Find Motive

I’ve been quietly working on a new project the past few months that I will be releasing soon. I was a little side-tracked by EchoPic and its surprising popularity and growth rate, but now I am back onto ChartVote full time.

What is it?
ChartVote is a new music discovery service that allows users to listen and vote for music they like.

Vague huh? Well thats all I can say for now =).

We are looking for artists
Yes sir, we are. If you are an artist who wants to participate in joining ChartVote you can email me at info(at)chartvote.com

Go to ChartVote.com and submit your email address and I will notify you when it launches.

Its almost 2008 and the use of generic file controls on web forms are still in major use today. Why are we still using this old ugly technology when there are much better solutions?

Reasons not to use them
- They’re ugly
- There is no way to limit the file types displayed in the “Browse” window
- You can’t make them look good very easily as they lack alot of CSS support
- They’re ugly
- You can’t see how much of the file you have uploaded.
- No way to select multiple files to upload at one time without multiple file controls
- They’re ugly

Solution
There are multiple solutions, but the one I always use and is the most widely supported is using flash to upload files from a web browser. Using flash I can tailor the upload process to the site’s UI and design needs.

SWFUpload is a great premade script that allows you to upload files with flash.

Even though I avoid using the file control as much as I can, I still find it useful sometimes…sometimes.

There is such a thing as posting too much on your blog, just as there is such a thing as not posting enough. I usually have a problem with not posting enough because my attention is usually occupied with some crazy idea project of mine.

I’ve put together a not-so-comprehensive list of reasons not too post too much content in a day.

Reasons not to post too much:
- Readers can’t digest all the content
- Readers tend to overlook your posts more often
- Content usually starts to lose quality
- And the worse case: Readers will remove you from their RSS reader

I was an avid reader the gadget blogs Gizmodo and Engadget for a good few months, but I just got tired of keeping up with all the content. Each day they were posting at least 30-40 articles and I didn’t have the time to sift through them all to find the content I was actually interested in. So I removed them both from my RSS reader.

I hate to say this, but one of my favorite blogs, Mashable has been pumping out the posts lately too and I’ve noticed a decline in the quality of their content.

Screenshot of my Google Reader Stats

Moral of the story? Stay in the middle. Don’t post too little or too much. Where do you ask is that middle point? For me personally, 1-5 high quality posts in a day is the range I like the most.

Disclaimer: This code is not meant to be used in any malicious way. Its only a proof of concept and should not be used to illegal download music. I am not responsible for any damages caused by this code. Use at your own risk.

Now that I got that out of the way...have at it.

How it works
With this PHP code you can specify the friendID of any artist on MySpace and it will download all the songs from the artist's profile. URLs to MP3s on MySpace have a one-time use token in them that only allows the URL to be used once, thus allowing the MP3 to be accessed only once per request. This script grabs all the parts needed to construct this URL with the token in it and grabs the MP3 like a normal browser would or like the song player on artist profiles.

This code is only a snippet of a MySpace crawler that I wrote that can spider and categorize MP3s on MySpace. My version is much more advanced in functionality so I am only posting the "meat" of the code here. Why? Because I am in a generous mood and plus its not exactly rocket science to do this.

The Code

Download: MySpace-MP3-Downloader.zip (1kb)

Just recently I deleted my Facebook and MySpace account to see what life is like without them and I love it.

I now have 2 less distractions I need to deal with and I am more productive because of it. I no longer have to respond to comments and messages, I don't have the urge to browse my friend's profiles to see whats going on in their life. Its not that I don't care to know whats going on with them, its that I do it less frequently now and in a more personal manner such as a phone call.

(What? Talking? You mean I have to TALK to my friends? Like using my vocal chords? HA! What about LOL's and smiley faces?)

Get unplugged! I don't see myself going back to Facebook or MySpace anytime soon because I have no need for it right now. For me it was just a waste of time and productivity.

Disclaimer: I am an introvert by nature. Yay for me.

I'm trying out a new ad service called WidgetBucks. So far I am pleased with the ads themselves as they are interactive.

Click here to check it out

A very interesting easter egg has been found in Halo 3...Cave man!

Found on flickr here

I did the design and code for EchoPic in about 4 hours. I did it just for fun and so far in less than 24 hours its received over 2400 hits. I love the web. For now its a pet side project and I will add features to it as they are requested or as I see a need for them.

Screenshot

URL: EchoPic.com

Derek Sivers, the founder, president, and sole programmer behind CD Baby, wrote a great article about why he switched back to PHP from Rails. I have nothing against Ruby or Rails, but I never found the reason why everyone was so hyped about it. Check out the article below.

“Is there anything Rails can do, that PHP CAN’T do?”

The answer is no.

I threw away 2 years of Rails code, and opened a new empty Subversion respository.

Article:
7 reasons I switched back to PHP after 2 years on Rails

At Apple's "The beat goes on" special event, Steve announced a couple of cool new products, but in my opinion the biggest news of the event was the price drop for the iPhone. Now the 8GB iPhone is only $399, down from $599! That is a $200 price drop in 2 months! Amazing.

Apple also introduced new iPod Nanos and a new iPod Touch which is basically an iPhone minus the phone capabilities. iTunes is now available on the iPod Touch and iPhone so you can purchase music directly to the devices and sync it to your desktop or laptop once the unit is docked.

I'm so glad I waited to get my iPhone because now I will save 200 bucks...booya.