Last night I had the opportunity to hear firsthand how product development occurs at Facebook from mobile product manager Neel (aka Bubba) Murarka. After today’s announcement today regarding Facebook’s partnership with Skype to bring video conferencing within the site, I am even more excited to share some of the behind-the-scenes insights he gave on product design and usability priorities at the social networking giant.
I thought it might be helpful to discuss technical considerations when deploying multimedia websites. In this post I will focus on hosting options for your site and next week I will discuss email marketing options to promote the site once you have it up and running. If there are other technical questions that you would like me to cover, please leave a comment and I’ll be more than happy to tackle them in the near future!
Last week’s post about NFB’s Flash site Pine Point brought up a good bit of discussion about the limitations (and some might argue abuse) of Flash. I’d say 99% of programmers hate the ongoing war between HTML5 and Flash because the two are not direct substitutes, but it is important that we all have a solid understanding of the capabilities and current limitations of HTML5. So, please note that this is not a Flash-bashing post but rather a dosage of inspiration for the HTML5 lovers out there and those curious as to what all the hype is about.
I have always been inspired by Jonathan Harris, co-creator of “We Feel Fine” and producer of “The Whale Hunt,” among others. Last month he gave a 36-minute talk titled “Cold + Bold” for The Professional Association of Design (AIGA), and I really enjoyed learning more about his recent work and his thoughts on the impact of digital technology on individuals and the world around us. Even if you are not familiar with his work, I highly recommend turning on this interview in the background while you catch up on your emails.
Regina McCombs recently emailed me about an upcoming seminar from August 25-27 at The Poynter Institute that II readers may be interested in attending. Titled “Programming for Journalists / Journalism for Programmers,” attendees will gain a concrete understanding of how programmers and journalists can work effectively together to visualize data-rich content, such as the upcoming 2010 Census.
Ultimately, buying Django 1.0 Template Development comes down to what kind of learner you are: Django’s official documentation, the Django Book, and the Django users Google Group, should give most Web developers and template authors enough to learn most of the template system, but the book can be a handy reference and walk-through that will hold your hand in a lot of sticky points. The examples in the book are bound to teach something to even the most seasoned Django developers.
With summer officially gone and my first week of class well under way, I have to admit that I am really excited about what lies ahead. I am taking a combination of theory and practical skills courses, so please let me know if one in particular interests you. I found that I blogged several times last Spring on particular readings or projects from class, so I am happy to do the same this semester if people find it helpful. Also, please let me know if you prefer learning about particularly good readings, or looking through coding examples and tutorials.
In this week’s edition of II’s summer guest blogger series, Richard Cornish discusses Django, both providing examples of Django projects and a brief history of how it came about. Cornish is an interaction designer at the Lawrence Journal-World, where Django was developed.
Journalist Justin McLachlan started a social network on Ning yesterday specifically for journalists and coders to discuss “how programming and the news can go together.” So far, we have 21 talented developers within four sub-groups: Actionscript, HTML/CSS, Ruby on Rails, and Django. I look forward to utilizing Ning to connect with and learn from journalists who are embracing programming concepts to further storytelling. Therefore, I encourage all II readers to join!
St. Petersburg Times launched a brilliant interactive on Monday, utilizing booking information to create a database of the most recent arrests in their area. According to Shelby Sapusek, a media-focused twitterer, this package received 100,000 hits in the first 3 hours. Now that’s what I call a return on investment! Even better, they bypassed Flash and produced this package with Django, an open-source software known for it’s rich database capabilities under a tight deadline.
