PE 's 20th Anniversary Gift

November 30th, 2009 in PE's official 20th anniversary. I'm not planning the customary anniversary party for this year, because I don't feel PE's really accomplished much worth celebrating this year. Instead I'm planning to dedicate a lot of time over the next few months to add resources to the web site that will give back to the community. I'm also planning to relaunch the web zine and start adding content and features on a regular basis. Here is my plan...

Phase One: this is what I will be adding to the the web site immediately:

1. Community Space: user profiles, contacts and photo galleries based on the Facebook model (in fact I will probably set it up to synch with your existing Facebook account).

2. Events calendar. You may remember the events calendar I experimented with last winter. I'm going to reinstall this system, but integrate it with the community space so you can send out event notices to your contacts.

3. User blogs. Got something to say? Publish it. This will be integrated with the above.

Phase Two will include the following resources

4. Digital Jukebox. Bands will be able to upload their music into an on-site storage a retrieval system and add a player to their profile (ala MySpace).

5. Streaming audio server. PE will soon be broadcasting anarchy, punk and chaos on the internet 24/7!

I plan to have Phase One up and running by the end of the month. I also plan to have the first major updates to the web zine starting around the same time.

A good chunk of the scripts that run these new resources are free, thanks to the Open Source community, but I will have to buy some proprietary code and probably spend a few hundred dollars to make this happen. I would also like to upgrade our hardware and add some redundancies in case of a hard drive crash or other server failure. I'm going to go ahead and make this happen with my own money and do all the work as a gift to the entire community. If anyone wants to help with some of the financial part of the equation, feel free to make a donation (click the link in my signature, or better yet, save us the Paypal fees and send a few well-concealed bucks to PO Box 18051, Minneapolis, MN 55418). The other way you can help support is to use the new features and invite your friends and comrades to do the same.

Thanks for your support!

Dan

To donate to PE click HERE.