Archive for December, 2009

December 6th, 2009

WordPress plugin: Photo Gallery XML Export v1.0.0

This is my first attempt at a WordPress plugin. I implemented it on The News Tribune‘s homepage several months ago and there haven’t been any disasters, so I’m considering it a success.

This plugin takes post data from your WordPress blog and creates an XML feed of that data. I suppose it could have several uses, but it is optimized to feed data to Flash photo galleries with info from the Title and Excerpt fields as well as each post’s permalink.

Download the plugin: Photo Gallery XML Export v1.0.0

I’ve also added the ability to include up to five custom fields (good for thumbnails) and the option of limiting to just one category.

Here’s a screenshot of the options page:

setting_examples

How you might use this in the real world:

If you have a photo blog or a blog that usually includes at least one photo per post, you could use exported XML data from your blog to feed a Flash content rotator that you would use to promote that blog on another page of your site.

Or, if you have a special feature on your blog — say, “Recipe of the Week” — that includes a photo, you could assign that special feature a category (like “recipeoftheweek”) and use exported XML data from just that category to feed a Flash content rotator to promote that special content.

Here’s an example of my blog’s content as XML generated from this plugin:

xml_screengrab3

And here’s a live example of a Flash content rotator that’s pulling data from XML generated by this plugin:




A few suggestions for Flash content rotators:

• Simpleviewer

• JW Image Rotator

• Flash Image Rotator using XML Playlist

Some notes:

1) The XML declaration is hard-coded to be: <?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″ ?> … I don’t have any plans to change that unless I get requests for other declarations.

2) You can name most XML elements however you see fit, but right now the parent element is hard-coded to “images” and each blog post parent element is hard-coded to “pic.” I’m hoping to make that customizable in the future.

3) If your excerpt isn’t populated, it will pull from your blog post. Not entirely ideal, but that’s how WordPress excerpts work by default.

CategoryUncategorized | Comment14 Comments »

December 2nd, 2009

Mapping the manhunt

After four Lakewood police officers were shot at a Forza coffee shop in Parkland on Sunday, November 29, police from Seattle and Pierce County scoured the region for the suspect, Maurice Clemmons. During the 40 or so hours following the crime, there was a dizzying amount of police activity in the region, including a failed hours-long standoff in the Leschi neighborhood of Seattle.


View Manhunt! in a larger map

I live in the nearby neighborhood of Mount Baker and was on news-junky high alert as helicopters circled Seattle’s central area all night long. After the police came up empty from the standoff in Leschi, they headed to Beacon Hill and Columbia City on separate tips, both neighborhoods that border mine on the south side.

Because it had become a national story at this point, family members and friends of mine in other states were asking how far away the police activity was happening from where I lived, so I created a simple Google map to show them. After I sent the link, it occurred to me none of the stories online were using a map to tell this particular story yet. So I kept adding to it from what I was learning on news sites, the police scanner and Twitter via the #washooting hash tag. Local media big and small started taking notice of the map, linked to it and traffic started pouring in.

googlemap

Two things this unintentional experiment taught me about breaking news online:

1) People crave simplicity when things get complicated. There will always be a need for someone to distill information and make sense of it. I think maps, in general, are overused in the news business. But in this case – with this story – it couldn’t be told without a map. Seattle residents were worried about the police activity and having a suspected murderer on the loose. They wondered when it might affect their neighborhood or when it might stop affecting their neighborhood. There was an overwhelming amount of information out there, but scattered in a hundred different places, and not everybody has the patience to sift through all of it.

Side note: The best use I’ve seen of this type of breaking news via Google map came from the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2007 with their wildfire map. Another instance where residents felt surrounded by the news and needed to make visual sense of what was happening.

2) West Seattle Blog must get a SICK amount of traffic. At least half of the traffic sent to the map came from West Seattle Blog. Local advertisers would be crazy not to get their businesses on that blog asap.

CategoryInternet, The News | CommentNo Comments »

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