Whistle . Microblogging social network that allows you to publish messages with the topics that are of interest to you in 140 characters. The publications can be seen, instantly, by other people who are interested in your activity.
A microblogging is a blog with very small entries, that is what each registered user has on Pitazo, an account that allows them to post short entries.
Pitazo was developed by the Joven Club , specifically by the Villa Clara development group .
Images and links can be shared on this site; people will be able to be aware of a topic by using tags introduced within each post; You can republish and respond to what other people have disclosed, establishing conversation threads .
In this social network a user can listen to others and vice versa. People you listen to can send us private messages.
Everyone who registers will automatically have a personal page showing their activity on the network and the data that is public.
Summary
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- 1 Requirements
- 1 Software requirements
- 2 Recommended hardware requirements
- 2 History
- 1 Project conception
- 2 First steps
- 3 Media controversy
- 4 A new technology and changes in staff
- 5 Mobile whistle
- 6 Current members
- 3 See
- 4 Sources
Requirements
Software requirements
Apart from having a connection to the Cuban Intranet, these requirements must be taken into account:
Operating system: Multiplatform ( Windows , Linux , Mac OS X, etc.)
Web browser: With support for HTML5 and CSS3 , optimized for Mozilla Firefox 15 or higher .
Your browser must have JavaScript code enabled.
Recommended hardware requirements
CPU: Pentium III (1 GHz) or higher
RAM memory: 192 MB or higher
History
Project conception
Pitazo was founded in March 2013, in the theater of the Joven Club Santa Clara 1. A group of young instructors from various Joven Club de Villa Clara met after responding to a call from José Alberto Méndez, R&D Specialist of the Provincial Directorate of the JCCE. On that occasion the project roles were distributed and work began.
From the beginning, all the activities were done remotely. The team established a repository and used an instant messaging service to coordinate the task. A lightweight and customized version of the Rational Unified Process methodology was used to create this social network.
In April 2013, the project received the visit of several members of the Cubava project and national directors of the Joven Club to agree on some issues regarding the development of the application. From the beginning, free software was required and a user interface prototype was presented that combined shades of gray, blue , white , black and orange .
This discouraged the team, because indeed, the appearance of the proposal was stark and sad.
First steps
However, from the beginning the project had the collaboration of Rolando Miranda, aka Nightman, a full-time designer, who made a decent design, which would be replaced by a much more attractive one, after months of discussions.
Isel Hernández and Yuniel Martínez wrote the project requirements and, based on them, developed various artifacts that helped the team get on the right track. From the beginning the information architecture was simplified, to achieve the greatest possible ease of use of the final product.
Ariel Udaeta, an experienced programmer, played a very important role researching very specific functionalities and their development in the technologies used. He originally scheduled the sending of emails, the uploading and cropping of images and other of the site’s biggest cool ideas.
Yean Ruiz carried out various activities, collaborated in the design and software engineering. Raúl Veliz was involved in site testing and migration to free software. Both of them made a great effort because they resided so far away from the other developers. Finally, they exited the project in early 2014 .
At the end of September 2013, four developers traveled to the Central Computation Palace, headquarters of Cubava , to coordinate various matters related to Pitazo. Once again they were confronted with the refusal of not being able to change the colors of the design.
In November 2013, they returned for a development marathon, where several breakthroughs were made. By that time José Alberto had already managed to get most of the code to run correctly on a free server. All project documentation was in order and was presented to MININT for compatibility. In a meeting with national directors of the JCCE, it was decided that Pitazo could have a new design more in line with the times. A new logo was proposed that months later would be presented. On November 18, Pitazo, running on Apache Tomcat, in a Debian virtual machine with 4 GB of RAM, was published for the Young Club network as tests, to optimize its development.
Media controversy
Days after Pitazo was published, Kirenia Fagundo, leader of Cubava, contacted a journalist from the Cuban News Agency and told her the results that the JCCE was obtaining with its projects, including the Pitazo network.
That was not the only time that the national press became interested in the subject. Interviews with Kirenia were reviewed by various media, Radio Reloj, Cubadebate and the Cubavisión noon newscast.
Several international media, including Telemundo and Radio and TV Martí, echoed the news and said that the island’s communist government created social networks to control information. In contrast, several Internet users received with optimism that in Cuba someone had dared to create a new medium so that nationals could enjoy Web 2.0 and that having their own social networks was the best measure to avoid the espionage scandals that it involved to the US National Security Agency, when it invaded the privacy of users of Facebook, Twitter, Google and other popular services. Several readers of Cubadebate complained of not being able to access from another network that was not that of the Joven Club and asked that Pitazo be available very soon.
The quick reaction of the media predicted a great future for the project, but due to the problems of the JCCE to host the site, Pitazo’s arrival to the general public was delayed. It is expected that in 2014 the network will be available for the entire .cu domain
A new technology and changes in staff
During February 2014, José Alberto and Ariel worked on a new architectural pattern, essentially a variation of the previous N Layers that was related to Model-View-Controller. They recoded the entire project and got much of the code to run on the client side, increasing the response time of the application.
A new designer joined the group, Jose Raúl, who brought him new ideas and worked on a feature to customize the background of the page.
In mid-March 2014, Yuniel Martínez left the project of his own free will, to move to another job. After achieving the compatibility of the project, the last thing he did was work on the architecture of a new monster …
Mobile whistle
The announcement of the arrival of the Internet to mobile phones led to the creation of a version of the site for these devices. Isel and Yuniel, who had worked for 3 months on the modeling of the new system, delivered a proposal for the functionalities and architecture of Pitazo Móvil at the beginning of March. In April 2014, a rather elaborate interface prototype was perfected.
Current members
- José Alberto Méndez Torres
- Ariel Udaeta Hernández
- Rolando Miranda Díaz
- Isel Hernández Fernández
- Technician José Raúl
