Sticky Note Explosion

Audio Recordings with Yahoo Medaiplayer

2009-09-10T10:20:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday to Me (original by Cracker)
Space Oddity (original by David Bowie)
Jackie's Lament (original by The Baseball Project

Had problems getting Firefox to play Window Media Audio. Although the player was helpful in suggesting an add-in to allow wma files to play in Firefox browser.
So I ripped the songs in iTunes and uploaded these m4a files. I'll be curious to see how the player handles two different media type, also I wonder if you can create multiple playlists per page.

Happy Birthday to Me (original by Cracker)
Space Oddity (original by David Bowie)
Jackie's Lament (original by The Baseball Project

Next I am going to add the playlists via an XSPF ("spiff") xml file, as recommended on the Yahoo! Mediaplayer Wikia support page.

Yahoo Music Player

2009-09-08T17:53:00.000-07:00

Just discovered this Yahoo! Mediaplayer that operates as a JavaScript include. I don't know anything about it other than from listening to music on Steve Wynn's website. It looks pretty awesome and easy to use. Just include the Javascript library and apparently it will id all the links with audio files attached. Pretty awesome implications for local musician and bands (not having to sign rights to their content away to MySpace).

I am wondering about the impact on user experience and how that will be affected by using sure a free tool. Experiment to commence soon!

New Buisness Cards and Personal Branding

2009-09-06T17:31:00.000-07:00

Just created a new business card template. Its kind generic, without explicitly declaring any job title so it is useful in just about any professional setting (ie: Interactive Communications Coordinator, Freelance, etc). Has the basic contact info stuff, my broader professional identifications and some of the more prevalant activities that might be useful to let people know I am involved in. Not sure I am into the color scheme, but I know I am into something understated and more grayscale.

I had a little bit of fun thinking about creating personal logo.

Something that could be easily identifiable from a quick glance and scalable to icon like size with some relevant meaning. Figure it might have an impact as people go from meeting me in person, to looking at my card, to taking a look at my website, to stumbling across other content online (such as a blog entry). Not sure how far I plan to take it, just experimenting right now.

Using Visio to Draw a Vector Sticky Note

2009-08-25T19:51:00.000-07:00

To work on my chops with Visio I have been tracing over digital images and creating a vector rendition. I find this both helps with improving familiarity with Visio and helping along my artistic/sketching skills. I have to think about how to compose a drawing within the limits of the tool. This project I wanted a clean, simple, cartoon-like illustrated sticky note. I liked the incremental, block shading effect. Here its is along with the Visio file. Please feel free to download and use, so long as you give me credit where appropriate, under a Creative Commons license.

Visio Sticky Note file (vsd 123kb)

Sticky Note by Andrew D Szydlowski is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.stickynoteexplosion.com.

I am Going to WordCamp

2009-08-23T14:23:00.000-07:00

After having used WordPress for the last couple year, with varied degrees of success, I think its time for some for me learn a bit more about it! Thats why...

The main purpose for me to to find out the cool usages of WordPress, specifically ways in which I can use it as a CMS. Think this could hold some good potential for some new way to employ WP. And for the price, $25 + service charge, it's worth it just to see what it may hold. Also seems like a great warm-up for InfoCamp! Seems to have a similar unconference-hybrid setup. Could be very cool!

Interactions and CSS

2009-08-06T23:39:00.000-07:00

Just had an "Aw shit this is awesome!" moment using CSS to implement some interactions instead of javascript. Advantage being, CSS is more accessible because JavaScript can be turned off, on top of just being plan easier and more elegant.

While trying to put together an awesome button for a registration task for InfoCamp, I use a pretty handy buttonmaker tool from CoolText.com.

This code...

<style>
#reg-button { background-image: url(cooltext430521759.png); }
#reg-button:hover { background-image: url(cooltext430521759MouseOver.png); }
#reg-button:active { background-image: url(cooltext430521759MouseDown.png); }
</ style>

<a style="float: left; width: 264px; height: 53px;" id="reg-button" title="Register for InfoCamp Button" ></a>

Does the same as this...

<a style="float: left; width: 264px; height: 53px;" id="reg-button"<
<img src="http://www.blogger.com/cooltext430521759.png"
onmouseover="this.src='cooltext430521759MouseOver.png';"
onmouseout="this.src='cooltext430521759.png';"
onmousedown="this.src='cooltext430521759MouseDown.png';"
onmouseup="this.src='cooltext430521759.png';" />
alt="Register for InfoCamp Button"
</a>

and actually the iteractions are a little bit smoother and more natural, win-win!

Frustrated by Twitter Search

2009-07-20T16:22:00.000-07:00

I have been constantly frustrated by the time limitations on Twitter searches. I have noticed that you can only go back a couple weeks using the Twitter provided search engine. Seems they don't have the capacity to do the extensive searching back any farther. Most third-party sites focus on the "real time search" and only use the Twitter API. I guess maintaining an index of all tweet would demand a lot of resources.

This has been something I have wanted to fold into the the InfoCamp materials for this year, because the participants were so active on Twitter last year. It would be a great way to give an idea of what happened. So the best I could find was doing a Google search for InfoCamp and limiting results to twitter.com

site:twitter.com infocamp

I did eventually find one tweet tracker/archive download. Thanks Mel Carson for blogging about The Archivist. I think I am going to check it out.

-------------------
Okay after looking into The Archivist, it required a .NET upgrade that I didn't want to deal with so I have been finding some other options:

Twapper Keeper - supposedly will scan based on Hashtags and archive tweets. No account needed to create and there are some other sorting functions I didn't get into.
Print Your Tweet - Mainly for your personal archive, but they seem to have added a search archive function. Required login with my Twitter account gave me pause and I haven't used it yet.
What The Hashtag?! - Define what the hashtag means. Seems to have some archiving but not complete.

InfoCamp and Social Networking

2009-07-09T21:48:00.000-07:00

I was talking with Michael recently, attempting to avoid dealing with some of the more unpleasant business side of consulting, and we started riffing about the value of creating an InfoCamp social network and some design ideas. We got pretty jazzed up and wound up spending the better part of the afternoon talking the scenario out.

Ultimately, I think that adding a simple, independent social network could add a tremendous value in the time leading up to and after the actual event. We try to give people an idea of who will attend and what presentations will be like for weekend and have largely been using a wiki to capture that information. Honestly, I think that using a wiki can be too much of a barrier for a lot of people to get involved early. Asking for the kind of info we are looking for in the form of specific profile questions might make that process easier for some portion of our user group and also provide a more fluid and immediate opportunity for feedback (ie: better ux ;)

This method might also helps people get an idea of what the make up of the weekend will be like and probably most valuable to those that are not very familiar with InfoCamp. It's more effective to show people what it is, than trying to describe it. It will also help shape the context of the discussions and subject matter beforehand, so there is more time to jump in rather then feeling out and orienting largely starting on Sat morning (which can be tough no matter how much coffee is there).

The biggest things would be to keep things as streamlined and simple as possible. Aimed at only solving the most immediate concerns. I have really enjoyed the IA Summit's Crowdvine social network implementation.

The way I see it there would have to be three main types of objects in our system with various interactions:

Participants: Who can connect to other participants (typical friends type stuff or want-to-meet),indicate when they plan to attend (Sat and/or Sunday), provide identification info about themselves (Twitter accounts, Blogs, Linkedin), and what kind of session they are interested in.

Presentation Pitch: These would have various level of info (topics, titles, descriptions, presentation pitch). Other participants can "like" the presentation idea and (optionally) comment. Participants would have to indicate the level of commitment they have to presentation ("riffing", "thinking about it", "committed", etc) and what type of presentation they see it being (panel, PPT presentation, roundtable, theatrical, product demo, etc). And perhaps most importantly indicating what day they intend to give the presentation.

Links: These should be studies, articles, products, or any other relevant references to subject matter of interest to the participants. These can be accompanied by a description and be associated to a Presentation Pitch. Community can "like" it and perhaps have some Digg like functionality to show what the community at large is excited about.

There are a ton of other functions that could be useful, but given time and technical constraints, it will probable be best to leverage what tools are available (ie: discussion boards on Facebook or Linkedin, Slideshare for slide posting)

I have been looking into many ideas and have yet to settle on one. They range from creating a Facebook App, to using plug-ins and adapting Drupal or WordPress, to using social networking platforms like Elgg or Dolphin. I am initially leaning towards something that we can use for our own specific purpose, have our own strong branding and customize exactly the way we want.

Anyway, this is in the research and formulation stage, so we'll see if putting something like this together is actually feasible. I am just pretty excited about it right now. So we'll see what happens.

RT - Learnings from the Twittersphere

2009-05-07T00:20:00.000-07:00

This is a copy of an e-mail I sent to a new friend I met at the IA Summit back in March. I am relatively new to using Twitter and just wanted to share my musings about the "sensation that is sweeping the nation"...

Framing the World

" Lots of people seem to use Twitter to document moments of their life, reporting observations, what was overheard, reactions to situations. With my limited experience Tweeting, it kinda reminds me of when I took a few photography classes as an undergrad. A couple semesters in, I got really into it. I would use the camera to document moments, thinking about how to frame the images of what I was experiencing, to make them interesting. This was a unique way to see the world, literally through a lens, but inevitably alters your experience of the moment. It allowed me to see things I never would have noticed before, but it also made me feel detached from the real world. I actually got tired of it quickly and stopped carrying my camera around.

Twittering seems to produce a similar framing/detachment affect. Maybe even more so.You have to look at what you see and experience in a different way. Cognitively recognize what elements are Tweetable. I don't want to say good or bad, just different and you can miss some stuff... of course you might see some pretty cool things in a way you otherwise wouldn't.

Identity

"How to handle my identity and Twitter have been something of a question for me. I have certainly been moving toward approaching it with more of professional angle. What to share? Who sees it? Why is it worth spewing into the world? But I have been slow to put myself out there professionally, make statements, take positions. I always think too much and err toward caution about putting anything out into the Interwebs.

Small Chunks

"Although it think Twitter can be really valuable for developing an online presence. Since you are limited to such a short amount of text you can be prolific without having to invest too much time. It also affords the interactive quality.

I also think the short nature of the messages are a great way to partition thoughts, kinda like using postit notes or notecards for brainstorming and cardsorting.

Embedding a Google Document Spreadsheet

2009-05-04T12:09:00.001-07:00

I am working on a project for a local High School and testing out cheap and simple was to increase the functionality of accessing some of the information. This is a test of the Contacts list in using a Google Documents spreadsheet.

This help stub is less than completely useful http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55244
How do I use the generated URL?

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=r3lOrkPox6oWKXVhi7eDbbA

So I figured out to use iFrames. Although not it doesn't meet Strict w3c standards.

XML

iCal

Design and Maintainability

2009-04-29T10:34:00.000-07:00

It seems like on of the biggest bottlenecks I have been dealing with in the design and implementation requirements of websites, has been the maintainability of content. Most of my projects have been dealing with organizations of limited resources (non-profits, government, schools) and every design decision has to consider, not necessarily the best or most effective design solutions, but the ones that will be able to be maintained by the owners of the content.

I have since become a huge fan of the larger, mainstream blog, social networking, APIs, blogs, plugins, badges and other tools. Using external tools makes it easier for since they are generally much more familiar with how the already established tools work.

As I realize this, I am also realizing that the overall success over time of these projects depend on active and proper maintenance of the content. How much effort should I give to educating and making the creators aware of the needs? How much should I limit the design based? How responsible should I assume for those considerations, both explicitly and implicitly?

I certainly spend a lot of time talking about cost and benefits of specific designs in terms of future costs. The more I learn about how important a consideration it is, the earlier I have been including it in the dialog. The fear I have is scaring people out of stretching their thinking and "outside the box" possibilities.

Anyway, this is more a general musing without much conclusion. Although I don't have much experience with Intranets, it feels more similar considerations in designing them, like how much the content creators are willing to invest into maintaining a whizzbang metadata scheme or keep thing updates.

Floating Javascript Button... that is good!

2009-04-22T15:22:00.000-07:00

Never thought I'd say it, but I think I have actually found a way to implement a JavaScript button that floats in the browser screen as one scrolls through the content.

Take a look at this article on Installing Drupal on Yahoo Web Hosting. What do you see? Is it annoying? Distracting? Useful? I don't really know, but I know I don't hate it... which is saying an awful lot.

Drupal on Yahoo!

2009-04-22T14:52:00.001-07:00

So I am working on building a proper professional portfolio for my personal site. I am figuring there will need to be constant additions and edits as I accumulate more experience. SO I figure some sort of content management system would be a good idea and good for professional development.

I think I will give Drupal a shot. I have heard some great things about it. But more than anything I love the community support it has. I have really enjoyed talking to people who are into Drupal (..people..) and since it is open source that seems to me to be the most important thing.

Problem is my site is being host by Yahoo! Not the best hosting service solution, but a legacy from years ago. I haven't found it to be too limiting yet, and I don't want to go through the trouble of switching services... yet. So I am going to give it a shot and see what happens.

A little bit of help from...

Drupal.org

FYI: my initial experience with Yahoo Web Hosting - this was the most informative helpful for me.
With a key piece of from...
comment .htaccess files on Yahoo! Hosting article

Animatrick - How to install Drupal on yahoo server.- Started here, but in the end didn't have to make the changes to $register_globals

Space doesn't seem to be a problem, but I wonder about having enough transfer. We shall see.

New Game!

2009-04-22T14:43:00.001-07:00

Hello again. This is Andrew Szydlowski back to the blogland. I tried doing this while I was in school. I was an attempt to see if I could blog... I could't then. Info In the Morning was a good idea to start with. I tried to do it anonymously, learn how to be contributing part of the distributed content creation community. I wanted to go back to using that blog, but unfortunately I forgot my login info!

So here we go anew. This time as a professional. Bright eyed and bushy tailed. time to actually put myself out there, now that I might have something to talk about.