ThumNet

Update 2009-12-16

Looking for help in hosting

If you have a server that hosts PHP and you want to support the Scraper service please contact me (info at thumnet dot com).

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Update 2009-12-12

Service currently down, due to too many request to IMDb, working on a fix!

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Update 2009-12-09

• Added Picture in imdb-name request
• Added result count limitation param (see the guide)
• Some small bugfixes:
  • missing tt and nm prefix in ImdbID property in imdb-name-search request,
  • missing ImdbID for Writers and Directors in imdb-title request,
  • changed Season and Episode in imdb-episode request to SeasonNR and EpisodeNR
  • added result type to the summary element, to identify the result data

Update 2009-12-02

• Added Name search functionality, with imdb-name-search url param (imdb-search is now imdb-title-search)
• Added Name details, with imdb-name url param

Update 2009-12-01

• Fixed the Plot and Tagline for imdb title’s, see comments below.

It’s been some time since my post about the IMDB webservice but I’m proud to tell you readers there is a new version available.

Some important changes include:

• Restructured output (sorry to you guys who have to update their software)
• Output available in XML, JSON and debug (other output formats can be added on request)
• Automatic support for gzipping the output
• Summary information, containing:
  • data source
  • timestamp of the data
  • time taken in ms
  • scraper info
  • error code (0 for no error!) and error description
• Easily extendable scrape framework, so in the future more sites can be scraped!
• Admin interface to review the data you guys produce

Still interested or just curious?

Well the new url is: http://scraper.thumnet.com

The old version (imdb.thumnet.com) will only be available until 1 december 2009.

Because I wanted to learn programming in Adobe Flex I build a tool called airTranslate. It uses the Google Ajax Language API to translate the users input text to the chosen output language.

airTranslate features:

• Multi platform
• Auto detection of input language
• Drag and drop input text (with auto translation)
• Dock to tray icon (Windows only)
• Translate from clipboard (with auto translation)
• Auto store last chosen translation language
• Update notification

airTranslate is available at Google code: http://code.google.com/p/thumnet/downloads/list

The project is open source, and sources are available at http://code.google.com/p/thumnet/source/browse/#svn/trunk/Air. It is possible to request new functions and report issues through the Google code website.

To run Adobe AIR programs you need to download and install the Adobe AIR runtime

In my previous post I talked about the modifications I had made to the Pixeled Wordpress theme.

Well about 2 months ago I send the creator of the Pixeled theme an email requesting him to read my blogpost about the changes I had made to his theme.
But since then I haven’t heard anything from him, so I decided to release the pixeled-multicolor theme myself.

Some screenshots:

Download Pixeled-Multicolor (release 20090701)

New version available!
Read my update post.

The site imdb.thumnet.com is a personal project that I recently released on the web.

This webservice/api supplies an interface for the Internet Movie DataBase (in short IMDB). It gives you the abbillity to search for, or view details of,  a movie with a REST like request.

Some examples are:

• Searching for the matrix
  http://imdb.thumnet.com/xml/search/the+matrix/
• Getting details for the matrix (id tt0133093)
  http://imdb.thumnet.com/xml/title/tt0133093/

The output for the result of the request can be as XML or JSON. This makes it fairly easy to integrate movie information on you’re personal site.

For more information check out the site yourself.

If you encounter any problems please report them as a comment below.

Welcome to the ThumNet blog.

This is actually my first blog post ever, and I hope there are many more to follow!

As most of you already concluded this blog is build with WordPress

After the WordPress installation, which was very easy thanks to InstallaTron, I went looking for a theme. On the WordPress Themes page there was the blue Pixeled theme (version 1.9.2) which I really like, but there is one small problem. The developer (Sam) also created an earlier version of the pixeled theme (version 1.0) which was in green, but this wasn’t really up to date anymore. For this blog I wanted to give visitors the ability to choose between these two colors.

So I took the latest version of Sam’s theme and changed the following:

• copied both bgbody.png files into the images directory and renamed them accordingly
• created two partial StyleSheets with specific color settings, which will be loading on top of to the default StyleSheet
• picked up the styleswitcher.js file from A List Apart, which had to be updated because the attachEvent function isn’t cross browser compatible
• finally added the links to change the theme’s color in the header.php file

The links to change the color are located at the top right of the page, next to the text “color”.

Sources for the multicolor pixeled theme will be available through Sam’s or this site, but I first have to contact Sam to show him the modifications and ask him what he likes to do with them.