Creative Industries Network Alert Widget

CIF Network Alert WidgetFinally finished the Creative Industries Network Alerts Widgets (CIAlerts.widget Yahoo! flat-file, ~250k). Its purpose is to allow system administrators at QUT, where I work, to send out network alerts to staff and students when things go wrong on any of the servers.

You are free to download it, but be warned that you probably wont see very much (if anything) because it requires that someone send out an alert; and only Admins at QUT, where I work/study, can do that. The widget’s dynamically loaded source code is also available.

The widget is accompanied by a website from which the alerts are sent. Network admin can send three kinds of alerts: “Please Note”, “Attention”, and “Very Important”; each kind of alert comes with its own color (as seen above and below).

CIF Network Alert Widget in Please Note state CIF Network Alert Widget in Very Important state

Using XMLHttpRequest, The widget works by periodically polling the server for new alerts. The alerts are sent as a JSON header string and processed in the widget. The widget features:

Dynamic BootStrapper (bootstrap.js):
…details coming soon.
Custom Animation Engine:
…details coming soon.
Custom event subscription model:
…details coming soon.
Alerts database:
…details coming soon.
Simple Dock manager:
…details coming soon.

Widget Processing Model

Widget Processing ModelStarted to diagram the a high-level flow-chart of the Widget Processing Model for the Widgets 1.0 Spec using Visio. It is still early days, but hoping to submit it to the WAF Working Group soon for discussion. I’ve particularly focused on resolving the localization of content problem following the model used by Apple, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Opera does not support localization of their widgets through automated folder selection, which makes them the odd one out.

If you have comments, you can post them here or on the WAF public list (public-appformats@w3.org). I’m also hoping to republish the Widgets 1.0 Requirements document within the next few weeks.

GPS Course: Great Brisbane Bike Ride

Garmin ForeRunner 305I finally got around to publishing the GPS course for the Great Brisbane Bike Ride. If you live in Brisbane, Australia, you are free to download it and use it (race against virtual me 🙂 ). I will put more GPS courses up as I capture them.

The courses were captured using a Garmin ForeRunner 305 which I recently purchased (pictured on the left). If you are into running or cycling, I highly recommend this nifty device; I use it almost every day. It tracks everything including your heartrate, and even lets your race your (virtual) self. It comes with great software (The Garmin Training Center – see their website for screenshots and details) for keeping track of all your stats and for viewing all your captured information on a map.