Assignment 002: "Invite Friend"

I'm on a roll now!! Once I get started I just can't seem to stop until I've finished.
So today I have been creating the system so that you can invite a friend to join the social network, as you can only be invited and you can only view the site if you are a member, which in todays world seems to be a good idea.

At first look the idea seems easy; sending an email which you can input the message, and sending, however there is a lot more to it. On closer inspection you have to enter the email address of who's sending the invite, which may mean disclosing certain personal information that you may not want to. I wanted to be able to send a pre-defined hidden subject and message which also inputs the name and email address of the person sending it.

After a bit of searching and a lot of cut, copy and paste I was able to produce exactly what I wanted. I created the actual page in which you were able to enter the email address of the person to be invited. After clicking on send it then sent an email, which was hidden and contained the name and email of the person sending it, with a link telling them where to register for their account. I also defined a prototype email address and an example subject, which makes the invite look more professional and realistic.

Assignment 002: "Click To Send"

After getting the login system working on my site I set about how to create public and private messages. First I created the database to hold all the information for the public message system, cleverly titled 'public_message'. Then by using a simple send and receive tutorial, alongside a little javascript [which, if I'm honest, didn't understand] and with the examples we used for the CD database I used a month or so ago I was able to create the public message system which would [eventually] be shown on every persons profile. The hard part which I've missed for now is trying to get who the message is from to show the persons name rather then the member ID or member email.

When it came to the private messages I created a separate table, again cleverly titled 'private_message'. I used the same coding as the public message system, but I changed it so that it only showed messages for the user who was logged in, which is found by querying the session of the web page. Again I had the same problem with who it was from.

Thats one more down, and a lot more to go.

Assignment 002: "Wrong Email or Password"

Just completed the [basic] design for my login system and got it working, just. So that's one of about thirty things completed. Its amazing that if you forget one space, and put an upper case letter instead of a lower case one the whole thing doesn't work.

Assignment 002: Inital Design

After explaining to my friends about this terms project and how I have to create a social network, they were more then happy to help me with the name choosing. Half a dozen pints later we came up with the name 'iPlanet'. Initially I wanted something to tie together both MySpace and Facebook, and to also steal some ideas from my friends work in progress 'yourwURLd'. But after a long list the only good one was MyBook, which sounded like the latest product from Apple. Which gave me a brainwave, iPlanet could be the latest of creations from Apple. Genius!

With this in mind the latest will be based on the Apple site.

I'm expecting the cheque in the post soon.

New York, New York

After a short weekend away in the Big Apple I found something that may be of some interest to me in my final year. I was walking past The New York Times building on Broadway, if I'm correct, and noticed two walls filled these strange black boxes. I thought nothing of it as I knew I wouldn't be able to get in because of the security at the entrance. I turned a corner to find an entrance open to the public, perfect opportunity.


Two walls filled with about 400 6" screens. All connected to a computer. This was very weird at first sight. Each individual screen seemed to be displaying a different piece of information. Then at certain intervals, some would start and then stop making different patterns, but exactly the same on both walls. I read that the piece was called 'Moveable Type' by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin [2007] and said the following on the project




"Moveable Type is an active portrait of the New York Times that is fueled by the contents of the daily paper and to the visitors to NYTimes.com who are browsing, searching, reading and commenting. The artists have programmed the work to extract fragments - words, phrases, quotes, numbers and places - from The Times' growing, living, real-time news database, and to recombine these fragments into a series of ever changing kinetic compositions."

Interesting. Just a little bit.

Amazing...

Remember the series of Honda Adverts from a few years ago [The ones with ], well they've just realised a new series of adverts. After scaling the wonder that is YouTube I managed to find the whole advert. I particulary like the first one with the Rubix Cube's. Maybe because it ties in with the pixel art I studied [and became obsessed with!!] a few months ago!



I also found out that the company [Wieden + Kennedy] have also created a large number of todays advertisements for large companies, including the latest Stop Motion Animation Advert for Cravendale.