Down with tonsillitis, so my coding is slower, and blogging much vaguer. (After fifteen years of this, I have tendons like piano-wire anyway so a slowdown might be a good idea).
The hatchery will be getting an automatic adult remove after I finally figured it out last night. 3am fever dreams are good for something :)
The Smashwords Reader in php may end up being the real one, since the next bit of feedback was "What have you sent to T? He's sitting in front of the computer clicking and giggling and clicking." I swear, I only sent him a Reader link with his book in it. Which doesn't mean that was what he was looking at, but is still promising.
However being ill does allow me time to be a complete pain to certain deserving individuals:
I got a gift for Christmas - not something I'd have chosen to buy, but with a thirty day guarantee "if it doesn't work for you, money back". When I went to return the product - it was dreadful, ineffective and badly designed - it turns out that not only has the giver well overspent on the agreed amount, but the company in the small print stopped the guarantee right after christmas. A mis-selling case, perhaps?
I've spoken to them. The first CR said I could return it, the second said I couldn't and then said she'd escalate it to Head Office and I should expect a phone call. It's been five days, and my rating on the product has gone from 1-2 stars (it's really not good) to -1 from trying to deal with their customer service.
Braun - a faster way to get 2mm designer stubble is just not to shave: it's cheaper and you don't have to deal with their customer service reps.
Tuesday 31 January 2012
Wednesday 25 January 2012
Ereaders and updates
I haven't been blogging recently because I've been too busy coding. My major project has been a lightweight php e-reader that takes Smashwords samples and displays them.
It's now up and running and I've got feedback, ranging from " cool!" to "I can't fault this."
The tricky bit was the launcher - since I wanted it to open from a link and run whethre or not the user had javascript, be useable by Wordpress users and others whose hosts were locked down, and run at a reasonable speed. And it had to be code easily used by non-coders. Let's just say there's a lot that goes on in the background, and leave it at that.
The real problem, and the reason another coder is building a java version is bandwidth. Parsing and sending the sample is almost 250K or our bandwidth each time it is hit - careful coding reduces the impact on the viewer, and the host offering it uses virtually none - but it's still costly. We've got the affiliate link hard coded in, which should help to offset the costs.
On the other hand I mght try and convert it to a desktop app which can read in files. It is already capable of reading in full (free) ebooks from Smashwords, the bandwidth becomes prohibitive. If it's a desktop app then anyone who wants to can run DRM-free epubs in it. It just wouldn't have a library or anything like that.
Right now I'm working on another coding project, this one at the exciting stage where all the variables are being written out on screen when it runs so I can see what the program is doing - or isn't. The problem for that project is going to be artwork and design - I can code and write, but my drawing? Not so good.
It's now up and running and I've got feedback, ranging from "
The tricky bit was the launcher - since I wanted it to open from a link and run whethre or not the user had javascript, be useable by Wordpress users and others whose hosts were locked down, and run at a reasonable speed. And it had to be code easily used by non-coders. Let's just say there's a lot that goes on in the background, and leave it at that.
The real problem, and the reason another coder is building a java version is bandwidth. Parsing and sending the sample is almost 250K or our bandwidth each time it is hit - careful coding reduces the impact on the viewer, and the host offering it uses virtually none - but it's still costly. We've got the affiliate link hard coded in, which should help to offset the costs.
On the other hand I mght try and convert it to a desktop app which can read in files. It is already capable of reading in full (free) ebooks from Smashwords, the bandwidth becomes prohibitive. If it's a desktop app then anyone who wants to can run DRM-free epubs in it. It just wouldn't have a library or anything like that.
Right now I'm working on another coding project, this one at the exciting stage where all the variables are being written out on screen when it runs so I can see what the program is doing - or isn't. The problem for that project is going to be artwork and design - I can code and write, but my drawing? Not so good.
Tuesday 17 January 2012
Talking Money
This is ridiculous. I hadn't realised this until it came to the crunch, but I have a complete aversion to discussing monetary figures. I may have to ask someone else to write the sanitised (and more detailed) version of this for the Smashwords Tools blog.
The issue is the referral links on the Smashwords widgets. It's actually causing a few disagreements on the team, and some users wanting to know why they can't add their own - with varying degrees of politeness.
The hard truth: 500Mbs of bandwidth per day costs money.
While the developers are volunteers and donate dev time, and the processing power and server space are provided by a publisher, the bandwidth is an ongoing cost. And the tools aren't even out of beta yet.
Since we want the widgets to be free to use, we can a) put an ad on the website (which doesn't cover the costs) b) ask for donations (creating legal and tax issues) or c) add a referral link. At least with a referral link a user only contributes when the widget actually gains them a sale.
The worst current offender is the store - which doesn't take a referral link - but some of the widgets in the pipeline are larger (and fortunately faster). They are going to have to have hardcoded referral links, because otherwise the hosting cost will be prohibitive.
Oh well, away from these depressing thoughts and back to work on a search box for users who have webhosts who only take basic HTML - links and images only. I love a challenge.
The issue is the referral links on the Smashwords widgets. It's actually causing a few disagreements on the team, and some users wanting to know why they can't add their own - with varying degrees of politeness.
The hard truth: 500Mbs of bandwidth per day costs money.
While the developers are volunteers and donate dev time, and the processing power and server space are provided by a publisher, the bandwidth is an ongoing cost. And the tools aren't even out of beta yet.
Since we want the widgets to be free to use, we can a) put an ad on the website (which doesn't cover the costs) b) ask for donations (creating legal and tax issues) or c) add a referral link. At least with a referral link a user only contributes when the widget actually gains them a sale.
The worst current offender is the store - which doesn't take a referral link - but some of the widgets in the pipeline are larger (and fortunately faster). They are going to have to have hardcoded referral links, because otherwise the hosting cost will be prohibitive.
Oh well, away from these depressing thoughts and back to work on a search box for users who have webhosts who only take basic HTML - links and images only. I love a challenge.
Friday 13 January 2012
You know you're a little geeky when...
...after a day of PHP coding and trying to get putty and ssh to work together despite two networks that don't want to talk (for a closer analogy, doing the PC equivalent of two computers standing in the corner with their fingers in their ears shouting la-la I can't hear you) you relax by looking at chess problems.
And then wonder what it would be like if you played a video of the 1851 Immortal Game to the theme song of Mortal Kombat.
The answer?
In a techy kind of way, very cool indeed.
The Game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoJkiz4f2p0
The Music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAwWPadFsOA
Start the music first, the game immediately afterwards, and enjoy. If you get it right the moves in the video are pretty much on the beat.
And now back to digging up imagemagic from wherever the shell put it.
And then wonder what it would be like if you played a video of the 1851 Immortal Game to the theme song of Mortal Kombat.
The answer?
In a techy kind of way, very cool indeed.
The Game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoJkiz4f2p0
The Music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAwWPadFsOA
Start the music first, the game immediately afterwards, and enjoy. If you get it right the moves in the video are pretty much on the beat.
And now back to digging up imagemagic from wherever the shell put it.
Monday 9 January 2012
Tools - an unexpected level of interest
Last night I checked the usage stats on those tools. Then I checked again. Then I dropped an email to a friend asking if they saw the 500% upswing too. And then google produced this:
http://www.smashwords.com/about/beta
We're in the status update on the front of Smashwords itself.
The only thing I would like to mention is that this isn't the sole work of one independent developer. This is more because of the owner of an independant publisher (who happens to also be a technical consultant) bemoaning the lack of smashwords widgets, and grabbing a few friends in the same field to correct this - and then making the widgets available to other people with Smashwords' permission.
This isn't, from our point of view, a money-making exercise due to hosting costs and supporting the backend engine. If someone else wants to use that engine to produce a widget with their own referral link embedded that would be fine with us.
The other thing this has given me is a rather extensive list of fixes and suggestions to deal with today, among the work on my own projects and this bits that pay the bills. But, after that update my most nerve-wracking job today is definitely going to be a scheduled and major upgrade to that back-end engine.
Wish me luck!
http://www.smashwords.com/about/beta
We're in the status update on the front of Smashwords itself.
The only thing I would like to mention is that this isn't the sole work of one independent developer. This is more because of the owner of an independant publisher (who happens to also be a technical consultant) bemoaning the lack of smashwords widgets, and grabbing a few friends in the same field to correct this - and then making the widgets available to other people with Smashwords' permission.
This isn't, from our point of view, a money-making exercise due to hosting costs and supporting the backend engine. If someone else wants to use that engine to produce a widget with their own referral link embedded that would be fine with us.
The other thing this has given me is a rather extensive list of fixes and suggestions to deal with today, among the work on my own projects and this bits that pay the bills. But, after that update my most nerve-wracking job today is definitely going to be a scheduled and major upgrade to that back-end engine.
Wish me luck!
Sunday 8 January 2012
Smashwords blog
A blog for the Smashwords tools is up, at http://smashwords-tools.blogspot.com/. This is partly to record our dev work, but also to give a single place where users can leave feedback.
Over the next few days I'll be adding posts for each of the gadgets as a place to leave comments, and possibly tying those posts in to the website through a feedback button.
Meanwhile what started as an online link directory for Smashwords books has grown into something more after we got feedback on the site that indicated it might be a useful tool for authors. It's now something between a bookstore, an author's personal site, and a link directory. Submission? Stick your Smashwords book number in.
We're looking for other authors who might be interested in an alpha, although the site's backend is still under development. No explicit content - this is strictly UK 15/PG-13.
Over the next few days I'll be adding posts for each of the gadgets as a place to leave comments, and possibly tying those posts in to the website through a feedback button.
Meanwhile what started as an online link directory for Smashwords books has grown into something more after we got feedback on the site that indicated it might be a useful tool for authors. It's now something between a bookstore, an author's personal site, and a link directory. Submission? Stick your Smashwords book number in.
We're looking for other authors who might be interested in an alpha, although the site's backend is still under development. No explicit content - this is strictly UK 15/PG-13.
Friday 6 January 2012
More work done...
The database problem is fixed, so I should be going back to the front end to get the rest of the functionality built. Here's an ethical issue - when there's less than 10% of the original code left, can I change the licence information to read "based on"? After all, anyone downloading the original package expecting the custom work we've just done is going to get a nasty shock.
And a new wizzley page: Since the hatchery gained a twitter account and a Unicreatures hatchery over the last few days, I thought I'd also add it to wizzley for a few more hits.
My next project? Tweaking the blog templates to swap the Adsense under each post for a Project Wonderful ad - it's a better position for advertisers, so it's only fair it goes to the advertisers who support the blog.
ETA: Adding the Project Wonderful banner was surprising painless - all I need to do now is work out how on the template how to count how many times it shows on the page and cut it down by a few so it isn't so overpowering.
This blog is being used as my live testbed, so apologies if it looks a bit odd during testing today.
ETA AGAIN: YES! There is a tag for it! Now I just have the other four blogs to do. It won't improve revenue, but hopefully it will give the advertisers a bit more exposure.
And a new wizzley page: Since the hatchery gained a twitter account and a Unicreatures hatchery over the last few days, I thought I'd also add it to wizzley for a few more hits.
My next project? Tweaking the blog templates to swap the Adsense under each post for a Project Wonderful ad - it's a better position for advertisers, so it's only fair it goes to the advertisers who support the blog.
ETA: Adding the Project Wonderful banner was surprising painless - all I need to do now is work out how on the template how to count how many times it shows on the page and cut it down by a few so it isn't so overpowering.
This blog is being used as my live testbed, so apologies if it looks a bit odd during testing today.
ETA AGAIN: YES! There is a tag for it! Now I just have the other four blogs to do. It won't improve revenue, but hopefully it will give the advertisers a bit more exposure.
Thursday 5 January 2012
Coding and more Coding
It's odd. Last year my resolution was to eat healthily, clean up my lifestyle and so on. This year, I'm back on the sugar and caffiene and I've probably got more done in the first few days than most of 2011. It seems nature doesn't think I'm naturally a health nut.
On the other hand, I've spent this morning wrestling with a directory - only to find the underlying database (which isn't my area and I can't access it) is fragged. Did I mention how glad I am that this isn't my problem :) ? On the other hand, the twin site's PHP, front end and basic non-database operations are all done.
The hatchery's going great guns - I've just had to refine the adult remove because too many creatures were growing up too quickly. Magistream is definitely gettinmg more use than DC. A full-scale DC rotator is in the works, but at the moment we don't have enough dragons to merit it and the mini rotator works fine.
And I spent the last five minutes creating a small scratch-off image game.
I can't believe it's only half-three. What do I tackle next?
On the other hand, I've spent this morning wrestling with a directory - only to find the underlying database (which isn't my area and I can't access it) is fragged. Did I mention how glad I am that this isn't my problem :) ? On the other hand, the twin site's PHP, front end and basic non-database operations are all done.
The hatchery's going great guns - I've just had to refine the adult remove because too many creatures were growing up too quickly. Magistream is definitely gettinmg more use than DC. A full-scale DC rotator is in the works, but at the moment we don't have enough dragons to merit it and the mini rotator works fine.
And I spent the last five minutes creating a small scratch-off image game.
I can't believe it's only half-three. What do I tackle next?
Wednesday 4 January 2012
When purely positive feedback isn't always good...
Yes, this is about the Smashwords Tools again with an update.
Over Christmas, the tools went into open beta. The feedback on the tools has so far been either dead silence or positive (I'm ignoring the website, since it's a glorified link collection right now).
While we don't track useage in anyway, our bandwidth stats do show us when someone is using the tools. We have significantly more users than we've had feedback - including a few using multiple copies, so I think that means they are happy with it (?). The same just happened with the alpha we made available two days ago.
The problem is that without feedback we don't know whether to continue development, what direction to take the tools in, whether to create generators or if people are happy with them as they are.
Please, if you are using these, let us know. Even if it's "I've been using this for six weeks without problems" or "I can't make it work for my account." Sure, tell your friends, but please also tell us. What we don't know, we can't fix.
(And if you're waiting for the production version, we can't take the tools out of beta until we've had feedback. That would be irresponsible.)
One very good piece of feedback however came from our error log: without going into details the system fails very safe - unexpected in a beta version.
Embeddable stores
The embeddable version of the mini-site is now available in alpha. This means if you use it live, tell us so we don't start developing on that version!
A demo
Areas which we really need feedback on include: third party links, author data, the myspace link (none of us have profiles to check it works), general useability etc. It's good from about 350px to 650px so it should embed cleanly in most blogs. It's packaged here as an iframe.
Here's the link to find the code:
- http://www.raggedangel.net/smashwords-tools/booksite/index.php
Future plans:
Depends on feedback, literally. Our java coder is stalled because until we know if these are useful there's no point in rolling out an AWT applet. We are wondering about amending the generators to have the "About this widget" link to get more feedback.
If the widgets are useful, then we'll probably wrap them in an "addThis" wrapper to make them easily shareable.
Other projects
Now I'm back to looking at another project, which would be a manually-curated e-book directory, and checking on the Project Wonderful Network Ad I'm trying out.
Over Christmas, the tools went into open beta. The feedback on the tools has so far been either dead silence or positive (I'm ignoring the website, since it's a glorified link collection right now).
While we don't track useage in anyway, our bandwidth stats do show us when someone is using the tools. We have significantly more users than we've had feedback - including a few using multiple copies, so I think that means they are happy with it (?). The same just happened with the alpha we made available two days ago.
The problem is that without feedback we don't know whether to continue development, what direction to take the tools in, whether to create generators or if people are happy with them as they are.
Please, if you are using these, let us know. Even if it's "I've been using this for six weeks without problems" or "I can't make it work for my account." Sure, tell your friends, but please also tell us. What we don't know, we can't fix.
(And if you're waiting for the production version, we can't take the tools out of beta until we've had feedback. That would be irresponsible.)
One very good piece of feedback however came from our error log: without going into details the system fails very safe - unexpected in a beta version.
Embeddable stores
The embeddable version of the mini-site is now available in alpha. This means if you use it live, tell us so we don't start developing on that version!
A demo
Areas which we really need feedback on include: third party links, author data, the myspace link (none of us have profiles to check it works), general useability etc. It's good from about 350px to 650px so it should embed cleanly in most blogs. It's packaged here as an iframe.
Here's the link to find the code:
- http://www.raggedangel.net/smashwords-tools/booksite/index.php
Future plans:
Depends on feedback, literally. Our java coder is stalled because until we know if these are useful there's no point in rolling out an AWT applet. We are wondering about amending the generators to have the "About this widget" link to get more feedback.
If the widgets are useful, then we'll probably wrap them in an "addThis" wrapper to make them easily shareable.
Other projects
Now I'm back to looking at another project, which would be a manually-curated e-book directory, and checking on the Project Wonderful Network Ad I'm trying out.
Monday 2 January 2012
Embeddable Stores - First Alpha of 2012
Part of the joy of having a blog is gratitously testing alpha code, and then sometimes inflicting it on my readers.
Like this: Mini-site and bundle of joy.
Ok, my thought processes weren't exactly enlightened (along the lines of "Why does Amazon have embeddable stores and not Smashwords?") but the end result looks kind of OK.
Why is it an alpha? The print and audio book links don't work. The Amazon links are dead, and may be removed - I'm not sure how Smashwords feels about Amazon at the moment. There needs to be a version for Smashwords users who don't apply for premium distribution. The site doesn't collapse width-wise gracefully for smaller blogs...
The version here is the minisite, not the embeddable version. Firefox, for example, will break it where it is embedded in this blog, due to width.
On the other hand, it looks pretty cool. And there isn't currently an alternative.
Why do I think it's needed?
- To stop authors losing sales from readers who aren't smashwords users, but are on Sony/B&N etc.
- Because not everyone is web savvy enough to have a homepage, or webspace.
- To give an alternate URL. I'll probably get shot for this one, but Smashwords adult content means it is blocked at many of the places I've worked, and through child-safe filters. This is a problem for children's and YA authors, as well as anyone after sales from lunchbreak readers. In the US this stuff may be deemed OK for 13-year-olds, but in the UK it's strictly eighteen-plus and the responsibility is on the provider to enforce it. Yes, this would mean registering a family-friendly URL for the minisites. (Our hoster's rules are equally strict on this, so we don't have a lot of choice.)
In practice if there is a lot of interest, this would be more likely to become a directory of family-friendly Smashwords books rather than an ecommerce store. All this depends entirely on whether anyone else wants to use it, and if anyone is interested.
Testing, feedback, or general comments on the alpha all very welcome here.
Like this: Mini-site and bundle of joy.
Ok, my thought processes weren't exactly enlightened (along the lines of "Why does Amazon have embeddable stores and not Smashwords?") but the end result looks kind of OK.
Why is it an alpha? The print and audio book links don't work. The Amazon links are dead, and may be removed - I'm not sure how Smashwords feels about Amazon at the moment. There needs to be a version for Smashwords users who don't apply for premium distribution. The site doesn't collapse width-wise gracefully for smaller blogs...
The version here is the minisite, not the embeddable version. Firefox, for example, will break it where it is embedded in this blog, due to width.
On the other hand, it looks pretty cool. And there isn't currently an alternative.
Why do I think it's needed?
- To stop authors losing sales from readers who aren't smashwords users, but are on Sony/B&N etc.
- Because not everyone is web savvy enough to have a homepage, or webspace.
- To give an alternate URL. I'll probably get shot for this one, but Smashwords adult content means it is blocked at many of the places I've worked, and through child-safe filters. This is a problem for children's and YA authors, as well as anyone after sales from lunchbreak readers. In the US this stuff may be deemed OK for 13-year-olds, but in the UK it's strictly eighteen-plus and the responsibility is on the provider to enforce it. Yes, this would mean registering a family-friendly URL for the minisites. (Our hoster's rules are equally strict on this, so we don't have a lot of choice.)
In practice if there is a lot of interest, this would be more likely to become a directory of family-friendly Smashwords books rather than an ecommerce store. All this depends entirely on whether anyone else wants to use it, and if anyone is interested.
Testing, feedback, or general comments on the alpha all very welcome here.
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