We tinker with new things all the time but we were looking to do something different this week. After a bit of discussion and brainstorming we decided to do a code blitz. The idea is to take the whole development team and throw them into something for a single day with a single purpose. Ideally we would come up with a project that would strengthen their teamwork, develop their skills, give something back to the community and deliver a working product at the end of a single working day.

We discussed a number of cool projects (some of which we’ll come back to at a later date) and in the end all agreed on a cool little app that we’d all like to have available for London. When we’re out with our friends and family and want to know what’s going on right now what would come in handy?

We’ve worked with Thomas Czermak over at LondonFuse on a couple of small changes to the site in the past so we called him up and pitched development of an iPhone application for the site.

After a quick meeting to discuss the possibilities (and there are a lot of very cool ones) we narrowed things down to a narrow v1.0 feature set. The next morning we jumped in. We’ve done a few little things on the iPhone (including developing an interface for our open source Compost package) but this was going to be new for a couple of our guys.

The day was very productive and we learned a lot of great things but more importantly we came together as a team like never before.

We’re still polishing but we have a functional v1.0 app. We’ll be tacking on a few new features before it hits the App Store but we’ll have something ready to go in the next few weeks.

We’ll have an announcement on this blog and on Twitter (http://twitter.com/rtraction) when it hits the store.

Here’s a little eye candy for you in the meantime:

While it is still early and all the details have not been released there are a number of positives to look forward to:

• For new users the barrier of entry has been lowered; it will become easier to discover people and interests.
• Relationships are strengthened as users find more people and businesses to interact with.
• However there is a lower signal to noise ratio as you only connect with people relevant to your interests.
• Contextual data can be easily added to websites, applications and online services to facilitate these connections.

With this release Twitter is working to position the service as an information network where people can easily share content and learn from each other across a variety of different websites.

Recently events have illustrated Twitter’s ability to easily and safely bring people together; Iranian elections, the Chilean earthquake and conferences around the world. With today’s announcement they have extended this functionality to everyone and both users and businesses of all sizes will benefit.

The day started with the keynote presentation by Mitch Joel of Twist Image in Montreal. He delivered his Six Pixels presentation in which he reiterated the need to understand that we are facing a radical shift in the way we communicate. One of the great things I took away was that with social media, customers still have the same amount of control as they always have. However now there is a greater amplification of their voices. Its easy now for anyone to become a competitor of a traditional business and to succeed.

Mitch delivers a rich and engaging presentation and it was a great way to start the day because it got the attendees all riled up and excited. He provided the groundwork to the day that allowed many people to start on an equal footing.

Following the keynote there were a number of breakout sessions. I attended Brady Murphy of Vortex Mobile’s session on mobile marketing and was able to connect with him about a few interesting things I’d experienced in the space. Brady talked about many of the challenges that mobile developers face when dealing with multiple platforms and service providers. I’ve mentioned before that I believe mobile to be the future of social media and 2010 will be an important year towards that development. This session reiterated that belief, and introduced a lot of new people to the concept.

However, the highlight of the day was the release of PolicyTool. David Canton presented on the legal issues surrounding social media and at the end unveiled the free social media policy generator. David was also asked to present PolicyTool at the final wrap up, so all the attendees were introduced  to it. We’ve written about this already, including the resounding success that it has been.

I enjoyed my time at the conference and was glad to connect with lots of other people over the course of the day. Hopefully this is just the start to many more social media conferences in London.

We never would have gotten the traffic and the interest we did without the help of our social media friends. Mitch Joel sent several tweets out to his network and we are thankful for his interest in the tool and the role he’s played in promoting it. PolicyTool has also been mentioned at numerous conferences including the Great Ideas Conference and the NL Conference in Amsterdam.

From there hundreds of people have re-tweeted messages and shared the tool with their friends and coworkers. In fact as of today our PolicyTool was mentioned every 14 minutes on average. It also looks like people will be continuing to refer back to the site since hundreds of people bookmarked it on delicious.

But it wasn’t limited to Twitter. Lots of people have written blog posts reviewing the tool, sharing their policies, and discussing the overall need for a social media policy within any organization. Simon Fodden wrote a post for the legal blog Slaw.ca reviewing the policy generator.  Beth Kanter used PolicyTool as a springboard for discussion around Not-For-Profits and Aaron Robb for wrote about our incentive for releasing the Social Media policy tool for free.

A big thank-you to everyone who has taken the time to share their thoughts through various social media channels. We’ve heard your comments and are working to make the changes you’ve proposed.

Not long after starting your fancy new webapp, you will start to realize that putting

if (!isset($_SESSION['isloggedin'])) {
  redirect('/login');
}

in every single controller function is very tedious.

You can create an extension of the Controller class and put the common code in there. Here’s how.

Create a file in /system/application/libraries called MY_Controller.php. The name of this file is important. If the prefix “MY_” doesn’t do it for you, go into /system/application/config/config.php and change

$config['subclass_prefix'] = 'MY_';

to whatever you want. Don’t change the “Controller” part though! You can also extend Models and Helpers.

Start with the following code in MY_Controller.php:

class Authenticated_Controller extends Controller {
  function Authenticated_Controller() {
    parent::Controller();
    session_start();
    if (!isset($_SESSION['isloggedin'])) {
      redirect('/login');
    }
  }
}

Go ahead and add any common controller functions to this class. Feel free to change “Authenticated_Controller” to whatever you want. You can also have multiple Controller extensions in this file.

Note: If you only have one controller extension, it is standard to name your class MY_Controller (rather than Authenticated_Controller).

Important Note: If you find yourself creating a bunch of controller extensions, take a step back and consider what you are doing. Is your extension being used by only one controller? If so, just put your code in that controller’s constructor.

Now it’s time to start using your new controller extension!

In every controller that requires authentication (don’t do this for your login controller!) rather than the traditional

class Manage extends Controller { ...

use this instead:

class Manage extends Authenticated_Controller { ...

Do you have CodeIgniter controller extensions that could be useful to others? Let us know in the comments.

So in order to fill this need rtraction and technology lawyer David Canton are pleased to announce the release of our first PolicyTool, a free social media policy generator.

After answering a few short questions about your business and your employees roles online, you are provided with a full social media policy. We have worked with David Canton to review other social media policies, and relied on his legal perspective to build a strong and reliable tool that we are excited to share with the community.

This is being released as a free resource because we hope that it will encourage businesses of all sizes to start engaging in online conversations and feel safe doing so.

If you would like to see other policy tool modules, or have suggestions for improvements to the Social Media Policy Generator, then please submit them to our feedback form.

To learn more about social media, and how your company can take advantage of the many different technologies available, please check out services or contact us with specific questions.

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

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.

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.

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.

The event in Guelph is organized primarily by Brydon Gilliss (twitter: @Brydon). There were a limited number of presenters and we were among the privileged few who were chosen to show off what we’ve been working on. There was a variety in the types of projects: some, like ours, were pure software and others combined software and hardware.

Tara Hunt (twitter: @missrogue)
First up was the special guest speaker, Tara Hunt. Tara is the author of The Whuffie Factor, and had many interesting things to say about social media as it applies to individuals and companies. Regarding individuals branding themselves, she said “Who needs a personal brand? Get a personality!” To business, the comment was simpler but along the same line “Stop being robots”. Basically what she was saying to everyone is to be authentic. Whether we work for a small company, large corporation or are self-employed, we are still human beings with our own interests, passions and even flaws. She used the example of karaoke and how it allows people to relate to her better. Social media does more than just connect people, it embraces the human factor in everything we do.

Tiny Hippos (twitter: @tinyHippos)
This group built a browser plugin for mobile website and widget developers to aid in the laborious process of testing with multiple devices. This saves the time and effort of running multiple emulators. This project was still in its early stages and we were among some of the first to see it in action.

BerryBlab (twitter: @berryblab)
BerryBlab is a clean easy-to-use BlackBerry application to read vBulletin forums. This program has a clear purpose and achieves it well.

Compost (twitter: @compostr)
This was our presentation of our new opensource web design feedback tool. The hardest part was demoing in under 15 minutes, including setup and questions. After taking a quick tour through the demo website, we fielded several questions from the audience.
My two favourite questions were (paraphrasing a bit):
Q: What distinguishes Compost from similar software, such as ConceptShare or others?
A: Ours is free.
Q: How do you plan to make money off this product?
A: We don’t. The time savings of using the program translate to money indirectly, but the code itself is opensource under GPL3 and free for anyone to use.

JaxCore (twitter: @jaxcore)
JaxCore is looking to change the way web development is done by introducing a new language. The biggest challenge we can see is getting programmers to let go of their favourite programming languages.

SnapSort (twitter: @snapsort)
This is a camera comparison website with a bit different spin than many others. The application looks at the specs and compares them weighted by what’s actually important to consumers. If you’ve ever tried to compare cameras online, you’ve experienced the frustration of trying to figure out what any of the stats actually mean. This site might help me in finally deciding which digital SLR to buy.

Little Robots (twitter: @tonious)
This was a very interesting demo, though very hard to see in the packed room. He addressed the basic issue of subtle communication between individuals. The developer built two little robots, one for his fiancé and another for himself. By pushing the belly-button on his robot, his fiancé’s robot waves at her, and vice-versa. Very cool. But since I know little about hardware, I’ll stick with text messaging my girlfriend for now.

All around, it was a great event and I would love to see a DemoCampLondon. We have a number of specialized user groups: one for Drupal, another for .NET, and of course many great networking groups such as the GeekDinner, but nothing quite along these lines. Seeing a variety of cool products in development in a casual grassroots manner was a different experience and one I look forward to next time.

There are a number of applications that allow you to share your location with your friends. Gowalla, Foursquare are two that have made this into a game, allowing users to collect points and “dropped items“.

Metro’s recent announcement that they have partnered with Foursquare has taken these applications from permissible non creepy stalking to useful tools.

Metro newspaper is a free daily that is handed out at transit stations in major Canadian cities. They have also been active participants in new media, with numerous Twitter accounts and casually written blogs. They claim a circulation of over 800,000.

When a user checks into a location near a site that Metro has a reviewed, a Foursquare tip will be displayed on their phone with the option to read a full review.

There are other applications like AroundMe or CanPages that use you GPS location to return search results related to your location. However Foursquare has the benefit over these application of being crowd sourced and therefore updated more frequently.

While this announcement only speaks about reviews, there is also the potential for breaking news to be shared in the same way, a featuring lacking in other proximity applications.

While augmented reality could arguably be considered more interesting, there is still a barrier of entry (for example the need to install applications to your device). Foursquare and similar services are web based and are easy to use, therefore encouraging more users.

What Is Your Business Doing?

Social media gives businesses of all types the ability connect with their customers. And potential clients are asking to be connected with you. So what are you doing to converse with them? The tools are available and just waiting to be used in news and interesting ways.