I’ve been working with php for a little while and it’s finally starting to click with me and I’m actually starting to get it. It’s taken quite a while for me to get to this point with any web language, I’ve never really had the whole ‘Oh I get it’ feeling before. But now that I’m starting to get it php is my weapon of choice. So I’ve been developing my projects with php.

DropBin started out as a ruby on rails app that I had made for a learning project. After a while I gave up on ruby because I just wasn’t getting the same click feeling with it as I get with php. Setting up an application from server to server was a chore, paying for extra hosting monthly was a pain in the ass, and I finally came to the realization that as a freelance web designer / developer I would probably never need to use rails. So I decided that DropBin should carry over to php and be a learning project on that language as well. So it was carried over as DropBin 1.5 which was exactly the same as it was before just with syntax highlighting. Then people started complaining about the design of the site, and I didn’t blame them.

So Culver started development on the next DropBin. I am pleased to show you the beginnings of a new design. You can check it out at his test DropBin site. Note that that is just the first draft of the design and it is subject to small changes, but overall it should stay similar. Also note that that is a dummy site and the forms don’t work. The red/green bars will be all ajaxy with fade in/out effects which will be nice and purty. So he’s done the redesign and right now there are features in the works like better highlighting, accounts to manage your drops, editability of drops if allowed by author, private drops, and my favorite feature: File sharing.

One of my favorite things about the new DropBin is that we’re going to be using Amazon S3 to allow users to share files. I haven’t quite yet worked out the specifics of it all but people will be able to share any file that is x amount of size and will be able to choose how long it stays online (with a 7 day limit). So if suzy wants to send her best friend a song to listen to, all she has to do is go to dropbin, hit choose file, select how long she wants the file to be hosted, and hit upload. Then she will be given a link to send out to her friend. Now I hear you asking “Well Jake why wouldn’t she just send the file over IM?” My answer to this would have to be “She is smart enough to know that ALL file transfering over IM protocols is HORRIBLE.” If you try and argue against this, you are wrong, and stupid. :)

So I guess that sort of sums up DropBin status and development. Though I guess I never explained what it was. If you’re familiar with pastebin DropBin is the same concept, drop your text that you need to share (and with dropbin - files) and link whoever you’d like to see it. Also keep in mind that DropBin is an open source project - you can download the code from our Subversion repository at any time. At the moment we have the 1.5 branch and the Trunk. I’ll have an update post for everyone when DropBin 2.0 comes out.

The next project I’m working on with Danny. The project is called Music Is For You (MIFY - for short). The site originally started out as a way to share a song from a newly released album or a leaked album among friends in an efficient manner.

Realizing the power of this tool, the focus is now to distribute new, great music to people that otherwise would never discover on their own until the radio got hold of it. We understand that the music industry is always changing, but radio has never held less importance to a new band. The internet has become an incredibly powerful, and will become an even greater tool for musicians to find people that will love their music.

Keeping with this vision, we will expand it with a blog and become part of the music ecosystem that the internet has perpetuated.

The way I see it: If they have a problem with us giving them free promotion and sharing one song off of their new album, they can send us an email and we will take it down. Otherwise we will continue to help out artists by pushing out new tracks one at a time.

I will make sure to write up an update post for MIFY when we launch everything. It might be a week or two for this but it will definitely be worth the wait.

The final project I’ve been working on is called Mindlog. I got the idea in late early June, I remember working on it the night before my finals at school. But I was just toying around with the idea then and messing around with little worthless designs. At this time I purchased domains as I had decided to proceed with the project. So I bought Mindlog.info and I put Mindlog.org on backorder, thinking that it wouldn’t come through. It took a month for the prior registrar to let go of the .org domain and I received it on June 25th. I’m very lucky that I was able to get the domain and I am/was very happy about it.

It was not until mid-July that I actually started working on the plan again. I worked out an outline with of what the site should be like and the way I should make things. So I really think that I’ve perfected the idea of where I want to go with it, to the greatest extent of my ability. So I started working on the code a few nights ago and I’ve been making slow progress. Theoretically finishing the app shouldn’t be hard at all, but I always seem to get stuck on these little tiny details and end up taking three times as long as I really need to.

So I’ve officially started the development of Mindlog, if you would like to sign up (I encourage it) please visit http://mindlog.org and enter your email. The site will probably launch officially somewhere in between September and October, following a tiny private beta of my closest friends bitching at me about what I did wrong. :)

As I’ve linked people in the past I’ve gotten a response of “Oh what’s that?”, followed by 40 seconds of silence, and a “Cool idea!” So I’m going to take my summary from the site, as it’s the best explanation I have of it so far, and I’ll add a little bit to it.

MindLog is a web service that basically helps you keep track of your thoughts. I started it as a way to help me raise my self-awareness and to become more conscious of my day to day thoughts and actions. I figured that having a web app to store everything was a better idea than just writing everything down. I didn’t think starting a blog was necessary, and I don’t like the idea of having a written journal, so web app was the next best thing.

So far I’ve thought up a few sections that people will be able to use. There will be sections to keep track of mood, things you’re thankful for, dreams, and epiphanies. These are going to be the initial categories I will have available at launch. After the initial launch I expect to expand things into other areas for things such as ideas, and managing other types of thoughts.

My goals and intentions for the project are pretty straight forward; Help myself, while helping others at the same time. I’m pretty sure that there are a people out there who will have some sort of benefit from using this. I really weigh the importance of helping out the other folks higher than helping out myself. So if you have any feedback, ideas, questions, or anything of that sort please feel free to send me an email, and I’ll get back to you within a day and see what I can do for you!

So basically to resummarize the point of the site is to help improve self awareness and increase your consciousness level of your day to day thoughts and actions. I stand by my belief that if you become aware of the things you are thinking and doing that have a negative impact on your mood, life, and whatever else, you can consciously attempt to stop them. Theoretically if you stop all of the negative things and replace them with positive things, your life/mood should get better.

That is really the point of Mindlog. I know it’s kind of like a blog, or a journal, but it’ll be different. I will try to incorporate tools that will help anyone overcome whatever negative things they need to. I’m hoping everything turns out well with Mindlog, and I’m fairly confident that they will. I would expect to see Mindlog hit the whole personal development blogosphere pretty hard and I think that a lot of people will be able to make use of it.

So this post is an open forum for questions, comments, and suggestions for the three projects. Feel free to say anything. (also since this post is pretty long, I’m going to go ahead and skip proofreading, so feel free to point out mistakes :D )