Here's an example of the latest audio feed in a blog post. Again just feeding off an xml feed of the latest audio that I've uploaded.

There's various styles of the player and here's another style. I have to change the feed around so that thumbnails appear in the box to the left though. I would prefer a more strict standard, but the JW player is free, easy, powerful, and quick so that's what I'm using in the meantime so I can focus on the core application.

Although on the other hand, I will be re-designing the way the site looks soon. I'm settled on the general layout (for the most part) because I feel it's very quick to navigate and makes good use of space. The thumbnails can be reduced in size though to fit more in a row. Flickr gives you the option I believe of how many thumbnails per row and I'll have something similar.

After lots of banging my head on the desk, I've finished (for now) the video upload process. It's now possible to upload a video which will be converted to flv automatically along with a jpg thumbnail. The jpg thumbnail is created from the flv at the time of conversion and then also cropped square so there is not distortion.

All thumbnails are perfect squares. This may or may not change...and may simply become optional because you have the option of uploading a thumbnail with the video that will be used specifically instead of having one automatically generated. This is a severe advantage over many other sites/applications out there as you often can't specifically choose what the thumbnail will be, generally it's just a default number of seconds into the clip.

The number one goal of Minerva is to be very simple, yet very powerful and flexible. There is no 100% perfect solution for anything, but by keeping things simple and flexible, it's not difficult to make a change to get what you need. This is part of why large CMS' fail and/or end up becoming nightmares. In their world, they are great -- perfect even...But in the real world, there's requirements that don't match the CMS'. Now of course there will be requirements that don't match Minerva, but because of how it's built, adding in the new required functionality will be easier than adapting a large and complex CMS.

The videos here are just the latest videos that I have uploaded and not a specific collection. 

You will be able to include image galleries, video galleries, or audio galleries within any post with ease. It's just a simple button on the toolbar that prompts you with which collection to use and how you wan them displayed. After selecting which, you just click "insert" and it puts it within your post where your cursor was when you were typing.

There will be customizable flash players to display the collections. So in addition to creating themes for the blog, one can make flash containers for galleries that go along with themes or are simply stand alone. For now, I'm using the JW Media Flash player that's available out there.

For now, I'm just putting a gallery in this post that feeds off the latest images in the system. This will give you an idea of how it can look. Remember, the size of the gallery can change as well so you can wrap text around it like here or make it take up the entire width of your post and so on. 

This is a pre-alpha preview of Minerva Blog. It's designed to show off some of the features that Minerva will have.

Minerva Blog is not your normal blog. It allows you to easily share your media along with your articles conveniently. You have a lot of flexibility and control over how things get displayed. No other blog makes it as easy to share your photos, video, and audio. 

Keep checking back as updates will be posted as they develop. A working beta version is expected to be finished in a few months at which point you will be able to test out the admin functionality of the blog.

Minerva is much more than a blog though. It can be customized to suit the needs of a variety of web sites. There will be plugins in the future as well that will add-on functionality to the blog for specific functions. More on this later, for now, enjoy the taste.