Hello, all,
We have an alpha release ready of VoiceBox, our Knight Drupal Initiative project -
The project is a community media/feed aggregator/news space/conversation space. A high level run down of the featureset includes:
- Customizable user profiles;
- Discussions with embedded images, audio, and video;
- Publishing pictures, audio, and video via mobile devices and/or email;
- Content aggregation via rss;
- Remixing, curating, and republishing content within issues;
- Sharing content to eternal sites or via email; and
- Slideshows of featured content on the site homepage and selected landing pages.
While the primary focus is on grassroots and community media, it has uses within educational contexts as well.
The code is available at http://code.funnymonkey.com/project/voicebox
The project on drupal.org is at http://drupal.org/project/voicebox
Project documentation is at http://code.funnymonkey.com/doc/voicebox
And, a more detailed anouncement is at http://funnymonkey.com/community-media-grassroots-outreach-voicebox
For those interested, please grab it and run with it. If you have any issues, please report them in the issue queue; this is an alpha release, and while we've done a fair amount of testing we're looking forward to see what other people turn up when this is in the wild.
Cheers,
Bill
Comments
Nice Work on VoiceBox
i have not loaded it yet but what i have seen looks great! And as You know it teaches us who have not done a profile much. i see You like the flowplayer and used a bit of flash. With html5 the open source codecs are growing fast. Thanks for the great work and You have to admit it is Amazing when You think where we will be in ten years.
Ran
SWF Tools
Yes, we did use SWF Tools. That was definitely one of the choices we spent a fair amount of time thinking about. We considered leaving that out, and leaving the choice of how media files were rendered up to the individual site builders, but we opted to include SWF Tools because:
So, we decided to err on the side of the user with less technical experience, and make sure that their experience was as seamless as possible.
With Media module in D7, the means of handling and managing files will be much more streamlined. And with that said, we're also tracking progress on this.
FunnyMonkey
Bill...
Nice to see what you've been up to. Found the video interesting. And hope to find time in the not to distant future to try it out and see what's under the hood.
I am sure you are busier than busy can be -- and so am I -- but it would be good to touch bases. As you've focused on this area, we've focused on education sites with amazing results. We're now looking for money to go to the next level -- to improve the intuitivity, push back some of the admin to teachers and schools and focus on related content. The big issues we're finding are that a) the teachers really don't have much familiarity with the Web and technology and b) once they get it, there's not much content to support what they can do with it.
What intrigues me about this is how it might fight in to some community projects that are still using some antiquated methods to have community forums. We have some interest in connecting the schools to these community info organizations so they can publish kids' work in other places. So your VoiceBox might be just the thing.
Anyway, good for you. You in need of more syrup, by the way? (An excellent year for quality, not so good for quantity)
g
ggevalt
www.youngwritersproject.org
Definitely a good fit for places looking for a community site
Hello, Geoffrey,
Good to hear from you. VoiceBox would definitely be a good starting point for the communities you are describing. The "editor" role (and even the "staff" role could be renamed, and used for teachers.
One of the choices we made in splitting up permissions was to separate content administration from site config, so people can focus on managing content and community without needing to worry about (for example) navigating the views and the context UI.
As we have been working with schools and non-profits, we have been seeing (and advocating for) a split in responsibilities between "community managers" - people who work with humans, and the ideas they share - and "site admins" - people who work with site structure, and making sure the plumbing is intact.
And there is never a bad time for syrup :) You got me hooked on the Grade B.
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
Cool....
We'll definitely give VoiceBox a run through. What one of these groups is using now is really antiquated. There is a good chance we partner up with several groups as part of what we're doing, so testing it out will be a priority in a few weeks.
Good to hear from you.
Last year's syrup was grade A all the way -- and, unfortunately, the season was short. We also didn't do any storage in tin. I'll see what I can find. Send me an email with your mailing address and we'll send it pony express.
ggevalt at youngwritersproject.org
cheerio
g
ggevalt
www.youngwritersproject.org
This looks exciting. I'm
This looks exciting. I'm going to ask the obvious: Will the next user group meeting have one of you doing a demo?
Sala kahle,
Grant
+1 for demo straight from the
+1 for demo straight from the monkey's mouth
Looks like the next meetup is the 13th
I'd love to make it down for this, and would definitely like to do a demo and get some feedback.
We're at an alpha release now, and we'd love to hear things that should get more attention as we move to the point release.
FunnyMonkey
Better
This is definitely a very good thoughts you had in here. Well this is certainly a nice post to entertain, thanks a lot for this lovey post that you had it makes me feel better to read this.
Hello
Demo of Voicebox?
Is there a demo of voicebox online somewhere? Or some examples of sites using it?
Sounds like a great distro looking forward to seeing it!
Lee Raney
Dallas Drupal Group
www.ChurchFinder.com
Very cool
Looks pretty darn cool.
Having browsed a few of the video screen casts I start asking myself how this distribution is different from Open Atrium?
http://openatrium.com/
Robert Foley Jr
Solutions Architect
http://www.robertfoleyjr.com
Different use cases
OA is designed to support group collaboration around projects; it is a working space, an intranet, something that allows groups to work toward specific goals. The case tracker and the groups in OA support these goals.
They two profiles are similar in that they both assume use within a community, but the similarities end there. VoiceBox supports discussions among community members, but these discussions are not grouped around around a project, but are collected into a general topic area.
I guess if I had to distill it down, I'd say that OA is focused workspace, where VoiceBox is more of a discussion space. There are other differences as well, but that is a starting point.
FunnyMonkey
Were to find alpha voice box demo?
Sounds great.. looking forward how to install it..
Samantha
Anubavam LLC
www.twitter.com/anubavam
www.anubavam.com
So Cool
loaded the distro,
i did not know about mail handler or mime router how cool that a user can upload to the site by there smart phone. You have no idea how net a feature that is for http://marketstone.com/nnepdx fase book does not even do that. i am hosting at cheap godaddy and networksolutions an they did not have IMAP installed so had to do the drupal profile install. also getting a htmlstringreplace error other then that great JOB! i hope You keep work on this distributions they are going to be big. Just need to write the code that downloads the latest version of the modules before someone downloads the distro just a quick extra step but worth it. You do not have to respond to this but some where You must have a .sql file in the profile? or are just tables being created from the modules when You enable them?
Thanks Again, Ran
Is voicebox can be used as Elearning?
Is voicebox can be used as Elearning?