Archive for January 2011
Twitter has a great little widget that you can add to any web page to display a Twitter search. This allows you to creating stream of information about any topic of interest and post it in your website. In a CMS-based site, such as WordPress or Jooma, or a social platform site, such as Spruz, you can add this widget to a global area, so it automatically shows up on every page.
For example, if you'd like a running commentary of the Seattle Sounders, you customize the widget as follows:
However, there is a bug in the widget that has been acknowledged by Twitter: you cannot create a radius search around a location and insert it into the widget. A radius search on Twitter allows you to find all tweets within a zip code or city name, such as "near:Tacoma within:15mi" or "near:98501 within:20km". This is unfortunate because the radius search is a great way to find out what people are talking about in your area.
As it turns out, there is an alternative: Geocodes!
Geocodes include the latitude and longitude of a location. So, for example, let's say I want to do that Tacoma search I listed above, you would enter the search as follows: "geocode:47.252877,-122.444291,15mi".
If you don't happen to know the geocode of the location you'd like to search off the top of your head (smile) try this handy tool at iTouchMap.com. Simply enter the address, city and state of the location (or just the city and state if you want the geographic center of a city), and you'll see the exact geocode.
Here's a custom widget for my home town, Menominee, Michigan:
But here's the really cool part: you can use geocodes with search keywords to create a custom search. For example, here are a pair of actual widgets I've created to follow the twitter streams about the playoff game between the Seattle Seahawks and the Chicago Bears next week:
Trash Talk on Twitter: Bears Vs. Seahawks Playoff Game
Thanks to the following thread for helping me find the answer to this problem: http://code.google.com/p/twitter-api/issues/detail?id=1401
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I am certainly not a programmer by any stretch of the imagination, but I've been learning how to modify CSS for the CMS/Wordpress/Joomla websites I've been building, so I decided to take my first stab at modifying a vTiger theme for better usability. AMC Reader Earthtone is this first attempt. I have not tested it in a Windows browser yet, but troubleshot it using Chrome, Firefox 4 b8 and Safari 5 on Mac OS X.
A little background for the uninitiated…
vTiger is a CRM (customer relationship management) application that can be installed and run on just about any type of computer, including a hosted web server. It can be accessed using any standard, modern web browser. vTiger is a full-featured sales and marketing system, including leads, accounts and campaign mangement, plus invoicing, purchase orders, inventory & asset management. It is 100% open source, meaning you can install and use it for free. You can also make modifications and add-ons, provided you share them with the rest of the development community.
VTiger only includes a few themes (or skins), and all of these are really designed for smaller computer screens. My new theme is designed to be easier to view on larger screens, and looks particularly nice on Mac OS X because of its beautiful screen font rendering capabilities.
The AMC Reader Earthtone theme is based on the standard Woodspice theme included with vTiger, but I've adapted some of the concepts behind the iReader Chrome/Firefox extension, Apple Safari's Reader feature, and Arc90's Readability Project to update the theme so that it is easier to view on high resolution screens. The modifications include:
- Changing from sans serif (Arial/Helvetica) fonts to serif fonts. I have used Callisto MT and Palatino to build my CSS font stack, so you if you don't have Callisto installed, you should end up with Palatino or Times New Roman.
- Increased the default font size to 14pt
- Increased the contrast of the earthtones. You'll see a particular improvement on highlighted items in the list view tables.
Here are comparisons of the same screens
in Woodspice and AMC Reader Earthtone vTiger Theme:
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This article contains content available only to Mac Expert Gold Subscribers. Click Here to find out about my affordable Macintosh support plans. Starting at only $8.25/month! |
The AMC Reader Earthtone Theme vTiger
is available for free download from the vTiger users forums.
For more information on vTiger customer management systems or theme customization, contact me by phone or online.
Tags: apple, business applications, CRM, CSS, joomla, Mac OS X, Macintosh, Russ Alman, theme, vTiger, woodspice, Wordpress | 4 Comments »
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