dirtyBlog

So, it’s been a while eh? Since we had some problems with the old server, dirtyBeta is now hosted with slicehost! (Feel free to refer us if you like what you see).

This server seems pretty solid so far, and the sky’s the limit now. Look for new features soon!

Introduction

Hi there! Well, I’m really excited about this — I’m getting ready to launch my latest project, dirtyBeta. I’ve been working on this for months and by now it really feels like giving birth, only nerdier and realistically less life-altering. This site (dirtyBlog) is the official, supplemental blog for the site where I’ll be diligently updating and keeping records of new developments, features and tools — of which I have many planned! As a bit of a forward, let me introduce myself and write about the history of the site’s development a little.

My name’s Matt Hackett. I’ve been a professional web developer for going on 4 years now, and currently work for Yahoo! in the Widgets department. I have more than 5 years of experience with the various technologies that make the web work, including XHTML, PHP, CSS, JavaScript and some ActionScript. I’m constantly coding. It’s sick. I work sometimes 50+ hours/week, then go home and code a new JS library or throw a Widget together. But wouldn’t you know it? I’ve really only got one website I can put on my resume (which is a shame), and it’s really outdated and unused (dailyMidi — whose framework powered a lot of this site). Time to fix that!

I’m one of those guys that always has a dozen ideas buzzing around and just lacks the time to actually work on them. At my peak, I owned over 50 domains and I swear I had original ideas for all of them. Some ideas became stale over time, some became unoriginal, and others I just lost interest in. What separates this project from the others is: I really wanted a site like this to exist. I can’t tell you how many times in my life I’ve needed to know about new software:

• When FireFox automatically installs a new version of itself and asks that I restart it. What was in this new version?
• When something I use constantly but don’t read up on often updates — The Gimp came out with a fantastic new cropping tool, and I didn’t know about it for weeks!
• When proprietary software I’ve paid for has a limit on its renewal discount (Propellerheads, I’m looking at you!)

Just within the last few days I was asking a co-worker about a medium through which I could promote my new website through Yahoo! — there are hundreds of random mailing lists that would work — but nothing was available that wouldn’t be looked down upon as spammy (and rightly so). The thought sprang into my head, something like, “Man I wish there was a single, great site that notified people about new softwa– damn.” I really believe there is a need for this.

But aren’t there other sites out there that already do this? Let’s look at some of them:

• SourceForge - absolutely a fantastic place to host your open source projects. But it’s just open source, and it’s more about the actual projects themselves than a simple means to get the word out.
• FreshMeat - Again pretty closely related to FSF.
• Other news sources such as SlashDot or Digg - These are great for general purpose news, but what about just the new software? That’s what dirtyBeta is all about.

So What’s Next?

Well, first thing’s first. This is a user-powered site, people! So let’s get some generous contributors to graciously donate their time to improving the content of the site by submitting new software releases to the site. If you like the idea, by all means spread the word so we can all benefit. I’ve got a massive to-do list, including:

• Custom feeds - The ability to subscribe to a custom rss feed via a search term or tag.
• Improved sorting - Only care about what’s new this week? This type of sorting will become much more relevant once the site begins to collect data.
• Expanded tagging system - The more tags the merrier (and the more you can customize feeds!). Soon there will be a tool to suggest new tags.
• API - An API is already in the works, which will allow 3rd-party applications to tap into dirtyBeta’s database.
• Much, much more…