iTunes U revamp
As Erick said the other day, we’ve just finished updating the iTunes U site as well as the Texas A&M store on iTunes U. The store gets new graphics and a consistent set of branding for all of the albums and a cleaner, lighter look.The site gets a new layout and added functionality as we try to bring more of what’s in iTunes U to the site for people to see. We’re starting with the top downloads, but hopefully will be able to pull out other feeds of titles and topic areas.
But what the new site also does is set a foundation of design for one of the projects on our slate. It’s tentatively titled “Podcast Central” (I wanted to use “Rasputin” but I found out that Favreau and Co. are using that codename for Iron Man 2), but it would be a central point to feed in podcasts from different places and venues. This would allow us to highlight and promote videos from iTunes U, our and other A&M youTube sites and playlists, MediaMatrix feeds, KAMU streams, departmental podcast RSS feeds and more — and have it appear and be highlighted on this new site.
But, I digress. Anyway, in iTunes U we’ve gone ahead and redesigned all the album covers. If you have new podcasts that require posting or new artwork, please don’t hesitate to contact our iTunes U team.
Prioritizing New Features in Application Development Using Instrumentation
So today, after several weeks with clear, hot skies, we finally have some cloud cover and I’m hearing thunder outside. But nature’s thunder is not the only thing I’m hearing. When I developed the current production maps system, I put in some instrumentation to help me log errors and watch performance.
About 2 minutes after the first sounds of thunder I heard outside my window, I started getting emails from the maps system telling me that traffic was spiking (and with mobile phones no less). What does this tell me? The next version of the campus maps must have weather tracking!
What I’m seeing is spikes in usage and [unfortunately] mobile capabilities not being available when the weather starts changing. The current version of maps does not provide weather updates (or mobile friendly layouts), but you can bet that because I’m watching these requests roll in (along with the clouds), the weather feature just got a priority bump. Mobile features were already a priority for the next version, but weather was an afterthought.
I encourage every app developer to take the time to put good logging and instrumentation standards in place in their applications so they can justify one feature over another when it comes to the next sprint or upgrade. And don’t forget to save often… My APC just clicked…
iTunes U Republished
I’ll steal a little of John and Diane’s thunder by announcing now that the new iTunesU website is online. This version offers a little more functionality than the previous site. It uses RSS feeds to draw out some of the popular content so that you can see some of what’s there before opening the iTunes application and opening the store.
In a similar vein, the entire Texas A&M section of the iTune store has been updated. It has a much fresher, more open feel, giving you easier access to some great content. More to come from John…
My desperate search for information scent
Web searchers have been compared to hunters and gatherers, trying to find the most likely sources of food without using up their strength. In the Information Age, when we don’t hunt berries much, we’re looking for information scent to tell us which websites, which web pages, are most likely to give us the answers we need. But even today, sometimes people literally search the Web to survive. I experienced that during a health problem which my wife recently experienced. › Continue reading
TouchNet uPay Development Gotchas Article
Earlier this week I sat with Chris Weldon to try and troubleshoot some problems with the AggiePay replacement system - TouchNet uPay. He is developing one of the first applications that will use the system, and we found a few interesting bugs/gotchas that developers who will be communicating with the system might want to know about.
The first is that the uPay landing screen for submitting payment information uses some javascript to submit a form once your website posts to it. The javascript basically calls the function document.getElementById(”indexForm”).submit() to submit the form. However, if you send in a POST variable named “submit” (as in a submit button on your own site), you will get an error that document.getElementById(”indexForm”).submit is not a function. That’s correct, because it is actually a DOM element once the site renders out the values in the form it is trying to submit. When posting to uPay, don’t send in input fields w/ the name “submit”.
The second issue was specifically with PHP and md5 hashing. To make sure your data hasn’t been tampered with when you submit it to uPay, you first create a token from the values in the transaction, md5 hash the result, and then base64 encode the hash so it doesn’t get mangled in transit. Typically an md5 hash is a series of hex values. However, in PHP, the md5() function returns a string, and so base64 encoding it actually returns an incorrect value. In order to produce the right base64 value, you must first convert the md5() return value back into a hex variable with the pack() function. Then you can base64 encode the correct hex md5 hash.
You can find a much more detailed explanation of the issues in Chris’ blog post about TouchNet uPay Problems.
Events this week
Don’t forget, there is a meeting of the IT Forum today at 3:00 in 601 Rudder. Topics will be: SIMS Access Time Line; SSN Scanning Update; LDAP and Shibboleth Update; Understanding Security Threats
On Friday UWeb is getting together at 11:00 in 101A of the GSC. We will be talking about social media, both in general and in how it is being implemented here on campus.
Can visitors quickly sniff out your web content?
Web searchers have been compared to hunters and gatherers, trying to find the most likely sources of food without using up their strength. Professor Marcia Bates compared it to berrypicking. In the Information Age, we’re looking for information scent to tell us which websites, which web pages, are most likely to give us the answers we need. › Continue reading
Presentation: Search Engine Optimization & Google Search Appliance
The Powerpoint presentation, including examples, that I gave on
Search Engine Optimization & Google Search Appliance at the May 27 IT Forum is now available from the Division of Marketing & Communications website. And the video has been posted on the IT Forum website.
TAMUMobile now available
The icon for the TAMUMobile App
Well, as of yesterday afternoon, Texas A&M’s TAMUMobile application went live in the iTunes App Store and it looks like it will do pretty well. The folks I showed yesterday were excited about it and we’re getting good feedback.
There are still some tweaks that are ongoing. For example, when the TAMUtv sub app first opened it showed all of the content was “uploaded 39 years ago”. (I’m sorry but I don’t remember YouTube competing for my childhood attention back in the 1970s.) But we’re getting those knocked out as we see them. So if you download it, please feel free to email us at itunes@tamu.edu.
Phase 2 is also underway with the maps, courses and events sub apps going well. According to Diane (who’s working with the vendor) they are in discussions for a Blackberry version as well as others.
Once again, my thanks to all who are helping to make this possible. This really is a team effort.
Latest Calendar Feature
One of the nicest features of the Google calendar is the ability to embed various calendar widgets right into your own web page. With thanks to Donald St. Martin over in the College of Engineering, we are now happy to say that our calendar can do that now too. All it takes is a Javascript call and link to our style sheets (or write your own CSS if you don’t like our color choice!) Information and sample codes are available on the calendar help page.
I have created a sample page with each of these widgets on them as a demonstration.
Feel free to use this feature to start adding calendar elements to your own websites. Don’t forget, though, for those with a little more programming experience, you can always take the RSS or iCal feed and import the information into your page styled however you want.