Internet Explorer Shows a Feed? It’s a Bug

mjkeliher and mnheadhunter have helped me identify a fairly serious bug with Cullect reading lists when viewed in Internet Explorer v6 or v7.

IE really wants to give you the reading list’s _feed_, rather than the HTML page.

I’m investigating workarounds. Until I get to the bottom of this, try a different browser.

Thanks, and sorry.

UPDATE
If you’re running IE - could you load up a reading list (i.e. http://cullect.com/1/latest) and let me know if you see the gray left-hand column w/ ‘feeds’, ‘curators’, etc in it. Thanks.

UPDATE 2
Sounds like IE is cooperating again. Yeah!

August 19, 2008 by Garrick Van Buren | Filed Under Status, Support | 2 Comments 

Cullect is Feeding MIMA’s Summit 08 Reading List

That’s Cullect in the bottom row, 2nd from the right.

The Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association is prepping for their big, annual Summit on October 1st at Elsie’s in Northeast Minneapolis (my backyard).

To set the tone, they’ve created a Cullect.com Reading List - http://cullect.com/mima08 - and loaded it up with the blog and Twitter feeds of the presenters.

These event-based reading lists is something I’m very interested in. Seems like a great way to warm attendees up to a topic and its presenter ahead of time.

August 18, 2008 by Garrick Van Buren | Filed Under Interesting Uses, MIMA | Leave a Comment 

Cullect’s Eponymous Features

Just like that deli down the street that names its sandwiches after the celebrities that have dined there, Cullect has a handful of features inspired by someone special:

Thank you all.

August 18, 2008 by Garrick Van Buren | Filed Under Arik Jones, Background | Leave a Comment 

How To: Change Reading List Item Count, Order, Pagination

In each view1, Cullect shows 50 items by default2, these items are then ordered most-to-least (’descending’) based on that view3.

You can change all this things by putting the following variable in your URL request (works for all supported formats4)

  • count=# (how many items do you want? maximum of 50)
  • offset=# (this is how pagination is handled)
  • order= a (ascending) or d (descending - the default)

Example:
This is equivalent to http://cullect.com/1 :
http://cullect.com/1?count=50&offset=0&order=d

This will give you the second 50 items:
http://cullect.com/1?count=50&offset=50&order=d

This will give you the second 50, least Important, items,
http://cullect.com/1?count=50&offset=50&order=a

1. Important, Latest, Recommended, Tagged, Hidden
2. The default count in Javascript widgets is 10.
3.

  • Important = most Important, un-hid items, to least
  • Recommended = most recently recommended to oldest recommended
  • Tagged = most recently tagged to oldest
  • Latest & Hidden = most recently published to oldest. Latest doesn’t include hidden items.

4. .Atom, .JS (Javascript), .JSON, .M (’mobile’, i.e. text-only), .RSS, YML (yaml),

August 18, 2008 by Garrick Van Buren | Filed Under API, How To | 2 Comments 

Outbound Feeds are Unavailable: 16 Aug 2008

The reading list feeds out of Cullect aren’t working correctly (js, rss, atom, etc) - I’m on the case. Follow this post for updates.

Update 11:15CT
The feeds are back and better than ever. Available formats; RSS, Atom, js, json, M3U, PLS, YAML.

August 16, 2008 by Garrick Van Buren | Filed Under Status | Leave a Comment 

“Come Along and Ride the Big Train (to Hollywood)”

Thanks to Mike Watt and Tim Coyne for inspiring the code name for this version’s code name.

Yes, this means Cullect is back up.

While it feels really good to launch the new version, it’s not on the new server yet. And there’s still some clean up work to be done. I’m hoping to have both completed by Monday. Please use Cullect as you have been, and send over any and all issues you see.

Thank you.

August 15, 2008 by Garrick Van Buren | Filed Under Status | 1 Comment 

Cullect Will Be Down: 14 Aug 2008, 19:00 CT

Yes. Tonight’s the night. I’m starting the upgrade right after dinner.

Update 22:00 CT
In the midst of database maintenance right now. Everything’s looking good. Just taking a bit. :)

Update 23:00 CT
Database maintenance and backup complete. Testing deployment.

Update 15 Aug 00:00 CT
Still testing and configuring the deployment environment.

Update 15 Aug 01:00 CT
Still testing and configuring the deployment environment.

Update 15 Aug 04:30 CT
The new code is on the server. Now, that the code is up and working as expected, there are some additional database tweaks to make. I’ve kicked off the first tweak, and I’m brushing my teeth and heading to bed.

Update 15 Aug 10:00 CT
The changes to the database are taking a while to propagate.

August 14, 2008 by Garrick Van Buren | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment 

A Paragraph or 2 About Cullect.com

For an upcoming demo, I’ve been asked to write up a couple paragraphs describing Cullect.com. Here’s where I’ve landed - suggestions welcome.

Cullect.com is a feed aggregator platform focused on helping you find and share the most relevant items. In addition to presenting news items in reverse chronological order, Cullect.com offers an ‘Important’ view - a ranking of the items on 10 distinct attributes.

“I only have time to read three posts, I can be assured that reading the first three posts in my Cullect.com reading list will be satisfying and relevant to my interests.”- Laurie McGinley

One of the most heavily weighted attributes in the ‘Important’ ranking is how much money paying members of Cullect.com have given to the each web publisher.

“I’m not even going to talk about how you can pay Cullect so that part of your monthly subscription goes to publishers you read. I can’t even tell you how cool I think that is.” - Tony Thomas

Cullect.com’s built-in editor makes for easy publishing to your existing weblog, Twitter.com, and Tumblr.com accounts.

More about Cullect.com can be found at http://blog.cullect.com/

August 5, 2008 by Garrick Van Buren | Filed Under General | Leave a Comment 

And We’re Back.

I’m happy and relieved to say Cullect is back up.

Much love and thanks go to Derek and Linda @ Joyent, to Cullect’s paying customers and non- for your patience and understanding.

It’s good to be back.

August 4, 2008 by Garrick Van Buren | Filed Under Status | Leave a Comment 

Downtime Update: Itching for the Green Light

Quick Side-note: Until this downtime, I had no idea how much I use Cullect to remember the URLs of my favorite news sources for me. In my head, they’re all rolled up in a reading list.

Back to the update. Two things are happening simultaneously to get Cullect back online quickly, more reliability, and generally better.

  1. The current server is being upgraded with a ton more storage (your membership payments at work). When I receive confirmation from Joyent that the upgrade is complete, Cullect as you know it will be back. I’m expecting this confirmation shortly.
  2. A fresh, new server is being prepped for the ‘Big Train to Hollywood’ version. The initial steps of this are complete, to move forward the current server needs to be online.

I’ve tried a couple of strategies for getting Cullect back up - in anyway possible - prior to the storage upgrade, but I don’t have to tell you they didn’t work.

If you’re interested in scaling web apps - when the ‘Big Train’ launches Cullect will have a dedicated database server and a dedicated application server. To date both have been fighting for the same resources. Giving them their own space will make them (and you and I) happier and faster overall. Linda over at Joyent sent me a straight-forward, 10-step recipe for scaling this way and I’m anxious to get it started.

Again, I’m sorry for the multi-day outage. Thank you for your patience as I get the upgrade in place to get Cullect back up and insure this kind of outage doesn’t happen again.

Remember the Special ‘Availability Event’ Pre-Order Offer - Unlimited Reading Lists for $24/mn (currently $24/mn = 12 Reading Lists).

August 1, 2008 by Garrick Van Buren | Filed Under Status | Leave a Comment 

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