Delusions of Grandeur

It seems I’m really rusty on my project planning. My original (and altered) design had a box in users’ profiles displaying 10 friends’ release dates. Here’s the problem. The smallest Facebook thumbnails are 50px wide, and the maximum size for an element in a profile box is 380px wide. 10 friends simply will not fit. I’ll have to reduce it to around 5, which will terribly maim my app. I’m not pleased with this option, but I have yet to find another one. Splitting the friends list into multiple rows won’t do, because the idea is to create a timeline of friends’ release dates, and compare them to yours. If I break it into 2 (or more) rows I’ll lose the linear quality I’m going for. Its going to be hard to intuitively and attractively depict a timeline as it is, the last thing I need is to make it even harder.

In other news, one of you clicked a Google Adsense ad and earned me a few cents. I don’t know who, but thank you. Looking at the stats, my click ratio is actually pretty high, the problem is, my impression count is almost nonexistent. In other words, if I got my first click after a week, and statistically it was great luck, the only thing to deduce is that I need the bring in a LOT more visitors.

That means making a name for myself and this blog, which is not at all easy. I need daily, high quality content. I need to patiently keep producing it while my visitors go from 2 to 4 to 10 to 100 to 1,000,000. It won’t happen quickly, maybe never at all, but I have all the time in the world. I wish I had a subject I could blog about daily other than my everyday hurdles. I think I’m a good writer but I don’t think the current subject is a thrilling read.

Also, I need to return to being an active netizen, so links to this blog will spread. Too bad that can really steal one’s time.

Wish me luck! And tell your friends!

Was the only request made by Canadian officials in a recent South Park episode. When asked exactly what money they expect to be given and by whom, their answer was “give us some of that Internet moneh!”

The naivete expressed by the Canadians has some truth to it. There is plenty of money to be made on the web, but as we found out painfully almost a decade ago, its not just laying around waiting to be snatched by anyone with a half decent idea and lots of capital.

You could say I’m a veteran on the web. My first website was a silly 3-page website on Geocities I made when I was 6 years old. My user ID was like 136. I’ve been improving my craft ever since. I’ve created several websites as a freelancer, I’ve programmer many interesting things in PHP over the years, starting way back with PHP 3. I later worked as a PHP developer for a major website and was responsible for a very important project.

I’ve made a critical mistake. Not once during my whole run as a web developer have I looked into monetizing my creations. It was always either for someone else, of for fun. Never as an independent profit making project, and now I’m stuck lacking a lot knowledge I should have acquired years ago.

Those of you without ABP installed would have noticed some Google Adsense ads on the right. They’re not there to make me a lot of money. I know they’re not going to. They’re there so I could see what Google Adsense looks like from the content publisher’s side. Its about time I came across that. I’ll be glad if it gets me a penny from this blog, but I want to get familiar with it for some other projects.

Wish me luck!

Hey (no|every)body,
I wanted to share a particular difficulty I encountered while developing How Long. My original design had a timeline of the ten most adjacently released friends on each user’s profile box. As simple as that may sound, its a source of countless problems.

Problem A: Suppose Alice is not a How Long user, but has 100 How Long user friends. At some point, Alice adds the application and enters her release date. The application then has to check if an update is needed to 100 profiles. Suppose Alice, Bob and Charlie all have 100 friends and all add the application at the same time and you have 1 dead server, 3 frustrated users, and at the very least 100 users with inaccurate profiles. FAIL

Problem B: Suppose Alice was drafted on the 3rd of December 2006 (respect!) and so were 40 of her friends, 20 of whom use How Long. Alice and her 20 friends therefore have a very boring 10 closest friends list and are all quite unsatisfied. FAIL

Problem C: Suppose Alice and Bob are How Long users with the same release date, they are not currently friends. At some point Alice and Bob befriend each other. Facebook does not send out new friend events to user application, and rightfully so, honestly. Therefore, nothing is there to trigger an update to their profiles, and they’re both left with an inaccurate top 10 list. FAIL

Problem D: Alice is a How Long user with 100 How Long user friends. At some point she decides that because How Long has so many failures, she wants to remove the application from her profile. 100 friends need to be updated, the same problems arise as in scenario A. FAIL

There is only one solution to all this. Dump the idea and replace it with something different. I’m thinking of letting users choose 10 friends they want to display. This opens a new path to monetization. 10 friends for free, more for a symbolic price. I highly doubt this will work, seeing as how this application is targeted towards poor Israeli soldiers who make 700NIS ($208 as of today) a month at most, and belong to a population who generally does not like making transactions online. I’m not expecting a profit, I’ll almost surely dump the idea, but if the non-monetized application is a hit, I might just try it as a sort of monetization experiment and/or Spare Change API familiarization.

Wish me luck!

Hello folks,
I’m well aware that this will not be read by many people in the near future, maybe not ever, but everything has a beginning and this unread, unknown post has to happen. I’m hoping some day in the future, this website will be popular, thanks to its sister site mmgm-fbapps.com, which, as you may have guessed, will be hosting my Facebook apps.

I’ll start with an introduction. I’m Omri, I’m a soldier and an NCO in the Israeli artillery. I’ve managed to grab hold of a very convenient position where I have ample and plentiful spare time in the evenings - time that was wasted until recently. With the introduction of my new laptop and cellular modem into my life, that has changed. Evenings like this boring Wednesday nights are now spent doing what I’m doing right now; rabidly typing away at my keyboard. I’ve started to resume my pre-draft profession of web development, on my own this time. I may still do freelance projects, but my vision is elsewhere. This time around, I’m working on my very own, wholly owned, independent money-making projects. Its ambitious, I know, perhaps even arrogant to thinks that a kid with some spare time can make thousands (millions? I certainly hope, but I’m not even aiming there) of dollars from his own little hobby project, but that’s my goal.

My first route to wealth and fortune - Facebook apps. They have incredible potential, and its gonna be tapped. So as a first step, I’m practicing writing those. My first not-for-profit, learn-as-you-go application is called How Long. It shows a little box in your profile page telling your friends how long you have left before your release from the IDF. The interesting functionality should be coming soon - displaying a timeline of your friends’ release dates compared to yours. That’s my practice app. I have a great idea for a potentially money-making app, but it greatly depends on the quality of the implementation, which means I have a lot on my shoulders. There are thousands of great apps out there, competing for profile space and it isn’t going to be easy to win the fight. Its possible, armed with an idea as awesome as what I have, but you need more than ammo to win a battle.

Wish me luck!