Richard’s Corner

I threw Humongous URL! together as kind of a joke, but I figured I would share it with everyone anyway.  It’s basically the anti-url shortener.

It basically takes a standard url like this:
http://www.google.com

And turns it into something ridiculous like this:
http://www.humongousurl.com/r/38b63de0fec25916c5255387df1532319d68098d3e16ef6d5f5b...

See, I couldn’t even show the entire link without throwing off the entire layout of my site.  That’s how HUMONGOUS it is!

I am currently working on a new WordPress plug-in that will display a user’s Xbox Live Gamer Card.  The Gamer Card itself is a Flex application, and the Xbox Live account data is retrieved using Duncan Mackenzie’s Xbox API.

If you would like to see what I have developed so far, feel free to check it out.

It is pretty bare bones at this point, but I have some pretty cool features in mind for this project, many of which I would love to implement before releasing this as a full-blown WordPress plug-in.  Here are a few of the ideas I have been tossing around:

• Loading multiple gamer cards with the ability to filter by recently played games, gamerscore, reputation, etc…
• Visual comparisons with other gamers (e.g. who is logged on the most, what games are played most often, who has the highest gamer scores, etc…)
• Avatar images

If you have any additional feature ideas, I would love to hear them.  Please feel free to contact me directly, or leave a comment.

It looks like I was right about buying more Netflix stock. As of today at 8:06AM, Netflix stock is trading at $100.12 per share, an increase of $13.14 (15.11%). This follows yesterday’s announcement that Q1 profits rose 44% from a year ago.

Some analysts predict that Netflix can’t continue to gain value at it’s current rate, but with announcements like the one yesterday, I have a hard time believing their “professional” opinions.

Jesse Becker just announced that Netflix is “now shipping instant streaming discs for the Wii to ALL members who want one today”.  The disc is free with a Netflix subscription, so if you haven’t requested one yet, what are you waiting for?

As soon as I receive my disc, I will have the ability to watch Netflix streaming video on every TV in my home. 

Steve Jobs:

We’ve been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform.

*cough* iTunes on Windows *cough*

How about practicing what you preach.  If it’s good enough for Apple’s efforts on Windows, it should be good enough for Flash and Flex developers who would like to release their software for iPhone.

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