Status of Literacy Bridge Technology Committee
Cliff Schmidt
Thank you all for offering to help with Literacy Bridge's technology
needs, and apologize for the silence for the last couple months.
Here's an update on what we need help with:
We have a few basic needs right now:
1. We need a developer to build Salesforce apps for us. We use
Salesforce to track donations, sales, and volunteers; but we could be
much more efficient with a few custom apps.
2. We could really a developer to work on integrating Google
Checkout/Wallet with or Salesforce database. I would also love to
have someone figure out how we can set a web page on our site to allow
someone to make monthly donations through Google Checkout/Wallet.
Right now we use Paypal because it's easy, but using Google would save
us about 3% on fees.
3. We need C developers to work on the embedded firmware for the
Talking Book.
But here's the problem: it costs about $110 in hardware (plus
shipping) for any of you to be able to get started. Of course, any of
you who wanted to buy that hardware would be most welcome, but we
don't have the money at Literacy Bridge to send that hardware to
anyone who asks. This is one reason why we've been slow to figure out
how we can use those of you who have offered to help us with writing
code for the Talking Book.
Michael Busch, who has been volunteering for Literacy Bridge from the
beginning, has suggested that we try to create a Talking Book
simulator so that volunteer C developers could work on bugs and new
features on their personal computer without having the actual Talking
Book hardware. A few of us are hoping to start work on this simulator
in the next month or so.
4. We need Java developers to help us work on the Audio Content Manager
This doesn't require a Talking Book to run and operate, although it
helps to have a Talking Book to test some of the features (the Talking
Book costs about $30 + shipping). You can read more about this here:
http://www.literacybridge.org/talking-book/audio-content/ and
http://www.literacybridge.org/2011/07/21/helping-content-authors-create-more-effective-content/
5. We need people to help us improve our user manual and to help us
create documentation for other developers. Noirin and Rich have
offered to help with some of this, but they could use others to help.
Of course, to help with documentation, you really need to have the
hardware (until we have the simulator ready) -- either just the
Talking Book ($30) or the programming hardware too ($110).
For those of you who would like to begin helping right away, please
reply here and let us know what you can help with. If it's something
that requires hardware and you'd like to pay for the hardware, we
would love that! But we understand that this might not work for many
people, and for those of you, please wait for our simulator, which
might be ready in the next 2-5 months.
If you want to help on one of the needs that doesn't require having
hardware, let us know that too. If you want to work on the Java-based
ACM, take a look at the issue list for it at
jira.literacybridge.org/browse/ACM.
Thanks again to all of you for offering to help, and sorry that it's
taken so long for me to kick things off and tell you what we need.
Cliff
(Founder and Executive Director of Literacy Bridge)
Henri Yandell
#1: On the Salesforce apps - have you created JIRA issues and
braindumped what you'd like? I didn't see anything there. Unless it's
part of GENERAL-6.
#2: GENERAL-6 seems to imply Google Checkout is already setup - sounds
like it's not done yet. Another issue to cover needing Checkout
connecting?
#3: Simulator sounds cool :) Michael - any further thoughts on that?
I'm very naive on how you might write a simulator for a C platform
(aka, I haven't got a clue). Happy to help and learn though.
#4: Lots of Java devs out there :) Should be the easiest to 'hire'
for, but probably hard to connect people as there's a dearth of info.
Items that would help (imo):
* A page detailing how to checkout, edit, compile, and submit a
patch for review.
* A next version in JIRA detailing what issues are flagged as
desirable for that.
* Add a custom field in JIRA mentioning whether a device is required
or not to work on that issue.
* Looks like 1.0 and 1.1 have been finished, so should be marked as released.
Once that's done, tweeting for help will most likely discover an
individual or two.
#5: What documentation? (aka where should we look?) Bring the water to
us horses :)
Happy to spend the $110 - how do I go about doing that?
Hen