One of the interesting things we attempt to think about at Creative Synthesis is how the tools for pursuing artistic, social and scientific pursuits continue to evolve. The complexity of the tools we have available on the web is almost staggering. It is rare to see this illustrated so clearly as with pownce.
Pownce is a new twitter-esque mini blogging site with more room for structured content. What I found to be most interesting about Pownce was not its actual goal, implementation, or design (which are all nice). The fascinating part is to be found in the rarely traveled about page. Here Pownce illustrates, quite clearly, the building blocks involved in its creation.
The website is Django which is python powered and we use a mysql database. The servers are debian and our web servers run a combination of apache and Perlbal (by Danga Interactive). File storage is supported by S3 from Amazon Web Services. The desktop application is written in Flex for Adobe’s brand new AIR platform. We use some of the great FamFamFam Silk Icons and the ISO Series icons by Sodafish as well as some beautiful background illustrations by artists at iStockPhoto.
This is a beautiful illustration of what is going on with the web right now, how the things we can make in turn make other things and evolve in this tangled mess of code.
Oh and if you need a Pownce invite, go ahead and email hock [at] creativesynthesis.net
Share this:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
