Adding images to your posts

It appears that many people are still having some problems displaying images in their blogs. For everyone that may still be having trouble please take a look at the post below. It was posted by the lead developer on the blogs project here at FundingFactory and has some good tips on how to personalize your posts with your own images.

http://blogs.fundingfactory.com/developers/Archive/2005/11/01/18.aspx

--Bill

The Future of FundingFactory Blogs

So it's been 4 weeks since we went live with the blogs here at FundingFactory and we've seen some good stuff already.  We currently have 43 blogs created, with 37 total posts (now 38) and 168 comments.  Not too shabby for something that started as a little side project of mine to keep me sane during the day.  But just like with everything that I end up programming, I want to make it better. 

I want to know what sort of things will make the blogs better.  What sort of enhancements do you want to see so that you can manage your blog better?  blogs have an incredible potential to increase the visibility of your organization, just by writing a few words every once in awhile.  One discussion on the Walhalla Elementary School Technology Blog about a game called Peter Packet has already shown up on Google as the 7th highest ranking result when searching for Peter Packet.  Throwing a couple links in your post helps out too. 

I have created a list of the things I want to add to the blogs, things that I've noticed that are lacking while using it over the last month.  These items include:

• Adding the ability for you to customize your blog's layout and colors even beyond the pre-made templates we've provided.  This is my #1 addition I want to add.  You could put your school's logo on there, or put dancing hamsters on there if you wanted to.
• Adding a custom news area.  Wouldn't it be neat-o to add your school's dynamic tile or other news and important information to your blog that would show up on the side on every page?
• Images.  It's a pain to add an image to a post, since you have to have the image stored somewhere else.  This is a big one to change.
• Allowing more than one person to write on the blog.  All of the official FundingFactory blogs have more than one person writing on them, but we all share the same login and have to manually write our names at the end of the post.  I'd like to make it so you can all have your own login and be able to contribute to several blogs using that login (assuming the blog's owner has given you permission to do so).
• Automatically linking keywords.  I may write the word FundingFactory several times in a post and want each time I write it to link to http://www.fundingfactory.com/.  Or you could automatically link the word "fundraising" to FundingFactory's website (shameless plug).  Why not add it to your settings and let it do it automatically so you don't have to worry about it anymore?

If you have any other ideas, I'd like to hear about them.  Did you have any problems signing up for a blog?  Any problems creating posts, links, or changing your settings?  What did you find annoying about the whole process? 

-ron

Using Flickr to post images to your blog

One of the more confusing aspects of our FundingFactory blogs is how to add images to your posts. The way we have it set up does not allow users to upload images for posting. Rather, the user has to find a free service to store the images elsewhere and link back to it. The reasons behind this include a lack of server space to store the images and security.

However, there are some great free sites to store and share your images and one of the best is flickr.com. Hopefully I can explain how to use flickr to show images on your blog. Here's a step by step guide to post an image to your blog:

1. Create an account at flickr.com
2. Upload your photos
3. Go to the photo you wish to post
4. Find the link above the photo for "All Sizes"
5. Choose the size of the image you want to post (larger sized images may make your blog look funky, so stick to smaller ones).
6. If you are logged into your flickr account and are looking at one of your own photos, there will be some code displayed underneath the photo.
7. Copy the URL of the image (the first textbox of code):
   http://static.flickr.com/25/45801694_15264b1281_m.jpg
8. Now log into your blog and create a new post (or edit an existing one)
9. Look for the icon of a mountain and sun (11th image from the left on the second row) and click it  
10. In the window that pops up, paste that url (http://static.flickr.com/25/45801694_15264b1281_m.jpg) into the first textbox labeled "Picture Source".
11. Click OK and your picture should show up on the page!

Using other sites other than flickr will result in different steps, so your mileage may vary.  We hope to add the ability to let you upload your images automatically rather than having to go through flickr, but with all the artwork we're getting through PicturePoints, we might run out of space!

-ron

p.s.  my desk is a mess.

Remaking the Rewards Catalog

Development of the new Rewards Catalog was quite an experience.  How would we reload the Rewards Catalog to make the most of our participants points?  The answer came in the form of the web services made available by Amazon.com.  For those unfamiliar, a web service is essentially a technology that allows two parties to exchange data programatically. In essence, every time a participant searches for a technology product, we make a request to Amazon.com for any product they have that matches the search, and then present the results to the participant.

Sounds easy enough, right? As you may know, Amazon.com has a plethora of information on all products, and on a "simple" search that lists 10 results we can receive back over 100 pages of data in XML format. 100 pages! Using our XSL stylesheets we then present the data in the simple format you see on the search results page - product image, name, and points.

To date one of the biggest challenges has been excluding all the products which are currently unavailable. We've managed to remove many of those products by eliminating all the 3rd party vendors from Amazon.com so we only supply products actually sold by Amazon.com.  This took away some sporting goods choices, but we supplemented that with new products from our sporting goods vendor, Flaghouse.

Another feature we have been working toward is a search of the Amazon.com products by your available points. The web service does have a search based on cost, but the problem we've run into is that the search and results are based on the lowest USED price instead of the new price, and since we offer the new products only, this search isn't valid. We're keeping our eyes open to see when this will be offered and then we can get this tool out to our participants.

Hopefully you all find the Wish List and Recently Order Products addition helpful as well. Keep your eye on the Rewards Catalog, I'm sure we'll come up with something else creative to add.

Maybe a category where you can buy your favorite developers a pizza party?!?! Ok, maybe not. Wishful thinking.

Although there is much, much, much more I could write about the catalog I will stop here for now. After all, I don't want to leave a novel for you to read like Ron did.

- matt

Peering behind the PicturePoints curtain

One of the major projects I've been involved with at FundingFactory is the PicturePoints project.  PicturePoints started out as a contest for Earth Day where students would submit their artwork, schools would earn points, and we would post it online for everyone to view.  From that, it's evolved to it's current status, which includes ordering products with the student's artwork on them. 

Needless to say, it's turned into a huge project, and not just for us developers.  The last time around, we received approximately 20,000 entries from about 400 organizations.  That was the first time we had attempted this project and the software I created wasn't necessarily the best solution for it.  We rented a giant scanner from a local company to feed all the pictures through and stored them on an external hard drive which was backed up every night.  One of the problems we faced was how to deal with the varying styles of artwork that came in.  Not all the pieces that came in were flat and on 8" x 11" paper.  In hindsight, we should of realized our participants and their students were much more creative and could think outside of the box.

We eventually plugged through all the entries and got them all up.  Immediately following the contest, we sat down and came up with some better ways to deal with the problems we faced.  One idea was to mail out pre-printed pieces of paper that would ensure uniformity in the paper and make the scanning much easier.  We also added a form on the back to identify each piece of artwork.

As of today, 10/26/2005, we've received requests for 3794 PicturePoints kits from 620 organizations.  Each kit contains 30 pieces of paper, so that translates to 113,820 pieces of paper!  We've received a few kits in already and so far our new process has been working quite well. 

The new process involves 3 custom made Windows services created in C#, and a piece of third party software.  It all starts with one service checking our scanners' file system for any new files being added.  Once the batch of files is added, it then seperates the files into artwork, and entry forms (we scanned each piece of paper duplex), and renamed them in sequential order (so one piece of paper will have two files with the same name in seperate folders). 

After rotating the artwork to their correct orientation, we bust out the big guns.  Our third party software takes each entry form and does Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) and reads the handwriting on the form.  We then double check the data that comes out (it's been about 80% accurate so far), and save the data into a file. 

Finally, every night at 6pm EST, another service reads through the data files and stores the information into a database.  After storing the data, the service takes each artwork file and resizes it into 3 different sizes (original size, large size, and small size).  We do this so that when you look at the artwork on our website, you won't have to wait for a large file to load up in the thumbnail view.

I'm putting the final touches on the website part of the project, so that everyone will be able to view the wonderful artwork that has come in.  Some other features, besides ordering products, will be ranking artwork, and emailing artwork to friends and family. 

One last thing... on the website, we have a dynamically generated picture of the products we offer, with the artwork on it.  That was a fun thing to build.  Maybe I'll go into more details about that some other time, and post some sample code.

Sorry for the rambling long post, but I hope you enjoyed peering behind the curtain and seeing how things work for one of our many projects.

-ron

Welcome!

Welcome to the FundingFactory Developer's blog!  We plan on shedding some light on the technical aspects behind our website and other programs.  We hope you'll find it interesting and want to learn more.

Stay tuned...