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Szia Szeged! Off to DrupalCon

2008-08-18T18:54:33+00:00

I’m the first of the Development Seed crew to head out for Hungary, and I have to say I’m excited. I left Washington, DC on Friday for Vienna to have a week of vacation and visiting with friends and family. Then it’s time to hit the DrupalCon circuit again.

There are many sessions I’m looking forward to. Rasmus, the creator of php, shocked us al in Sunnyvale and I’m sure he has some new surprises for us in Szeged. Robert Douglas is leading a talk I’m particularly interested in on the future of search. We’ve been looking into alternatives to Drupal’s search, and it would be great to have a better solution in Drupal itself. Other session’s that I’m excited for are:

Several of my colleagues here at Development Seed are participating in some interesting sessions. Jeff will present recent developments on the Context and Spaces modules, Jose will talk about improvements to the Messaging and Notifications frameworks, and Eric will disclose how he attracts and retains Drupal talent on a panel with Robert Scales from Raincity and Tiffany Farriss from Palantir. Also, Aron and I will explain what’s cool about the new core aggregator patch.

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone in Szeged. If you haven’t gotten tickets yet, there’s still time to register and there are some affordable travel options out there. Hope to see you in Szeged!

Week in DC Tech: August 18 Edition

2008-08-18T15:47:55+00:00

The mild summer weather continues as we move into the third week in August, and no matter how worrisome strange weather trends are these days, we must admit the last few weeks have been pretty nice. Local tech events also continue to buck the August trends in DC, with many scheduled and past ones still getting great turnouts. Here are some of the events we’re looking forward to this week.

Tuesday, August 19
7:00 pm

NetSquared’s Pimp My Nonprofit: Like giving advice you don’t have to implement yourself? Workplace Fairness is redesigning its website and their team is looking for strategic help with design, usability, and finding a way to display a lot of content in a non-threatening way. Come out to give your two cents.

6:00 – 9:00 pm

Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre

2008-08-15T20:07:25+00:00

Support Drupal: Sponsor Drupalcon Szeged

2008-08-14T18:42:17+00:00

Looking for a way to show your support for Drupal? Easy: sponsor the upcoming European Drupalcon. You'll be helping to fund critically important work--and increasing your exposure and profile in the community at the same time.

Drupalcon sponsorship: mainstay of the Drupal Association

Drupalcon is the single largest source of revenue for the Drupal Association, the non-profit that supports Drupal. Sponsorship revenues make it possible for us to tackle key Association priorities, from protecting the legal integrity of the Drupal codebase to improving the infrastructure driving drupal.org.

Revenue from past Drupalcons is directly funding pressing projects like our top priority this year: improving the drupal.org website. Sponsoring Drupalcon is a direct and concrete way to financially support the Association's work.

Profile and Benefits

Sponsoring Drupalcon is not just a way to support important work promoting the Drupal platform. It's also an opportunity for exposure and profile in the Drupal community.

Drupal 6.4 and 5.10 released

2008-08-14T02:01:27+00:00

Download Drupal 6.4
Download Drupal 5.10

Drupal 6.4 and Drupal 5.10, maintenance releases fixing problems reported using the bug tracking system, as well as critical security vulnerabilities, are now available for download.

Upgrading your existing Drupal 5 and 6 sites is strongly recommended. There are no new features in these releases. For more information about the Drupal 6.x release series, consult the Drupal 6.0 release announcement, more information on the 5.x releases can be found in Drupal 5.0 release announcement.

Mark Boulton Design named redesign partner by Association

2008-08-13T23:32:48+00:00

The Drupal Association is pleased to announce the selection of a design partner in its Drupal.org redesign efforts. Through a competitive process, UK-based Mark Boulton Design Ltd. was selected. Their proposal stood out because of their work on Coolspotters and the upcoming Standaard.be (launching Q4 2008), their agile design approach and their highly-experienced project team including Mark Boulton as Creative Director and project lead, Leisa Reichelt as Information Architect & UX Research and Carolyn Wood as Content Strategist.

Show your support for Drupal at South by Southwest!

2008-08-12T23:10:29+00:00

South by Southwest (SXSW) is an annual festival and conference held every spring in Austin, Texas, dedicated to bringing together creative indviduals from around the world for a week-long celebration of music, film, and interactive technology. The interactive portion of the festival features over 150 panel discussions on cutting-edge topics in the new media industry and culture, as well as a trade show, Web Awards Competition, video game tournament, and some great after-parties.

Not only was the main SXSW Web site recently redesigned and relaunched in Drupal, but there are a number of really great Drupal-related panel proposals suggested for the interactive festival, which which will be held March 13-17, 2009. We need your help to make sure that Drupal is well-represented at SXSW because it offers an opportunity to reach out to a lot of new people who are not part of the traditional developer community. This past spring's festival included a Content Management System Roundup panel with George DeMet and Tiffany Farriss of Palantir and Jeff Eaton of Lullabot that attracted more attendees than all of Drupalcon Boston.

You have the opportunity to register your support for these proposals by going to the Interactive Festival Panel Picker, which is a Web site that allows you to review, vote for, and comment on all of the more than 1200 panel proposals that were submitted. The festival's organizers take feedback from this site into account when making their decisions for which panels are included in the final program. You can create an account and register your opinions regardless of whether you're planning to attend or not. The Panel Picker will be open until August 29, and the final panel selections will be announced starting in October.

If you’re interested in having Drupal represented at SXSW, providing positive feedback for these session proposals is a great and easy way to show your support:

New docs handbook coming!

2008-08-11T20:10:03+00:00

There has been a lot of work going on in the Docs team lately and we want to share that with the larger community. The biggest news that will impact everyone is that we are in the process of creating a new top-level handbook to be added to drupal.org, called "Getting Involved." It will be listed along with the other handbooks on the main Documentation landing page as well as be the new target for the Contribute tab.

New "Getting Involved" handbook

In March 2008 a number of folks got together at DrupalCon Boston to have a Doc Sprint. We worked throughout the day to help clean up the issue queue and brainstorm. A big idea was born from that to create a new handbook that consolidates, organizes and expands the existing information we have on the myriad ways that people can get involved with the Drupal community.

Week in DC Tech: August 11 Edition

2008-08-11T15:22:17+00:00

It's a gorgeous start to the week here in Washington, DC with sunny and cool weather that makes it hard to believe it's August - and not May. It looks like our luck will hold out for most of the week too. If you can avoid the pull of backyard barbecues and outdoor happy hours, come out to some tech events this week. The walk there and back will be beautiful, and there's some interesting chances to dork out with other techies. And for a full list of what's happening in tech this week, head over to DC Tech Events.

Monday, August 11

7:15 - 9:00 pm

DC Drupal Meetup: We're gathering tonight at Stetson's to talk Drupal and play some competitive foosball. Come out to talk to Drupal developers, users, and those just interested in the platform - or just to show off your foosball ferocity.

Tuesday, August 12

7:00 pm

George Pelecanos Reading: It's not tech-related, but George Pelecanos is one of DC's most well known celebrities. He'll be at Politics and Prose to talk about his latest book Turnaround.

Washington, DC Drupal Meetup + Round Robin Foosball Tournament Tonight

2008-08-11T15:22:17+00:00

Tonight we're having our monthly Drupal meetup at Stetson's Bar and Restaurant. Usually Washington, DC is a ghost town in August with Congress shutting its doors and most people fleeing the heat. But this August is definitely an exception - Congress has stuck around longer than usual and its downright comfortable outside. So we're expecting a fun get together tonight.

We'll start off with the usual round of 5-minute lighting talks. This is the time to share what you're working on with the group, and it's a great way to lead into more detailed conversations later on in the evening. So far we have two speakers on the docket - Mike Haggerty and Andy Laken, who will be saying goodbye too as he moves to Montana. Also, Addison Berry will be making an appearance tonight, so hopefully we can twist her arm to present as well. If you would like to talk, just post over here and come ready.

After last month's highly competitive, post-meetup foosball games, we've decided there is an obvious need for a more foosball action. So tonight we'll be having the first ever DC Drupal Round Robin foosball tournament. Come ready to play and with some quarters in your pocket.

Gabor got married yesterday!

2008-08-10T19:23:00+00:00

I've been working with Gabor for almost 5 years. First as a contributor to Drupal, next as my Drupal 6 co-maintainer, and more recently as a co-worker at Acquia. Yesterday, Gabor got married, so needless to say, a number of us traveled to Hungary to attend his wedding. In the picture below, you can see some of the Drupal people that were present.

Drupal Podcast 62: Merlin Mann, Jon Armstrong (Dooce), Ben Durbin

2008-08-08T17:16:36+00:00

Jeff Robbins talks with Merlin Mann (43 Folders and You Look Nice Today), Jon Armstrong (Dooce®), and Ben Durbin about running their successful blogs on Drupal.

Migration Tricks and Challenges

2008-08-08T12:16:06+00:00

This Wednesday we finished a migration from an old site running on OpenACS to a relatively complex Drupal site with organic groups, events, imagecache, attachments, books, and the whole spiel.

Having gone over budget on migrations before, this time we wanted to take a more systematic approach and make sure that we at least learned something if we wind up eating hours.

This is the approach we came up with:

1) Analyze, analyze, analyze

2) Write reusable code :)

3) Share our experience

1) Analyze, analyze, analyze

A problem in several previous migrations was that the real time hogs appeared late on the scene. Problematic data webs passed under our radar when estimating projects but took all our attention when the days got late. Another issue we had run into was that seemingly simple tasks turned out to be quite twisted and time consuming.

Knight News Challenge Garage, powered by Drupal, designed and developed by pingVision

2008-08-08T22:23:59+00:00

The Knight News Challenge Garage launched (beta) today. In the press release, the site is described:

Fifty coaches are standing by online to help innovative thinkers apply for the Knight News Challenge, a $5 million-a-year contest to move journalism into the 21st Century. The coaches — made up of past jurors and winners — will give News Challenge hopefuls a better chance of winning up to $5 million in prizes annually. They also hope to attract a more diverse range of ideas.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has funded the contest with $25 million over five years. Its goal is to discover new ways of using digital technology to meet the information needs of geographic communities. Last year’s contest received 3,000 applications. It named 16 winners.

The new “Knight News Challenge “Garage” mentoring site can be accessed online at garage.newschallenge.org. “With this incubator site we are taking a page from technology companies,” says Gary Kebbel, Knight Foundation’s journalism program officer. “We hope that the Garage coaches will extend the contest’s reach beyond the journalism field. We want to attract more applicants from technical communities, such as the social media arena. Another goal is to improve the overall quality of applications.”

Announcing Drupalcon Szeged draft program, ticket discount extended until this Friday

2008-08-07T08:42:32+00:00

We have just published our draft session schedule for Drupalcon Szeged 2008 yesterday based on feedback from you, the track chair selections and available rooms and timeslots. While building up the program, we took great care to find enough time for attendees to network, discuss code and business.

The unconference never received so much attention at Drupalcons. We set aside three workshop rooms for bigger BoFs, and now allow you to schedule your BoFs yourselves way in advance. It was a popular request to be able to know the unconference program before the event for easier planning (even though this goes against the unconference definition a bit). While BoF speakers can modify their placement whenever they see appropriate (even on the day their BoF would be held), the pre-scheduling possibility might help you gauge the wealth of program available on this event. You will be able to submit and schedule new BoF proposals on the spot in Szeged, but submitting earlier will help you get more attention to your topic.

Some early quotes we have heard about our program include Peter Wolanin of Acquia saying yesterday: Hmm, I might have to cancel all my BoFs - too many sessions I want to see! and Mikkel Høgh of Peytz & Co tweeting just took a look at the tentative Drupalcon schedule [...] – so much to see, so little time. It's going to be hard to pick….

Now that the program is out and unconference sessions are put into place, we thought you might decide easier to attend Drupalcon. So to make it a trivial decision, we extended our discount on tickets until this Friday. You can still buy 120 EUR tickets for Drupalcon today and tomorrow. If you are still not among those registered, don't miss the opportunity now!

At last but not least, some sponsor spots are still available and we are now selling booths at the different exhibitions as well. If your company would like to reach the hundreds of Drupal people at the event, or would like the developers among them to resell your hosting or other services to their customers, you should sign up as soon as possible to get into our booklet and have maximum impact.

Improved Aggregator for Drupal 7: What's Under the Hood

2008-08-06T22:25:47+00:00

The patch for an improved aggregator for Drupal 7 is now available on Drupal.org #236237. This code is result of Aron Novak's Google Summer of Code project and it is available as a Drupal project with regular patches against Drupal HEAD #236237. The patch has been out for a couple of weeks, so it's high time to talk about what improvements it aims to bring to Drupal core.

Before I dive into the details though, I'd like to point out that several people requested to break the patch into smaller pieces as it is rather big and touches on more than one functionality of the aggregator. We yet have to work on this, however I do think that there is a value in presenting the proposed improvements as a whole. So here we go.

There are four major differences in comparison to the existing aggregator:

Extensible architecture - allows external modules to add or replace functionality
Per feed content type configuration of aggregator
Replaces aggregator's XML parser with a SimpleXML based parser
Replaces aggregator's category system with taxonomy

1. Extensible architecture

This change is the widest reaching of all. At its core, there are the concepts of parsers and processors for aggregator. Parsers download and parse feeds, normalize feed data and expose it to other parts of the application. Processors grab feed data and act on it. For example they create database records for feed items.

In order to define a parser or a processor, one of two hooks need to be implemented:

hook_parse() for defining a parser
hook_process() for defining a processor

According to the parser/processor architecture, the new structure of aggregator is as follows:

aggregator module - implements API and standard download routines
syndication_parser module - standard RSS/Atom/RDF parser module that is supposed to ship with core. Can be used independently from aggregator.
aggregator.light.inc (part of aggregator module) - this implements a processor that stores feed items as lightweight database records just as the current aggregator does

The implementation of parsers and processors can be seen in syndication_parser module and in aggregator.light.inc. There is also a feed-items-as-nodes implementation in the project version of aggregator for Drupal 7. To my knowledge, the parser/processor architecture was first introduced in Drupal by Ted Serbinski with SimpleFeed, and it also exists in FeedAPI.

Current discussion points around the extensible API are:

Setting Up a Two-Way SMS Gateway with Gnokii and Drupal

2008-08-06T16:52:43+00:00

In addition to all of the work being done on the SMS Framework, we have also started researching how to quickly create our own two-way SMS gateway for sending and receiving SMS messages. It is a proof of concept based on needs we are hearing from development agencies. Our solution is based around gnokii, an open source project that can be used to control the various functions of any mobile phone it supports. gnokii sends and receives SMS text messages over a USB or Bluetooth connection with the phone.

In our setup we’re using a Nokia 6102i mobile phone, gnokii 0.6.8 (installed using Macports) and a MacBook Pro with Bluetooth.

A daemon, written in Python, manages the process of sending and receiving messages and a Drupal module acts as the end point on the Drupal side. The daemon periodically checks the phone for incoming messages and the server for outgoing messages. If a message is found it is processed and passed to the other side.

An outgoing message that originated from a Drupal module will be stored in a queue temporarily. The daemon checks the queue using an HTTP request. When it finds the queued message it connects the phone, sends the message, and clears the item from the queue. Incoming messages are handled in a similar fashion. When a message is first received it is queued on the mobile phone temporarily. When daemon finds the message waiting on the phone, it passes it to the server using an HTTP request and deletes the entry from the phone.

We are making the daemon open source so check out the code in the Drupal CVS repository and let me know if you want to talk about this.

Week in DC Tech: August 4th Edition

2008-08-04T16:14:16+00:00

August in Washington, DC usually means empty streets, emptier bars, and lots heat advisories. Congress is in recess, Hill staff flee the city for vacations, and everyone else leaves to escape the unendurable humidity. Who knows if it's high gas prices, a delayed exodus, or just the mild weather, but August is off to a different start this year. It's absolutely beautiful outside and looks like it's staying that way for most of the week, and there are a ton of very fun tech events happening all week long. Here's a look at the ones we're most excited about. As always, Ross has a full listing over at DC Tech Events.

Monday, August 4

Dusk

Screen on the Green: Start the week off with a relaxing picnic on the Mall and a flick. This week The Apartment is showing on the giant screen in front of the Capitol Building.

Tuesday, August 5

6:30 - 8:30 pm

CopyNight DC: Copyright law is a huge issue with online content, mostly because it's still far from black and white. Come out to the American Library Association to talk copyright law. This month's discussion will be on Georgia State's E-reserve lawsuit, along with other current goings on in copyright law.

Wednesday, August 6

Noon to 1:30 pm

Facebook for Nonprofits: Curious as to the best way to use Facebook for your nonprofit? Join the teleconference to hear advice from two nonprofits active on Facebook - Amnesty International and the League of Young Voters - and a Facebook rep working with apps and Causes.

NTEN CMS Satisfaction Report for non-profits- Drupal receives high scores

2008-08-01T16:40:04+00:00

Drupal received high scores in a satisfaction report by NTEN, a major Non-profit Technology organization. Drupal was evaluated in five categories, and had the highest number of responses, and the highest number of respondents that indicated Drupal is their primary CMS. Drupal is clearly popular with the non-profit crowd and this satisfaction survey provides the Drupal community with focused areas for improvement.

Drupal received the following scores:

Quality and reliability: A
After sales support: B+
Delivers on promises and deadlines: B+
Usability: B+
Value: A

The report is available to members of NTEN at a discount with the "Drupal" discount code. A sample format of the report is also available.

Vocalo.org: Public Media For The People

2008-07-29T18:59:52+00:00

Vocalo.org is a bold new concept in community media: a complex social media website and an associated broadcast radio station in Chicago, IL.

Vocalo.org is a place for people to compose and share stories -- including images, audio, and video -- with their fellow users. User-generated content is broadcast on the radio station as well as made available on the website for licensed remixing. Vocalo users span the globe, while the broadcast radio station (89.5 FM) and local focus keep the project true to its roots.

Surviving Information Overload: FeedAPI Mail Watches Your Mailing Lists

2008-07-29T12:27:19+00:00

Keeping up with all the information we get every day is no easy job. We follow hundreds of websites using feed readers and get hundreds of emails every day. If that wasn't enough, there are new sites everyday producing their own streams of information, sites like Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, and probably someone is launching a new one as I'm writing this. We definitely need help to manage all this information, so we use tools like email filters, feed aggregators and readers, and tagging tools.

Just one of the tools mentioned above means one more piece of software or website to deal with. And that means that when we find some other tool that can mix what two tools do into just one, we have at least some hope that the next day we'll have some spare time to do the real work. That's what FeedAPI Mail does for FeedAPI in Drupal - adds one more functionality to the mix.

Now we have the first proof-of-concept module for a FeedAPI plugin that adds mailing lists into the equation. With this plugin, you can follow mailing lists and enjoy the same features available for the other content. It treats individual mailing lists as if they were web feeds, allowing the same features for incoming emails as for the rest of the content, including automatic tagging (and geotagging), reading the emails in a single news reader, easy sharing with your team, and so on. Here's a look at it running in our team news aggregator/analyzer Managing News:

This FeedAPI Mail module works together with Mailhandler and FeedAPI, which grabs the rest of the feeds and presents them in a single web interface. In addition it has also a specific mail reader UI that can display threads and authors, which puts single emails in context.

To get started we need a mail account and to set up a mail inbox with Mailhandler so emails are read and made into nodes. Next we need to add a 'Mailing list' and set it up with the mailing list email address so incoming emails can be classified as coming from different lists. Then we just need to subscribe our email address to the mailing list (which may take some manual steps to handle confirmation emails), and we're all set.

What's to Come with FeedAPI Mail

Drual Podcast 61: Mashups and APIs, Oh My!

2008-07-28T19:31:37+00:00

Jeff Eaton, John VanDyk, James Walker, and Jeff Robbins discuss the web APIs, mashups, and (to a small extent) how all of this relates to Drupal.

Week in DC Tech: July 28 Edition

2008-07-28T14:21:34+00:00

It's another busy week for techies in Washington, DC with several interesting tech events to choose from. Here's a quick look at the meetups we hope to attend this week. For a full listing of what's going on around town, check out DC Tech Events.

Monday, July 28

8:30 am - 5:00 pm

Maps in Our Lives: This is short notice, but there's an interesting discussion happening today at the Library of Congress about maps. Stop by to see historical maps mixed with new GIS technology and some unique examples of how powerful data can be when it's displayed on a map.

Tuesday, July 29

12:30 pm

Knight Drupal Initaitive Monthly Proposal Review -- 7 August 2008

2008-08-06T18:59:29+00:00

The Knight Drupal Initiative is an ongoing grant program for Drupal development. To make the program successful, community review of proposals is essential.

We will meet for the next round of proposal reviews on Thursday, August 7th at 15:00 Eastern (US) (19:00 UTC). This meeting is part of our ongoing monthly review meetings. To be held in #drupal-dojo on IRC [freenode]. (See http://drupal.org/irc for information.)

State of Drupal 2008 survey: help shape the future of Drupal

2008-07-25T16:45:23+00:00

Every year, I try to communicate the "Drupal Zeitgeist" in at least one of my "State of Drupal" presentations. To help me capture the State of Drupal for my presentation at DrupalCon Szeged, I'd like to invite you all to take part in the State of Drupal 2008 survey that I created. The goal of the survey is to better understand our needs and to help prioritize our efforts. If you can't attend DrupalCon Szeged, don't worry; I'll share all results after the conference.

Now, fill out the survey and help shape the future of Drupal!