Monday, March 5, 2012

New project: Toonchecker.com

I still don't know how to monetize it, but I need it - and if I do, so does somebody else. Here's the plan:
  • Perl walker to scan a list of Web comic sites for each user. (Obviously the sites are shared.) This spider checks for update on, say, an hourly basis. If the site has a feed, I'll use that. If the site pushes an email notification, I'll use that. One way or another, though, I'll figure out what changes and when.
  • For each list of toons, then, we can present a list of updates since the user last checked in and read. That list will show ads, but only that list will show ads. My ads will never appear on the screen at the same time as any comic. That's pretty thin monetization, but it will have to do.
  • The reader consists of a very thin frame at the top with forward and back buttons and a title. No ads on the frame. No ads on the frame. No ads on the frame. The bottom frame is then the entire target URL, with the cartoonist's own ads.
  • A comic counts as read when you've gone to the next page (in case you get called away, lose your connection, whatever). So we have a bookmark for each and every comic we read.
  • With multiple users, we'll be able to start forming a similarity metric for recommendations.
Perl for the spider, PHP for the site.

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