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Compost

Written by gavinblair | Posted in Devit!, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
February 10th, 2010

Introducing Compost

Compost is an easy web-based way to grow consensus with your designs. Upload designs and allow your clients to annotate, rate and discuss. Easily revise comps based on feedback and get approval.

Compost is currently in version 0.8beta. Coming-soon features include email notifications, project searching, and an iPhone application.

Compost is free software, released under GPLv3. You have the freedom to:

  • - use the software for any purpose
  • - change the software to suit your needs
  • - share the software with your friends and neighbours
  • - share the changes you make

Getting Started

Download

You can download the latest version of Compost here. Follow the README instructions to get Compost up and running in seconds.

If you have any suggestions or problems, be sure to drop us a line.

Compost Versus Alternatives

Compost differs from most feedback systems in that it is completely free and open source. Here is a chart that compares some popular feedback systems to Compost.

  Compost Getsignoff backboard redmark Concept feedback Notable ConceptShare
Web-based Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Any type of design Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Ability to annotate designs Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Comment on annotations Yes Yes No Yes No No Yes
Create Revisions Yes Yes No Yes No No No
Change the look and feel of the site Yes Yes No No No No No
Unlimited clients, projects and designs Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No
Free Yes No No Yes Yes No No
Open Source Yes No No No No No No
Each project can have multiple reviewers Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Clients can rate designs Yes No No No Yes No No
Permissions-based projects Yes Yes Yes No No Yes Yes
iPhone App Coming Soon! No No No No Yes No

Participate

Participate

If you’re handy with PHP, jQuery and Code Igniter we encourage you to become a committer! Help us move Compost forward and give back to the open source community.

To get started, visit the project at Google Code – there you can familiarize yourself with the issues, checkout the source code and browse changes. You will need to be a member of the project to commit any changes – to become a member, send an email to gavin.blair at rtraction.com and I’ll add you as a committer.

If you’re not a coder you can still help out by testing Compost and providing feedback.

Coming Soon

Very soon Compost will have an iPhone app, drag-and-drop design ordering, and email notification options. What features would you like to see in Compost? Leave a comment below or at our feedback site.

gavinblair

As someone who loves to help others, Gavin is not easily ruffled. Poorly designed software is one of his few pet peeves, and we can count on Gavin to find solutions and make improvements in all kinds of applications. In his own words, he likes to "fight the good fight for quality code." He loves food and finding adventure in the kitchen, cooking with his wife. On one occasion, the combination of a white-hot skillet and no ventilation led to so much smoke they had to stop, drop and roll - but did end up eating "the best blackened catfish po'boy you can imagine."

Updates to Tweetdeck – Review of Features

Written by Titus | Posted in OurTraction | No Comments »
February 8th, 2010

The team at Tweetdeck just released an update to their social media monitoring application. If you’re not familiar with Tweetdeck I urge you to check it out now. It allows you to engage with a number of  platforms, and update you status across services like Twitter and Facebook and to monitor online conversations easily.

With this most recent update, the Tweetdeck has added YouTube and Flickr to their list of supported sites. You can now watch YouTube clips and view Flickr photos all within Tweetdeck. Now if one of your friend links to one of these site, you don’t have to leave the application.

One very neat update is column navigation. Now you can quickly jump to any column by hovering over a link a the bottom of the window. You no longer have to scroll horizontally across a screen.

There are also a couple of back end improvements. The Twitter API rate limit was increased and Tweetdeck now makes 350 calls per hour. This is great for anyone managing multiple accounts, or interacting with a high number of followers. We have also been given the option to edit search terms without having to delete the query and start over.

Its great to see the group at Tweetdeck constantly improving their application. Tweetdeck is quickly becoming the one program to easily manage your social media activities.

Titus

Titus role is to help keep our clients fluent in many dialects of social media. Titus has been a key organizer for a variety of local technology events. A true conversationalist both online and off, Titus rarely shies away from a healthy debate and is motivated to see the Internet become more social and move towards more engaging conversations. Titus is also an avid cook and would rather eat a failed recipe then throw out food. As a student, in order to save a few bucks, he would often brew his own beer.