Publish, like, and find: building an open and curated ecosystem

Most ecosystems such as app stores are either open or curated. But why can’t we have both? Well, we can — all you need is three verbs: publish, find, and like. That goes for technology and anything else.

Usually there are two options when you want to publish an app: publish it to something like the iOS App Store (where people will find your app, but Apple reviewers can deny your submission) or just put it on your website (where it’s easy to publish, but there’s no guarantee anyone will see it.) Not the greatest set of options.

Isn’t there a way to combine the strengths of both of these to make for the best possible experience for both publishers and consumers? I think there is. It’s called an open and curated ecosystem. Let’s take a look at:

  • What open and curated ecosystems are
  • Examples of open and curated ecosystems
  • What you need to make an open and curated ecosystem
  • Examples of these ecosystems beyond just technology

and see if we can discover something about the power of crowdsourcing, innovation, and the three verbs publish, find, and like.

Curated vs. open ecosystems

The iOS App Store and open internet, among others, are app ecosystems — places where apps can be published and found. And I think the big factors that differentiate one ecosystem from another are whether the ecosystem is open, where anyone can publish apps and whether it is curated, where the best apps rise to the top and users are assured quality apps. That’s the major difference between the iOS store and the internet at large, which I mentioned earlier.

Let’s look at examples of curated and open ecosystems and what differentiates them.

How to make a website, part 1

I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but there’s this thing called the internet that people these days tend to use a lot. As I’ve said before, it’s extremely important nowadays to now how to develop for the web.

So what better way to learn and practice web development skills, all while making a name for yourself on the world’s biggest platform, than to create a website?

This is the first in a series of tutorials where I’ll show you, step-by-step, how to build an awesome website from scratch.

Let’s go, yo.

Why care about web development?

Say you want to write about how awesome your pet toaster is and publish it for everyone to see. Say you want to make an app where users can interact with their own virtual pet toasters. Say you want to start selling pet toasters online once you’ve convinced everyone how awesome they are.

In this case, I’d probably be a bit concerned about your sanity. But, more importantly, you’d want to learn some web development – that is, the art of creating web pages like the one you’re viewing right now.

A Twitter tutorial for beginners: Part 1

Twitter's new Logo, the Blue Bird
Twitter is an extremely powerful social & news network – you just have to learn how to use it.

Twitter is a great social network for catching up on the latest — oh hey, I got a new Tweet! Be back in a second.

Whoops, sorry. As I was saying, Twitter, the “other” social network, is an incredibly quick and easy way to catch up on all the news that’s fit to type in one convenient place. But, in order to fully make use of the #awesomeness that is Twitter, you’ve got to learn a bit. Luckily for you, @I have made one that @you are reading right now. #whatluck

Sorry for downtime – also, props to WebHostingHub

A closed box package cartoon clip art
Error 404, elephant not found

tl;dr – hathix.com had some downtime but my super-helpful host WebHostingHub cleared it up immediately. Also, I apologize for the fanboyishness – it’s just that WHH is that awesome.

I was recently working with some so-called cutting-edge web programming techniques (parsing JSON using PHP from client requests using JavaScript and jQuery… told you it was gory) and realized I needed a new version of some software on the server that hathix lives on.

Introducing Sprinkle Safari, a web adventure game

Elephant with donut icon png
The logo for Sprinkle Safari, the awesome web game finally released to the public.

I’ve got a dirty little secret. Well, not so dirty, really, more… creamy. Sugary. Frosty. Sprinkle-y.

Here it is: for the last year and more(computer searching reveals since January 29, 2011 – even before hathix.com was founded), I’ve been working nonstop on a “little” web-based adventure game. And it’s never been formally released to the public – until now.

Here’s a look at the making of the game. It’s taken 16 months and over 100 hours of development.