Open Source Powered MyBarackObama

The April BostonPHP meetup featured Josh King and Chuck Hagenbuch of Blue State Digital talking about two critical features of MyBarackObama.com: the Neighbor-to-Neighbor tool and the email marketing engine.

The focus was quite technical – not sure if the “suits” in the room (there aren’t normally many at a BostonPHP meeting, but there were a few this time) really expected such a deep dive – and made you appreciate the herculean effort it takes to mount a sustained campaign like that one.

You can listen to the podcast version of the presentation, see some photos and check out Elena’s notes – she managed to capture the great majority of the details they shared.

BostonPHP: MediaWiki in Production

Earlier this week, I was happy to have the chance for Optaros to host a BostonPHP meeting again – we used to do so in the old Canal St. offices but hadn’t done so in a while – certainly not since moving to Milk St.

The topic was MediaWiki in production, with presentations by Greg Rundlett of Harvard’s Initiative in Innovative Computing (IIC) and Daniel Barrett, who wrote the (O’Reilly) book on MediaWiki, and uses it in production at VistaPrint.
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Updated: WordPress Facebook plugin update – with Profile Boxes!

Updated for 0.9.3 (Jan 13 2009)

Updated for 0.9.2. (Jan 7 2009)
Updated for 0.9.1 (Jan 2 2009)

I’ve been working on an update to WPBook, the WordPress to Facebook plugin I co-developed.

I haven’t yet released this version on the WordPress plugin site, but I do think it’s stable enough for use – try it out and let me know what you think.

I’m using it here: http://apps.facebook.com/openparenthesis/.

This version allows an “add to profile” button inside the app, which presents the five most recent posts in a profile box – can be on the user’s main profile or inside the “boxes” tab.

It also enables – if the “application settings” inside Facebook are set – for the blog app to be added to FaceBook “pages.”

Download: WPBook 0.9.3

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Programming to the Twitter API (ReTweeter)

Presented today at BarCamp Boston on programming for the Twitter API, based on the retweeter project I did for SXSW this year. You can grab the slides or the code.

Went better than the WordPress talk yesterday, in terms of time – easier to describe Twitter (which everyone already knows) than to try to cover the WordPress plugin API, the Facebook API, and the plugin I wrote to connect the two all in less than 30 minutes.

Drupalcon Boston 2008

Looking forward to the upcoming Drupalcon:

Drupalcon Boston 2008 takes place from March 3, 2008 to March 6, 2008 at the Boston Convention and Expo Center. There will also be a Drupal Code Sprint on March 7 at the Stata Center at MIT in Cambridge.

Drupalcon is the twice-yearly gathering of Drupalers to learn about, discuss & advance Drupal, and to network with other Drupal community members. With sessions targeted at everyone from novice to expert attendees, Drupalcon is where you go to advance your understanding and use of Drupal.

Note: Deadline is Today, Feb 11th, for submitting proposals.
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