Drupal

Open source <acronym title="content management system">CMS</acronym> powered by PHP and MySQL.

(Re-)Documenting My World With Drupal and the Nokia N95

After I tell two people an idea, it probably makes sense to publish it somewhere so that someone can go out and implement it. Here are the ingredients:

  • a site powered by Drupal 4.7
  • Location module for Drupal
  • GeoRSS module for Drupal
  • Aggregator2 module, though its successors are currently in heavy development
  • A . Or any mobile device that combines GPRS, GPS, and a camera and a phone. The phone part is completely unnecessary, but that conveniently limits us to the Nokia N95.
  • (optional) Google Maps and Views modules for Drupal

I say optional for the last one because you would only 'need' it to display a map on your own site. (Which I do: more on that later.) Some assumptions, using Vancouver as my example. Since we all have a natural urge to let complete strangers know not only that there's nobody back at home but also to let those same complete strangers where we are at all times, say I'm walking in Stanley Park and want to make a 'live' document, with a map, of the walk I'm taking. With photos and video, say. Say, also, that I have a reasonably-priced unlimited data plan, the same reasonably-priced unlimited data plan I moan and groan about not having. Here's what would happen:

  • I would take a photo and automatically upload it to Flickr, the GPS taking care of the co-ordinates and geo-tagging as I walk around.
  • Flickr then displays it on its map. That's really neat, but not the exciting part. In the RSS feed, Flickr adds the longitude and latitude to each photo's item.
  • My Drupal-powered site takes in the RSS feed, and thanks to the Aggregator2 module + the Location module + the GeoRSS module, automatically adds the longitude and latitude to the individual item.
  • I map it on my site using the Google Maps module. That's really neat too, but still not the exciting part.
  • The GeoRSS module also adds longitude and latitude to my site's RSS feed.

That way someone could come along and use my liberal "Attribution" (no other restrictions) Creative Commons License and do something with it. Add it to a mapping aggregator (like mapufacture that displays crimes committed in Stanley Park, which would be so nuanced as to point out where crimes didn't happen. So hopefully, assuming the current odds of my being involved in a crime at any given moment, it will map out that data point at that particular moment.

We now come ever closer to having all the tools we need to not only document our environment, but to let others re-document it in different, unimagined ways. Right now the process is fairly time-consuming: before even knowing about GeoRSS, through a process involving manually looking at Google Maps of the area, then parsing out the Google Maps URLs for coordinates, I pasted in longitude and latitude for each station so far on my SkyTrain Explorer walks. That gets me a cute map of each walk (clicking on the label goes to the walk's individual page), and thanks to the SkyTrain walk feed (generated with the Views module) that contains geographical data (courtesy the GeoRSS module) you can get the points plotted on an external map. Which also happens to use Google Maps, but the point is that the service, through a standard to output location data in RSS and a few other pieces, someone else can use an external service or pull down my RSS feed and do something with my location data.

By few, of course, I mean "a lot of", since none of it comes out of the box, as you need to glue together a content management system, modules, and a little bit of manual labour. The Nokia N95 takes care of the manual labour part, and the wifi modem makes grumbling about lack of a GPRS plan almost pointless. (Almost.) It also takes out of the hard work of learning mapping, mobile devices, location-aware tools—and increasing my own location-awareness—as I try them out, since they'd all happen at once. And it would be fun!

I'm not worried that some evil-doer has, after reading the above, gained knowledge to hasten our doom. I'm 100% confident they would have figured that out for themselves.

Canucks on HNIC

The website for the CBC, Canada's government-funded TV network that takes ad revenue and has as one of its most popular shows an American cartoon, has a list of all the games that they will show as part of Hockey Night in Canada. HNIC is, historically, all of Saturday night during the fall and winter as well as spring during the playoffs, though sometimes—especially the playoffs—those days are weekdays and/or Sundays. The listing they show isn't very useful, I found, since they show the times in Eastern and there's no obvious way to quickly switch to Pacific, the time zone I currently reside in. Also, it's not clear to me which team is the home team. (I guessed, correctly, that it was the team on the right.) Also, it's not in calendar format.

So, mostly to experiment with Drupal's features (Event + Location + Views), I created a calendar of all the Vancouver Canucks games shown on the CBC. I even created an iCal feed (which doesn't really work...). Why only Canucks games? Because that's the team I cheer for. Why games only on the CBC? Because that's the only channel showing hockey games that's not on TV that requires me to pay money. I could, though, add the games that are pay-per-view and on other networks, since I do occasionally go to a buddy's house and watch those games.

(If there are any errors in the calendar, let me know and I can make the change.)

Yes, yet another Drupal-powered site, which you can sign up for and write a weblog for if you like. I plan on writing there not very often, not really knowing what I'm talking about, but I'd like it to be an aggregation point for everything that people—bloggers and others—are writing with regards to my longtime-favourite hockey team.

The Three Letter Acronym Podcast
Running Drupal, using the Audio module.
sarahpullman.com goes PIRATE!
She explains how the Pirate module, which I wrote, led her to wonder who the hell we Bryght guys were.
Urban Vancouver-style site about the Lake Geneva area, powered by Drupal
Or is Urban Vancouver GenevaLunch-style? Community sites like these always have something to learn from each other.
Overview of Drupal API changes in 5.0
Looks like I have some updating to do on my modules.
Request New Password UI in Drupal

Putting the word "OR" between the "Username" and "E-mail address" text fields might reduce confusion as to whether both boxes should be filled. (Part of Dries' usability feedback experiment.)

tag:
Flickr icon for drumm
Submitted by drumm on Mon 2006-09-04 14:42 #

Maybe two buttons too?

Flickr icon for sillygwailo
Submitted by sillygwailo on Mon 2006-09-04 15:09 #

Don't forget additional radio buttons. Which might be a different kind of confusing.

Flickr icon for fax8
Submitted by fax8 on Mon 2006-09-04 15:16 #

The best approach here is IMHO one field for both username and e-mail address. The logic behind should understand if the user has inserted an username or an email address.

Another improvement could be change "E-mail new password" into "Send new password".

Flickr icon for chx
Submitted by chx on Mon 2006-09-04 21:17 #
Flickr icon for Dries
Submitted by Dries on Mon 2006-09-04 22:23 #

Two buttons makes sense to me.

Flickr icon for fax8
Submitted by fax8 on Mon 2006-09-04 23:40 #

IMHO two buttons don't make things easier...

Instead it makes harder.

Flickr icon for bertboerland
Submitted by bertboerland on Tue 2006-09-05 00:44 #

woudl having them NEXT to each other in stead of UNDER help? And vae the work OR between them?

Flickr icon for jbdbits
Submitted by jbdbits on Tue 2006-09-05 06:44 #

I think fax8 is on to something with 1 input box. Why clutter the UI with extra buttons? One simple box that accepts either the email address or username is brillant.

Flickr icon for sillygwailo
Submitted by sillygwailo on Tue 2006-09-05 07:13 #

Out of curiosity, how does chx's patch affect Drupal ID's? Yes, it's been that long since I've used one.

Submitted by deleted on Tue 2006-09-05 11:15 #

If we never need to request passwords for distributed log-ins, then a single input box can work perfectly. Otherwise, there is some ambiguity.

However, given that there is still a look-up in the user table for a match, and the one-time-use-link is only sent to the email address on file, there is little security risk. Single box gets a +1 from me.

Flickr icon for Kobus Myburgh
Submitted by Kobus Myburgh on Thu 2006-09-07 04:55 #

I agree that one input box is good (as fax8 suggested) "Enter username or email address) and the logic behind the coding decides what you've done.

But then again, issues with Drupal IDs. But in my opinion, if it finds a Drupal ID that it is the same as if you've put in a username, so I am noty sure whether this really is a problem.

Kobus

Flickr icon for Gary in MA
Submitted by Gary in MA on Thu 2006-09-07 15:35 #

+1 on the one field, one button

The above comments will not display in the recently updated section because they are syndicated directly from the Flickr photo.

Flickr icon for sillygwailo

sillygwailo added a note: Instructions clearly say "or", but users may see two boxes and think they need to enter two things, both a username and an email address. Reinforcing this, when typing in a username then pressing tab, the cursor goes to the email address field.

Getting started with Drupal
A good article on what makes up a module in the CMS.
Chris DiBona and Leo Laporte interview Rasmus Lerdof
Rasmus talks about the appeal of calling your project something starting with 'php' (and what it means for the bug reports to the PHP language itself) and, at the end, the importance of making the language easy to learn.

Pages