G.ho.st – Global Hosting System – announced in the beginning of the month that it will be shutting its services down to its extensive community on March 15, 2010. This comes right after a switch to a new domain located at ghost.cc, and promises of new features. Any where you look, you will find the following message to its users.

Dear Ghost User,

We hope you have been enjoying our free Ghost service. Regrettably changes in the marketplace mean that it is no longer economical for us to host the Ghost service and we will be closing down the service on or around March 15. We will instead be focusing on licensing or selling our technology to larger companies.

We advise you to migrate ALL important folders, files and emails to another secure place before March 15. You might like to consider Google Docs or Microsoft SkyDrive for files and services such as Gmail or Yahoo! Mail for email. Some instructions for migrating data are included below.

We are really sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you and are very grateful for the fantastic support we had from our community.

For those unfamiliar with the G.ho.st service, it was an extensive free Web OS. You were granted larger storage space based on referrals – 1GB per successful referred sign up. Being a Web OS, they offered an integrated messenger, email client, mp3 player, office applications (spread sheets, etc.) and many other features that made this the worlds most versatile Web OS.

Reading the G.ho.st forums, you can see that many of the G.ho.st users are unhappy with the decision to shut its services down. Many of whom state that they would gladly pay a premium fee for the service. G.ho.st won’t state whether or not they have already found a buyer for their service, or if it will be permanently commercial. They’ve also started a petition which can be found at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/ghostpersonal/

I know that all of the continual users will miss this service, and I hope that when it’s sold, the new owner releases it as a public service – even if it is a paid service.

Monroe Diner located at 2833 Monroe Avenue in Rochester, NY – which opened it’s doors to the public on Monday, February 22, started off business with a bang. Bringing a great new atmosphere to the upstate dining world. Creating a retro 1950’s decor with Marilyn Monroe’s picture plastered a few places around the spacious dining area. They have constant 1950’s music playing, with a retro jukebox sitting in the corner across from the main entrance. Shiny red and white cadillac style booths, as well as bar stools make you feel back in a small town diner.

The menu at the Monroe Diner is extensive for a diner, offering breakfast from open to close of service at 11pm. Their meals, which are inexpensive for the neighborhood the diner is in, are largely portioned no matter how small of a meal you order. Their menu includes home made Belgium Waffles, Matzah Balls, Various meat plates (A variation of the Nick Tahou’s Garbage Plate), Pastrami Sandwiches, Corned Beef, (Kraft) Mac & Cheese, Burgers, Fries, Steak and so on.

Everything sounds good so far, right? Well, you’re only seeing a small portion of what the Monroe Diner is. Now we’ll look at the cons of going to the Monroe Diner to eat…

Front of the house is the first thing you’ll come in contact with. Half of the servers you encounter have little to no experience, and are emotional wrecks waiting to explode. “Work smarter, not harder” is something I took from my years in the military, and the kids they have working at the Monroe Diner should learn – whether it be something as simple as swapping a condiment, or not continually pestering cooks about food. I watched as a server took an empty catchup bottle, but instead of simply grabbing another off an empty table or the bar, they walked off and forgot to replace it – the customer got it themselves off an empty table instead. Servers need to learn that pestering cooks about orders is useless and irritating. Not only does it aggravate the cook, it slows down the preparation of the food, and thus extends ticket time which then aggravates the customer. It’s understandable that you would like to know where the food is, but a cook can only put food up as fast as it takes to make it – the more you pester, the slower this becomes.

Back of the house is something that most customers will never see, and for good cause. The back of the house in most restaurants is cluttered at best, however the Monroe Diner’s horrendous. They’ve placed their dishes on a rack next to the cold station of the line, so that food constantly drops on to the dishes. So don’t be surprised if you get something else in your food that’s not supposed to be there, or if your dish is dirty. Quickly brushing off the counters on to the floor is acceptable to an extent, but when you have a breeding ground for bacteria due to full pieces of bread, eggs that broke on the floor, egg shells, fries and the hundreds of other food products that fall throughout the course of the Monroe Diner’s 16 hours of business, it gets a bit disturbing. A kitchen line should be cleaned multiple times during the day, as to keep contaminates out of food, and not getting allergens mixed with other food.

The questionable food… Some of you may question what you’re eating, and I’d like to shed some light on that. The Monroe Diner runs out of all potato products throughout the day. In place of fresh mashed potato’s, you will be getting instant canned mashed potato’s. Yes, I said *canned* mashed potato’s, sounds delicious, no?

Did you happen to order mac & cheese thinking you’d get a nice plate of home style macaroni and cheese? Well, you’re close.. Except it comes in a bowl, and it’s frozen Kraft Mac & Cheese.

Check your meat carefully, as you may be getting something else. They continually run out of different types of meat, and try to *slide* something else in to your gullet.

Food waste? Not here! Uneaten tomatoes from a customers plate? Well hell, we can use those for something else. The term “ABC Gum” comes to mind.

Things they could change to make the Monroe Diner more people friendly, hygienic and cost efficient…

Train their servers and cooks. The biggest thing they forgot to do was actually train any of their staff for the position they were hired for.
Be prepared. We all understand that you don’t want to waste money, but if you have customers waiting an extensive amount of time for food, and they leave either as it’s being made, in the window or because it’s not correct, you’re losing more money than you would have had you had the correct ingredients on-hand.
Clean, clean, clean. The dishwasher in *not* your personal maid. Every one in a kitchen is expected to clean up after themselves. One hand washes the other, and all that good stuff.

That’s about it. I honestly hope this place gets their act together, or they’re going to lose more money each day than they make.

Until next time,
Nito

Beside being a web and software developer, I also have a family. For the past couple of months, my grandfather has been going through chemotherapy for multiple cancers. It started with cancer in his blood, which led the doctors to find cancer in his esophagus and elsewhere in his body. I suppose it’s possibly caused from the drinking and smoking he did earlier in his life.

I’ve watched him slowly degrade from the energetic man I looked up to as a child, to what he’s become due to the cancer and chemotherapy. A walking skeleton with flesh pretty much sums his appearance up now. The doctors said that the cancer could spread to his brain, and after the past few days, it seems that has happened. He’s delusional and paranoid. He has barely eaten anything in the past three days, and has started to live in his own world.

I spent the better part of Saturday night and Sunday morning making sure he didn’t some how injure himself. After being awake for over 24 hours, I finally crashed around 6am Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon brought more delusions. He thought that the bathroom was the den, and attempted to use the bathroom near one of the couches. He started walking around the house with no pants on afterward.

Later, we found him in the kitchen with all the stove burners on, and the sink filling up with hot water. He started rambling about getting the gas and electric company, and having my grandmother arrested. After a couple of minutes of that, he started spouting about my grandmother and uncle stealing all of his money, and put his finger in my uncles face, who grabbed his wrist. I quickly grabbed my uncles hand, and sternly told him to let go (The urge to punch my uncle in the face for that almost got the better of me). I started to lead him in to the living room to sit down, when he started ranting about the food being poison. I assured him that was the same food we had eaten earlier that day, and got him in to the recliner in the living room.

I sat down with him, while my uncle made him a cup of coffee. He asked why this was happening to him, and all I could do was shake my head. He then started talking about god, and how “the rest of them” were the devils servants, referring to my grandmother and uncle. He then put out two fingers, and drew a cross in the air, stating that he had forgiven me of anything I had done in the past. I smiled and got his coffee.

I’ve been periodically checking on him for about 4 hours now. He’s been asleep for about 3, and hopefully that will help…

-Nito

Yesterday, I posted about how I found some of my old writings on a data disk.

This is another one of them, but it’s more along the lines of: wtf was I thinking when I wrote this shit?!

Entitled: Numeric Prophecies

Now, for all of those that think they know
Come in and take a look
‘Cause i’m not your typical, or about average stalker
I’m a riddle, entangled in rhymes
Sift through, and find a numeric talker
Wouldnt you like figure me out
Learn how my twisted mind works
Although I use numeric riddles
Its not as easy as one, two, three
Take me to a doctor
As he performs psycho-analysis
His mind will be on overload
My riddle’s forever engraved
As for the rest of you
Take a grasp on this
There is nowhere to hide
A dog is mans best friend
Always at your side
But one day that dog will turn
The process of nature
And the cycle of life
Ones blood for another
But its yours that it takes
Have you figured it out
Or do you need more time
There is an answer
Numeric of course
Try a percentage
A few fractions to add
If it werent for our mothers
There would be no sins
But if there werent any fathers
How was the world to begin
The world turns
And life progresses on
There are shadows at your side
In the midst of all its chaos
Think about it for a few more years
And maybe you’ll have a solution

After installing Windows 7 on my main box, I started going through old data cd’s, looking for anything I may need to throw back on it. While I was going through some from years ago, I found a few songs or poems – or whatever the fuck they are – that I had written. These may not be suitable for younger people to look at – not that most of my posts are anyways… I will be randomly adding one every once in awhile. Possibly when I have nothing else to write about.

These were most likely written in very bad times in my life, and misspelled words are common in my work. I can’t really be assed to make corrections, so they’ll be posted with the errors (as-is).

These are by all creative rights, my property. Any use of them without written or verbal permission from myself is infringement, and I will sue the fucking shit out of your ass for every penny you have. I will also make sure that I get any and all pets you have, so that I can rename them, and post pictures of them in retarded ass clothing with signs in the picture of things animals may think.

This is one of my darker ones, and it seems I didn’t finish it – or I did, and just didn’t save it? Or it’s possible that I wrote the rest on actual paper, and it got tossed away… The document title says it’s called “Prom Night”..

Hey there buddy, youre invited to the prom
But its not the standard usual dress
Its trench coats and other peoples flesh
No need for a date, we supply the girls
Our diminions of death, laced in black pearls
With hell as the setting, fire lights the room
Sit down, take it easy, and pop a shroom
Shes not real, just stay in your seat
Time for orderves, and youre fresh meat
Carry you to the pit in the upstairs loft
Barbequed ribs, so tender and soft

I just got back in to software development after about a year and a half of focusing purely on web development. I can thank the Raptr client for that, because their newest version of the client is disgusting. It hogs all TCP connections, lagging any online games you may be playing, and slowing web page’s to a crawl. I decided to write my own, with a few additions that I feel would benefit me. In doing this, I *borrowed* Raptr’s games list, adding more games they didn’t have listed. I encoded it in Base64, in case I decide to make it a public application, and thus the hunt for a much simpler Base64 decode function started…

Encoding/Decoding Base64 shouldn’t take hundreds of lines of code to do. I was looking for a simple way to decode a base64 text file, without having to use write up an extensive module. In my journey for a cleaner, more simplistic code, I ran across a nice snippet from Tim Hastings which is probably the simplest way to do this.

First, you’ll need to reference XML in your VB6 project:
Project -> References -> Microsoft XML (Any version => 2.6)

Public Function EncodeBase64(ByRef arrData() As Byte) As String

End Function

Test the above function by using the following code, which decodes a encoded string back in to it’s original text.

Public Sub Main()
Dim strData As String
strData = EncodeBase64(StrConv("ohaithr", vbFromUnicode))
Debug.Print strData
Debug.Print StrConv(DecodeBase64(strData), vbUnicode)
End Sub

The output should be..
b2hhaXRocg==
ohaithr

*Thanks again to Tim Hastings for posting this on his blog.

-Nito

More and more phishing websites are popping up, making it even harder to navigate an already vast and complex digital universe. Gaming websites are one of the biggest victims when it comes to phishing, considering you can sell game accounts for a month or so rent depending on the network, level and items/gear that account may possess.

I get many phishing emails to an email which has no gaming accounts linked to it, which I find funny and odd at the same time. I must have some how gotten put on to some email list ::shrugs:: Oh well. Anyways, they attempt to duplicate these websites, both with domain names, the website layout and emails. A lot of them don’t succeed, and I will be showing two of them to you here.

First, we have a crudely made website, which has been taken down now. Their layout attempted to mimic the World of Warcraft’s login page, but the styling was off, and had images placed in wrong order and different sides of the screen. Below is the email that was sent, and the URL the hyperlink in the email directs to.

[The link below was used for phishing]
worldofwarcraft-consulting.com/index.asp?ref=https://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/&app=wam

The next website is still up, and I have grabbed a picture of it, as you should not go to this site, even if you don’t input any information. Below is the email received, and website.

The link leads to: worldofwcratcft.com
Creating the illusion of the same domain name is a big part of creating a proper phishing website.The closer the name looks to the original, the easier it is to fool victims. A lot of people only quickly glance at a domain name, which in the case of a phishing victim, is bad.

The image below is of the actual phishing website.

These are only a couple of the phishing emails I’ve received. Phishing has been around for almost as long as websites have, and it’s not going to go away. A few quick tips to help you stay away from phishing sites…

1. Always watch the links you click.
Even if it looks like a site you regular at, just be sure by scrolling over the link and checking where it actually leads.

2. Don’t input sensitive information on unsecure networks.
If it’s not a secure network, it doesn’t need your information. A lot of people (including myself) have an online alias, which can be used in place of actual information for any websites needing information. The only thing that needs your actual information would be Amazon, Ebay, PayPal, etc.

3. If you’re not sure, don’t.
It’s better to be safe than sorry. If you’re unsure about a website, try searching Google for it. You’d be surprised at what you can find out about a website or company through blogs or review websites.

Until next time,
Nito

I worked at the Anchor Bar in Rochester, NY. And as such, I feel it is my responsibility to bring some things to light that might otherwise stay hidden from its customers.

The front service is the most talked about thing in all reviews for the Anchor Bar. They’re constantly getting bad reviews on the quality of service from servers, and this is why. The servers have *very* little experience. Any one that went to the free wing grand opening might remember having to wait about 40 minutes before service started. This was because Ronnie decided it would be best to tell the servers how to do their jobs at the very last moment.

Now, most of the servers are all ass, no brains – You know the type. A couple of them actually know how to do their job, and always get great compliments and tips from the customers they’re serving, but the rest of them couldn’t tell a door from a wall. Between dropping platters in the kitchen, mixing up orders and completely ignoring customers, these people should *not* be employed as servers, period.

The food is another thing that gets dragged through the mud. Speaking of mud… How did those wings taste that were cooked in the fryers when they were out back of the restaurant? I watched a whole lot of them be dropped on the ground, and put back in. Did you enjoy your wings? If so, you should probably just stop reading this blog, as it will most likely make your stomach turn. I’ve watched on numerous occasions, the usage of expired chicken wings. Not one or two days over the expiration (although that’s still not something that should ever be done), but three or more days past expiration. Why, you ask? Because it’s more cost efficient, and it would be almost impossible to trace a customers food poisoning back to to the Anchor Bar.

Maybe you ordered a burger? Well, have you ever read Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham? Take away the eggs, turn the ham into a burger, and you have yourself an Anchor Bar burger. I’ve actually only seen this done once, but that’s enough to post about. I do hope you check your burger before you eat it though, as it tends to be undercooked.

Cleanliness is a big thing for me. I *hate* when my station is a mess, and I hate when people leave other stations a mess. Behind the fryers is pretty much an infestation of disease and parasites. Under the prep/soup table in the kitchen you can usually find a few week or so old chicken wings.

This one kinda makes me a little sick.. Anchor Bar failed four health inspections in a row, but is still open. How is that even possible? Maybe that’s where all of Ronnie’s money’s going, is to pay off the inspectors. Because he forced pay cuts for the kitchen staff, leading to 2 people being fired, another becoming a ‘on-call guy’, and 2 more to quit. He’s also been threatened with the Sheriffs by some of his suppliers, due to non-payment. Seriously?

Oh, you ever see the big black guy that sits at the end of the bar all day stuffing his face? Watch your step around him. He’s a felon (supposedly cut off his wife’s arm after finding out she cheated on him or something to that extent), who works off the books for Ronnie.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that maybe the actual owner, Mike, should find himself a different person to manage the business. He’s dragging the original Anchor Bar’s name through the dirt.

Until next time,
-Nito

Same thing as last post. Been working pretty much 10 hours a day, and then working on a website for a friends guild when I’m at home. Free time? I don’t know what that is anymore, lol.

I guess it’s good to keep a full plate, even on your own free time. Although some free time to just relax helps balance out the equation. I can’t say I don’t enjoy drawing two paychecks, but it gets tiresome after awhile. It’s the same redundant cycle over and over again – Go to work, come home, work on a website, turn on cartoons and go to sleep. Yes, I fall asleep watching cartoons. Lately it’s been Beavis and Butt-Head, because well.. That show kicked fucking ass. I also watch Rockos Modern Life at times.

I’m big on the older cartoons, before they fluffed them up because parents didn’t think animated bitch-slapping was good for their children. We grew up with it, and we turned out just friggin’ dandy, right? Bandwagon hopping people just piss me off. Most of the parents didn’t care, but they got pressured into saying it was bad for kids to watch a dog and cat attached to each other get into trouble.

Bah, I’m done for now.
-Nito

I’ve been working my ass off at the bar, because there hasn’t been much demand for websites around here as of late, and I’m running out of ideas for websites that can be put under the Phux name.

I came up with a few ideas, but they’ll all take quite a bit of time to get put together and functional. I think one of them is a pretty good idea, and would probably be pretty helpful to the public. I’d discuss it, but I’m still deciding whether or not to start the project. If I don’t, I’ll post it so someone else can give it a go.

I guess that’s about it for now. I’ll try and update more when I can.

Until next time,
Nito

Back in the summer of ‘08 I decided I wanted to work for a web design company, so I could get a better understanding of how to run ours. I applied at Ebiz Site Designs, in Downtown Rochester. At first glance, this place might seem to be an established website design company, and that’s what catches most of its customers in its web… There was 4 graphics designers, 3 programmers (including myself), two sales rep’s and the boss, who also did sales. I was told that I would be a drifter, working the developmental aspects of projects, sales, SEO and the only actual tech that they had.

I started off the sales by shadowing the other sales rep there a few hours a day. While he did everything in his power to try and get as many clients as he could (due to him being paid on commissions alone), I would be jotting down notes. They used an email tracking system that allows them to view how many times a user opened an email he sent them, which would allow them to magically call those who might be interested and close the deal.

My next role was SEO, and at that point I knew enough to scrape my own websites by in the page rankings. I wasn’t given any type of reading material, but instead had to scrounge around and find books and articles on it myself. I’m used to this, as I’m a self-taught web developer. It just seemed funny that I would have to, when I’m in such a *profitable* company. So, I managed to learn what I could from the books and articles I read.

The development stage is by far the funniest part of the job, as we don’t really do much there. I thought we would be building websites from the ground up, but in fact, we were only doing minimal work since we outsourced overseas. A few lines of HTML, maybe a database query, or if you got lucky – a flash based menu system.

Now, I’m all for an enjoyable work environment, but when you have your designers/developers taking multiple hour breaks during the day, there’s something wrong. I was given access to the ‘company forums’, which was used not only by us, but the people/companies we outsourced to. I finally logged on to it after about 3 weeks of being with the company, and saw that it wasn’t us designing the websites, but companies and freelancers overseas. Those live streams we offer our customers to watch the designers work, are nothing more than the designers tweaking what someone in another country had already created.

The quote they have on their website, about “developers with up to 15 years experience”, it’s more along the lines of the boss having 15 years experience in networking, and the rest of the company having maybe a year or two tops.

This really irked me, and I simply wrote a email to the owner, packed up my things, left and never looked back. Still to this day I hear about people and companies waiting months, and even in some cases – over a year for their websites to be finished. This is nothing new. I was given clients who had been waiting 3 – 8 months for websites, and had been through 4 or 5 sales rep’s in that period of time. Needless to say, they’re not a joy to deal with over the phone, but I can imagine what they’ve been through.

Now, the profits part… This company, although doing massive business, is a sink hole for revenue. Aside from having to pay the bills for the company, they have to pay lawyers (they get a lot of clients who want their money back, but never get it), and then the companies and freelancers *before* they’ll even take a job. Not wondering why your website’s taking so long to complete now, are you? There’s really no incentive to complete it on a reasonable date if you’ve already pocketed the cash.

My conclusion to this blog, well, it’s pretty clear. This company is a ripoff. The designs that aren’t made overseas, are purchased in bulk from template companies.

** I did not sign a nondisclosure contract with this company, and therefore are entitled to let the public know of the misleading this company and it’s owner do **

Until next time,
-Nito

Well, it has certainly been a while since I last blogged. I’ve actually been extremely busy with work, and a minor back injury I had last week. Nikki and I are going to view an office building later today at 6 for Frag Designs. We’re looking for more clientele, so if you’re in the Rochester, NY area and need a website created or updated, drop us a line. We prefer to only work locally, although we have done websites for out-of-state companies before. We find it easier to communicate, and get everything situated if we can have actual sit downs.

Aside from work, there hasn’t been much going on. One of the Phux members, Ryan, is back around and doing good. I’m still hearing about one of my old employers screwing people over with their websites. In my next post, I’m going to tell everyone a little story about a place named Ebiz Site Designs.

Until next time,
-Nito

My second XBOX 360 console shit the bed. My first I expected as much from since I bought it used, but my second I bought brand new in April from GameStop. I think it’s due to the dashboard update. Microsoft seems to think that adding more GUI acceleration to a system that’s already lacking on video processor speed is a good idea.

It started by just freezing at the boot screen screen (where the X comes up on the circular button), and quickly turned into three red rings. I’m sending it in to be *repaired*, although we all know that they just run a quick diagnostics on it, and then ship you a new console. So now my big question for myself is, should I stick with the 360, or splurge and get a ps3 as well. I’ve weighed the pros and cons of this idea for months, and still haven’t come up with a decision. But now that Sony has reduced the price of the ps3, it might just be that time.

PS3 is definitely the superior of the two. It offers a higher grade video processor, and the system is unbeatable when it comes to new-age gaming consoles. It has very few break downs or issues, and the only one I’ve heard of happening to multiple people is the 80gb HDD issue, which is hardly anything to worry about, since I’d most likely get a 120gb.

The only issue I have with the PS3 is that the game lineup is ridiculously small. Microsoft got most of the good exclusives, even if PS3 has the game, and the only game exclusive content I can think of that Sony got was for the new Batman.

So, I ask you, my readers – Would you get a PS3, or stick with the 360?

If you do any online gaming, you’ve probably run into this. It’s the idiots who seem to think that because they’re behind some sort of screen, that they can act big and tough. You know who I’m talking about. The people that try and flame you out because you head shotted them, or the players that try and bully you in a game because that’s the only place they have any type of masculinity.

Now, I see a lot of this because I play a lot of online games. I actually just had someone nerd rage on me in a free RTS game called Evony, because I took one his dozens of valleys. He decided that sending thousands of troops to my cities would make up for the less than one minute he didn’t have the valley, and then message me. Now, in this game you can join alliances, which is the same as a guild. This was his message:

I am recovering wages for lost time and lumber. :- Joining alliance I give everything back plus more….no biggie.

So, basically this player’s attempting to bully me into their alliance ::rolls eyes::. Now, for anyone who plays Evony, you know that attacking another players city costs you as well as the city you’re attacking. I’ve played this game for awhile, so I know how to defend my cities, and what to do if there’s an incoming attack. I move all my resources to another of my cities until after the attack. So, let’s take a look at what he gained and lost by attacking my cities.

The first city he attacked he sent 70,000 Archers. He lost 68,000 of them and only plundered (stole) about 4,000 in resources. That’s a serious loss, when you look at what it costs to build an archer.
The second city he attacked, he sent 60,000 Archers. He lost all of them, and plundered nothing.
The third city he attacked, he sent 1,100 Transporters and 4,300 Ballista’s. He lost all of the Ballista’s and 900 Transporters, while plundering nothing.

Now, you put in the cost of the extensive army he just sent to attack, and he’s just lost about 10,000,000 in resources, give or take. But, of course, he doesn’t care as long as he can try and bully someone in a game.

Another good example of this, is about 45% of the World of Warcraft players. You’d think that being a pay to play game, it’d have a higher quality of player, but since a lot of the players are kids who got their parents to pay their subscription fee, you end up running into quite a few of the nerd rager’s. This is done in PvP (Player vs Player). I find it quite funny, because the opposing faction player will attempt to belittle you after they’ve killed you, but Blizzard created different languages for each faction and race, so you can’t read what they say.

To you nerd rager’s: Go out, get some sun and stop trying to be something you’re not. Being able to type insults you got off Google or kill other players in a game because you spend your lives doing nothing but gaming doesn’t make you cool.

To the victims of nerd rage: Remember that most of these kid’s (and sometimes adults) are going to have nothing to show for their time on earth but a high in-game PvP score, and a lot of people who wouldn’t mind finding out where they live.

Until next time,
-Nito

I’m currently working on getting this damn website up and running. I tell ya, sometimes it’s a pain in the ass working for yourself. Unless we’re releasing something as OSS, there’s not really any motivation to get it done. I mean, as the lead project manager I know I have to set a deadline, but what if we miss it? There’s no one to answer to but me, and I’m sure as hell not gonna get on my teams asses about it, because most of the sites we release are free to use, and barely generate any profit. It’s actually funny, the money we do make is from working for other people, and not ourselves..

Yeah, we don’t get many donations and we’re definitely not complaining, because we’re all about helping people learn while keeping their money in the pockets, but that means we use out-of-pocket money ourselves to keep everything running. Back to the topic at hand though, lol…

We’ve been working on MyLinkFarm for about two months now, constantly trashing what we have, and starting from scratch. I think the count’s up to six times scrapped now, but I plan on keeping what we have now for at least the beta portion of it. Speaking of the Beta, I almost forgot about that, and I’ll add the details and how you can be a part of it at the end of the post.

The idea behind MyLinkFarm was to allow web masters to exchange their links in a easy to use and friendly environment. Completely free of charge (We hope to keep it that way, as long as we can get continuous advertisers to buy space, donations, etc.) to use. We’re working on getting a function up to check each and every affiliate to make sure they’re still hosting the other parties link on the page they gave. We’ve also looked at how other link exchange websites work, and decided to add something we think is vital, and that’s the choice between adding our link to your index page or a webpage in your directory to verify your site.

We’ve removed the virtual directories for the website until we can get it fully functioning (mod_rewrite’s a fucking pain in the ass when you’re working with multiple pages that call multiple other pages and so on). AJAX has been implemented, to help cut down on the amount of pages and refreshes. We plan on adding a mobile portion of the site later on down the road to allow link accepting on the fly. We’ll also have the option to get real-time updates via email (possibly SMS when we create the mobile portion of the site).

We’re still deciding on how the Beta will work, but right now we’re wanting to open it up to a set amount of people (We’re thinking 50). We want to vary the type of users that would be using it, so we can get a feel of how each group likes the functions, GUI, etc. This would be Tech Savvy (Programmers) and Internet Users (People who spend most of their time just surfing various websites, with little to no programming experience). If you’re interested, you can send post here, or send us a DM on Twitter @PhuxDev. Remember to add what group you would fall under so that we can start building a list of potentials.

Until next time,
-Nito