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!

I’ve been working on a separate website to just be a front page to my online self. It will have some info about me, links to all my various online accounts, resources that I think should be helpful to others, and info about my web-design services.

As of this writing, the domain isn’t completely ready, but it should be ready soon. Usually, it takes 24-48 hours for the domain to be ready.

Also, Blog Action Day is coming up, but I’ve been really busy, so I’m not sure I can get in a nice lengthy one, but I’ll be sure to get one in.

UPDATE: The site is finally online. I heard it was working earlier in some other areas, but I’m pretty sure anyone can go to EricOuyang.Com now and find my under construction page.

First, to go through this process, you have to have a banking account with online banking enabled, which involves going to the bank and getting forms signed to enable it. According to my uncle, in the past, you didn’t have to go through this to get online banking, but because of security issues, this extra step was put in.

Next, I assumed that I was all set to go ahead to purchase something on TaoBao, like in the U.S., but I was wrong. In case you haven’t purchased something online before, basically you go to a secure website (with https at the front of the URL) and enter in your name, credit card number, your credit card’s expiration date, and then the security code (the 3 digit code on the back), to send money to the online store. I tried this, but I received an error message. I first had to go to the online banking account website for the card to configure things over there.

For this particular bank, which was the Bank of Communication, you had to enter in your card number and then your PIN (which we set up when we created our card) to log in and create an account. Then you had to enter in a cell phone number. At this point, I was really questioning if buying something online was worth the trouble (it was quite a bit cheaper though, 150 yuan each). I typed in my cell phone number (a temporary pay-as-you-go one that I used for the two months I was there) and then it said that it would send a confirmation number to it. So in a few seconds my phone beeped to tell me I received a text message. Following that, I had to enter this pin into the website. On the form it also made me put in some “verification phrase”, and I wasn’t sure what this was. Clicking on the help button revealed that it was a phrase that I put in that would be displayed during every transaction so I would be confident that the website was not a fraudulent one. Finally, online banking was all set for me.

Though the process wasn’t quite done yet. Next, on Taobao, I clicked on the button for the banking company that I was using, then it brought me to the bank’s website to complete the transaction, and sure enough my verification phrase was there. There, it sent my cell phone another confirmation number to type in as well as my card number and pin. After clicking “confirm”, I was brought back to the TaoBao website where it told me that my purchase was successful.

A few days later,  I received a package with my stuff, and then I had one last step to complete. On the TaoBao website, I had to confirm that I had received the package (in case the seller was a fraud) so it would send the money to the selling person.

Whew. That was quite a bit of work! Well it goes to show that Chinese online shopping is quite secure. But still, many Chinese are not completely sure of buying things online. They worry that their card number would be stolen, or they are sent fake products or defective ones, so most people just continue to buy things at actual stores. And even with this long process to securely setup and purchase something online, there are still stories of getting your money stolen online in China.

It might take a while, but I do think that with time people in China will slowly start getting accustomed to online shopping and make more of their purchases with a few clicks of a mouse.

Now, Yahoo will likely be pairing up with Microsoft to face Google in its domination of the search market. Bing will become the search engine on Yahoo, and Yahoo would deal with most of the search ad work.

I’ve used Bing quite a bit now, and I think it is definitely worthy to compete with Google. In particular, I’m fond of the daily picture on the homepage everyday and overall interface, though I’m not sure its results are as accurate to what I’m searching for as Google. Microsoft is pouring a lot of money into Bing’s, and if done properly will likely take a chunk of Google’s domination. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo will have 30% of the market.

Any thoughts on this Microsoft+Yahoo combo? Leave a comment!

More reading:

BusinessWeek

Article on AdAge

BoomTown

Also, as a side note, some photos I took in China are uploaded onto Flickr here. And a probably more interesting note that I just discovered is that Bing is blocked in China for some reason as well as sites like Flickr and Blogger.

Image from Wikipedia.Com.

JamLegend

I’m sure many of you are familiar with the game Guitar Hero, this is similar in the idea, but online style complete with social networking features like profiles, commenting, and a easy to use interface.

Xmarks

A browser plugin that enables you to sync bookmarks across computers as well as discover new websites though your bookmarks. Also handy as a bookmark backup tool.

Digsby

This program connects together your online accounts (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Gmail, Yahoo, AIM, Google Talk, etc.) in one program.

Elance

An online system to hire  (basically outsource) people and manage these connections. The website also handles the money as well which is convenient.

Tripit

It combines all your travel info (which you forward to it by email) in an organized location and provides additional information to help your trip go more smoothly. There is also an iPhone app for Tripit.

Interested to see the rest of the top 100? Go to http://www.webware.com/100/.

According to this article, what suddenly made this “explode” was that Needham decided to create a Facebook page for her initiative, and although the page is only about a month old, she has already received 470 pledges to join her cause. Combined with this as well as the word of mouth and her own website, people from across the country are joining in on the cause.

Just think about that for a second, in just over a month, one person with the help and support of a few others were able to get almost 500 people to give up a day’s pay even in these hard times. That is what the internet can help us do, tell that to someone 20 years ago and they would think you are nuts.

Coincidentally, I’ve been working with a group of friends to create a website that helps people do just that: harness the power of the world wide web to promote initiatives in their community. I’ll bring up more on that in the future, but I just would like to commend Needham on her work to make her cause known by using the internet. Also, I’m very fond of the overall design of her website: clean, to the point, and informative.

To learn more about this, go to http://www.onedaygive.com/, see the newspaper article (here), and check out the Facebook page as well (here).

If you are interested, I used the the Simple:Press Forum plugin. Check it out at http://simplepressforum.com/.

NOTE: I have just installed it (and it is beta software), so there may be a few bugs (so post it on the forum under Site Suggestions and Bugs). I also need to write up a “Service Agreement” for the forum.

• Now I have my Flickr Albums available on the site, though I really need to get some more pictures up. Look for them over the next few days. See the “Photos” tab to take a look at them.
• Also, I’ve added Google Friend Connect, so you can add your self to the ReflectionUpon Blog network!

I’ve also added some other features (though not today) to my blog.

• Email subscriptions, so you can sign up to receive the ReflectionUpon Blog updates by email (and if you want, you can also do it through RSS, though that has been up since the site started. 
• AnswerTips, so if you double click on any word on the blog, you’ll get information about it, such as a definition of it.

Not quite a feature, but I’ve also added a Links page for sites that I feel deserve recognition. If you have a website (or other online content such as a Youtube Channel) you could submit it by using this form.

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!

So what is new? Well from your point of view, really nothing. The real update is the back-end. It has been completely redesigned to be easier to navigate and use.

Talking about new, I’ve also installed an automatic mailing system for this blog, so every time I write a new post, it’ll automatically send it to my subscribed readers without me doing it manually. Tell me how it works out!

Interested in finding out more? Check out this blog post on WordPress.org. To learn more about WordPress in general, check the about page on WordPress.org.

Below is a video from that post from WordPress.org showing what is new, so you can check that out too.