Thinkcorps

DialedIn was an experiment in aggregating local bloggers to provide an alternative view of city life. I built the system to run more or less automatically once the data sources have been picked. The system as it stands now pulls in blog feeds, news feeds, Flickr photos, and iCal calendars. It’s kind of a one-stop shop for local community information. [update: i shut the service down until i find a new webhost.]
What I ended up with is very similar to the FeedWordpress project. There are some things that I’ve done differently, and some that I would have added in if I’d been seriously pushing the system the way Charles has been. But it’s good enough for me as a proof on concept, and I don’t like releasing code to the public because I’m not willing and/or able to support it.

This project combined my love of RSS feeds and Wordpress, and gave me additional insight into how flexible Wordpress is. As I continue to understand WP’s API, I really like how you can extend the program’s functionality through plugins (leveraging both PHP and Javascript).

Oh, and if you look, you can see that I integrated a cool weather plugin right into the interface. I think I’m actually most proud of that. The simple design I developed uses a prominent feature of the cityscape in the header and puts a current weather image right over it. I love the idea of infographics integrated into the site design—and it’s so basic! If you mousover the image you get additional data. It certainly doesn’t show off any programming skills, more dumb luck really, but I’ll take it. :>