Amazon S3 is a fantastic data storage platform — I use it for everything.

It’s perfect for sharing data with friends. The only disadvantage is the interface: there is none. You can manage your buckets files with REST requests, along with a number of desktop clients. That’s fine, but what about your visitors? The only way to show them what you have to offer is to build a frontend system that ties into the API.

The Solution

Baconfile: Simple S3 Frontend. You’ll never be happier.

Check out me out at Baconfile.

Ghost is no exception to this rule. It is a simple command line application for adding and removing 127.0.0.1 entries in your /etc/hosts file. I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of this sooner.

Example Usage

$ ghost add mydevsite.local
[Adding] mydevsite.local -> 127.0.0.1

$ ghost add staging-server.local 67.207.136.164
[Adding] staging-server.local -> 67.207.136.164

$ ghost list
Listing 2 host(s):
mydevsite.local      -> 127.0.0.1
staging-server.local -> 67.207.136.164

$ ghost delete mydevsite.local
[Deleting] mydevsite.local

Installation

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sudo gem install ghost

It all started when I was a student at George Mason University. The student book store had a small selection by the checkout counter. I bought a pocket-sized ruled notebook to keep track of my todo list. As soon as I unravelled the shrink wrap, my attention was brought to the informational leaflet. I was instantly hooked.

After three years of using the Hard Lined Large Notebooks, I’ve recently migrated to a notebook that better suits my needs:

The Soft Squared Large Notebook is the ultimate Moleskine.

The squares marked A and B are the same shade of grey.(proof)

Imagine taking elements of Twitter, Yammer, Foursquare, Yelp, and other social services, and shoving them together into one package. Now imagine covering that package in a layer that looks a lot like FriendFeed. Now imagine shoving that package inside of Gmail. That’s Buzz.

— MG Siegler of TechCrunch

I couldn’t say it any better myself. I highly encourage anyone and everyone to start using it as your main social aggregator immediately.

This is software sophistication at it’s finest.

Check out my latest buzz.

Snow, snow, snow, snow. I’ve never been so tired of the word.

My small town of Winchester, VA suffered from over 3 feet of snow over the past week. Everything shutdown.

I am reminded importance of infrastructure.

I lived in Minnesota for 5 years, and have never seen so much panic from some simple snow. They have the infrastructure in place there. They can handle the snow. Winchester was totally unprepared for it. It’s amazing.

As you know, Spotify is only available in the UK, Spain, and France. So, the only way to signup for an account it to take a trip overseas… virtually.

Step 1: Signup for a virtual private server

Signup for a Linode account, and buy a 360 VPS. Linode allows you to choose a datacenter when you buy a VPS, and luckily, they have a datacenter in the UK. This will run you $20 a month.

Step 2: Install Ubuntu and Boot Your VPS

Install Ubuntu Server on your new british hackbox. You can SSH in to test it out. Have fun. Make sure openssh-server is installed.

Step 3: Edit Hosts File

Append the following lines to your /etc/hosts file:

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127.0.0.1 		spotify.com 
127.0.0.1 		www.spotify.com
[your vps ip]		hackbox

Step 4: Open a Reverse SSH Forwarding Tunnel

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sudo ssh -C root@hackbox -L 443:spotify.com:443
sudo ssh -C root@hackbox -L 80:spotify.com:480

Congratulations. You’re now a brit.

Step 5: Create an Account

While creating an account, you are prompted for you postal code. I did some google-fu and used SO23 8TH as my postal code for Winchester, Hampshire UK.

Download the client.

Step 6: Enjoy :)

You now have unlimited access to a library of ~8,000,000 tracks, as if they were on your own computer.

Once every two weeks, you’ll have to reopen your SSH tunnels and login at spotify.com to proveyou’ll be good to go.

This restriction is lifted if you signup for a Premium account. I highly recommend this, as it allows you to listen to your music at 320 kbps. I’d tell you how, but I’d rather enjoy the fruits of my hard labor.

Looks like Google finally took the hint. Within the next few weeks, they will be rolling out (in the typical staggered unveiling) the ability to upload up to 1 GB of files to Google Docs.

Additional storage space will be $0.25 / GB / Year. That’s one tenth the price of Amazon S3!

[ Google Press Release ]

This totally blows my mind. They are about to totally revolutionize the television industry.

You can manage TV ads just like you manage AdWords ads for the web. You enter the amount you’re willing to pay per impression, and your daily budget, and Google does the rest.

Google is the future of all advertizing. NBC, be afraid.

From Google:

The results were extraordinary. Web traffic to ooVoo.com increased by 500% and ooVoo-related search queries rose by more than 200% over pre-campaign levels.” - Lisa Abourezk, VP of marketing, ooVoo

If you have any improvement suggestions, feel free to share.