Custom Picassa Photo Gallery Application

After experimenting with several of the leading photo editing/organizing tools including offerings from apple(iPhoto) and Adobe(Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks), I have decided to use Picassa2 for our online photo gallery needs. Besides the interface being excellent, I chose Picasssa2 becuase of how easy it was to create a custom photo gallery templates based on one of the standard templates.

To create your own Picassa2 Template first go into your Program Files/Picassa/web/templates folder and make a copy of one you would like to base your template off. Then change the first line of the index.tpl in order to give your template its own version number, name and description. You can then easily replace the Picassa Logo with any logo of your choice by simply saving your logo over in the assets folder. I added a little padding around my logo by modifing the css file in the assets folder. To the BODY i added "background-position: 10px 10px;". I also moved the photo caption below the photo for use as copyright by moving the <%itemCaption%> tag in targetlistelement.html . And that was about all it took to create a custom enterprise photo gallery.

snap footer to bottom of viewport

Previously, on our pages with short content the footer would not always appear at the bottom of the viewport (browser). I was able to fix this with a little css wizardry.

I do, however, feel that this functionality should be built into the standard and therefore the browser but thats the subject for another post.

I surrounded all non-footer content in a "page" div and the footer in a "footer" div here is the css:

.Page {
height: 80%;
position: relative;
}

div.Footer{
width:100%;
float:left;
height:174px;
margin-top:15px;
position: relative;
}


This seemed to do the trick despite the many more complex solutions posted around town.

Team Messaging

My team needs real time messaging capabilities. Sending a link or sharing a file should not require 7 clicks and several seconds as is the case with using Outlook for this purpose.

More Specifically, what we need is:

• Chat /Conference room for my team to collaborate
• Desktop application as opposed to running in the browser
• Visual and audio notification of new messages

Seems so simple yet I am having trouble finding a tool to suit these needs. I have looked at the big 3 messangers: AOL, Windows, and Yahoo!

Aol seems geared towards children of myspace generation and Windows requires that we change our firewall settings so both of these are out of the question. That leaves us with Yahoo which is fine but far from perfect.

The Yahoo! Messenger sign up process does not include an instant screen name availability check which wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for having to do a captcha for every taken screen name. A very interesting feature is the ability for the messenger to run in a strictly http request mode which allows it to bypass our corporate firewall.

Unfortunately, messages are taking around 7 seconds to get to my coworker sitting right next to me. Also, when in conference mode there is no new message notification.

Looks like I'm back to the drawing board. Maybe I'll just write an app myself. I mean this is simple messaging we are talking about; the most basic of internet functionality.

Project Management Software Investigation

Out of a dire need stemming from a growing team involved in more projects than I care to enumerate and a lack of what I consider to be essential collaboration tools, I have been investigating project management software. My initial reaction was "oh, i know, how about that much bzzzzzed about app from our innovative friends over at 37 signals...Basecamp.

I singed up for the free 1 project package, invited my team members, entered our Milestones for the next year and we were all set to start existing in the modern era of project collaboration . Thats when "Process Management" got involved and we are still, more than a month later, without an official project management tool.

Process Management suggested 2 tools:
Project Insight which is huge and bloated with reporting and charting features. Despite it being web based and having a collaborative aspect you'd probably be better off with yea ol standard MS Project

And ViewPath which I thought was alright and would probably do the trick but was a little lack luster and unrefined.

What I need most:

• shared calendar
  
• document repository which allows discussion
• action item / todo lists
• a tool that is not only easy but actually fun to use
  

What my boss needs:

• time tracking
• high level view of what his developers are doing

Basecamp provides all this is a beautifully arranged package which displays an innate understanding of the fact that what makes a successful project is a well communicating team.