Ryan Leland

This is a kind of quick and dirty approach to making an ajax responder in Zend Frameworks. The more elegant solution would be to make a controller plugin to add support for auth, and acl, but so far it looks like this approach works just fine for simple things.

<?php
class AjaxController extends Zend_Controller_Action {
	private $ajax_output;

	function init() {
		if($this->_request->isXmlHttpRequest()) {
			//The request was made with JS XmlHttpRequest
			$this->_helper->viewRenderer->setNoRender();
			$this->_helper->viewRenderer->setNoController();
		} else $this->_redirect('index');
	}

	public function indexAction() {

		Zend_Loader::loadClass('Zend_Json');

		$myArray = array('someData',
             			'moreData' => array(
                             			'hello'
                           			)
           	);

		$this->ajax_output = Zend_Json::encode($myArray);
	}

	function postDispatch() {
		echo $this->ajax_output;
	}
}

Today is significant. I have committed to releasing a site I have been working on for 2 1/2 years on 08.08.08 (Aug, 8, 2008), and today is 4 months from that date. Despite having a crazy amount of work left, I just committed rev 58, and have nearly 4000 lines of code that I’ve written in the last 4 weeks.

So despite having worked on this site for 2+ years, this is the 3rd complete re-write, and it is epic. I am so excitd to finally have a product, and officially be able to call myself a web entrepreneur.

If I had had more time I would have made an official announcement with some details, but I think this will have to do given my limited time, and unlimited tiredness.

Or rather, my first day being self employed again. It turned out to be fairly interesting. A good mix of struggling with Zend Framework, which is awesome in every way despite some often confusing documentation. The classes themselves are documented as well as one could hope for, but there are times when peicing the library together to make an actual framework takes some trial and error.

I also had some issues with SVN not quite working properly. My hunch is that the service I use, and the combination of my wireless network dropping packets like crazy, causing commits to time out, and corrupting my working copy. This technically should not happen, but it did. I had to create a new project, and create the directories manually, and copy over each file, and commit. All 53 files.

I  did get a lot done, and I plan on announcing my project within a few days in a fairly big way (at least that is the hope).

According to this msnbc article, AOL will be buying Bebo for the price of $850 Million USD. Bebo, a social networking site that is best know in Britain and Europe, has a membership of 40 million users. This obviously works out to about $20 per user. My estimate is that each of those users would have to average 20,000 page views, or 2000 hours of site use before AOL would make that money back. Hard to say what kind of growth Bebo is experiencing, but this still seems as though it’s on the expensive side for a site that most North Americans haven’t heard of.

I think the web is on the verge of another bubble. An explosion of new money into the industry by existing leaders, and investors trying to ride the next wave. The reason I’m thinking this will happen soon, is the sudden influx of internet aware spenders. The mid-20 somethings that are both net savvy, and have credit cards.

During the last bubble, a lot of the money made was fed off of peoples ignorance of what the internet was. Countless web firms cashed in on business owners fear of being left behind, and ignorance with regards to what developing, and hosting a static web page actually cost. And that was only client services. Many big sites sold for multi-million dollars, and investors eagerly fronted cash for super bowl ads, for the chance to be the next Amazon. Consumers were aware of the web, because it was forced down their throats, but in the end, users spent time only on a few trust worthy sites (ie. Yahoo).

Here is the reason I think the web, and I hesitate to use the term, but web 2.0, is taking off. I already mentioned the influx of tech savvy spenders, but it is also that people are far more willing to experience more. Where it was Yahoo and Amazon, it is now, Digg, Facebook, You Tube, Twitter, Google (not just search), and more. One problem here is that this new generation of web users are seemingly less likely to be ad clickers. So while a new site could likely get new traffic really quick, the potential to find advertisers, and sustainable revenue seem less likely.

The cost of building a site has never been lower, and the cost of attracting profitable traffic has never been higher. This is why it is common to see sites with high traffic being sold for insane amounts, and it is why I think we are on the verge of seeing investors putting up big money to anything that looks like it could get huge traffic. The reason I think it’s still going to be a bubble is that right now the common idea is that traffic equals money, but I think that that business model is severely flawed, and deep down investors know it.

It’s seems to me like we’re hitting the next .com boom. And I think anyone who’s spent any time looking into how to make easy money, or money online, has heard about blogging for profit. I’ve never doubted the possibility, I just have serious doubts that is is anywhere as easy as anyone says it is. It seems as though all the people claiming they have 6 figure income from 4, or 5 blogs, and only work one day a week have something to sell. Usually an eBook telling people how they can also make a 6 figure income from 4, or 5 blogs, while only working one day a week. And I don’t doubt that they are actually making that sort of money, but perhaps a good portion of that money is from their book, and the 3 of their blogs promising tidbits of how to earn easy money.

Here’s my thoughts. All of these blogs rely on Google AdSense to earn money, and most of them pay a fair amount of money on Google AdWords to promote their blogs, and eBooks. It’s both a popular subject to advertise, and a popular ad to click. Making free money on the web is still one of the most clicked on contextual ads out there as far as I know. And it’s more about the demographic. People who have spent any considerable time online have seen these ads, and know what AdWords are. We don’t click on them, and we know how easy it is to get in a seeking information loop, of getting a tidbit of information, and clicking the next ad that looks the most promising to move on. And we also know of, or have a blog, and understand how big of a hassle it is to get traffic, and more importantly, profitable traffic. These are two very different things in my opinion.

Free money is still possible. Maybe. But when even the people who have the skills to make the next digg.com need a truckload of luck to make a penny on the internet, I have a hard time seeing anyone using IE6, and a free blogger.com account can retire off the internet.