Mapovino: Google-mapping and social-networking and wikipedia-ing

It’s very difficult to describe what we are aiming for with the Mapovino project without getting caught up in Web2.0 buzzword bingo; or, going the other route, being so pretentious that it’s we’re sooo different that we shun any words that sound vaguely like the “read-write web”. Sigh. Below are my best thoughts in words so far….

(We’re having a demo and wine-tasting in San Francisco soon. Contact me if you’re interested!)
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Mapovino is a wine-mapping website incorporating GoogleMaps to showcase geographically distinct wines and the stories behind these wines.

Mapovino is interactive:

• Users can add comments, photos, link to maps in their blogs, and even add blog links on the map.

Mapovino is encyclopedic:

• It will pull wine and geography information from Wikipedia and other public information sources. This secondary user-generated content further enables users to interact with Mapovino.

Mapovino is information and referral:

• Mapovino will not sell wines; instead, it will point to where to find the wine in stores and restaurants.

Mapovino will be driven by wine fans, helped by Mapovino staff:

• Producers will not have the burden entering information about their wines and vineyards - fans of their wines can help input that information. Mapovino staff will highlight producers, and post in-depth articles and interviews. Producers can control their own entries, but do not have to do anything specific for their wines to appear on the site.

Mapovino is in development:

• To be part of the conversation, please email “greg.beuthin” in front of “@af83.com”

Technorati Tags: mapovino, af83, terroir

Great Drupal Resources (and a fun event): Drupal Module Finder and Drupal Code Search

My friend Brian Wood at UC Berkeley (and part of BDUG) pointed to a couple of great resources by way of John Bern’s blog:

Drupal Modules:  A comprehensive way of searching for, favoriting and ranking Drupal modules.

Drupal Code Search:  A site using Google’s Code Search API to lookup Drupal code strings.

Neither are officially sponsored (nor sanctioned - yet?) by Drupal.org.  Nonetheless, I love this tertiary after-market style ecosystem building around Drupal.

Also, from Amazon, who is one of several people representing Druapl at the LUG Radio events in San Francisco:

Selena Deckelmann , and Andy de la Lucha, daytime Linux system administrator, nighttime design geek,  will be doing a fun and theatrical event pitting WordPress easy entry and their huge user community versus Drupal’s you can do anything and it’s huge “join the community now!” developer focus.

Should be a really fun event!

Signup and more details are here.

We’re hiring! AF83 is looking for a Drupal developer!

Read all about it over here. 

My contact info is on the linked page - yep, you’d be talking to me.  (The position is based in San Francisco…)

Technorati Tags: af83, drupal

eDemocracyCamp in DC!

I’ve been so busy focusing on, amongst other things, DrupalCon that I totally missed mentioning eDemocracyCamp, happening this weekend in Washington D.C. Good friend in the BarCamp, WineCamp and i18n / translation world Tim Bonnemann is one of the organizers.

eDemocracyCamp!

“The place for innovators, optimists, and engaged citizens. March 2, 2008 in Washington, DC

We are building off the momentum of the 2008 Politics Online Conference
which always draws a spectacular crowd. If you are coming into town for one of these events you should definitely check out the other one in order to make the most of your time here in DC.

eDemocracyCamp will be the first BarCamp with a focus specifically on e-democracy. eDemocracyCamp will connect citizens, researchers, developers, practitioners and anyone else interested in the topic to learn about the current state of e-democracy and share their visions for its future direction.”

2 Guys Uncorked - and a question for Mapovino

I really like 2 Guys Uncorked for a couple of reasons:

• It’s populist.  It’s meant to be populist.  They only (for now) review wines from Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods.  They have a reason behind their philosophy, and in the end I appreciate it.  I can easily find stuff I too have tried without needing to dig too obscurely.  And it’s great for people just getting into wines.
• The site is built on Drupal.  Thumbs up.  Nuff said.
• They have a map.  Cool!

Wait a sec.  This is where it falls apart a bit for me (but that doesn’t have to negate the rest of the project).  How meaningful is a map “locating” Charles Shaw (”Two Buck Chuck”) in Modesto, the wine producer’s headquarters?  That wine is actually an amalgam of cheap surpluses gathered from around the state every year.  (On the plus side, I love the fact that they publish the pictures of the labels….)

Mapovino would - of course - identify wines that had some sort of geographic claim.  How specific that is, is something we’re still figuring out.  Thankfully, the U.S. has a system of regional appellations, so it’s not too controversial, but even calling something “Sonoma” (like “Loire” in France) can mean almost next to nothing - Sonoma wines can be Cabs, Merlots, Zins, Rhone blends, Pinots, any sort of white, etc - not to mention the actual style of the resulting wine.  OK, we can guess fruit-forward and higher alcohol, but then again, maybe not…..

But 2 Guys Uncorked raises a question for the Mapovino project:  Are regional-specific wines from, for example, Sonoma appellations like Dry Creek Valley going to be too expensive and out-of-reach for beginning wine enthusiasts or those without deeper pockets?  I can’t think of a single wine that comes from a specific vineyard in Napa or Sonoma that is under $30.  That’s a lot of money to spend per bottle for someone wanting to “learn” about how geography can affect wines.  We don’t want Mapovino to be elitist…..

(Obligatory Drupal nod:  See you at DrupalCon?  If so, ping me via my Drupal page.)

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Drupal 6 release party @ PariSoMa - tomorrow night!

Get all the details.  Nuff said.

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OpenID, Diso and Vidoop - there, that covers it

[UPDATE:  In my note about Vidoop, I inferred that they had made a deal with AOL; in fact, they are just one of several "white-listed" OpenID providers.  I've fixed the language, and pointed to where I got that mistaken impression.  Thanks, Sam, again, for the pointer.]

I attended part of the OpenID camp this weekend, because I’ve been interested in single sign-on for a while, as the first step in the fight against dozens of silos of walled social networks. Here’s a brief report back, because the first rule of any camp is to Talk About (Bar/OpenID/Whatever)Camp:

• Since I’m not a coder and the acronym soup was over my head, I jumped in on the conversation about recommendations for OpenID providers. At it’s most basic, a provider will offer a URL which is the basis against which other sites will verify your registration and log-in information (a good primer screencast is here). People can make their own OpenID servers with the addition of just a little HTML code; other sites offer a full OpenID identity management (like myOpenID). Right now, an end site can display one of several different personas you create, which can contain varying degrees of information - but the personas are either all-on or all-off. I.e. if you want to display little info, you set up a very simple persona; if you want to share more, you set up a more complete persona. But either one you choose will display all the information in that persona to whoever visits the URL. Chris Allen (who pointed me to a good dissection of privacy he had written) suggested that in addition to offering the ability to have different personas on an OpenID server, it should also allow different levels of authorized information based on permissions levels, minimally a type of “if I show you myOpenID, you show me yourOpenID.” In the subsequent Diso discussion (see below) Chris M. also suggested that OpenID providers offer the identity information in hcard / microformat (natch) so it can be parsed by a wider range of subsequent tools for Diso purposes. (Standards and format flame wars over there, please - I’m just a messenger…)
• Check out myVidoop.com There, I said it. Vidoop is a new OpenID provider, and they helped sponsor this camp (as well as SixDegrees and others). OK, so I have to thank Sam from Vidoop for putting up with my noob questions and explaining some of the more tricky use cases for me. And Vidoop has one (of several) interesting business model(s) - they don’t use passwords for your account login; instead, it’s categories of images that you choose as your recognizable set. For hosted services (for example, AOL), the other images that are not part of your set can be branded - AOL, or whatever. Yes, that makes no sense until you set up an account and see how it works - then read their blog post.
• I got to sit in on a bit of Chris Messina’s DiSo description. Thank god, because the Google page doesn’t really capture it in any succinct fashion (to be honest, Chris took 15-20 minutes before we got the full picture). In essence, it’s a way of using open source tools and standards (like WordPress) to build social networks that are not tied to a particular platform (like, uh, Facebook?). There’s a lot of great potential there, as well as a lot of work to even just get different services to communicate - much less be plug and play to the average use. But it’s great to see my personal peeve (a rant from a year and a half ago) of walled-garden social networks confirmed by people far smarter than me.

Technorati Tags: openid, diso, vidoop, privacy

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My new gig: Mapovino, AF83 and FaberNovel

I still don’t quite believe it. My job is now wine. Well, not quite, but close enough for me to be very excited.

After several months of discussion, negotiation, and yes, some wine, I’ve been hired by AF83, a French-American firm that develops social networking sites, incorporating open-standards technologies like microformats, and using open-source applications like, yes - Drupal. (Since this work is part-time, I am continuing my other role as a technology director at a school.) A big tip of the hat and gracious bow goes to my French homonym, Grégoire, who originally proposed the wine project we are now both working on, and who introduced me to AF83.

So now I am the U.S. contact for Mapovino (no actual site yet) - a website that locates on a map local and regional producers of wine and other place-focused food products. We are developing the first beta now, and it will eventually allow users not only to find but to add comments and experiences about these growers and products. More on that in the coming weeks.

A bit about my new employers: I am also one of two (so far) U.S. employees representing AF83 for new projects. The agency has a track record of developing social networking and complex user-based sites quickly, on open standards including microformats and open-source software like - yes, Drupal. (And like many web shops that have too much work, their own site is in need of an update - and an English translation - so I’m not linking to it yet.) Do you need open-source web development from a a proven company with open-source expertise, bilingual website development experience and contacts in the European market? Drop me a line.

faberNovel, one of the partner organizations supporting AF83, is also setting up shop in San Francisco. faberNovel specializes in innovative strategy development and solutions implementation. Yeah, well, that’s my paraphrasing of the marketing speak. They also have an interesting track record of projects that are above and beyond web development: a BlueTooth application to assist blind people navigate subways; mobile-accessible transportation schedules for complex multi-agency transport hubs (think Paris - or the Bay Area?); a coupon and ticketing system for mobile phones; and an automated bicycle rental system.

Finally, the AF83 and faberNovel offices will be offering coworking spaces in the near future. PariSoma is the name of the office space, and that’s where you can get more info about the office and the two French companies.

I’ll be talking much more about Mapovino in the coming weeks - right here. So keep yer eyes peeled. If you want in on the gossip - the gossip that I don’t publish on this site - then pop me an email.

Technorati Tags: mapovino, af83, fabernovel, parisoma

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Students: Writing, and portfolios

I wanted to catch up (in this space) with some of the work I’ve been doing for my school:

• Students 2.0:  A new (and excellent) student-written blog focused on education:  “Administered, designed, edited, and written by a global mix of students of varying ages, interests, voices, and points of view, Students 2.0 will feature content written by both staff writers and guest contributors. From Hawaii and Washington, from St. Louis and Chicago, from Vermont, New York, Scotland, Korea, and other points on the globe, these writings will be united in one central aspect: quality student writing, full-voiced and engaging, about education.”   Tip o’ the hat to Bill at FunnyMonkey for the heads-up.
• FolioLive (TM): I don’t know how new this is, or even if it’s becoming a major player in the arena - but it’s got a lot of the functionality we’re looking for.  This is a hosted eportfolio application (yearly license fees, it looks like) published by McGraw-Hill.  What’s frustrating is that I’m sure we - as a school - could convince funders to support us paying money to license this application, yet it’s so much harder to find funders willing to support the open-source development of an identical application - that we would own, could share freely and allow other schools to customize.  The fact that it would be ridiculously minimal to customize the existing DrupalEd application to do this (if the new version doesn’t already incoporate this functionality) is all the more frustrating.
• (And for what it’s worth, that’s one of the poorest video-demos I’ve seen.  A pointless and long intro (at least they include a skip button), and then a series of mostly static slides, with someone reading the text printed on the slides.  Ngghhhhhh.  Sorry, is that sense of frustration palpable?)

The challenge we face (as a school) that links these two sites is  most of these conversations - whether it’s Students 2.0 talking, or conversations about eportfolios - are aimed at high-school students and above.  And if you’ve any experience in the middle-school world, you know that this level of sophistication for students is coming if not already here, and we’d like ot get on top of it before someone applies a thick-thumbed approach to it like McGraw-Hill….

Technorati Tags: eportfolio, drupal, drupaled, mcgraw-hill

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Awesome drupal case study - for online newspapers

Information.dk - a Danish newspaper that relaunched on Drupal - published their production case study on Drupal.org - from architecture design to CSS challenges…

Wow - I wish all case studies were like this.  This is yet another way to give back to the community.  I’ve rarely read a case study where I actually learned so much.

I found this while digging around for info about Drupal newspaper sites for a friend.  There’s a newspaper group, and from there I discovered that there are a bunch of Drupal newspaper sites
 (including internationally) in production.  Including America’s Finest New Source, natch.

Technorati Tags: Drupal, newspaper, casestudy

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