Rolling Stone Federated Search

RollingStone.com just deployed a new federated search feature, showing top results from the Rolling Stone Archive along with the regular site search.

My team member David Benson created the search service used in the federated search, a stand-alone Archive search page, and all the necessary glue to automatically direct users back to the intended content after authenticating.

The end result is a great way to tie the archive deeper into the Rolling Stone site, and to provide historical context to a user’s search:

When clicking on an archive link, if not authenticated, you are presented with an upsell/login page.

Once signed in you are then shown the article you clicked on:

Or if you clicked the View All items link, the full archive search, with facet filters and sorting options:

Enjoy!

archive.rollingstone.com – another feather in our cap

With the successful launch of the new iPad-enabled Rolling Stone Archive, I figured I’d take the time out to congratulate our client, Bondi Digital, and my team at Applied Information Sciences (AIS): Jim Jackson, Robin Kaye, Ian Gilman and Siva Mallena  (with additional help from Leslee Sheu and Kevin Hanes).

Built on the same technology that we used to launch i.Playboy.com, the Rolling Stone archive combines our Silverlight viewer and the Html5, touch-optimized iPad viewer in a single site, sharing peripheral components such as menus and search features.  Per client requirements for Rolling Stone all desktop users will get the Silverlight-based viewer, with its keyboard and mouse integration, and deep zoom of images, while iPad users are automatically switched to the Html5 viewer.

Building and optimizing a highly graphics intensive app like this for the excellent, but admittedly limited, iPad browser has been a thoroughly enjoyable challenge. Showcasing our work to the public through another premier publication like Rolling Stone makes it all the more satisfying.

Our team is already onto the next publishing project – stay tuned…

Silliness/Project Management: Hug a Developer Today

Found the following on Scott Watermasysk's feed: too poignant not to pass on.

And as proof that humor + viral video + free works, I signed up for DevShop.com's free 3 person trial account.

Scrum in 90 minutes

I came across an updated version of the Mountain Goat Software Scrum presentation via Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day.

I thought a Google Docs version would be handy, so I took advantage of the Creative Commons license and (after some editing) uploaded the PPT file to Google Docs. Below is the result: