Portfolio
This is probably more of just a simple list of projects i've developed with brief details of the pivotal functions within each than an actual presentable Portfolio, but here it is anyway:
Infectious Videos
Overview
We started Infectious Videos under the rubric Infectious Concepts PTY LTD as our founding project, and in fact it was the initial impotus to register the company. The idea wasnt particularly complex, it was merely to provide a Video Hosting Entertainment site with, what we thought could be, a social networking aspect to it and see what we could learn from entering that market and our technical abilities. This was in March of 2006, and right about the time that YouTube was rapidly devouring the video hosting market and web2.0 was in full swing.
To our credit we were one of the first, if not the very first, Australian Video Streaming and Hosting service and one of the first websites in the World to introduce Revenue Sharing (Using Adsense) for our users to make money from their submissions to our site.
Technical
I use ffmpeg, mencoder, lameMP3, flvtool2 and imagemagick to convert our videos from a number of different formats. I even included an MMS video uploading system which is simply a php script that polls the mms@ mail account for MMS data, when it finds the data it strips the video from the email as an attachment and looks up the mobile number set in the details of the MMS to automatically add it to the sending users account (if they have one) - otherwise it seeks the content for a return email that matches the system - if no return once again, then we simply add the video as an anonymous video to the website.
Infectious Music
Overview
The first large online project I undertook began in 2000 when i began contacting Perth bands and their managers to gain authorisation to put together a site known as mp3.zoob.net, which has undergone a few name changes as i came up with new ideas, but has rested at Infectious Music (http://www.infectiousmusic.com/).
The response from Bands and their Managers when asked if they would allow us to showcase their songs and videos online was very positive and before long I had hundreds of songs, videos, photos and so forth from a large number of Perth Bands. Unfortunately (Or fortunately..) other countries decided they wanted a piece of this as well and soon we had bands from the Uk, USA, Scottland and elsewhere submitting their bands details to Infectious Music.
Technical
Initially Infectious Music, in its original form of mp3.zoob.net, was a static website built by hand, but as it grew i began learning php/mysql to enable the site to be dynamic so people could upload their own data that would be automatically converted on the server. Infectious Music uses the lameMP3 system to convert audio files into a raw format then render them as an mp3.
Admittedly Infectious Music does need some more work, but we moved on with Other projects that were a lot less niche and they demanded a hell of a lot of our attention.
Chip Retro
Overview
This site began development halfway through 2007 and is the result of my 8bit influences from earlier life. Commodore 64's, Zzap Magazine, Amiga 500's, Atari-ST's, Amstrad CPC's and so forth. I collected pretty much every machine i could get my hands on and in the various houses i've lived i would always dedicated a single room to various blinking and flashing screen and keyboards. Chip Retro has over 30 Gig of data in it, games, music, scanned magazines, game manuals, streaming mp3's of classic game music etc. Huge amounts of stuff to play with.
Technical
Chip Retro is more of a data site than a technical site there is not really a lot to say about it. Obviously it was developed using PHP/MySQL with a little bit of Javascript here and there for the dynamic interfaces but we use ModRewrite for static URL's for "Perma-linking". There is a streaming MP3 Player on there also used to play the various MP3 files of Game/Demo tunes that have been uploaded.
Soon we'll be looking into some in-line emulators so that games may be played directly from the website.
Credits to hurben for the graphic of Chip Retro
Photo Buffer
Overview
Originally this was known as www.perthpix.zoob.net and was a very simple photo uploading service, but since its not specifically limited to Perth, Western Australia, i've renamed it Photo Buffer.
Technical
Though mostly in its original form, some of the features have been upgraded with the name change, multiple photo uploads with category select and you don't need to be logged in to add photos, a feature that may be changed in the future but for now it poses no problem.
We use imagemagick (convert) to crop the images.
Zoob Apps
Overview
I setup www.zoobapps.com as a platform to present some of the tools i had written for myself and friends to use from time to time. It's still in development, but i find the .htaccess file creator and the Favicon (ico) Creator quite useful from time to time.
Technical
The .htaccess builder creates an MD5 and a DES encrypted password in PHP, and also provides the file for immediate download in case you want to FTP your .htaccess document up to your server, or it can be cut and paste straight from the browser into a shell session if you want to build it on the server.
Your Heroes
Overview
The idea behind Your Heroes is for there to be a central place where person could find information on their Heroes, or even to add their own Heroes. Sites such as Wikipedia and NNDB already exist to provide a semi-solution to this need, but the problem with those 2 sites is the lack of in-line media information. I wanted to be able to provide a page with statistics about say perhaps a Musician and then lists of Videos and Mp3's (provided they're non copyright of course) of either their works or their interviews etc, so if you wanted to give a friend a reference to an artist you think they would enjoy the works of, which is often the case, you can simply send them the Your-Heroes link for that artist and they'll be sufficiently engorged on information purtaining to this artist.
Technical
We use a Flash FLV Player to play videos, a Flash MP3 Player to play the audio clips and the usual PHP/MySQL to drive the sites upload functions and navigation. Credits to hurben for the Your-Heroes header image.
Infectious Lyrics
Overview
Not a lot to say about this one, we had a database full of lyrics so we simply provided them online with a simple system to enable people to add more if they wished. Infectious Lyrics was developed as a component to the Infectious Concepts PTY LTD empire.
Technical
Theres not much technical to say about Infectious Lyrics, although i was getting spammed intensely at some point so i added a very remedial method for blocking basic spam-bots which was the Gold/Clown/Cow/Boat method of human-detection/verification. Technically it wouldnt take a genius to out-write that horribly basic script, but given the volume of people who have written a basic human detector such as I, the ratio of time investment to reward must be such that it hasnt been broken by a spam-bot since.
Infectious Recipes
Overview
Basically we had a lot of Recipes and a few people interested in adding more, so we've slowly been developing Infectious Recipes. We've always intended to revisit this site and see if we can extend it further into subsection of recipe types and try to garner a little more interaction and feedback from users, but for now she sails as-is.
Technical
A fairly simple PHP/MySQL driven site with the ability for people to rate on each others Recipes and submit comments about each recipe. There is also a simple Shopping List feature.
The Kevin Bacon Game
Overview
The Kevin Bacon game is an extension of the assertion that every human being is related to each other by, at the very most, 6 degrees of seperation. IE. you know James, James knows Kathryn and Kathryn knows Fred Estaire, therefore you are 2 degrees of seperation from Fred Estaire. If you'd like more details, head over to www.thekevinbacongame.com
Technical
After spending days downloading and extrapolating hundreds of meg of IMDB Movie data and planning our database structure we realised we werent spending enough time on other projects/sites that demanded our attention so we simply decided to use the Virgina University of Technologies Science Departments Oracle of Bacon server to run ours. It's a bit slack, I know, but we'll revisit our own KBG engine shortly.
Random Abuse
Overview
This was setup to allow people to have a bit of a whinge if they wanted to, allowing a user to login or publicly add some Random Abuse by entering in the name of the Abuser and the name of the Abusee then a wonderful rant. :)
***If you want to visit www.randomabuse.com please understand that there is some fairly strong user-generated language in this site so if easily offended, avoid visiting.***
Technical
This was developed as a short side project whilst working on other larger Infectious Concepts projects. It uses PHP/MySQL to drive it and was my first implementation of ThickBox to run the grey-box style login system. I've refrained from using Ajax on this system, or indeed many systems nowadays since I find Ajax to be a little on the dangerous side, generating a lot of errors/bugs and so forth, and a lower threshold of browser compatibility means less folk will enjoy our work.
