Archive for 2007

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Hackfest: Facebook List of the Day visual design

Tuesday, December 18th, 2007

Last week, I announced that our weekly Hackfest would be working on a Facebook application. We decided to make it an open source application hosted on Google Code, which you can access here: http://code.google.com/p/fblotd. It is licensed under the new BSD License.

In week two of our weekly Hackfest, Glenn and I worked on the visual design for the profile box of our application. We agreed that it would be the area where we anticipate most of our users to interact with the application, so it needed to be focused on first.

The design intends to remain consistent with the look and feel of Facebook’s own applications, to reduce any confusion as to how our app. functions, as well as not disrupting the design of a user’s profile page. Here’s a screenshot of the first draft of the visual design:

Facebook List of the Day visual design

I know I promised a write-up of the overall concept of the application in my previous blog entry, which I never got around to. However, I’m hoping that the visual design communicates the intent of the concept enough that people who see it will just “get it”–otherwise, it won’t be as effective of an application if it needs explanation before users can understand it.

In a nutshell, users are encouraged to complete the sentence that makes up the “List of the Day” as well as vote for submissions by others. The next day, we’ll display yesterday’s list and the top five submissions as voted by the users, followed by the current day’s new list.

We know that there are plenty of directions we could take this concept but for the initial release, we’re keeping the scope small so we can get it done quickly–especially since the Hackfest only meets once a week for two or three hours at a time.

Next week, I hope we can actually implement the code that implements the profile box. Then, we may open up the application so everyone can start adding it to their profile and help us test it!

If you’d like to participate in the development of this app., join the Hackfest and come hack with us! We meet every Monday at the Panera Bread in Paramus, NJ. Once you’ve joined, you can RSVP for the next meetup so we’ll know you’re coming.

If you have any questions about the app., feel free to ask them in the comments below.

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Monday, December 17th, 2007

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I’m officially a Taproot Foundation volunteer

Sunday, December 16th, 2007
Taproot Foundation logo

After hearing about the Taproot Foundation from Jennifer, who came to the November MySQL Meetup and told me about it, I decided to complete a profile as a volunteer. Shortly after, someone contacted me and we had a brief chat and scheduled me for their December 11th orientation at the Time-Life Building in NYC, which was this past Tuesday.

In a nutshell, the Taproot Foundation is nonprofit organization that awards service grants for other nonprofits’ projects, to be performed by volunteers, for free.

Attending the orientation and completing the volunteer agreement form was the last step before I could be selected by an account director to work on a service grant (project). Now, I’m just waiting to hear from someone who wants me on their team.

Why am I signing up to volunteer my time for free? Especially after my recent financial stumble just a few weeks ago? How can I possibly have time to volunteer when I should be trying to squeeze every billable hour out of my non-sleeping time?

I like to say, “The best gifts are the ones you cannot wrap.” I’ve always enjoyed giving of my time and talents where they are wanted. As a teenager, I worked as a volunteer at a local hospital, as well as at a homeless shelter. As an adult, I’ve been playing guitar for the Sunday school children at church, as well as singing in the church choir, and I plan to participate in the Sierra Bravo’s F1 Overnight Website Challenge in March 2008. Volunteering through the Taproot Foundation is the kind of thing that really suits me.

I’ll write more about my experiences volunteering for Taproot once I’m on a service grant. Until then, if you want to ask me questions, feel free to leave a comment below. Or, perhaps you want to sign up as a volunteer yourself!

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Hackfest: Getting started on a Facebook app

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

Last week, Mike G. reminded us that we don’t do a lot of hacking at our weekly Hackfest, which is something I also wasn’t happy about. We did some brainstorming and decided to try writing a Facebook app.

So, last night, Glenn Martin and I sat down and started working on it. We started out trying to use Glenn’s hosting provider, but it choked on Facebook’s POST requests with a HTTP 405 error, not liking the HTTP verb. After a few minutes of fiddling around in the web-based control panel and having no luck, we decided to punt and use my Dreamhost setup.

After changing the Facebook app. settings, we were able to get our “hello world” FBML to render in Facebook. The Facebook API PHP5 code worked as expected and I was able to set the FBML in my Profile Box, as you can see in the screenshot below:

Facebook List of the Day app screenshot, 2007-12-11

It’s nothing special yet, but it’s a start and is finally something we can actually start hacking on at the Hackfest.

Next week, I hope we can all get the basics of our app. functionality working. Between now and then, I’ll try to elaborate more on the concept behind the application so people will understand what it’s supposed to do.

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Monday, December 10th, 2007

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