the entire presentation. Micah was second in line after Jason Fried from 37Signals, so I felt a bit gypped.

Adriana Gascoigine and Girls In Tech

Adriana is the Director of Corporate Communications for hi5. Launched in 2003, h15 is now one of the world’s largest social networks – ranked as a top 20 website globally and the #1 social network in 31 countries. In March 2007, Adriana launched Girls In Tech, and organization focused on touting women’s achievements in tech and beyond.

BigOmaha Guide

This was my least favorite presentation, for a variety of reasons. Where Micah Laaker’s ramblings may not have had a point, they were at least interesting. The Girls In Tech presentation lacked point, purpose, power, and anything remotely interesting enough to draw attention. All the other speakers (including Mr. Laaker) focused on offering some sort of advice or motivation. The Girls In Tech presentation was purely an organizational sales pitch, and a very poor one at that.

The speech went something like this:

“Hi, I’m Adriana Gascoigne from Girls In Tech. Girls In Tech is an organization that promotes women in technology careers. We promote women in technology careers because there need to be more of them. There need to be more women in tech careers because there aren’t enough. We’re starting a local chapter here in Omaha, which is awesome. Thank you for your time. Questions?”

Abbreviated, but not exaggerated. I have never been opposed to the movement for equality for minorities and women in the workplace, but there has to be some sort of point to it at least. Arguing that the reason that there need to be more women in a field because there “aren’t enough” is horrible reasoning. During the ending Q&A section, an audience member asked how much is enough. Ms. Gascoigne dodged this question, making some sort of oblique reference to wanting to view more statistics on ideal demographics. In addition, I find the idea of arguing for more women (or men, or cows, pullets, robots, whatever) in anything based strictly on there not being an arbitrary number of them, very silly. Especially if you’re arguing for equality across the board. If everyone is equal, does it matter that there happen to be more cows than robots working in the soilent green factories?

Lastly, Ms. Gascoigne never actually explained what Girls In Tech does. They are a chapter-based organization that promotes women in technology fields, but what does that actually come down to. No mention was made of fundraising or promotional events, professional services, PR campaigns, etc. An audience member (a women engineer, I might add) asked if GIT sponsors programs for schools that raise awareness for younger girls about possible tech career paths they hadn’t considered. Ms. Gascoigne skirted this question as well, referencing that there were a lot of programs like that out there, and citing NASA as an example. That’s all well and good, but what exactly is it that you do? It took a trip to the GIT website to discover the one-line answer: “Some of these resources include, educational workshops and lectures, networking functions, round table discussions, conferences, social engagements, and recruitment events.”

Matt Mullenweg

Matt is the founding developer of the popular open-source blogging software WordPress and writes a popular blog, Photo Matt. After quitting his job at CNET, he has devoted the majority of his time to developing a number of open source projects. In late 2005, he founded Automattic, the business behind WordPress.com and Akismet.

BigOmaha Guide

I’m a huge fan of WordPress, though I recognize its flaws and areas where it is lacking. So it’s no surprise that I was really very excited to hear a speech from its father figure, regardless of what the talk was specifically about. However, my dreams were shot when it was announced that Matt had canceled and wasn’t going to be attending the conference. I found out on a WordPress discussion board via LinkedIn that Matt didn’t cancel, but instead wasn’t able to make the connecting red eye flight to Omaha because of delays in previous flights down the road. That sucks. I’m sure he would have given a great presentation.

Joe Olsen

Joe Olsen is the CEO and co-founder of Phenomblue, a multi-platform interactive software creation company. His footprint on today’s emerging media landscape has been recongized via several industry-specific awards targeting everything from his collective creative to the concept and delivery of complex design and digital systems.

BigOmaha Guide

I’d heard of Phenomblue in passing, but my work and interests typically travel in different circles. Still I thought the perspectives of an interactive software and installation developer would be interesting and unique given the hype and dominance of web applications, UX, and UI. Instead, Mr. Olsen came out on stage to perform a lengthy introduction to Jeffrey Kalmikoff and to encourage everyone to “be a balla” in their business. He even had us do the Branson-esque divided room chanting where one half of the conference hall yelled “Stop Hustlin’!” and the other half followed with “Start ballin’!” Had it not been for other other fantastic speakers up to this point, I would have been seriously questioning if the 7 hour trip northward had been worth it.

Ok, enough of the bad. Next time, I’ll do a review of the awesomeness that I was treated to, and breakdowns on individual speakers and their topics.

Thumbnail image credit: Zoran

I wanted to start this brief series of articles on the BigOmaha conference with kind of an overview of what went down, and my overall impressions.

BigO was started to “bring forward-thinking creatives, entrepreneurs, and innovators to Omaha.” That’s a pretty broad goal, and the dynamic at the conference reflected the breadth of purpose. Clarification wasn’t made about the conference centering around Web-related practices and approaches, so a wide variety of disciplines made a show. I spoke to several web and software developers, but also to a fair amount of graphic designers (working mostly in print), PR consultants, and even a few accountants. The age groups were just as random as the career base, and the visual demographic was a mixture of suits and sandals, cocktail dresses and jeans, punk hair and baldness.

The really huge range of attendee demographics could have been a big factor in the success of the conference, and I think that it was for quite a few people. However, I personally found it to be a difficult barrier to overcome because there was little common ground to be found in most places. I made a concentrated effort to introduce myself at the various parties and break periods, but wasn’t able to find much to discuss with those that I met. Jarad Johnson, one of the other three Springfieldians to make the journey north, related a similar story where he tried to get to know a fellow attendee. It went something like this:

• Jarad: “So, what do you do?”
• Attendee: “I’m a developer.”
• Jarad: “Oh, neat! So do you do mostly frontend or backend?”
• Attendee: (frowns) “Uhh… mostly commercial real estate?” (confused)
• Jarad: (blank stare)

The messages shared by the speakers were universally applicable to most businesses, so I don’t think that anyone would have been wasting their time attending the conference. But because all of the speakers and the information presented was geared toward a more South By Southwest style crowd, I would tend to think that a lot of what was discussed may have fallen on deaf ears. You could also make the argument that those industries that have traditionally been blind to the Web are the ones who probably needed to hear it the most.

As far as the actual organization of the conference, the amenities, the preparation, etc… I was impressed. The branding done for the conference was extremely consistent and had a lot of whimsy, which made it very memorable (bravo, Oxide Design). Other than the lanyards we had to wear being a bit finicky, all the materials we were given were put together nicely. The actual conference was held at the Kaneko library, which was one hell of a space. I wish we had a library half as nice as that one in Springfield – and it wasn’t even finished yet. Downtown Omaha is really very beautiful, and the conference held its opening and closing parties at some really nifty local venues.

The speakers were, on the whole, exhilarating. I’ll get to some of their ideas and topics in later posts, but there was a powerhouse lineup of Jason Fried, Jeffrey Kalmikoff, Micah Baldwin, and Gary Vaynerchuk that made for a lot of really interesting and (I hate using this word) inspirational talks and discussions. Some of the speakers were extremely disappointing, and I’ll get to that in a later post as well.

This was Year One for BigOmaha, and I think they did a really fantastic job overall with giving it a good jumpstart that may make it grow into something to rival SXSW, An Event Apart, or Web 2.0 down the road. Props to Silicon Prairie News for taking a shot in the dark. More to come once I get my notes organized. In closing, I’m attaching some scans on my notebook from BigO, with some random observations I felt compelled to write down:

Uncoverr recently came into my life in a very…”unique”…way. The idea behind it is pretty neat, so I thought I’d churn out a brief synopsis and some of the interesting background information on it.

In short, Uncoverr is a book site. It targets books related to web professionals, which typically means publications on CSS, JavaScript, LAMP, etc. They have a sponsorship from Sitepoint, who is more than happy to provide them with books to review and increase their sales. They also recently have hooked up with O’Reilly and will hopefully be reviewing their books soon. In addition to the various book reviews, Uncoverr also presents interviews with various web notables, such as Andy Budd and Jonathan Snook.

Objectively

Before I start a review of the site, how it’s put together, and how well it accomplishes its goals, I have to admit something. You see, I was recently approached by the person who established the site, Lachy Groom, to write reviews for books periodically. That being said, I’ve tried to leave my own self-promotion out and take the site for what it is.

As a book review site and affiliate link box (as all book review sites ultimately are), Uncoverr only moderately succeeds. The idea of targeting this genre of books is a good one, but the site is slightly disjointed in stringing together the reviews, user feedback, and push marketing of a book. The most useful navigation element is the sidebar topic list, which instantly links you to a category on, say…JavaScript…and then provides a list of all available books on record with their reviews and links to purchase them on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Powell’s. However, this navigation never includes all topics by default (just the most popular ones), so the entire offering of the site isn’t visible by default unless you click the “see all” link.

The reviews are fairly formulaic, and I say this having written one myself. None of what I have seen posted exists as a shining example of writing prowess or a beacon of light in the dark world of bad grammar, but they’re just book reviews. They serve their purpose of a brief introduction and opinion on the book, and do it succinctly.

Oddly enough, the site features no user capability. No logins, no personal accounts, nothing. This severely hinders the extraneous meta data that is the real core of any site trying to serve the public. Uncoverr was launched in a beta state, so I can only assume that user features are on The List.

Randomly Interesting

It’s worth relating some of the interesting facts about Uncoverr. Namely, information about its benefactor, Lachy Groom. Lachy was recently featured in an interview for the Sitepoint Tribune monthly newsletter, focusing on young entrepreneurs. Lachy is 14. He lives in Australia, and runs multiple web businesses, including PSD to WordPress. Lachy and I have talked via Skype, and while his youth is obvious in some of his opinions and phrasing, he has a keen business acumen. And he’s much more intelligent than most of the lurkers on the web.

Overall, Uncoverr has a lot of potential and work is being done to develop interest around the site and its reviews. It will be interesting to watch as more features are added, its reviewer pool grows, and more supporting publishers are drawn to the site.

A little over a month ago, I noticed an interesting job posting on Krop: Blog Writer.  It was for a new web design blog and resource site, and it sounded really intriguing.  So, I thought “What the heck?” and sent off a brief introduction and invited the powers that be to look at the content I was pushing out on my site.  Long story short, they decided to give me a shot and I now have a post up and running on their site.  It’s generated a lot of interesting feedback, and I highly recommend checking it out and weighing in with your insights.

But I don’t want to stroke my own ego; I really want to put in a plug for what is rapidly becoming a very important resource for the creative web professional.  Web Designer Depot (henceforth known as WDD since I’m lazy) has only been around for about 2 months, at least going by the date of their first post.  It’s obvious that a great deal of thought and preparation were put into the launch of this site, as evidenced by the job postings, design efforts, and all around marketing that I’ve noticed surrounding its sudden appearance.  They’ve even been featured in the WordPress Showcase.  Their mission statement as seen on their About Us page:

We love design and are passionate about it in all its shapes and forms. Our vision is to make WDD a great showcase for this passion and feed a worldwide audience of savvy designers eager to learn more and share their knowledge with the design community.

It’s not stated outright, but this seems to imply that they view the web as a sort of merging point where all prior forms of design contribute to produce something that is more than what it has come before; something more refined and more tempered by the direct responses and involvement of communities, yet fluid by definition.  That’s awesome.  Go mission statement.

WDD has come off the starting block with a lot of really interesting posts.  There are the ubiquitous posts and tutorials about Photoshop, and nearly every post title follows the current trend of enumerating the points you’ll cover (guilty!), but that’s fine.  Every blog needs its core of those type of posts; they never cease to be useful.  But some of my favorites thus far have been about topics of a slightly more involved variety, such as:

• How NOT To Design A Logo
• Why Mood Boards Matter
• Designing Outside Your Comfort Zone
• Video Game Design Between 1990-2008

Anyway, check it out.  Subscribe to the feed.  Read.  Share.  Enjoy.  Hopefully you’ll see more of me on there too :)

Over the holidays I’ve been going through my ever-lengthening To-Do List and trying to cross off some of the things that I’ve been meaning to get to for quite some time.  I decided to put off teaching myself how to train ferrets and underwater basket weaving, and instead try and finally get my massive book collection into an online, electronic format.  I went straight to www.librarything.com to get started because, well, everyone uses it (or so I’ve observed).  What follows is an overview of my trial experiences with the LibraryThing service, Shelfari, and Goodreads:

LibraryThing

This service has come highly recommended from several people I know.  I few of them even have updates via their site when they add new books, and there seems to be an integration capability with FriendFeed.  After going through their site briefly, I created an account and started to add books.

Pros:

• Huge user backing (come on…everyone’s doing it).
• Customized search options from multiple library databases.
• You can use a barcode scanner to import books (that’s really nifty).  Problem is, you have to have access to a barcode scanner.
• Advanced statistics viewing (users, libraries, book types, etc.)
• Ability to create widgets to embed on your site/blog/whatever.
• Well-developed community of readers, reviewers, and authors.  Good perk if you’re in it for the people as well as the books.
• Supports a multitude of languages, netting it a much larger user base.
• Allows you to link your books to Amazon with a referral code so you can make some bank.

Cons:

• Since LibraryThing seems to be so popular, they have some really critical performance issues.  As I write this, their site has been down for almost 2 hours 3 hours now.
  EDIT: at the time of writing, LibraryThing was undergoing massive maintenance.  They never bothered to give a notification about that though.
• The site is horrid looking.  Not quite 1990-era…but almost.
• The customized search makes you choose which library from the 690+ they have to search from.  Not a big deal, except they neglected to include a “Search From All” feature.  So if one library doesn’t have your book, it becomes a guessing game to which library you go to search for it.  You can always manually enter a book, though.
• Adding books is time-consuming and somewhat painful.  Besides to aforementioned search issue, every time you add a book you must search again for another one.  This is a massive usability problem if you’ve done a search by author and want to add multiple books.
• Likewise, choosing your correct edition is a headache as you have to view the books individually and select the edition from their details page.  Because of the performance issues, this is a bigger hassle than it really needs to be.
• Semi-pay service.  200 books for free, then you have to pay $10/yearly or $25/lifetime.  Not a big deal to the casual reader, but for weirdos like me who have hundreds of books it is an imposition.  But, I’m not opposed to supporting such a great idea as a personal online book catalog.

Shelfari

Apparently this service was featured on Oprah, or her magazine, or another of her billion publications; I didn’t know that going in to it.  I originally found the site from this post: Catalog your books online! (Including Test).  Kim, the author, had embarked upon a similar journey as what I’m describing here.  Credit where credit is due :)

Pros:

• Shelfari, in basic visual terms, is much easier to look at and comprehend than the retro LibraryThing setup.  There are less navigation options, it it follows a slightly more traditional navigation structure.
• The site doesn’t have near the performance issues that LibraryThing did.  However, there is a downside (see below).
• Shelfari is owned by Amazon, so it has the full backing of one of the most powerful entities on the web (for whatever that’s worth).
• Adding books is a very easy process.  You can add multiple books from a returned list, with details such as “I’ve read this” or “I own this book” all in AJAX-ified goodness.
• Allows the creation of multiple widgets, each being customized to your needs.  Of the 3 services I’ve tested, this is the only one that powers its widgets with CSS that can be restyled to suit your whims.
• Completely free.
• Allows you to link your books to Amazon with a referral code so you can make some bank.
• Book searchs are more compiled, with less inclusion of extraneous copies and versions of the same book (duplicates).

Cons:

• There may not be many performance issues, but there isn’t a very large user base (yet).  The interface for your bookshelf (books you’ve added) is very graphics & javascript heavy…so any increases in popularity might cause it to become extremely cumbersome.
• The community surrounding Shelfari is relatively non-existence…at least compared to the behemoth LibraryThing.
• As far as I can tell, only supports English across the site.  Doesn’t mean you can’t add books in other languages though.
• Lots of fun ads from Amazon :)
• Even though their site is obviously superior in usability and style to that of LibraryThing, they seem to do less to promote themselves than LT does.
• No FriendFeed integration (negligible).
• Lacks some of the statistical data about libraries and individual books that true bibliophiles may crave (also negligible).

Goodreads

I happened upon Goodreads while checking FriendFeed to see if they had an integration available or Shelfari.

Pros:

• Very stylish, and yet still light on the graphics and bandwidth.  Feels much more optimized than either of the other services, having very fast response times to information requests.  Follows a navigation scheme that is different from Shelfari, yet still easily understood.  It might even be better in the long run.
• Seems to have an active, and growing, community.
• Searching for and adding books is the easiest and fastest of the 3 services reviewed here.   Searches
• Has built-in integration with Twitter, in addition to Facebook, Myspace, and Bebo.
• Widgets!  They aren’t customizable, but all the code is provided.  Simply copy and paste.
• Allows you to link your books to Amazon with a referral code so you can make some bank.
• Has a unique authors and sellers program, that I haven’t really explored yet.
• Completely free.

Cons:

• Still can’t compete with the sheer number of people that seem to be using LibraryThing.  I guess you have to decide how big of a crowd you want to be a part of.
• Widgets for your site are not customizable, and the better options are Flash, which kind of sucks.
• You still have to go to a separate details page to choose the correct edition of your book if it’s different from the one pulled up in the search.
• English only as far as I can tell.
• AdSense ads abound in your members area.  Hey, have to pay the bills somehow, right?

Conclusion

In the midst of doing the research for this article, I was accused of being “a designer, rather than a librarian, bibliophile, author, reviewer, and/or community member”.  I guess I have to plead guilty to half those counts, but I am a bibliophile (in my own right), an author, a review, and a community member (if just a lowly troll).  However, this particular sentiment was voiced from a proponent of LibraryThing when I had initially declared that Shelfari was much better, and I get the point of his jibe.  If you’re looking for a vast community of other book-nerds (a good portion of them probably academics) then LibraryThing is the obvious choice.

But, if you’re like me and enjoy books on a more recreational level, and simply want to be able to catalog your books to keep track of them and display them on your site…I’m going to have to say that Shelfari or Goodreads are much better services.  I say this mostly from a usability standpoint, as most of the extraneous features (like the widgets, Amazon referral codes, etc) are the same across the 3 services.  I personally have decided to throw my hat in the ring for Goodreads.  It was easy to use, fast, and had all the features I needed plus a vibrant community should I magically discover extra time in my day for such pursuits.  I would invite anyone searching for their ideal book catalog service/community to post a comment and let everyone know which service you use, and why you use it.  Perhaps there is some undiscovered gem floating around out there.

Image credit: 11010010

For most people, FeedBurner is old news.  Nearly anyone who has subscribed to an RSS feed from a major site has probably come into contact with a feed redistributed by FeedBurner, whether you’ve known it or not.  Heck, even I, a relative newcomer to this land of pingbacks, comments, and calibrated SEO measures has known of FeedBurner for quite sometime.  However, knowing it’s there and trying to use it are two different things, and I recently had a very pleasurable experience when I signed up for my first FeedBurner feed.  So, I thought I would share why I thought it was so nifty, and offer a few quick tips on how to easily get your WordPress site spitting out feeds enhanced with FeedBurner.

What Is FeedBurner?

I felt I should answer this first, before I dug into it a bit more.  Even knowing about FeedBurner beforehand didn’t really give me a clear indication of what FeedBurner actually does.  So, here’s the skinny:

• FeedBurner is, at a basic level,  a service that takes a single feed that you provide, and recompiles it into a “super feed” that is readable in all formats (RSS1, RSS2, Atom, etc)
• FeedBurner also modifies your feed output to include a number of custom features, such as animated images and links for social networking in each post (Share on Facebook, Digg It, etc)
• You are given a stats report, detailing who your subscribers are and what they are reading.
• Other options are available, like having FeedBurner notify indexing services when your feed has been updated, integrating AdSense

Why Is It So Awesome?

Lots of reasons.  The entire goal of having a blog (and the giant dispersal of information we know as the “Internet”) is to reach as many people as possible.  FeedBurner’s ability to take a single feed and tailor multiple XML formats for various readers means that you can hit a wider range of potential recurring readers.  Couple that with its custom modifications to include monetization (AdSense) and social networking links to improve your shareability, means that you have a much higher potential for making the most of your blog/podcast/rightwing ultra-conservative anarchist revolutionary feed.

Being a designer, I’m innately concerned with the presentation of whatever materials are before me.  With this in mind, the first thing I noticed was the superb usability FeedBurner brings to its services.  The homepage has a fair amount of information, but the reason you are most likely there is front and center and ready for easy use:

I was able to sign up for a free account, and convert my WordPress default feed to a FeedBurner super mutant feed in about a minute.   I then instantly had access to this wonderful workflow navigation:

Everything I need is right there, in an ordered format, with helpful hints and instructions under each tab.  That’s a breath of fresh air compared to a lot of web apps, which can easily become so cumbersome that they collapse under the usability issues of their own vast amount of features.  On top of that, I couldn’t help but notice the subtle humor and personality present throughout the site.  This is something I’ve come to expect (and enjoy) from most Google-owned services, which breaks the monotony of the business of business.  I found this starting page viewable immediately after creation of my first feed particularly…um…cute? :

It makes sense, it gives you some options, and it even makes you smile a little.  Perfect.

FeedBurner & WordPress

Ok, so now we’ve got this nifty hybridized feed that monetizes, optimizes, customizes and Simonizes…how do we get it into WordPress?  This part is really simple, thanks to Google/FeedBurner fully supporting the FeedSmith plugin for WordPress.  Basically, you follow the instructions on this page: Creating your WordPress feed (self-hosted WordPress).  The page details a 5-step process, but it can basically be summarized as:

1. Download FeedSmith, upload it to your plugins folder, and activate it.
2. Go to Settings > FeedSmith, and paste in the URL to your FeedBurner feed and hit the button…you’re done.

Easy.  There’s also a guide for using FeedBurner through WordPress.com, found here: Creating your WordPress feed (WordPress.com)

FeedBurner isn’t just another WordPress supporting service; it’s a standalone that you can use in any situation where a default feed can use some major optimization.  Try it out, recommend it to your friends, all hail Google.

I wrote a post the other day detailing my adventures with and subsequent complaints of Pandora’s feed/widget creation.  However, at the end of it all, I was victorious and the proud new owner of a customized widget showing my bookmarked songs and their album covers…or so I thought.

The nasty surprise

Naturally after working with something like this that tested my patience, I wanted to brag to someone about how awesome I was to get it working.  The only person who happened to be online that would have appreciated this was fellow technophile and WordPress-er, Matt Stublefield.

One of the things I love (and hate) about Matt, is how quickly he can identify a critical problem in a setup and waste no time in notifying you about it.  I’d like to think that I reciprocate this service to him as well.  In this particular instance, he noticed a huge, gaping hole in my awesome Pandora setup:

• Matt Stublefield: Man, 569kb in 14.4 seconds.
• Ryan Burrell: for?
• Matt Stublefield: Your site.
• Ryan Burrell: …there shouldn’t be near that much data
• Matt Stublefield: The Pandora stuff is huge.
• Ryan Burrell: what do you use to do bandwidth profiling?
• Matt Stublefield: Firebug.
• Ryan Burrell: oh lord…I know what it’s doing
• Ryan Burrell: those album images…those are full resolution

Yeah, that’s right.  The feed Pandora generates only allows the album art images to be a fixed size…yet the source image they draw from is a full-sized 500 x 433 image.  And I’m loading 5 of those at the bottom of my page.

The journey continues

I have no control over the setup of Pandora’s feed generation.  And, despite my best efforts, this last little discovery has been the nail in the coffin for using resources straight from Pandora.  I mentioned in my previous article about finding this page: rgb255 » Blog Archive » Pandora Widget now also as Plugin.  When I had tried working with it before it had caused some plugin conflicts.  However, having an extra several hundred kilobytes of image data on my page is inexcusable, so I guess I’ll do some investigation and see if I can get this plugin to work again.

I ended my last article with a plea to Pandora and any other large company serving the web community to please Please PLEASE work to make your resources as standards-compliant and customizable as possible.  Just a little more effort on Pandora’s end would have made their feed resources just as exceptional as their music service.