Many of my loyal readers know that I'm into Drupal in a pretty big way. Lots of things are going well for Drupal these days, including a better-than-ever release of Drupal 6 and a community's who only major problem is handling the exponentially rapid growth. Last week, tech celebrity Chris Pirillo announced a project called Gnomepal where he encouraged developers and users to use Drupal as a core for a community platform. It's just another reason why I think Drupal is the web framework of the future and that I hope I'll be able to develop with Drupal more in the future.

First, Chris talked of Drupal as a "community platform", but what does that mean? A community platform is a website where all aspects of an online community can be attached or created. Drupal's web site calls its software a "content management platform" and "community plumbing". This is very accurate because Drupal is made up of many modules that work on top of the main core of the site. At the core of the site is the basics of managing news items and basic pages of a website, but with only a couple clicks you can add a blog for each user (or subset of your users) or a discussion forum or an RSS aggregator of a number of specified feeds. I have literally implemented all of these in a matter of minutes on basic sites to facilitate community. In this way, a website for an online community can be started in minutes and features can be easily added to accommodate growing needs.

What's so great about a community platform? On many of the sites that I build at work, we often use three or four open-source applications - sometimes a CMS that manages pages, a blog, and a discussion forum, and then there may be some custom work to tie them together or bring in custom functionality. The problem is that each application has its own administration and logins. Not only do the owners of the site have to keep track of four different accounts, but the users of the site have a disjointed experience and have to sign up multiple times as well. This type of community platform allows you to make one site with all these different parts that integrate better and all use the same login account. The only downside is that, because it does everything, it does not do everything well. For example, WordPress is perfect for a blog and exactly what I use here because the features are more specialized for a blog. But if I wanted a blog and a forum, I'd install Drupal because users only need one account and the site is better integrated by design.

Second, what is a "web framework"? A web framework is a collection of functions and libraries that speeds up the web development process. The web framework is built on top of an existing language and speeds up the web application development process. Examples of web frameworks include Ruby on Rails, Django (for Python) and Zend Framework (for PHP). We use Zend Framework at work and it really helps in making custom applications because there's a system for database abstraction as well as systems for managing URLs, templating, and much more. It takes a bit of work to understand and get used to the framework, but once you get the hang of it, it speeds up the development process a bunch and still gives you the ability to override or extend the functionality gracefully.

Although Drupal does not use an MVC pattern like most of the other frameworks, it is a powerful web framework. All extensions are written as modules, and functions for themeing, rendering and organizing forms, etc. are all available from the Drupal core. Many of the contributed modules even provide their own functions for adding your own modules on top. Although Drupal's web framework API is a bit different than the major web framework players, it is still a great development system. And, again, one of my favorite things is that this web framework comes with a extensible Content Management System from the first moment you install it, giving you a shortcut to building most applications.

In the end, though, there is a problem. I've adopted Drupal as the platform of choice for a community platform, for example, on my music website, inReview.net, as well as the basic content management system for most sites I manage. The problem I've had is figuring out how to figure out problems and learn more. Through the Drupal book and asking a question or two in IRC and on drupal.org, I have gotten a long way and been able to develop a number of custom modules. However, in the development of inReview.net, I have gotten to the point where I'm spinning my wheels a lot. I'm trying to make as much of an automated site as possible but I cannot figure out how to organize and tie in the artist data throughout the site. I know Drupal can do it, but I cannot figure out a way how. I've tried posting a question about it on drupal.org, but I've never received an answer. I need some outside help, but I'm not sure where to get it.

The free options are to just read up a lot about stuff on drupal.org, but that takes a long time of reading and does not directly answer my problem. I could try networking and learning a bit at a local Drupal group, but their meetings already overlap with a People of Praise meeting I already have. There are a couple other local groups of Drupal developers, and maybe next time a Drupal Day is organized, I will go, but there seems to be no real low-cost solutions to my problem that don't require a bunch of time I do not have. I already do other free things such as a free Drupal podcast which has given me lots of ideas.

So, I think that means I need to spend some money to figure out more about Drupal. I could hire consultants from Lullabot or Bryght or somewhere to figure out and develop a solution, but that is just investing in my site and not my own learning. Plus, hiring consultants such as these could be very expensive. The solution, I think, is the Lullabot Training series. These world-class Drupal consultants have helped Warner Bros. Records, Sony Records, MTV.co.uk, Participant Productions and many others to create great-looking sites that leverage all the benefits of Drupal. Plus, they've done week-long training sessions in most major cities and even are bringing it this week to Australia. It is almost $2,000 to get a week of training, but it seems like it may be the answer to digging into Drupal a bit more. They are spending a week next month in Minneapolis, and I'm thinking about attending. I think I'd learn a lot from the classes, and just getting a week to play around with Drupal and have some guidance will probably be exactly what I'm looking for.

What do you think? I'm leaning towards thinking $2,000 of investment in my Drupal skills is probably worth it. Should I go? Is there something else I could do? Have you been to a Lullabot training and did it help you? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Last Thursday, Apple held an announcement on their campus that detailed some of their plans for the future of the iPhone. Although not much was surprising, many Apple fans and developers alike will be very happy with the amount of concerns that were answered by Apple. The only major concern for some people that was not answered was when the 3G-enabled iPhone will be coming for those faster speeds over cell networks, but with all the new capabilities with today's data speeds, developers should have plenty of projects to work on. Most of what Apple revealed will not be available to the public until June when iPhone software version 2.0 comes out, but both developers and corporations worldwide are looking forward to the future.

After a brief introduction by Steve Jobs, Senior VP of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller talked about the solutions for the corporate customers. Apple decided to license Microsoft's ActiveSync technology to enable corporate customers to get e-mail delivered to their iPhones directly. In a jab at RIM's BlackBerry services, Schiller explained that Apple's service does not rely on an intermediate service such as the one RIM has, but instead the iPhone communicates directly with the corporate server, and optionally via the Cisco VPN tool that will be built into the iPhone. Some commentators have said it less reliable than the system that RIM currently uses, but it seems more secure to me and less prone to system-wide outages because there's no intermediate service to go down like happens all too often for BlackBerry users. They performed an impressive demo where Schiller created a new contact on his Exchange-enabled phone and then some Exchange administrator in the audience added it immediately. Apple is even giving Exchange administrators the ability to reset the iPhone to factory settings whenever they want. For most corporations who already have an Exchange server, it seems like the iPhone will fit into the corporate environment with very little work.

The main portion of the presentation was done by Scott Forestall, Vice President of Platform Experience. Forestall announced the immediate availability of the iPhone SDK to developers and proceeded to show off the iPhone's ability in a number of ways. The SDK they released is the exact same as the one they used internally to develop all the apps standard on the iPhone, so it should be some incredible access to the phone's innards. Forestall reminded us that the iPhone is a stripped-down version of Mac OS X through and through, and therefore development will be much the same. For the Mac OS X, Apple has previously released their Cocoa API for developing applications, and now they're releasing an API called Cocoa Touch with functions for interacting via a multi-touch enabled screen. Tools include graphics layers, access to location-based awareness, accessing contact information and the photo picker, as well as data storage via the SQLite database.

Some of the funnest parts of the presentation for me was Forestall showing off the API. It seems like it might even be fun to develop for the iPhone (or maybe my Mac, as well). It seems that iPhone development will only be able to be done a Mac, which is not surprising. But, never having used the included Mac developer tools before, I was amazed at all the helpers they give. First, there's helpful apps such as an Interface Designer that allows the user to graphically layout and an amazing debugging application called Instruments. Forestall created a "Hello World" application and loaded it onto the iPhone connected to the computer and Instruments collected live information on how fast the program was running. He just clicked on an underperforming part of the graph and was able to see what parts of the code were running just then. And finally, the iPhone Simulator allows developers to run an iPhone on their desktop even if they do not own one. I had a bit of fun playing around with my virtual iPhone for a bit, although the Mobile Safari didn't want to bring up iPhone-specific versions of web pages - just the standard ones.

Forestall quickly showed off a couple demo apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch. First, they put together a simple photo editing program that uses the touch controls. Scott put his finger over the photo and the part under his finger bulged out. He then took two fingers and pinched another part of the photo together much like fun little photo editing programs do. The most exciting part, though, was the idea of just shaking the iPhone like an Etch-A-Sketch to reset the phone. They also made a little Starfox-like game called Touch Fighter. Just tap on the screen to shoot, and to move around, actually move the iPhone from side to side. You might look a bit like a dork jerking your iPhone around to dodge bullets, but it's probably pretty fun.

For the next section, Forestall introduced several application developers, mostly game companies, who got to spend only two weeks playing with the iPhone API. In most cases, they came up with some amazing stuff. First, a couple EA developers showed a basic port of this year's most anticipated game, Spore, which will be releasing for iPhone this fall. They were able to demo basic gameplay and species modification using the touch controls of the iPhone. Sega also showed a version of Super Monkey Ball that is only controlled by banking your iPhone from side to side and the developer claimed it was a very fluid, intuitive motion. It looks like a blast and it certainly looks like the games will abound on the iPhone.

Non-gaming apps were represented as well, with AOL Instant Messenger, Salesforce.com and Epocrates making appearances. The AIM client looked great and easy to use, and is great confirmation that Apple and AT&T aren't going to be sticklers about using lots of data services. Salesforce had an interesting application that would certainly help salespersons manage their bottom line and follow up on sales from anywhere. Epocrates, a healthcare information provider, had an extensive database of drugs loaded into the iPhone's database and made it really easy for doctors to search for drugs and find all kinds of information about conflicting drugs and even see hi-res photos of what the drug looks like. All these applications look just as nice as the ones Apple provide with the phone and provide plenty of features. Rumors over the last couple days have been saying that programs are not given the ability to run in the background or as a scheduled event, so that may be a hurdle to overcome with some developers. Also, at least on the phone, your application has to be ready to stop at a moment's notice in order to answer a phone call, so that may be a bit hard to account for.

Steve Jobs return to the stage of Apple Town Hall to tell us that developing your own applications for the iPhone is entirely free as long as you're just testing on the iPhone simulator. However, to load it onto an iPhone, you need to purchase a $99 certificate from Apple to verify you're a trackable, reputable devloper. You can test it on your own iPhone and then upload it to the iTunes App Store, where iPhone and iPod Touch users will be able to download applications. Developers will be able to sell their apps for any price they like, including free, but Apple will take 30% of the sale price for the hosting and listing of the program, which is comparable to similar centralized stores for Palm or Windows Mobile. Apple will test your program and verify that it's not malicious and then will post it online. The App Store will also be available directly on the device, so users don't have to get to a computer to download and install new applications, which is crucial, although you could if you like. This seems to be a good balance between security and usability of applications and doesn't seem overly expensive for developers.

In a somewhat odd announcement for the fabled "One more thing...", Steve Jobs and Kleiner Perkins, a large Venture Capital firm, announced the "iFund", which is $100 million that is set aside for startups who want to develop for the iPhone. I guess this is supposed to spur development for the iPhone and give the little guy a chance for iPhone development. This move doesn't sound bad, but it's just a bit odd.

Overall, it seems like the iPhone is headed firmly in the right direction, even if some of us wanted it about a year earlier. Still, it's not surprising, as Apple doesn't like to lay all its cards on the table - they'd rather stagger them over time as the market for the original product slows down. If the development for the iPhone is anywhere close to what Apple and most people are expecting, I'll be itching to get an iPhone for my next phone when my contract expires in 18 months.

This past week has been a historic week for people who leave their houses on a regular basis in Minnesota. This week, Governor Tim Pawlenty's often overused veto power was overruled by state legislators. This is a major win for the state, as Gov. Pawlenty has consistently vetoed every transportation bill to pass his desk in the last six years as well as worked to cut transportation funding in favor of balancing the state budget without raising taxes. (Some politicians who have not supported Pawlenty's transportation plans even blamed the governor's policies on the collapse of the I-35W bridge this past fall.)

The transportation bill will raise the state gas tax 5.5 cents per gallon. This is the first gas tax increase in 20 years, and will generate billions of dollars for transportation-related projects, of course mostly roads and bridges. Also, the seven-county Metro Area will add a quarter-percent sales tax that will raise approximately $1.1 billion over the next 10 years for public transportation projects such as light rail, improving bus service, and providing more options for bicyclists and pedestrians.

Under Pawlenty's terms as governor, I've seen transportation, especially public transportation, suffer. When I started using the buses about 6 or 7 years ago, the buses ran more often and many routes ran all night. But since then, almost no buses run after 1 am (thus negating the idea of using the bus after the bar) and only a handful of routes run more often than every 20 to 30 minutes. The Metropolitan Council has often been blamed for putting too much money into light rail at the expense of bus service, but the truth is that the Met Council was doing what they could with the limited finances they've been given.

I, for one, am very excited about the potential for this extra funding. There's no doubt that our roads and bridges can use the funding, unless we want to to turn more of our roads into private toll roads or something. Also, I'm excited about the potential for improvements in other forms of transportation such as buses and light rail, which have been sorely underfunded in the past couple years. Like I said in an opinion letter in a local newspaper, we need to promote mass transit and make it a robust system, otherwise no one will use it. I still think that is true after three years, and I am glad that the state legislators are willing to fight for it.

In other Twin Cities transportation news, MetroTransit recently updated their Trip Planner to have a better user interface and maps of the locations (although it should be using Google Maps). Also, I will be posting more on the current plans for the Central Corridor Light Rail in the next week and how it is progressing, so stay tuned.

Over Christmas, I was looking for a good game or toy for a young relative of mine. I had to take a picture of this hilarious-looking game box:

NOTE: Those friends of mine who know little of computers or know nothing about Linux may not find the humor in this.