Communication without complication

Using CODA to keep track of your social world...

Here's a PHP script which will give you your Twitter feed in CML, so you can just assign it to a CODA display. If you want to track more esoteric things, like the raising and lowering of Tower Bridge or the movements of the Isle of Wight ferry, you may prefer to create a separate Twitter account just for your CODA screen rather than mixing them in with your normal friends!

Here's a way to get an image chosen at random from a directory of images on a web server.

With this, you can change what's being displayed simply by adding images to or removing them from the directory. It uses PHP, so you'll need to have that enabled on your web server if it isn't already. It's a very simple script that just picks a random file (one with an image extension) from its own directory and returns it.

Here's the script: index-php.php.txt.

The <div> tag in CML now has three new features which can make your screen layouts more attractive.

translucent backgrounds

You can set the backgroundOpacity attribute to make semi-transparent overlays

rounded corners

The cornerRadius attribute lets you be a bit less square

vertical gradients

Divs can change colour from top to bottom using the backgroundGradientColors attribute.

If you want to add an interesting background to your CML-based displays, you can create an image in another package - say, Keynote, Photoshop or Powerpoint - and specify a full-screen div containing that image before overwriting it with your hand-tweaked or code-generated CML content.

The relevant CML used for this example is...

On the right-hand side of many of the CODA pages, there are 'shortcut boxes' which can be a very quick way to achieve certain common tasks. It's worth getting to know them as they can save a lot of time.

On the information page for a display, for example, you'll find the 'Source search' box.

Type in a few letters and CODA will search through the names, tags, and descriptions of your sources to find the ones that match. Simply clicking on one of the names will assign it to that display; much quicker than using the 'Edit display details' link at the bottom of the page.

There's a similar 'Add a source' box on an album page...

Mac OS X includes a wonderful feature called PDF Services, which lets you create a PDF and send it to a folder or to some other process using a button in the File > Print dialog. It's available from almost every application that can print.

So we can create a PDF Service which takes the print output from an application and creates a ZIP file full of PNG images, one per page, ready for you to upload to CODA as an album, all with just a click or two. You can quickly create a slideshow on a CODA display from whichever application you prefer; Powerpoint, Keynote, Word, Aperture... the choice is yours.

Here's how to set it up.

It's easy to create your own CML files, save them on a web server and assign them to a screen. But don't forget that they can be dynamically generated by a piece of software.

Here, for example, is a simple PHP script which you can put on a Linux-based web server and it will show you the current load on that server.

One easy way to create content for your CODA system is to use a presentation application such as Powerpoint, Keynote, or OpenOffice Impress. Before too long we hope to support many of these formats directly, but in the meantime you can use their 'Save as images' features.

Google Calendars are a great way to put timetable information, company appointments, meeting-room bookings etc onto a CODA screen. Here's how to do it:

Photocasts are a way of distributing images using RSS feeds. They are typically used by photo-sharing sites such as Flickr; you can subscribe to a friend's feed using CODA and you will see a selection of their most-recently-posted images which will update over time as they post new ones.