The Berkman Center for Internet & Society launched Media Cloud in early March, though it had been quietly available for a few months before that. It’s an exciting concept, limited in its current implementation but sure to grow in utility as more features get added.
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.
Groundhog Day – Joining Facebook Network
Early last year I wrote about the complete opacity of the Facebook network process (see “who do I have to poke to get a network?“). You can request a network be created, but you have no real sense of what actually moves the request through any process.
Now, 15 months later, there is a network for Optaros – but I can’t join it. (I also have no idea what finally triggered creation of the network – enough people requesting it? Enough people listing Optaros as their employer? I only discovered its existence because it showed up in a search result).
Continue reading →
Tracking Keywords in Twitter
Tracking the occurrence of keywords in twitter through one of the automated tools is a quick way to add value to your experience.
Brands often use this approach to track mentions of their products and companies, developers can use it to track mentions of their favorite languages, frameworks, and open source projects, and anyone can use it to track mentions of their hometown, their own twitter username (to make sure you don’t miss any @replies).
Continue reading →
WPBook 1.3 Released: Improved Admin, Bug Fixes – Last PHP4 release
Quick Update: I just (3/27) released 1.3.1, a quick bug fix update. Details in the readme. Recommended for all users – still supporting PHP4 in this bugfix release, as I haven’t started on 1.4 yet.
I’ve just checked the code for version 1.3 of the WPBook plugin into subversion, which means it should shortly be available for auto-update in your dashboard/plugins page, or for download here. (Remember that your dashboard/plugins page only checks once each 24 hours for new plugins, so you may not see it until tomorrow).
Changes in this release:
Continue reading →