Loosing Site

Google has launched Sites, a product developed from its 2006 JotSpot acquisition.

Designed for team based site building and collaboration, the application can be used to build intranets, projects spaces, on-line classrooms and generic web sites.

Welcome to Google Sites via kwout

Sites are built from combinations of:

• Web pages with WYSIWYG editing and version control.
• Dashboards composed of collections of gadgets.
• Dated announcements that act as internal blogs.
• File Cabinets used for storing and describing binary files.
• Sortable Lists.

Pages can be enhanced with gadgets that integrate with other Google services:

• Calendars
• Documents
• Picassa web slideshows
• Spreadsheets
• Spreadsheet Forms
• Presentations
• YouTube
• Google Video

Specialised gadgets help with navigation

• Table of Contents
• Recent Posts
• Recent Uploaded Files
• Text Blocks

Any standard gadget from the iGoogle directory can be embedded in a page, as can Google Mashups and bespoke gadgets built on top of the Google Gadget API.

Sites has a small collection of themes. Additional options give a more refined control over backgrounds, logos, color schemes and fonts. The visual appearance will be adequate for many applications, but will not be sufficiently distinctive for sites that require strong branding and highly distinctive visuals.

While Sites is best suited to intranet/workgroup use, the easy integration with other feeds and services makes it a platform worth considering for public facing content driven applications, particularly those that integrate data from a variety of sources.

Official Google Blog: Bringing it all together via kwout

Integrating well with Google Apps for Teams, Google Sites is in direct competition with Microsoft Sharepoint. It again uses a bottom up marketing strategy, allowing workgroups to introduce technical solutions linked via company email addresses.

This site is so simple and useful that it almost requires no description.

LinkBunch – Put multiple links into one – http://linkbun.ch via kwout

Feed LinkBunch a list of long urls and it will give you one very short one in return.

E.g. Holiday reading: http://linkbun.ch/3sr

The short url can be scribbled down, sent as a text message, written in a handout etc. When viewed in a browser the short url is expanded up into a full list again.

LinkBunch is extremely simple to use and even has an API, though understandably not a very complex one.

LinkBunch – API – http://linkbun.ch via kwout

Facebook are planning a redesign of user profiles this spring, aiming to make the profiles simpler and more relevant while giving a greater degree of control to the users.

Facebook Developers | Facebook Developers News via kwout

The draft design uses a tabbed layout for the wide column with the initial set of tabs for a Wall, an About page and Photos. Applications can also be set up in custom tabs, but these are configured and controlled by the user.

The design changes are intended to “align the goals of application developers with the principles of the Platform ecosystem”. This, combined with the earlier introduction of “allocations” to ration the features available to unruly applications illustrate Facebook’s strategy of ecological platform development; changing an environment in which desirable behaviours are easier and more profitable than undesirable ones.

BList, the “database for the rest of us” that launched at DEMO 08 has introduced a new features for charting, importing, search and sharing.

blist blog » Blog Archive » New Features – Excel Import, Sharing, Charts & Search via kwout

These are fairly basic at the moment

• the charts can be viewed, but not exported

• importing of csv files has a manual step for specifying the field type

• sharing is read only

but with only three weeks elapsed since the launch of the private beta it’s nice to see the feature set filling up, without compromising the style and simplicity of the initial vision.

Having just secured a $6.5 million investment from Frazier Technology Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures Blist is set for rapid development and refinement.

RoopleTheme have released Tapestry, a very flexible theme for the Drupal content management system. The tableless design validates against XHTML and CSS specifications and also performs well in Accessibility Valet tests. When properly configured Tapestry will not only give sites good browser compatibility, but can also comply with Section 508 web accessibility guidelines.

Tapestry | A Drupal Theme via kwout

Tapestry comes with 20 pre-built styles that can be used as is, or used to provide a starting point for a custom style sheet. It also comes with a very flexible set of layouts for 2, 3 and 4 column displays.

2.2. Using Tapestry Sidebars | Tapestry via kwout

Even greater flexibility is given by the Block Theme module that site administrators can use to apply a custom themes to any block on the site.

2.3. Using the Block Theme Module | Tapestry via kwout

While the template itself gives an easy mix and match approach to site design, it also acts as a solid starting point for additional CSS development, inspiration for which can be taken from some of RoopleTheme’s designs for dooce and 43 folders.

Services | RoopleTheme via kwout

(CLARIFICATION: The 43 folders theme was created by RoopleTheme based on a design by Chris Glass.) 

Tapestry is open source, released under the GNU General Public License it is compatible with Drupal 5 and 6.