Nick Temple - Personal Blog

I’ve just completed “beta1″ of the Intellispire Software Updater for Joomla! (more commonly known as “com_updater”), and am looking for a few people to test it out. I’ve even put a screen shot on the front page, so take a moment to check it out - then join the beta!

In order to streamline my business and focus on the development of the Intellispire Network (which I’m building out into a “real” technology service company), I’m selling various business assets mostly having to do with .

If you are interested and know what to do with a website and software, and have a few thousand dollars available to spend strain, contact me and we’ll discuss what I have to offer.

• Complete website(s)
• domain names
• Software / ebooks / Videos I’ve created and / or acquired semi-exclusive rights to
• Resale rights products
• Technical consulting to help you get things going

ideas of how it all comes together, and a few other odds and ends.

I’d prefer to find one person who wants everything, but may part things out if necessary. I envision someone who has a good grasp of Internet Marketing, already with some things going, who wants a bunch of new technology related products that you can have polished to add to your product line.

If this describes you, or you have some other ideas, please do shoot me an email so we can start discussions.

I’ve decided to go ahead and release the Trixbox CE AMI I created on EC2, as described in this post.

This is completely “unofficial”, and is simply a packaging of the the vmware version already released.

You’ll want the documentation from the official Trixbox site.

The image name is ec2image/image-trixbox1.intelliforge.net-manifest.xml

The root password for the image is “trixbox”.

If you try out Trixbox on EC2, please let me know how it works for you by commenting here.

Coming from an original assembly language (computer machine language) background - where optimization is the norm, I foundChris Vincent’s new site at PHPBench about PHP micro-benchmarking intriguing- it’s well worth the read. You can find a short description here.

While I agree wholeheartedly in this explanatory comment at the end of the page:

All in all micro-benchmarking was not considered to me as something that Is utterly important for how a program works. I agree with those people who have said that the major items at the hardware and algorithms.

I also agree with Chris’s approach: if you can determine the faster way to do things, and train yourself to use the “better” constructs consistently [never at the expense of maintainability, however] you’ll get a step up in your code … not only in performance (which can be significant in large programs), but also in terms of consistency in your code.

I do have some questions about this benchmark, for example, exactly what version of PHP is being used, and what is the platform? Would a 64 bit processor have different charcteristics than a 32bit? Maybe. Maybe not.

I’ve been playing around with various voip technologies, including Trixbox Trixbox CE is the sucessor to Asterisk @ Home run by Fonality, who’s CEO, Chris Lyman is a long-time friend since the Virtualis days in the 90’s. I’ve also been working a LOT with Amazon’s web services, especially EC2, S3, SQS and SimpleDB.

One cool thing I found is that it is trivial to get Trixbox running on EC2. Here’s what you do:
1) download the latest vmware version of Trixbox CE from: http://www.trixbox.org/downloads
2) boot up in the player
3) install the EC2 tools
4) bundle the volume

After a couple of hours you should have a fully functioning AMI you can then boot-up on EC2 with Trixbox CE ready to rock.

Don’t forget to use EC2 to open up the appropriate ports.

I’m considering making a paid AMI for those people who want to play with it without taking the time to create their own - and to play around with Amazon FPS to boot.

From the people I’ve worked with over the past few days, it seems that the majority of people need help in two primary areas:

The first is a real, solid overview of the software solutions available and their capabilities.

Second, it seems that most people are only familiar with one type of membership model, and that’s the common one I call “pure content”.

These are the simplest to setup, the simplest to run - and can make a LOT of money IF you are able to get massive traffic to your sites and are OK with large attrition rates (or you are able to manage that attrition through “stickiness” factors).

Pure content sites can be built with just about any software, and in many cases, no software required beyond the ability to take credit cards and password protect areas of your site.

Wordpress (with additional billing software and plugins), for example, is a GREAT, simple solution for these kinds of sites.

It’s the OTHER models - building community, providing applications, positioning yourself as an authority, creating vertical portals or distance learning systems - that require the advanced features that the more complex software solutions can help with.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be providing information on both of those aspects - showing you the different site types and what they are capable of, and showing you the various types of software that can implement the features you want to have.

And yes, at least one more survey. I’m finding that not only do the surveys help me to better understand what people need, but that they help the person taking the survey become aware of more choices as well.

That way you can make a more informed decision on your membership site model and the software you want to use.

I’ll also be giving away goodies that I’ve stumbled upon that may be of use to you.

For example, I just picked up a set of video tutorials on setting up Wordpress, so I thought I’d post them for you to enjoy.

While not perfect, they DO give you an idea of what it takes to customize Wordpress, so I figure they are worth at least $47.

My gift to you just because I think they’ll help.

To get the videos, just subscribe and opt-in, here:

http://www.easymembershipsites.com/report

(if you’ve already opted in, just head on over to the private blog link you received in your welcome email - they are posted there)

I’m still thinking through how to best really present the membership site information - I have an inkling of an idea, but I need to check in with myself
before going for it.

It’s kind of scary, actually.

Stay tuned for another update later today.

Unless I chicken out, of course :->

Nick