[maemo-community] Maemo Weekly News: a proposal

[From: Andrew Flegg]

On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 16:19, Reggie Suplido
<reggie at internettablettalk.com> wrote:
> I think this is a great project. I have some suggestions though.

Thanks Reggie.

> 1. If this is a weekly summary of 'hot topics', there should be links
> to the discussion threads at Talk, or if none, a way to discuss the
> article somewhere, preferably in Talk.

Hot topics to an extent (*the* hottest topics from Talk could be
included in one of the automated sections, alongside hottest bugs, top
10 downloads and newest downloads). However, also very much in scope
are the single posts which contain some nugget buried of info, buried
amongst lots of other stuff.

So, yes - there'll be links to Talk, Brainstorm, Bugzilla, random
blogs and anything else which turns up Maemo-related which a
contributor feels is worth including.

> 2. Over at Maemo Talk, I always try link to an existing discussion at
> Talk so discussion is well contained. I hope this new system can
> create a thread automatically at Talk and tweet every time a new
> article is created.

For discussion of the digest, a talk thread seems sensible.

> 3. If folks are open to creating a new section in maemo.org to make
> this happen, I suggest to use Wordpress to run it. I can even run it
> on the same server where Talk is running, and install the plug-in I
> created (used at itT) to create a new thread automatically at Talk. I
> can also customize the theme to match maemo.org. It's RSS feed can
> then be added to News so it appears there automatically.

Cool. I *think*, as Sebastian's realised, there'll need to be some
tool development to make the sub-editor & editor jobs easier.

For example, you could imagine an issue being put together as:

   1) Log in.
   2) Open the current in-progress digest to edit.
   3) Select a section from a drop-down. A list of Twitter posts
      from the MWN account in that section appears in a side-bar.
   4) Each Twitter post can be clicked on to add the lead-in text, an
      appropriate quote and any lead-out text necessary.
   5) Items can then be dragged on to the section, and re-ordered.
      Possibly with WYSWIWYG editing. (i.e. steps 4 & 5 could be
      combined)
   6) Changes are instanta-save and, ideally, shared between any
      sub-editors looking at the section (one step at a time).

Using lots of tools like JQuery and YUI! to make it really quick and
simple to flesh out a few links into a paragraph each and pull each
section together.

So, for example, the links I gave:

---------8<--------
Applications - wazd helping qwerty12 on Transmission:
http://s56.radikal.ru/i152/0911/34/a388e13890a0.png

Title: wazd helping qwerty12 on Transmission <--- auto-created but editable

Lead-in: {user:wazd}, our prolific community graphic designer, is
helping {user:qwerty12} with the UI for his port of Transmission, a
Bittorrent client; allowing the user to download (legal) content from
various places on the Internet.
Quote: [none]
Lead-out: [none]

Renders as:
<h3>wazd helping qwerty12 on Transmission</h3>
<p><span class="lead-in"><a href="http://maemo.org/profile/view/wazd/"
class="user" title="wazd">Andrew Zhilin</a>, our prolific community
graphic designer, is helping <a
href="http://maemo.org/profile/view/qwerty12" class="user"
title="qwerty12">Faheem Pervez</a> with the UI for his port of
Transmission, a Bittorrent client; allowing the user to download
(legal) content from various places on the Internet.</span></p>
<div class="link"><a
href="http://s56.radikal.ru/i152/0911/34/a388e13890a0.png">Read
more</a></div>
-------->8--------

--------8<--------
Devices - Release firmware available to download:
http://flors.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/maemo-5-final-release-updated-sdk-and-firmware/

Title: Summit N900 owners rejoice: release firmware available to
download <--- defaulted, but edited.

Lead-in: Those of us who received loan devices at the Maemo Summit
have been using pre-production firmware; until now:
Quote: The Nokia N900 is landing in the hands of real users with the
Maemo 5 final release that we have been polishing in the last weeks.
The fortunate users of a pre-production Nokia N900 are encouraged to
flash completely their devices in order to have them as they come out
of a sales box.
Lead-out: Simultaneously released is the final release SDK, allowing
developers to run the same environment  on their device and in
Scratchbox.

Renders as:
<h3>Summit N900 owners rejoice: release firmware available to download</h3>
<p><span class="lead-in">Those of us who received loan devices at the
Maemo Summit have been using pre-production firmware; until
now:</span> <span class="quote">The Nokia N900 is landing in the hands
of real users with the Maemo 5 final release that we have been
polishing in the last weeks. The fortunate users of a pre-production
Nokia N900 are encouraged to flash completely their devices in order
to have them as they come out of a sales box.</span> <span
class="lead-out">Simultaneously released is the final release SDK,
allowing developers to run the same environment  on their device and
in Scratchbox.</a></p>
<div class="link"><a
href="http://flors.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/maemo-5-final-release-updated-sdk-and-firmware/">Read
more</a></div>
--------->8--------

> 4. Since there will be several folks involved in this project, I
> suggest a place for all the staff to talk about the article for the
> week. I can create a staff-only forum at Talk, or another good place
> is Socialcast ( http://socialcast.com/ ). Socialcast is being used by
> several big news sites sites so staff can communicate easily with one
> another -- it's free.

I'll have a look. Saves have to bolt on comments/messages into the builder UI.

> Lastly, I would like to volunteer [...]

Thanks :-)

Good to have you on-board!

Cheers,

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew at bleb.org  |  http://www.bleb.org/