I’ve just removed the password from the beta version of the australianscreen site - a massive new site my company has been working on for the Australian Film Commission. It’s fantastic content - a team of curators have been trawling through the archives of the NFSA, ABC, SBS and AIATSIS to build an online database of Australian film and TV productions. On top of that, teachers’ notes have been developed by The Le@rning Federation for selected clips. The end result is like a cross between an Australian IMDB and YouTube - a directory of Australian screen history, complete with video clips.
The site is built entirely in Django, which has allowed us to slice and dice the content in lots of interesting ways. We’ve got tags, location maps (using the ubiquitous Google maps technology) and a Flash timeline (developed by my colleague Greg Turner). We’ll be adding plenty more Web 2.0 goodness in the coming months.
This took me by surprise today, when trying to open a Word file over the network.
Actually, it’s not the scariest warning I’ve ever received. I remember trying to change screen resolution in an old beta version of BeOS, and being told that selecting the refresh rate I had chosen may cause my monitor to catch fire. Did I want to proceed?
It was a bit of a rush job - we wrote the script on Wednesday, filmed on Thursday, and uploaded to YouTube on Friday - but I think it’s come up OK. It was a great job to do. The folks at Amnesty are really cool to work with, and it’s great to be doing something this worthwhile and immediate. As I read this I’m listening to the news that State and territory attorneys-general have signed a declaration demanding the Commonwealth take action to ensure that David Hicks is immediately brought to trial.
Oh, and don’t forget to go to the Amnesty website where you can send a message about David Hicks to John Howard.
Who would have thought that an almost complete lack of features could make an application so useful?
WriteRoom is a new Mac application that does word processing
For Mac users who enjoy the simplicity of a typewriter, but live in the digital world. WriteRoom is a full screen, distraction free, writing environment. Unlike standard word processors that focus on features, WriteRoom is just about you and your text.
I’m doing a whole lot of writing for The Pure Drop at present, and the lack of features is helping me focus on the main game — stringing words together. The only downside is that the green-on-black interface shows up all the dirt, so I’ve had to clean my monitor
I just realised it’s been quite a long while since I last wrote about The Pure Drop, despite the fact that it’s been the project keeping me busy for most of the last few months.
Something mysterious and bad just happened on my PowerBook.
Basically, it looks like a lot of my application preferences have gone missing. Most applications are acting like I have never opened them before. Daily workhorse applications like BBedit and Transmit are welcoming me as a newbie. My dock looks way too clean, and iTunes and iPhoto don’t seem to know anything about my 30GB of MP3s and photos. Worst of all, Mail can’t find any of the 900 or so emails that were languishing in my InBox.
It’s almost (but not quite) as if the contents of ~/Library/Preferences were deleted.
Has anyone else experienced something like this? I’m trying to think what might have been the culprit, and the only 3 things that spring to mind are:
My PowerBook got a nasty bump a few hours earlier
I had just finished downloading approx. 9,000 spam emails from an unused email account belonging to one of my clients (don’t ask!)
I have the ‘flu, and somehow this made me stupid enough to delete lots of emails and plist files.
Oh well, most of what I lost was backed up, but there is a chance that some recent emails got lost. So, if you’ve emailed me recently and I haven’t replied yet, please try again. It may be that I lost the email you sent me.
Update: I was wrong about iTunes and iPhoto not being able to find media files. The media files were actually gone! So far as I can tell, nothing is missing from my documents folder and all my applications are OK. What could cause such a specific pattern of data loss? It almost feels like a virus. Thankfully I had used a demo copy of Super Duper a few weeks ago to do a complete backup. I’ll be upgrading to a registered version now!
I’ve just heard that Australians at Work, a site we built for Film Australia, is a finalist in the Best Learning category of the 12th Annual AIMIA Awards. We’re thrilled because it’s a site we’re particularly proud of — especially from a technical point of view.
For a site that is based around video, Australians at Work exhibits an unusually high level of web-standards compliance. We used content negotiation techniques to dynamically serve 2 levels of standards-compliant code. Where browsers send an http accept header that indicates they are fully XHTML compatible, the pages are served as XHTML 1.0 Strict, using the “application/xhtml+xml” mime type in accordance with W3C recommendations. When accessed by older browsers, the page is converted to HTML 4.01 Strict and served as “text/html”. In both cases all pages have been validated using the W3C validator tool. This ensures they are 100% syntactically correct.
This level of standards compliance (ie. serving valid XHTML with the correct mime type) is still quite rare. I would imagine that this is the only public-sector site in Australia that offers this level of web-standards compliance.
We also put a lot of effort into making the video content as accessible as possible. We used Flash for the video and designed for maximum accessibility by attaching accessible text to all essential controls and by implementing keyboard shortcuts for those controls. By using “.swf” files for video rather than the more common “.flv” format, we were able to extend compatibility to users with version 6 of the Flash player, whereas most sites using Flash video require version 7.
Anyway, we’re up against some stiff competition in the final round, and most of the competing sites are certainly more flamboyant and graphically rich. Having been an AIMIA awards judge myself, I know that immediate visual appeal and ‘wow factor’ usually counts for more than what’s under the bonnet – but here’s hoping!
It’s been a hectic week, but we have now moved Ether into new premises.
When we first started the company back in 1993 we had offices in the wonderfully bohemian and sadly demised Blackwattle Studios. During the late 1990s Ingrid and I tended to work on-site with clients, so there wasn’t a great need for anything grander than a desk or two at home. From 2000 onwards we set up an office in the largish basement of our townhouse, and that was working well – at least the commute to work was quick, and it’s made it easy to work while bringing up 2 kids, although finding separation between work and home life has always been rather difficult.
But the last few years have seen the business growing like crazy.
Late last year we realised we needed to get more staff but we had nowhere to put them, so we looked around for commercial space and were pretty uninspired by what we saw, and certainly nothing lived up to the glory days of Blackwattle Studios. Then a couple of the townhouses in our row came up for rent, and it occurred to us that renting one of those might give us just enough separation without losing the convenience of having an office within shouting distance (almost) of home.
So far we couldn’t be happier. Our house now feels spacious again now that Ether has moved out, and in the new place Ingrid and I are both loving having a room each! We’ve also now got a separate video editing suite which is a big improvement on our old situation which was completely open-plan.
Finally, the complex’s pool is just outside the back door of our office. (You can see it on the GoogleEarth snapshot above.) If only they’d finish repairing it so it had some water in it
This one is for Jayda Tham and Pete Talbot. I just found this on Flickr. It’s what you guys missed when you fell asleep in the back of the car on the way back to Reykjavik and wouldn’t wake up to come and look at the crater!
