personal blog related to technology, coding and publishing.
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Flipboard: changing the way I read local news (in a good way)
Aug 2nd
A few days ago I wrote about Flipboard – a new socially-connected information aggregation app for the iPad. The post focused on the potentially-nsfw display that Flipboard presents (how the twitter, facebook and other streams are not censored for image-content).
Hopefully, a future will arrive that allows for apps to recognize content-levels automatically, possibly giving users a flip-switch (or options) to change the level of work-appropriateness they’d like content to adhere.
Until that time, I’m moving on to another area of focus on Flipboard: how much it has altered the way I consume local news content on my iPad.
To-date, there were three options for me to consume my local newspaper on my iPad:
1. Use their iPhone application in 2x view (not ideal).
2. Use their Web site in Safari (Flash interstitial ads make that less than ideal as well).
3. Use an RSS reader, such as Feeddler (lately my number-one choice).
Well, that’s changed with Flipboard.
As I wrote previously, Flipboard grabs links and external content mentioned by tweets and facebook posts, parsing the content and presenting it in a beautiful display. For instance, say you tweeted about Brier Dudley’s tech blog (with a shortened URL to a story/post). Flipboard would follow that URL and present a user with the story in all it’s textual glory. Tweets without a url are just presented as tweets, urls are processed and displayed as stories.
For me, this has made browsing the Seattle Times online much more enjoyable. I don’t get 100% of the content from their mobile or full Web site (as the only stories I’ll see are those that are tweeted from the @seattletimes account), but what I do see I enjoy. A great example of how much I’ve used Flipboard for consuming the Times: I just read a golf story (“Steady Bernhard Langer wins US Senior Open“).
Another nice feature: if a story contains an image, the image is presented along with the story, re-flowing in portrait or landscape.
Here’s some photos of what I’ve been seeing:
What about the legality, you ask?
I’ve been asked (and have read) “Is this legal?” I’m not a legal expert, but here’s my two-cent opinion:
1. The @seattletimes twitter account posts links to their own content, hoping users will click-through to read the stories. Flipboard presents that content in-part (I haven’t found a story short enough that it’s entire content is displayed by Flipboard). So one could argue that Flipboard is helping get users to the ST Web site in more volume. I find the content that Flipboard presents to be a good “teaser;” helping me decide if I really want to “read on web” (read more).
2. By presenting – even as a partial – the ST content without advertising, readers may escape the ABC statistics (an industry standard for measuring performance; also used to determine ad costs). This is a bad thing, and in my opinion the number-one reason why a publisher would disagree with their content being aggregated outside their control. From what I understand, newspapers rely heavily on the ABC numbers to determine what to charge for advertisements (a major part of their revenue); if readership drops (because potential visitors are not clicking-through to the full Web site), then advertising rates plummet, causing layoffs and the dreaded mantra “newspapers are dead.”
Summary
To summarize, I’m warming up to Flipboard. I’d love to see RSS feeds added, but I understand that’s not really their model (RSS is already organized – the brains behind Flipboard deal more with digging to discover the “meat”). I still have an entire page on my iPad devoted to news reading – from the AP, to the Seattle Times application, RSS readers, Time and Wired, etc.
The “news” page on my iPad. I go through each of these apps before bed. Sure, some aren’t really “news,” but there’s enough similarity to the apps to keep them all on one screen. Yes, I have the same “News” group on my iPhone.
For now, I’ll keep flipping through Flipboard as part of my nightly routine (I read all my news sources just before bed). If something better comes along I’ll discuss it. In the meantime, I may miss some stories from Flipboard, but I’m sure I’ll find the rest using my page of apps.
Flipboard: Potentially NSFW
Jul 28th
Flipboard, my new favorite time-waster on my iPad finally added my credentials for Facebook and Twitter, thus bringing in news and shared content from my contact lists.
The addition of Twitter and Facebook streams looks beautiful – I can browse (in a newspaper-style layout) the tweets, links, photos, and messages from both services quickly.
While I do love the layout (I’m a print guy, after all), I did find one problem with two areas of worry: The content from your Twitter and Facebook stream is presented in Flipboard’s own choice of layout. Meaning, some photos or links from your friends might show up as small boxes, or nearly fullscreen.
In the section view, this means any NSFW content uploaded by your friends (and we all have friends that post non-work safe images, or is that just me?) could be nearly fullscreen.
In the photo-slideshow view (which is displayed on-launch), that same content could appear fullscreen.
I use the slideshow view while my iPad is docked in my homemade cardboard dock at work, that way I can quickly glance at any given photo as it comes across and tap to read more. It’s a nice feature 99% of the time. That is, until a friend’s photo of a night out drinking or another’s link to a punk show (displaying an angry panda) might take some explaining to a hovering boss (as just happened to me).
Flipboard in the dock - showing the angry panda
Flipboard in my hand - showing a photographer-friend on a night out
Twitter stream - yes, that says 'warm weather humping' with a nude photo
As much as I’m enjoying Flipboard, I can’t recommend one using it as a work-safe slideshow or browsing app if anyone could be hovering in your work area.
That said, totally worth the wait for my custom access. I’m looking forward to the ability to add in news feeds in the future (hint at a request there, guys and gals), video and more.
Substringing a preg_replace (PHP) – Solved!
Jul 23rd
I’m working with a string, via PHP that I’d like to do a little cleanup on.
I’ve written a plugin (for CodeIgniter) that handles the string as input, checks for empty lines (excessive \r\n’s), cleans e-mail addresses (pretty), and converts URL’s to their full ‘a href’ layout.
The problem I’d like to solve: many of the URL’s I’m finding are “long” – meaning, they are over 100 characters long. I’d like to shorten them to, say, the first 20-30 characters, followed by ellipsis (eg: “http://www.chadedge.com…”).
Using substr() inside a preg_replace() will not work (substr chokes or preg_replace chokes – neither like being wrapped up that way).
Any ideas?
–
Here’s a before:
its hard to find a good one and most of us are not to thrilled with some of the local repair shops. i have found a really great guy in north seattle. he does beautiful full restores, maintenance, rebuilds and great work all around. have been using him for a while (including correcting some of TL's work). He also sells NOS and repro parts for a better price then anyone local. the is the best i have found and really a great guy to work with. feel free to email me and i can tell you why i like NCVH better then TL. http://northcityvintagehonda.wordpress.com/ http://www.northcityvintagehonda.com/servlet/StoreFront
And the after:
its hard to find a good one and most of us are not to thrilled with some of the local repair shops. i have found a really great guy in north seattle. he does beautiful full restores, maintenance, rebuilds and great work all around. have been using him for a while (including correcting some of TL's work). He also sells NOS and repro parts for a better price then anyone local. the is the best i have found and really a great guy to work with. feel free to email me and i can tell you why i like NCVH better then TL. http://northcityvintage... http://northcityvintage...
Update (2010-07-26): I have written a solution by editing (a bad idea, of course) the url helper (system/helpers/url_helper.php) in the function auto_link.
I highly recommend you do NOT repeat my process; however, as this is a one-time hack for a special circumstance, here’s what I did:
In url_helper.php – at the function_auto_link: There is a section of code that parses any found URL in to it’s “bits” (stripping http:// etc). I checked for the length of the url, and if it’s +20 characters, I substring it down to 20 and add an ellipsis to the string before returning the full linked-url chunk.
The code:
Again, I don’t recommend you follow my example – it’d be better to subclass the helper, but in my situation this works just jim-dandy.
At it, big time
May 17th
“Emmy’s Closet” (a paper-doll app), “Chicken Scratch” (urban chicken app), a yet-unnamed NPAA collaboration, and a photo-video app for local businesses (a template model).
This is getting crazy.