page titles & free-form text
As discussed in an earlier post, schmedley now offers you some cool new tools to “Personalize Your Page”. The first two we want to tell you about are the “Page Title” and ”Free-Form Text Area”. They allow you to add different sizes and types of text areas to your customized schmedley pages, and are especially useful on public pages. Public pages are ones that are designed and published by you and are available at a custom URL – i.e. schmedley.com/username. The icons that launch these new tools are pictured below…
The Page Title can be as long as you’d like (so long as you’d like it to be less than 50 characters). My page is titled: “J.R.’s Personal schpace.” Clever, no? … No.
Adding a Page Title is easy. Simply click on the “page title” text to select the area and start typing. Then, put it where you want on the page and you’re in like Flynt. What makes a tool like this great is its intuitiveness – the ability to click on the title text and “edit in place” right there on your schmedley page without new windows or “edit screens” to load or open.
The “Free-Form Text Area” allows you to enter paragraphs of text to your page. And, just like the Page Title, you can place it anywhere on your page that you’d like. A major difference from the Page Title, however, is the ability to dynamically resize the “box” that contains your text by clicking and dragging on the bottom-right corner. You can make your text boxes skinny and tall, or short and fat. Create one big content area, photo captions, multiple columns, etc. – it’s entirely up to you. And, if there is a lot of content, and it extends beyond the viewable area of “the box”, a scrollbar is automatically generated for you.
The “Free-Form Text Area” works pretty much the same way as the “Page Title”. Start by clicking the “default” text block of latin text to select the “text area” and start typing. Then, when you’re done – resize it, and place it wherever you want, and away you go.
Coming next… “Personal Photos.” Until then, Hasta la bye bye. 
NEW! – personalize & publish
Allow us to introduce you to “the other side of schmedley”…
Our new webpage creation and publishing tools.
When building in these new features, we knew we wanted to make the process as easy as possible – and – to make it virtually impossible for our users to create an ugly webpage. We decided that to do this better than other websites, we would need to have a noticeably different and elegant user experience that was streamlined and simple. And, creating a beautiful webpage takes just a few minutes.
Here’s a list of some things we DON’T have…
- giant banner ads across the top of the screen
- lots of navigation links that your visitors don’t need to see
- annoying music and video players that start playing when someone enters the page
The end result is all about YOUR content – NOT links and advertising.
To get started, click the first icon in the schmedley dock…
This loads a launcher with all of the new personalization tools (pictured below)
We’ll be giving detailed information on each of these items in a series of future blog posts, but for now, a brief introduction to these cool new page creation tools is in order – Page Title, Free-Form Text Area, Personal Photos, MP3 Player, Video Player and “Embed Any Flash”.
With these new design tools, you will be able to make schmedley truly your own, and you’ll be able to show your friends, family and the world, what you are up to, and what interests you.
In the future we plan to offer templates (for building photo galleries, blogs, resumes, etc.) that will make custom page creation even easier. So, all you’ll have to do is provide the content.
schmedley – whatever you want it to be.
Facebook Connect in schmedley
On November 30, 2008, Facebook released Facebook Connect, its newest social integration tool, to developers. Facebook Connect allows programmers to insert Facebook users’ information into their webpages, such as: name, basic profile information, profile picture, friends, photos, events, groups, and more. Websites that offer this integration will sport this snazzy little button supplied by Facebook…
We were integrating Facebook data into our Facebook schmidget in schmedley long before this, but the release of Facebook Connect made our job a whole lot easier. When it was first announced, we jumped right in – schmedley was one of the first websites using this technology – We were granted special access to the Facebook Connect API before it was “whitelisted” and released to the general (developer) public.
Some other companies/websites currently using this technology include: TechCrunch, CNET, Red Bull, Netvibes, Brightkite, Vimeo, Gizmodo, Lifehacker and CNN’s “The Forum.”
The schmedley Facebook schmidget uses this technology in three ways:
1 – All of your friends’ most recent status updates are in the main body of the schmidget…
2 – Your entire friends list is in the slide-out drawer to the right…
* Both of these areas above link directly to your friends’ pages
3 – Post status updates to your profile from the bottom drawer…
Facebook Connect is also integrated with our new page creation and publishing tools…
When you’re about to publish your new creation, one button click posts a link to your page to your Facebook status, so everyone can see what you’ve been up to on schmedley.
background art by Robb Kramer
We are excited to see that one of schmedley’s partners (and a good friend of mine), Robb Kramer, is continuing to have great success. Robb is credited as Lead Sculptor on the new film from Focus Features, Coraline.
(theatrical release: February 6, 2009)
He carved many of the set details and
all of the exterior landscapes on the film. Additionally credited with Set Design, his concepts were used for the “Orchard/Well” set, as well as the climactic “Bug Room” interior set. Lastly, he did some design and art direction work on the “Real Garden” set. Robb developed many of the textures for the film using odd materials, like sponge, fur, hemp, etc.
The Coraline website states – “Your about to enter a world where everything you’ll see has been created by hand” – so it should come as no surprise that this project took almost three years to complete. Coraline was filmed using stop-motion animation and is also the first movie to be originally filmed in 3D! Starring Dakota Fanning in the lead role, and Teri Hatcher, the film was created by the visionary director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach – Director, Henry Selick. (pictured below – left – w/ Robb – right)
Other notable projects for Robb include: sculpting work on the now defunct Reserve Hotel & Casino in Henderson, NV and sculptures of Arabian horses for the Las Vegas residence of Wayne Newton. His original oil paintings and sculptures have found their way into many opulent homes in Hollywood and elsewhere. Many of his original works can be viewed on his website – robbkramer.com – some of which are even available for purchase.
Robb and I attended Wilson Jr. and Sr. High School together and then he took off to Georgia to attend Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD). He attended the Chautauqua Institution in NY, over the summers while in college, to hone his skills and work with many different types of media in art, including pencil, ink, pastels, as well as different sculpting techniques. He is currently living in Portland, Oregon after having bounced between Savannah, GA, Southeastern PA, Boulder, CO, and Las Vegas, NV for several years.
schmedley now features 10 of Robb’s original paintings, available as background desktop pictures that our users can add to their pages. To, get to them, make clicky-clicky on the “select a desktop picture” icon located in the lower-left of your screen…
…this loads the “desktop backgrounds” window. (shown below)
Then, click the tab in the window labeled “Robb Kramer”, and Bob’s yer uncle…
what i’m hooked on these days…
With the exception of my wife and son, I am totally hooked on Facebook these days (who isn’t, though?). It’s not the social aspect of it that I love so much, really. It’s an application on Facebook that I am hooked on. When I tell you what it is, you will think I’m trying to be funny, but the pun is totally unintentional. The application is Fish Wrangler.
You may wonder what the fuss is about this app. and I have no idea. It is a game in which you literally start out with either an oak branch or a broken rod and some chum and you cast every 15 minutes catching fish that earn you gold and points with which you can upgrade your fishing pole or buy chum or even a boat. 
As you go on and catch more fish, your pole levels up and you catch even more fish.
Along the way, treasure chests are found which contain either gold, chum or other treasures My favorite is the six-pack of stouts which allows you to cut up to 15 min. off your wait between casts. There are also special lures, which allow you to attract certain fish and repellants which chase off other types, of course.
I started this game out of curiosity, initially. The ad showed up on the side of my Facebook homepage and I figured I would take a look before canceling it. Now, I have over 680,000 points and I have, in just the past few days, opened up one of the secret islands to fish at when earning enough points.
Some of the other things this app. offers are the ability to fish in the monthly tournament earning points (in the form of rubies). The winners of the tourney. earn special chum that will catch you a fish most of the time. Another is a nightly fishing trip with either groups of 5 or 8, earning you gold and points faster than by yourself. You need 10,000 points to join these trips and be in the same island that the boat leader is leaving from.
Well, it’s almost time for me to cast again so I’m outta here. If you care to join me for some fishing, and you have Facebook, then get clickity-clicky here.
Good casting,
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