Exegist – Midterm
March 18, 2011
In Clay’s Designing Conversation Spaces class, we each spent 15 minutes and came up with 3 new conversation spaces each. Then we were bunched into groups and asked to create them. This…was more complicated than expected. My team included Mark Triant, Monika Krishnan and Chelsea Stark. None of us are professional coders, but no matter.
The idea behind EXEgist is to provide an interface that encourages long-form, in-depth, position-specific text annotation, inspired by exegetic paradigms like the Talmud and old-school approaches to footnotes, but with the dynamic filtering and view controls afforded by the web browser.
We built the site out of Ruby, Sinatra, and DataMapper with loooooots of jQuery for the front end. It swallowed my past 3 weeks and now it’s out there, in a “So Alpha It Hurts” way. Clay just tweeted our site out to people and we’re getting some fun responses and great general feedback. Please check it out here.
We got a ton of advice and help from Rune, Greg, Daniel, Clay, and Oren from Heroku. Thank you to all who helped out.
Posted in Designing Conversation Spaces | Leave a commentLasercut Dragons
March 17, 2011I wanted to make something easy and fun for my first project. I wanted a baby dragon with legs whose legs were dangling in the air. However, I made my design too late at night and didn’t measure properly, so I ended up with dragon bookends. I still like them.
Digital Fabrication class – WIP
February 22, 2011
Stay Tuned
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 CommentThesis – 4 Weeks In
February 18, 2011Latest Design Mockup
Current Thoughts
I definitely expected to have more done in four weeks, but I think that’s a normal. I’ve gotten proficient enough with Ruby/Sinatra/DataMapper that I was able to quickly build out the ground floor of the site. Today, I’m stuck on an Amazon AWS implementation that seems to be crashing my code. I’ve found some amazing tutorials and it looks like i need to create a .amazonrb file and insert my access codes, but I’m feeling uncomfortable as to where and how that should occur, so I’m holding off until Tuesday, when I can talk to the schools leading Ruby expert, Greg.
My project rides quite a bit on the premise that there is enough incentive for the hardware manufacturer. I think there is 
I think the benefit for them is they can get new iPad/Kindle/etc. users to adopt and grow familiar with their ebook store. The reason I would use this service is to remove a bookshelf from my tiny, tiny studio apartment, plus it gives me an excuse to buy a iPad. Heck, it’s almost like I am getting the iPad at a discount rate, since it’s coming stocked with all of these books.
Accomplishments Thus Far
- Keynote Presesntation with Wireframes on the fucntionality and flow of the site.
- 3 PS Mockups, 2 of which are pretty bad.
- Basic code for the on-site section of the site with forms for logging in the username and submitting the book title.
- A collection of new names.
- A first draft of the survey form for the new names.
- Spoken with Clay.
- Received initial contact from 2 3 Experts.
Next Actions
- Presentation – Flesh out Keynote Presentation. Perhaps make the login a multi-link situation that will jump you through the various sections of the presentation. Simplify the choices for the Non-Profit section.
- Visual Design – Just keep working on it. Attempting to keep the site looking warm, inviting and simple. For me, the goal is to create an ease of use situation that is similar to an iPhone app, aesthetically pleasing like an app, but the functionality of any robust site. My concern is the aesthetics will look too playful.
- Code – Implement the ruby-aaws into the search. If I can actually figure out how to use it, I want to upload to GitHub example code and possibly some better documentation. Something that noobs like myself will find useful. If I have to wait on that, then I’ll move to Google Maps API for the on-site location, create a form for non-profits to add themselves(plus address, & types of books) to the db. I don’t think I’ll need to move to Rails, but I’m darn willing if I need to.
- Experts – Next stop, talk to Housing Works, Better World Books, send reminder emails to my initial experts for a response.
Links for the Code Conundrum
For your edification and my way of not having a Delicious account.
- Amazon Product Advertising API w/ Ruby
- ruby-aaws RDoc
- Code Experiments in Ruby – ruby-aaws
- Rails for Zombies (turns out I won’t need Rails, but there are zombies…so I’m gonna link to it anyway)
Thesis Introduction
February 14, 2011Books have finally crossed the digital threshold. No book can ever be sold out and the printing cost is no longer a critical factor for publishing. The distribution cost of digital books is almost negligible for the publisher. The user has their choice of e-readers, such as the iPad, Kindle, Nook and more.
Not everyone currently benefits from this revolution. Our public libraries are continuously battling government budget cuts. With less money every year, libraries must choose between new books or the library staff, safety measures, updated technology, etc.
Bookboost will remedy this problem by allowing the donation of hard copy books to literacy centers and libraries in exchange for a digital copy of the book. Structured as a web application, Bookboost will create the potential for increasing donated hard copy books by offering the digital version as compensation. The result is mutually beneficial; donors keep the content and gain some space, libraries and literacy centers gain books that would otherwise be cost prohibitive, ebook distributors (Kindle, Ibooks, Google) receive tax breaks and nurture a new client base.
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