#groupconnect

Ever spent hours and hours for something simple, and then all of a sudden it hit you and you came across a solution to your problem? My guess is that you probably have.

Earlier tonight I put together a signup for Groupconnect's Private Beta. After searching hours online for different html5 templates, html mailto scripts and php scripts, I finally found a solution. I came across MailChimp's API and found it to be quite user friendly once I dove into it. I've only worked with API's a hand full of times with Facebook and Twitter, so this wasn't going to be an easy task. It took a little bit of customizing and thought, but in the end everything seems to be working quite well and looks good. Below are the steps that I took in order to get this done.

1.) I started experimenting with the MailChimp API a bit, finding it very user friendly and powerful at the same time. Rare, I know. Here's a screenshot of some of the quick html changes this took.

Nothing hard, some CSS and simple HTML changes. Once I figured out how to incorporate MailChimp's signup form into my index.html page it was smooth sailing from there. On to step 2.

Step 2.) The next step I had to do was configure the CSS properties to display exactly what I wanted them to. Of course, it gave me a little troubles at first, but nothing that Firebug can't solve!

3.) Now that I had everything sitting perfectly how I wanted and working well, it was time to tie in Twitter to give this signup a chance to bring in some beta testers. I was able to put a link to our Twitter handle on the bottom of each page of the signup, but I was also able to use ClicktoTweet so that whenever someone was done with the signup process they could share the love and tweet it out to their followers. Here's what this looked like.

5.) Once I got the url that MailChimp provided me, I simply inserted the URL into ClicktoTweet and was able to add any #'s or @'s , just as long as I kept it within 140 characters.

6.) Now that I got that setup, it was almost complete. Now just add a few lines of code and we're set to roll. Here's a screen shot of the final product on Groupconnect's site.

7. ) If you see in the picture directly above, you'll see there is a link labeled as "here". This is pretty slick, because once you click the link, your page is forwarded to Twitter, taking you to this screen.

Notice that what I preset in ClicktoTweet will show up automatically, so all the user has to do is click Tweet. Pretty simple, but powerful at the same time.

Go ahead and try this out yourself here. It's kind of a cool little process that ties in a couple of different platforms. This is what API's can do for you.

It's been a while since I have done a blog post, so now is a good time to blog about what I have going on in my life.

On November 1st of this year I got the opportunity to speak to a class at UNI that was using Vookbag in their class as an alternative to Blackboard Learning Systems. It was a good opportunity to gain feedback, especially because about 90% of students that use Blackboard absolutely despise of it, mainly because the user interface hasn't been updated since the 80's (not really), but probably since the early 2000's I would guess. I was also fortunate enough to get a sneak peek of what Blackboard has in store for this upcoming semester and I must say, it'll be pretty cool, but that's not their biggest problem right now. Their biggest problem they are facing is their brand they have destroyed. When someone hears of Blackboard Learning Systems they automatically think of "I hate that piece of shit!". Honestly. I'm not just saying this because Vookbag competes with it. It honestly needs to be improved and it is becoming more modernized. It's got more features than any other website I've ever saw that is in the learning management software industry. I feel that Blackboard has totally lost their customer loyalty and it will need to rebuild completely if it wants a chance to compete with a few of the upcoming LMS's on the market today.

Anyways, from the feedback that I gained from the class using Vookbag and from a survey that my friends and I conducted, we've decided to turn our focus to a new project for the time being. We were finding that it was difficult for students to find a time to meet up for a group meeting and got responses that really started getting us thinking. Students were saying that they would be willing for a service that would be taking care of their needs for finding a time to meet or where to meet for their group project.

We kept doing some more research and have found a need for software for "groups", both personal use and business/organizational use. This project we are working on now is called, "Groupconnect" for now that is. We've spent countless hours trying to decide what in the hell we were going to call this project. At first it was called, "Grouplr", so we bought the domain names necessary and then we decided that didn't tell a good enough story about what we wanted to accomplish with this project, so we went back to the drawing board. It then hit me when I was on my way to work. I suddenly thought of Groupconnect, not why it hit me then, but it did. It sounded smooth and rolls of the tongue well. Check it out here: http://groupconnecthq.com. I'm pretty proud of it. A few of my friends (Joe Sorenson...you can find him here at his Twitter account: @joebearsorenson & Thomas Gilbert...his Twitter account is here @thegibbs and I have spent quite a bit of hours in the past month or two working on it. It's coming together quite nicely.

I've been not spending as much time with Vookbag as a few people may want, but it's still in the back of my mind and as of last week it was solely meant to be a learning management system, but it may be changing soon.