New Beginnings
Opentape - The Free, OpenSource Alternative to Muxtape
Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 | Hack, Music, New Beginnings, Open Source, Twitter, WebApps | No Comments
With the recent demise of Muxtape, a group of developers have gotten together to release an open-source online mixtape package named Opentape.
Personally I think this application is far superior to Muxtape, which recently had been forced offline by the RIAA for copyright infringement. You can upload songs to your Opentape server via web or FTP, rename, reorder, customize the style and then share the mix on any website through an embedded player.
They’ve even set up a twitter account so you can stay updated on their progress/new releases via tweets. Find them at @opentape.
Visit opentape.fm to read more about the project, or click here to go to the direct download page.
Requirements
Apache 1.x, 2.x with PHP 5. Many other webservers will do fine as well.
PHP 5 curl extension is required for update notification and publishing to the Opentape Discovery Network.Supported/Tested Browsers
Firefox 3.0.1/OS X
Opera 9.52/OS X
Safari 3/OS XFirefox 2.0.0.11/Win
Opera 9.52/Win
Safari 3/Win
IE 7/Win
IE 6/Win (styles have errors)
Cloud Based Service Applications - Google App Engine, Amazon Web Services, And More
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 | Beta, Business, Marketing, New Beginnings, News, Tools, WebApps | No Comments
Hewlett-Packard just officially announced the release of HP Upline, an online storage service that serves as both a personal back-up source as well as a way to share files with friends. Not only that but it starts at only $4.99/month for unlimited data transfer & storage, making it ridiculously affordable compared to alternative large-scale backup methods. This announcement comes shortly after the successful launch of two similar services, Sugarsync and DropBox. The apparent need for a one-stop service provider that allows for data-backup, file-sharing, and cross-platform syncing has finally hit Enterprise level it seems. SugarSync service boasts the ability to synch not only your mac and pc, but also any mobile device that you may have as well. On top of that it would serve as a backup for your files should something happen to your equipment. The demand for the service was so high (their 45 day Free Trial may have something to do with it) that it actually crashed their service two days ago, resulting in a blog posting from their CEO Gibu Thomas explaining the situation and their progress towards fixing it. DropBox is currently still in a closed beta, but utilizes Amazon’s “cloud” based S3 service to do the same thing as what HP’s Upline is promoting - a virtualized synch/backup service that works on all platforms as well as can be used to share files with friends.
Speaking of Amazon, who so far has been the undeniable leader in Web Services, they too experienced a similar outage when their S3 service suddenly went down for a few hours a few weeks ago - leaving developers stranded as the entire purpose of using this service was to replace the need for any localized storage of data. The difference was that no one from Amazon has come forward to apologize or even acknowledge the error officially, the only mention was via a tech support representative after their forums were flooded with a battery of irate users reporting the error and asking why there wasn’t some sort of monitoring software/services in place (good question). Apparently Amazon either didn’t know about the outage, or simply didn’t send out some form of communication letting them know of the problem.
For a company to tout themselves as the replacement to purchasing/maintaining localized hardware to service enterprise level applications, this type of outage is simply unacceptable in my mind. Then the lack of response regarding the issue becomes an added slap in the face. Their complete lack of communication with the developers who relied on them was well documented across the web via the blogsphere but I sadly did not find it anywhere in the press. Why should it have been you might be asking? After all, it’s just some web-service. Their cloud services are currently being used to house large ammounts of critical data in applications that range from credit card processing portals to health-care based applications used in hospitals. Three hours of down-time with no explanation, warning, or even corporate outreach could have been catastrophic, even deadly. A great explanation of the incident can be found in a ZDNET article written by Michael Krisman where he even points out one worried developers plea, “But what do I tell my clients?” For a different perspective, I suggest you check-out what Bob Lozano had to say about the early-morning incident in his Appistry Blog (which also has a few other great articles on cloud/cluster based services if you’re interested in learning more about the service). S3 being down for any amount of time crippled a few companies who relied on it for data management…. and if you read the forums posts on Amazon’s site you can see the wide range of firms/industries who were helpless until the issue was resolved.
Since then there still hasn’t been any news from Amazon other than a small message explaining that the problem has been fixed. That doesn’t give me much confidence in the reliability of their other services, particularly their just recently announced launch of “Elastic IPs - Static IPs for Dynamic Cloud Computing,” This recent development would mean that you could not only use their virtualization/cloud services to store, manage, and transfer your database driven info but could also host the application that uses it through them as well. Throw in their Fulfillment Services and you have yourself a fully operational virtual company! An interesting thought was brought up on Brian “Krow” Aker’s blog (one of the smart ones who had a hand mysql + slashdot “back in the day”) comparing what I used to have running on a beat-up developement box in college and all these new offerings:
LAMP ->
Linux -> EC2
Mysql/Memcached -> S3/SimpleDB/Queue
Apache/Asterisk -> HTTP/Mechanical Turk
PHP/Perl/Python -> REST
Not to mention Google also has been aiming at getting in on a piece of the action. At last night’s Campfire One Google announced that they are now offering hosting for enterprise level web applications via a new tool called App Engine. Rumor is they also are partnering up with Salesforce (who have their own Appexchange service) in the upcoming week as well. Currently Google is giving away access/hosting for FREE to a limited 10,000 developers . I was lucky enough to snag an invitation, and although I have only had a few brief moments to tinker around with the site, it looks extremely promising at first glance. It currently only supports the Python language, however they are working on adding additional platforms soon-enough (i.e Ruby on Rails, or at least I hope seeing how it would be a perfect back-end for a cloud-based application of this magnitude).
According to their Google App Blog - the development environment provided is based off of how they themselves manage all the services/data, just rolled up into a more scalable (as in down-scale) commodity that they could then sell. This includes being powered by Bigtable and GFS - two services that have enabled Google’s search engines to run as fast as they do while parsing through petabytes of data to find you whatever it is you are searching for.
Soon the days of having to beg VC’s for startup capital to fund server farms will be replaced by virtualized data-flow…. I can tell you this much at least, all of these services give you the tools necessary to build whatever application you think might be the “Golden Ticket” - And It’d be a lot easier to get that $400 Million in funding by letting your potential investors actually use the product you want them to buy into. You then are selling them on the experience itself, leaving you free from having to dress in a suit to show off some slides of just how the experience “might look like.” And we all know that death by powerpoint is never a fun experience……
This Site Design = FAIL - Tell Me How Much It Sucks
Monday, March 24th, 2008 | New Beginnings | No Comments
I’ve been fooling around with a bunch of different blogging options for this new site, from using a completely different platform to converting projects that I’ve done in the past into pseudo-WP themes….. but have looked at my various homespun designs long enough to realize I can’t make my mind up on what Addicted to 1s and 0s should look like…. so I’ve done what every frustrated 5 year old does…. throw my hands up and pout. I’ve reverted the stylesheet and template back to an old hack job (and not in the good sense of ‘hack’) of one I came across a while ago…fonts mis-matched and all.
That’s where you come in -
What font family would you like to see on here, any particular header font (gotta love sifr)…. layout - 2 column, newspaper style, 3??…..features….? You give the opinion, I’ll code it. If the idea’s good enough, i’ll even scrap the whole template that it currently is doing a disservice to and start from scratch (which i’ve done about 4 times yet never could settle on a design). What do you get in return? Linkage from here and my advertising blog - www.brentter.com, a solid review from me on your own services/site as well as a permanent place on the “designed by” byline in the footer and depending on the suggestion, i’ll even name the sucker after something representative of you and your design prowess.
Rip this place to shreds, pile on the suggestions, tell me how much it sucks, send me death-threats because of its’ hideousness, bring it on!
Let me know how bad this site really is.
You can reach me via twitter at www.twitter.com/brentter
You can reach me via email at brent (at) addto10.com
Or the easiest way is by just using the contact form I’ve placed on the site.
There’s also linkage to just about every other way of reaching me in the sidebar to the right, use whatever way you feel most comfortable to reach me.
I’m suffering from designers block, so I want to hear what you have to say about it. What direction should I take the site-design in?
What should I add, remove, burn?
Alltop.com - The New Mac-Daddy of News Portals
Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 | Marketing, Mashup, New Beginnings, News, Promotion, RSS | 2 Comments
Introducing Alltop.com, the latest venture from Nononina (the same company behind Truemors.com - an increasingly popular source for the latest internet rumors). Alltop.com, which is still in beta form, is an ever-growing collection of RSS feeds broken down into various categories, including everything from “Moms” to “Sports.” They essentially have attempted to categorize the web in what you could consider a one-stop-shop for whatever type of late-breaking-news you might be seeking. The sites featured in each category seem to change as better suited feeds come to light, however the most interesting part of this collection of data is just the sheer number of sources that they pull from. As I said, each set of feeds is based on a particular category, even including an “Ego” (where you’d find Scoble & Mark Cuban’s blog) and “Celebrities” (TMZ, Dlisted, and all other Britney-obsessed tabloids) category thrown in there for those who secretly fiend for celebrity gossip. The idea originally stemming from another multi-source RSS portal, Popurls, and piggy-backed on the success of Truemors, this new venture has already been widely talked about in both press and (obviously), the internet. Nononina is run by infamous mac-evangelist/idea-generator Guy Kawasaki, Will Mayall, and Kathryn Henkens. This trio also were the founders of Fog City Software, producers of the long forgotten (unless you were a mac/apple geek like me) Claris Emailer.
From personal observations, I’ve noticed that only a select crowd use their own custom RSS News Aggregator (a la Google Reader), or even social bookmarking services like del.icio.us. That positions this site as a convenient alternative to having to rely on iGoogle or a “customized” Yahoo! homepage. With those the user would have to already know which feeds he or she was interested in vieweing, whereas here the average internet user would be able to explore not only the sites they typically frequent, but would also be given the opportunity to discover a whole new realm of similar content. With that in mind, I applaud the trio for creating this news-portal, the only catch is whether or not they will be able to create enough “buzz” about the site to draw that targeted user demographic away from their most likely “widgetized” homepage. Hopefully posts like this will help the cause. I look forward to seeing how it evolves over the next year. Good luck guys!
For more information on Alltop, check-out this great post on the evolution blog featuring an interview with Mr. Kawasaki himself, or just go read what they have to say about themselves via their about page - alltop.com/about/
Get your tech/web fix here…….
Friday, February 22nd, 2008 | New Beginnings, Site Information | No Comments
So after a long time of running Everything’s Better With Brentter, an advertising blog that I would post campaigns/news that I found to be interesting, I have decided to begin a new blogging venture. Recently, I realized that my daily intake of information/links had been headed in a more interactive direction, to the point where, similar to nerds in High School cafeterias across the nation, I found myself not feeling welcomed even in my own playground. That’s where this site comes in. Here you will find anything that doesn’t feel at home on brentter.com, but that I feel should be shared (and or re-shared, depending on my sources).
So if it’s web/tech related, it’ll go here, if it’s advertising related, it will still be posted on www.brentter.com…. Eventually I might even startup a third weblog on brentterrazas.com to house my personal ramblings, but for now I think these two sites will keep me busy enough.
So that’s the plan, now all that’s left is to see how long this experiment will last… comments, suggestions are always welcome… Seeing how this is completely new, I will be playing around with various features until this site fits my needs…. so stay tuned!
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image courtesy of Terence Chang - who’s currently working hard like an entrepreneur but still playing hard like a billionaire. Checkout his blog and maybe he’ll show you how.
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