Projects
I usually have a bunch of little projects or things I would like to make rolling around in my head. Some of these I am actively working on, others are things I would like to make eventually but don't have the time for right now. There are also little tools I've made for my own use, for things like ip lookup or pinging a server.
Server Ping
Want a quick check to see if those CNAMEs you setup for S3 or CloudFront have propagated and are pointing to the right place? Well, I did :)
This is like a poor man's online version of Windows "ping servername.com" command that uses the Pear Net_Ping library for PHP coupled with a little bit of AJAX sexyness. What's next? Probably make it more like Linux's "dig" command.
What's my IP?
This comes in handy when you need a quick check of the external IP address of your computer, such as the IP addy of your cable modem. The sites online for this annoyed me with their ridiculous amount of ads, so I made my own. No ads of course :)
FizzBuzz
Jeff Atwood popularized the notion of a Fizz Buzz program for weeding out job applications. I was bored and felt like taking on the FizzBuzz challenge. Not content with basic ugly output, I took another couple minutes to make it prettybetter looking and show my code on the page. I suppose complicating it with colors and formatting kinda goes against the clean, simple FizzBuzz answer but hey, whatcha gonna do.
Jummly
Jummly is an online IDE (Integrated Development Environment). My friend, Eric Schultz, and I have been kicking this idea around for a while now. We have a specific set of features and functionality that we would love to have in our dream code editor.
As most things seem to do these days, our vision for Jummly changed from the desktop to being an online web app. With great open source resources like SkyWriter (formerly Bespin) taking care of a lot of the dirty work of the actual text canvas, we have the freedom to focus on building out our core features and desired aspects of the IDE.
Jummly is a fun project we hack away on in our free time, and a great excuse to play with Node.js. No promise of a finished produt or time to market. If we end up with a beta and you would like to give it a whirl, you can sign up for it here: jummly.com
Hacker News OnePage v2
I am currently working on an update to my original Hacker News OnePage extension. Version 2 will fix some bugs as well as offer more flexibility for users to customize the experience on top of what OnePage already does for them.
Check out the original extension here: Hacker News OnePage
Online Media Hosting
I would really love to have an online media file hosting solution for my music and movies. Something that backed up all my music and movies, has an awesome interface for managing and streaming them online in your browser, and can stream music or video to any device such as game consoles and mobile devices.
Additionally it would be great to have some features that let you share your music or videos with friends (only for listening/watching, not for download) as well as way for you to create playlists that include music from your online library as well as your friends. The platforms and tools exist, such as S3, CloudFront, and ZenCoder, but it would certainly take time to build. I know there are solutions that are similar to this already in the wild, but nothing really hits that sweet spot that I'm looking for.