• 05/31/2009 - 18 More Social Sites Added to SocialNetwork.in
• 05/25/2009 - Run Your Own Remix or Music Project at ArtistServer.com
• 05/22/2009 - AudioBoo.fm and YouNoodle.com Added to SocialNetwork.in
• 05/06/2009 - mp3tunes.com - no option to close your account
• 03/17/2009 - How to run a Remix Project
• 09/28/2008 - My Lovely Wife Lou is Pregnant
• 12/14/2007 - ArtistServer News and a new site: FreeMusicLicensing.com
• 09/18/2007 - AritstServer and ToneThis Serve Up Indie Ringtones
• 09/11/2007 - Running LightTPD and PHP on Windows
• 09/06/2007 - Compete.com -vs- Alexa.com - Comparing Website Rank

ArtistServer.com and it's previous identity, ElectronicScene.com has always provided artists with a means to post news on the site. A few years ago, we added a free blog with every account, which in some ways was similar to the news tool. What was different between them, is that a news posting is one way, a blog is potentially a two-way coversation.

Since the blog section of the site has been seeing a lot more traffic than the news section, I selected to merge all the items posted to the 'news' section of the site to the Blog tool/section.

With blogs, we just don't need a separate news section on the site. If people want to post news, they can create a blog category called 'News' and they're set.

I encourage all the artists and members on ArtistServer.com to give their blog a try, make a posting, tell a story, describe something, and be a color on the canvas.

To those who subscribe the RSS feed, sorry if you received any quantity of old posts.

ArtistServer has added a CAPTCHA challenge-response system to the various forms where people can either contact it's members or post replies to blog posts. With CAPTCHA, we can now block the multitude of spammers and spam bots who crawl the Web looking for Web forms.

The following text comes from: http://lyla.maestropublishing.com

What is a Captcha?

A Captcha is a type of challenge-response test used to determine whether or not a user is human. A common type of Captcha requires the user to enter the correct string of characters that have been distorted in an image. A Captcha can also be an response to a question that most people should be able to answer.

What does Captcha stand for?

Alan Turning described challenge-response tests in a paper he wrote in 1950. Computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University and IBM coined the term in 2000. Captcha is an acronym for "completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart." In 1997 Alta Vista developed the modern-day Captcha to prevent bots from adding URLs to search engines. The rest is history.

For those who want to know how I set this up, I used LylaCAPTCHA for ColdFusion - which is an open source project built from another open source project from: http://www.compoundtheory.com. In only took a few hours to add to integrate the code into the site and add to the various forms we needed it on.

Thanks goes out to: Peter J. Farrell and Mark Mandel - the developers of this CAPTCHA solution.

New Feature/Tool Announcement at ArtistServer.com!

Upgraded Artists on ArtistServer Can Earn Money From Ads on their Sites.

Artists and Bands who upgrade their accounts now have access to the Ad Settings tool, which is located in the My Account area. This tool provides control over the ads on their ArtistServer site and pages. It's easy to use, and changes happen live.

Artists and Bands earn 100% of the revenue generated from the ads on their sites, and receive their payments directly from Google.

The following are the four ad settings options we provide:

1. Use your own Google AdSense account
2. Use ArtistServer's Google Adsense account
3. Use your own ads (JPG/GIF with links)
4. Turn ads off

Before an Artist can begin displaying ads from Google Adsense, they'll need to sign up for Google's AdSense service. Once this is done, they just need to locate their ClientID, enter it into the Ad Settings tool, and they are live!

Where to Find the Google AdSense Client ID:

1. Sign in to your AdSense account.
2. Then, click the AdSense for Content tab.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and locate the 'Your AdSense' code block. This textbox contains code you would normally copy and paste into an HTML document. Look for the following line: google_ad_client = "pub-1234567812345678" - your clientID is the value inside the quotes. In this example, the ClientID is: pub-1234567812345678.

If artists and bands would rather use their own banner ads and links, they can select the option to display "Alternate Ads," then create or upload a JPG or GIF image for each of the ad sizes.  We use 2 ad sizes - dimensions are in pixels:

1. 278 x 90
2. 250 x 250

Alternate Ads are uploaded with the Graphics/Files Tool, and become available for use in the Ad Settings tool.

What's Next For the Ad Settings Tool?

* support for 'text/image' in addition to the current 'text' option for Google ads
* support for channels - a Google AdSense attribute for tracking
* support for other ad networks/services
* making the tool available to upgraded member/fan accounts

Below is a resized screenshot of the new Ad Settings Tool - if you would like to view a full size version, follow this link:

http://www.ArtistServer.com/m1/8/9/A6DA33E0-E081-20D5-8A416BF94B00F218_O.jpg

Every few months, I revist my notes and ideas about the next generation of ArtistServer and try to shape it more. I usually do this by sketching out the interface in a graphics program like Adobe Fireworks. A great site is one with the right combination of: form, function, and content. While I'm sure there are people that don't like how ArtistServer looks or works, I can tell you that many people have emailed and messaged me stating they felt ArtistServer has a great interface.

But - the Web is changing, becoming more interactive, dynamic, and intuitive. It's a media and data rich environment which is evolving and empowering people.

How will this apply to ArtistServer?

The answer is to evolve with the Web and to explore and experiment with new ideas and technologies. ArtistServer is a natural fit for what people call RIA's - which stand for "Rich Internet Applications," and below, you'll find my first steps in experimenting with a recently launched technology called "Flex 2" by Adobe. Flex allows you to create a very rich application-like experience which renders as Flash. One of the cool things about Flex, is that it can talk to ColdFusion, which is the technology ArtistServer is built on.

Instead of spending time playing with the Beta for months, I selected to sketch out a possible design, and would wait for it's release. Flex 2 was released just last week (June 28 2006). This first screen you see is only a graphic I designed - no coding.



Here is a link to a larger version.

This second image is what I've created so far using Adobe Flex Builder. Right now this is only an interface - there's no interactivity nor do the buttons do anything. I'll need to work through a few tutorials before I dive in to the real coding.



Here is a link to a larger version.

Feel free to post feedback, comments, or ideas.

I'm sure a few people won't like this because it's Flash. I'm definately one of those who don't like Flash... but... I have to say, I'm really enjoying how Flex Applications function - it's like a cross-platform desktop applicaiton in the browser.

Keep in mind these are only sketches - these are NOT screenshots of a new 'beta' version of the site.