Client launches come and go, but every so often, there's free pizza. That's exactly what Boston Pizza is doing, as the first customer on Strutta's new contest and voting platform. A spinning ring of pizza presents their designer selections and entices the user to enter for a chance at free pizza for a year.
Interesting technical note: the "pizza carousel" isn't Flash, it's entirely HTML and Javascript with JQuery. Somewhere underneath it is Drupal. I'm a longtime fan of BP's, but in my opinion, the best pizza in Vancouver has a site with animated GIFs.
More to come... [more]
Via Twitter, Vancouver's Raincity Studios relaunched their Bryght community content hosting service. You might remember it was last November that Raincity bought Bryght; the two companies were already partners and shared office space. In addition to a fresh look for the site, they've also modified their pricing structure, with Bryght Light shared hosting at $20 a month (or free, ad-supported), and VPS options from $50 to $160 a month. For those who weren't aware of Raincity/Bryght's allegiances, "Community Content Hosting" means Drupal to them. The two companies have a long history of working with Drupal and supporting it's open source community. Interesting to note: both the Bryght and Raincity Studios websites are now localized in Chinese, reflecting Raincity's pursuit of the Chinese market. Raincity's blog doesn't mention the relaunch yet, but it is clad in Beijing 2008 colours as Raincity's head duo of Kris Krug and Robert Scales take a break from Raincity's Shanghai office to take in the Olympics. They're equipped with an arsenal of gadgets to deliver their independent take on the events through Flickr streams, videos on NowPublic, and more. They've already posted lots; providing an interesting view of the event that you won't see on CBC. Have fun dudes, and hopefully your citizen journalism doesn't get you thrown in a Chinese jail (and hopefully that line doesn't get Techvibes blocked in China).
Bryght is a Web 2.0 service that enables individuals and businesses to simply build powerful and dynamic hosted websites. [more]
Founded: December 2003 by Robert Scales Principals: Robert Scales, CEO Kris Krug, President Mark Yuasa, Creative Director Erik Hermans, Production... [more]
Just popped up on my reader that Victoria web shop North Studio has laid out the dates for Drupal Camp Victoria. Very well planned dates they are, overlapping with the Great Canadian Beer Festival, of which the DrupalCamp organizers have a limited but sizeable number of tickets. Visit the Victora Drupal Camp site to register (not accessible at the moment, possible DNS delay).
Via Raincity Studios blog, mixed media man Dave Olson has done a wrapup on recent Drupal Camps in Seattle, Alberta, and Portland. Kudos to Dave and the other organizers of DCV for contributing part of their budget surplus to the Seattle and Alberta events.
The recent Drupal Camp Vancouver saw folks coming from around BC, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, so it's not unreasonable to imagine Edmonton and Calgary Drupal fans making road trip to meet on neutral ground for Drupal Camp Alberta. The University of Lethbridge will host the event July 3 - 4, 2008. Speaker submissions are open until June 10, and sponsorship slots are availible as well. If you're thinking about ride-sharing, Twitter hashtag #dca08 might be a good place to start. For more info, visit their well themed site, drupalcampalberta.org.
This weekend SixHourStartup is working on building another website in an afternoon. In preparation for this, a small group gathered at SaturdayHouse last weekend to get a tour of Drupal. Drupal is a content management system that is trying some new and exciting things.
On May 10th, the Portland Drupal Users Group will gather to talk about all things group in a fest called DrupalCampPDX. At the same time, the Vancouver BC Drupal users group will also gather for Vancouver DrupalCamp. June 26th and 27th, the Seattle Drupal Users Group will gather for a DrupalCamp Seattle.
The BarCamp process of bringing together interesting people and cooperating to come up with a good plan works well and is generating a lot of buzz. It makes for lots of opportunity to find people who are interested in similar things.
It is too bad that the time frames were not more distributed, so that Portland, Seattle and Vancouver Drupalites could visit each other more directly. I have learned a lot when I have gone to BarCamps in other cities.
Perhaps the issue is a organizational. when you go to the main BarCamp site, the first thing you see is a time ordered list of the BarCamp events across the world. I wonder what it would take to get a list of all the DrupalCamp events across the world?
Four generous volunteers from various Vancouver Drupal shops are putting together the first Drupal Camp Vancouver. The event is planned for May 9 and 10; the first day taking place at the SFU Wosk Centre for Dialogue, and the second day at Workspace. All levels of ability are welcome.
This will be the first event of it's kind in Western Canada. With the amount of Drupal activity in Vancouver, it shouldn't be too difficult to fill two days with interesting content, so start polishing your slides. Volunteers and sponsors are needed, both would be great ways to show that your Drupal shop is above the rest. Registration will open mid-April.
Yesterday, Vancouver's Project Opus Technologies launched Mixx Maker, a Facebook application that allows friends to create virtual mixtapes while remaining within the legal bounds of fair use. Shown off last year at Barcamp and Facebook Developer Garage under the former title Opus Player, Mixx Maker started as a proof of concept for a "much larger project still in development", but they liked the idea enough to refine it into a product. In Mixx Maker, a user creates a "Mixx", an empty playlist, and gives it a theme such as "music for our road trip" or "music for biking through Stanley Park". The user then sends requests to friends to upload their music into the Mixx. These collaborative, social playlists can be streamed by your friends through the web interface. Songs on Mixx Maker cannot be downloaded, only streamed. This, along with facebook's ability to define social connections is what keeps Mixx Maker within fair use. "Legal issues prevent us from offering the service where Mixxs cannot be restricted to friends" says David Gratton, CEO of Project Opus. While this rules out a stand-alone version of the application, Gratton is hoping to expand to other social networks. "One of the reasons we built mixxmaker.com was to facilitate it as a hub for bring Mixxs to other social networks, and to expose the Mixxs data to other services." When Project Opus presented at Vancouver's Barcamp, the developers talked about building Mixx Maker on Drupal. While popular as a content management system, adapting Drupal into the backend for a Facebook application was an uncharted path. I asked Gratton if the choice was worth the effort: "We did have a false start in the summer... We had to scrap our work and restart from scratch". After some debate, the team has carried on with Drupal, looking towards future integration with their other Drupal projects and third party services. "When we considered the longer term prospects for MIXX, Drupal was a no brainer."
Project Opus™ is an online music community designed to support artists, fans and local music. It is a single point of contact for discovery of... [more]
Two of Vancouver's best known web service companies have formally joined forces with Raincity Studios buying Bryght, their long-time partner. The merger began when Robert Scales, CEO and founder of Raincity, and Kris Krug, former president of Bryght (and new president of Raincity), travelled together to Shanghai to scout out new offices and decided their companies ideally complemented each other. In addition to being able to "outsource to ourselves," according to Krug, Raincity Studios Shanghai will also be able to work on internal projects in China, and added that Raincity is also providing some employees with Mandarin lessons. The company is on the lookout for sysadmins and PHP developers locally, and needs developers and project managers in Shanghai, and Scales will be moving to China to run the new office.
Dave "Uncle Weed" Olsen, Vancouver podcaster extraordinaire, recently sat down with Bryght's Boris Mann to discuss FreeTheNet.ca, Mann's recent trip to Drupalcon Barcelona, and various other goings-on in the Drupalsphere, and you can listen to the interview via a podcast.
Freethenet.ca is a Canada-wide initiative to provide free wireless access throughout urban neighbourhoods by strategically deploying Meraki mesh routers. Gastown is already peppered with the routers, as are bits and pieces of the rest of Vancouver's downtown core. The Vancouver chapter of freethenet recently sold the last of their hardware, but will notify the public when they've got more in stock. Uncle Weed (yes, him again) has more information about the quest for free urban wireless in Vancouver on his blog at Rain City Studios, and if you're looking for further podcasts about FreeTheNet.ca, look no further than Tod Maffin.
