Friday, November 10, 2006

Python Decorators

I recently learned about decorators in python from this guy. And was able to implement a stack framework for django. Now I can do the following:
    @push_call_to_stack_decorator
    @login_decorator
        def add_payment_account(request):
            rv = add_payment_account_handler(request)
            if rv is None:
                #done -> go back to caller
                shortcuts.pop_stack_response(request)
                rv = shortcuts.peek_stack_response(request)(request)
            return rv
Now, I realize that out of context, the above may not make much sense. Without going into the technical details of how it works. The add_payment_account page requires that a user is logged in. If a user is not logged in, they are brought to the login page, and once logged in go to add_payment_account. add_payment_account itself is pushed onto the call stack. Therefore, pages the come off of add_payement_account can pop back to add_payment_account. This framework will allow for easily creating webflows within my page.

Friday, October 27, 2006

Backup

I permanently lost plenty of data off of my computers. Hard drive crashes or otherwise (a few years back I adopted an 'no root when drunk' policy). Well with all of this hard work I decided to back up some of this stuff off of my computer. I found this site that will host your data for free as long as it is less than a gig. Well, this project doesn't have *that* much code. Just need to remember to log in every now and then so they don't get rid of my free account. If my place burns down, I will be damned if I lose my source code!

Note To Self - Don't Do Anything Illegal

The 23 year old Grant Stanley has been sentenced to five months in prison, followed by five months of home detention, and a $3000 fine for the work he put in the private BitTorrent tracker Elitetorrents.

will need to cover my ass like google does.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Waves on my pond

found this article on digg today:
The Microsoft Zune may pay you for sharing a song with others if they end up buying that song themselves. As you probably know, the Zune's WiFi capability will let you send a song to another Zune user, and then that user can listen to it three times for free within three days, after which a prompt appears asking for $1 to buy it. As the rumor goes, Microsoft will give you an unspecified number of credits for passing along that song that was later bought. Then, you can redeem those credits for free music or anything else from the Zune Marketplace.

This is a great idea. If enough people buy into Zune, the product will reach critical mass, and because of this bounty, everyone will be eager to offer their song lists to others, hoping to amass enough credits to buy more music. It's viral/incentive marketing on a micro-payment scale. If this is just a false rumor, if I were Microsoft I would do it anyway.

PeerIt.com value proposition:
  • All kinds of digitally deliverable goods
  • Sell your own stuff - plenty of room for the little man
  • Real money back to the buyers

Captcha

They are those boxes with morphed images containing characters. It stops computers programs or bots to get through your forms - for now. Why? Because its hard to write an application to read the characters. Although computer vision does work , it is pretty processor intensive. I want a captcha for my signup page. The reason is that one of the errors I give on the signup page is "this account already exists". I am currently planning on using email addresses for user names (although this is something I will need to think long and hard about). I don't want a bot to be able to enumerate my database, by trying to get the account already exists message by creating lots and lots of dummy accounts. I found bunch captcha code out there. One piece of code that I really liked was pycaptcha. It is a python captcha generator. Check it out. only a few lines of code and I have a working captcha in the django framework.
import Captcha
from Captcha.Visual.Tests import PseudoGimpy
import StringIO


def captcha(request):
    g = PseudoGimpy()
    s = StringIO.StringIO()
    i = g.render()
    i.save(s, 'JPEG')
    request.session['captcha'] = g.solutions[0]
    return HttpResponse(s.getvalue(), 'image/jpg')
now just to integrate it into my signup page.

Monday, October 23, 2006

Dealing With Money

How do people trade money online today? PayPal seems to be the way things are done for most people. My first thoughts where that PayPal would be *the* way money is handled for PeerIt.com. I am starting to have second thoughts. Why get tied down to one. I was recently told about neteller.com by a friend of mine. Looks like they are pretty similar to PayPal, but there are some important differences Transaction Fees
  • paypal - personal accounts free, premier 3% + 30 cents per txn
  • neteller - 1.9% p2p payment
User Agreement
  • PayPal - pretty restrictive - no p0rn, no gambling - why take the fun out of it.
  • neteller - wow - as long as your not a terrorist, its all good baby.
Usability
  • PayPal - whatever...i am used to it..so is everyone else
  • Neteller - never used it. But online gambling addicted friend told me about it - how hard could it be.
API
  • Both support accepting payments, and a MassPay for affiliate payments.
How it all works in PeerIt.com: It would be nice to leave the option open to the seller. How do they want to receive money. How do they want to pay their affiliates. PeerIt.com would need to link the PayPal/Neteller account to their Peerit.com user. First rollout may just have PayPal support, but architecture should be open to support more. All money stuff will be abstracted out in the code. We should be able to plug into whatever payment system we like.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Sharing is Caring

This blog was created for the PeerIt.com project. PeerIt.com will be a distribution channel for digitally deliverable goods. A truley peer to peer community with everything from community, file distribution, and its payment strategy. Community where Buyers are Sellers: PeerIt.com relies on the communtiy of sellers and buyers to help each other.
  • A seller posts digitial goods for sale, along with the affiliate rate.
  • A buyer purchases the good, and downloads it via a custom peer-2-peer client
  • Buyer becomes affiliate for the Seller, helping upload to the next purchaser
  • Seller's pay out affiliates based on how much the affilliate has uploaded, and the Seller's affiliate rate
Feedback: Have a great transaction? Buyers can post feedback on sellers. All of the items sold on the site will have their own page
  • See item description
  • See what other purchasers have to say
  • If you have purchased the item, leave a comment
  • RSS feeds
  • Ask sellers a question
  • Read other questions and answers
Get Real Money: PeerIt.com does not work with buyer credit or funny money. We are working with cold hard cash. Sellers will recieve cash from their buyers. Buyers will recieve cash from the sellers for helping distribute files to more buyers. Accounting:
  • Accounts Payable
    • Each seller will have an accounts Payable
    • How much is owed to each affiliate
  • Accounts Receivable:
    • Buyer's can make money on their purchases.
    • Money is distributed to the Buyer from the Seller
    • See how much money is owed to you.
    • Which Sellers owe how much for what.

arkayne