Tim Owens

A few weeks ago when I started playing around with Wowza for streaming I started thinking about the value iTunes U offers for the University. We have an iTunes U server on campus that never really got much action, in part because it was nothing more than a Linux box running Apache. Users had to FTP to the device to send their media to it and then use links to hotlink to the content. No embeds, no fancy interface, just simple storage and serving.

UMW has an iTunes U account but getting that content into their interface is maddeningly difficult. It’s not as simple as uploading content, you have to provide specific media feeds to the system for it to feed in. Of course naturally 3rd parties have seen this as an opportunity to sell more software overtop of the “free” iTunes U interface. But what value does iTunes U give us in return? iTunes of course is an integrated platform for folks who use it for their media. As a podcast directory it’s a great central location. Ideally they want to be the central media hub for EVERYTHING but if you don’t have an iDevice or run their software you don’t get to play. That makes no sense for a higher ed institution and it’s not a space I’d like to see UMW investing time and money into just to say we have “a presence” there.

Ironically when researching iTunes U I came across this post by Jim Groom which hits the nail on its head. From 2007 he could already see that we had the possibilities with WordPress to do something better. I think he was right, and I think it’s time we built that. UMW Blogs has reached massive scale for a campus our size and it’s a shining example for the functionality of WordPress Multisite (now a part of WordPress Core). I envision this alternative iTunes U interface, which I’ll call Media U for now, running on this same system.

We already plan on using a replacement media server to run Wowza for live streaming, but it can also do video on demand. This takes care of our storage, encoding, and serving. Institutions who don’t want to host in house could choose the EC2 route or alternatively choose platforms like Blip, YouTube, or Vimeo. Media U would be a separate network extension of UMW Blogs, allowing for the same users to access the system and create their own “Audio/Video Series”. The theme of these series pages would be standard allowing the user to choose their own album artwork and begin uploading each file, as individual posts. WordPress will handle the RSS feeds automatically and it’s possible that we could even feed all this into iTunes so we have our “presence” there, whatever that means, but it’s not the focus. Automated syndication of our content distributed from our servers to the web.

I began working on this with a standard install of WordPress and activated it as a Multisite installation. Right now I’m playing with the theme, which I’m building on the Skeleton Framework so it will resolve on mobile device sizes just the same as on the desktop (which I think is important since mobile devices are quickly becoming a key way to consume content from the web). You can start to see an example of all this taking shape with a generic page at http://timowens.me/dtlttoday. Noticeable right now is the lack of media files. Right now it really is more about working out a good looking theme that fits as many use-cases as possible.

This is already turning into a fun side-project at DTLT and it just one example of where being in this position gives me the freedom to choose a passion and run with it. Taking ownership of our media content is a natural extension of the publishing platform we built years ago and WordPress as the management system for it is, to use a Groom term, “a layup”. Freeing ourselves from the restrictions of a locked in media system used by few and opening up a wealth of media content to the world via the Web is an exciting prospect and I’ll be updating right here as the project progresses.

Today after giving a standard talk to students about some great resources freely available on the web for their projects, Jim and I stuck around and chatted with George Meadows who is teaching the freshman seminar course. We got to talking about interesting technology that’s out there right now and George mentioned wishing he could justify the purchase of a Thing-O-Matic to fool around with in the classroom. Have you seen these things?! That’s a 3D printer that takes a plastic material, heats it, and then prints layer after layer from a computer-generated model to build a living version of that computer artifact. And the whole setup only costs $1,299! Continue reading →

Shortening URLs has become a really popular service in conjunction with Twitter and text messaging growing in popularity. I’ve wanted to play around with URL shorteners for awhile now. To be honest I don’t trust that bit.ly or t.co or is.gd will be around forever and while I can’t guarantee that anything I DIY will be either, at least I maintain some control over it (isn’t the web an ephemeral space anyway?).

The first step, getting the domain, was probably the easiest. I don’t want this to sound like an ad, but I ended up using 101Domain and especially with a foreign domain it couldn’t have been easier. Very straightforward, no attempts to add-on tons of needless extras like Godaddy, and a simple management interface. If you hate Godaddy and especially if you’re interested in purchasing a less-common international domain (which is popular for URL shorteners like this) give them a shot. Or don’t. Whatever, but get a domain. One thing to keep in mind is that while you might have that perfect domain picked out that plays on certain letters to form a nice short word, some top level domains have specific restrictions on their usage. For example, you cannot use a .de domain unless you have a residential address in Germany. And some international domains take longer to register and may require more paperwork. Luckily that wasn’t the case with .gs and within 24 hours we were registered and ready to go.

I added the domain to my current hosting with Dreamhost not because I like them at all (in fact due to recent annoyances I’ll probably be shopping for a new host when my annual service with them comes up) but I didn’t want to put a heavier load on UMW Blogs and I didn’t yet know what effect a url-shortener would have on server load.

To handle the URL shortening I’m using a package called Lessn More which is actually a fork of a project started by Shaun Inman called Lessn. It’s straight-forward barebones PHP with a MySQL database to store the shortened URLs. The nice thing about the Lessn More fork is that it also offers the ability to create custom slugs (like a vanity URL ie. umwbl.gs/tim) and uses some character detection to not make difficult URLs by avoiding things like lowercase ls and 1s.

Installation was a breeze but how to get started using it? The admin interface will give you a bookmarklet to start generating your own but for this project I wanted this to be the URL shortener that all of UMW Blogs used for URLs. WordPress has it’s own url-shortener (wp.me) and integrates a “Get Shortlink” button on all posts now with 3.2. I came across an excellent plugin by Matt Wiebe which is perfect because it simply ties in to your Lessn install via a few options setup in the PHP file and quietly switches all shortlinks in WordPress to use your URL shortener. No extra settings screen or tons of options. I put in the information and dropped it in the must-use plugins area and all 5,300 blogs were now powering it.

I don’t yet know how the URLs get generated (when someone logged in asks for one via the admin bar? Automatically by crawling all sites and pages?) but as of this writing with less than 48 hours of usage, the install has shortened over 20,000 links and counting! It’s a great test to the scalability of the software and frankly it’s just awesome to personalize such a large space. If you have a site on UMW Blogs anytime you’re logged in you can grab a shorturl for any page on any of the sites hosted there from the admin bar up top.