Live Brum Monday (24th May)

It’s Monday so it’s Live Brum day. Following on from last week’s work I had intended to finish up some new Wordpress widgets available for you to play with. Unfortunately I got distracted and they’re not ready yet. Soon, I promise. I did, however, get a bunch of other stuff done. Details below.

Layout changes

The header is now full-width in your browser. Unless you have quite a big screen this should make little difference to your life. With my big screen I find it slightly more pleasing and that’s a good enough reason. Let me know if you disagree.

Venue information is now open by default. Previously it was hidden behind a ‘more info link’. i.e. http://livebrum.co.uk/venues/hare-and-hounds. For further explanation see the two before and after screenshots below.

Before

After

More images everywhere

I have been thinking about images. We have tons of great images on Live Brum and, to date, I’ve been using them with real moderation and care. Not any more. As an experiment I’m throwing up a load more preview images all over the site.

The downside of this is that the pages are a bit ‘heavier’ to load and the detailed listings start a bit lower down the page. If these are things that matter to you and you don’t like all this image nonsense then please tell me. Otherwise they’ll probably stay.

In particular, I’ve added a boatload of new images to the home page (12 actually). There’s no fancy algorithm for what get’s featured – it’s just the next 12 events coming up that have images. That’s all.

I’ve added more images to today, tomorrow and by date, i.e. 31st May.

You do know that you can look up what’s on any particular day just by changing the URL don’t you? i.e. if you type http://livebrum.co.uk/2010/05/31 you will see all events on that day. The format is simply http://livebrum.co.uk/yyyy/mm/dd if that helps.

And you do know that you can subscribe to a feed of all events on that day don’t you? So if your birthday (for instance) is on 23rd September then subscribe now. As events get added for that date your feed will update automatically.

You can subscribe in two ways. Firstly click the orange icon thingy on a particular page or just add .rss to your link. i.e. 2010/09/23.rss

Add to Google Calendar

As per the feedback from @domster and added to our shiny new feedback form, I have finally added an ‘Add to Google Calendar’ button on all the event pages. Sorry it took so long.

While I was doing that I rethought the whole venue section of an event a little bit. I’ve changed the colour and underlined the venue link to make it more visible as I think people were missing it.

I’ve opened up the performances bit if there are less than 5 performances. If you click on one of them then you get an .ics file which can go into things like iCal and other calendar software. That feature has always been there but I’m not sure if I ever mentioned it.

Oh and the times on your calendar files are right now. Cough.

Below another before and after comparison

Before

After

Feedback

Please do submit your feedback. I only got one request last week and if you don’t tell me what you want then I have no way of knowing what is important to you. As you have seen, you only have to ask.

At some point soon I will add a bunch of things from my todo list so you can vote them up or down and help me decide the priority of developments. You may have to bear with me though. I am insanely busy and next Monday is a bank holiday. I will probably take that day off and return to Live Brum with renewed vigour on Monday 7th June.

Posted in Developments, Live Brum, News | No Comments »

Live Brum Monday

As per the plan I spent today working on Live Brum.

Much of the day was spent catching up on correspondence. The info@livebrum.co.uk inbox had got wildly out of hand but is now sorted and under control. But look, if you are waiting for a reply from me and haven’t had it then please email me again as I may have missed your message. From here on in you can always expect a reply by the following Monday at the very latest.

As ever, events information that you send to events@livebrum.co.uk will continue to be dealt with as soon as possible but almost always within 24 hours.

Dealing with the Live Brum email backlog took longer than I anticipated but I did manage a few small improvements to the site today.

Digital Brum joins Live Brum

Events from Digital Brum are now also included in the main Live Brum listings. The main advantage of this change is that upcoming Digital events will be seen by a much wider audience and that feels like a good thing to me.

Live Brum sources

Each event now has a more prominent ’source’ link below the title. This shows where we got the information from. This is the same as the ‘more information’ link over there on the left but it seems that lots of people were missing that.

Send to a friend

Send to a friend functionality has returned. After giving up the battle with the spambots in late 2009 (who at one point were submitting rubbish to that form over 10,000 times a day) I have had another go at crafting something that puts a stop to the bulk of that while keeping it easy to use. To recap: If you click on ’send to a friend’ when viewing an event you get a small form slide into view so you can send that information to your friend via email.

Share event information on other sites

Until today there was also a panel called ‘Bookmark’ which had some increasingly out of date links. That panel now has a title of ‘Post this event to’ and I’ve updated the options to cover Twitter, Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Reddit and Stumbleupon. Along with the ‘Subscribe’ panel this is also now open by default.

Feedback

There is now a Live Brum Uservoice Forum where you can add your own requests and vote others up and down. This is the place both to ask for new features and report things that may be broken. If you use it then I will let my Monday’s be guided by what you think is most important.

There is also an ugly Feedback tab on the side of every page of Live Brum now. I promise to make that fit in a bit better next week.

That’s it. Not a huge amount for my first Live Brum Monday but not nothing either.

Next week

At the top of next week’s list is the first release of some Wordpress widgets. These will enable you to put Live Brum listings in the sidebar of your Wordpress site. A very early version of these can currently be seen in the sidebars of this very blog. They won’t be finished next week but I will make them available over at developer.livebrum.co.uk for other people to start testing and playing with. Full details next Monday.

Posted in Developments, Digital Brum, Live Brum | 2 Comments »

Live Brum is Two

It is with both mild surprise and huge delight that I can announce that Live Brum has reached the ripe old age of two. Two years! The usual ‘has it really been that long’ comments mingle with ‘feels like ten years’ to show that time is different for each of us.

To celebrate our first birthday we launched an entire new design. This year I have something slightly different but first a bit of background.

There are two key aspects to running Live Brum. The first is the maintenance of the listings. This is a big deal and, two years ago, was the biggest hurdle to overcome. There was, naturally, some doubt that we would be able to sustain the site in the longer term. I’m delighted to say that due to a small number of dedicated volunteers, the listings remain impressively up-to-date. We can’t guarantee to show everything that’s on in Birmingham but I think we are amongst the most comprehensive and reliable of your options. Most of this isn’t down to me.

In particular, Live Brum has one amazing volunteer who enters more data than everyone else put together. This person wishes to remain anonymous – and we must respect that – but we all owe them our gratitude for an incredible ongoing effort.

Right now we have approaching 26000 events in the database of which about 3500 are upcoming events. Events are being added at a rate of just over 1000 per month.

Before patting ourselves on the back too much though, this is not true of all related projects. Digital Brum limps along with just enough data to be useful. That’s pretty impressive actually as I haven’t personally entered an event on there for months. One or two more volunteers who could enter a couple of events a week would get that ship shape. Anybody?

Art Brum meanwhile is in the doldrums. Volunteers haven’t stepped forward to help with that one and while I thought I could maintain it, turns out I was wrong. As ever I just don’t have enough time. Again, if anyone wanted to volunteer to do some data entry then that would be delightful.

And then there’s All Brum. This shows the entire contents of the database. Live, Digital, Art and a few stray categories with little in them – results of half-developed ideas that petered out. People do use All Brum but it only gets about 10% of the traffic of Live Brum and, more to the point, it depresses me.

So, good and bad on the data entry front. But more good than bad overall.

The second aspect of running Live Brum is the maintenance and development of the code powering it. This has had precious little attention in recent months and is becoming a concern.

This code is also in use now on The Isle of Wight, in Worcester and the global Kiting Community amongst others. Similarly, the data is being used by an increasing variety of other sites and I am painfully aware how awkward some of the feeds are to re-use on your own sites.

I have a list a mile long of improvements I would like to make, features I would like to add, but simply haven’t found the time this year so far. This frustrates me. So it’s time to fix that.

After a bit of determined life-rearranging I am delighted to announce that from 17th May and for the forseeable future I will be spending every Monday working on Live Brum and family. That’s probably all I’m going to manage so progress isn’t going to be super fast but it will be steady and it will be ongoing.

The meat of what I have planned will have to wait for Monday 17th May, my first Live Brum day, but in short, you can expect news on the following soon.

• A place for feedback where you can tell me what you most want to see (and others can agree/disagree)
• A new space for those wanting to use the data, http://developer.livebrum.co.uk
• Live Brum will soon cover all genres including Digital and Art (not just live performances)
• All Brum will metamorphose into something slightly more general (to be defined)
• The Live Brum archives – easy access to our entire history of events in Birmingham

Ultimately I plan to start work on a new improved codebase which will lead to Live Brum version 3. However this will be some time in the making as I am not abandoning the current site where I have a raft of small improvements lined up.

Live Brum V3 will start with an API with a website to follow. The tentative plan right now is to start exposing that API to you lovely people a chunk at a time. With each release there will be example code showing you how to make use of it to put the data on your own site.

Additionally, there are some new flavours of the site brewing. A single venue version is bubbling away as is a ‘custom’ version where you can choose which venues/genres to show.

My plan is to write up my day’s work and post it to the Live Brum blog every Monday evening so you can keep track of what’s happening where.

Does this seem good to you? Sound off in the comments below and I’ll post an update on Monday 17th May (and every Monday except Bank Holidays after that).

Posted in All Brum, Art Brum, Digital Brum, Events On The Wight, Live Brum, Live Worcs, News | 2 Comments »

A whole new look

I’ve just activated a very new, still in progress, custom Wordpress theme for this site.

This brings the design into line with Live Brum. It’s probably broken in all sorts of horrible ways right now but I’m working on it and everything should come right in a day or three.

Please bear with me.

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Introducing Events On The Wight

It is with genuine delight that I can announce that Events.OnTheWight.com is now live.

Managed entirely independently by Simon and Sal, the fine people behind Ventnor Blog, the site is based on the same code that powers Live Brum and Live Worcs.

How did it come about

Well, at some point in the last few months I had a brief chat with Will Perrin of Talk About Local where (as it so often does with me) Live Brum came up in the conversation.

At some point after that, Will found himself at a conference in Stoke chatting to Simon and Sal from the Ventnor Blog. They were having problems finding good ways to display event data for the Isle of Wight.

Will mentioned me to them. They emailed me and, I’m not exaggerating here, two weeks later Events on The Wight sprung into life.

Why does this make me so incredibly happy?

I go back a long way with the Isle of Wight. My great aunt Sybil lived in Bonchurch, right next door to Ventnor throughout my childhood and I spent pretty much every summer there when I was growing up. It’s a magical place, only enhanced by my skewed childhood memories which are always of blue sky and glorious sunshine.

The summers I spent in Bonchurch were some of the most joyful times of my life. So much so that I’ve been back twice this year to relive old memories. On both occasions the sun shone brightly, enhancing those childhood memories and adding to the magic. Behold some 2009 photos.

Bonchurch sea front. Ventnor is just round the corner, about five minutes walk.

Bonchurch village.

Bonchurch Pond

So when, by complete chance, I got an email about doing an event listings site for the Island I jumped at the chance. It’s been thrilling to see the code beginning to power sites in other areas and Simon and Sal are the best possible people to be running it in the Isle of Wight.

Early feedback

The response to the launch has been tremendous. The Ventnor Blog announcement post generated some wonderful comments. I’ve copied a random selection below but it really is worth reading them all.

“I must say this is a brilliant idea – a one stop portal is a real asset, you despair of other offerings.”

“Fantastic. A much needed resources. Looks good, feels good, what’s not to like. Good luck with it.”

“lovin it VB! great stuff and another step forward in ruling the media-waves with community driven content.”

“Brilliant…..Sheer brilliance….Another wonderful asset for the Island community…It’s the way ahead. ”

Finally, news came a coupe of days ago that the site has been shortlisted for Hampshire Web Awards in the ‘Pride of Place’ category.

Exciting times.

Want a version for you area?

Well get in touch and let’s talk.

Posted in Events On The Wight, News | 1 Comment »

Introducing LiveWorcs.co.uk

I couldn’t be happier to announce that LiveWorcs.co.uk is now live.

Covering events of all types throughout the City of Worcester and maintained entirely independently from Live Brum, Live Worcs is the first listings site in the world outside Birmingham to use the Live Brum codebase!

There’s a blog too and you can find them on Twitter under the name @liveworcester

Talking of Twitter, there was a nice endorsement from Worcester City Council.

As ever you can find events by Date, Genre, Venue or Keyword Search with RSS feeds throughout.

Another good logo

Yep, we have Claire Hartley to thank for that. Starting with a brief that simply said ‘anything but a cathedral spire’ Claire came up with an original, iconic, design that seems to perfectly suit both the City and the website. Thanks Claire.

Posted in Live Worcs, News | No Comments »

The Live Brum Logo

Here’s a nice big image of the current Live Brum logo, designed by the immensely talented Sam Rayner.

I love it – it’s bright, cheerful, dynamic. It radiates energy and vibrancy which seems like a good way to represent this fine City. However, I’ve yet to meet anyone in person that can guess it’s distinctly Birmingham origins. It’s been fun letting people in on the ’secret’ individually but it’s time to go public with the big reveal.

However, looking at the comments on my previous post it seems that lot’s of people can easily guess with no wrong answers so far! Perhaps it’s not a oblique as I imagined.

Ponder it one more time. Can you guess it’s inspiration? Scroll down and all will be revealed.

It’s the Gravelly Hill Interchange, more commonly known as ‘Spaghetti Junction’.

So now you know.

Posted in Live Brum, News | No Comments »

The Live Brum re-design

I should have written this post months ago when the current design went live. Unfortunately that co-incided with an unusually busy (even for me) period of my life and so it went without mention. It’s time to put that right.

Live Brum originally launched with a home-grown design (which you can still see here). It worked and seemed to be popular but it also lacked a certain something. This design wasn’t intended to be anything special – just my attempt at presenting the information in the cleanest way possible. Anyway, I wasn’t satisfied.

Enter Simon Clayson based at the legendary former RAF base at Rissington. Following a quick meeting Simon quickly came up with a raft of great ideas which we gradually distilled down to what you see before you today. There’s also a Flickr set showing old and new side by side. Simon did a terrific job and was an absolute pleasure to work with.

This new design went live a few months ago now and has had universally positive feedback. This design also made it much easier to launch new variations and that was an important priority for me. Future posts will show why.

What about the logo?

I wanted Live Brum to have a logo. Days before the original site launch in May 2008, Sam Rayner knocked me up a few ideas. In the end, mostly due to time pressures, I launched without anything of note. However, one of Sam’s ideas in particular really stuck with me and, in the end, we ended up using it on the re-design.

Those colourful criss-crossing lines may not appear to mean much but they have a distinctly Birmingham flavour. I’ve asked around and, to date, I’ve not met anyone that worked out their inspiration. Can you? I promise I’ll reveal all in the next few days.

Posted in Live Brum, News | 6 Comments »

Signs of Life

So, it’s been a while…

Since the launch of Art Brum and Digital Brum things have gone a bit quiet round here. Sorry about that.

However, despite the silence, Live Brum and family continue to thrive. Developments have been happening in the background and it’s time to start telling you about them. Overdue actually but real life has been particularly real recently so I’m running behind.

Bear with me, there will be posts.

Posted in Live Brum, News | No Comments »

Art Brum is live

I’m delighted to announce that, bang on schedule, Art Brum is now live and available for your delectation.

It works much like Live Brum but for art and exhibitions around the City. You can see what’s on today, or browse by venue or date. There’s RSS feeds everywhere so you can subscribe to all events, events at a particular venue, even a feed of results for a particular search term.

As ever, it’s not finished. Still to come is a list of permanent and semi-permanent exhibitions which we’ll display alongside the main listings in some places. Some of the current listings such as Dürer to Spencer may get demoted to this area as I redefine them as semi-permanent. It’s all about trying to find a balance between showing everything that’s on and not having some of the exciting, short run events get drowned out. We’re going to keep experimenting with this over the coming weeks. Let us know if you have any strong feelings or brilliant ideas!

If you know about an Art related event happening in Birmingham that isn’t in then please let us know and we’ll add it immediately. Even better, you could even do it yourself. Again, just get in touch and we’ll sort you out with an account that allows you to add and edit data directly.

Finally, for those of you who like both art and live performance, there is now a site that shows you every event we’ve got. All Brum is also now live and shows everything from Live Brum, Art Brum and Digital Brum all in one big set of listings.

Enjoy.

Posted in Art Brum | No Comments »