MediaFresh News:

“Notable Gotchas”

http://asquare.net/javascript/tests/KeyCode.html

Could someone tell me why keyCode is different for onKeyPress vs onKeyDown?  Argh!

Just launched the Inword pre-sale for the highly anticipated album:

http://www.myspace.com/inword

They’re using the starter package.

http://www.fistfulayen.com/blog/?p=509

Fantastic post detailing how D2F should be done.  Nuff said.

a.

We launched the Bumstead Productions website earlier this month.   So far, it’s our most complete implementation of the Fresher music vertical projects.  It includes:

• Shopping cart for digital and physical sales
• Widget player with individual track buys
• Widget creator
• Integration with all 3rd party apps (ArtistData, PayPal, Courrielleur, YouTube, etc)
• Large file downloads (for selling HD video)
• Bundle options (for selling packages)
• Featured release, artists, and bundles
• RSS feeds
• Contact page
• Dynamic animated banners without Flash (using jQuery)

I’m sure I’m forgetting a few features but we’re proud of the result.  They currently manage nearly everything from Fresher and are able to create new product and sections at will.

What can I say.  I’m officially converted.  For the first time ever, I can focus on one language for everything.

My trip through server side jscript for JSON parsing in Fresher really got me thinking (especially about how I never thought about doing it before).  So today I did some research and found that javascript server side could become as popular as php:

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/03/10/server-side-javascript-will-be-as-common-as-php/

Considering how much actionscript/javascript I’ve been doing these days, this sounds right.  After some digging through lots of blogs and articles that included stuff like SpiderMonkey/Rhino, Junction, Whitebeam, I ended up on Jaxer.  There’s something extremely appealing about writing in the same language on both sides.  I juggle between them so much, I can’t believe I haven’t researched this earlier.  Jaxer is built on Mozilla’s Gecko engine and runs standalone (or with Apache).  Going to install it here and see what it can do. 

Serializing JSON in VB is relatively easy.  Parsing and juggling it is another story.  I’ve been scratching my head all weekend thinking how easy it was to play with it in Javascript and Actionscript but I had so far only been doing it client side.  Then I found this page:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1019223/any-good-libraries-for-parsing-json-in-classic-asp

Oddly enough, the _last_ solution (using a hybrid vb/jscript page) is brilliant.  I didn’t realize you could read your VB objects in JScript server side.  A small tweak to the standard json2.js file at json.org let me use their parser server side with some easily ported client-side javascript code I already had.  Thought the job would take all day and it only ended up taking the afternoon.  We now have Excel (CSV) reports generated server side for accountants from Fresher’s JSON sales reports.  Lovin it. 

I love this page:

http://www.jibbering.com/2002/4/httprequest.html

This is “Web 2.0″ from a developer’s perspective.  I remember when the xml http request object was just introduced.  Unfortunately, the lack of support kept me from leveraging its power (although I didn’t hesistate to use it in the back end technologies I developed).  Today, it’s THE fundamental building block.

We just launched Champion’s new album Resistance.  Check out the release page with various bundles:

http://resistance.djchampion.net/

When our client, Saboteur Records, asked us to see what we could do for Champion, we met with the management team (Bon Sound) and proposed a minimal version of our music industry vertical solution.  They were already well into building a custom PHP based website and simply needed a way to sell directly to fans.

The team now uses Fresher for the player widget (with custom skin based on album cover) and for bundles – selling a CD with a t-shirt for example.  We included the widget creator and tacked on a few new features to the redirect page to help us handle bundle options (t-shirt sizes for example) and shipping.  It works great.

What surprised us is how this is a perfect fit for many artists who’ve wanted to deal with us this year but haven’t had the budget (or grants) to afford our up front costs.  This new “minimal” Fresher instance has a nominal setup fee and allows artists (and management) to sell through their existing websites without changing everything.  Needless to say, with Champion’s popularity still growing, the launch was a great success.

Also, The Trews pre-sale started this week for Bumstead:

http://www.thetrewsmusic.com/

We’re slowly gearing up to a complete revamp of the Bumstead site and looking forward to a few big titles this year with them.  Bumstead has chosen a full fledged Fresher based site for their label and artists.

Well we’re already near the end of August and I have no idea where the summer went.  Seems like July was yesterday and judging by the number of posts, you’d likely assume that we’ve been enjoying the hot weather.  Not so.  It’s been so busy this summer that I haven’t had a chance to post.  We’re gearing up for a really busy month of September for our music clients.  Several new releases from the various labels we host as well as some new clients I can’t wait to talk about.  We’ve also got some eLearning, community portals, and corporate sites on the go.  Looking forward to a great Q4.