independents hall: more than just a rant this time.
alright. so ive done my fair share of shouting about coworking both here and at my work related blog. It’s time i got down to tacks (?) and start outlined my intentions. So here we go.
The wiki password is liberty, and I encourage you to contribute ideas, feedback , contacts, resources…anything you might have at your disposal to make our dream a reality.
[tags]coworking, wiki, independents hall, philadelphia[/tags]
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son of a gun
i knew i should have spent more time developing this idea. Today the crew @ HappyCog released swfIR (swf Image Replacement).
this does some SICK stuff in comparison to mine, and my original intention was different but this direction is pretty awesome and the tool is very robust, making my fetus-like alpha script cower in comparison.
(via Zeldman.com)
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east coast coworking…
…featured in businessweek. Ok, west coast really got the bulk of the recognition but I did notice a bunch of spots in new york (one of which I’ve visited). There is also one in Pittsburgh.
Wait a second.
Pittsburgh? Pittsburgh has a coworking space that’s gotten recognition in businessweek and Philly’s got nothing?
Ef that. I hope that I’ll come across some Philly folks when I’m at SXSW next weekend who share my vision and can help me get Independents Hall off the ground.
I’m serious about this. And it’s not just because I need to get out of my house.
What I NEED is to see creative collaboration in the city that I call home. What I NEED is to stop seeing so much inbreeding in the local industry. What I NEED is for my town to stop being “cool…but not New York”.
This town’s gonna change. It’s my calling. You in?
Drop me a line. Lets rock. (I’m going to do it with or without you, you may as well join me for the ride)
[tags]businessweek, coworking, independents hall, SXSW, philadelphia[/tags]
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3 months in
3 months ago, I made a pledge to myself. I’d spent just over 2 years in the industry working for a couple of top notch agencies, and it was time to flex the connections I’d worked so hard on. I’d been taking on freelance work all along, using it as an opportunity to hone my skills and make some side cash, but it definitely cut into my free time. So, on December 1, 2006, I left my full time job to dedicate my work week to my own initiatives. I pledged to try to make it at least 6 months. If I could make it that far, I could go the distance. Plus, I picked a difficult month to make the switch: December. A month where a) many companies have frozen spending b) the holidays exponentially increased my spending and c) I went to South Beach Miami for New Years partying. If i could make it through that month, I should easily be able to make it through the long haul.
And now I am here a few days from my 3rd monthly anniversary of going completely indie, and I’m not looking back. I’ve had more fun, worked with more cool clients, and kept the bills paid (and tucking some cash into savings). More cool opportunities are coming in on a regular basis, and I’m in a position to pick and choose the one’s that I am passionate about. After all, the quality of work you get from someone who’s passionate about their work is much better.
I’m starting to get a little bit of cabin fever…I’m working on a loose version of coworking to start getting me out of the house on a more regular basis. I can’t really go to the local Starbucks (not because I can’t afford it…I drink for free, thanks to my lovely girlfriend), but because I can’t focus in that kind of environment. I’m much better off surrounded by other creatives. So I’m on the hunt for an existing space inside an agency that I can rent out a couple of days a week.
And of course, I’m still looking for an opportunity to move out west. Chris and Tara are patiently waiting my first official appearance in San Fran, which I’m gunning to make happen in April for Web20pen.
In the mean time, I’m trying to get the last of my details in order to attend SXSW in a week and a half…if anyone has a floor I can sleep on, I’d happily throw some cash in for it..I just cant justify $200+ a night for a hotel 7-10 miles from the conference.
A lot going on, as the life of an indie is busy. But it’s a good busy. A productive busy. One of the most rewarding busy’s I’ve ever been.
On to the next adventure, kids…
[tags]freelancing, coworking, SXSW, travel[/tags]
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Yahoo Pipes: Visual Feed Mashups for Everyone
Prompted by a handful of “what the heck is that” type conversations I had observed, I decided to take Yahoo Pipes for a spin. I’m overall pretty impressed with a bunch of the UI elements of the tool, though there are many that are left confusing…and overall, the tool itself is very simple despite it’s complicated looks. Here’s the low-down.
Pipes makes a number of existing RSS feeds(Yahoo search, Google Base, and Ebay, for example), as well as your own selectable feeds via a “fetch” command, able to be sorted, mashed, and translated through a number of user inputs or filters. This whole process reminds me very Peavy’s MediaMatrix, which I used in my previous experiences with Theater Sound Engineering.
Media Matrix, like Pipes, takes digitally converted signals from microphone inputs, puts them into a digital processor chip with a loaded “schematic”…which acts as a map of sorts through some virtual hardware. The signal’s properties could be manipulated by their pitch, gain, and a ton of other fancy filters. Similarly, Pipes takes the feed input you select, compartmentalizes the data and then passes it through a number of filters which can be selected, tweaked, and connected via a visual “schematic” of the workflow (the word workflow should allude to something like Apple’s Automator…and rightfully so. If you can figure out automator, you could use Pipes, and MediaMatrix for that matter).
The value in this tool is really going to grow as its ability to process more and more types of feeds grows. It’s not clear to me (and this is an opportunity to point me to sources to self-educate) about the contribution factor. A means of creating and then SHARING the workflows you create with Pipes could make it much more popular, but more importantly, a way to create and import your own feed processors and filters. Yahoo has done a good job of documenting and opening up their tools via APIs in the past, hopefully they will do the same here. Another valuable tool would be to create a set of hooks so that external web pages could hook directly into Pipes-processed feeds.
Finally, I could see this as a visual tool for figuring out process flows for beginner-developers. Having the ability to create a workflow and then hit “export” to php/sql code which I could dump into my application…could prove handy for rapid prototyping of feed-driven web tools.
Still, Pipes is a cool concept if for no other reason that it is an interface that looks like it SHOULD be flash…but its done with html and javascript…all done with Yahoo’s UI Javascript Libary. This is a GREAT example of the power of javascript in UI.
I’m excited to see how this project evolves, and if Yahoo opens it up for more public contribution. If so, I’d be excited to use a more matured tool.
[tags]Yahoo Pipes, Peavy, MediaMatrix, YUI, workflows, javascript UI[/tags]
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