Open Source

YouTube Downloader and Feed Parser

Posted on by John

So I decided to spend a bit of time over the holidays scratching an itch and writing some PHP code. The result is a new open source project: YouTube Downloader.

Its main purpose, for me, was to enable me to subscribe to a user’s YouTube videos as a podcast, and have the episodes downloaded in Downcast on my iPad. In the process though I also found it useful to make it usable as a form-based script, where you input a video’s ID and get a list of the available formats for download. So, the project does both.
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WordCamp comes to Providence – Truly Responsive Design

Posted on by John

Just confirmed I’ll be speaking at WordCamp Providence, October 27th 2012.

My talk will be titled “Truly Responsive Design“:

Perhaps the greatest sea-change in the industry since the “Web 2.0? meme, Responsive Design has been the unavoidable theme of the web industry in 2011 and 2012. But too much of the focus in responsive design has been on the mechanics: media queries, responsive images, javascript polyfills, and techniques for progressive enhancement.

Not enough attention has been paid to how responsive sites and applications should be designed to take into account the needs and contexts of users. In short, we’ve been designing sites that respond to the needs (and capabilities) of *browsers* and *devices* rather than the desires and contexts of users.

In this talk I’ll cover strategies and processes you can follow which help ensure your web applications are truly responsive to business goals and user needs, not just device capabilities.

Look forward to the first WordCamp in The Creative Capital

Conference/Open Source

DrupalCampCT

Posted on by John

Very excited to announce I’ll be giving the keynote talk at DrupalCampCT later this month (August 18th, 2012)!

I attended DrupalCampCT last year, but missed the deadline for submitting a talk. It will be held this year again in Luce Hall on the Yale campus in New Haven.

Last year’s keynote was John Zavocki, who was compelling and inspiring (and funny) and set a very high bar I hope I can live up to.

Hope to see you in New Haven in a few weeks.