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WordPress Plugin (notifying users tagged in comments)

I wrote a plugin by hacking together some ideas based on the Notify on Comment plugin.

Essentially, I was looking for a plugin whereby someone mentioned or tagged in a comment (using the familiar @username syntax from Twitter) would be notified. They wouldn’t have had to have made the post being commented on, nor would they have had to made a comment on that post yet in order to be notified. It can notify multiple tagged users in one comment (eg. Hi there, @user1 and @user2) — it will notify both user1 and user2 via the emails they have registered as users on your WordPress install.

Now, because this plugin only queries the user database in WordPress, it’s not going to be useful for a wide range of blogs. But, if you’re a multi-author blog looking to shift more of the conversation away from emails or private posts and into the main stage of your blog and its comments, this might work for you.

Included in the zip file is all you need to upload it to your plugins directory on your WordPress install. It has a very basic email template, which you can adjust using some of the markup from the plugin file itself.

Download the awkwardly named plugin, Tag User Notification.

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iPhone app development (on paper)

I’m starting a new project in creating a series of iPhone applications for Surviving Windsor. Some of these applications will be absurd, some useful, but all will be focused primarily on the specific conditions and realities found here in South Detroit.

This suite of applications takes the city as its conceptual backing, generating a set of small technologies and tools that can help citizens of Windsor and visitors investigate and understand their surroundings through critique, humour, and imagination.

Why use the iPhone? Well, I’m already familiar with it for starters — I haven’t even touched an Android phone — but I’m also interested in looking at what the potentials are in the iOS world for creative intervention, and for becoming another tool of sorts to examine and understand the peculiarities of locality.

So, what are these apps going to do? I have a few ideas, and I’m in the process of thinking through a few more, but after having skimmed through some basics on iOS development, I think it’s time to start unfolding some of these on paper. And, of course, one of these apps will be based on psychogeographic / algorithmic movements in space.

This project is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council, Media Artists Section.

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BCL Report – August 22, 2008

I’m not sure why we didn’t start doing this earlier, but here’s the first report of our weekly activities. We’ve been meeting on Fridays for almost half the summer, trying to make, plan, and do events/projects/demos/awesome. Today involved us revisiting our seed bomb recipe, beginning the stenciling for posters for our upcoming Dance Party (details soon), and plotting our next adventures.

Continue reading “BCL Report – August 22, 2008”

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What To Do With Malls When They Die?

Devonshire Mall, Windsor, Ontario from Google Maps

WorldChanging recently wrote about some malls in the US that died (or are in the process of dying) and what was being done with the space afterwards. It seems that some malls are being redesigned as mixed-use developments, with arts/community centres and housing. Reusing existing spaces for this type of redevelopment and activity is surely positive, but it seems that some of these projects are being billed as new downtowns. As most malls are built away from other other development, and many are designed around (or rather within) fields of parking lots, should these spaces really be considered a new “downtown”?

If this happened in Windsor, what might be the results? Devonshire Mall is over 1,000,000 square feet. That’s a lot of space for apartments, studios, galleries, shopping, markets, even a school. However, would this type of development just take the focus away from fixing our downtown (or is it already a lost cause?) Also, more questions would certainly be raised about a private space functioning as public space, as even the sidewalks of a “street” would suddenly be under private ownership. Other spaces in the city like old factories, the Home Depot right beside the mall, and even shutdown churches all seem like they could foster a good type of growth by converting those spaces into (hopefully) accessible places for artists, community groups, and housing. How do we start?

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