The Project, part deux
The front page. Requires some tweaking but you get the idea...
Some time ago, I wrote about my final year project here. It was a vague description of my project. In hindsight, that’s partly because the project has been rather vaguely put together, at least from a physical code perspective. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s cobbled together, but the phrases “waterfall development” (project managers will know that one) and “agile environment” spring to mind. This is because my project heavily relies on other people. Namely, the endpoints of several API’s supplied by social media outlets (e.g. twitter or Digg). You’d be surprised how many times during development (a few short months, in-between normal working, college assignments/exams and yes, being a social butterfly) they change random things. You’d be even more surprised as to why they change things. This is because, it seems, no one knows why they changed them. Much to my shegrin.
The digg search shows my own custom-engineered digg buttons. No, they don't work (on purpose)
My project, for those who didn’t read the post I did a while back, is a social media search engine. Much like google, it apes the functionality of “traditional” search engine, but instead relies on user-submitted material to give data. Data is also not given relevance like Google, etc. Instead it’s based on dates. Even with Digg news stories. Sure, I show how many Diggs an article has… but the top article is the newest one, not the most “dugg”. The whole thing apes twitter in that regard – it’s more interested in a timeline then relevance… because in social media, time = relevance.
The systems I’m pulling data from are twitter (my primary source), flickr (for images), lastFM (for improved music results), comments (from blogs, sites etc.), vodpod (user-created video content, also allowing mobile uploading) and digg. Not only that, I’m using the trending topics from twitter to allow users to easily find what’s “hot”, as well as logging everything people search and creating my own chart of what people want… my own trending topics, if you will. Though I expect the two to follow each other quite closely.
The system is called SCLSRCH. Why? Because the domain was available. It’s “Social Search” without any vowels. Sure, it’s not creative, interesting or even clever but it gets the job done. I seriously cannot think of anything else that would be marketable or available in a domain. Even with an odd, foreign TLD. As my project supervisor says, it’s not a marketing course. He also said I’ll “pass this with flying colours, whatever grade you get above that will be up to others”. He’s more interested in the dissertation, which I talked about more previously. He did also point out that this works so smooth, looks so nice, etc. that I’d be mad not to sell it. I’ve no idea who’d buy such a thing… I would much rather get sucked up into Google to work with their social media stuff. But hey, anyone interested? 
The guts of the twitter search, sidebar and all. Looks sexeh...
So why am I telling you? Well, partly because I’ve nothing better to do and wanted to update my blog. Partly because I’m proud of it and want to show off a bit. Will I launch it? Sure. As I said, I own the domain. I just need to submit this to college and move forward first. I would suspect May is a safe time to expect a launch. I have other projects to complete too. Including a rather large (and similar) “advanced internet development” assignment.
The other thing I would say is that this is a hobby horse – not a career prospect. While I am proud of it, and I do enjoy social media I also loathe social media “guru” types and their insistance on trying to be a celebrity with an “us and them” attitude on twitter, in particular. What I am developing is a tool, which I outlined is probably going to be used by people on the peripheries of social media. People interested but not willing to part-take. If it does well and I get to continue working on it, great… maybe I’ll get to sit on the sidelines too!
Wish me luck on the grades! I’ll need ‘em.
