Jonathan’s Twitter Updates for 2008-04-03
April 3, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
- Good Morning Twitterville! #
- Do you know of a REALLY good email program for the Mac? Apple Mail has been misbehaving lately #
- @gregbd, Adobe Connect can be finicky but I do love the service. What’d it do? #
- Just setup my next meeting with the startup incubator who’s going to assist with Contributr #
- Taking a look at Scalr, the open source Amazon EC2 management initiative #
- @smalljones DM or email me more info you have any please
# - @newmediajim I’ve heard good things about the Sony line #
- Following up on job leads and making appointments with people #
- Just ordered a pizza for delivery via txt message, crazy isn’t it? #
- @melissaha I REALLY doubt it! #
- @danielpunkass you must have caught them on a good day, good catch #
- @benstein ah dang, to yourself? #
An Outline of How Cloud Computing Should Work
February 12, 2008 by Jonathan · 2 Comments
I do a lot of investigating and research on web hosting, it’s always been a business that interests me and the economics of the industry are very dynamic as well. Let’s just say that the entrepreneur in me has been ‘planning’ the best web host out there and you know what, it’s all about cloud computing now, we need ubiquitous web application servers now.
So here’s what I think the ideal cloud computing web host looks like:
- Large amount of on-demand storage, I’d like to not only host my files and my web sites and applications, but also keep backups of my personal files in the pie in the sky. I do want to pay for that space, I know that unlimited storage is certainly not unlimited, the market says that just cannot be so.
- Fast, speed is really what counts here. I need to be able to tell that my site is up, running, and extremely fast. A lot of this is up to me to develop sites that are light weight and use resources efficiently…. but let’s just check and double check that the hardware and pipes connected to that hardware isn’t what’s slowing the web down.
- Standards Based, I’m not saying software should be free, but the ability of open source software to evolve and change, and be enhanced is just too powerful to ignore.
- Easy to use control panel. I currently use several Media Temple servers to host various web projects and am very happy with them. One the reasons for that is that their control panel is very easy to use yet provides enough control to keep experienced developers happy.
- Transfers to and from the service need to be simplified. This is where Amazon has lost out, they only support a limited number of transfer methods. For cloud computing to truly catch on and be powerful enough for us all to tap into it needs to operate like a ‘normal’ web host or server does. Simple FTP, SFTP, and SSH access is a necessity. Without that, you loose the ability to signup young, inexperienced developers, and you loose the ability for peaceful migrations from other platforms.
I believe that these things are possible, and the technology is largely here already (look at the major Content Delivery Networks). And the final thing that needs to be worked out for cloud computer? The Pricing. It’s an entirely new way to bill and invoice customers, only charging for what they need.
However, I would also offer standard plans similar to what we have in the industry now. You get X amount of space and X amount of cpu time for $Y per month. There is definitely something to say about knowing exactly what you’re going to pay each month for hosting.
Web Design and Buildouts
January 23, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
As a web designer I have a small bit of experience ranging from e-commerce and mail-order companies, to micro-sites advertising goods and services, to blogs, discussion boards, and a philanthropic site. I’ve built a wide variety.
I’m passionate about online communities, and in order to positively affect change you have to remember who you ultimately are serving, the almighty user. Enhancing user experience is vital to any project whether offline or online.
You’ll find links below to some of the sites I’ve designed and built over the years. The methods and the technology has changed, and so have I. Design and development went from largely Photoshop comps hard coded into HTML sites to standards based XHTML, Flash, and Content Management Systems.
All of my projects strive to be standards compliant and I especially enjoy working with people who believe in open source software (Drupal and WordPress are my favorites) the benefits to both the developers and the users when taking advantage of open code.
News and Journalism based sites:
- Smart Decision 2008
- KOMU Blogs and Boards (online community, still in development)
- KOMU News Base (online training and tutorial site for newsroom employees)
- Kansas City Pets (WDAF-TV micro site)
Personal and Professional Sites (many of these sites are simply archived copies, some links may not work on them):
- Creative Celebrations (2002)
- FunFunFun For Kids
- CB Designs
- Family Guy Quotes
- How You Can Volunteer
- Perennial Podcast
- JonathanCoffman.com Version 1
Journalism
January 19, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
First we had newspapers, then radio and television, and now the Internet, cell phones, and more. The practice of journalism has evolved for a long time and will continue to change. In recent years however, the way journalists and news media present facts and information has changed dramatically. Journalists and the business behind the news can no longer sleep heavily and depend on slow growth and profits.
The constant invention and expansion of news delivery formats has increased the demand for journalists, producers, and sales people to exert more time and energy in forging new relationships and connections with more people and businesses.
As news and information is further commoditized it becomes more important for a journalistic entity to expand it’s reach and stretch it’s resources.
Here are some journalism pieces that I either wrote or edited for various news organizations. All links open in a new window
WDAF-TV 4 (Fox Affiliate)
Special Projects:
Kelsey Smith, 18, was ubducted from a Target parking lot. I generated original and online exclusive content including live-streaming from SkyFox helicopter, live-chats taking questions from viewers, and moderating hundreds of blogs and discussion board posts.
Planned, Designed, and Implemented Afternoon Web Update. This is a brief that is posted every-day from 3PM till 5PM with ‘everything you need to know for the drive home’.
Moderated and participated in FOX sponsored chat and blog sessions on a daily basis.
Planned, designed, programmed, and prepared for launch a special pets related micro-site.
General Assignment:
- New KCMO HR Director Missing
- Kansas City Kansas Man Fights For Custody
- Child Sent to Hospital For Tick Bite
- Woman Jogger Nearly Abducted in Lenexa
- Ruling Opens Doors For Executions to Resume
KOMU-TV 8 (NBC Affiliate)
Special Projects:
Planned, Designed, and Coordinated a community site for viewer interaction based on the open source Drupal project.
Moderate and Post blogs and news updates to legacy discussion board system.
Support Wiki
January 15, 2008 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
We’ve decided on a couple different support solutions for our Contributr clients, first and foremost we want them to be easily accessible, and powered by the people who actually use our applications. Second of all, they need to be easy to use, just like the rest of Contributr.
We had quite a few options, I looked at mainly open-source solutions for a long time because we’re a big fan of community and conversations and all, and I’m really impressed by products like OSticket and the like for ticketing. But I just didn’t feel like that was the right solution for us. So here’s what we decided to do: We’re using a wiki for the primary repository of information, articles, and tutorials. Now there’s a lot of options in the wiki space too, open-source solutions included (like MediaWiki), but I’ve done research and built wikis before, they’re just not all that easy to use.
So that really narrowed it down… easy to use wiki. After some conversations on Twitter recently I got reacquainted with the folks at PBwiki, now they have an easy to use, inexpensive, and reliable wiki service. So guess what? We signed up! We started on a free-plan but eventually decided that if we’re supporting our customers using PBwiki, we ought to be supporting PBwiki. So we’re now on a Gold level plan which gives us some on-wiki file storage and some other bonuses like access control (think special hidden pages for clients with technical details we don’t want in the open).
So alas, we’re on http://contributr.pbwiki.com now, have a visit and let us know what you think.
FIVe3D | Open Source Action Script Classes
October 25, 2007 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
Alright, you have got to check our FIV3D and their beautiful (and open source) ActionScript classes. They’ve got 4 great examples and their underlying code up on the site right now, and from that I’ve heard, they’ve got some other great things coming.
I already have some ideas of ways to integrate these examples into my own upcoming projects here very soon.
My Facebook Review
August 24, 2007 by Jonathan · Leave a Comment
Facebook is the ubiquitous and most trafficked social networking site out there right now. It began as an alternative to the traditional college “face book” and has evolved into something even bigger and more grand.
Despite the tremendous growth, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder, still refuses to sell his company to any of the major players who have offered (rumors have it that Google, Yahoo, and FOX had all put in bids at one point)
I’m a user of Facebook and frequently check it when I have spare time. The current problem with the application is that they have opened up the development to anyone who wants to write some code. While this sounds great and certainly brings attention to the open source arena, it has complicated things, and that isn’t a good thing.
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