Me and the guys from Bureau BlauwGeel have been working together on their new website: http://www.bureaublauwgeel.nl
The CMS-based website uses video files to create a dynamic, living and breathing background.
Each menu item has a background image that slowly zooms in to keep that dynamic feel.
Although the background and interface always adjust to the size of [...]
One of my hobby projects is building a tourist map of Tokyo. I started out with displaying a RSS feed from Google Maps on my own hand-drawn map of Tokyo. Even though the Google Maps API now allows custom coloring of your map, I still think google’s maps are overpopulated with information and are visually not very inspiring.
Having the system in place for placing geo data on my own map, I realized it should be just as easy to display twitter messages, as long as they include geo data:
Retrieving twitter messages with geo data from http://search.twitter.com/ starts with including a geo location in your search parameters (in this case ‘tokyo’). Still, many twitter messages include geo data that only includes a town and no latitude/longitude information.
For this map, I retrieve 60 messages that were twittered in Tokyo, and then filter out all the messages that actually have a latitude/longitude. When using a map of an entire country you’d get a lot more twitter results so that’s going to be the next step in this project!
Check out the beta version here:
The Twitterfountain project has been online for more than 2 years, and has seen many changes. Recently we upgraded to version 2.0, a huge upgrade that has been getting lots of attention. When reading user feedback and watching our Google Analytics, it became clear that the interface could use some clarification, and doesn’t need some of the more complex options.
This inspired me to sketch a new user interface. The new design hasn’t been implemented yet but here’s a preview:
When visiting the homepage, we might present the user with a simple dialog that allows them to customize the homepage immediately, using just a few mouse clicks.
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Selecting sources also becomes easier and more versatile.
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Some advanced options are still available by clicking the ‘more’ tab.
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Sharing becomes a whole lot easier, since you can now just email or tweet a URL to a twitterfountain. Embedding a widget still remains an option.
The 1st of january was a special day for Twitterfountain users since the new version of Twitterfountain went live.
The update incorporates:
A list of twitter messages on a slideshow background.
Single twitter message on a photostack background.
