Mon, 19 March 2007
Mime Čuvalo has created the "The Rock Hard Times," an ambitious project to the the IMDB and Wiki for music

From Mime: he's created the "The Rock Hard Times," an ambitious project to the the IMDB and Wiki for music.

Hello everybody in my address book!
I hope this letter finds you all well and happy. I myself am doing just peachy these days.I've finished a project now that I've been working on for over 8 months so I'm very happy actually. Some of you have heard me talking about it before and describing it but for those of you who don't know here's the lowdown. Basically, I've made a music website.

Ok, great, you're saying - another music website to add to the million other ones already out there on the web. Maybe, but I'd like to think I've created something different. Basically, it's a combination of a lot of different ideas I've had - but the main site that it's similar to is IMDb.com (http://imdb.com) IMDb, if you don't know, is a movie database website where you can find out basically anything and everything about a particular movie. I use it all the time and I know a lot of other people that check out frequently too (*cough* tony *cough* - (he lives in Hollywood)) <-- and, yes, I always match my parenthesis (jokes for nerds, jokes for nerds). Anyway, I always felt it was an awesome site and that there wasn't really a site similar for music that did what IMDb does for movies. Another inspiration for the site is Wikipedia. Now, I understand Wikipedia has its pros and cons but one of its great (at least in concept) ideas is that it can be edited by anyone. So, this site does that too (but a little differently than how Wikipedia does it). Finally, the last main idea was that the site would also let me have an account there and keep track of my favorite artists that are on tour - you know, see who's coming to town this month, see who's got a new album they just released. I'm an pretty big audiophile and I've got about a 1000 distinct artists in my collection (some with many songs, some with just a few). And really, it's hard to keep track of all of those bands and people - and it's something that I really would like to do.

Ok, so to sum it up: basically, I've made a site, that can be edited by anyone (kind of like a Wiki - but the site does things a little differently), that will hopefully end up becoming a central resource when finding out information about music (like IMDb for movies). And on this site, you can keep track of your favorite artists that are on tour and keep track of any upcoming albums that they release. The site has links to mp3's, videos (on official sites or YouTube), lyrics, tabs, information on songs, producers, b-sides, singles, remixes, photo galleries, and, oh man - just a lot of stuff - I've been working on it for a long time :)

So, right now with the help of my great friends Andja, Eli, and Michele we've added about a 100 bands (or so) to the database (and many more individual artists). Some big names, some little. And the idea is that artists and fans (like myself) can contribute to this site to make it larger, increasingly more complete, and, well, rockin'.

I call the site: The Rock Hard Times.

I actually (because I am crazy in my own way) released 3 different projects all at the same time yesterday. The second project is another website that is a simple storefront to Amazon.com's store (took me about 2 or 3 days to do - not like another 8 months). In other words, you can search Amazon.com's store through this website but as a stripped down version. And the last project I released is major update to my long-standing program FireFTP (almost at 3 million downloads, baby! by the way, in case you were wondering, the new version is technically still 'pending release' but it should be up today or tomorrow).

So, without further ado, the links:
Project #1.) The music website: http://www.therockhardtimes.com
Project #2.) The amazon.com website (a mini-project): http://www.thelargestriver.com
Project #3.) My 'old' work, FireFTP: http://fireftp.mozdev.org

Obviously, most of you are probably only going to be interested in the first one. The second one is pretty cool (I like to think) for a simple little storefront. And the third is for us web techies so there's not too many of you like that.

So, anyway, that's what's new with the Mime. I hope you like the new site. If you do, tell your friends, that would be awesome.

As for me, I'm taking a mini-vacation,
Much love,
Mime Čuvalo