the FuBlog. Covering PrintFu, Yummy! and other Brandon Corbin inspired products.

The New Blog

2005-09-01T09:37:00.000-07:00

Everyone!! Please update your feeds and bookmarks, as the PrintFu Blog is now located at:

Site: BCorbin.com
Feed:RSS feed

May the Fu be with you!

New Design and Features

2005-08-15T07:27:00.000-07:00

The new PrintFu design is complete. Its a lot lighter and less "evil". Lets hope that it helps sales! Last month was my worst month ever! Also, new features will be added shortly. The biggest feature is the shopping cart - dubbed the fukart! HA. You will be able to order multiple books at the same time, this will save on shipping as well as a cheaper price per page. Also, I am working on adding a USPS Media Mail shipping method, prices for Media Mail is a lot less than UPS but it does take about 6 days to get to your home.

I have also decided to focus more time on getting Yummy running smoothly in hopes that it will help increase PrintFu's bottom line. Additionally I am working on more partnerships with large content providers (names withheld until all the documents are signed!).

So far I have been blown away by the number of requests I have gotten for PrintFu over seas. I still have not set up any firm relationships with printers outside of the US walls, but that is something I would like to finish up before the end of the year.

Again, I would like to thank everyone for all your great words of Printfu and Yummy!

Yummy... Ok we will try again

2005-08-10T14:23:00.000-07:00

Ok, all of the emails convinced me, that I will let Yummy try to have a second life! Here's to Yummy. Lets hope that it doesnt keep crashing my server!

Yummy has been Killed!

2005-08-09T07:07:00.000-07:00

Due to various legal reasons (DAMN THE MAN) Yummy has been shut down. I would like to thank everyone that contributed to this great little side project, it was a great few months. Unfortunately, with the legal issues, the server traffic and my lack of time, I have decided to stop it all. If you still want to find PDFs check out PrintFu's PDF search at http://www.printfu.org/index.cfm?mcAction=search.pdf

Now, if anyone out there is interested in taking the brand and running with it, contact me. Hell, do a google search for Yummy! and it's the first one. So if you want to build a better yummy, I will help.

Now, if you liked Yummy, your going to love Futodo, Kick Ass Time Management. I will be releasing it soon in beta and by invitation only. If you would like to be on the initial invite list email me at Brandon.corbin@gmail.com

Thanks again!!!!! B

xpressMessages

2005-07-25T19:35:00.000-07:00

UN Communications, (the company that does most of PrintFu's fullfillment) has released XpressMessages, a product that allows companies or individuals to quickly send personalized postcards to any mailing address. These on-demand, full color cards are printed and mailed the same day they are ordered for a total price of around a buck per card.

Right now the system is mainly set up for corporate accounts and people who are willing to drop 250 bucks for a base account. But at around a dollar a card, you can make a pretty good argument that is a hell of a deal.

A great application would be for large companies HR departments. The majority of large companies have a database of job candidates, these passive job seekers need to be reminded how much company "XXX" loves them. So they could automatically up load their candidate list to xPressmessage and send them all a nice personalized postcard in just a few clicks.

I can see a lot of use for a product like this in sales organizations too. How about a birthday card for every prospect automatically sent out? The possibilities goes on and on. Check it out at XpressMessages.com

Futodo is almost done

2005-07-20T07:50:00.000-07:00

So I have stopped development of yummy for the time being to finish up Futodo. With all the stuff I have going on, PostMaster LX Development (a killer job posting product for my employer), PrintFu, Yummy, and personal life stuff. I have found it damn near impossible to easily manage all the stuff I have to do. So I started building futodo, which is almost ready for alpha. Im not going to open it up for general access for a while, and It will be by invitation only until it leaves beta.

Creating Todos
1. Email
You can send an email to UserId.add@futodo.org and it will automatically be added to your todos. (it will parse out your due date and tags if you supply them) the system also supports iCals attachments and Outlook Invites.

2.Webservices, HTTP Get, HTTP Post
The system is completely open and ready to accept requests to create Todos.

3.Chat!
After the product leaves beta, we will support instant messaging. So you can create Todos by IMing an AIM or Yahoo account.

You will be able to list your todos, or be notified of a up coming task via Instant Messenger, Email, SMS messaging. You can also subscribe to your todos via RSS and Webcal!

The real geeky part about this is the way that you can filter your lists. I created a RequestHandler object that basically takes a string turns it in to a todo filter. For example: UserId.tags_work.retrieve@futodo.org will send you all your tasks that are tagged with "Work" or UserId.tags_work.status_complete.keyword_dogs.retrieve@futodo.org will return all tasks that are complete, that have been tagged with "work" and have the word "dog" in any of the parts.

The same goes for URL, users/USERNAME/status:Not Complete/todos.webcal

Futodo. Well make you efficient!

The new yummy!

2005-07-12T15:08:00.000-07:00

The new Yummy is coming soon. I have been working on really tearing apart a PDF, so everyone can basically get all the information they need before they have to download. Like: Summary, HTML version, PDF Indexing and searching, Google PDF Search API, working thumbnails, accurate PDF metadata etc. Once I find the best java pdf manipulator I will post them here. (suggestions welcome)

Also, I am in the process of redesigning the entire product. I really hate the del.icio.us copy that I have now. Plus, Yummy is not a del.icio.us for PDFs. Its really meant to be a personal Library. That being the case, I think a clean un del.icio.us design is called for. Let me know your thoughts! Thanks, Brandon

The Corbin Free Spirit.

2005-07-12T12:03:00.000-07:00

My sister Kim Corbin has to be one of the most interesting people I know. My family is not lacking in "strong personalities" and Kim helps reinforce that point more than any of us. As a matter of fact a few years back she decided to start a National Skipping Movement. Yes, skipping like you did when you were a child. My dad and I thought she was nuts, but using that great Corbin dedicated, she ended up in People Magazine, The Wallstreet Journal, Donny & Marie Show, NPR, Self Magazine, and hundreds of other big publications. Full list.

Believe it or not, there are skipping groups in almost every major city. Crazy right? The Corbin family wouldn't have it any other way! Here's to the crazy ones!

You can read more about Kim at the newest Corbin family blog: The iSkip Blog

The yummy move is over

2005-07-07T18:43:00.000-07:00

Ok, Yummy is officially moved over to the new box! Whoo hooo. It was tricker than I expected, but Yummy prevailed! Now on to some tweaks for PrintFu, then some new features for yummy, and then off to build futodo.

Futodo, is going to be a system that lets you keep track of everything you have to do. Pretty simple concept. Lots of people have built all sorts of task managers, project management apps, little tools for pdas and cell phones. futodo is going to trump every single one of them, in a few areas. It will be brilliantly simple, accessible by any digital device, and completely open! I should be able to finish it up in a couple of days. I just need to find those couple of days.

Thanks for everyones great emails, blogs and radio talks about Yummy! Your suggestions, compliments and critics do not fall on deaf ears.

B

Yummy on CommandN.tv

2005-07-05T17:49:00.000-07:00

So I was just checking my stats and I see a lot of traffic from http://www.commandn.tv. So I go and check it out. Well they are a TV show about uber technology. After talking a bit about Yahoo MyWeb, Googles new Earth browser, they talked about Yummy! Whooo hoo. She did call it "Yummy Alpha", but none the less. So thanks for the props! Download the Big Movie

Also, keep your eye out for futodo.org. Lets change the way we keep track of things. :)

Product Incubator

2005-06-30T09:44:00.000-07:00

I will be getting my new servers set up soon, and I would like to make an offer to some Mad Product Scientists out there. If you have a product idea that you think is insanely killer, lets talk. If the idea is good enough, I will put up the money for hosting and help assist how to bring it to market. If this is a match for you email me at Brandon.corbin@PrintFu.org.

I will write more about the Product Incubator Model shortly.

Insanely Yummy!

2005-06-30T09:41:00.000-07:00

Well, yummy has now been getting regular traffic since Friday (about 5 days now) - and we have had 56,000 page views and 23,000 unique visitors! I thought printfu was a good idea, but man yummy has trumped it. If anyone has any suggestions for Yummy! please let me know!

B

Holy Delicious PrintMan!

2005-06-28T06:50:00.000-07:00

So I built Yummy (the social PDF book marketing thing) in about 2 days. I never did anything with it, then I started getting emails from all these people saying, "can yummy do this, or that" after some investigation I realized it was number 4 on Delicious' Popular Page Today (6-28-05) its number 2! I had 166 people sign up in one day. Its crazy, so now when I finally get done with my full time jobs newest product - I suppose I will have to actually make Yummy killer!

PrintFu in the Poster Printing Business

2005-06-15T13:43:00.000-07:00

So what would you think about PrintFu creating a sibling company for printing Posters? Of course the orders would be as simple as it is today (on of the best perks, imho). You will give it a JPG or PNG url or upload, then a few days later you will have a huge 4-color poster at your doorstep. The price will be aroudn 15 dollars.

Let me know your thoughts, I have already lined up a couple printers to do the fullfillment!

My fathers all grown up!

2005-06-09T07:16:00.000-07:00

Well its official, my beloved father has officially set up his own blog! http://billCorbin.blogspot.com. If you are interested in fiction writing check it out. Way to go dad!

Looking for Film Makers

2005-05-17T12:31:00.000-07:00

If anyone out there knows of a good up and coming film maker, that wants to make a huge splash with their stunning work. Please have them contact me at Brandon.Corbin@PrintFu.org

PDF Thumb Nail Creator Web Service

2005-05-12T11:45:00.000-07:00

Well after working on Yummy some more, I decided I wanted to have a thumb nail of each PDF that is in the Yummy index. So I finally figured out how to do it, and its pretty slick, if I do say so myself.

I will be releasing a web service that will let you pass a URL to a PDF, and Yummy will return a URL of the thumb nail. Its not super fast considering the server has to download the entire PDF, and then generate the thumb nail. but its acceptable.

Yummy! Social PDF linking

2005-05-11T16:23:00.000-07:00

Ok, just for my blog readers. Today I built a del.icoi.us like tool for PDFs. Its only in alpha, but I think it has potential. yummy.printfu.org

I am hoping that I can eventually replace the Google API Pdf Search that I Currently have on PrintFu, with Yummy. Just from a standpoint that you know more about the quality of the PDFs from yummy, compared to what google indexes.

Would love to know your thoughts.

Nerd-Star Book List

2005-05-07T06:39:00.000-07:00

Most of them are in PDF format..... MMMMMMMM.

http://www.nerd-star.com/books/

Damn Internet Explorer 5

2005-05-04T15:10:00.000-07:00

I just viewed PrintFu on Internet Explorer 5.5 and I must say, ITS HORRIBLE! The problem is I used "almost" compliant CSS. But of course, IE cant do compliant CSS.

So Now I will have to sit back down and make a bunch of Modifications just so it can work on IE! DAMN THEE MS! DAMN THEE!

Quick PDF Search

2005-04-28T18:08:00.000-07:00

Ok, I was playing around with search engine safe URLs, and decided to make a quick PDF search URL.

You can now go to:
http://www.printfu.org/search.cfm/YOUR KEYWORD.

For example:
Say you wanted to get the CSS2 PDF from the W3G. (Any more acronyms?). Instead of going to the search page you can now just type in:
http://www.PrintFu.org/search.cfm/CSS2

Interesting PrintFU. Usages Statistics. Mac + Firefox WIN!

2005-04-23T08:02:00.000-07:00

GO MAC GO.

Operating Systems using PrintFu

Mac OS X - 55%
Windows XP - 36%
Windows ME - 5%
Windows 2000 - 3%
Linux - 1%

Browsers using PrintFu

Firefox 48%
Safari 32%
Internet Explorer 19%
Mozilla 1%

Accurate Shipping Costs

2005-04-22T12:39:00.000-07:00

Well, I have finally gotten around to using UPS's Rate WebService. So now manuals will have a more accurate shipping cost. Before, I just had to prices for shipping dependent on the Page Count. Now we figure out the weight and dimensions dynamically and send it to UPS's Rate Service.

Once I figured out the messaging part and got signed up for the Access Key from UPS. Integrating it with my pricing object was pretty easy. I did build it in ColdFusion, so if any one wants the code to connect to UPS and get Rates just let me know.

How to Spread the PrintFu Gospel ? Any Ideas?

2005-04-21T15:32:00.000-07:00

So I think PrintFu is a great little idea. People get a great product for a great price. I get a couple dollars, the Printshop Makes some money. Everyone is Happy. What a killer thing. No one is getting screwed.

Now I want to figure out how to spread the word about PrintFu. I want more and more and more people to Love it like, the current people that do. The PDFURL hack, has really helped spread the word to the geeks, and thats about it. The "make-a-buck" help paying people for referers. in an insanely simply way. But know I want to know what the next thing is.

Will you help?

What should PrintFu do, what is going to be the Next Big PrintFu Thing!

Again, everyone thanks for the support.

GetPrice Bookmark Hack

2005-04-12T11:25:00.000-07:00

Sam Gorstein created this little snippet of code, that lets you click on a bookmark link, enter the page count, and it will give you the PrintFu printing price.

Simply drag the following link to your bookmark bar.. Walla!
Get PrintFu Price

Thanks Sam!

The PrintFu Gmail Challenge

2005-03-30T09:38:00.000-08:00

When was the last time you read an email you received 6 years ago? Chances are you haven't. Why is that? Because we loose CD's, Floppies, Zips, Hard Drives etc. So whats the solution?

A product that can log in to various email systems . ie Yahoo, GMail, HotMail.. download messages and using the PFML xml2pdf web service, generate a PDF.

How cool would it be to have a PrintFu book of your emails from 2004? Gmail would be a great start. You could select a specific "filter" to print - and boom you have a nicely printed PrintFu Book. Whomever builds it first wins. Considering the amount of email out there, and the amount of users that would use this "Printed Email". Could generate some serious referral coin.

Maybe a good starting point would be the GMail API for Java

HTML ID CLASS - CSS Stub Creator

2005-03-27T16:40:00.000-08:00

Great name huh? This is quite possibility the least "user experience" focused thing I have ever written. HOWEVER its really helpful, at least to me.

I first design my sites like structuring an XML document. Defining the various structures in to data nodes, like header. pagesection, pageSectionSub etc etc. The problem is, that most of my sites have a lot of classes and IDs. So when I go to create the CSS, I always have to look back at all the various names I managed to come up with.

So I wrote the CSS Stub Generator. You paste in your HTML, and pops out the CSS stubs that you would need to still that site.

Obviously, I offer no guarantees on this puppy, its a super quick REGEX look up and some formatting.

Mac OS X Printfu PDF Service

2005-03-23T08:17:00.000-08:00

I would like to thank Michael Stephens who built a PDF Print service directly to PrintFU for Mac OS X. Using the "developer make a buck" feature of PrintFu, Michael will now get a dollar for each order from his service! The download can be found Here.

The PDF Service in Mac OS X is pretty slick. You can write an Obj-C, AppleScript or Unix command that is selectable right from the Print Dialog box of almost any application. When you select it, OS X will create a PDF and then send the location of the PDF to the application you write... God I love macs.

They like me! They really like me! - PrintFu

2005-03-19T11:26:00.000-08:00

Rob - author of Mac OS X Hints - received his PrintFu order (after his massive PDF assisted in finding a few bugs) and had this to say.

As a follow-up, I received the manual (after my big print job helped find and fix a couple glitches in the system :) ), and it looks great! Nice grayscale, perfectly aligned three-hole punch.

Read the official Comment here

Get Price Quote Web Service

2005-03-14T06:22:00.000-08:00

Get Price Quote - URL GET

Location: http://www.printfu.org/?mcAction=getPrice&pageCount=555
Input: Page count
Output: Price ($8,65)

Description: Using an HTTP Get call simply pass a "pagecount" url variable to http://www.printfu.org/?mcAction=getPrice. The result will be a Price. Pretty simple huh? Example

Lessons Learned

2005-03-14T05:22:00.000-08:00

So we have now gotten some new lessons from our blitz of ordering last week.

1. PDF's larger than 70 meg will make the system choke.
This happens due to the way we handle the PDF's, PrintFu loads up the PDF in memory to do various tricks to it, then spits out a new copy. PrintFu will bark an "out of memory" error. I will look in to a work around... Thanks to Anderw M. for this one!

2. Paypal's Refund system sends an "Instant Payment Notification"
I didn't expect this one at all. Our system waits to hear back from PayPal when someone pays for a manual. When PrintFu hears from PayPal the system converts the Print-Request to an Order. Well when I did a refund to Rob G. PayPal sent a notification with the cost being "-13". This threw the system for a loop.

Thats all the learning so far.

PrintFu - What a killer week!

2005-03-13T11:45:00.000-08:00

I would like to thank everyone that has ordered from PrintFu in the last week. The response has been great! I was losing faith in the PrintFu concept. I personally thought it was so simple that it had to be successful. Then after 3 weeks went by with out a single order (NOT EVEN MY FAMILY), I started to think that PrintFu wasn't going to happen... But then it hit. In a matter of 7 days PrintFu has already exceeded my wildest expectations!

Heres to a great year!

MacOSXHints.com

2005-03-07T15:21:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Rob over at Mac OSX Hints for a nice story about PrintFu!

Blogger Client

2005-02-02T12:18:00.000-08:00

It wont be to long, before I have a Blogger system that will turn
anyones blog in to a Printable PDF!

US Printing Only

2005-01-26T13:50:00.000-08:00

I had a man in Europe call me today asking if I will ship to the UK...
Right now from a business / cost standpoint PrintFu only works in the
US. But I decided to see what it would cost to send something to him
in the UK using UPS. $63!!!

However, If we could get a printer in the UK, then it might be totally
possible... Any suggestions on a good printer?

So far so good

2005-01-26T13:37:00.000-08:00

PrintFu has now been officially online for 4 days, and we have had about 500 unique users visiting! It seems the web service is very popular! By the way if anyone is interested, the entire PrintFu system and subsequent "manucast - pdf printing engine" was completely developed on a Apple PowerBook G4!

The PrintFu Conundrum

2005-01-24T04:17:00.000-08:00

So when I started out building PrintFu, I figured it would be pretty easy. Just take someone's PDF, some shipping information, send them to paypal to bill them, tell the Printer the PDF is ready to be printed, and boom. That's it.. Right? WRONG.

I will be covering in detail the steps it took to build PrintFu, in hopes of helping others out there avoid some of the pit falls I ran into.

Quickly, here are some of the technologies I used to build this wonderful streamlined system (sans the grammar and spelling errors!)

PDFTK - PdfTk is a great FREE source for doing various things with PDFs, I mainly use it to get the Information that is embedded in to PDFS.

APGetPageCount - If for some reason PDFTK chokes on getting the information on a PDF, I then use this little tool to extract the page count (which is super important for PrintFu's user experience)

Apache FOP - When an order is downloaded by the Printer - I automatically generate an Order Slip that is added to the very last page of printed manual. This way all the printer has to do is look at the last page to know where to ship etc.

ColdFusion MX - I love my ColdFusion, and I don't care what anyone says. I have had nothing but great experiences with it! Really the bad rep that ColdFusion gets is mainly because 90% CF Programmers are not really programmers, they are HTMLers that want to be Programmers. Anyway - it has made building PrintFu, very enjoyable.

More Later

xhtml2pdf

2005-01-24T04:10:00.000-08:00

Ok, so here is the beginning of my xhtml2pdf XSL that is used in printable manual generation web service (http://www.printfu.org/?mcAction=developer.ws) Tis pretty long, but you should get the idea.

The possibilities of this are completely endless, I have built a couple prototypes using this to generate killer looking PDFs like: a Guitar Tab to Guitar Tab Book (http://www.printfu.org/sub/tab/), A Job Resume book, and more. I would love to hear other ideas.

I use Apache FOP to generate the PDFs. You can view the XSL here.

Welcome to the FuBlog

2005-01-24T03:08:00.000-08:00

Wonderful! PrintFu now has a blog. Here we will cover various aspects of the business and the technology that runs the business. The main site can be found at http://www.printfu.org/