we are arck

Amazon’s stock price has been inversely proportional to Apple’s after today’s iPad debut. Goodbye Kindle.

Paul — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:41:29 +0000

It’s interesting that Amazon’s stock has been inversely proportional to Apple’s since the iPad debut today. With the cheapest version of the iPad at $499, is this the end of the Kindle?

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Arck joins forces with local non-profit Center for New Community.

Paul — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 21:40:29 +0000

We’re happy to announce that will we be providing design and development services to the Center for New Community, a local non-profit. The mission of the Center for New Community is to build community, justice, and equality. CNC currently focuses its efforts through three highly successful programs – The Building Democracy Initiative counters organized racism, anti-immigrant activity, and other forms of bigotry through strategic research, community organizing, education and training around the globe. The Revitalizing Congregations and Communities program develops congregation and parish-based community organizations to work for social and economic change in small cities and rural areas. The Rural Pastors Institute supports and enhances the ministries of rural congregations, parishes, and pastors, advances pastoral excellence and leadership, and strengthens community life.

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Arck launches public Elgg-based social network demo: Kyoutsuu

Paul — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 22:08:28 +0000

Kyoutsuu is a basic example of what’s possible with Elgg, an open-source social networking framework, and Arck Interactive, a team of talented web designers developers. Elgg provides the building blocks that allow you to create and grow your own social networking site, whether publicly (like Facebook) or internally on a networked intranet (like Microsoft Sharepoint).

Arck provides a full-range of custom design and development services for Elgg and offer options for either hosting your social network with us, or on your own server. You can view a fill list of our Elgg services and case studies for social networks we’ve developed with Elgg on our web site.

Please register for a free account and play in our sandbox. If you have any questions, or feedback, click the little Feedback tab on the left side of the web page and we’ll get back to you soon!

By the way, kyoutsuu means community or commonality in Japanese.

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What’s possible with a free, open-source social networking framework called Elgg? The Wiley Faculty Network, for one.

Paul — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:00:59 +0000

We’ve been using the open-source social framework Elgg on nearly all of our social development project over the past two years. Never heard of Elgg? I’m not surprised. It hasn’t been given the attention or the visibility that it absolutely deserves. Hands down, it’s the best framework for developing custom social networks.

That said, I’d like to share our latest Elgg development effort, a faculty network for John Wiley & Sons, that we developed in cooperation with Garfield Group Interactive.

The Wiley Faculty Network is a global community of faculty, connected by a passion for teaching and a drive to learn, share, and collaborate. Members connect to collaborate with colleagues, join professional and peer groups, find mentors, attend virtual and live events, and view a wealth of resources all designed to help them grow as educators.

Site functionality included: one-click login integration with Wiley’s existing faculty system ProfVal; role-based access with custom profiles; intelligent dashboard widgets that suggest content to users based on their professional and personal interests; a custom content management system plugin allowing Wiley to deliver context and discipline specific content to users; a complete events management system; custom file/resource (documents, videos, audio) sharing; granular analytics and reporting; blogs, user groups and forums.

You can read the complete case-study on the Arck Interactive site, here:

http://www.arckinteractive.com/work/wiley-elgg-development/index.php.

The live Wiley Faculty Network web site is available here:

http://wfn.wiley.com/home

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Elgg Development Services Page Launched

Paul — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 19:57:27 +0000

We’ve launched a page dedicated to the Elgg development services we provide. Since we started offering Elgg services nearly 2 years ago, the demand for custom development has steadily increased. It’s now at the point where we’re spending about half our time developing new social networks with Elgg.

Check out the page here: http://www.arckinteractive.com/services/elgg-development.php.

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New Social Network Focused on Commercial Elgg Services

Paul — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:58:45 +0000

I’d just like to give a plug to our friends Shane Atlas and Billy Gunn who just launched the first social network focused exclusively on commercial Elgg services. The Elgg community has been sorely lacking a site where developers can connect with the business community.

Kudos to the ElggExchange team!

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Building a Social Learning Environment – using Elgg

Jane Hart — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:17:02 +0000

On Tuesday 17th November I am going to be speaking at the Learn Trends Online Conference. My presentation is entitled Building a Social Learning Environment. Here's a sneak preview of what I#39;ll be saying ...

I am going to talk about organisational concerns of using public social media tools for their social learning initiatives
I am going to describe a solution to address these concerns: the open source social engine, Elgg
I am going to explain how I've implemented my own social learning environment at SoLEARN
I am going to feature two case studies of organisations I have worked with to implement an Elgg-powered social learning environment
I am then going to finish by mentioning some of the lessons learned along the way
Finally, there will be plenty of time for discussion around building a social learning environment

If you want to hear the presentation and be part of the discussion, you will need to sign up for Learn Trends

We just launched our third enterprise class social network for Wiley & Sons Publishing!

Paul — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:43:32 +0000

Working for Garfield Group Interactive over a period of 6 months, we developed a scalable social network based on Elgg. Functionality included: one-click login integration with Wiley’s existing faculty system ProfVal; role-based access with custom profiles; intelligent dashboard widgets that suggest content to users based on their professional and personal interests; a custom content management system plugin allowing Wiley to deliver context and discipline specific content to users; a complete events management system; custom file/resource (documents, videos, audio) sharing; granular analytics and reporting; blogs, user groups and forums.

Check out the case study here.

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A useful time-management tool for freelancers

Paul — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:50:02 +0000

http://klok.mcgraphix.com/klok/index.htm

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6 free tools for web developers

Paul — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 02:12:45 +0000

As a web developer and small business owner, I’m on a constant quest to find free tools that allow greater collaboration and communication for my project teams, which tend to be spread throughout the country.

Without further adieu, here are my top picks:

1. Etherpad
Etherpad is a real-time, web-based collaborative text editor. You create a “pad”, invite others to join by sharing the URL, and paste in, or type, text. Edits show up in real time with each user’s text formatted in a different color. There’s a chat room where you can discuss your edits and an option to save revisions.

I’ve found Etherpad especially useful for team editing CSS and Javascript files and sharing bits of code for debugging. The only thing it’slacking is syntax highlighting for more languages, but I hear that’s in the works.

Interesting note: Etherpad was created by ex-Google Docs developers with funding from y-combinator.

2. Pastebin
Pastebin is a collaborative debugging tool with syntax highlight for just about every programming language. You paste in a code snippet, select the syntax and it outputs a web page with your formatted code including line numbers. It’s useful for sharing small bits of code on mailing lists, or IRC.

3. Snipplr
Snipplr is a social source code repository for scripts, CSS and code snippets. Forgot the min-height fix for IE6? They’ve got it. Need a javascript/CSS rounded corner script? There are several.

4. Xdebug
Xdebug is an essential PHP extension that provides stack/function tracing, time tracking, parameter display, code coverage analysis and a performance profiler that allows you to find bottleneck methods. If you can’t parse cachegrind files, this guy has released a PHP-based parsing tool.

5. Teamviewer
Teamviewer is a browser based remote desktop sharing application and a great alternative to paid applications like Goto meeting. It has supports remote desktop control/sharing, file transfers. The one feature the free version is lacking is audio, but that’s easily solved with Skype or FreeConference (see below)

6. Freeconference
Freeconference is a tool for setting up conference calls. The free versions allows you to set up a conference line with a local (not toll free) exchange. Participants dial in to the number and enter an access code to join your conference.

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