The Business Is???

Social Appeal

2007-08-11T21:58:00.000-07:00

Skipped a month. I was busy adding some grouping features to the main site. I always figured there are enough social networks out there that I would just let those sites be the place where people shared their audio messages. While I don't think msg-time will become a fully fledged social networking site, it would be nice to have a place to showcase your audio to like minded people, friends, or contacts. Hopefully this makes things easier to use and more fun.

All Night to the Early Morn..

2007-06-07T07:30:00.000-07:00

So, it's about 1:30 and instead of putting off upgrading my site to leverage Facebook's new platform features till this weekend, I started hacking away late evening(early morning), and it lasted all the way till just in time to go to work. There are a lot of nice integration points to explore with the new tools, and I've chosen to use the Canvas Page integration point as a sort of gateway to Msg-Time.com content.

Facebook users can share and search on public content provided by Msg-Time users. I've found a little bug with the share links, but the search functionality seems to be working fine. Hopefully this reaches more people and gives them a compelling reason to add their audio messages or voice to the web.

I'm so tired....

"..Seek and ye shall find..."

2007-05-20T22:07:00.001-07:00

Rolling out some search capabilities. What's the point in having all these messages and no one can look for them? It's pretty simple at this point and should get the job done.

The search function looks on tags, title, description, name, and the author to help someone find what they're looking for. I'd like to bring advanced options and searches by category sometime soon.

More to come...

Playing a little game called "Tag"

2007-04-09T00:36:00.000-07:00

Bringing yet another addition to the msg-time fold......comes the tagging of message files and feeds.

Many web sites these days use this to give the content people create some meaningful information.

This information may be later used to categorize or search on said content described.

My little foray into the tagging world is more of an experimental and rigid implementation, but hopefully is enough to provide some beneficial uses.

- 6 tags are allowed and words only.

- There is some controlled vocabulary used when associating information with content so be aware of those limitations.

- tagging is allowed for message files and rss/atoms feeds (msg-lines).

This is one of those things that really shows its potential from the creativity and strength of the user participation, so hopefully you guys like it enough to make it useful.

Feel free like always to throw any suggestions my way about it as well.

Adios.

Spring-Time

2007-03-14T20:38:00.000-07:00

Hello Hello. The latest is....

- There should be a blog service or two added to the feature set soon.

- Explanation of what those services mean and a site map were added.

- Also added is an explanation for how upgrades work and their benefits, for all those gracious enough to be interested in subscribing.

Everything else is about spreading the word these days. I do need to tackle how I want to offer the site in different languages. This needs to be done in a way where the translations are not laughable or disrespectful either. Should be fun. Check the voice over below.

Say, Say, Say

2007-02-19T20:05:00.000-08:00

New additions! Note the newly added web services on the home page, more message management tools, and I finally got rid of that activation nonsense on the recorder for all you IE users out there. I've done a lot of reading up on the competition lately. I have to say that the user generated content space is exploding with a bunch of different sites and ideas. There are some very good ideas at that. I'd like to think my KISS approach to a content service will be good enough, but the people will have the final say on what works best for them when all is said and done. I've appreciated the challenge of making something happen like this, and whatever happens I've appreciated the support greatly. I'm in it to win it though, and the growth is steady steady. Till next time...

Excited

2007-01-11T07:15:00.000-08:00

Welcome.

Here we go again. An Idea I feel I really need to scratch has crept up on me. I've received a lot of questions from people about how am I going to go about making money off of this or making it worth my time. Of course, I always reply that this is really a throwback idea from some old friends of mine, and I'm the type of person that just likes to create stuff on the fly if possible. I've also had the unexpected return of gaining exposure on some career fronts and moving onto better things. I don't need the money to drive this site, because it is something I enjoy doing and put my own money into to make happen. Something has hit me like a brick though, and I figured if this thing ever became something that is pay worthy, it would just kind of happen. I am going to make a solid attempt to monetize, and I want to make some guarantees to any current or potential future users of my site as long as I'm the owner.

1. There will never be ads served up all over my site home pages or informational pages.

- I'm not a fan of all the clutter and I feel the absence of all that nonsense better enables people to experience the spirit of my site.

- Advertisements would only ever be served in my members section and only if you're a member that is using the FREE service. They will be off to the side and banner like. NO POP-UPS, OR VIDEO/AUDIO BASED ridiculousness. If the ad does involve sound or video you will be allowed to listen or view to your choosing. They WILL NOT auto-play.

2. Paying members will never be served ads of any kind.

- If you've deemed my service worthy enough for payment. I appreciate you for making my service better and your support. All the while you get to enjoy your message limit increases and increased functionality that comes with paid membership undisturbed.

This is the stance I am taking on trying to make money on the web. It may not be the most realistic or smart money man's game to play, but at the same time if it is that good, people will talk about it, like it, and it will pay for itself. This works like every other product anyone has sold and been successful with. In my eyes the Internet is no different.

Another year Another minute

2006-12-30T01:49:00.000-08:00

Bye Bye '06. Was SUPER busy towards the end there. I plan on catching up on the ALL the sleep come January. In Site news...I'm almost pretty much where I envisioned. Had some loose screws I had to tie up so, making the service truly mobile had to wait should come soon though...or an attempt at least. Things should be, at least I'd like to think, a little more stable now. Sorry for those who lost files for a couple days. No pain no gain right! Remember all opinions are welcome through email, site forms, or however. Maybe I should be like mike jones and record my cell number on my home page. (It's never on anyways...I'm broke). Happy new year all, and party safe. You'll hear from me again soon.

The Rookie....

2006-10-30T18:38:00.000-08:00

Been looking into some things...debated it a long time. I needed a site up, do I learn all the newest and coolest web programming standards and design methods (great css with divs), or do I just get her up and running? I chose the latter and while it's been a decent experience, I do want to attempt some more style and step my game up a lil. I do have some revisions I'm planning to work on in the coming weeks, so it'll be back to the grind.

Long time

2006-10-12T12:11:00.000-07:00

Lots of happenings.

Had to move my site to a dedicated server. I figured if I'm going to be serious about this it was the only move that made sense. In that process I broke my site about 80 times. Learned a lot though, and she's FINALLY running like she was with some better things going on inside. Facebook API integration is working (that was ugly). Now time to let her rip. Been a long five months, and still a lot left to do. Gonna be tough giving the people what they want, but maybe I can come through on that promise.

YouTube for 1.6b Bill... wow if the lord would give me 1/10,000 of that....

This should be fun.

Hi Again!

2006-09-09T14:10:00.000-07:00

Been awhile...going through a job transition. Looking for a job while you have a job is still stressful. Things should be full go on that soon hopefully.

I've added a page to explain broadcast feeds to the users. I placed links in the text that lead to more information about feeds and broadcasting online. Hopefully its clear enough for the masses.

I'm going to now move over into using different blog API's, starting with yours truly blogger.com, to let a user directly post to their blogs from my service. A universal API would be nice for all these blog sites and tools. Maybe there is one...or maybe I can make a crude one...(The pain...) Anyways, there's more to come.

I'll also post voice overs for my blog posts from now on. Wouldn't make sense for me to create a service and not use it...yup.

firstpost_message

Serviced By

Catch Up...

2006-08-11T12:14:00.000-07:00

Lots goin on....A lot of thinking basically. I've added some broadcast functionality to the member section of the site. This enables the generation of link feeds directly to a users audio. I have to add some tagging functionality for the file uploads, should come soon.

This has been itneresting so far, because you come to a crossroads when undertaking a spur of the moment idea and trying to make something substantial out of it. Do you work on this project with the purpose of making the big pay day down the road, or do you continue your work because you enjoy what you're doing and regardless of the outcome can be proud of it.

Admittedly, yes I pursued this after seeing "the million dollar webpage", social networking sites blow up, and all the other "web 2.0" wonder and hoopla albeit, with my own twists. With this excitement comes phantom business plans, monthly revenue losses and terribly high bandwidth costs, and etc. (Granted I do understand the value is in monetizing the vast amounts of information being uploaded by the populace, which I believe is important.)

Without a financial network or financial backing to speak of (besides my peanuts salary) , this project is going to have to take a different form. Many have been down this road before, build brand recognition, long-term plans, understand your market, yaddda yadda. All the solid business principles. I would like for this to become something that is beneficial and a worthy service, I believe it already is. Hopefully, through the one man army that is me, I can make something out of nothing.

IDIOTS!!! IDIOTS!!!!

2006-07-09T00:09:00.000-07:00

And the great magical discovery was.....(drumroll).... my usb camera. Retarded...it has some audio capabilities and in my sound settings was set as the recorder... Should i add the fact you can use a usb cam for leaving a message...probably not. It's enough people have to mess with a pc microphone or a cell phone with cords to use the site. Man hands free would have been everything. Wireless USB coming soon. (Or might already be here not quite sure...) But even then some pc monitors come with mic ports. Alright enough rambling. Everything is normal, later.

Discovery...

2006-07-08T13:07:00.000-07:00

I'm just sitting here. I'm testing the site functionality, bro is chillin on the couch we're talking. I push record, then play...and well what we said plays back. I look over and the phone is disconnected.... I don't know how or why but I have to go to the bat-cave this weekend and figure out how this is working without nothing being in the microphone port. Sound card settings, bios configuration, all that jazz. If this is possible without a microphone or cables or buying anything. Just a normal speaker setup...this will be amazing.

HAPPY 4th!!!

2006-07-05T20:46:00.000-07:00

One page left and I don't have to bug the site too much anymore. (There'll always be things to fix). I've added the voice overs to the how-to page in my site. The last page remaining will be the phone to pc hook-up page. Hopefully i can do a picture type tutorial for that. This project has come a long way in 3 months...between working and getting teeth fixed...crucial crucial. The site has taken a lot of direction from feedback users gave when I first started talking about her. So hopefully the customer is really always right and more people will join. All in all, this is good exp. I'll keep everyone posted. Stay tuned....

Weekend Update

2006-06-18T22:53:00.000-07:00

I managed to skim some fat off of my pages...I was handling my error validation messages in a bad way. I was basically printing the html ouput for the entire page out for each error condition instead of using a string variable to output an error based on the error condition....my pages were bloated basically and needed the exercise. I'm working with a voice recorder applet now for the site. It's kind of nice, but I can't seem to get the upload functionality of it working right at the moment...hopefully by week's end. Going to add some voice overs in the tutorial to go along with explaining how to use my site. I figured out a way to turn a cell phone into a microphone...I am trying to make this as easy as possible folks. Stay tuned...

A lil progress...

2006-06-14T21:35:00.000-07:00

Did I mention I use notepad to develop this stuff....I need to fall upon some better IDE type tools soon, because the headaches are getting too big. It took me 45 mins to find a rogue "br" in the html to fix my broken "laughics". Besides that, I managed to revamp my member section today. I Basically rolled the upload and download pages into one and hopefully cleaned it up a bit. This will let the users get in do the message thing and get out without clicking around as much. More to come.

Crossroads

2006-06-13T22:21:00.000-07:00

I've reached a point where my site functions like I originally planned, and there are no reported glitches as of yet. I look forward to getting my hands on a voice SDK which i'll purchase from VIMAS technologies for implementing a web based voice recorder onto my site. I Looked into some paid search programs today, but I am not sure I have the budget for that stuff.....I'm going to have to market her the old fashioned word of mouth and say it so much people can't stand it way. Interesting times....

First Post

2006-06-11T08:45:00.000-07:00

I've officially jumped on the blogsphere as of today. This will be a way for me to write about any personal projects i'm working on or projects that are working on me...(programming can be a headache). Hopefully this supplements my attempts at professionalism in a positive way. I will more than likely post at a decent frequency and probably not everyday, but more than likely about 2 or 3 times a week or if I am really busy 2 or 3 times a month.