The Boathouse Gym: where we study, cultivate, and break-in emerging digital technologies and platforms.

Using Eyewonder and Gigya, we have launched a rich media banner campaign focused on a green energy calculator related to the new wind power options from NSTAR.

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Posted in General, Software, Technologies

This website is now powered by the self-hosted version of WordPress.

We have used only a few basic plugins:

• Local Analytics for Google Analytics (including local, 24-hour browser caching of Google’s tracking JavaScript)
• WP-OpenID to allow visitors to use their OpenID accounts to logon and post comments
• WP-Yadis to allow us to set this website URL as our single identifier for our multiple OpenID accounts (Yadis)
• ShotCode to create 2D bar codes for mobile phone bookmarking
• AddThis to allow users to easily bookmark individual entries on this site (and allows us to see reports on this activity)

We did come across a few problems with the installation – most of them revolving our our use of Microsoft IIS as a server. The biggest problem was our inability to make “pretty” permalinks to each post. Additional information about this problem (and work arounds) is found here.

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Tags: mySQL, openid, opensource, php, shotcode, wordpress, yadis
Posted in Platforms, Software

We have been exploring the use of OpenID as both a provider (so our employees could potentially use one logon for multiple websites) and to integrate with the sites we produce (e.g., allowing easy logon for visitors to our clients’ sites).

From the OpenID website:

OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience.

We wanted to explore the creation of a single logon for our development resources. A simple solution for this is phpMyID.

From the phpMyID website:

phpMyID is a single user (though, if you were so inclined, you could easily turn it into a multi-user setup) IdP, or “Identity Provider” for the OpenID framework.

You can view our sample logon page here:
http://gym.boathouseinc.com/openid/

Next up: Using Yadis to allow a single person to use multiple open authentication services (including setting your own website or blog name as your OpenID).

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Tags: openid, opensource, php, yadis
Posted in Platforms, Software

In an effort to explore alternatives to SurveyMonkey and other similar web-based survey tools we have been exploring open-source solutions. Our goal was to find a solution powerful enough to be used for the quick creation of low-end to mid-range surveys, while providing a customizable platform. During our research we came across and are now evaluating the LimeSurvey solution.

LimeSurvey Highlights

• Open-source platform: PHP and mySQL
• Advanced reporting through integration of JpGraph (open-source) and exports to SPSS.
• Integration with company directory servers (LDAP)

Our initial implementations are set to private/internal-only. As soon as we create a few public examples, we will post them here.

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Tags: jpgraph, ldap, mySQL, open-source, php
Posted in Software