Mike’s Digital Laboratory

Don’t miss this new blog on collaborative computing.

Collaborative computing and the next steps that will evolve as traditional corporate email crosses paths with mobile devices, social media sites, instant messaging, knowledge matrices, and keyword tagging. Vendor independent discussion of everything from iPhone, Blackberry Enterprise Server, Lotus Notes & Domino, Exchange, Google Apps for Enterprise, and email compliance and archiving solutions. Beyond Messaging is solely the work of veteran collaborative computing specialist Marianne Case.

Ok, so I admit, I may be related to this particular blogger, but hey genius runs in the family I’m sure…  You go sister.

It gives me great pleasure to announce the new WXXI website launched this week. It has been an intense development schedule but loads of fun.  The web development team at WXXI has been a great crew to work with.  And I have found myself diving deeper into Drupal than I ever imagined.  I also found myself sharpening my CSS and Javascript skills along the way, not a mention a bit more PHP and MySql as well.

The fun part of architecting  this new site has been the rapid design cycle enabled by Drupal and all it’s myriad modules and theming capabilites. Got an idea in the morning? You can see it implemented by the afternoon.  Or maybe even in a few minutes depending on the situation.   Drupal ( or I should say Drupal and all it’s companion modules) succeeds because the granularity in component construction is at the web design pattern  level.  If a good idea for the web has been thought of, there is probably a Drupal module to support it.

Calais for semantic tagging and we’ve added Facebook Connect to the site, both work well.  We’ve also successfully integrated with NPR and PBS, we pull feeds fresh headlines from NPR news every day using their API and you can watch some of your favorite shows now, right from your web browser in very good quality video. There’s much more, but too much to list here. All I can say is check it out and let us know what you think.