Tube The Vote!

Posted on Friday, September 19, 2008 @ 15:48 CET

So the last project I was working on before I left my old job was soft-launched a couple weeks ago - well the user/password combo that was previously required was removed. In any case, my designer-turned-developer friend Per Kristian Stoveland wrote a post on his blog about it.

The project's goal was to combine user generated content found on the web using API's from YouTube, Twitter and Flickr alongside editorial content to create a one-stop election shop. We were sitting around trying to decide what to call this thing and I thought, well, since we were combining content from YouTube and talking politics like Rock The Vote!, how about Tube The Vote? Half-joking, but it stuck and I think kinda works. In any case, check it out!

So for the technical stuff. The MagWerk Engine itself was rewritten from scratch for AVM2. Its a Flex 3 app, built using Cairngorm that connects to an AMF-PHP back-end where the services reside. Using Cairngorm and therefore following a strict MVC pattern meant that the actual displaying of the magazine was completely separate from the rest of the engine. This means that the model could be represented however you wanted to and for this particular project they decided to go with a Cooliris (formerly PicLens) style look and feel using Papervision.

Fun fact: The rendering class is actually decided by the back-end, which sends over a fully qualified class name as a String which is instantiated at runtime, making it quite flexible. There's an internal API that allows the renderer to register with the controller and vice-versa. Now at the moment the rendering classes are compiled as part of the project, but they could always be externalized. In other words, compiled as separate modules and loaded in on-demand at runtime for uber-awesomeness.

Anyways, building that engine was one of the most interesting projects I've worked on so I think it would make an pretty good case study. In any case if you live in the Oslo area come by for the next FUGN meeting on October 6 where we will be going through the application, showing how it was put together and where to get the duct-tape :)

- paulo

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