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We talked about installing plugins in WP and moving the blog to our own server. Since we may want to do more that blogging, for example: Multilingual Posts, Projects, Some metrics and Analytics, (Nikolay was taking about Trust Metric), Event organizing, Advertising, Fund raising, add more… I wonder what software is best suited to handle all ?
Lately I have been thinking of methods of intelligently power up mobile devices through additional mobile power sources by using all currently available technologies and design solutions on the market. With wireless charging finally becoming a mass market reality through WildCharge, I am both excited and in the same time disappointed how little of the potential is actually covered by WildCharge. I decided to write down a quick list of features of a prototype product I’ve come up as the PowerPebble
** Twitter, Facebook Publish or Facebook Mail (when API available) self. GoogleTalk/XMPP Push. RSS hosted locally or proxied via online service (FeedBurner with PubSubhubbub support). Email. Create alarms in Google Calendar for charging via iCal Calendar.
** Messaging can tell devices that PowerPebble has capacity to serve them thus devices should specifically ask the user to use the Pebble. Devices with GPS can compare their own GPS data with PowerPebble GPS data and if close, could tell the user that the closest PowerPebble is in close distance. Devices can subscribe to multiple PowerPebble feeds/accounts/etc. and triangulate closest Pebble.
** Google Latitude, Fire Eagle GPS support. GPS Log support for cross-tagging media from cameras, online travel tagging services. GPS-defined Locales that trigger on or off Alarm Cap functions. For example, be alarmed of low capacity only when you return home.
** Voice Alarms via Bluetooth-connected headset. Support for headsets capable of connecting with multiple devices.
I am still trying to expand the PowerPebble concept from a feature-rich wireless mobile charger to any sort of disruptive technology.
Point for expansion: Several PowerPebbles can communicate with each other via their Communication Cap, via Bluetooth or 3G/WiFi PowerPebbleRSS subscribe, or eMail, XMPP, etc. What information can a Pebble send to another Pebble unit. A Pebble could alarm the user to remove devices when its capacity is low, and then tell other Pebbles to alarm via sound the user to move devices there. Pebble1: “I’m dead. Sorry, user!”, Pebble2: “I’m up for the task. Gimme devices!”, Pebble3, demonstrating smart behavior based on data: “Your Pebble1 is dead and Pebble2 is in use, hey I’m almost dead too so please charge me and Pebble1 when you get home OK? Here, I set your Google Calendar for 18:30 and your HTC Hero will scream bloody murder even if I’m dead.”; You can also prepare for a travel and tell your Pebbles how many recharges you need. User: “Pebbles, I have added my HTC Hero profile to your databases. My HTC Hero operates for 5 hours on a heavy use. I need to travel 25 hours, so I need 5 recharges of my 1350 mAh HTC Hero. ” Pebble1: (is dead, doesn’t respond), Pebble2: “Count me in, I provide 3 charges”, Pebble3, smart behavior again, demonstrating receiving 2nd-pass data from web interface: “One charge from me, I see you only got 3 charges so far, charge me so I provide the remaining one!”, User via Web Interface: “Okay, thanks Pebbles, I’ll charge Pebble1 and leave Pebble3 as it is”.
Public or Paid PowerPebbles: Operating PowerPebbles in a similar fashion to what FON does for WiFi. Implement option to turn on or off PowerBlock’s magnet wireless charging via Communication Cap. Hotels, cafes and such can set up a Kiosk (or allow any other Web device) to web-connect to PowerPebble. Use Nokia Money, PayPal or Credit Card API to pay for number of hours operation of the PowerPebble, get temporary WiFi account to use Pebble as WiFi or MiFi point. Successful payment allows PowerPebble to charge for the next X hours.
Not as disruptive but a must for the iPod generation.
I think it’s a good idea and all electronics should be designed similarly to the Swarm Robotics post below.
It’s kinda off topic, but Yonel had some crazy ideas in the past (which turned not to be so crazy) – wirelessly powering devices on big distances using lasers.
I’d be very interested to see that idea in a written form. I am quite interested about safety implications. While a bird or two can be sacrificed in the name of wireless charging, a plane off course cannot.
The idea came to me while studying about lasers in high school. Its simple to describe but probably very difficult to implement realistically and impractical for electricity transmission. (more likely something else …). Basically some lasers ionize air and ionized air is the shortest path for a high voltage electrical discharge. The key words for this type of phenomenon should be (Laser Induced Tunnel Ionization, laser-guided electric discharge in air … etc.)
I am not sure how safe such method of electricity transmission is, although it could probably be used with impulses rather than constant laser flow?
Here is a wireless powering from Sony!
Here’s another wireless electricity idea.
I like something about the idea of power bricks communicating with each other. There can be multiple algorithms for charging and providing power on demand from a group of interconnected power bricks replacing todays complicated central charge and drain controllers.
BTW, is Duracell myGrid a re-branded WildCharge?
Apparently yes, I think it’s a rebranding so Duracell can offer its own complete solution. The design is the same. It’s a shame though, as the current design size is really not comfortable for charging dozens of devices, especially larger ones such as netbook and notebook charging (Dell already announced a laptop with WildCharge charging).
Neven Boyanov
Bertrand
Stefan Stefanov
ihayes2000
Jean
jyonkov, 
Apostol Apostolov, 
jyonkov 12:23 pm on December 19, 2009 Permalink |
It seems that we can’t see what the other options are… so it would be nice if we add them as a comments. I was not expecting to see a lot of votes for google, but with google apps and JEE engine it seems that it has a lot of potential.
Bertrand 4:47 pm on December 20, 2009 Permalink |
Drupal and ModX are really simple and clear, Joomla is heavy to setup and manipulate but there is much more fonctionality.
About Google tools, i turn a bit around Google Site and it’s look ugly and very limitated by default.
Joomla, Drupal, your call ;o)
jyonkov 2:11 am on December 23, 2009 Permalink |
As you may have already realized, it’s not really “anyone’s call” what we are going to use, but to me its more about what we need and who is willing to contribute and what platform one has experience with… Please forgive me for the following brain dump but from what i know: Nikolay has experience with WP and he has acquired gambari.org for us, Naven has extensive experience in organizing communities, Stefan has extensive experience with PHP, Bertrand is extremely good with graphics, etc … and we are all pretty good at programming and software architecture. Please add anything you’d like to share… For example I’m more comfortable with Java and Google Engine than PHP. I’m also really exited about getting together and doing a development camp, perhaps sometime next year. Candidate projects pages and projects dashboard would be useful (we can add pages under Projects page), raising funds would help (start with google adsense?). About our community portal i’m sure you’re aware that you can export WP and experiment yourself. I personally think that instead of dividing out community it would be better to experiment bridging WP. For example we can setup our WP server at http://wp.gambari.org or/and JOOMLA at http://joomla.gambari.org , as for the current http://gambari.wordpress.com we are very limited as Nikolay mentioned earlier.
Daniel Radev 3:32 am on December 23, 2009 Permalink |
It’s not about dividing community, I think we need a place where we can share some more information without it being visible to spam bots for example (Bertrand please remove your email from bellow
).
Nikolay 10:20 pm on January 1, 2010 Permalink |
From SEO point of view, it’s not good to have multiple subdomains. Whatever we pick, it’s better to reside on the same domain under different paths, i.e. gambari.org as the main and gambari.org/blog as the blog, etc. Regarding the CMS… I think for blogging, WordPress is the best. There are many additional things you can do on top of WordPress MU such as BuddyPress (SocNet), bbPress (forum), etc. Drupal is cool, but even the upcoming Drupal 7 is nowhere close to WordPress for blogging. Probably Drupal 8 will change the status quo, but for now I think WordPress MU + BuddyPress is the best choice for us.
jyonkov 2:10 am on January 2, 2010 Permalink |
Agree about the SEO point of view. About CMS I’m all for what people have experience with. The top things TODO in my opinion are to create our own WPMU, add advertisement and a way for all of us to see how much funds we have accumulated, add infrastructure for translating content. Nik, if you have time can you setup WPMU at http://gambari.org and suggest a way to add Ads. Additional user accounts might be useful (people may like to help…). Lets keep both WPMU’s active for awhile.