And so, without addressing the issue that people are still going to be mean on the site (which we’ve discussed before), we are no longer showing reported items on the site anywhere.

Here’s the email we received:

I think your interactive 8-ball “game” encourages stupid and crude behavior.

By googling my son’s name, the interctive 8-ball site came up. I have never heard of this site before.
I found references on the site to my son and other students from his school which are offensive, crude, and hurtful. I “reported” them as offensive and I reported them to the school. I want them removed from the site, and thought that they were removed by the act of reporting. However, I see that you can access them by clicking on ’see reported questions’. They are also available in the “cached” items on the google site.

I find this very disturbing. He had nothing to do with these words appearing here and does not even know of their existence.

Please tell me what you can do about this. I want all questions or answers with his name removed. Can you do this? I am certain the are him because of the other names of students in his classes also being present.

Please respond.
_____ ______________

… and my response …

Mr. _________,

Thank you for contacting us about this. Before launching the site, we never understood how base and downright mean people who use Interactive 8Ball. It quickly became apparent though that most people who use the site use it to hide behind the anonymity and write hurtful things about other people.

Still the site can be fun for some… enlightening for others, and we’ve kept it online.

However, due to your email, we’ve re-evaluated our reporting system and agree that reported items should be removed forever. All of the question/answer pairs you reported will no longer be accessible on the site.

Please know that we have no control over Google’s indexing or caching, and so cannot immediately remove the content from Google’s site. However, they keep their index and cache fairly current, and after about a month or so our pages which were indexed there should disappear.

Regards,

Jason Coleman
Stranger Studios, Interactive 8Ball

Play the Interactive 8Ball now and see what all the fuss is about.

 http://www.haverford.edu/cdo/opportunities/events/

1and1
We use 1and1 to purchase and manage all of our domains. At just ~$7 per year, it’s hard to beat. We also use 1and1’s Linux Business package to host the Stranger Studios website and a number of smaller internal websites. For just $9.99 per month, you get 250GB of storage space, 2500GB of bandwidth, and the ability to host up to 100 domains. If you don’t understand those numbers, just know that it is much more than need.

1and1 has great uptime. They offer both MS and Linux packages, including everything up to dedicated servers. In our experience, the packages below “business” level suffer from some performance issues, as there are a large number of websites running on the same server. However, the business packages have been great for sites of our that receive fewer than 1000 visitors per day. For sites that require greater performance or more flexibility, we suggest…

Myriad Network
WineLog.net is hosting on a Myriad Network Virtual Dedicated Server. People moving from a regular shared server to a VDS will notice a huge difference in performance. Another reason to look into VDS options is if your application requires databases larger than 100MB (1and1 and other shared hosts limit on MySQL DBs). Our Mobilicio.us application with hundreds of thousands of rows of data zings on a new Myriad Network server. And Myriad makes it easy to scale to multiple servers or larger dedicated servers.

When moving to a VDS, you’re going to have to do a lot more of the nitty gritty at the server level. For our clients, we handle all the nonsense. But even we get confused sometime with some of the more subtle aspects of running a server. In these cases, the Myriad support has been nothing but great with us. They are always timely in their responses and very helpful.

And, yes, those are affiliate links above. For over a year now, we’ve been referring clients and friends to both of these hosting companies without using affiliate links. A little bit of math showed us that we were leaving some money on the table here. Not a lot of money, but maybe enough for a trip to Vegas. So we appreciate your support by using the links above to sign up for these great companies. We wouldn’t recommend them unless we thought they were the best. And they are.

ComiteSkin.com
Philadelphia-area Dermatologist, Harriet Comite, came to us for a total revamp of her growing practice’s (Advanced Skin Care) existing website. The site is balanced in its appeal to masculine and feminine audiences and conveys loads and loads of information in an easy-to-digest format.
Learn more about this project »

Garrett-Olsen.com
Up-and-coming Kart racer Garrett Olsen needed a web home-base for his growing stardom. The site is built on the Wordpress CMS to allow easy updating by the client and his web team. The site is also enhanced by the use of third party sites like Viddler and YouTube, and Flickr.
Learn more about this project »

LuxuryBabyBlog.com
A blog for hip parents to keep track of all that’s cool and “luxurious” for their growing families. The project includes our proprietary mailing list application (that we will hopefully make available as a Wordpress plugin shortly), as well as integration with Feedburner for email delivery of blog updates.
Learn more about this project »

VanessaPeanFoundation.org
Stranger Studios has a heart! We helped develop a web presence for the Vanessa Péan Foundation to serve as a hub for all of the foundation’s many meaningful efforts.
Learn more about this project »

Why would you want to install I8B on your Facebook profile?
I don’t know, but if you use Facebook as your homepage instead of iGoogle it’s nice to have I8B right there. We also update your profile and mini feed every time you ask a question through Facebook. Although this last bit can get tricky; we had a lady email us to take down a question she asked about a love prospect for fear of being had. (Which only gave us another idea for a Facebook app that we might share at some point.)

And What Happened?
I8B got a ton of traffic. In three days, we got 400 people to install the new application. Traffic to I8B trippled to 800 visits a day and then… leveled out. We actually lost 5-10 users today as people have started to uninstall the application. So growth is not exactly parabolic so far.

I guess we need something more to help the spread. (This blog post? A mention at TechCrunch? Maybe I’ll resubmit I8B to Emily Chang’s eHub.) It would be nice to have the 20,000 users that the other lame-o eight ball application on there has. Of course they got there first and so are high in the app directory and have the catchy URL at apps.facebook.com/eightball. (ours is apps.facebook.com/bettereightball)

What’s next?
A WineLog app for Facebook, duh. The I8B stuff was kind of a primer for work on a WineLog application. And good thing too. It is nice to work out all of the kinks using a brand that we aren’t as invested in. This article helped me a bunch, but it also took a lot of hacking around to figure out what he meant by everything. The toughest part was fixing Facebook’s broken PHP4 client. Don’t even try messing with that unofficial one. If anyone needs help, shoot me an email or IM.

Anyway, a WineLog app would be fun. Again, I would rather just go to WineLog to see what my friends are drinking. But if you spend your day at Facebook, it’s sweet to get notifications on what people are logging. And it will hopefully introduce WineLog to some new folks. Cross your fingers.

UPDATE: Here are links to my versions of the facebook api scripts. Download them and rename them to .php. I hope to comment up the code when I get a chance, so you can see what I changed. But in the meantime, this might be a better starting place for you than Facebook’s version.

facebook.php
facebookapi_php4_restlib.php
IsterXmlSimpleXMLImpl.php

Download all of the above files, rename them to .php, and follow the tutorial instructions here (or do whatever you’re doing). The strange one at the bottom is a library to handle XML objects (PHP5 does this natively I suppose). Read here for more on simplexml44. Or here is the entire simplexml gzip file as I unzipped and installed it on my server.

Meanwhile, I was using completely different code for my own projects. Typically I put all of the pagination code into a function (or PHP class), which makes it much easier to use in practice. Now I’ve made available a version of this function, which people should look to first if they want a quick implementation.

• Download the PHP code for the function here: diggstyle_function.txt.
• To use it make a function call like getPaginationString($page, $totalitems, $limit, $adjacents, $targetpage, $pagestring);.
• $page is the current page number
• $totalitems is the total number of items in the set. You usually get this from a SQL query.
• $adjacents is the number of page links to put adjacent to the current page.
• $targetpage is the URL you want to point to. e.g. index.php
• $pagetext is the string used to append the page variable to the URL. e.g. ?page= or &p=
• Use this style sheet.

Read the tutorial for more help and to see an example. For a real-live example, check out my Wine Log.

Also, Mis Algoritmos is at it again with a digg-style pagination plugin for Wordpress based on this code.

One of the biggest issues with Interactive 8ball is that it requires an installed base of users to work properly. If there is no user to answer your question, you’ll get an automatically generated recycled answer after a 1-minute wait. Even worse, if there is no one asking questions, you’ll be waiting for ever on the answer screen. So this current run up of users is pretty exciting for me. We’re at the point where I would guess that you have at least a 50% chance of getting a response from a real person, depending on the time of day you’re asking your question.

I also coded up a page to search through old questions and even a quick digg-like voting system. This page hasn’t been getting much traffic, but I just put a link to it from the widget’s homepage that should help out. And while it’s not yet as popular as the 8ball itself, it is a ton of fun to search through to see what people are asking about.

It’s been a ton of fun asking and answering questions with the folks “in the ball”. I haven’t done any rigorous research yet, but here are a few observations I’ve made based on the use so far:

- People are mean. Mean and/or negative answers seem to outnumber nice/positive answers 2-to-1. I suppose answering in a sarcastic way, or generally being a downer, is more fun for people that saying something nice. This could be an issue going forward as I’m not exactly sure that the people asking the questions enjoy the rough responses so much and may be turned away from using the 8ball again. Perhaps there is some way we can encourage an even number of positive and negative responses or at least responses that are well though out.

- The most commonly asked questions are of the form “Does ____ like me?”. Makes sense. I’m thinking of picking the petals off of daiseys singing, “She loves me. She loves me not…”

- A close second is any form of the question “Will I have sex?”: “Will I have sex tonight?”, “Will _____ has sex with ____?” There are a few “am I pregnants”, which is alarming. I hope people aren’t using the 8ball as a method of pregnancy detection. Maybe we should have and advertisement for pregnancy tests on the homepage instead of a link to buy an 8ball toy.

- The next most common questions are of the form “Is ______ gay?”. I’m surprised that so many people have questions about the sexual preference of their friends. I wonder how many of these are serious questions vs. a way for people to poke fun at their friends. I remember being a kid and can see how young boys especially would think it’s funny to use the word “gay” and one of your friends’ names in the same sentence.

I’m still trying to figure out the best way to monetize the widget. I thought that it would be kind of fun to put a small AdSense ad below the answer you get, but I couldn’t find any conversations online around whether or not it is okay to place AdSense ads into Google gadgets. In any case, there seems to be no way to make the AdSense links open up in a new window rather than inside the gadget’s iframe. So that plan is out anyway.

Other types of advertising might work, including direct sales to interested parties. Based on the typical questions, some sort of dating service might be appropriate. Although it seems like a majority of users are teenagers, so ads targeted to that group might be most successful.

I have one person who already approached me about such a deal, but I think I’ll wait until usage has grown more or at least reached a consistent level. It’s always fun to think about how these projects can make money, but I’m also a firm believer in the idea of “get people using your site first, then worry about making money later”. We’re arguably still in the “get people to use the site” phase.
Overall I’m pretty excited that people are using, and seemingly enjoying, the Interactive 8ball. Hopefully this surge in traffic won’t die away. I like the fact that I can have a random interactive with an anonymous party any time I want. It’s an awesome time killer.

Introduction

• Our Story
  Jason, Kim, and Stranger Studios
• Winelog
  Background on the idea and development and an overview of what WineLog is.

Types of E-commerce Businesses

• E-commerce as an extension of an existing business
  Best Buy: Buy online, pickup in store. Negative point: Best Buy has different online and in-store prices (confuses customer).
  Gap: Fully integrated with in-store shopping.
• Pure E-commerce
  Examples of purely e-commerce businesses (Amazon) and a discussion of the benefits and weaknesses of doing business online.
• Other hybrid models?
  Examples of web businesses that later moved in bricks and mortar businesses: EBay shops that sell your stuff for you.
• Netflix vs. Blockbuster
  How a bricks and mortar store can get a leg-up on a purely e-commerce company.

Starting up an E-commerce Business

• The Long-tail
  Why online businesses can take advantage of the long-tail in ways that traditional businesses cannot. (Hacking the Long Tail)
• Getting free help
  How to immerse yourself in the community you are hoping to break in-to and build up a support network. (BarCamp, Co-Working) 
• The role of planning in online ventures
  When do you need a plan and when is a plan a hindrance?
• Your online business is getting some attention, now what?
  Comments about the different paths you can take with your *potentially* successful online business. Taking VC money vs. boot-strapping, etc.

Making Money Online

• Brokering information on the web
  New web ventures base their revenue model on selling information, rather than what we traditionally think of as a product or a service. A discussion of blogs (Techcrunch, GigaOm) and other information-engines (Epinions, CNET).
• Growth Before Dollars
  Don’t think dollars first: web destinations that are useful to people will grow. So make your site, application, or service useful first. Once you’ve got a lot of people’s attention, then it should be easy to make money.
• Your idea doesn’t have moneymaking potential…so what?
  Don’t lose sight of the other benefits of your online venture – like learning new things, gaining a posse, credibility and popularity, enlarging your network and just HAVING FUN (Interactive 8-Ball, Mobilicio.us).

What should we make the address for the WineLog mobile site?

Here are a few options. Feel free to come up with your own.

• http://winelog.mobi
• http://mobile.winelog.net
• http://mob.winelog.net
• http://winelog.net/mobile

We picked up the winelog.mobi domain a little while ago “just in case”. I’m not really a fan of the new top-level domain. Creating a separate subdomain for the mobile version seems much more elegant to me. Although, keeping the mobile site and regular site on different domains will help with traffic tracking and the such.

The effect on Google juice should also be taken into account though. By using a different top-level domain, we’ll be losing the Google ranking we’ve established. But maybe a .mobi address will help with mobile search engine ranking. I doubt it though since Google themselves aren’t using the .mobi domain. http://www.google.mobi redirects to http://www.google.com/mobile.

“mob” is quicker to type than “mobile” or “mobi”, so I’m pretty fond of mob.winelog.net. But I also want to keep to any standards that have been developing. My only experience with this so far is http://mobilicio.us, where we made the base site the mobile site and use http://mobilicio.us/www as the “project site” meant to be viewed from a larger screen. The mobile application was what people would want, so we put it right there at the root level. We did use the funny .us top-level domain to stay hip and remind people of the interaction with http://del.icio.us.

So I’m really looking forward to everyone’s opinions on this. Thanks in advance.

Well, the improvements are in. We have a modularized PHP version and a Perl version. See the updated pagination demo page for details.