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Caspio Bridge

We were just told about Caspio Bridge and how it's being used more and more by other Advance newspapers.

Any opinions on it?

Permalink Reply by Dave Brooks on April 14, 2008 at 12:15pm: We use Caspio at the Nashua (NH) Telegraph ("we" meaning "me", a reporter-turned-"special projects" guy) and it's fine. You create an Excel sheet, upload it, stick the result on your Web page and voia, a searchable database. I can literally have a straightforward database online in an hour, once I get the data.

It's not as powerful as a real relational database, it's not as pretty as something you can design yourself, but it's *possible* - you don't have to wait for IT folks to actually do it. It's simple enough that newsroom folks with only a moderate computer comfort level can use it. It seems to be a reasonable cost, too, although I don't deal directly with that, thank goodness.

This is our big Caspio project - a searchable database of local child-care providers, with links to PDFs of the actual documents. I'm in the process of updating it on the fly, which is easy:
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=news0504

This is a small Caspio project - searchable database of safety reports from local schools, that goes to a list of results, nothing more.

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071216/...

(Hey - you can't preview your posts here. I hope this is OK); ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Nancy JonesFrancis on April 14, 2008 at 9:41pm: Thank you, David, for these examples. They both are important issues for parents, so I can imagine they would go back to these "search engines" over and over again. That can be the beauty of using Caspio.

Does the software lend itself to creative elements? I have only seen creative pieces surrounding a Caspio graphic.

Thanks, again.

Nancy; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dave Brooks on April 15, 2008 at 8:29am: I'm a words and numbers guy - graphic elements are beyond me. But the Plain Dealer has made the search boxes look much nicer than the vanilla Caspio look we use; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Nancy JonesFrancis on April 16, 2008 at 10:23pm: Hi Dave,

Thanks for the added comment. I've seen other Caspio graphics with that same "vanilla Caspio look" and wondered.

So one can stretch beyond the barebones look without going wild crazy, of course.

Nancy; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Mary Ann Chick Whiteside on April 14, 2008 at 9:56pm: Did you catch this discussion?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Nancy JonesFrancis on April 14, 2008 at 10:06pm: No, I didn't.

I looked in the Advance group, but didn't see anything ... probably had to dig deeper.

Thanks, for the link!!

Nancy; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Nancy JonesFrancis on April 16, 2008 at 10:32pm: Oh, Mary Ann, I meant to add that my husband and I were in the middle of a long-needed vacation when you all started this topic!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by John Kroll on April 17, 2008 at 1:20pm: Nancy,

The default Caspio look isn't very exciting, but there are several ways to deal with that:

-- One of our folks created a set of templates to keep our colors, fonts etc. consistent. That takes some digging through the Caspio instructions, but it's a big help to create a look that's more in keeping with the rest of your site.

-- Caspio results can include HTML, so you can wrap the elements into whatever kind of package you want. I don't have specific links, but ajc.com uses Caspio (as do the other Cox papers, I believe), and when we had a presentation from Caspio's David Milliron he showed us some very good-looking (and un-Caspio looking) packages on things like real estate searches.

-- Caspio can feed its results into Flash, so you can use it just as a backend database that flows into whatever you want. I think some of the other folks here at The PD are working on some things along those lines now.

From what I've seen and worked with, the only limit to customizing the look of Caspio projects is the time available and the familiarity you have with HTML or Flash. And some time spent early on, setting up templates or practicing embedding elements, will pay off in the long run.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Michael Dupras on April 17, 2008 at 2:06pm: -- Caspio can feed its results into Flash, so you can use it just as a backend database that flows into whatever you want. I think some of the other folks here at The PD are working on some things along those lines now.

John --

I've been wondering about this possibility for some time now -- how do you make that work? I know you can export an XML out of Caspio and then have Flash use that file, but are you saying you know how to have a Flash app talk directly to a Caspio database?

-- Mike; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Nancy JonesFrancis on April 17, 2008 at 11:18pm: -- Caspio can feed its results into Flash, so you can use it just as a backend database that flows into whatever you want. I think some of the other folks here at The PD are working on some things along those lines now.

Wow, that's great to learn.

Earlier today, I signed up for a free 30-minute "lesson" with someone from Caspio. I doubt I'll learn about using Caspio with Flash, but maybe they'll touch on manipulating coding.

Thanks, John.

Nancy; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Cody Switzer on June 24, 2008 at 3:32pm: We are looking into using Caspio here in Erie. I understand it's also fairly easy to integrate Google or Yahoo maps. Anyone have any experience with this?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dave Brooks on June 24, 2008 at 3:51pm: I did it in a very clumsy way, by inserting URLs to individual Google Maps in the Excel chart that was used as the basis for our child-care-provider search. The Caspio search allowed us to make that particular part of the result a hot link; clicking on it opened the Google Map in a new window.

A Caspio representative later sent me a more elegant way to do it, that keeps the map on our page, but by then I had moved on to other projects and I have never returned to change the setup (although I've updated the data).; ▶ Reply to This