Allen Lew's Thoughts » Technology

Site Changes for 2010

Allen Lew — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:43:30 +0000

My site

With the long 4th of July Weekend, I thought it was time for my yearly site refresh. After upgrading to WordPress 3.0 (which has a number of advanced features like Custom Post Types and Multiple Sites installations), I decided to make two major cosmetic changes to the site.

I decided to change the site’s theme to Thirty Ten, a three-column version of the new WordPress default theme, Twenty Ten. Like all of the times I change themes, the old theme is still pretty good, but I just felt the need to experiment with a new design. I especially like that asides have been given their own still and that it’s easy to place my own header images (which I hope to do in the coming weeks).
Since I recently joined up with an online advertising company, I wanted to understand more about the business. So I reactivated my Google Adsense account, and decided to place ads on my site and feed. I had resisted putting ads on my site since I first started it (which when I think about it seems odd, since I was making less money then I do now), but it felt right to try this out. We’ll see how this experiment goes.

So check feel free to check out my new web site at allen.alew.org.

My new job at Rubicon Project

Allen Lew — Wed, 12 May 2010 01:58:18 +0000

If you haven’t heard the news yet, I am leaving my current job at the Los Angeles Urban League after a good three years with the company. At the league, I was at times a youth mentor, interview coach, webmaster, and then also found some time to do my regular job of fixing computers and providing technical support as a member of the IT department.

However, I recently received an amazing opportunity to join up with The Rubicon Project, an internet company with a “mission to automate the $65 billion global online advertising industry.” There I will be working alongside their Engineering Team doing Quality Assurance for the Project’s platform. It’s a great new opportunity to work with great new people, but it’s also bitter sweet to leave a place you have been working at for a little while. To all my coworkers at the League, good luck to all of you. And to all my new coworkers at Rubicon, I look forward to meeting all of you.

If you want to know more about the company, I’ve enclosed a Youtube video of the Rubicon Project’s HQ after the jump:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brbAtR3jn-4[/youtube]

Monetization Models for Video on the Internet

Allen Lew — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 18:38:09 +0000

I had a brief discussion with a friend about making money with Internet video. We looked at a couple of business models for a nonprofit to make money online and realized there were a couple of ways anybody could make some money with Internet video. Here are some suggestions for almost anybody to earn revenue from video on the web:

Take advertising on your site and/or videos. This probably isn’t feasible as a nonprofit (Update: this is possible with a nonprofit), but online advertising revenues will give you a somewhat decent amount of money for the amateur and is the most common video revenue model. In addition to ads on the producer’s website (generally provided by a third-party), most video hosting sites like Youtube or my personal favorite, Blip.tv, allow ads to be inserted before and after videos, and at designated times during the video.
Post the videos (or excerpts) on Youtube and Myspace. As a nonprofit, Youtube and Myspace will allow you to collect donations. For example, take a look at this page from the Anaheim Ballet. They have a donation button on the their page and on each of their video pages with Google Checkout integration. Also, having a Facebook Cause and/or Page as well, as they allow you to collect donations as well. Even if you are intending to sell the videos, having a small presence on these sites can at the very least draw some attention to your videos (and a random donation as well).
Creating an online video store- This is probably the most technically challenging option. It is possible to create an online store that sells video downloads using ecommerce software like Ubercart, a Drupal module for ecommerce, and others like Magento. You can also sell some of your stuff on iTunes and other services using a company like TuneCore.
Post videos online, but sell physical media (DVDs, booklets, etc.) – This is the model now for most television stations, including PBS. For example, the show Frontline on PBS is available online in its entirety, but is also sold as a DVD online, along with teachers guides, and other supplemental materials. You can even have these items made on demand via new websites like Lulu.com that print and make CD/DVDs and books when some one orders them.

So those are just some ideas I had about making money online with video. They are not mutually exculsive items (for example, 1 and 4 are completely complementary to each other). Feel free to also post a comment with any other ideas.

Automatic FTP uploads and downloads using BAT scripts

Allen Lew — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:29:44 +0000

How to automate FTP uploads from the Windows Command Line – This BAT script uses the FTP command in the command line and automating the actions into a script. The script can then be paired with other processes (like Scheduled … finish reading Automatic FTP uploads and downloads using BAT scripts No related posts.

Los Angeles Urban League Event Board

Allen Lew — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:37:27 +0000

In a similar vain to the Job Board I built for the LA Urban League, I created an event board using WordPress. The main plugins I’ve used are the Event Calendar for the event information and the Geopress plugin for locations.

Los Angeles Urban League Job Board

Allen Lew — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 07:15:02 +0000

Inspired by Recruitpress, a job board made with WordPress and a couple of packaged plugins, I’ve just deployed a job board for the Los Angeles Urban League. Basically, I’ve replaced the Secure Form Mailer Plugin For WordPress, used to apply for this job section of each job post, with the cforms plugin, which I felt was a bit more customizable.

Split First and Last Name into Seperate Columns in Excel.

Allen Lew — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 06:27:07 +0000

If you have a First Name and Last Name in one column in Excel, here’s a tutorial on splitting them into two separate columns (without VB macros) from LauraJ’s blog. It involves using the Data to Text feature. Very handy. … finish reading Split First and Last Name into Seperate Columns in Excel. Related posts:

How many countries can you name in five minutes?

Getting Flash to Work with Ubuntu 7.10

Allen Lew — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 06:00:08 +0000

If you haven’t been able to install Adobe Flash Player on your Ubuntu 7.10 install, Jayson Joseph Chacko wrote an excellent post with a set of terminal commands to get Adobe Flash installed. Thanks Jayson.

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Check out GMU’s Center for History and New Media Web projects

Allen Lew — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 18:23:35 +0000

Center for History and New Media

George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media has been really putting out some great online academic tools. They’re the ones behind the Zotero research extension for Firefox. Now they are developing some software for web sites like Omeka, an open source content management system for museum collections and exhibits, and ScholarPress, plugins designed to make WordPress more usable for college classes.

ScholarPress has two plugins right now, Courseware, for adding syllabi and assignments, and WPBook, a way of converting your WordPress blog as a Facebook Application. The two developers, Jeremey Boggs and Dave Lester, also host a podcast called THAT podcast and have posted a tutorial on using the Scholarpress plugins along with an interview with Matt Mullenweg as the first episode. I certainly admire them for the impressive amount of work they have put in to all of these projects and look forward to trying their tools out in the future. (via Photo Matt)

How many HTML tags can you name?

Allen Lew — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 20:29:00 +0000

For me, not that many:

(via Kottke)

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