ITS Web Services

The heliotropic entrepreneur

Billy Hylton — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:43:13 +0000

Have you created a UNC VoiceThread account yet? VoiceThread is a web-based application that “allows users to post media files and then invite others to provide comments in writing, with voice or with video.” ITS Teaching and Learning has partnered with the VoiceThread folks to roll out a UNC VoiceThread pilot.

Andrew Synowiez, a co-founder, graduated from UNC in 2005 with a BS in Computer Science and lives in downtown Durham. Andrew has also spent time at NPR, published photos in Sports Illustrated and USA Today, and digs heliotropism. Andrew took some time away from building a company and studying the diurnal motion of plant parts to answer a few of my questions…

What is your role at VoiceThread?

Something akin to a Chief Aesthetics Officer. I’m responsible for the look and feel (design) of essentially everything people can see and interact with on VoiceThread.

How many active VoiceThread accounts?

Around 100,000 users.

You’re not positioning VoiceThread as a “Web 2.0″ application. How come?

Because we fundamentally don’t understand most “Web 2.0″ business models which often seem to be based on fantastical exit strategies and market delusions about “new realities.” You should build what you understand and so we’re building VoiceThread’s business like you would a paint store, a restaurant, or even a print magazine. Online business can look and behave so very different from off-line ones, but great businesses are more alike than different. We imagine being a part of our customers lives 5 years from now and work back from there.

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Transparent PNG support for IE 6, 5.5

Andy Smith — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:12:49 +0000

Tired of compromising your beautiful designs or being forced to find work-arounds that don’t work when using transparent PNGs? There is a way… By invoking the CSS behavior found in this script you can add decent PNG support to IE5.5+ on Windows with no changes to your website HTML source code. And since this method uses CSS “behaviors,” a custom Microsoft extension to CSS, it will not affect any other browsers like Mozilla and Opera which already implement good PNG support.

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Webmonkey Returns

Billy Hylton — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:03:04 +0000

A roommate in college maintained a popular Radiohead fan site, “Lift.” It boasted more traffic than most sites hosted at the University of Kentucky, our school, back in 1997. I was inspired and wanted to display stuff on a computer screen too! But how? Jon showed me around Netscape Composer and Webmonkey answered the other questions: How does a web form work? Should I use HTML frames? How do I create an animated gif? What’s the difference between Java and JavaScript. Most importantly, How do I make a career out of making web sites?!

Webmonkey was an essential resource at the time and offered newbies and seasoned veterans tips, tricks, and reference tools. Webmonkey authors were also outspoken, opinionated, and helped shape the emerging digital and web culture. Eventually the site lost relevance and disappeared… until April 2008. Webmonkey 2.0 has launched.

Firefox 3 to ship Tuesday, June 17

Andy Smith — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:28:42 +0000

Firefox 3 will be released on Tuesday, June 17, 2008, and you’re invited to the party! From the Mozilla Developer News blog: ‘After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we’re proud to announce that we’re ready. It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th. Put on your party hats and get ready to download Firefox 3 — the best web browser, period.’”

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Show Me, Don’t Tell Me

Billy Hylton — Fri, 30 May 2008 20:21:40 +0000

Web Services has been researching screen recording software for demos, presentations, and training videos. We recently purchased a product called Camtasia Studio (with education discount). Ultimately, the goal is to add voice narration, text annotations, and integrate the videos with a training app such as Moodle.

Any difficulties viewing the video above? Please let me know. Thanks!

Custom Webclip Icons for iPhone

Billy Hylton — Tue, 13 May 2008 02:34:45 +0000

Remember the first time you saw a little web site icon pop up in your browser’s address bar? It was like, “Cool! How did they do that?” Fast forward to 2008 and with the most recent software update for the iPhone, users can save bookmark icons (webclips) to their phone’s desktop. Fortunately, it takes even less time than creating a “favicon.ico” image and you never have to worry about it strange disappearances (IE 6). It’s as simple as creating a 57×57 .png and uploading to your server’s root. Name the file apple-touch-icon.png. Don’t forget to add the rounded border and glassy effect necessary for Apple aesthetic goodness.

Flash? We don’t need no stinkin’ Flash…

Andy Smith — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:05:45 +0000

John Resig, creator of the JavaScript library jQuery, today released a new library: Processing.js. A port of the Processing visualization language to JavaScript, one application of this library is to provide an alternate to Flash for animation and interactive graphics content. Among the drawbacks are browser support (the library is specifically targeted to the latest beta versions of Firefox and Opera) and the inefficient nature of JS engines (which are not designed to process this type of data), but it’s pretty cool, anyway. Be sure to view your CPU’s performance as evidence of the latter when viewing any of the numerous demos available on Resig’s blog.

“Get Out of Jail Free” Twitter

Andy Smith — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:40:31 +0000

When James Karl Buck was detained at an anti-government rally in Mahalla, Egypt, he got the diplomatic cogs turning with a simple message via his cell phone to Twitter: “Arrested.”

Over the next several hours, Buck was able to update friends and family using the micro-blogging site, some of whom then transposed his messages to other blogs of their own. Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, told CNN that there have been more and more stories of people using the service during natural disasters. In Buck’s case, the speed at which news of his situation was disseminated led to his school hiring a lawyer on his behalf. Less than 24 hours after his arrest, he left the station with another one word blog entry: “Free.”

Read the whole story at CNN.com.

Stylin’

Billy Hylton — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:42:26 +0000

Checked out edustyle? The site is described as a “web design gallery dedicated to higher education websites and powered by higher education web design professionals. Users submit, review, and comment on sites they like (or don’t like). The aim is for higher ed web professionals to learn from and be inspired by the work of their peers. Once a month two sites are selected as Noteworthy based on user votes and feedback.” Consider me inspired. Some of the featured work–particularly from smaller liberal arts schools and seminaries–is exceptional. Some crowd pleasers:

Cross-posted on Webmasters.unc.edu

Photoshop Express

Andy Smith — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:10:16 +0000

Adobe launched the Web-based Photoshop Express on Thursday, March 27. Available for free with 2 gigabytes of storage space, the online image editor is targeted towards consumers that want a simple way to touch up, share, organize and store photos without the cost attached to Photoshop or Photoshop LE.

The application, which needs Flash Player 9 to run, pushes the limits of browser-based applications and will likely ratchet up the competition on the dozens of free and online photo-editing products available now. Check out the full review at webware.com and screenshots of the app at CNET News.com.