Check it out: America's Best Young Entrepreneurs
You can vote for us here: Vote for your favorite from the 25 under 25 entrepreneurs
Later
Monday, October 30, 2006
Monday, October 16, 2006
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Amie Street Says Hi in the Wall Street Journal
We were in the Wall Street Journal this morning. Check it out.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Some Really cool stuff I relized after the last post
If you log in to your amie street account and come back to this page, any middle distance runner songs you own on Amie Street will play the full songs in the player in the previous post. That is way too cool!
Another cool thing. Want to show the latest songs you're buying on Amie Street? Here's the last 20 songs I bought.
Want the code? After myUsername__ just type in your amie street username. Here's Elias' last 20 buys.
Here's the code:
<embed height="300" width="400" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://amie.st/listSongs.php?fetchPlaylist/myUsername__YourUsernameHere/sortBy__added_on/order__DESC/"></embed>
Another cool thing. Want to show the latest songs you're buying on Amie Street? Here's the last 20 songs I bought.
Want the code? After myUsername__ just type in your amie street username. Here's Elias' last 20 buys.
Here's the code:
<embed height="300" width="400" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://amie.st/listSongs.php?fetchPlaylist/myUsername__YourUsernameHere/sortBy__added_on/order__DESC/"></embed>
Another It's been awhile post, another stack of cool features
It's been a crazy month. We passed some pretty crazy milestones, songs sold, songs avilable etc, and the monster is still growing. Tim is working on getting the site on a new server. Our former hosting provider hung us out to dry last week during the Techcrunch craze and the server died. That's why we're switching.
And this time we've made absolutely sure on our own that the new server CAN have CPU's added in 5 minutes AND they're always in STOCK.
Fortunately, we have found some time during this time to build some really cool new stuff for everybody. I'll post details on them in the following days, but first a look at the overhauled player and some new features that have been added on to it.
First of all, there have been some small style changes to make it fit better in the new design as you can see below. Its still pretty primitive. been working on the functionality side of things up to this point.
If you look closely, you'll notice that Amie Radio is finally starting to see the light of day. Want to just bounce around indie and hear alot of music you've never heard before, even if you're heavy users like us around the house. You can just open up the radio and get a good two hours of music. Adding to the idea of genres as another focal point for discovery, each genre now has its own station. What's really cool at least to me, is how easy it is to get around all the content in a genre via some intelligent URL's and the arch. For example, say your a big indie fan. Here's how easy it is to get all of the content you could ever want.
First, there's the genre home page. You can get there by just typing in http://www.amie.st/genre/Indie . Want blog posts? Three options. View in the site, http://amie.st/blog/genre/Indie Newsfeed? http://blog.amie.st/tag/Indie/feed/ Feedburner fan? http://feeds.feedburner.com/amie/genre/Indie What about tuning into the Indie station? Simple enough. http://amie.st/radio/Indie What if you want to search for something? Simple. http://amie.st/search/Indie
Yikes spikes that's slick! But back to features.
On the functionality side of things, some in the flash it self, other on the backend, the player has become its own entity entirely.
After some good user feedback, we added some more buttons to make life easier. Hear a good song playing on the radio? Click a button and you can rec, buy, download, or go to the artist's store.
Something really cool is the option to add the player itself to your browser's sidebar. This works on just about every browser out there, but no one really uses it but us. No pop ups, no iteruption. Just cruise around the site listening to good music. A link to easily bookmark any playlist or radio station has also been added. Some other functionality has also been put in to make sharing the player with your friends easier.
You can also search right in the player and the results will load as a playlist. Again, pretty slick. Big fan of the search bar in the upper right hand corner of iTunes? Same deal here. You'll love it.
You'll also notice the first bits of playlist integration. In the upper left hand corner. Lists are an academic essay in themselves, so I'll save that discussion for another time.
The last change i can think of in the player is the concept of listen pages for artists. Want a really easy way to let people listen to your music on Amie Street and allow them to buy songs really easy? Simple. Just make a link to http://amie.st/listen/The Artist's Name . So if you want to listen to The Far Star, http://amie.st/list/The Far Star . Seldon Plan fan? http://amie.st/listen/The Seldon Plan . Rather put the flash player on your own site? Just copy and paste the code in the embed input and you're set. Want to let people listen to samples of middle distance runner on your site?
<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="300" width="400" src="http://amie.st/flash/player/xspf_player.swf?playlist_url=http://amie.st/listSongs.php?fetchPlaylist/artistId__334">
</embed>
That's it.
We use Fabricio Zuardi's XPSF player as the frame work for our player. Check out http://hidout.com.br for really really good free independent music.
Note: These features have not been pushed to the production environment yet. So if they don't work, that's why. Should be up in a couple days though.
And this time we've made absolutely sure on our own that the new server CAN have CPU's added in 5 minutes AND they're always in STOCK.
Fortunately, we have found some time during this time to build some really cool new stuff for everybody. I'll post details on them in the following days, but first a look at the overhauled player and some new features that have been added on to it.
First of all, there have been some small style changes to make it fit better in the new design as you can see below. Its still pretty primitive. been working on the functionality side of things up to this point.
If you look closely, you'll notice that Amie Radio is finally starting to see the light of day. Want to just bounce around indie and hear alot of music you've never heard before, even if you're heavy users like us around the house. You can just open up the radio and get a good two hours of music. Adding to the idea of genres as another focal point for discovery, each genre now has its own station. What's really cool at least to me, is how easy it is to get around all the content in a genre via some intelligent URL's and the arch. For example, say your a big indie fan. Here's how easy it is to get all of the content you could ever want.
First, there's the genre home page. You can get there by just typing in http://www.amie.st/genre/Indie . Want blog posts? Three options. View in the site, http://amie.st/blog/genre/Indie Newsfeed? http://blog.amie.st/tag/Indie/feed/ Feedburner fan? http://feeds.feedburner.com/amie/genre/Indie What about tuning into the Indie station? Simple enough. http://amie.st/radio/Indie What if you want to search for something? Simple. http://amie.st/search/Indie
Yikes spikes that's slick! But back to features.
On the functionality side of things, some in the flash it self, other on the backend, the player has become its own entity entirely.
After some good user feedback, we added some more buttons to make life easier. Hear a good song playing on the radio? Click a button and you can rec, buy, download, or go to the artist's store.
Something really cool is the option to add the player itself to your browser's sidebar. This works on just about every browser out there, but no one really uses it but us. No pop ups, no iteruption. Just cruise around the site listening to good music. A link to easily bookmark any playlist or radio station has also been added. Some other functionality has also been put in to make sharing the player with your friends easier.
You can also search right in the player and the results will load as a playlist. Again, pretty slick. Big fan of the search bar in the upper right hand corner of iTunes? Same deal here. You'll love it.
You'll also notice the first bits of playlist integration. In the upper left hand corner. Lists are an academic essay in themselves, so I'll save that discussion for another time.
The last change i can think of in the player is the concept of listen pages for artists. Want a really easy way to let people listen to your music on Amie Street and allow them to buy songs really easy? Simple. Just make a link to http://amie.st/listen/The Artist's Name . So if you want to listen to The Far Star, http://amie.st/list/The Far Star . Seldon Plan fan? http://amie.st/listen/The Seldon Plan . Rather put the flash player on your own site? Just copy and paste the code in the embed input and you're set. Want to let people listen to samples of middle distance runner on your site?
<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="300" width="400" src="http://amie.st/flash/player/xspf_player.swf?playlist_url=http://amie.st/listSongs.php?fetchPlaylist/artistId__334">
</embed>
That's it.
We use Fabricio Zuardi's XPSF player as the frame work for our player. Check out http://hidout.com.br for really really good free independent music.
Note: These features have not been pushed to the production environment yet. So if they don't work, that's why. Should be up in a couple days though.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Wow its been awhile
Things have been pretty crazy over the last week. We moved to new digs over on Trenton street and we've been wicked busy with the move, settling in, and releasing/doing some cool stuff. You'll notice that we rolled out a blog on the site. El was in DC this weekend for the Amie Street sponsored Labor Day Madness concert (pics on flickr). We've spent all weekend working on IE bugs. And IE users, I now have really good news for you. You're finally going to get to experience Amie Street in full effect. JRO has been banging away on the CSS tweaks that have a high jibber jabber ratio. I've been working on the player itself and listening to samples. So now, the site will look proper to you AND you'll be able to listen to samples straight through the player. The issue was IE's terrible handling of the SSL. That's now fixed. Enjoy.
Monday, August 28, 2006
Multiple Script Execution Problem Fixed! Finally!!!
We've had a know issue on the site forever. You can't download a song and browse the site at the same time. I'm happy to announce, it's FIXED. At first, we had to deal with the multi threading issue in Apache2. Then we had to figure out the problem PHP sessions were causing. That means, we can now realease a ton of features including the player!(see next few posts).
Our Biggest Release Yet
In a few hours, we'll be doing our biggest production synch to date. There are tons of new tweaks and features coming. The biggest of all, a player! Here's a shot from it still on the development box. There are a lot of new things that can be done with the player. The best feature in the history of features is you can turn any search result into a playlist and take it with you! Yes ANY search result can now have sound and not just a newsfeed. More on this tomorrow morning.
Videos? In your Amie Street Profile?!?!?!?!?
Yep that's right. The guys from 508 Disturbance were the first to figure it out and have earned themselves a super amazing 1 oz. steak, courtesy of Peter.
You CAN have videos on Amie Street. Right now. You dont need to wait for us to build an uploading system. Just upload your stuff to YouTube, Metacafe, or Google Video. Get the place this video on your page code (an embed tag) and just paste it into any field on your profile page.
Artists, here's a suggestion. Create a custom profile field called the title of your song. Then just paste the embed code into the other field.
At the end, you get something really slick.
You CAN have videos on Amie Street. Right now. You dont need to wait for us to build an uploading system. Just upload your stuff to YouTube, Metacafe, or Google Video. Get the place this video on your page code (an embed tag) and just paste it into any field on your profile page.
Artists, here's a suggestion. Create a custom profile field called the title of your song. Then just paste the embed code into the other field.
At the end, you get something really slick.
We ♥ Meebo!
So we've been playing with Meebo around the house and we're just lovin it. If you use any of the popular IM clients, you should definately have a look. If you don't know what Meebo is, its pretty straight forward. You can use your browser to login to several popular IM services, AIM, MSN, etc, and do all your messaging right through your browser.
You can do something really slick when it comes to integrating Meebo with your Amie Street profile too. If you look at Eli's Profile, you can now put the Meebo Me widget in your profile. Really cool feature for artists. If you're logged into meebo, you can view who is on your Amie Street profile and start an IM with them. Look for more cool stuff between Amie Street and Meebo in the near future.
You can do something really slick when it comes to integrating Meebo with your Amie Street profile too. If you look at Eli's Profile, you can now put the Meebo Me widget in your profile. Really cool feature for artists. If you're logged into meebo, you can view who is on your Amie Street profile and start an IM with them. Look for more cool stuff between Amie Street and Meebo in the near future.
Buncha OReilly Books Online
If you're like me, you're a junkie for OReilly books. They are fandamtastic. Spotted this link over on Digg to a plethora of freebies that I'm just starting to flip through.
See http://www.dpm-2k.org.uk/oreilly-ebooks/
See http://www.dpm-2k.org.uk/oreilly-ebooks/
Downloading in IE fixed!
The download problem with certain versions of IE has been fixed. What caused it? IE's general retardedness. IE has a know issue of reading headers set by PHP correctly, specifically in versions 4.01 and 5.5, which has no work around, other than to upgrade to SP2 and IE 6. The problem we were facing wasnt this know error. It was only happening on very specific versions of IE. For example, Peter, running IE 6 on his laptop could download fine, but I couldn't download songs on my tower running another version of IE 6. It was really damn frustrating for us and I'm sure all of you IE 6 users who couldnt download. But now its fixed. So have fun.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
IE Download Woes
There seems to be a pretty big problem with some IE setups. That problem is, you can't download songs. Whenever you click on the download link, the box pops up, you hit save, it seems to work for a little while, then you get an error about not being able to read the resource.
We think that this has something to do with the way some versions of IE handle the HTTP headers, because it was dropped on its head as a kid. We know about it and we're working as fast as we can to get this sucker fixed.
As a matter of fact, you could just fix it youself. Here's a hint:
And while we're at it, screw outlook too
Hopefully we can get it fixed on our really soon. We'll make an announcement when its fixed.
We think that this has something to do with the way some versions of IE handle the HTTP headers, because it was dropped on its head as a kid. We know about it and we're working as fast as we can to get this sucker fixed.
As a matter of fact, you could just fix it youself. Here's a hint:
And while we're at it, screw outlook too
Hopefully we can get it fixed on our really soon. We'll make an announcement when its fixed.
Sunday, August 20, 2006
First Round of the Contest Series Has Ended
So the first round of the giveaway ended last night. And the winners are being notified. There was a bit of a glitch on the leaderboard this morning. The time server on our new box is really damn funky right now. The old server was on pacific time and we switched to the new server which is on eastern time. The leaderboards weren't built for anything like this. To compound that, for some reason our time server on our new set up says the current time is actually 3 hours 54 minutes ahead of eastern time. So the contest which ended at 11:59:59 PDT needed to include all buys up to 5:54:59 AM, on the new server time. Whatever the hell you call that time, I have no idea.
Josh and Eli are working on contacting the winners and getting things set up for the next contest, which should start at 11:59:59 tomorrow night. the next contest will also include a user component. Top three users with the most street credit win some cold hard cash. The payouts will be higher than the last contest, but we're still working up all the copy and such. So you'll just have to wait until tomorrow to find out the details.
Josh and Eli are working on contacting the winners and getting things set up for the next contest, which should start at 11:59:59 tomorrow night. the next contest will also include a user component. Top three users with the most street credit win some cold hard cash. The payouts will be higher than the last contest, but we're still working up all the copy and such. So you'll just have to wait until tomorrow to find out the details.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Yay Migration! Weeeeeeeee!
So the migration is on its last legs. We got all of the bug fixes done last night. The DNS switch is still filtering down, so if you go to the site right now, you'll see the following message:
If you can't wait for the DNS changes to filter down, you can get on the site by updating your hosts file with amie.st IP http://207.154.61.28/ or just by going here. Why we didnt think to put that link in the little text do-hickey about, no ideas. Almost all of the changes are on the backend side of things, so you really won't notice them until a few weeks when we release so uber-cool new features built on top of this new jargon(Hint hint, if you have OCD like me, you ll notice that albums now have their own profiles).
One thing to notice right away, is way better searching. We did a lot of tweaking to mysql and took adavntage of some new stuff that is now available in version 5. So now searching for CX actually gives you the proper results.
There are still going to be some bugs. So if you come accross some funkiness, send us feedback or just post them as comments here on blogger and you could get youself some free shwagg. If you do post feedback on blogger, make sure to include your Amie Street username so I can get you credit and track down your bugs faster.
Now, as the little do-hickey message says, time for me to get a drink.
Amie Street has stepped out for a quick drink. Sorry about the downtime, we'll be back up and better than ever in a few hours. We miss you already!
If you can't wait for the DNS changes to filter down, you can get on the site by updating your hosts file with amie.st IP http://207.154.61.28/ or just by going here. Why we didnt think to put that link in the little text do-hickey about, no ideas. Almost all of the changes are on the backend side of things, so you really won't notice them until a few weeks when we release so uber-cool new features built on top of this new jargon(Hint hint, if you have OCD like me, you ll notice that albums now have their own profiles).
One thing to notice right away, is way better searching. We did a lot of tweaking to mysql and took adavntage of some new stuff that is now available in version 5. So now searching for CX actually gives you the proper results.
There are still going to be some bugs. So if you come accross some funkiness, send us feedback or just post them as comments here on blogger and you could get youself some free shwagg. If you do post feedback on blogger, make sure to include your Amie Street username so I can get you credit and track down your bugs faster.
Now, as the little do-hickey message says, time for me to get a drink.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
It's Contest Time Baby!
In case you haven't see it yet,
That's right. We're going to give away 10 grand to you guys. Cold hard cash. We don't pay ourselves and we live in a s*@! hole (if you saw the article in the PBN about us, you'd know this REALLY is true) but we love you guys and Elias said we could afford it.
I could give you the details, but you'll have to signup or login for that.
As always, hugs and kisses,
Amie
That's right. We're going to give away 10 grand to you guys. Cold hard cash. We don't pay ourselves and we live in a s*@! hole (if you saw the article in the PBN about us, you'd know this REALLY is true) but we love you guys and Elias said we could afford it.
I could give you the details, but you'll have to signup or login for that.
As always, hugs and kisses,
Amie
Fair Warning: If You Try and REC or Buy Your Own Songs
Fair Warning to All Users
We put a certain amount of faith in our users when it comes to building the community. We're pretty hands off. We have faith that users take their buys and REC's seriously. We need to measure demand accurately to price our stuff and if you try and game or blackhat around our system it kind of screws things up a little. But not for long, The alorithm is built to take that crap into account when it prices things. Come on, we're pretty smart guys and if you think you can get anything by Elias (excluding sarcasm and inside jokes), you need to check yourself in.
All that being said, we do realize that there are still other ways that you can try and game us. We will find out about it (one of the nice things about our sweet log analyzers and Elias who never takes his eyes off them). When we do, we aren't going to delete your account or any songs, REC's or buys. But, and this is the fair warning part,
WE WILL CALL YOUR S#@*!
Oh yes, a serious wall of shame is in the works. If you try and game the system and everyone else on the block, you're face will be glued to the wall of shame for everyone to see until we decide to take it down. Just keep it in mind.
We put a certain amount of faith in our users when it comes to building the community. We're pretty hands off. We have faith that users take their buys and REC's seriously. We need to measure demand accurately to price our stuff and if you try and game or blackhat around our system it kind of screws things up a little. But not for long, The alorithm is built to take that crap into account when it prices things. Come on, we're pretty smart guys and if you think you can get anything by Elias (excluding sarcasm and inside jokes), you need to check yourself in.
All that being said, we do realize that there are still other ways that you can try and game us. We will find out about it (one of the nice things about our sweet log analyzers and Elias who never takes his eyes off them). When we do, we aren't going to delete your account or any songs, REC's or buys. But, and this is the fair warning part,
WE WILL CALL YOUR S#@*!
Oh yes, a serious wall of shame is in the works. If you try and game the system and everyone else on the block, you're face will be glued to the wall of shame for everyone to see until we decide to take it down. Just keep it in mind.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Woops!!!!!
Some of you may have noticed some problems on the site over the last couple of days. We're still in the middle of migration to our new server, which means all of the code in the main repository branch is in PHP 5. There was an accidental synch of some work from the repository to the current server, which is running PHP 4. Completely incompatible. So we had to do a rollback to an older local version from the 29th. A lot of changes were lost in the process. So if you ran into trouble on the site in the last couple days, let me be the first to say "our bad. we're sorry". We think that the remaining bugs have all been fixed now. All bug reports from feedback have been fixed or resolved. Someday when we have time and are fully on the new server, the site will have a bug report form to send bugs right into our bug tracker and somewhere on the site, you'll get to see the bug report and public work logs (i.e. what we're doing at the moment to fix it). We just can't do it right now on our current server setup. Damn you name-based virtual hosts and fsockopen for your hatred of them!
If you're still seeing bugs somewhere, or just want to chat up Josh and Eli for a bit, swing over to the feedback page and send them something nice.
If you're still seeing bugs somewhere, or just want to chat up Josh and Eli for a bit, swing over to the feedback page and send them something nice.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
More Preview Player Problems ... Solved!
So we've still been getting in bug reports about the sample player, mainly that in one line view, under Music or Rec, when you expand a line to medium view and click on the big sample song button, it pops up and says "You dont have flash installed", even though you do. Well that's been fixed. And let me be the first to say, our bad. We switched over the way the preview player flash object is access in the DOM a few days ago and forgot to update the links in those two templates. Nothing a target="_parent" can't solve like that.
We're going to be introducing a new bug report form to integrate better with our bug tracker probably over the weekend. This means less headaches for us sorting through feedback emails, more time spent actually fixing bugs, and really fast bug fixes.
We're going to be introducing a new bug report form to integrate better with our bug tracker probably over the weekend. This means less headaches for us sorting through feedback emails, more time spent actually fixing bugs, and really fast bug fixes.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Adding Some Feedburner Stuff
After talking with some cool people over at Feedburner and talking to a lot of people who are currently using their services, I decided to jump off the bridge too. As you can see, I've added some Feedburner chicklets to the dev blog, mainly to let people get updates by email and let people take advantage of Feedburner's cool features. But man do I feel like the little league right fielder right now with that little icon showing 1 subscriber! Subscribe now and don't miss out on anything Amie Street. I've heard Josh is working on a new look called "Magnum" and that it's way better than La Tigre. Man that Hansel, he's so hot right now.
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