From inside and out.
The new lscsa.com is arguably the most ambitious project to be directed by the Secretariat. It represents a major milestone as we take our giant step into the Internet-driven era.
Internally, lscsa.com is a domain with a solid collaboration infrastructure under the hood. For the rest of us, it is a suite of online services built on top of leading-edge web technologies.
Collaboration like Google.
Efficient collaboration requires a well-built infrastructure that just works. 6Deployed internally by Google themselves, Google Apps combines the powerful web applications essential for collaboration anytime, anywhere.
The implementation of the Google Apps infrastructure will not be limited to the Secretariat. Every working member in the Student Association will receive a custom account - studentID@lscsa.com.
Developed with businesses, organizations and educational institutes in mind, Google Apps brings together the internet giant’s market-leading online services, ranging from communication to productivity.
Thanks to the seamless integration between these services, working members can access and share their documents and meeting schedules wherever Internet connection is available, with a single account.
With all our data and applications sitting on Google’s fleet of reliable servers renowned for their rare downtime records, plus Google’s promise to take care of all maintenance work, we can concentrate on our innovations and enjoy an unprecedented level of streamlined collaboration.
See how we are going to put the bunch of web applications into action:
Gmail
A widely-acclaimed email service featuring a great spam filtering mechanism and an intelligent labeling architecture, 8accessible from virtually all third-party clients using POP3 or IMAP.
Google Talk
An instant messaging platform based on the open source Jabber/XMPP protocol, 9compatible with thousands of third-party clients across all platforms.
Google Calendar
Members can arrange meetings and events easily, and store their schedules up in the cloud. Also, automatic email notifications to all participants is a great time-saving feature. A shared calendar will be open to all schoolmates, viewable at lscsa.com (more details to follow in the next section), subscribe-able in most calendar applications.
Google Docs
An online office suite which enables real-time sharing and editing of documents, spreadsheets and presentations. It is also one of the first web applications to receive Gears support for offline editing.
Google Sites
The guided customization tools and WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor featured in Google Sites allow clubs and societies to create and update their own websites easily, without requiring any web publishing experiences.
Web technologies meet no boundaries.
The rising popularity of social-networking sites, blogs and sophisticated web applications has led us to the new internet era dubbed “Web 2.0”.
Millions of web developers worldwide have contributed to the pool by introducing new web technologies and frameworks which make development of RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) easier than ever. Now we are bringing them to the campus.
Rebuilt from the ground up, the new lscsa.com will comprise a collection of web services. On top of them will be a clean, intuitive and highly-interactive user interface that rivals many desktop applications.
We avoid employing proprietary platforms like Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, so that no installation of plugins is required. These plugins are known to be processor-intensive, resulted in ridiculously-high system requirements just to get them run smoothly.
Our applications are in full compliance with industry standards by design, which is essential for avoiding compatibility issues (usually misaligned text, images and form objects). This allows a uniform browsing experience across all modern browsers, regardless of the operating system used.
The Secretariat expects to have the following sections ready at launch:
The Cabinet
An introduction of the SA cabinet just like what you may have expected.
Storefront
A product showcase with detailed specifications and stock statuses. For the first time ever, schoolmates can place orders at home right in their browsers, using the simple Google Docs form.
Reviews
A library of comprehensive reviews of third-party revision notes and exercises issued by the Publications Board. Schoolmates can find out where to purchase them at a glance (thanks to the Google Maps API), and even submit their own ratings.
Calendar
An embedded version of the public calendar directly from our Google-based “intranet”, where schoolmates can check out up-to-date event schedules.
Gallery
An AJAX-based gallery which gathers photos from major events held by the Student Association. Schoolmates can view and download the photos in their full-size glory.
We will work on support for the popular browser extension 10Cooliris (formerly known as PicLens). Cooliris presents photos in an impressive, three-dimensional interface, under the “3D Wall” moniker. The extension works in major browsers including Windows Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari.
Ads
All schoolmates are welcome to post ads on lscsa.com at a nominal monthly fee. Every application entry will be carefully censored. Contents that present any form of menace, eroticism, personal attack, privacy infringement or racial and religious discrimination are strictly prohibited. We only accept text and static images, but not distracting animations such as animated GIFs, Flash and Silverlight contents.
In the near future, we plan to incorporate social-networking features with data interoperability platforms such as 11Google Friend Connect and 12Facebook Connect. Both platforms promise to make user data more portable, but are still far from general availability. As soon as they become mature, we shall start rolling out experimental builds of some exciting new features.
Flick, tap, scroll. On your iPhone.
In 2007, Apple struck the mobile phone industry with its revolutionary iPhone, which unearthed the amazing potential of the Internet on mobile devices. Now that the iPhone 3G has arrived Hong Kong, we are introducing our first iPhone web application - a lightweight, compact portal of lscsa.com designed specifically for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch.
To take advantage of the innovative 13touch gestures on the iPhone and iPod touch, our iPhone web application fits nicely into the huge, gorgeous screen on the devices, so that you do not have to zoom in and out. We study the 14iPhone Human Interface Guidelines posted by Apple, which suggests design principles and tips on building touch-friendly web applications.
The full-featured 15Safari web browser in the iPhone OS borrows the exact underlying rendering engine from its desktop brother - the open source 16WebKit. Mainstream media has proved Safari as the fastest browser on market, outscoring even Mozilla’s award-winning Firefox, not to mention that WebKit is one of the first rendering engines to score 100/100 in the 17Acid3 web compliance test. The upcoming 18SquirrelFish Javascript interpreter introduces significant improvement to the already-impressive Javascript performance, making WebKit the ideal environment for mobile web applications.
Visit lscsa.com/iphone on your iPhone or iPod touch.
