Lifestreaming is cool. The last time I check, I was active on close to 15 social media sites. True, ping.fm brings a lot of those together, but it isn’t perfect yet!

I came across AmpliFeeder in my Twitter stream the other day and thought I’d share it. It seems pretty solid but I don’t like that I can’t install it on my PHP/MySQL server..

• Combine and archive your activity from lots of different services. Adding new services is a complete breeze. It’s easy.
• Easy to style and personalize.  AmpliFeeder is built to make theming and personalisation as simple as possible with standard XHTML & CSS. Be unique.
• Pull yourself together.  Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google Shared Items, Tumblr, Digg, Reddit, LastFM, Stumbleupon, Delicious, Upcoming, Mixx & more
• Open Source and AGPL Licensed.  Runs on industry standard ASP.NET 3.5, SQL Server Express and IIS: A rock solid foundation for exceptional web applications

What are your favorite lifestreaming apps?  I personally use WordPress plugins for anything I do, and I’ve played around with SweetCron, but what about you?

Job boards are definitely cool things. I once had a client call me looking for one and was willing to pay up to $10K for it. He was a pain in the ass so I never went through with it, but I did find some cool open source apps to get the job done.

JobberBase is the best server-side application I could find. It’s based on the ever popular jobber.ro and features a complete admin panel for the administrator to manage the site. (A lot of software I found was admin panel-less which is not cool in my book).

The install itself is relatively painless. Unzip, upload, establish a database, chmod some files, edit the config file… If you want to edit the look and feel of the site though, you have to be a pretty proficient coder. The programming in it is top notch but is largely uncommented.

Just for testing purposes, and to build a little site, I put up FindingGuests.com. My thought was it might be a cool place for podcasters who were looking for guests for their show. All the current website offerings in that space suck, so I tried to build one that didn’t :0)

Have a look at Jobberbase and let me know what you think!

Normally, I’m not real big on featuring Twitter apps on NH, but I wanted to do this one real quick. Probably because I called in to test them last night and the transcription was excellent! Goog-411 has nothing on these guys..

Anyway, here’s a quick video of Tweetcall. Let me know what you think of the app!

WordPress is one of the most extensible, flexible pieces of software I’ve ever used. Quite simply, you can do anything with it! Some of the top blogs and websites in the world use WordPress to manage day to day web publishing tasks.

We’ve used Wordpress to power everything from blogs and business sites to surveys, landing pages and project management systems. So I wanted to do a free webinar for everyone new to setting up a blog! This is going to be the first in a series of advanced blogging webinars that will help you harness the power of WordPress.

Here’s some of the things we’ll be covering in this webinar:

• Installing WordPress on your server
• Managing your day to day publishing activities
• Managing links, comments, photos and multimedia elements
• Installing new plugins and themes
• Simple SEO and link strategies

The webinar will be Friday, May 15th and 2:00 PM EST and will last for about an hour!

To sign up, just fill out the short form below. We’ll email you the link!

One thing I have always looked at trend-wise is emerging technology.  As everyone last one of us knows, social networks are here to stay.  They’re fun.  They’re informative.  And you can meet some really cool people on them.

Today, I want to show you an app that’ll let you create your own!  That app is PHPizabi.

PHPizabi is built with PHP (surprise, surprise) and runs on a MySQL database - perfect for adding a community to your web server.  It’s pretty lightweight, easy to install, and has some plugins that definitely extend it’s functionality.

The drawback?  Most of the good plugins cost money…  The software is free though!

So if you’re looking to build that snowboarding social network you’ve always dreamed of having, install PHPizabi and you’ll be one step closer.

It really is nice stuff.  If you’ve built a PHPizabi site - let us know through the comments and we’ll add you to this post!

Surveys are beneficial for a lot of things like data collection, research and customer response.  No doubt, you’ve had to fill a couple out or create them for clients and bosses.

Surveys can be a pain in the ass, frankly.  Aside from making them look good - they have to function correctly.  Oftentimes, the data is critical in nature, so security and ease of use is a must too.

I wanted to build a quick survey to give people after our Social Media Webinar on Thursday.  I cForms in Wordpress rocks, but I don’t want to be emailed the data.  I just want to download it once it’s all done.  Hosted options like SurveyGizmo are limiting as to what the free account gives you, and all that stuff is sitting on some one else’s server!

So I ventured out to find an open source solution.

After trolling around SourceForge for hours, I finally found LimeSurvey. 

LimeSurvey is a complete survey application that lets you do the install on your servers, build a really nice looking survey, and keep the results in a database. 

One of the beautiful things about LimeSurvey is its ease of use.  After only a couple minutes you can have something up and running.  There is also some graphing and reporting options available in the admin panel.

So the next time you need a survey done, check out LimeSurvey.  All you need to do is install it on your web server, populate the fields, and you’re off and running!

Let me know what you think about the app!

A week or so ago, I posted about a web app, Are My Sites Up.  While that service is good, I found a better one :0)

The script: PHPwatch.

PHPwatch is a service monitor that’s able to send notifications of outages via email or text message.  Here’s a bit from the site:

The purpose of this system is two-fold: it allows administrators to easily check the status of many different services running on any number of servers and also allows developers to interface with the query and notification APIs.

To view a quick demo, click here!  It really is impressive stuff! And totally open source :0)  Let me know what you guys think!

Server apps are awesome.  What better way to recycle on old PC than to hook it up to the network, install a couple applications, and make it work for you! 

The only thing that makes me love server side software more is when they offer community editions so you can try them, tweak ‘em and build them out.

Rendezvous is one such server-side application.  It’s an ‘Enterprise Collaboration Suite’ meant for project teams and scattered workforce members, but it’s features are something bloggers or ambitious professionals might use.

It features an:

• Email client
• Calendar
• Project Management
• Document Management
• Contact Management
• RSS/Atom Feed Reader

So rather than pay two or three services for similar functionality, install this app on your server and use it for free!

URL shorteners are awesome.  The less characters, the better!  But what happens when that server goes down or some network issue prevents people from getting to your links?

Nothing.  Blank pages.

Better yet, why would you want to brand someone elses domain name?  Think about all the traffic and notoriety you’re giving tinyurl and is.gd?  Can you use that same traffic to your advantage?

I have a solution.  Build your own!  In fact, check out mine at j.dro.hn!  The software I used was Kissabe, an open source script hosted at Google Code.

The install is really pretty simple.

1. Upload all of the files to where you want it installed (e.g. the root of your domain name).
2. Create a new MySQL database called “kissa”
3. Import kissa.sql to your kissa database using the command line or phpMyAdmin (don’t use kissa_v1.sql)
4. Edit config.php and change the MySQL string with your database username and password. Make sure the path
   to your database is correct (if it’s not localhost).
5. Then edit create.php at line 30 or where is says
   $short_url = “http://kissa.be/$code”;
   to read
   $short_url = “http://yourdomian.com/$code”;
6. Then rename htaccess.example to just .htaccess
7. Start shortening!

Let me know what you think!

 

 How To Build A Project Management App: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 How To Build A Project Management App [.wmv]: Download
 How To Build A Project Management App [.mov]: Download
 How To Build A Project Management App [.mp4 - HD]: Download

Project management software is big money.  For you to have something custom developed, it would run well into the thousands of dollars.  If you decide to go the hosted route, expect to pay about $50 a month for decent stuff.

In this how-to podcast, we’re going to show you how to build your very own project management suite.  Your clients can log in.  Your people can log in.  Everyone can keep tabs on what’s going on, upload files, send emails, and all sorts of other fun stuff.

Here the podcast notes:

• We’re going to be using Collabtive
  • Install instructions:
    • Unpack the Collabtive archive in a directory of your choice.
    • Next, upload all the files to your webserver.
    • Make the following files/folders writable:   /files    /templates_c    config.php
    • Then open the installer in your browser.
    • Point your browser to http://yourdomain.com/collabtive_dir/install.php to do that.
• Commercial offerings and other services
  • Basecamp
  • GoalsOnTrack
  • GoPlan
  • ActiveCollab
  • Jira

All set!  Let me know what you think!