Jason T Clark.net

So, I’m sifting through some blog posts on ajaxian.com, and I come to a post about this beta technology developed by Yahoo! called ‘Pipes’.  I won’t try to explain the whole thing, but in essence I can mash up all kinds of data from the web in almost any way shape or form to create very convenient applications for public use. I’ve already started reading the documentation for it, and Wow!  This is really a great tool for RSS feed readers, and Information hogs alike!

<More info on how it works here.>

Here’s the cool part: Once you got your pipe ready and working, you can share it with anyone in a number of forms.  Export it as a Facebook application, or add it to your Wordpress blog (which is what I’m thinking….).

Ok so I’m excited about it.  I’m going to play around with it a bit more, and see what I can come up with, and you should too!  Check out my public pipes at: http://pipes.yahoo.com/jasontclark.

So, if you’re an IBMer, and you’re in the know about IBM’s Hackday events, you’d know that the results were recently posted.  And the winner in the Virtual Worlds/Augmented reality category was none other than my Project WiiSpark application.  Thanks to Peter Yim, my colleague, for all of his work contributing to the project.  And, thanks to all those who voted.  Since this is an internal IBM event, there’s not much I can show about the other winners.   However, we here at IBM developerWorks are planning to to a full-on YouTube video explaining the app, and the technologies used to pull it off.

Again, thanks to everyone for participating!

Here’s a nicely written article on Gamedev.net on the ElectroServer product by Electrotank.  Electrotank is known for their ElectroServer product, which powers the ever popular Webkinz MMO for kids.  If you’re any ways interested in persistent-worlds development using technologies like flash, check it out.

The above video is a small screencast of my IBM WiiSpark application. This is the application that I created, using ActionScript3, Papervision3d, and the WiiFlash API. As you can see, it starts out as a rotating cube, but after entering in a keyword search, it goes out and retrieves thumbnail pages of the search results from IBM developerWorks. I figured since I work for them, I’d try to make this sample application relevant (*smile*).

You can’t see this on the video itself, but the movement of the cube is being controlled by a Wiimote that is connected to my PC via Bluetooth, which gives us a pretty good inidication that the Wiimote can certainly be used as an alternative input device. I’m sure you may have seen many other Wiimote device applications, and this was just my entry into the “sweepstakes”.

Maybe this is useful from a broader perspective though- should I open source this code? Leave me a comment, and let me know what you think.

Oh one last note, I ended up entering this application in as my entry for IBM’s Hackday event last month.  Haven’t heard about any results from that event, but I’ll keep you posted!

I’ve decided to challenge myself and create a Wordpress plugin. If you don’t already know, the Skreemr website is one of the best MP3 search engines I’ve come across, and I use it frequently when I’m looking for new music. With that said, I came up with the idea of creating a new Wordpress plugin that allows you to simply type in the name of your favorite artist, and a skreembox widget is created for you that’s dynamically populated with that artist’s music, based on the results of a Skreemr search.

I’m about 1/3 of the way of getting this done, and as soon as I am, I’ll be offering up for grabs. Stay tuned!

So, Nick and I have come quite a ways with the book over the past few months. One thing that we have noticed is that the technology we allude to in the text becomes a “moving target”. By the time we capture our thoughts and ideas around a concept, it changes. I guess rapid development is like that. Staying ahead of the curve can be a magical art to master as it seems. Nevertheless, next month we are going to have a meeting of the minds with respect to repositioning the text so that we aren’t “out of style”. Make sure to keep up-to-date with our progress over at PlatformSL.com.