Category: Technology

How To – Lightbox

Well well it may sound easy to implement the Lightbox photo album, but of course I think you all don’t mind some bits of the implementation details:

  1. First, download the Lightbox Javascript, unzip it, upload to your server …
  2. In the Lightbox /js/ directory, check the file lightbox.js, search the Configuration section. Ensure the paths to the two images are correct.
  3. In the Lightbox /css/ directory, check the file lightbox.css, ensure the paths to the image files are correct.
  4. Now back to the blog tool, find out the tiny-mce-xxx.js (xxx is your blog tool), probably in the js directory, and make sure the “a” element (i.e. the anchor tag) includes “rel” (i.e. the relationship attribute) in the line of extended_valid_elements. That change make the tinymce accepts “rel” in anchor tag (by default, tinymce will remove this attribute).
  5. Then, amend the template of your blog (in my case, the header.template) to include the few script tags and link tag (as specified in the Lightbox help page). That change includes extra js files to your blog pages – i.e. it will essentially slow down all the pages … sorry.
  6. Last step, create your blog post as usual, but don’t forget to include the “rel” attribute in the anchor tag, as in the Lightbox help page.

That’s it !!

Web Idea: What The Duck

It’s not my own web idea, but the whattheduck.net illustrate one web idea that I found very interesting …

  • First the site, pretty much like a “new media”, is run by Aaron Johnson. This site hosts the Comic Strip “What the Duck” (a photographer), and you won’t find it in other traditional newspapers, magazines. In other words, the website is the only media that you can see the strips.
  • However, unlike other comic strip web sites, you can copy, download the strips to your site, blog, forum, newsletter etc. Royalty free, quite a breakthru model.
  • And somehow, each of the strips has no caption / title. Instead, viewers (i.e. site visitors) can send in their suggested caption of the strip as comments (This “tradition” began from strip #49). And Aaron will pick the best one (from his point of view) and apply to the strip. I think it’s a new and novel way to let the site vistors to participate in a comic strip.
  • Then, how Aaron make money ? You can buy all kinds of goods from this site, all with the “What the Duck” logo or theme – T-Shirts, baseball hats, clock, badge etc. etc.

The only complaint I have about this site is … mac.com is really slow.

Anyway, not bad, not bad … I hope you enjoy the strips and that good idea as much as I do.

Web Idea: WeTube !!

OK, we are the person of the year 2006, according to Time. According to the magazine, we are the person of the year because instead of watching TV after work, we write, we shoot, we video etc. and contribute those contents to the web. And many of those contents, actually changed the world. Hmmm … I agree with that, but to me it happens every year since the born of browser back in 1994 / 1995.

Back to the idea, what will be the possible next step of all these photo, video, music sharing services ? In the past few years, there is one category of digital product waiting to take off – Digital Photo Frame. It’s now cost as low as US$ 100 and for some companies like Ceiva and eStarling, you can even update the photos automatically.

The concept of Ceiva and eStarling is quite simple but novel – the user upload the photos to a central storage or send the photos to an email address; and the digital photo frame will show the newly uploaded pictures automatically. Imagine you buy this frame to your parents and grandparents. They can see you new pictures without switching on their computers (even they know how to do it).

My idea is about combining these Web 2.0 stuff with the Ceiva / eStarling concept … WeTube !!

Imagine you can shoot a short video and upload to WeTube (the next generation of YouTube 8-). Your “multi-media player frame”, will periodically download the video and play it in the frame. Imagine … your family doctor will tell you to do a body check up in his / her video. Your children will send you the clip of their recent trips in Europe. Your friends will tell you their recent updates etc. etc. You tube, we tube, everybody tube …

All these can be done because of Google / YouTube already have hundreds of thousands of servers to provide the feed and in fact, the traffic shall be even less for such targeted video transmission if you use the Venice project approach.

In the ultimate WeTube X.0 version, even the TV and Cable companies will broadcast their shows using this approach … finally, a customer-centric TV.