Read more here: http://blog.sponsr.us/2011/09/01/where-are-we/

I got a chance last week to start coding up the platform and I’m basically done implementing the basics. In a nutshell, it aggregates (using SimplePie) RSS feeds into a single stream of news and then displays it. I’m using Tumblr as the provider of the user submitted content since it 1)allows for anyone to contribute out of the box and 2)has that focus on “bite sized content”, which can be short posts or photos or even videos.

I could have just kept it straightforward and just a single page, but from there, I figured I would take it a step further and integrate in some javascript. Now, the PHP-based platform is complete with jQuery effects and AJAX loading.

I’ve open sourced the code for anyone to use. I really think this kind of community news source would be great within a lot of high school and college communities, but we’ll see how it goes at my school.

Check out Andover Pulse at http://pulse.phillipian.net/ and the code is available on GitHub at https://github.com/ericouyang/pulse.

Let’s start a change in how news is made and discovered on campuses! Interested in starting a Pulse at your school? Contact me!

Here’s where Sponsr.Us comes in. It’s a two part website: part social fundraising (a la Facebook Causes, Kickstarter, StayClassy, etc.), part a fund provider for students. I’m hoping to apply for Sponsr.Us to be a non-profit organization and to work with local business and individuals to raise funds.

What distinguishes Sponsr.Us is a couple of things:

• Fundraising is for something specific: rather than raising funds for “cancer research”, “science education”, and so on. It’s focused towards something specific like purchasing a video camera for a school film-making club or purchasing new lab equipment to start a higher level chemistry class or provide transportation costs for a competition.
• Sponsr.Us is geared towards students, mainly high school and college students
• Our organization provides funding for student projects: groups will apply for the funding (6 or 12 month cycles)
• We’re non-profit: donations can be tax-deductable

I’ve already registered the domain and started development using a Python web framework called Django (somewhat similar to Ruby-on-Rails)

Interested in joining in? Send me an message! We’re looking for motivated students to be a part of the team.

A screenshot of my.ReflectionUpon.com (click on it to go there)

Originally, I had hoped for this to be a full fledged website, but I realized quickly that such websites already exist. See Goalmigo.com and Inpowr.com. Though anything that I would make with Joomla could not be as “non-buggy” and as easy to use as the professionals both because of Joomla’s architecture and my own abilities with websites. (which are very limited when it comes to web design and programming) But nonetheless, just for fun, I’ve created the site using quite a few extensions for Joomla and some minor tweaking, so that means I actually did very little nitty-gritty programming. I just mashed them all together to work as they do in my site.

If you are familiar with Joomla and you want to know the extensions I used they are as follows:

• Community Builder- the actual connection and profile part of the site
• Fireboard- the forum
• IDoBlog- the notebooks
• JCE (Joomla Content Editor)- the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Editor that is used to post up goals
• UddeIM- the private messaging system for users
• Mass Content- I used this to set up the sections and categories
• Content Submit- Allows users to only post to certain categories and sections
• JoomlaPraise’s Submission for the Joomla 1.5 Template Contest- the theme I’m using for the site

Other details:

• The goals are actually just articles posted by users and I have set up so when you register you are automatically an author
• I tinkered with the PHP files to avoid goals needing to be approved

More than likely you’ll run into problems with the site, you can report them, and I’ll try to fix them, but I have to stress that this site is not for real use. Sure, you can do what you want with posting your reflections, but you won’t really get any use out of the site (unless some event occurs and a lot of people actually start using it).

If you are interested in really taking part in such a goal-tracking site, check out those two sites I mentioned. I haven’t really looked at them myself, but I’m sure they’ll be much more useful than my.ReflectionUpon.com.

On the other hand, if anyone is interested in playing around with my Joomla site, you can contact me and I’ll see what I can do for you (and it’ll depend on how well I know you for you to do so)

So if you want to try my site out, go ahead and sign up for an account on my.ReflectionUpon.com!

Although stupid, it is pretty funny
(From Mac4ever.com) <= Oh, really.

We’ll start with what the iPhone didn’t do well. First of all, which is one of the most evil: the tight integration between iTunes, you have to activate it through that, download stuff through that and do everything else through that! I hate Apple’s enclosed circle of its products. Also the no stereo Bluetooth and 3G, is kind of disappointing even though it is a pretty expensive phone.

The recessed headphone jack is pretty annoying too, especially if you bought a set of expensive earbuds (or headphones), and you can’t use it along with your $399 iPhone.

There are also numerous features missing like no flash or editing on photos, no video, no self portrait mirror, no external memory card slot, and low volume.

The good things on it we like. The sleek design and interface we loved. The picture quality and additional apps (Youtube, Google Maps) were nice. Even the battery life was good when used normally. So we’ll take those into consideration.

Next, the business people Blackberrys. These are actually not that bad. Although they are not great “fun” devices, they are the preferred device for many companies as they can surf the internet, use third party apps, and are good for emails. But, we’ll want to make “our” phone a little more friendly for the average customer.

The Blackberry 8800 (Courtesy of Phonesreview.co.uk)

Now, the Windows Mobile Based Phones. These mainly come from HTC. The Touch (Not to be confused with the iPod Touch) is a Windows Mobile 6 based phone. It also features finger control (TouchFLO, and it can’t be used in landscape), but you can also use a stylus (which you can’t on an iPhone). TouchFLO features a 3D cube where you can easily access all your basic stuff. The phone also has a modified Home screen that has a lot of basic information (Time, Weather, and a Schedule) and you can also access some programs through this. The Touch uses the normal Windows Mobile keyboard which is small and cramped, only fit for a stylus, making it slow and a pain. The SIM card and MicroSD slot are also hard to get to.

The HTC Touch (From Intomobile.com)

The camera on this phone is 2.0 megapixels, but the picture quality was only OK, but it does have a self portrait mirror and video.

The GPhone (Google Phone) will supposedly use a Linux based operating system and have Java based applications which is said to be very responsive. The thing is that Google hasn’t been denying the GPhone exists, so it could actually be coming. Also back in 2005, Google bought a Android, a phone software producer, further confirming this theory.

A possible design of the gPhone
(From SciFi.com)

With the GPhone it probably won’t be a shiny and good looking as the iPhone. They’ll most likely be focused on usability. It might even have ads so you can have lower priced service, but I’m not sure what the public would think of that. It is said also to have a large color screen and a predictive Qwerty keyboard so you can type faster. It is likely if it is made that the maker will be HTC.

Another gPhone mockup
(From SciFi.com)

Although the iPhone has Google Maps, it isn’t really useful unless it has GPS, and the GPhone might do just that.

One more mockup of the gPhone

Microsoft doesn’t really have too many good rumors on making a phone, but they have some ideas on phones and calling in general. Bill Gates believes that calling should be moved the the computer and the internet. This in fact is a good idea but will not likely actually happen for quite some time. The VoIP thing although works well, isn’t as reliable as normal phones, and until it becomes that, not everyone will make the switch.

So what will the Funknowledge Phone be like? Well, we want to combine the good ideas and get rid of the bad. So help us design it and we can come up with a phone that will be sleek, at a reasonable price, easy to use, and innovating. So post a comment or email me at funknowledge@gmail.com.