CT: Next

We're testing the use of Zoho Office for quick data projects. Check CapTimes on Wednesday to see the first implementation. We've removed the test report so we can start entering data. For those who are looking for an easy online database tool, I highly recommend Zoho Creator. Much easier, more intuitive and cheaper than Caspio. Here's a good opportunity for folks to chime in with their own experiences. What's the best online db tool? Why am I wrong about Caspio? The folks at Lawrence.com have done wonders with Django, but I'm not in a good spot to learn a new framework - maybe for our next app. Especially if it is something bigger than what we're knocking out this week... READ MORE

We're hoping to do a lot more with all the exciting events coming up - debates, playoffs, elections, playoffs, SNL skits, playoffs.  Today, I'm testing a tool that will help us do live-blogging.  In essence, a live-blog is just an article that keeps getting updated, but this tool will let us do more and allow visitors to get in on the action. ... READ MORE

The CapTimes twitter feed for news is finally working. We're following everyone we could find in Madison, which has been a real education.  It's also fed us two leads and brought in some tech perspective on a couple issues. Most recently, I read that someone was going to Buraka for the first time.  Since we just launched 77 Square, I thought I'd tweet the individual a link to the Buraka page in our dining guide and asked that the tweeter share their thoughts. Enter Ubiquity.  Mozilla has released this early alpha into the wild and it is indeed wild.  The interface is raw, but useful.  In this case, I used it to grab the URL from the... READ MORE

Soft-launch We've soft-launched 77 Square.  It's like launching, but the job isn't done.  There's marketing to do. I both adore and despise the soft-launch.  It's an opportunity to put the new product out in the wild and get feedback without an unknown error blowing up on a large scale. Visitors (hopefully) let us know about problems not found during development and we run around (hopefully) fixing them.  The end result is a more-polished product. But, it can feel like a job that's never done.  Like laundry.  At what point is the laundry 'done'?  Never, unless one makes arbitrary definitions like 'laundry from this week'. Refactor Which brings me to my next most unfavorite word, 'refactor'. When we finally... READ MORE

But, only if you're not a web bot sending spam. Contact us pages on web sites are vital to a two-way conversation. But, placing email addresses on the site lead to super spamination. So we make contact forms that hide the email address. Then those get taken over by spammers, as well. Then our servers get blacklisted and we can no longer send email to anyone. Especially not AOL. Oh, well. It's a continuous battle and distracts from doing fun things like building Twitter feeds (coming soon). So, I looked for an web service and came up with Contactify. Below is my Contactify form - let me know if you've tried any similar services and whether or not you found any success. Contactify me... READ MORE

It's what happens when one puts said cart in front of the horse, and grows impatient with the results.  Like holding the expectation that a new website will show up in search engines. All projects are fraught with catch 22 situations.  Right now, I'm faced with the Google paradox.  Visitors can't find a site through Google until Google condescends to crawl and index said site.  The site won't be crawled and indexed until it has live links coming in.  That generally doesn't happen while a site is under development. Sure, I can (and have done) submit the site URL and a sitemap to Google.  But, that doesn't do a whole lot for an invisible website.  All the new content, new navigation and new features lay beyond the reach of the most important variable in the Google machine - relevancy.  Hidden content could not be more... READ MORE

Prolonged periods of non-posting are a non-starter.  I tell this to every prospective blogger. Time to heed my own advice and end this three week dry spell. We're going full tilt on the 77square website.  Not that you can tell.  But, you will be able to.  Shortly.  Or my boss is going to steal my Swingline and move my desk to the basement.  If I'm lucky. I'm in the midst of renaming the blog to 'CT: Next' in deference to the Newspapers Next group from whom I take much inspiration and do my best to steal many ideas.  Maybe they can help me figure out why I don't have the proper permissions to overwrite the html templates so I can move out of the midst of renaming and into the completed stage... My ftp woes are probably due to recent site outages... READ MORE

...lonely? desperate? achey-breaky? Whatever. I apologize for the long break. There's nothing worse than a blog that promises to keep the audience up to date on something and then the blogger kind of spaces out. Really, I just didn't have anything momentous to talk about. We've been hard at work on the 77square.com site and we should have some sneak peak items shortly, but a lot of the work has been set up type stuff. Nothing pretty to show. Nothing about which we can ask for feedback. Just painstaking minutiae that one hopes to get right the first time. One minor tweak that was actually made some time ago will make an appearance soon on the CT site. We've been using Google Docs to manage some of our data. As a result, we're able to deliver nicely formated tables of data within articles. The sports team is working on some savory summer stats highlighting... READ MORE

We've made more moves on the commenting front. Editor Paul Fanlund prefaced the most recent change with a column. We have published a new FAQ about how to comment - and the most likely causes of comment deletion by moderators. Future developments will include a language filter and an email to the author of deleted comments noting why their comment was deleted, or never posted in the first place (like running afoul of the language filter). Of course, this will only work if the author provides a real email address. We are also looking at removing the ability to comment on stories through the madison.com forum, which does not have a word limit nor a strong language filter -... READ MORE

No, it's not a race.  It's almost the opposite of a race in that's it's a limitation.  We've decided to cap comment postings to 300 words. Now, that's not exactly haiku.  300 words is a lot - I'm at 41 right now.  I could write all of this 5 times and still be well under the limit. The idea is that short and sweet will help engender further conversations, long-winded rants will kill them.  We've also noticed that folks like to paste entire articles into the comment space.  Way wrong.  Publishing outlets need traffic to pay for those things - so link to an article, don't copy-and-paste. If you REALLY need more than 300 words, perhaps you should... READ MORE

Adding maps to site elements is way-fun and can really boost the information content of a feature.  We've just added a rudimentary map to the restaurant database on 77square .com.  What kinds of features would make maps really pop for you? Driving directions?  A larger version?  Printable version?  Street view? Next up, advanced search features.  Right now, the 'Features' part of a restaurant listing is click-able, but doesn't do anything (lazy links!).  We'll be making these link to more search results and combine all the search-able parameters into one super search,... READ MORE

Ok, everything about 77square.com is beta. But, this is the first item under development for the 7/7 launch date. We'd love to get your feedback on the restaurant search. Let us know what's missing, what needs improving, and what you enjoy about this feature and help us build the best guide for the gourmet, gourmand, gastronome and glutton, alike. Still under development for the restaurant search are the map, comments, reviews and photo galleries... READ MORE

Previously, on the Development Blog: We discussed the Yahoo! search API and how it doesn't seem to work for me. I haven't made any significant progress since then. I was about to try anew to figure out how to apply filters to the Yahoo! search so we can offer section-level searches when I got an e-mail from Nick Heynen of the Wisconsin State Journal. Nick manages the online databases for WSJ and plays around with Internet widgets - in this case Google's custom search. At his suggestion, I gave it a try. It took 7 minutes to research and set up. ... READ MORE

While it's probably bad form to use the words 'mash up' and traffic, that's essentially what we've got going here. We've taken traffic images from the DOT and worked them into a Google map. How fun is that? We hope to be able to start using this in conjunction with breaking news and construction notices... READ MORE

I rushed through a first attempt to get the Yahoo search API up and running. It was fairly easy to do. I had to: Sign up for a Yahoo account Apply for an application id Download the SDK (ok, I could have read the site docs and skipped this part) Write some code I've set up a page for those of you who are interested in seeing application development in progress (warning: it ain't pretty). Right now the search is rudimentary. I have not found a means by which to limit the search to CapTimes content, so... READ MORE

We've added the timeliness indicator on the home page as well as links to individual blogs as discussed in the last blog posting. There has been a lot of support for search, which seems like a no-brainer. We need to have a reliable search function on our site. We have new technology on the way that should provide this function, but it would be great to have an interim solution. Josh and Jonathan have suggested Google, which offers a great service with both free and an enhanced paid options. As Capital Newspapers has an agreement with Yahoo through its association with Lee Enterprises, we will likely try to implement their similar solution. I'll start banging on that this afternoon and add new postings with progress as soon as I have something that actually returns results. Chime... READ MORE