41411 Rmmbr: Text Your Inbox

rmmbr is a service I built for myself and recently opened for general use. I wanted a way to send myself notes about things I need to do, items I want to research etc. If just write this on a scrap of paper I usually seem to forget about it, so using Textmarks‘ web-SMS gateway (which is pretty nice btw – reliable and easy to interface with) I wrote a little web app that lets me text these notes to my inbox.

The examples on rmmbr’s home page are pretty much how I use it – I come across some term I want to research or am reminded of something I need to do and send an text message like rmmbr <whatever> to 41411. When I get back home an email is waiting in my Gmail inbox with the text sent, a Google search link for it, and if it’s an address or a date Gmail might also attach its “map this” or “add to calendar” links as well.

To start using it, you need to let rmmbr connect your phone # with your email address by texting rmmbr signup <your@email> to 41411. You’ll get a confirmation email and can start sending yourself messages. Just remember to always start the message with “rmmbr” – it still gets me sometimes..

I don’t know how useful it would be for anyone with an iPhone or a Blackberry, but if you’re like me and prefer to keep your cellphones small, cheap and low maintenance, you might find this a useful solution for your text-to-inbox needs. Enjoy :)

[Update: formerly rmbr, the app/sms code is now rmmbr, to prevent confusion with rmbr.com - which is a different product, not related to rmmbr in any way]

Kunstler: The Tragedy of Suburbia

WordPress just added special TED support – I’m not a fan of TED’s exclusive/trendy approach, but it’s a good opportunity to post this excellent talk by James Howard Kunstler.

The lesson of design which considers its users, environment and resources vs. design that is isolated, contrived and wasteful holds true to software as well, from the UI to the server.

JSONP, Quickly

I discovered JSONP just recently, following Chris‘ comment. Though I initially didn’t intend to support JSON, JSONP made enough difference that I rewrote most of the TheRealURL code (all 20 lines of it) to support it. Since it took me some time to figure out JSONP initially, perhaps a quick guide might help those who follow.

JSONP allows you to make an HTTP request outside your own domain, which enables consuming Web Services from JavaScript code. It relies on a JS quirk: while XMLHttpRequest is blocked from making external requests, there’s no such limit on <script> elements. What JSONP does is add a <script src=> element to the DOM, with the external URL as the SRC target.

To serve JSONP simply return the JSON data inside a function. e.g., this JSON:

{ "hello" : "Hi, I'm JSON. Who are you?"}

Becomes:

some_function({ "hello" : "Hi, I'm JSON. Who are you?"})

(The reason is that the latter is actually code that will run inside the created by the JSONP client, so it needs to be executable code rather than plain JSON data)

some_function is provided by the calling client, usually in the ‘callback’ parameter. So, a query like this:

get_jsonp?callback=getthedata

Should return:

getthedata({ "hello" : "Hi, I'm JSON. Who are you?"})

On the server side, this means adding some code similar to this:

// assume $json holds the JSON response
if ($GET['callback'] != '') $json = $GET['callback']."( $json )";
return $json;   // my PHP is rusty but you know what I mean

On the client side, modern JS frameworks include JSONP support (or you can DIY). For example, in jQuery <= 1.2 adding &callback=? to the query string in getJSON method’s URL sends a JSONP request.(jQuery transparently replaces the ‘?’ with a unique string). Here’s how you get the unshortened URL for ‘bit.ly/a’ using therealurl:

$.getJSON("http://therealurl.appspot.com?format=json&url=bit.ly/q&callback=?",
	function(data){ alert(data.url) }
);

That’s about it. JSONP probably won’t feature in the next Beautiful Code edition and obviously you need to watch the URLs you’re accessing so you don’t get malicious JS code executed, but, until cross site XHR is resolved, JSONP can get the job done.

Best April Fools’ Prank

Tech media’s April Fools’ day pranks felt a bit stale this year, haven’t they? I guess it’s getting hard to tell them apart from everyday tech reporting. But this non-tech one is awesome.

The Real URL

[UPDATED on April 21st, 2009 to reflect the JSON/P additions. Since it's <24 hours after the initial release, I hope it won't cause anyone problems.]

The Real URL began as a joke – after discovering, while working on another project, over 80 URL shortening services, I figured there must be room for a service that un-shortens all these URLs. (The web is overflowing with hype and blog posts/articles complaining about it just add to the noise, so it’s better to make your point by building something. My favorite example is the Twittering Office Chair).

Turns out there are already several out there: (eg, trueurl) but I built it anyway, since I had a slightly different approach in mind. The Real URL is meant to be used as a web service rather than on its own. It returns the “real” URL in either raw text, JSON or JSONP format – examples and details are on the homepage. (I added JSON mostly for JSONP, per Chris’ comment – admittedly I didn’t even know it existed ;) This enables cross site JS requests which might actually make The Real URL useful.

While I do want The Real URL to be solid and reliable in the long term, I don’t want to spend much time/money keeping it up. It’s a sustainability issue – building a system that will work reliably over a long time while requiring minimal care and resources. I made a few design decisions to that end:

• Keep it simple (always a good idea). Real URL does only one thing and is accessible in only one way (the homepage demo uses XHR to access the service, to keep it so). It now supports text/JSON/JSONP, but it’s just the same output formatted differently. Sometimes you give up some elegance to make the product useful. As in the following item:
• Deploy with Google’s App Engine. Initially it was nice, super-minimal Sinatra code. Unfortunately Google App Engine doesn’t support Ruby yet and there’s no service that offers comparable cost/stability ratio, so I rewrote in slightly less minimal Python for GAE.
• Use App Engine’s domain (therealurl.appspot.com). Buying a domain and keeping it renewed isn’t a big deal, but it still requires some attention – especially if you happen to hit a nice domain name which people try to grab or piggyback on. Sticking with appspot.domain minimizes this issue. (if the need rises I might add a “real” domain later on, but in any case therealurl.appspot.com will remain active)

If you find a use for The Real URL this or have an idea for one, please comment here or email me at niryariv@gmail.com. Let the street find its own uses etc ;)

List of URL Shortening Sites

I’ve been compiling this list of URL shortening services for some time now, for use in one of my projects, and thought it might help developers who need it for their own work (or VCs who seek to place a couple $mil on one)

Anyway, here are the 74 82 (thanks commentors!) sites I got so far. If you use Ruby, just stick %w{ } around it and you’ve got an array. If you own one of these sites, put “Twitter-compatible” on your homepage, who knows ;):

adjix.com b23.ru bit.ly budurl.com canurl.com cli.gs decenturl.com dolop.com dwarfurl.com easyurl.net elfurl.com ff.im fire.to flq.us freak.to fuseurl.com g02.me go2.me idek.net is.gd ix.lt kissa.be kl.am korta.nu krunchd.com ln-s.net loopt.us memurl.com miklos.dk moourl.com myurl.in nanoref.com notlong.com ow.ly ping.fm piurl.com poprl.com qicute.com qurlyq.com reallytinyurl.com redirx.com rubyurl.com rurl.org shorl.com short.ie shorterlink.com shortlinks.co.uk shorturl.com shout.to shrinkurl.us shurl.net shw.me simurl.com smallr.com snipr.com snipurl.com snurl.com starturl.com surl.co.uk tighturl.com tinylink.com tinypic.com tinyurl.com tinyvh.com tr.im traceurl.com twurl.nl u.mavrev.com ur1.ca url-press.com url.ie url9.com urlcut.com urlhawk.com urli.ca urlpass.com urlx.ie xaddr.com xrl.us yep.it yuarel.com yweb.com zurl.ws


UPDATE: I moved the list to listable.org, per Karan’s suggestion, which allows easily exporting the date to SQL, JSON or text. Future updates will all be there: http://www.listable.org/show/url-shortening-sites

UPDATE #2: As a result of this post I ended up building a URL unshortening service, which I now think might actually have some uses. More here.

Backing Up MySQL Database with Subversion

While working on a recent Rails project, I wanted to occasionally backup the database to a remote location. Since we were already using Subversion for source control, I figured I could just use it for storing the DB contents as well and came up with a short Ruby script for this, called dbbackup (ironically, stored on a Git repo – I guess it could use a –use-git option ;)

The only Rails tie is that it uses config/database.yml to get the database name and login info, so you could easily adapt it to run on non-Rails projects too. It’s built so that it can be ran by a nightly cron task, and since it’s only sending the diffs it wouldn’t be too resource-heavy.

I wouldn’t use this for Facebook’s production servers, but if your needs are more moderate you might find it useful. Feel free to send over any questions or patches to niryariv@gmail.com. Here’s the repo URL again, with the script and an explanation on how to use it: http://github.com/niryariv/dbbackup/tree/master

Asako Narahashi

Maybe because I lived nearly all of my life within 10 miles of the Mediterranean and now we live in NYC – which might as well be in Arizona as far as swimming in the ocean goes – I really love these.

(Found via ffffound, one of the most intelligently crafted sites out there right now)

Prixfeed Earns Its Keep (Almost)

First revenue ever from Prixfeed, my RSS-of-Amazon-prices app, arrived in my email today in the form of an Amazon gift certificate:

While not exactly retiring yet, I’m pretty proud of this little app. Very simply done, no marketing to speak of, barely Googleable, it somehow managed to attract users. Not many – but those who find it do seem to actually use it. It’s the micro web app: a single page contains the whole UI, an API of sorts (returns microformatted RSS) and now even a revenue source :)

Rebuilding Venice

From Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn series: “Planners the world over take inspiration from Venice. But Venice was never planned”

This points to a fundamental mistake everyone makes, whether you’re planning a city or trying to relive a vacation you enjoyed – you try to match an example or experience, by building top-down what was built bottom-up, orchestrating what happened unexpectedly, reverse engineer Venice.

This is likely to fail: even if you have to resources and skill to copy Venice, your copy by definition is located in another place, with another weather, a different economy, inhabited by different people and so forth. So your copy of Venice, however precise, will always feel contrived and forced unto its environment and people instead of growing organically to meet them.

In software, these copies of Venice usually happens when you build an application without much user feedback in the process. You set your goal to an existing product which you admire, but don’t involve the users in the process. You often end up with a features users don’t require, an interaction which doesn’t make sense to them or even a whole product which doesn’t serve a real need.