Apple App Store

I know I am bit late to the party, but I just updated to OS X 10.6.6. I have been resisting the App Store for ages. (I am doing a slide scanning project with Nikon CoolScan scanners, whose drivers require OS X 10.6 and lower.) But I needed to re-install Developer Tools and my OS disk was scratched. – A real pain. So I had to download 10.6.6 to get the new development tools to work. And a part of the package I get the App Store. So I might as well check it out. It is a real pain to use.

  1. There is no way to save an app I am interested in purchasing but am not going to purchase right now. – This is a feature in the iTunes store.
  2. No feature for saving interesting apps.

  3. The search algorithm for apps does not help me get the apps I want. – I thought I would try a search for a metadata editing tool. Some apps which I know are in the Apple App Store, and this is their primary function are not showing up. Disappointing.

Retired License for Audio

One of the things I enjoy is reading about the licenses that CC has retired. Usually they do great job of explaining why they are retiring the license. Understanding these use cases and their context is a really informative view on society.

One interesting retired license is the Sampling+ License. They did a really good job of explaining why they were retiring the license. One of the interesting exercise they talk about was how they had to go through the machine readable description to describe the license — basically mapping out the assertions.

Sound+ is interesting because it is targeted for sound. It makes me wonder if sound/audio can still be licensed under Creative Commons if it is not protected by copyright.

Using google Docs with WordPress

I have a reason to use WordPress as a front end and Google Spreadsheet as a backend. I have been looking high and low for a plugin which would allow me to pull content from the spreadsheet and then edit it in the WordPress interface, save it back to the Google Spreadsheet. The advantage to this would be that as record in my spreadsheet would go into a single row, that I could then spice up the UI a bit to make things logical for users. – No luck.

  • Inline Google Docs http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/inline-google-docs/

    Many people maintain dynamic content on Google Documents or hold volatile data on Google Spreadsheets. These change when collaborators save an update or users submit a form. Occasionally, one may wish to embed the contents of one’s Google Documents or Spreadsheets in a post or page to reflect the latest updates on one’s blog. This plugin seeks to provide this functionality without using an <iframe>. In addition, it caches contents of the Google Documents or Spreadsheets to speed up page loading.

  • Google Docs Viewer http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-docs-viewer/
    This plugin provides multiple viewing functions related to Google Docs.

    First of all it can allow you to easily convert a link to a document so that it uses Google Docs as the viewer. Secondly, it provides a method of embedding certain document types directly into your post or page.

  • Inline Google Spreadsheet Viewer http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/inline-google-spreadsheet-viewer/

    Fetches a published Google Spreadsheet using a [gdoc key=""] WordPress shortcode, then renders it as an HTML table, embedded in your blog post or page. The only required parameter is key, which specifies the document you’d like to retrieve. Optionally, you can also strip a certain number of rows (e.g., strip=”3″ omits the top 3 rows of the spreadsheet) and you can supply a table summary,

    and customized class value.
  • Google Doc Embedder http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-document-embedder/
    Google Doc Embedder lets you embed several types of files into your WordPress pages using the Google Docs Viewer – allowing inline viewing (and optional downloading) of the following file types, with no Flash or PDF browser plug-ins required.

None of these things did what I really wanted. So, I kept looking. Eventually I found this Publishing Google docs to your blog, which talks about taking a GoogleDocs Writer document and letting it be the data for your post. But I wanted Spread sheet stuff.

Then I found HOW TO: USE GOOGLE SPREADSHEETS AS A DATA SOURCE IN WORDPRESS from 2008 (part 2). That is like a century ago. I am not sure there were even WP Custom Posts around then. But this source only tells one how to get data out of Google Spread Sheets (and I think that Google Spread Sheets have updated since then too).

There was one hopeful solution. That is PhpGrid and the phpGrid Lite WordPress Plugin (on Extend). I think I could take my whole data model and apply it inside of PhpGrid and not need Google Spread sheet.

phpGrid Lite WordPress Plugin is based on phpGrid Lite, a free version of phpGrid. phpGrid is a simple and fully customizable PHP control for generating data-bound, AJAX, PHP datagrid.

Grid-based editing, create, read, update and delete (CRUD), are the most common operations for web developers. With phpGrid web-based data editing is easy. Even with little programming background, one can develop professional looking, AJAX-enabled PHP datagrids in just a few minutes.

Finally, I did find out about GoogleDoc’s Data APIby reading Saving Form Data to Google Spreadsheets Using PHP and the Google Docs API by far IN space WEB+, but I just want to plug something in and it to work. So this solution got pushed no further. (And they were using an older, depreciated version of the API).

Cross-posting post from one WordPress Site to another

I set up another WordPress site and I wanted to transfer what I had written there to this site, so that all my writings would be together. This would include comments, links and attached media, and metadata about the post.

What I want a transfer plugin to do.

What I want a transfer plugin to do.

So I looked for a WordPress Plugin to do that. I found two (and as it is when I find more than one I have to test it out and write-up the results.):

  1. Xpost: Cross-post was the first plugin I found and it seemed to have a lot of really nice features.
  2. Transfer: the main difference between the two based on author description is that this one said that it also transferred images attached with the post.

So I tried Transfer first.

Transfer

However, when I installed Transfer, it said that it could not find the Zend Framework… Warning: require_once(Zend/XmlRpc/Client.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home1/public_html/username/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/transfer/library/Aperto/XmlRpc.php on line 3Path values changed to protect the innocent.
The plugin requires that one download Zend Framework Minimal (http://framework.zend.com/download/latest) and put the Zend folder under /wp-content/plugins/transfer/library/

I did this and I would get the WordPress white screen of death. I was told that this white screen of death was because my provider terminated a process (I had maxed out my user’s memory allocation) This white screen happens on one of my installs but not on another under a different user… so, not sure what is going on – Neither WP install would transfer the post. To get around the white screen of death I had to de-activate the plugin by editing the database.

I had initially failed to read the install requirement for Zend, so I found another solution for adding Zend to wordpress.
So I knew I needed to install the Zend Framework, I am sorta surprised that Dreamhost, my hosting provider did not have Zend set up on my server in a way that WordPress was automatically going to detect it. Oh, well is there a plugin for that? – Uh, yes there are like a gilzillion! So I went with the first one: Zend Framework [or also in WP-Extend]. I loaded it and then added the helpful code found in the online WordPress forums.

Go to your wp-config and paste this right after * @package WordPress part and before // ** MySQL settings – You can get this info from your web host ** //

/** Zend Framework **/

function add_include_path ($path)
{
foreach (func_get_args() AS $path)
{
if (!file_exists($path) OR (file_exists($path) && filetype($path) !== 'dir'))
{
trigger_error("Include path '{$path}' not exists", E_USER_WARNING);
continue;
}

$paths = explode(PATH_SEPARATOR, get_include_path());

if (array_search($path, $paths) === false)
array_push($paths, $path);

set_include_path(implode(PATH_SEPARATOR, $paths));
}
}

add_include_path(dirname(__FILE__).'/wp-content/plugins/zend-framework');

After I did both of these things all of my errors went away.

I did try a second plugin, WP-ZFF Zend Framework Full for installing the Zend Framework, this one said that the plugin would modify the include path so I thought that could use this without modifying wp-config.php but the plugin failed on import so I deleted it.
So in the sad case I that I was not able to get Transfer to work I moved on and decided to try Xpost.

Xpost

Xpost [on WP-Extend] was a breeze to set up and I actually got it working for a simple post. However, I was not able to select the target category in the master WP install, from the writer’s WP install (The test post I used just when to the default category).

Xpost not getting categories

Xpost not getting categories available on the master WP install.

The box just says categories loading. This seems to be a problem reported by Nigel and by gulliver.

The test image was not transferred to the media library of the master WP install from the writer’s WP install. Additionally, if the category of the post is changed in the Master WP install, then the writer’s WP install loses track of the post. This is only temporary… If the writer tries to cross-post the post again, then the This results in the writer not being able to update the post. (Red error message is shown.) But if the writer tries a second time then the original post in the Master WP install is found, and updated. Including the “removed” category. However, this “removed” category was intentionally moved by the editor on the Master WP install. So this creates a bit of a conflict. BTW: It would be nice to be able to select a special custom post type for imports.

It seems that Xpost was designed to broadcast out rather that to ingest.

What xpost seems to do

What Xpost seems to do

Diving into the UX World

For the past few weeks I have been working with a team on redoing a large corporate website (almost two large corporate websites).

Word Cloud for UX

Word Cloud for UX

During the course of the project I have had several people, who are unfamiliar (and familiar) with web technology talk with me about UX and UI, but in terms of Design. They might say: "We need a re-design. Our branding is not displayed well." or the might say " Oh, but it was designed to do that, it is doing exactly what it was designed to do!" So, most of the people (I am encountering) talking in terms of design, are talk about the business design or the function of a website at a very high level. Not the UX and UI level of design. I have tried to explain it in the following terms

The words Usability and Design each suffer from a very unfortunate ambiguity. Usability in a very raw sense means is a tool usable. Just because every tool can be a hammer, does not mean that every tool should be shaped like a hammer. Design in computing also suffers a similar fate. If some computer tool does something, it does so because it was designed to do so. This does not mean that the computer tool is esthetically pleasing or that it creates a good impression on its user. An impression of such a nature that the user might want to come back to the site and use it again. The following diagram contrast the words, functional, reliable, usable, convenient, pleasurable, and meaningful.

User Experience model

User Experience model

Because images show so much more than words I looked around for some images to describe the difference I have been trying to communicate. This has resulted in the following collection of images. In the process of linking to these pictures I hope to introduce my readers to some of the ongoing discussion of professional UX design and development.

Layering the Design

Layering the Design

This image is from a PDF called: The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garret. [1] Jesse James Garret. 30 March 2000. The Elements of User Experience. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf [PDF]

Layering the Design

Explaining the Layers

This Image comes from a write up about UX: UX Design Defined [2]Michael Commings. 16 August 2010. UX Design Defined. Uxdesign.com [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://uxdesign.com/ux-defined [Link] In it is perhaps the best definition of UX I have come across is:

User Experience Design is the art and science of integrating all the various elements that comprise an interactive system so that:

  1. The user's needs, limitations, goals, desires, expectations, are served
  2. The publishing organization's objectives are served as a result of serving the user's (#1)
  3. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts
Peter Morville's Facets of the User Experience

Peter Morville's Facets of the User Experience

This image was take from Peter Morville's article on User Experience Design. [3] Peter Morville. 21 June 2004. User Experience Design. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000029.php [Link]

Flickr user Model

Flickr User Model

This Diagram of the Flickr user experience model has been attributed to Bryce Glass by Kenny Chen on 5 April 2008, at http://www.kennychen.net/blog/2008/04/05/flickr-user-model-diagram/. [4] Bryce Glass. Diagram of the Flickr user experience model. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] [Link]

user experience design explained

User Experience Design

This image comes from What Is User Experience Design by Kimmy Paluch. [5] Kimmy Paluch. 10 October 2006. What Is User Experience Design. [Accessed:8 November 2011] http://www.montparnas.com/articles/what-is-user-experience-design [Link]

Multiple Roles in Web Strategy

Multiple Roles in Web Strategy

Finding the right fit of UX

Finding the right fit of UX

This image is taken from User Experience Strategy. [6] Luke Wroblewski. 27 July 2005. User Experience Strategy. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?203 [Link]

Additionally there some good articles:

  • UX ROI: User Experience Return on Investment [7] UXPassion.com. 10 October 2009. UX ROI: User Experience Return on Investment. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://www.uxpassion.com/2009/10/ux-roi-user-experience-return-on-investment [Link].
  • User Experience vs. User Interaction [8] uxrevisions.com. 23 December 2010. User Experience vs. User Interaction [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://www.uxrevisions.com/user-experience-design/user-experience-vs-user-interaction [Link].
  • The difference between Usability and User Experience [9]uxrevisions.com. 23 December 2010. The difference between Usability and User Experience. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] … Continue reading
  • Strategy by Design, the second page - about Recruiting T-Shaped People, was interesting. [10] Tim Brown. 1 June 2005. Strategy by Design. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/95/design-strategy.html [Link]

References

References
1 Jesse James Garret. 30 March 2000. The Elements of User Experience. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf [PDF]
2 Michael Commings. 16 August 2010. UX Design Defined. Uxdesign.com [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://uxdesign.com/ux-defined [Link]
3 Peter Morville. 21 June 2004. User Experience Design. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000029.php [Link]
4 Bryce Glass. Diagram of the Flickr user experience model. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] [Link]
5 Kimmy Paluch. 10 October 2006. What Is User Experience Design. [Accessed:8 November 2011] http://www.montparnas.com/articles/what-is-user-experience-design [Link]
6 Luke Wroblewski. 27 July 2005. User Experience Strategy. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?203 [Link]
7 UXPassion.com. 10 October 2009. UX ROI: User Experience Return on Investment. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://www.uxpassion.com/2009/10/ux-roi-user-experience-return-on-investment [Link].
8 uxrevisions.com. 23 December 2010. User Experience vs. User Interaction [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://www.uxrevisions.com/user-experience-design/user-experience-vs-user-interaction [Link].
9 uxrevisions.com. 23 December 2010. The difference between Usability and User Experience. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://www.uxrevisions.com/user-experience-design/the-difference-between-usability-and-user-experience/ [Link].
10 Tim Brown. 1 June 2005. Strategy by Design. [Accessed: 8 November 2011] http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/95/design-strategy.html [Link]

MAMP Helps

I use MAMP for my local test environment. But I have recently moved beyond just PHP apps. I am also looking at using Tomcat. I would like to mess around with DSpace locally and use Solr also. But I have found a couple of helps for adding things to MAMP.

One of the problems I am facing is that I really like apps like MacPorts. But I do not want to tinker with the CORE and default setting of my OS X machine. So I find that MAMP is a good alternative, but I can not type a command in the command line and have all the dependencies download automatically. I recently found that I could do something like this with Homebrew…. Never used it before but it looks to be the tool for the job. So I have collected a few tutorials like: installing php5.3, Using an gmail as a smtp server, and setting up solr.

Durian

This October, when Becky and I went to Malaysia she insisted that I try durian. Having never been to Asia before one might think that I would have a hard time describing this “Asian fruit”.

Picture of Durian from Wikipedia

Durio Kutej



Well I did try it. Some of the guys I was with were even very fond of it.

Here is my summary:

  • Is kinda structured like a pomegranate on the inside but has pointy things on the outside
  • Smells like Liquid Augmentin
  • Feels on the tongue like over steamed cauliflower
  • Throws like a hand grenade
  • And it stays on your breath for two days.

Some Notes on Using FLEx

During the workshop there was ample opportunity to observe how 80 people interact with the same piece of software.

About 80 people

About 80 people attending the workshop.

Of the 80 participants no more than 10 were from the university. While I was presenting my session I asked some technology owned questions and I found out that: Continue reading