Today i had an early morning meeting to discuss the implementation of an application i’ve been building (Go Links). I guess it’s a good thing that it’s a high profile enough application that it needs to be signed off on, by two Vice Chancellors But with that high profile comes responsibility, and necessary policies. For those that don’t know, the application allows permitted individuals (NC State Employees) to create shortened links that will auto-redirect people to another location. It’s exactly like any other link shortening service, except that it will be branded for NC State, and also it allows more individual management of ‘official’ links for the university.

For Example: Convert this URL: http://www.ncsu.edu/policies/informationtechnology/REG08.00.2.php —- Into this — go.ncsu.edu/ComputerUse

Pretty useful eh? The shortened link is much easier to use in print publications, email signatures, business cards etc.

The best thing about the application, is that i am going to distribute it to anyone who wants it. Open Source. That means that anyone who wants it, can download and install it for their company, university, whatever.

The bureaucratic necessities…..unfortunately that’s the nature of the beast. We talked about the operational plan for this application, which means that we decided on how to manage it if people do the wrong thing. Like if they made go.ncsu.edu/library redirect to www.duke.edu/library or something like that. There are checks in place to prevent certain links from being used, but as soon as you idiot-proof and tamper-proof an application, people will make better idiots, and better tamperers (is that even a word? guess so…no squiggly line). So, i’m really happy that we’re at the stage of almost launching the application, but i’m also admittedly a little frustrated at having to put all these checks in place to deal with people who do the wrong thing.

The goals are progressing well….pushups all done, running is done, slowly but surely the weekly goal list is getting checked off.

I was going to write a little more about Kiva.org today, but that will wait till another day. I have to go to indoor soccer for a 10:00pm kickoff.