Girl I made in Photoshop

By admin 1 Comment 21.07.08

Well, I have left my comfy spot at a local digital media agency and joined the Avusa iLab team. Over the past few years I have built up a decent rack of skills and experience, working with great A-list brands and leading online publications. However, working with iLab on Avusa Media products will most definitely hold the most exciting and intimidating challenges so far. The purpose of iLab is to to create online, offline and mobile innovation within Avusa Media. Taking the various Avusa Media brands into account, iLab has the unique oportunity to innovate on a powerfull distribution platform and make a huge impact on the local online media space.

I will be working with Colin Daniels, Justin Hartman, Gregor Rohrig and Ian Barnes as the multimedia desginer. It’s a challenging and stimulating role, which I hope will bring great value to the teams efforts. I also have a strong PHP development background which I am sure will come in handy on more than one occasion.

I’ve been working with the team since Monday and all I can say at this time, is stay tuned - Tons of exciting things happening here!

“Just as energy is the basis of life itself, and ideas the source of innovation, so is innovation the vital spark of all human change, improvement and progress.”
– Ted Levitt

It’s not too often we see large media companies embracing Open Source technologies, so it is really great to see one of South Africa’s large media houses embracing Drupal, an Open Source CMS.

This morning I read an Aricle on bizcommunity outlining the launch of gotravel24.co.za. In general the site promotes travel in and around South Africa. GoTravel24 also allows users to create travel blogs (Using their existing blogging platform),book hotels, rental cars, flights and find specials etc.

What got me really interested in the site, was the voting feature - A Drupal module! At first I thought it must be the script from which the Drupal voting module was based, however upon further investigation I found references to Drupal in the source.

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Well perhaps it is not so much a launch as a re-launch. Mid 2007 Google launched an educational program. At the time it was called ‘Google Code for Educators’. Google has now re-designed the site and re-launched as the Google Code University. The site is aimed at helping educators and students alike become more familiar with the technology behind Google and the internet in general. It is a repository of computer science educational material including tutorials, lecture slides, and videos.
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I recently updated NoboxMedias design. I don’t want to go on too much about my design, however, Nobox is not alone.

Along with my new design I assisted TechMongrel.com and TheOpenSurgery.com in jazzing up their blogs. We got together one night for a few drinks, a braai and look at their blogs. We quickly put together a new logo and changed the color scheme of TechMongrel.com . TheOpenSurgery.com needed a new logo and theme. We soon found an appropriate design, put together a fun logo, changed the color scheme and presto, a fresh new look. Please take the time to check these sites out, they have some great content and a written by well informed individuals.
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This is a simple PHP script I compiled for a little side project.

The script returns the title and meta data of a page by using a function called ‘get_meta_tags’ and a string search for the title.

I imagine it is similar to what many social bookmarking sites and content aggregators do to pull information when registering a site or submitting a link. I rate this coupled with an RSS aggrigator and the image pulling script could make the basis for a good content aggregator (I have never made a content aggregator so I don’t know too much about this). I would love to know if Afigator.com or Amatomu.com would be interested in pulling images along with posts (I belive technorati does this.)
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Well it is the first day I have checked Google since I posted my Springleap article. I see Bandwidthblog is still holding strong, however, viralmarketer and imod slowly creeping up there. I also see Nobox up there in 8th place - whoohoo! When I posted the Springleap article we were initially listed on the fourth page, should you type springleap in Google. I have my doubts whether anyone will knock springleap.com off first place, but we will see…

For a while now I have been wanting to share a few scripts to help visitors with image manipulation. Only thing is I did not want to list out all the tricks I have learned without any context. Recently, a South African site called Springleap launched. Springleap allows visitors to upload t-shirt designs. Visitors then vote for the designs and the winners get paid - good old cash prizes. They have now opened a SEO competition to help create a little hype around the local blogging community. Whoever gets the highest ranking for a post about Springleap wins R2500. So this got me thinking. As far as I can tell (I am no SEO guru), the best way to get a good ranking in Google, is to have allot of well recognized and established sites linking back to my post. The best way I know how to do this is to write a good scrip/tutorial and submit it to the hundreds of script sites. So, this is the plan - this article will use Springleap as a case study to explain the practical implementation of the following scripts. This will give me a chance at winning, provide a little support for a local start up and most importantly, help you with image manipulation.

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This is a little script I’ve been playing with. I’m using it on my pet project GoGuide.co.za, a social bookmarking site. The plan is for the site to pull a thumbnail image of a submitted URL’s page. The script scans specified sites for the first image with a width greater than 200px. I suggest 200px as in most cases blogs and news sites will not have any images with widths greater than 200px other than in their content.
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Wow,  I’m thrilled to be nominated as a finalist in no less than two categories of the SABlogAwards!

I launched Nobox in November last year and as such this is my first time as a nominee.
I must say it is quite an honor to be listed with some of SA’s coolest blogs, however, it would be a really insane honor to win - So vote for Nobox!

Good luck to all the finalists and may the most worthy win!
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