Three Project Ideas
Belief Based Social Networking Website
Up until now social networking websites have encouraged their userbase to divulge relatively inane information above themselves. I propose to create a social networking website that will encourage people to state exactly what they believe in, whether it's related to the existence of Ghosts, the Loch Ness Monster or God.
Each of these beliefs will be represented by a database entry which can subsequently link in with a 'system' effectively allowing anyone on the website to create their own belief systems/philosophies from a set of ideas.
These 'beliefs' will be similar to how 43things.com represents 'things', anyone can create an idea. However, users will be encouraged to comment upon and develop each belief into something more significant.
Beliefs will be categorized to help give the site a more rigid structure. For instance there will be one on the Afterlife, Nature of the Universe, Meaning of Life, Nature of Gods (if any), Holy Books and potentially many, many more.
To make the site more interactive I could implement a lookup facility for the Holy Books category where the user can search the Amazon Catalogue via it's API selecting a book (or books) that encapsulates the philosophy behind their belief system (for Christianity it'd be the Bible, Upanishads for Hinduism etc..)
I'll develop it in PHP5 with an MVC framework (either CakePHP or Zend Framework) with support from PEAR. RDBMS = MySQl. PHPDocumentor for class/method documentation. Basecamp for project management. Either Dreamweaver or Zend Studio as the IDE.
Pros
- Religions / churches could sponsor their establishment for more transparency on the website. This will provide a core business model which could be augmented with contextual ads from Adsense, Adbrite, AuctionAds or Chitka.
- Since people will be able to search for users based upon individual beliefs they may well come into contact with people of different faiths who share the same basic ideals.
- Religious discussion is a popular topic on major social bookmarking websites like Digg, Reddit and Stumbleupon which could help the site gain exposure.
- Everyone believes in something, therefore there's (potentially) a large target market.
Cons
- It'll be difficult to produce a data model that can potentially encapsulate every type of belief system on the planet. I'll therefore need to spend time researching and dissecting the individual components human belief is comprised of.
- Need to establish filters that'll stop extremists from sabotaging the website. An extensive 'User Agreement' will also need to be written to help ensure that all of the user submitted content is lawful.
- I'm inexperienced with server management and I don't have very much money. Will I be able to afford a dedicated server plan when the site becomes popular? Will I be able to manage the server effectively if this is the case?
Emo Gaming Site
This idea involves building a gaming website where the user can adopt an emo kid as a pet and care for it. It'll be like a mashup of a Tamagotchi virtual pet with aspects of the emo subculture thrown in for good measure. Instead of feeding your emo food, you can feed it vodka. Instead of your emo thanking you for taking care of it, it'll blame you for everything that's ever went wrong in its life.
The user's success in the game will be measured by how depressed they can make their emo. For instance it'll be possible to buy your emo kid depressing albums. Each of these records will be stored in a database table with an attribute measuring how much it'll contribute to the emo's depression.
| Artist | Album | Depression |
|---|---|---|
| Bee-Gees | Any of Them | 5000 |
| Blondie | I'm Hairy Debbie | -5000 |
| Radiohead | Kid A | 50000000000000000000000000000000000 (for the depression attribute we'll need to declare it as a TEXT type rather than an INT in order to compensate for all of Radiohead's albums) |
I could make money by storing real albums in the table and then linking to the desired product page of an online CD trader with an affiliate program.
As well as caring for your emo, you will be able to play online Flash games which give you the opportunity to earn money to buy more booze / ridiculous clothing for your kid. After the user has finished playing a game Flash will store their score in a MySQL database and their money total will be adjusted accordingly.
Pros
- Developing Flash Games will be a healthy challenge and will give me some much needed experience in that area.
- Emo-based memes are constantly circulating around the internet. This could be another one if it's executed well.
Cons
- Might be deemed as controversial by self-harm groups who will think that the site trivialises self-harm.
- There's also the possibility that I'll receive poorly written death threats from Emo Kids ala "U suk Im gnna kill u LOL"
- Prospective employers mightn't be readily impressed by a site which promotes making virtual depressed teenagers even more depressed.
Worst Bands
Ever bought a music CD that you really hated but didn't have the heart to take it back to the shop? Then you might be interested in this idea..
Worst Bands will cater for disillusioned music lovers who can make lists of the bands and albums they consider to be the worst on the planet. Users will also be able to rate various artists on several criteria such as "Talentlessness", "Ugliness", "Inability to Sing In The Studio", "Inability to Sing Live" etc.
It'd be cool to stage contests like 'Worst Myspace Band" and "Worst Overall Band" were the band that receives the most votes wins an award. It would also help drive a lot of interest to the site in a short space of time.
In terms of a individual Worst Band Lists I could implement each band as a div which can be dragged into position on the list. It'd be easy enough to do this with script.aculo.us.
Pros
- Large target audience. Most people hate at least one band.
- Fans of the Worst Bands will be likely to defend their group thus partaking in the debate more. More content = more food for Google = more potential hits.
Cons
- It's possible that some of the content might violate the Adsense TOS meaning I'd have to rely solely on affiliates like Amazon or Allposters for income.
- May attract negative publicity from the bands who are featured as the worst on the site (thankfully The Beautiful South aren't around anymore so this shouldn't be much of a problem).
- I'll have to hard code conditions into the application to stop Mick Hucknall being upvoted relentlessly by mischievous users for "Talentlessness", "Ugliness", "Inability to Sing In The Studio", "Inability to Sing Live"
- Again, prospective employers mightn't like this one (especially if their favourite artist is Mick Hucknall).
<?php
generate_pages("http://www.mattwaterworth.com/des511j1/weeks/view");
function generate_pages($url)
{
for($x = 1; $x <= 12; $x++) {
// format the directory url to include the leading zero
if($x < 10) {
$dir = "0".$x;
}
else {
$dir = $x;
}
$html = "
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"0;url=$url/$dir\">
</head>
<body>
<h1>You are being redirected!</h1>
<p>You are being redirected to my entry for Week $x, please be patient!</p>
</body>
</html>";
if(!file_exists($dir)) {
mkdir($dir, 777);
}
$fp = fopen("$dir/index.html", "w+");
fwrite($fp, $html);
}
}
?>
