for NewsCloud
In case you missed our April Fool's joke earlier this month, Arctic Polar Bear Relocation Begins on Earth Day today. Keep up with real global warming news at NewsCloud.
Technorati Tags: climate change, earth day, global warming, polar bears
We're having our first code meetup in Seattle. This is the first in what will hopefully be a monthly series on open source code development and the NewsCloud platform.
At the first session, we'll be talking about LAMP-based open source development tools and the open source Facebook Application Newsroom framework. If you're interested in learning more about Facebook application development, this will be a great introductory session.
I recommend that you have basic PHP/MySQL skills to get the most from this session.
Please RSVP so we can keep a headcount of how many people to expect.
WHEN: Tuesday, April 22, 6:30 - 8:30 PM
WHERE: Uptown Espresso meeting room in Belltown (corner of 4th and Wall)
QUESTIONS: email us
Technorati Tags: uptown espresso, facebook applications, meetups, open source, facebook newsroom, php
From the beginning, a primary goal of building the NewsCloud community has been to empower it with influence over the way the site itself operates. Today, I'm introducing an experimental scoring system which rewards more active NewsCloud users with more influence in our community.
Initially, I've programmed NewsCloud to rank members based on their levels of participation as well as performance as judged by other members (through responses to posted stories and comments). From these rankings, NewsCloud assigns each member a user level e.g. Platinum (high), Gold, Silver, Bronze, Contributor and Reader (beginner). The higher your user level, the more voting power you have to determine which stories appear on the front page at NewsCloud. Rankings will be re-calculated regularly. If your participation increases, expect to see your user level grow over time. By visiting your account page, you can see a complete breakdown of the factors we're measuring and how you rank against the overall community.
The ranking system not only rewards you for voting and posting stories and comments but it also rewards you when stories you post generate discussions or when other readers rate your comments highly. The rankings also reward you for inviting new members to our community - especially so when they join. It also assesses your involvement over the past 30 days as well as the past six months.
I will continue to experiment and tweak the measurement system over time to produce better and better results. If you have questions or feedback, please email me at jeff@newscloud.com. Please also let me know if you encounter any problems with the new rankings or experience problems voting.
Thank you for your continued support!
You can view your account score here. Here is an example breakdown below:
Technorati Tags: member levels, user scoring, ranking
In a private email to NewsCloud members today, NewsCloud's founder put his support behind efforts to relocate polar bears to Antarctica:
One of the groups I've been supporting since the NewsCloud acquisition is the Polar Bear Conservancy . Yesterday, PBC announced that it plans to move the first of 3,000 polar bears to Antarctica on Earth Day, April 22.
Scientists say polar bears face near-certain extinction by 2020 as global climate change accelerates melting of their habitat in the Northern Arctic (just last week a polar bear was found and shot 250
miles inland in the Yukon )... Antarctica, in contrast, can be a viable home for the bears.
Though experiencing melting of its own, the southernmost continent still has sufficient ice coverage to support the polar bear indefinitely in its traditional climate, and it has abundant food
stocks, including penguins, seals, dolphins, and migratory whales.You can read yesterday's press release and media event with McCain or Grist's coverage. The PBC folks have a tremendously creative and ambitious team. It's been a privilege to be a part of their efforts in some small way.
We're having our first code meetup in Seattle. This is the first in what will hopefully be a monthly series on open source code development and the NewsCloud platform.
At the first session, we'll be talking about LAMP-based open source development tools and the open source Facebook Application Newsroom framework. If you're interested in learning more about Facebook application development, this will be a great introductory session.
I recommend that you have basic PHP/MySQL skills to get the most from this session.
Please RSVP for the location and so we can keep a headcount of how many people to expect.
WHEN: Tuesday, April 22, 6:30 - 8:30 PM
WHERE: Belltown (RSVP for exact location)
QUESTIONS: email us
Technorati Tags: facebook applications, meetups, seattle
NewsCloud has a new Incoming Stories page which allows you to browse feeds from around the Web. On the new page, you can browse stories that readers have posted to NewsCloud or wire feeds from our partner sites, other mainstream media and even reader blogs! You can also visit your account page and add your own blog to share with NewsCloud readers. If you don't have a blog, you can get a free WordPress blog at NewsCloud.
Technorati Tags: rss, newswires, incoming stories, free blog, wordpress
Now you can rate the comments of other NewsCloud readers. You can also sort a comment thread by date or ratings. Link to example
Technorati Tags: comment ratings
Today, we're releasing a beta of our new open source Facebook Newsroom CMS application framework:
The Facebook Newsroom CMS framework is generic Facebook application code which can be quickly and easily installed, configured and customized for any small organization wanting to establish a sophisticated Web presence within the Facebook community. We hope this framework will drastically reduce the barrier to entry for organizations wishing to leverage Facebook. See our demonstration site at Facebook.
While Facebook has Groups and Pages that are easy to set up, they are also quite limited in functionality. These features are not conducive to community-building, engagement or organizing. Until now, building a Facebook application with broader capabilities required a significant investment of $5 - $15,000 minimum. This framework provides the easiest, most customizable and economical solution for small and/or non profit organizations to run an application on Facebook.
It's essentially a start up kit for small organizations wishing to
build a Facebook application without spending thousands of dollars.
It's also a great starting point which can later be enhanced and
extended with additional features. With just a few hours, a Web developer with basic PHP skills can launch your application. Hosting can even be obtained free for one year at Joyent (waiting list may exist for free accounts).
Since the framework is open source, it can grow over time as the development community contributes new capabilities. You can download the source at SourceForge or learn more at our Wiki.
Available Features
The default framework provides some basic pages (like a basic Web site or Drupal or Plone installation) e.g. Home page, Newsroom, Photos, Wall, Discussion Forum, Invitations page and About page. It also provides basic content management (CMS) features for customizing the site from within a Web-based management user interface which many users are already familiar with. Pages can be turned on or off or content edited in place.
The news features include integration with your organization's own RSS feed (from a blog or Web site) and the NewsCloud Newsroom which provides real time community-driven news content on a variety of topics. The NewsCloud Newsroom can also be fully customized. If you have a Drupal-based Web site, check out the Drupal NewsCloud module.
The CMS supports HTML blocks and iFrames to allow you to integrate advertising e.g. Google AdSense, fundraising e.g. ChipIn, photos e.g. Flickr slideshows and more.
See the generic demonstration site on Facebook for examples.
For updates, please check back at the NewsCloud blog or subscribe to our feed.
Download the code from SourceForge
Drupal Newsroom Module and demonstration site
Requirements
Facebook Developer account
Linux hosting with PHP 5.x (4.x with minor changes)/MySQL 4.x
Possible hosting options:
Joyent
JohnCompanies
Amazon S3 (may be a bit expensive for some organizations)
Questions?
Set up instructions are included in the readme file with the code download. As usual, please contact me via email at jeff@newscloud.com with any questions, bug reports or feature requests. Thanks all!
We've introduced a new feature at NewsCloud called Talk About This which emails readers when there's an important story to discuss (no more than every 2-3 days). If you wish to turn off this feature, you can opt out at anytime by changing your subscription settings in your profile. Talk about this will help stimulate discussions on hot topics and breaking stories within our community.
The first two stories were: Studies: CO2 output must cease altogether and Tibetan monks 'surrounded' by Chinese troops ... join the discussions there...
Technorati Tags: comments, talk about this, email alerts
We're experimenting with adding the open source FredCK editor to NewsCloud comments and story posting. The editor makes it easier to edit and format rich text comments and and captions. Please give it a try and let us know what you think. You can see it here and here.
If you run into any bugs or problems with it, please email me.
Technorati Tags: fckeditor, rich text formatting, comments
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