If we suck entries in and go by publish date, some that were back-dated would be buried, even though they're new; and some that were old (especially from new feeds) would show up at the front every time. So some sort of hybrid solution seems needed, I think.
I'm in the middle of a couple of other projects, but I hope to have some time to devote to massaging ILENN - at least before BrickFest. :)
]]>And yet another big project is hurtling my way, thunderous engines pounding at my heels as soon as a server gets set up. This may be one of the coolest projects yet, I'm really looking forward to it, but it's gonna be a ton of work.
Bottom line for ILENN: it's been neglected, for which I feel poorly. But the personalization module is about half-written, and hopefully I'll be able to squeeze some PHP coding into the cracks here pretty soon. I'll also try to improve the performance of the site, which is currently pretty doggish.
Treading water, over and out, for now.
]]>Now that I'm back from a quickie European trip, I hope to have more time to work on ILENN and get personalization done. After the jet lag passes, that is.
]]>I've received several comments and suggestions about how to make ILENN better and more compatible (thanks!) from many sources, and despite the dearth of updates here, development has been ongoing. In the interest of being geeky, I thought I'd discuss some of the exploration about making things better. Techie geeky warning.
]]> One of the core issues is how to properly display multilingual feeds using the proper character sets. As an example, ILENN currently pulls English, Japanese, and Hungarian feeds, each with their own charset. However, it's danged difficult to display them with appropriate glyphs (characters). Surprisingly, the holdup has been Hungarian... the Japanese issue has (I think) been solved.This all comes back to how I'm retrieving the feeds. Currently, I'm using a PHP RSS parser called Magpie, which does a very good job at reading in lotsa different types of feeds. But it's also a bit limited in some ways. So I started looking for a different parser, and stumbled onto one called SimplePie, which is also PHP based. It just appeared this month. SimplePie pulls in a bunch of flavors of RSS and Atom feeds, as well as being multilingual. It's also really straightforward to use, which is great. It's still in beta, and has a few kinks yet to be worked out, but it's getting there rapidly.
So the last few days have been spent culling the 'net for character encoding, Unicode, RSS parsers, and all other sorts of things to make life better for my non-English-speaking friends. I'm pretty confident that SimplePie will become the core ILENN parser, as soon as I do some more testing. I also need to make sure I'm storing the data in the DB correctly, and it can get pulled out and displayed in the appropriate character set.
So now the biggest challenge is seeing if I can display different languages together. If not, then we'll need to make sure there are as many language optimizations as possible, to set the character encoding property. That means a Hungarian reader would click the Hungarian link, and see Hungarian feeds using the proper character set, but other characters (like Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Hebrew, etc.) won't show up properly.
But since a person reading something in one language won't necessarily be able to read feeds from other languages, it's probably not a big deal, and maybe I'm making more of this than it needs to be...
For those of you keeping track, yes, I'm waaaaay behind in getting out the next beta. I apologize. I've been playing with CSS some more, as well as a better RSS parser (Magpie is good, but it misses a couple of things). More updates on that later.
]]>Eventually, I'd like to create a feature for ILENN that lets people nominate "important news of the day" or some such, for future browsing. This would be one of 'em.
]]>But there's apparently a reason why I divide my time that way.
]]>I'm now glad that I released ILENN as an alpha, since it's shown some major tweaks that I think need to be done in the core architecture. Two things recently brought me to this conclusion: first, the sheer volume of mass media attention paid to William Swanberg's arrest (a mile from my house, thankyouverymuch), and the addition of a Brickshelf feed. Both show there needs to be better delineation between categories that I think people will want to see. So I'll be doing some revision shortly. Warning: geek alert.
]]> Originally, I wanted to have ILENN be a relatively simple way of showcasing the filtering power of LENNI (LEGO Enthusiast News Network Initiative). However, none of the filters I've set up really work that way in real life. Originally, I'd thought to continue bucketing content inside themes: Space, Train, Pirate, Bionicle, Micro, and so on. That would require some additional work on the part of those creating RSS feeds, unless the channel is also dedicated to that theme (like BZPower = Bionicle). To that end, I've default tagged each RSS channel with what I think are the appropriate LENNI tags, but almost all of them are tagged "LEGO General". To make matters worse, I also append tags to each article, although again, they're almost all generic. There are currently 43,000+ individual tags on 10,000+ articles. The database is starting to feel the hit, and I'm not even sorting by these tags yet.So back to me thinkin'...
Right now, the more useful categories I see are not themed silos, but type of content or type of content provider. Some of these are sorta halfway implemented, but to do it right I'll need to adjust some stuff.
For example, the old LENNI paradigm has:
This is necessarily incomplete, so as soon as a new theme with a new fan base crops up (say, maybe ExoForce), it's outdated. Since I truly want this to be self-sufficient, I've come to think this isn't the best way to categorize articles. Keywords like these in a channel meta-description would suffice for searches, I think.
Now, I'm thinking a much smaller series of buckets, each holding much more content, is the way to go:
Additionally, users with customized interfaces will be able to choose from either those top-level buckets, and customize their feeds to match different channels, and add keywords that match new articles. So, for example, somebody could say they wanted all Community News, limited to their selected channels, that match keyword "train".
It basically just shifts the emphasis from LENNI-style tags to those eight top-level buckets.
From an end-user perspective, what will happen is this: they'll see eight buckets they can choose, they can see which columns they want to put them in (3 column layout or 2 column layout), and they can arrange the content they're most interested in so they see it the way they want. Further drilling down will allow people to select or restrict particular channels, and add keyword matching, and set default number of articles per bucket, and so on.
This change should allow better content management by end users to find content they're actually interested in. It also removes the burden of other webmasters from having to tag their RSS content. That may be something that can be added later, if and when there are hundreds or thousands of channels available, but for now it really appears the LEGO community is small enough to not be overwhelmed with content. I still think LENNI has a place, but perhaps that's a bit further off than I'd initially anticipated.
Since my next part of the project is customization/personalization, I'll wrap this in unless I hear strident arguments against it.
]]>The next week or two should see some changes on ILENN. I appreciate the comments and suggestions people have sent so far, so keep 'em coming!
]]>So the decision went against TLG, which wasn't completely unexpected. Megabloks, a Canadian company producing, um, semi LEGO brick-compatible products featuring less precise tolerances and materials, has been given the OK to sell their products inside Canada without infringing on any of TLG's rights. TLG had argued that the basic mechanical design of the brick was a trademark rather than a patent, a move that may seem to have been a last-ditch effort at market protections. Personally, I would've thought the LEGO lawyers should've argued about the interoperatibility aspect as being confusing, and leave the shape alone. If it snaps onto LEGO bricks (regardless of how tight or loose), shouldn't it be a LEGO brick? But I'm not a lawyer and I don't even play one on TV, so don't listen to me.
Anyway, what really struck me about the AFOL silence was the number of AFOL comments (about 14) compared with 170 comments on Slashdot. Most of the comments there are pro-LEGO, and quite a few decry lower quality of Megablok products. A few people stuck up for MB with, "who cares, it's cheaper!" and others said the right action was taken by the Canadian Supreme Court, even if the person posting prefered LEGO products. And a predictable percentage bemoaned what they see as the lack of innovation and quality of sets produced by TLG in the last decade. (Cry me a river. Sorry, don't buy that one.) But overall, the main theme at Slashdot was "LEGO rocks, MB sucks."
I agree with a lot of the sentiments in the Slashdot response, especially with comments like this one.
I frankly expected this level of passion to be displayed by the core LEGO community. But it hasn't been. It's taken IT geeks to bring out the inner LEGO enthusiast and declare how much better TLG bricks are to the competition. I expect this kind of anti-MB sentiment from the dyed-in-the-wool LEGO crowd, but for whatever reason this community has chosen to remain silent.
Why don't I go out and raise the torches and pitchforks, might you ask.
Well, I kind of am, here. But among the AFOL community I'm not exactly a firebrand. There are quite a few people who I'm confident are more forthcoming with their opinions, but they've managed to avoid this topic.
Has the malaise of Lugnet affected everyone so that news of this magnitude is ignored or dismissed as irrelevant? Or am I simply too deeply involved in the daily news of all things TLG? I don't think it's just me.
So I'm puzzled. Stunned at the deafening roar of silence. Is this issue not important enough to even comment on? Where's the passion about being a LEGO enthusiast??
Maybe I'm just expecting too much. I'd like to think not. But I have to ask...
Are all of you going to let a bunch of nerds outshine you in talking up LEGO?
One of the new 2006 themes has just been added to LEGO.com: Exoforce. It's kind of a "Mecha meets Bionicle meets Gundam" theme, complete with what looks like lights through fiber optics. My kids saw images of this a little while ago and they liked it a lot, so I'll probably end up getting at least a few. Thanks to fellow LEGO Ambassador Eric Brok for the link.
My favorites are the minifigs with their Digimon hair.
]]>Because it doesn't have all its features yet. ILENN is still very much a work in progress, despite the obvious improvements.
What's new?
What's left to do?
Lots, really. The next big step is personalization, where you can customize your interface. Select which channels, types of content, and so on. After that, localization of language so that non-English-speaking countries can also use ILENN. This is meant to be truly international.
I'm looking forward to feedback on the new functionality, and especially on the scrolling column layout. This is far from complete, as I said, and can change quite a bit before it's done. Post comments in in my blog or email Kelly@ILENN.com.
That breakdown is pretty indicative of the visits I got from each site. Here are the rough stats for visits from each referer:
BZPower: 2,000
Lugnet: 630
LEGOFan: 140
Links from Classic Castle, VignetteBricks, Golden Shpleem, Bricks on the Brain, Brickish Association, and JLUG also showed up (thanks everybody) in smaller amounts.
Of course, these numbers don't capture the number of people who came here directly, which is about the same as everything else combined. These numbers are from Nov. 1 through 11, 2005.
It's probably appropos to note that I'm a co-owner of BZPower and can post whatever the heck I want on the front page. Hence, my conclusion that the numbers make me look good.
It's my hope that ILENN will evolve into a vital community resource along with the other mainstays of the LEGO community. With progress being made almost hourly, I'm even impressing myself (admittedly not a difficult chore), and I'm working toward another alpha release later this weekend. I think people will be enthused about the new functionality and progress being made.
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