DanLin.net

Earlier this week I upgrade the backend to the latest version of Wordpress 2.1.1. Today Wordpress announced that a hacker had inserted a remote PHP execution exploit into the code and recommended everyone to upgrade to yet another version 2.1.2. I guess that’s the risk I take for being an early adopter. The upgrade is minor fairly simple compared to the previous update. Hopefully you are not still running the dangerous version 2.1.1. If you are, go get the new one NOW!!!

After hitting version 0.8.1 and logging 40,000 beta testers, the guys at Joost are ready to grow again. This week they began issuing more tokens for inviting friends to current beta testers. As a matter of fact, I already gave one of my 2 tokens to Senor Deekez earlier tonight and already they have filled my bucket back up to 2 again…

There are even guys now selling their invite tokens on eBay which I’m guessing you have to be pretty desperate to do. OK, I thought about doing that too but I’ve decided against it. If you need an invite to Joost and don’t know anyone already in the beta group, post a comment below and tell me why I should give you one of mine.

Ning is a company that has been around for about 2 years now and this week they finally launched a product that is worth discussing. They are near the forefront of commoditizing social networks by allowing people to create vertical social networks based on their interests. Conceptually this is pretty cool and as it is free, it might have put fiveacross out of business had they not been acquired by Cisco earlier this month.

From a development and design perspective, the product is very beautifully made with gratuitous Web 2.0 UI features. Usability is very intuitive and setting up a social network is literally a few clicks away. I tested the service and created my own trendy Web 2.0 social network called ThunderAndLight.Ning.com.

Today’s social networks are like the message forums of the 90’s and the blogs of 2003. Ning to me is the PHPBB and Wordpress of social networks. The only difference is that it is free but not open source. I can see a lot of small organizations like schools and churches begin building social networks of their own using services like this. Ning’s business model currently looks like purely advertising driven and they are betting on the vertically integrated model to drive enough traffic to build revenue.

Founded by Mosaic co-creator Marc Andreessen and his protege and Stanford Business School grad Gina Bianchini (Link to Flickr profile), cash and industry connections are not likely gonna be problems. Let’s just hope this vertical market thing lives up to its hype.

I wrote a little script that allows you to display the photos from any Flickr RSS feed. The phot album you see to the side of this blog is using this little script. It uses the lastRSS class to parse the feed written by Vojtech Semecky from lastRSS.webdot.cz as well as javascript library from script.aculo.us. It has some nice caching features built in to speed things up a little. Enjoy.

Download RSS Flickr Photo Album version 0.02

(Requires PHP4)

I wrote a little simple script that allows me to serve my MP3 library over the net so I can stream it from whereever I am. I use it to stream my 100 GB music collection to my Treo 700p via EVDO. I essentail can walk around any major metropolitan area in the U.S. and access every song in my collection through my phone including creating dynamic, on-the-go playlists.

I decided to share it with the world since I use it so much. It’s pretty basic but it has some nice features already.

1. No database required
2. Dynamic playlist creation
3. Multiuser support via cookies
4. Supports common mp3 players (iTunes, Winamp, etc..)
5. Flash-based Web player (I didn’t make the swf file)
6. Works with Smartphones such as the Treo 700p over EVDO

Check it out and feedback is welcome as long as they are constructive…

Download the MP3 Streaming Server Script

Requirements: PHP 4, Apache 1.3, Flash Player (To use the Web-based player)
Should work on all platforms. Tested on SuSE Linux 9.