I am so proud today to see ChicagoNow featured in an article on Mashable as one of five web sites that could reshape the news. From the article:

Owned and operated by the "old media" outlet The Chicago Tribune, ChicagoNow drops traditional journalists and news reporting in favor of a large network of volunteer bloggers, all writing about the community, culture, politics, and everything else in the city of Chicago.

There is so much about this project I am proud of, but most of all it was the opportunity to work with such awesome people, from Tracy, Brent, Ryan, Muhammed, Alicia and so many more. Such awesome people are there for one simple reason: Bill Adee, a rare breed of manager who hires and recruits the best and the brightest and then does what so few other managers I have worked are willing or able to do: get out of their way.

When I think back upon what I built, some of the people I got to work with, like Jason Santa Maria, and what was accomplished in such a short period of time, I can honestly say it is one of my prouder moments.

Congrats and kudos to the entire ChicagoNow team!

Not too long ago Amazon made some important changes to its API to improve security, but this change had the unfortunate result of breaking Media Manager. My knee-jerk reaction was to just go into my code and implement the API change directly in my custom built Amazon API library -- because hey, it would fix the problem and allow me to go about my day. But working on Melody has been a reminder to me about how important it is to drop proprietary code in favor of third party libraries when they emerge. It is not always the easy thing to do, because it often requires a huge effort to rewire your code to a new library, but in most cases it is the right thing to do because in the long run it will:

• Consolidate development around a library that more people will benefit from.
• Bring more features to your users faster.
• Allow you to leverage documentation written and maintained by someone else.
• Increase the size of your support community.

And that is what I did with Media Manager. I dropped all of my old proprietary Amazon API code in favor of a widely used, well supported CPAN module called Net::Amazon. In the process I dramatically simplified my code base, I incorporated more features that have emerged from Amazon's API since I initially wrote Media Manager, and made the framework easier to extend and use. All in all, it is proving to be a great change for the plugin that brings more features and capabilities to Media Manager users.

However, this change may also mean changes for its users. For a lot of Media Manager users, this new version may mean that your template code will no longer work. This change which breaks backwards compability was unfortunate, but to a great extent unavoidable, especially if I wanted to maximize the end-user benefits for shifting to Net::Amazon. So if you are an existing user of Media Manager and are anxious to restore interoperability with Amazon, then please consult Media Manager's new documentation with its many template code samples to see what changes you might need to update your blog's templates.

You can download Media Manager 2.1 from github, and file support tickets and bug reports in lighthouse. Please, if you have problems, let me know so that I fix them as soon as possible.

Media Manager provides users and authors within Movable Type and Melody with the ability to search and insert media from a number of popular remote services like Amazon and YouTube. Using Media Manager one can open a dialog, enter a few search terms, select the book, DVD or video and optionally insert it into a blog post.

Once the media item has been selected it is automatically inserted into Movable Type or Melody's asset management system and can be view by going to "Manage Assets" under the Manage menu.

Installation

To install this plugin follow the instructions found here:

http://tinyurl.com/easy-plugin-install

Prerequisites

Keep in mind that before installing Media Manager you need to make sure you have:

• Movable Type 4.01 or greater.
• Digest::SHA perl module
• Cache::File perl module

Download

Download Media Manager from github.

Resources

For Media Manager

• Template Tag Documentation
• Frequently Asked Questions

Related

• Melody
• MovableType
• Media Manager Homepage
• Amazon Web Services
• Net::Amazon

Bug Reports

You can file bug reports here:

• Via the Web
• Via Email

Help and Donations

Media Manager represents a lot of work by one individual. While the author is happy to write this software, and support it completely free of charge, the author also appreciates and form of support you can provide. Please consult the following URL to learn more:

http://www.majordojo.com/projects/mediamanager.php

Copyright

(c) 2007-2008 Six Apart, Ltd. (c) 2009 Byrne Reese

License

Media Manager is licensed under the Artistic License.

Q: What is the difference between version 2.1 and 2.0?

A: In 2009 Amazon made a significant change to their AWS Product Marketing API on top of which Media Manager and MTAmazon are built. Media Manager 2.1 contains the fixes and changes necessary to make Media Manager work once again with Amazon.

In updating the software to work with Amazon's new API, Media Manager was overhauled to utilize the CPAN module Net::Amazon. For most people this is meaningless, so let me explain. Net::Amazon is a library, a small bit of software that talks to Amazon's APIs on behalf of Media Manager. The library is maintained by a third party and far more flexible and performant than anything that has previously shipped with Media Manager.

Q: What are the changes between version 1.0 and 2.0?

A: Media Manager 2.0 is a dramatic evolution from its predecessor. Media Manager now integrates far more seamlessly with Movable Type then ever before.

In this rearchitecture of the software, however, I redefined what the goals of the software are and adjusted the scope and feature set of the product to meet those goals. For example, Media Manager 1.0 was an evolution of BookQueue and BookQueueToo, which by their name should indicate that they presumed you were managing books alone. As a result Media Manager 1.0 allowed users to set the "status" of an item as either "reading," "read" or "unread."

That is flawed assumption, especially in light of the fact that those statii are irrelevant to CD's not to mention patio furniture - both of which are available through Amazon. What follows is a list of features that have been REMOVED:

• item statuses - users are encouraged to use Movable Type's built in tagging system to manage the state of an item
• reviews - now that Movable Type allows users to insert assets directly in their posts, there is no need to support the concept of a "review."
• ratings - ratings were associated with reviews in previous versions and since reviews are gone, so are ratings
• list import - i suspect many users did not make use of this feature so the ability to import items from an Amazon Wishlist has been removed
• finished on date - yeah, sorry about this one for now

Q: Is Media Manager 1.0 forward compatible with Media Manager 2.0?

A: Items found in Media Manager 1.0 will automatically be ported into the new Media Manager 2.0 and Movable Type 4.0 system. However, not all data will be carried over. Reviews, ratings, and statii will NOT be ported over. Not yet anyways.

Q: Will my Media Manager 1.x template tags work with MT4 and MM2.0?

A: No they will not. To simplify the code base and bring focus to the Media Manager application, all legacy template tags have been removed. Movable Type's core template tag set should be sufficient for anything most users need to do.

For the most part, Media Manager does not yet expose any template tags of its own. The only template tags exposes by this plugin are specifically for interfacing with Amazon's API.

AmazonItemSearch

AmazonItemSearch is a container tag and is responsible for conducting virtually all searches against Amazon's Marketing/Product API. Using this container tag you can search for Books, DVDs, or any product in their catalog, as well wishlists and more.

The arguments/attributes this template tag supports is drawn directly from the Net::Amazon. In fact, all of the search parameters supported by Net::Amazon's search() method are supported as attributed by this tag. This tag can be used to search for a specific item (e.g. by UPC or ASIN ID), or a group of items (e.g. by keyword or category).

For example, here are some of the search parameters supported by Net::Amazon (for a complete list please visit Net::Amazon's homepage).

• asin - Returns a single item identified by its ASIN (or Amazon ID).
• actor - Return items starring an actor (or actress!). This is useful for video. Can return many results.
• artist - Return items created by an artist. This is useful for music. Can return many results.
• author - Search for items created by the specified author. This is useful for books obviously. Can return many results.
• browsenode - Returns a list of items by category ID (node). For example node "4025" is the CGI books category. You can add a keywords parameter to filter the results by that keyword.
• exchange - Returns an item offered by a third-party seller. The item is referenced by the so-called exchange ID.
• keyword (or keywords) - Search by keyword, mandatory parameters keyword and mode. Can return many results.
• wishlist - Search for all items in a specified wishlist. Can return many results.
• upc - Music search by UPC (product barcode), mandatory parameter upc. mode has to be set to music. Returns at most one result.
• isbn - Book search by ISBN (International Standard Book Number), mandatory parameter isbn. Returns at most one result. When searching non-US locales use the 13-digit ISBN.
• similar - Search for all items similar to the one represented by the ASIN provided. Can return many results.
• blended - Initiate a search for items in all categories.
• seller - Start a search on items sold by a specific third-party seller, referenced by its ID (not seller name).
• mode - The catalog by which to restrict your search. Common values are: Books, DVD, DigitalMusic, Merchants, VHS, and Video. A complete list can be found on Amazon's web site.

You can even combine the attributes to create compound searches. For example, to search for all books about "Blogging" you would use this tag:

<mt:AmazonItemSearch mode="book" keyword="blogging">
  <mt:if name="__first__"><ul></mt:if>
  <li><$mt:AmazonTitle$></li>
  <mt:if name="__last__"></ul></mt:if>
</mt:AmazonItemSearch>

AmazonASIN

Return the ASIN of the current Amazon product or item in context. This must be contained by the AmazonItemSearch tag.

AmazonTitle

Return the title or product name of the current Amazon product or item in context. This must be contained by the AmazonItemSearch tag.

AmazonDetailPageURL

Return the URL to the product currently in context. This URL will contain your Amazon associates ID if you have specified one. This must be contained by the AmazonItemSearch tag.

AmazonProductGroup

Return the product group of the item currently in context. This must be contained by the AmazonItemSearch tag.

AmazonImageTag

This returns a complete HTML tag referring the image associated with the current item in context. A user can optionally specify the size of the image they would like returned. The following values are allowed to be used in the size attribute:

• thumb
• small
• medium
• large

For example, the following template tag:

<$mt:AmazonImageTag size="small"$>

Returns the following HTML:

<img src="URL" width="WIDTH" height="HEIGHT" alt="ITEM TITLE" />

AmazonCustomImageURL

Amazon has a robust system for transforming images in the catalog in a number of different ways. Through this mechanism users can:

• blur an image
• rotate an image
• specify the exact width of an image
• add a drop shadow to the image
• and more

To make it easier to tweak images in these ways, the CustomImageURL tag was created. It accepts the following attributes:

• size - small|medium|large|thumb
• width -
• blur - 0-100, where 0 is clear, and 100 is blurry as hell
• rotate -
• shadow - left|right, to display a drop shadow on the left and right side respectively
• percent - 0-100, to display a "45% off" pill on the image
• percent_loc - left|right to display the "percent off pill" in the lower left, or lower right hand corner respectively

AmazonPrice

This returns the price of the current item. Amazon of course sells multiple version of an item. One can buy an item used or new. To specify which price you would like to display on your weblog use the type attribute. Acceptable values are:

• New
• Used
• Refurbished
• Consult Amazon's Web services documentation for a complete list

For example:

<$mt:AmazonPrice type="New"$>

The price that is returned is "formatted." In other words, it contains a currency character (like the dollar, pound, or euro sign), and the necessary decimals.

AmazonItemProperty

This is one of the more powerful template tags provided by Media Manager for Amazon, as it provides direct access to any attribute or property that a product might have. The list of all of these properties is not listed here because it is an extensive list. The best place to look for these properties can be found at the Net::Amazon homepage. When you click through you will see a bunch of links to modules like:

• Net::Amazon::Property
• Net::Amazon::Property::Book
• Net::Amazon::Property::CE
• Net::Amazon::Property::DVD
• Net::Amazon::Property::Music
• Net::Amazon::Property::Software
• Net::Amazon::Property::VideoGames

These modules each document the list of properties associated with each product/media type. Let's look at an example. The media type of "Software" supports a property called "studio" which is meant to hold the name of the studio that produced the software. To output this property you could use the following code:

<mt:AmazonItemSearch asin="B00005JNOG">
<img src="<$mt:AmazonItemProperty property="ImageUrlMedium"$>" /><br />
<a href="<$mt:AmazonDetailPageURL$>"><$mt:AmazonTitle$></a> - 
Studio: <$mt:AmazonItemProperty property="studio"$>
</mt:AmazonItemSearch>

Example Code

The following template tag sample code will show the last 4 Amazon items you added your system.

<mt:Assets type="amazon" lastn="4">
<mt:AssetsHeader>
<div class="sidebar-module pkg" style="width: 185px; clear: right;">
  <h2 class="module-header">Currently</h2>
  <div class="module-content">
    <ul class="module-list"></mt:AssetsHeader>
      <li class="item" style="float:left">
        <a class="asset-image" href="<$mt:AssetURL$>">
          <div style="height: 75px; width: 75px; padding: 5px; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: center center; background-image: url(<$mt:AssetThumbnailURL width="75"$>)"></div></a>
      </li>
    <mt:AssetsFooter></ul>
  </div>
</div>
</mt:AssetsFooter>
</mt:Assets>

See the documentation for the "Assets" tag for more information.

I have a love/hate relationship with Amazon right now as they recently made changes to their Amazon Product Advertising API that has broken Media Manager. Now I have numerous users tapping their feet anxiously waiting for an update, during a time in which I really should be working. I have only myself to blame though as Amazon gave me more than enough warning of this change, emailed me numerous times warning me about it, and honestly did all that a services provider should do to inform me of this impending change and its consequences. But naturally I procrastinated, and now I must reap what I sow.

On the flip side, this change has forced me to crack open one of my oldest plugins, one built with a great deal of duct tape and chicken wire, and retool it to be slightly more modern. Most users of course won't appreciate or notice a change, but I myself am relieved to finally replace all of my home-grown web services code, with a more stable and tested equivalent. This hopefully will make it easier for me to add features in the future and not cringe quite as much whenever a user reports a bug.

So while I privately curse Amazon under my breath, Media Manager and Movable Type users can thank Amazon for forcing me to finally devote some time to this plugin.

And that's the good news: Media Manager is getting a much needed overhaul: it is being updated to work with Amazon's new API restoring its operability; and I am making this work available for download today. The bad news is that this work is not 100% complete, so I must beg the for the community's continued patience and understanding in that this overhaul will take a little more time to complete. In the meantime, those willing to experiment with something that is partially complete, you can download and follow my progress with Media Manager over at github, and you can report bugs via the web and email over at Lighthouse.

Unrivaled Experience

I have been an active contributor to the Movable Type community for years, and have launched some of its most successful plugins. But more importantly, I have played an instrumental role in shaping the platform itself to make it more extensible and accessible to developers. As a result, I have an intimate working knowledge of the product and its APIs. Here are just a few of the plugins I have developed:

• Media Manager
• Forum Utilities
• Contact Forms
• 404 Manager

Hire a Product Manager

I am not just a Movable Type Developer for hire - I am an experienced Product Manager that knows what makes a good user experience, how to determine what features make the most sense for your target audience, and how to best help you meet your needs, your schedule and your budget.

I am an experienced entrepreneur, blogger, community manager, technologist and product manager. My breadth of experience across the many disciplines that work together to make a product and community successful enable me to be incredibly creative and effective at helping clients bring innovative and engaging products to market.

Learn more about my services in the following areas:

• Blogging and Social Media
• Movable Type
• Software Development

With the release of Movable Type Pro, and with us making is completely free to bloggers, the Universal Template Set has been quickly making its way into the hands of more bloggers. I often get asked by other UTS users, "could you send me your templates, I would like a front door that displays my action streams like yours does."

In the past I just replied to those emails after having cut and paste my template code into the email. But recently I created a handy template set generator, or exporter for Movable Type that makes it a snap for me to package up all of my templates into an easy to install plugin.

And that is exactly what I did with my current design. So if you are looking for a Universal Template Set, or Professional Website variant that includes support for Action Streams, look no further. Here it is:

Download Majordojo UTS now.

Prerequisites

• Action Streams
• Media Manager

Features

• Front door that has a list of recent blog entries, the last 20 items from your action stream, and a stream of items your are consuming from Amazon, YouTube and Flickr.
• A dedicated page and archive of Action Streams.
• Action Streams Atom Feed

Feedback

Yes, I want to hear it. Send me a comment.

CMSWire recently published a video/interview with me about Movable Type 4, the Movable Type Community Solution and MTOS and the future of blogging and the future of products at Six Apart and... no that's it.

During a recent visit to the Six Apart offices in San Francisco, we had a chance to pick the brains of one of the fine gentlemen sitting in the eye of this storm. Byrne Reese is the lead product manager for Movable Type. He’s the person primarily responsible for the release of Movable Type 4, and has been intimately involved in what’s now called the Movable Type Community Solution. Byrne is presently heads-down on the open source version of Movable Type (MTOS).

So yesterday was a day just like any other day, except that I had the pleasure of listening to a Movable Type user rant about our claimed, but "lacking" support for podcasting. Man, it hurts hearing such a passionate user become so frustrated.

But it is precisely at times like those that we at Six Apart swallow our pride and listen to our users. Not hear them. But actually listen to them.

And you know what, Todd is right about at least one thing: Movable Type's support for podcasting could be better. A lot better. So I went ahead and slapped together the first Podcasting Plugin for Movable Type 4.0, and I call upon Todd (and the rest of the Movable Type user community) to help me make this the best podcasting plugin for any blogging product.

Now I put together this first pass really quickly - in just a couple of hours actually, which I think is a testament to how easy it is to build a plugin on Movable Type for anyone who knows a little Perl, not to mention evidence to what it means to be a true Media Platform (see also the YouTube, Flickr and Amazon asset integration provided by Media Manager).

But I digress. I purposefully put together the most minimal feature set possible and still meet Todd's basic requirement: the ability to link to an externally hosted MP3 file and have Movable Type encode the necessary enclosures within an RSS and/or Atom feed. For fun I am redistributing a free flash MP3 player licensed under the creative commons to make it easy for users to allow readers to listen to their MP3 files directly from their blog.

But now I need to pass the baton to Todd, ProNet (especially Budd) and any other serious podcaster (Niall?) to help me shape the remaining feature set for this plugin. As a Product Manager myself I am reasonably certain think I could define a feature set myself, despite how clueless Todd may think I am, but I really do want this plugin to be something informed directly by the community. So please, everyone, chime in.

Todd, I am personally sorry you had a hard time with Movable Type. I sincerely hope this plugin will begin to provide the functionality you need, and I hope we can continue to evolve its feature set together as a team.

In yesterday's hackathon I took another whack at Media Manager 2.0 adding support for two of the web's most popular media sharing services, Flickr and YouTube.

I have yet to update the documentation for these new services, so here are a few things you should know.

1. YouTube support requires no special configuration. Yay YouTube! 2. Flickr support requires that you register for a Flickr API Key, that you will input into your System Preferences for the Flickr plugin. Once that has been setup, you need to go to your profile, select "Flickr Auh" and authorize your MT blog to access your Flickr account.

Flickr support still needs a lot of work - especially in the search area. But this is likely to get overhauled a great deal as Media Manager because more of a framework for supporting third party media integration with MT.

The download/build below is an early build for which I have done very little testing. If you are a brave soul I would really appreciate your help and feedback in downloading and testing it.

» Download Media Manager 2.0 Beta 2.

Media Manager is still in beta for Movable Type 4.0, but it is still relatively stable and in use by a number of different users across the web. To help demonstrate how seamlessly Movable Type can integrate with a third party content provider, like Amazon, I created a quick screencast demonstrating the plugin, which makes extensive use of Movable Type's extensible asset framework.

Media Manager has been a hobby of mine ever since I first started working for SIx Apart; from my first release of BookQueueToo, which was an expanded version of BookQueue, to a nearly completely rewritten Media Manager for Movable Type 3.x, this plugin has been how I, as the Product Manager for Movable Type, understand the developer experience of building plugins with the Movable Type platform.

When I set out to update Media Manager to work with Movable Type 4.0, I really wanted to take a fresh look at how it was built, and what the user experience was like. My previous versions of Media Manager surfaced far too much complexity by trying to bundle too many different capabilities into the product, like "reviews" and "ratings" which are probably, in all honesty, functionality best left to be fulfilled by other more specialized plugins. I also wanted to remove some vestigial features that were left over from the plugin's earliest incarnations, such as the statuses "read," "reading," and "not read" - which are perfect if the only thing you consume is books, not so great if you like DVDs, CDs and even kitchen appliances.

Despite however Media Manager's reduction in complexity, Media Manager 2.0 is a far more advanced plugin then its predecessors. That is because it integrates more smoothly and seamlessly with the core Movable Type user experience then ever before, thanks to Movable Type's incredible developer APIs. However, to some users Media Manager may seem too simple having "lost" many of its formally core features. For example here are the features that will ultimately be removed from the core Media Manager plugin once it is officially released later this year:

• Almost all of Media Manager's template tags will be completely removed in favor of template tags defined by Movable Type itself
• Reviews have been completely removed, because Movable Type now makes it crazy-easy to insert assets, like Books and DVDs from Amazon, into entries and page content.
• Ratings have been completely removed because this is functionality that is best served by another plugin like Mark Carey's Ajax Rating plugin.

I do this not only because I want Media Manager to serve as a reference implementation to other developers on how plugins should be built and how they can best leverage capabilities within the platform, but also because it is what is best for the product. I want it to be simpler and easier to use, more focused, and capable ultimately of support services like YouTube and Flickr.

So today, I release the first public beta of Media Manager 2.0 to hear your feedback and your thoughts on the changes I have made, as well as get your advice and suggestions on how I can make Media Manager better.

• Download MediaManager-2.0b1.zip

Overview

MTAmazon is a plugin for Movable Type that provides template tags for displaying information from Amazon's product catalog.

Important Notice

MTAmazon is no longer maintained as a separate stand alone plugin. Users wishing to integrate Movable Type with Amazon should use Media Manager (which MTAmazon comes bundled with).

History

• MTAmazon was originally written by Adam Kalsey. As I developed Media Manager I wished to make changes and Adam allowed me to take over development of his plugin.
• I initially renamed and repackaged MTAmazon for Movable Type 3.2 and thought it clever to name the software MTAmazon32. I have since regretted that decision as it only has led to confusion about the difference between MTAmazon and MTAmazon32. In truth there is little difference.
• Later I found that most users wishing to use MTAmazon, really desired the functionality of Media Manager which made great use of MTAmazon's functionality. To simplify the installation of Media Manager, I began to bundle MTAmazon with Media Manager, which I continue to do todat.

Latest Documentation

Below is the documentation for the version of MTAmazon that ships with Media Manager.

• MTAmazon 3.0 Template Tag Reference

Legacy Documentation

• What is Amazon32?
• Installing MTAmazon32
• MTAmazon32 Template Tag Reference
• Troubleshooting MTAmazon: "Nothing shows up for me!"
• MTAmazon Getting Started Guide

Download

Users wishing the most recent version of MTAmazon should download Media Manager, which MTAmazon is now bundled with. Only users of Movable Type 3.2 and before download the following packages.

• Unix (tar.gz)
• Windows (zip)

Plumbing MTAmazon 3.0 with an automated installation and upgrade process was easy. So without further ado, here is the official MTAmazon 3.0 Beta. With the release of this beta my support for the 1.3.3 version will dwindle in favor of the more up-to-date software. I have learned a lot from not only maintaining previous MTAmazon versions but also from trying to build on top of MTAmazon as a plugin developer. I have done my best to incorporate those learnings into this latest version of the software in an attempt to make MTAmazon easier to use and install, more communicative in the event of an error, more flexible and configurable, and of course, easier to incorporate into and reuse in other plugins.

And with MTAmazon 3.0, a long overdue release, I believe I have achieved that. But the proof is in the pudding. I need help testing the new version. And don’t worry — MTAmazon 3.0 can live quite peacefully right along side other versions of MTAmazon with absolutely no conflicts, so there is no need to worry that this Beta software will in anyway interfere with your existing blogs pre-existing integration with Amazon Web Services.

But there is also another reason why this software upgrade is important. Amazon no longer supports Developer Tokens and Subscriber Ids. So if you were a new Amazon Web Services user/developer, then that means you would have been unable to use previous versions of MTAmazon and Media Manager. snif

So don’t delay Movable Type users, download MTAmazon 3.0 (available in Windows and Unix formats) and help me test it now!

The following requires that you have Media Manager installed, and if you are using a more recent version of Media Manager, this widget may have been installed for you. This widget displays a list of books labeled with a status of “reading” and links them automatically to Amazon.

In my work with the Atom Working Group, which I admit, has been scant recently, I have become really impressed with the number of Atom Extensions being defined and developed by the community - a testament to Atom’s extensibility. One in particular, the Feed Thread Extension, authored by James Snell, is probably one of the most important because it is likely to be the one most quickly adopted by the market. I have been working with James on refining the specification for some time and am happy to announce the availability of a new Movable Type plugin [tentatively] called “Feed Manager,” a plugin that provides turn-key comment feeds for your Movable Type weblog.