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I’m so excited to be a part of the beta test/evaluator team for Martin Bowling’s latest iPhone app iDailyBooth (app store link). The 1.0 release was pushed out to fill a demand and even Martin says he feels it went out a little too early. Well let me tell you that 1.1 had improvements but 1.2 has even more.

The biggest improvement that I love is speed. There’s been some great tweaks to the user interface that were well thought out. For example when submitting a new photo the buttons have been reordered and the speed to get to the camera is almost instantaneous unlike in 1.0 when it took 15+ seconds.

There’s also the addition of the users photo stream. Now you need to understand some of the background on what’s happening. There’s currently no API to allow quick easy queries so iDailyBooth has been completely developed using available web POST queries. The photos are pulled through a little known RSS feed, so it can take some time to load.

Overall the experience of 1.2 is exponentially greater than previous versions. I’ve also been informed the team at DailyBooth.com is also working on an API and told Martin to start working on iDailyBooth 2.0. I’d suggest you get your feature requests in now. Easiest way is to leave them in the comments below and I’ll be sure to pass them on to Martin.

Download your copy of iDailyBooth now!

I heard from my buddy Martin Bowling today that iDailyBooth was finally approved and available in the Apple App Store. I checked it out and it is available. Hurray! At some point I’ll do up a full review on the app as I was involved in testing and am happy to be involved a little more in the project then I think either of us initially gave consideration to. Raise a glass to toast the success of iDailyBooth and go get it now!

Edit: Just a quick FYI that version 1.1 is apparently in the Apple Store pending approval. There’s a number of improvements that have been made to it. Also follow iDailyBooth on Twitter for more updates and a chance to win a FREE copy of iDailyBooth.

With web hosting being so affordable nowadays, many web hosts allow for multiple domains to be hosted either through multiple domain hosting, or through the use of parked domains. With domains from www.GoDaddy.com being so affordable, it’s common to get .com, .org, .net and more — especially for brand protection and online reputation management. The only issue with parking your domains is that if done incorrectly, you could potentially be penalized for having duplicate content. Many search engines explicitly indicate that duplicate content will face a penalty in their ranking. Suddenly your protection of your brand name or keywords doesn’t pay.

I came into this a few months ago when I needed to redirect ExtremePitaCatering.com to ExtremePitaNE.com while not losing any organic search results. The other kicker, they’re hosted on the same server, pointing at the same directory. It makes it easy to maintain. Reasoning behind the new domain is beyond the scope of this post, however simply forwarding the domain was the easiest route.

If you’re looking to forward a domain name, you’ll want to add the following code to your .htaccess

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} extremepitacatering.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://extremepitane.com/$1 [R=301,L]


The above is almost the exact code I use on the Extreme Pita Catering website. The best part is that it forwards the user seamlessly for old business cards out there, old search results, and pretty much anything else. Additionally it tosses a 301 status to the browser (or search bot) indicating to no longer index the page, but to update it to the new one.

Honestly, it’s a quick fix for those with an Apache server and mod_rewrite existing. Did I miss something? Am I doing it wrong? Have you got another way to forward a parked domain correctly?

It’s no secret that I recently upgraded my Mac Pro to run the latest version of Mac OS X Snow Leopard. It’s probably no secret to most people that I also develop code for various different websites and projects. That being said it just makes life easier to have Zeus (all my systems are named after Greek mythology Gods/Goddesses/Heroes) run the languages I use locally. Not only do I use standard HTML & CSS but I rely heavily upon PHP & MySQL. These were running flawlessly on my 10.4 installation and have been on my iBook (Apollo) for years. I recall last time that I had to compile PHP & MySQL to work on OS X properly but somewhere along the way stumbled upon an article highlighting that Mac OS X comes pre-compiled with both languages, along with an install of Apache.

So I hit Google and came across a great article that highlighted the high-level things about tweaking settings when upgrading to Mac OS X. This was great. It allowed me to get MySQL & PHP up and running quickly. There were a few things missing like session support. Some more searching yielded another resource on how to enable session support in PHP. Combining my knowledge of code development, the first article I found and the correct variables to adjust it was a quick edit.

I will say I did this all in Terminal on my Mac. The thing you must know is that you have to run pico (built in text editor) in admin mode. It’s really easy to be honest. Simply enter sudo pico xxxxxx (where xxxxxx is the filename you wish to edit) and enter your administrator password when asked. Refresh your page to see if it worked. If not, you may have to restart Apache and try again.

It might sound complicated and daunting, but it is quite simple. Now unfortunately there are a few things that still don’t seem to be working correctly and some additional libraries need to be compiled as well. Hopefully I can get away without doing too much to get things working properly. I’ll be sure to let you know what I come across.

Do you have any other suggestions or resources on setting up Mac OS X as local development server? Let me know in the comments.

For those of you who know me, you’ll know that I rarely have a shortage of what I consider my “million dollar ideas” to build on. In fact, I fairly regularly add to the list. A while back I wrote a post about thought vs. action. It seemed to me it was a turning point in my thought process…one of turning it into action. Fast forward a little over 6 months and where am I now? For starters, I’m off on leave (that’s really hard to say and hard to talk about). A long story short, I’m a big ass ball of stress. In addition to that my “million dollar ideas” list is larger and not a single one has been checked off anywhere near complete. There are some tiny modules that are working here and there, but nothing impressive at all.

I consistently find myself in a position where I’ve got a great idea and don’t act on it. Years back when the whole Napster vs. RIAA thing was coming to light of being illegal I was chatting with friends and telling them about a different, legal way to do MP3s on the internet and ensure the artists continued to make money. Well that idea is essentially what is now known as iTunes (and many other online music stores). At the time however, there were none…not a single online shop doing it. I’ll stamp that with a big FAIL on it as well.

Last week I was watching episode 9 (second segment) of Dragons Den on CBC. I love the show. There’s something fascinating about watching people do stupid things. But at least they’re up there doing it. I had been chatting with my brother about an idea I had which we were calling BlueBinder (@BlueBinder) and how cool it would be to pitch it on Dragons Den and get some capital, but more importantly the expert knowledge of these highly successful dragons. All five of them would be a valuable asset to the business. Well just the other week, GrubCanada pitched (successfully too I might add) and the thought of BlueBinder flickered and almost died. Then a friend forwarded me an article from TechCrunch about GrabyMyTable and it knocked another dent in the side of BlueBinder…though I’m sure OpenTable will give them a good run. Luckily there is still at least one USP (unique selling point) I have with BlueBinder and I’m hoping to capitalize and honestly competition is a good thing…it gives you someone to target. That being said, action is imminent and required IMMEDIATELY. This idea, is honestly on life support right now but can definitely be revived for huge success. I’d love to find out some information on patenting the idea/process that I have for BlueBinder’s USP.

Referencing these recent ‘insights’ I went back to have a look at the list of “million dollar ideas” and started going down the list:

• SPRY: While not a million dollar company right now, at least it’s in progress and slowly making some income. Most would consider that a good thing and I’m definitely in that boat.
• uPlay: I guess you could make this similar to Pandora—at least from my understanding of Pandora. Since I’m in Canada I have a hard time accessing it to actually test drive it.
• BlueBinder: As mentioned above, similar sites exist out in the market place that are doing certain components and other various concepts but none are actually doing it the way I think it should be done or how I want to do it.
• Community Connection: This one was a huge learning experience. Over $20k of personal cash invested in it (and still trying to pay that off) and a huge education as a result. The publishing industry is definitely an interesting one. The product was ahead of its time and I have no regrets for doing it. There’s a slight twist I’m planning to put on it that will hopefully have it making some revenue when I decide to revisit it in 2010.
• Back 2 School: I can’t take full credit for this one. A lot of the basis of this idea was from my fiancee. A mother in Ontario has done something similar (it took me forever to find in Google), though not the same concept. I even had contacted various people at Staples, Grand & Toy and Office Depot to get communications going. It’s definitely a little bit of a challenge to get high up enough into some of these organizations.
• Hotel Reviews: Again, not a complete idea of my own but the guys at Oyster are doing something similar. This one is moving forward slowly and will hopefully launch in Q1 of 2010.

The best part about ALL the ideas above is that they’re similar, not the same (with the exception of the iTunes one from the mid-90s). What does this mean? Well it means I need to take action. The only way to become successful is by taking action. It goes back to the wonderful grade 11 physics class with Dr. Flint and the whole “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” theory. I never realized how that would actually play over into life as well as the scientific realm.

Of course the list of “million dollar ideas” above is not complete. It also doesn’t give more then a 40,000 foot high-level view of a few of the things I’ve been thinking of. Have you got suggestions on things to add or features you’d like to see on them? Simply comment below.

My thought around this for a moral of the story is take action. And more to the point, why not take action today. Tomorrow is not a promise.

I look forward to hearing about your lost “million dollar ideas” from sitting around with inaction. More importantly I look forward to hearing your stories of success. Please, leave a comment.