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“Django 1.0 Template Development” book review
Ultimately, buying Django 1.0 Template Development comes down to what kind of learner you are: Django’s official documentation, the Django Book, and the Django users Google Group, should give most Web developers and template authors enough to learn most of the template system, but the book can be a handy reference and walk-through that will hold your hand in a lot of sticky points. The examples in the book are bound to teach something to even the most seasoned Django developers.
What I am learning this semester … and hopefully teaching you!
With summer officially gone and my first week of class well under way, I have to admit that I am really excited about what lies ahead. I am taking a combination of theory and practical skills courses, so please let me know if one in particular interests you. I found that I blogged several times last Spring on particular readings or projects from class, so I am happy to do the same this semester if people find it helpful. Also, please let me know if you prefer learning about particularly good readings, or looking through coding examples and tutorials.
A gentle introduction to the Django Web framework
In this week’s edition of II’s summer guest blogger series, Richard Cornish discusses Django, both providing examples of Django projects and a brief history of how it came about. Cornish is an interaction designer at the Lawrence Journal-World, where Django was developed.
Journalism programmers – join us on Ning!
Journalist Justin McLachlan started a social network on Ning yesterday specifically for journalists and coders to discuss “how programming and the news can go together.” So far, we have 21 talented developers within four sub-groups: Actionscript, HTML/CSS, Ruby on Rails, and Django. I look forward to utilizing Ning to connect with and learn from journalists who are embracing programming concepts to further storytelling. Therefore, I encourage all II readers to join!
Tampa Bay Mug Shots utilizes Django for innovative database
St. Petersburg Times launched a brilliant interactive on Monday, utilizing booking information to create a database of the most recent arrests in their area. According to Shelby Sapusek, a media-focused twitterer, this package received 100,000 hits in the first 3 hours. Now that’s what I call a return on investment! Even better, they bypassed Flash and produced this package with Django, an open-source software known for it’s rich database capabilities under a tight deadline.
How to get started building an iPhone Web app
I was fortunate enough to attend an Apple seminar on UNC’s campus today for iPhone and iPod Touch application developers. Mobility consulting engineer Steve Hayman discussed the use of Dashcode for Web apps, as well as Xcode for native apps. Hayman showed us some innovative examples of current apps, tutorials with basic templates, and tips to getting started as a developer. Since this is a completely new topic for me (I’m still stuck with a crummy Verizon phone) let’s learn together!
UNC student reflects on importance of multimedia programming
UNC multimedia student Grace Koerber blew me away during the SND portfolio review when she showed her latest multimedia interactive — a class project from Donny Lofland’s multimedia programming class. Having taken this class several years ago, I am impressed by the breadth of programming knowledge that multimedia journalists are now being asked to learn. Of course I could always preach about the importance of this skill set, but I asked Grace to give us an outside perspective. In this post she writes about her experience learning how to program, this project, and how she feels programming will help her as a journalist.
Integrating bots into multimedia for a virtual reality interaction
What if intelligent agent simulators, also known as bots, could be programmed to create a virtual reality experience for multimedia storytelling? Stay with me on this one. During my Human-Information Interaction class, 30 masters students spent an hour conversing with software robots, including Alice and John Lennon. If UNC masters students could enthusiastically chat back and forth with bots for an hour, I have a feeling this could be potentially the next biggest thing for interactivity and multimedia on the web.
Example files and tips for deeplinking with Flash SWF Address
Back in October I wrote a tutorial on how to utilizing deep links in Flash files. This post has consistently been the most viewed page on the site and I have been receiving several emails asking for help fixing bugs. Although I am happy to help individual cases, I decided it might be best to provide my files as well as publish other II reader’s trials, tribulations and success stories to help everyone out there who is also working with SWF Address.
FlarToolkit introduces augmented reality using Flash
My former classmate Jason Tucker passed along a fascinating concept that he discovered using FlarToolkit. In layman’s terms, he described it to me as a tool that “uses your webcam, tracks a shape and then uses that with PaperVision and Flash Player 10 to create an augmented reality.” He continued by saying that “you could potentially use it to track a person’s eyes and use their webcam to control a panoramic image as they rotate their head.” That got my attention!
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