Quiddities Dev, Inc.

A Creative Web Solutions Agency Weblog

Blogstipation

Margaret, Mindi and I just returned from BlogHer, an amazing conference that inspired me to feel really guilty about not blogging. I love blogs and I always tell our clients how important it is to blog. I know this. I’m in the industry. Yet when it comes to blogging myself I suffer from this procrastinatory nature that is inexplainable, except for this: I feel like my blogs should be smart, witty, well documented, brilliant, lengthy and deeply educational. In short, I set such high expectations for myself I price myself out of the blogmarket.

What I learned at BlogHer is simple: blog. Blog because it is going to change the world. Blog because you can make wonderful new blogger friends. Blog because people will know who you really are by reading your innermost thoughts, and right now, that’s a good thing. Blog because, even if you don’t think so, you really do have things to share with others. Blog, because I’m not kidding about this, it really is going to change the world.

We are communicating like never before: we’re sharing information that used to be withheld; we’re holding politicians accountable in ways unimaginable 10 years ago; we’re aggregating important stuff that would have gone unnoticed. It’s a seismic communication shift and we all need to participate because we are taking back the media.

I got out of bed to write this because I couldn’t sleep with all these blog thoughts rolling around in my head. Taking back the media seems like such a big job, but I figure if I plug away at it a little bit at a time, and stop beating myself up over my writing skills, I can overcome my fear of blogging.

So there, I did it. Wish me luck.

Posted on July 22, 2008 – 1:05 am by Amie Forest in Quiddities & tagged , , | Comments (0)

And The Winner Is…

The 62nd Annual Tony AwardsI was watching the 2008 Tony Awards on Tivo last night and started thinking about the similarities between putting on a Broadway show and developing websites. Every website Quiddities develops is a production of sorts.

The Plan

We start with an idea from a client, then work to develop that idea into a plan. Once we have a plan, we  begin building the set (design & structure) and writing the script (content).  As we build the set we tweak, and fine tune each piece until it is just right.

Tech & Dress Rehearsals

A few weeks before releasing a website we start having tech rehearsals.  The tech rehearsal is where we pull together all the components of a website, including design, content, and programming. After the tech rehearsal, we then start the dress rehearsals. This is the part where we review the site to insure that the integrity of the design is maintained and the content is accurate.  At this stage, last minute finish touches are applied to formatting and styling.

Previews (Beta)

We then have previews of the site for the stakeholders in the project. The previews are a chance for the stakeholders and Quiddities to review the site again, to insure that we have maintained the integrity of the site and final tweaks and adjustments are applied.

Go Live

After final review, we determine that we are ready to go on with the show. In geek terms we call this the “Go Live” or “Launch” period. The excitement builds as we enter the final hours before we go live with a website. Will the audience like the website? Do we tell the story that was intended? Then after many weeks, and sometimes months of preparation and development we raise the curtain and launch the site. As with any new Broadway show, the first 24 hours can sometimes be a little bumpy as we work out any kinks that may come up. In the end, we recognize the collaboration and hard work have paid off to successfully launch the site.

And The Winner Is…

It is with great pleasure that I’m happy to announce two new “productions” that we have recently launched using the Drupal Framework.

UC Berkeley Printing Services

UC Printing Home Page

UC Berkeley Parking & Transportation

UC Berkeley Parking & Transporation Home Page

Coming soon…

Over the next few weeks we will be launching several more UC Berkeley websites. I want to thank all of those involved at Quiddities and UC Berkeley for their hard work and dedication to preparing these sites to go live.

We have several other websites on the horizon that will be launched in the next couple of weeks, and I look forward to announcing those as well.

Posted on June 20, 2008 – 8:00 am by Tracy Smith in Quiddities, Website Launch & tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Holy Cow! Sir Tim

I have just experienced a day I could have never imagined.

I shared the stage with Sir Tim Berners-Lee and other fellow grantees as we accepted our grant awards from the Knight Foundation. I have shaped my craft, my company, and my career on the very invention that is credited to Berners-Lee. It is an awesome event in the life of a geek to stand in this moment. We are humbled and inspired to be selected among such an amazing spectrum of projects.

I was fortunate to share dinner conversation with Berners-Lee’s colleague, Dr. Martin Moore and other grant winners as we pondered the past and future of web standards. Our table also included grantee Brein McNamara who is a deaf technologist and blogger. Through translators, we were able to learn about the experience of the deaf web. This had a particular twist as our grant is focused on radio which is one of the mediums that can be inaccessible to the deaf.

While we at Quiddities have long adhered to web standards that allow the visually impaired to navigate our websites, we have never considered the impact of the multimedia web on the deaf. They are unable to experience or engage in a site like YouTube. Imagine missing this cultural phenomenon. Brein’s project and his participation in the Knight community will bring a wider awareness to issues that could lead to web standards for the deaf.

Yesterday was just the beginning of a conversation. As grant recipients, we will have the opportunity over the course of the grant to explore avenues of digital innovation with other award winners. We will be gathering at MIT and in Chicago this summer to continue our conversation. We are humbled.

Posted on May 15, 2008 – 5:30 pm by Margaret Rosas in Quiddities & tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Funded to Dream

Quiddities awarded a $327,000 grant by the Knight Foundation

Yesterday, Margaret and the Quiddities team were in Las Vegas accepting a grant awarded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to fund innovative digital media projects. As one of the 16 project winners out of over 3000 entries, we were awarded $327,000 for our project RadioEngage which will be powered by Drupal. RadioEngage will be available as an open source, comprehensive solution for public radio stations nationwide to promote local discourse, engage with their community, and use the Internet to increase participation.

We will be working with our local Public Radio Station KUSP as our test market. Last fall, KUSP approached us about working with them to make their website more relevant to the community. Local news in the Central Coast region has been on the decline and we saw the Knight Foundation grant as an opportunity to use emerging technologies to reinvigorate local media.

We plan to make it easy for volunteers at the radio station to merge local radio news with blogs, podcasts and other rich content on the web. We will create tools that allow community members to take a more active role in what gets reported by their local radio station.

The website will be built entirely on the Drupal open source platform. In the future, other public radio stations will be able to replicate the tools we’re creating for KUSP.

We are thrilled to be working on this project with KUSP and our community. We will be inviting you to join us in the conversation.

Posted on May 15, 2008 – 3:30 pm by Amie Forest in Quiddities & tagged , , , , , , | Comments (1)

Drupal Training

Getting to Minneapolis

On Wednesday, I travelled to Minneapolis from Santa Cruz to attend Drupal training by Lullabot. I travelled via feet, car, 2 planes, tram, light rail, and feet again. Who knew that one could use so many different forms of transportation to get somewhere.

What is Drupal

Drupal is a content management system (CMS). It is an extensible framework that performs the basic CMS functions and allows us to customize code. It is setup so that you can apply customizations without “hacking” the core. By not “hacking” the core, updates and security releases can be applied without losing any previous customizations.

How is Drupal Different?

There are hundreds of CMS systems available to you. Joomla and WordPress are two options available to you. If you just want a blog, then WordPress if for you. Joomla is a great CMS out of the box, but leaves little room for customizations. An alternate is to have someone develop a custom CMS for you. While a custom CMS may do exactly what you want it to do, there are several disadvantages.

  • Creating and maintaining a custom CMS can be very expensive
  • You or your developers are solely responsible for security patches and upgrades
  • There is no development community to support your custom CMS.

One of the examples in my training compared a custom CMS to Drupal. The custom CMS is like a hand-carved wooden race car. It is very delicate, but in the end looks exactly as intended. Drupal on the other hand is like putting together a bunch of Lego pieces. Different parts do different things. The challenge of Drupal is getting all the right parts together to craft your car. All the pieces fit together to build your car, but it may not look exactly like the way you want. Sometimes in Drupal, developers struggle with making certain things perform a certain way. Unlike a custom CMS, you have to take considerations when developing a Drupal site. However, Drupal provides a solid foundation for you to build on.


Drupal Customization

Out of the box Drupal is a complete CMS that provides a content interface for editing and posting content, user authentication, and categorization. If all you need is a simple site to display content, then a basic Drupal install will work for you. You can pick a theme, download it, and install it in a couple of hours.

If you want your own design, then your site will need to be “themed”. Theming is just the process of converting your design documents to HTML and CSS. Drupal provides a powerful framework for theming that keeps the content separate from the presentation.

Now comes the fun part, customization. Drupal is extensible that you can pretty much make it do anything you want. However, customizing Drupal can be expensive if you aren’t willing to make some concessions. By taking advantage of the tools built in to the Drupal Framework and making some concessions, you can minimize the amount of development time required for your customizations.

Drupal Training

The training I attended was on API and Module development. It wasn’t exactly what I had expected but proved to validate my experience with Drupal. It also gave me an opportunity to network with other Drupal developers and learn about “giving back” to the Drupal community. I look forward to contributing more time to “giving back” to Drupal.

Leaving Minneapolis

As I leave Minneapolis, I look forward to continue building my expertise in Drupal, sharing that expertise, and giving back to the Drupal Community. Thank you Lullabot for providing the training.

Posted on May 8, 2008 – 9:19 am by Tracy Smith in Quiddities & tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

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