Five WordPress Plugins that should be Mango Plugins

As many people already know, Mango Blog is an easily customizable ColdFusion blog engine that provides a way to administer and publish content to websites. It also provides the necessary architecture to extend its basic functionality by adding plugins. While there have already been many great and flexible plugins developed for Mango, the list has a long way to go before it reaches the WordPress plugin directory.

The nerds at Brice Cheddarn are hard at work on several projects, which limits time for plugin development. But, that didn't stop us from compiling a list of plugins we wouldn't mind seeing developed (either in-house or by one of the many CF developers in the world). As such, here are Five WordPress Plugins that should be developed Mango Blog Plugins:

read more...

The Launching of Hawkeye Tweets

There is no mistaking the fact that I am a HUGE Iowa Hawkeye Nerd. If you hadn't noticed, two of the last three sites launched by Brice Cheddarn Development have been Hawkeye related. Hawkapalooza was a pro-bono website put together to help a student organization at the University of Iowa. NILE was put together for a client to help him promote his novel.

Hawkeye Tweets is personal project to support my favorite team. It was inspired by the work of colleagues, who put together Suns Tweets and Cards Tweets as a way to use Twitter in support of their teams. I took the same concept and applied it to the Iowa Hawkeyes.

With the help of justSignal, the same technology used on Suns Tweets and Cards Tweets, I was able to put this site together in one massive all night, Monster-fueled hacking session. Hawkeye Tweets uses the justSignal Twitter Widget to pull in the streaming tweets and ColdFusion to power the backend and other ancillary components. ColdFusion will be used more heavily as the site expands.

read more...

Iowa Tech and Social Media Interactive Conference

In just a few short weeks, Iowa will be hosting the Iowa Tech and Social Media Interactive Conference (IOWAtasmic), one of the very fist large social media conferences to be organized in the state. On September 18-20th, 2009 in Mount Pleasant, Iowa on the Welsyan College campus, IOWAtasmic will provide a chance for businesses and individuals around Iowa and the midwest to take part in and learn about the ever growing social media revolution.

While many people think social media is just a fad, IOWAtasmic sets out to demonstrate to Iowans that it's not. The goal of the event is to bring new technology and knowledge to Iowa, as well as to showcase the existing technology and services already offered in the area.

The conference also sets out to prove that Iowa is not ten years behind the rest of the World, technologically speaking, and will attempt to highlight incentives and benefits of relocating or expanding into Iowa.

Event organizer Bradley Laborman, known as Bradman in the online world, says attendees will benefit from the knowledge of top tech and social media figures from the U.S. and Canada. The conference will consist of keynote speakers, local musicians, youtube celebrities, social media gurus and entrepreneurs from across the country.

read more...

The Launching of Hawkapalooza

Our involvement with Hawkapalooza began by feeding an addiction for Hawkeye information. Like most mornings, I was reading Iowa Hawkeye news while waiting for the caffeine to kick in, as I have found this to be the best way to start off the day.

One morning, the student newspaper for the University of Iowa (The Daily Iowan) posted an article about a newly formed Student Committee on Athletics whose purpose was to encourage Hawkeye Pride. The committee had a brilliant idea called “Hawkapalooza,” a pep rally and concert with the goal of the event to drum up excitement before the football team’s home-opener with Northern Iowa on September 5.

Being the web nerd I am, and having a fair amount of domain instinct, I checked the availability of the hawkapalooza.com domain after reading the article. Sure enough, it was still available. I quickly purchased the COM, NET and ORG versions of the domain and then sent an email over to the committee letting them know they were secured.

My purpose in acquiring the domains was not to profit from them or use them as leverage. Rather, it was to assist the student committee and contribute to a good cause. I used my nerdness for good to help support my beloved Iowa Hawkeyes.

read more...

Get ready for Phoenix Design Week

Three months from now, the Phoenix design community plans to take over the city. Phoenix Design Week is a community movement dreamed up by a motivated designer named Mark Dudlik in an attempt to unite and strengthen the design community. His open letter gained immediate momentum and support, and further solidified the need to ignite a fire from within.

Phoenix is a city full of talented and passionate developers, artists and designers, and Phoenix Design Week will be the first large-scale effort to bring them together around their shared love for visual design. The event is will gather graphic and interactive design individuals, design firms and industry organizations to participate in a week’s worth of events to showcase what Phoenix Design has to offer the world.

read more...