The Poetry Foundation partnered with us to design and develop an iPhone app that would act as a mobile database of poems. Shortly after launch, POETRY was featured as “New and Noteworthy” lifestyle software in Apple’s app store, and was the sixth most popular app in its category! Last week, the app was reviewed by The New York Times both online and in print. Read the article.

Download the app from the App Store.

(You can’t see it in that image but there is also a sponsorship graphic & link—gasp!—to the right of the editorial promotions.)

Similarly, Food2 promotes a handful of videos alongside a more conventional list of nav links.

And on the Craftsman site, graphic promotions appear below a straight-forward index of links.

At first glace, this goes against everything we’re taught about good user interface design. Navigation should be like the exit signs along the highway, not the advertising billboards. But I must admit that these examples don’t bother me—in fact, they look kind of juicy. Maybe it’s all about the context. In the case of Food2, I’m not very familiar with their programming, so I was happy to see some interesting suggestions crop up unexpectedly.

Of course, three examples does not exactly qualify as a trend per se. But it does seem to reflect some broader changes in search-related behavior that designers are beginning to explore. Cheryl, one of my co-designers here at Tierra, is currently reading Search Patterns, published by O’Reilly, which talks about how the boundaries between searching, browsing and discovering are being blurred. Or so Cheryl says. Rumor has it she will be posting a review of the book here soon, so stay tuned.

function switchVideo(videoTagId, newUrl) {
  var videoTag = document.getElementById(videoTagId);
  if (videoTag) {
    videoTag.pause();
    videoTag.src = newUrl;
    videoTag.load();
    // the .play() call might not be needed if your video tag
    // is set for autoplay but it can't hurt to call it
    videoTag.play();
  }
}

Add a comment if you have a different way to do the same thing.  I’m curious.

‘Tis the season….You’ve made your lists, checked them twice. You’ve crossed off all your to-dos. You’ve been nicer than naughty. In short, you done everything you were supposed to do this past year. So it’s time to reward yourself. Celebrate your restraint instead! Tell the whole world all the things you didn’t do that you’re proud of.

Introducing Tierra’s iDidn’t app, a first of a kind mobile lifestyle application dedicated to recording and broadcasting your virtuosity to the world. Immortalize and customize all the bad habits you’ve avoided and then tell your friends on Facebook and Twitter, all from your iPhone. Your friends will never be more impressed with you.

Download iDidn’t in the App Store now for FREE and start sharing your incredible personal victories from the comfort of your own phone.

You may all remember that roughly 1 year ago, I wrote this little blurb about black friday deals here. I thought this year I would elaborate further and explain why the topic interests me so much.

Origin

For those of you who don’t know, Black Friday (sometimes referred to as “Green” Friday is a day when most stores sell enough merchandise in one day to turn a profit for the year, essentially going in the “black.” From age 16-21, I worked at a very well known and established toy retailer. Having said that, I feel I have a lot of insight on the subject and can prove a worthy ally when it comes to navigating this day.

Tips From A Pro

Here are some tips from a pro (yours truly) that will help you have a safe day.

1. Stake Out: Stores have limited quantities of “door-busters” so get there early – I’m thinking 2-3 days early.
2. Be Prepared: Bring a sleeping bag, water, food, warm clothes and an attitude. People cut in line when your guard is down. It’s your job to resolve that. Using the advice of Sarah Palin – “Go Rogue.”
3. Stop if you hear screams: When the doors open at 5am, if you hear someone screaming, chances are you’re all trampling someone. Stop! Allow store personnel to access the person(s) and then safely resume your frantic run for that latest Pokemon game little Johnny “has” to have.

Now, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. If you’re really prepared, chances are you found that you can actually buy the same item from the store online, get free shipping and have it with a lot less hassle. You see, retailers realize that the in-store experience is slowly dying. That’s why they created sweet-spot deals for e-shoppers, knowing very well that people will be just as cut-throat online to get deals as in the stores. What retailers they won’t tell you, is that Internet sales make up almost 50% of gross Black Friday sales, so in actuality, they are hoping you’ll shop from home. Now granted, they may not get you with an associated sale item, but they still move product and that’s all that matters. Plus, if you can’t find it at your favorite store, chances are Amazon, eBay, or other web outlets will have quantities in stock.

What I’m saying here is this – if you do a little research online and find the right coupon codes, you can get the same great deals without the hassle. Black Friday is an absolute zoo, from 5am – 12am. There is really no reason to be a part of it, unless you like that kind of thing. Plus, do you REALLY want to be on the evening news plowing into your local Wal*Mart?

We also formally announced Tierra’s WordPress CMS Toolkit website at WordCamp.  As part of our commitment to releasing all the project code to the open-source community, we launched the Toolkit site to centralize all plugins, templates, and other support info about this project.  The Tookit takes WordPress way beyond blogging and lets you use it as a full-blown content management system (CMS).  Using our plugins and templates your organization can easily design and build scalable and flexible media-rich websites with the ease of use of WordPress.

In addition to what’s there now, more plugins and code will be posted soon.   Dozens of WNET.ORG and other organizations have already taken advantage of the plugins for their sites.  We hope you find it useful and look forward to hearing your feedback about it.

Pre-Setup:

1.) Generate a certificate request (CSR) and private key – CD into /etc/httpd/conf/ and run the following command to generate a CSR (Certificate Request File) and private key. The private key file will be named {domainname}.key and the CSR will be {domainname}.csr.

openssl req -new -nodes -keyout {domainname}.key -out {domainname}.csr

You will now be asked to enter details to be entered into your CSR.  What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN.  For some fields there will be a default value, If you enter ‘.’, the field will be left blank.

—–

Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]: US
State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]: New York
Locality Name (eg, city) []: New York
Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]: {companyname}
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:
Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []: www.{domainname}.com^[1]
Email Address []: {emailaddress}

Please enter the following ‘extra’ attributes to be sent with your certificate request:^[2]

A challenge password []:
An optional company name []:

[1] NOTE: The certificate will NOT match non-www records. You’ll need to make sure to redirect all non-www requests over to the www, or buy a wildcard certificate whill will work for any *.(domainname) instance.
[2] NOTE: Please find out if the CI (Certificate Issuing Company) would like the certificate request password protected. Most DO NOT. If they do NOT want it password protected, hit ENTER and leave the fields BLANK.

—–

Your CSR will now have been created. Open the {domainname}.csr in a text editor and copy and paste the contents into the online enrollment form when requested.

2.) Forward off the .csr file you have generated to the CI (certificate issuing company). They will email you the new certificate. They will also email you a ca certificate. This tells the client’s browser that the CI is vaild. You should rename that ca file to ca-{domainname}.crt and also the private key needs to be moved into the ssl.key folder which is located at:

/etc/httpd/conf/ssl.key/

You will want to copy the private key that was generated with the certificate request in step #1 to:

/etc/httpd/conf/ssl.crt/

You will want to copy the ca file that was sent from the CI to:

/etc/httpd/conf/ssl.crt/

See the config below for how this should look.

Server Configuration:

1.) Setup an IP Based Host – This means that the server responds to a unique IP address not configured for any site except for the one the certificate will be used: (Port 443)

<VirtualHost 12.34.56.78:443>

2.) Add the following lines to the apache conf for that site directly under the specified ServerName:

<VirtualHost 12.34.56.78:443>
ServerName www.{domainname}.com

SSLEngine on
SSLProtocol all
SSLCipherSuite ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv2:+EXP:+eNULL
SetEnvIf User-Agent “.*MSIE.*” ssl-unclean-shutdown downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0

SSLCertificateFile /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.crt/{domainname}.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.key/{domainname}.key
SSLCACertificateFile /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.crt/ca-{domainname}.crt

<Files ~ “\.(cgi|shtml)$”>
SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</Files>
<Directory “/home/httpd/cgi-bin”>
SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</Directory>

CustomLog /var/log/httpd/ssl_request_log \
“%t %h %{SSL_PROTOCOL}x %{SSL_CIPHER}x \”%r\” %b”

<Directory /var/www/html/{domainname}>
SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
Options FollowSymLinks Indexes ExecCGI
AllowOverride None
</Directory>

RewriteEngine On
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/{domainname}
</VirtualHost>

Restarting Apache

You must completely stop and start apache for the certificate settings to be absorbed in apache:

sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl stop
sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl start

If you restart the server, for some reason, apache won’t sever “all” connections, so it is advised you stop and start.

Other Notes

Keep in mind that your locations for installing the certs, paths to apachectl can be completely different then what we have listed here. Find your locations and amend this document to best fit your needs.

Over the many deployments of Wordpress and Wordpress MU, we have found that our clients are constantly requesting the ability to sort content at the category level without editing the core of their templates.

Today, we present our latest plugin titled, “Smart Category Ordering.” The plugin that we are releasing is a modified version of a plugin we developed for WNET.org and their various Wordpress platforms.

This plugin extends the built in content sorting that you can control via your templates by allowing you to control it via the Wordpress admin. The plugin works strictly at the category level, and does NOT work with the home page, as that is not a category.

The “Smart Title” option strips the leading “a”, “an” or “the” from the post title when setting the ordering. Additionally, per sorting definition, you’ll define the number of posts per page (default is 10) and whether your category sorting is confined to a single category or the category + all children.

*Note* You should set a (catch-all) sorting option which acts as the default sorting method for the rest of your site. By default, Wordpress sorts by post date in descending order.

How To Install

First, you’ll need the plugin. You can download it here. After you have completed the download, follow these short steps:

1. Upload ’smart-category-ordering’ to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Set your sorting options

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the “Smart Title” option and how is it used?

When sorting by “Smart Title”, that option is there to the leading ‘a’, ‘an’ or ‘the’ from a post title when sorting. This is the only difference between “Smart Title” and “Title.”