New Mini-Site: Maui Photo Day Calendar

On a whim, I decided to put up a mini-site to promote my Maui Photo Day Calendar Google Gadget. Nothing too special or elaborate, but I'm pretty happy with it for only about 6 hours worth of work. It's good to have an actual url (http://www.mauiphotocal.com) to send people to when telling them about it, or have others link to on my behalf.

The mini-site features a live preview of the gadget, with an option to add it of course. There are also exceprts and links to the different blog posts I wrote regarding the gadget to provide a little background. There are also links to a few of my primary sites, and at some point, I'll be adding a way to revisit the photos from the previous days.

So if you have a moment, stop by the mini-site and let me know what you think of the design.

Oh, and add the gadget and tell your friends.

Mahalo (thanks).

Beta Testers Needed: Maui Photo Calendar Gadget

I'm looking for a few iGoogle users that are interested in helping me with beta testing my new, Maui Photo Calendar Gadget. This is the first Google Gadget that I'm looking to publish for public use, so I want to try and do as much due diligence in testing as I can. And alas, I can't do it alone.

The good news is that it is a really simple gadget. All it really does is just determine the current date (one small gotcha in a minute), retrieves a daily photo and details from my Flickr account, and put it all together in a layout as you see here. Maybe it's too simple and I'm only being paranoid about pushing that final "publish" button, but better safe than sorry I guess.



There is one custom setting, though, that might not seem necessary, but I wanted to point it out. There is a Timezone Offset setting that will trigger the gadget to know when "midnight" is and flip to the next day. I know I could use a little JavaScript to detect and retain the timezone information with a cookie, but I wanted to limit the moving parts involved, at least to start.

What To Do
If you would like to help, the first step is to accept my thanks. I appreciate it.

Next, you just need to add the gadget anywhere on your iGoogle homepage. Just copy this url to your clipboard and click on the Add Stuff link on the iGoogle tab you want to use. When you click Add Stuff, the following page will have an option in the bottom left of the page that says "Add feed or gadget". That's where the url from above goes, and you're all set. You'll get a message saying that the gadget wasn't created by Google (obviously).

What Else
Just kick the tires and let me know what happens. Once you add it to your iGoogle homepage, it will show up anywhere you login. I have been trying it with a few different machines, displays, and browsers, so that's really all you can do as well. I know you can use these gadgets in other locations, and while I haven't gotten to trying that, feel free to do so if you'd like. It's not required, though.

If you experience any issues, such as error messages, timeouts, size, cropping, alignment issues, etc., you can post them here as comments, use the contact form, or send me a note on Twitter. Also, if you like it, have suggestions, or anything else, all feedback is welcome.

Timeframe
I'm not looking for anything long term from a testing period, probably a week at most. I'm also using Google Analytics to track the usage of this gadget, so that will help me gauge how much traffic its seeing and where I want to go from there.

So, thanks again for reading and if you decide to give it a whirl (now or when it's published), a big Mahalo.

New Project Idea: Online Photo Day Calendar

What an afternoon of random ideas.  During a rather slow drive home from work, I started thinking about new site designs for Ka'anapali Dreamin' and came up with a few goodies.  After some quick browsing for inspiration and a handful of pencil sketches, I arrived at something woth throwing together in Photoshop.

Getting ready to fire up the laptop, I soon became distracted by yet another idea while looking at one corner in my office at home.  You see, I have been a fan of the Islands Gallery Day Calendar for a few years now, and whenever I come across a day that features Hawaii, I put it on my wall.

As you can imagine, one would gather quite a few of these over the course of 3 years (I'm counting 39 so far, with a few of them practically duplicates).  And in all of that time, I had yet to think of using my own photos to create an online version.  But for whatever reason, today I did.

I already have a Today's Photos section of Ka'anapali Dreamin' that features three different photos each day (albeit it on a rotation).  The same three photos can also be found on the site's home page in the sidebar as a slideshow using the Google AJAX Slideshow and a custom feed I put together.  

I also already have a daily game called Is It Maui? that features a new photo (via Flickr) each day that was taken on one of the islands of Hawaii.  Each of these photos has a subtle (or sometimes obvious) hint in them that tips off which island it was taken on, and the object of this simple game is to guess whether it was taken on Maui or not, and if not, which island. I have to use additional photos from Flickr because all of mine are from Maui (and that would have just made for a pretty lame game otherwise).

Yet despite having those daily displays on the site today, I still have this urge to make something like this daily calendar just because I can probably do it in a day or two.  There is, of course, the laborious task of going through and finding 365 pictures to use (I don't plan on cheating and including the weekend as one photo).  I have certainly taken my share of photos that I could use, but that part of this would still be very time consuming.

Then, there are the options of what I could do with it once it's finished.  Obviously, I'd find a home for it on the Ka'anapali Dreamin' site somewhere (no doubt in the Daily Maui section).  I could also publish it as an RSS feed and style it for a Google Gadget that people can add to their iGoogle page (even if it's just me).  And as being an RSS feed, someone could also just add it to Google Reader and see a warm Maui photo everyday.  And then maybe I could integrate it with Facebook, ... well you get the idea.

I'll probably have a working prototype up by the end of the night, and then I'll see if I'm still as excited tomorrow about having to go through all those photos. :)

Stay tuned.