BG Gizmo
bggizmo.comAt its core, BG Gizmo is a collection of four web applications - a community calendar, a classified advertising system, an online marketplace, and a content sharing platform. The applications are all tied to a single user account, allowing visitors to shop, sell items, post an event, and upload a video without having to trek across four different sites.
BG Gizmo is an ongoing side-project of Sea Lion Studio, geographically targeted towards Bowling Green, Ohio and its surrounding areas. Along with sister site BG File, BG Gizmo acts as an informational portal for local residents, as well as a tool to encourage participation and collaboration between businesses, groups, and individuals.
The site is designed to work on two levels - first, the collection of local content and information and second, the formatting of this content for playback and syndication over the web. Users may add a number of standard or custom playback options to their own websites in order to present content from themselves and the community. A good example of a custom playback solution can be seen at on the Bowling Green Convention and Visitor's Bureau's site. The content displayed comes from a number of local groups and businesses, putting less of a burden on the CVB to add calendar events while increasing exposure for those coordinating the events.
BG Gizmo also features a sponsor-driven advertising system, GizmoAds, which I was responsible for developing. Under GizmoAds, advertisers are able to update their sponsor panels at any time, incorporating text and images into a number of different template options. BG Gizmo sponsors are also capable of sending their panels to mailing lists that are maintained through BG Gizmo.
I have been the lead developer on the project since July 2009, primarily in charge of Post (the free classified system), Files (the media sharing system), the GizmoAds engine, as well as general site functionality.
