05 - The Concept
Performa – The Concept
05 - The Concept ↑Performa (Performance Analysis) is a web application specifically designed to be used on a handheld device such as the iPhone/ipod touch. The web application is optimised to use the full functionality that the iPhone provides.
The web app will allow users to easily take statistical analysis of a sporting event. For my major project Performa will be aimed at Gaelic Football. The scenario for Performa to shine, would be a coach on the sideline of the pitch looking to take quick small stats of a team, and/or of an individual(s) on both his own team, and on the opposition. Normally this is done with a pen and paper, but to take these can be distracting from the match, and it can be quite time consuming to note all the stats as a lot of events can happen in 60 minutes of football.
This is where and when Performa will be a lifesaver to any coach in these circumstances. With Performa being a web app, all the coaches data will be automatically saved onto their account at the Performa website. The web app will allow to display the statistical data in percentages with a graph to easily illustrate the impact of the stats. Performa will collect data from the match with only a few quick touches on the iphone, allowing the coach to concentrate on the match. On the Performa website the coach will be allowed to easily create a template for Performa to use before the match starts. If changes in the match occur and Performa’s template needs to be altered this can be done all on the iPhone given the application great versitility.
Sports Analytical Tools
05 - The Concept ↑
I have nearly 4 years experience working as a Performance Analysis, 3 of those years working with County Armagh Seniors, Ladies, U-21s, Minors and development squads. Throughout these years I have been using Performance Analytical software called Focus X2 from Elite Sports Analysis. I found this to be a great piece of software for doing video analysis, but this process is time consuming ranging from 3-5 hours to analysis approx. 60 minutes of footage.
From the makers of Focus X2, they have recently launched The Analysis Zone (TAZ). This is a great tool that Elite Sports Analysis have released, and have to admit that I was thinking of a similar idea at one stage for my major project. They have created a website that allows coaches and athletes to access their analysis and upload videos, so that both parties can view the details from the comfort from their own home.
I have presented some examples of the power of video analysis at many conferences, and been present at Talks about other products within the Performance Analysis industry. A college of mine who is heavily involved with Rugby would use software called Gamebreaker. The makers of Gamebreaker have also developed many other products such as SportsCode, this is piece of software that the likes of Manchester United would be using. They have developed a handheld version of these products called CODA. This has been the closest product I have found that may be in competition to Performa. Although CODA is developed only for a PDA, and is to be used with other SportsCode technology meaning high costs.
However, I never have used any of their software but someday it would be nice this technology in action. If you have played Championship Manager 2008 before, you will be familiar with ProZone. This is the same idea of what SportsCode can produce.
Another Analytical software that I have come across is Dartfish. To me Dartfish is a more advance than Focus X2 but not as advanced as Gamebreaker. I am aware that the SINI (Sports Institute of Northern Ireland) are using both Dartfish and Focus X2. However, I have never actually used Dartfish before although I have heard only good things about it.
Designing for the iPhone
05 - The Concept ↑
This week I finally got to look through the article of web resources depot, I got a lot of good bookmarks more so on how to create an iPhone app and tutorials. There were some posts on design for the iPhone such as the iPhone Toolbox and Samples, and finally a post from Speckyboy on icons for iPhone.
Other sites that I have found with references to icons and PSD files relating to the iPhone:
The implementations of designing for the iPhone is I am working with a 480 x 320 pixel viewport, and this is both in portrait and landscape views, so my design will have to be able to cope with the change in the size within the viewport.
Frameworks
05 - The Concept ↑I have played with a few different frameworks over the last year, to see which would be the best to use to create my major project. I have used PHP quite a bit over the last two years now and becoming more comfortable with the language. However, I have been reading great things about using Frameworks so I wanted to find out what exactly a Framework is.
A Framework is similar to an API because it is used to accomplish a set of tasks within a project without spending time creating reusable components from scratch. What separates a framework from an API is size and scope. Most APIs are devoted to accomplishing a single task or implementing one protocol. Frameworks often provide facilities to manage much more complicated problems such as allowing a consistent code style within a large project, or providing a consistent look-and-feel within a large GUI-based project. A framework will often include related resources such as graphical elements or UI widgets to help the developers using the framework.
Source - http://www.wantii.com
Ruby on Rails
05 - The Concept ↑
I have played with Ruby on Rails a few months back after the popularity it got from Twitter, Basecamp and after Lee and Paddy launched the Big Word Project. I initially found it very difficult to setup as I have never used the terminal approach before, but I have setup the framework on my Dreamhost domain. I have signed up to the podcasts from building web apps. These are really detailed podcasts with screencasts, and would recommend them to anyone starting out with Ruby on Rails. However, I found read some articles highlighting some inefficiency with the framework when the application or site becomes large scaled, and I feel that learning a PHP framework would be more beneficial to me.
Zend Framework
05 - The Concept ↑
Zend Framework has a very impressive website with a lot of documentation, and at the end of my placement a college attended a training course of the framework and recommended to me. He also gave me a copy of some training video tutorials and e-book if I wanted to learn the framework. At the moment I am seriously considering this framework, however, I can remember reading that the maker of PHP, Rasmus Lerdorf, said that he would not recommend using frameworks but if he had to choose a framework he would choose Codeigniter.
Codeigniter
05 - The Concept ↑
Codeigniter is the framework used to create the very popular Content Management System (CMS) Expression Engine. To showcase the potential of the Framework the people behind Expression Engine, and Codeigniter (http://ellislab.com/) have created a sneak preview of Expression Engine v2.0. After seeing this video I was very impressed and can’t wait until to see the v2.0 released, but it allowed me to see what can be created with Codeigniter, and its up there with Zend Framework that I may use to code my major project.
CakePHP
05 - The Concept ↑
CakePHP is another nice framework I have had a look at, and it has a very impressive website and documentation similar to that of Zend Framework. Leighmac from phpvideotutorials.com has recently post some video tutorials on CakePHP creating an invoicing application. This gives me some food for thought as there are three very good frameworks each with their own advantages and disadvantages, and as I finalise my major project idea, I believe the right framework will be either Zend, Codeigniter or CakePHP.
Other Framworks out there:
05 - The Concept ↑- http://www.djangoproject.com/
- http://evocore.net/
- http://www.xisc.com
- http://www.springframework.org/node/622
- http://www.symfony-project.org
Fancy Zoom/ShadowBox
05 - The Concept ↑This week I wanted to use an image viewer so that uses could click on a small image and with a wee bit of JavaScript magic could allow the user to see a bigger view of the image or screenshot. I have bookmarked quite a few websites that I could of used such as:
LightWindow
05 - The Concept ↑LightWindow is ideal for what I was looking and even provide support for displaying a wide range of video formats such as flv, quicktime and swf. LightWindow also supports iframes, embedding websites, forms and Gallerys. It resizes the content to fit the user’s screen.
mooSlideBox 3.2
05 - The Concept ↑This is MooTools version of lightbox. I really like how the it slides in and bounces onto the screen. However, I felt that this can cover too much of the screen and felt that it wasn’t quite what I was looking for, something a little less obtrusive.
However, there were some very nice scripts that I really wanted to experiment with to find the one, which suited my blog, so I had played with the following scripts:
Lightview
05 - The Concept ↑Lightview is a nice script very similar to LightWindow, in terms of functionality (including Ajax calls) but used a different animation to appear onto the screen, and had used rounded corners on its frame.
Fancy Box
05 - The Concept ↑Fancy Box is a jQuery version of Fancy Zoom, which is very much what is used on the http://www.apple.co.uk website. I really like the effect with the animation of zooming into the image. However, I had a lot difficulty in getting this script to work on my site.
ShadowBox
05 - The Concept ↑When Fancy Box would not work for me, I looked at Shadowbox by Michael J. I. Jackson. This is a very impressive script that allowed me to setup an animated gallery by using the rel=”” attribute similar to the Lightbox’s way of grouping images. Another impressive feature that the script was that it could create an adapter, which meant that it could be coded to work with your favourite JavaScipt library. So I had it paired it up jQuery. Although I really liked this script I personally preferred Fancy Zoom.
Fancy Zoom
05 - The Concept ↑After reviewing the above scripts and experimenting with them all, although Fancy Zoom only works with images at the moment that is all that I am after in terms of usability. Also the main thing a like about the setup of Fancy Zoom is that the effect is automatically attached to all the anchor tags, therefore, meaning less markup for me to write and ultimately smaller file sizes.
sIFR3 and Typeface.js
05 - The Concept ↑I have been working with sIFR 3 on and off for the last three weeks, and I have finally have working on my site (as you can see from the main heading of each week). The font I am using is called Capture It and sorry Chris its unfortunately from dafont.com. When I was implementing and testing sIFR I found that it took a long time to load up the swf file of the font. So I thought I would see if there was anything else out there that may be better than sIFR 3.
I found Typeface, a JavaScript file that is the alternative to sIFR 3 and FLIR if you don’t want to use flash or php. Well I thought this look great from Chris Coyier website CSS-Tricks. That was until I found that it more or else there was only three fonts to choose from. Although it lets you upload your own font without copyright infringements it doesn’t quite work. As I looked through the comments on CSS-Tricks I found that a lot people were having problems with it so much so that Chris Coyier felt the need to take the article down as he was having problems with it as well. Really like the simplicity of the implementation of the script though, just wished you could choose from a wider range of fonts.
Google Analytics and Talk
05 - The Concept ↑I had wondered if something like Google Talk could be added to a website, in that for my major project if I had users who were having some difficulty, that I could offer another way of providing some support that is faster than email.
I had a look at my Google Analytics account both online and offline, to see how the offline app was working. I find the online version a lot more detailed but with one click I can see my account on Air app version, which is great.
404
05 - The Concept ↑Have a look at my 404 error message…
However, because the imdserver is running on an IIS Windows server, my .htaccess file won’t work as this is the setup for an Apache server, and for an IIS server I need to access the some panel directly to create the redirect.
Plans for Next Week
- I want to look at CSS3 and Web-kit to what is possibly with CSS on the Safari 2.0 on the iPhone
- Research into different Content Management System, that I may use for my major project
- Attend the Digital Futures talk at the Art College