So the plan was to take the live system that we built, which works pretty well, and add a bunch of cool features to it, and turn it loose to the public at 12:01 central time last night.
Well, We kinda missed the mark. But our product IS up and it IS live and public facing. It DOES NOT have all the features. I just got home, so that tells you we didn't quite make midnight.
But soon we'll roll all the cool(er) features in.
Once the features are added, I'll show you guys some REALLY cool stuff.
Right now, I used it to build an AIM bot that searches here, macosxhints, macworld, and lowendmac. That's right. Search over AIM using only the sites I want it to use. We call it BYOMS (Build Your Own Mobile Search). And I might say it's pretty flippin' nifty. The creator of each chat bot (we call them BYOMS) can exhastively tweak and modify the sites and kinds of results their BYOMS give. Mine isn't tweaked much because I'm tired. I got here at 3:00 yesterday afternoon, didn't leave till 7:00 This morning, and was back at work by noon.
Anyhow, add "TheMacResource" as a buddy to your AIM and start asking away. The cool thing about our system is that it tries, whenever possible, to locate complete sentences to reply to you, so it's pretty conversational, depending on how good the sites are that you reference. Remember, this is BETA and I might also take my buddy offline for a while if I want to make some changes. It might also crash or something.
Also, probably the coolest thing I've seen was the Wikipedia one we did. Add "BYOMSWikipedia" to your AIM buddy list and start asking it reference questions or feed it keywords. It's amazing!
Also, before the flame wars begin, this system IS capable of using other chat protocols, like MSN, yahoo, and Jabber (works on Google Talk, for example). We just use AIM for a few reason. First, we're an all-mac shop (in the office) and most of us have .mac accounts which go to AIM for iChat, and next, AIM has better HTML support than other chat clients.
This all runs on the OpenBSD server cluster I manage (yes there's a Terabyte worth of XServe RAID there):
Tom, or any of the good Dr's... feel free to tag me and I'll hook you up with the ability to make your own chat bots. I think you guys would probably like playing with it 
Only 1TB? We just installed 250GB SATA drives into one of our 12-bay Intel SAN units at work. Should format down to about 2.5TB.
It doesn't store any "index" data for our search stuff, only code, email, and networked files for our little 12-employee company. It's more than substantial. I assure you. I carry 250GB external HDD wherever I go, so I know what you're saying. The XServe RAID only has 5 of the slots used.
Sooo beautiful.....
Nice work.
i added those 2 to ichat, that is pretty freakin cool
ask anything you want and the little booger searches out the answer for you
me likey
Just FYI, as of this week I'm no longer associated with the makers of BYOMS (and that big rack of hardware is now someone else's problem).
I've got a bunch of stuff lined up for the near future, including a possible move to Denver, CO. Right now though I've got a consulting gig lined up, and the possibility of a short term Linux sysadmin position to tide me over. Of course, there's more money involved (w00t) so I'm probably getting my Black MacBook in the next few weeks.
anyhow, I can't answer much more about BYOMS nor do I know what direction it will take, but I still use it. I love the wikipedia one! I'm glad some of you also like it.
now you all see what I dream about lmao
Neato. Next time drop me a line and I'll hook you up with some Rackable brand servers.
http://www.rackable.com
Well, being that I don't work there anymore... I won't be needing rack mount boxes any time soon. Unless a consulting client wants one. I guess that's a possibility.
The thing is, those servers were meant to be uber-cheap. Like when one goes out, toss it into the "dead node" pile and slide another one into the rack for $300 or less.
One of my clients (actually more of a friend that I do some side-work for) may be wanting to get out from under his dedicated hosting plan and into a colo facility. If that's the case, I'll need to drum up some hardware. You'll be the first to know.
Oh, we don't make servers in that category. Ours are built to last. We do have some configs as cheap as $700 though
wait, that means your losing 2 hard drives worth of space (500gb) if you filled up all 12 bays. the hell? I know formatting is inefficent, but that is too much. what's the point of having 500gb of space your never gonna use to store stuff? acouple hundre megs to a couple gigs is fine, but half a tbyte lost to formatting, geez.
somebody explain that.
also, how much did those SATAs cost? I just got a 10gb PATA for $60 recently. nice deal.
-digital
From the founders blog is also found the AppleKnowledgeBase BYOMS.
I'm sure they have them setup in a RAID 5 setup. In RAID 5 you lose the capicity of one drive to parity information right off the bat. That way if you lose a drive all of you information is intact. Most SAN units I have seen do more than simple RAID 1 or 5, so that is where the space went.
RAID 5. I think our cost is something like $80 per 250GB drive (we buy them in bulk anyway, since we manufacture PCs). The chassis was a freebie from Intel.
Incidentally, we ended up selling that chassis and replaced it with a 16-bay chassis instead. We only have 12 bays populated, broken into three 4-drive RAID 5 arrays, but I think we're going to pull those drives and install 16 400GB drives instead.
The ones we use (we have 2) are actually just dual Xeon machines running Unix that boot off of a RAID 1 array of CompactFlash cards. You can do pretty much any kind of RAID config you want, including RAID 10 or 50. We have 4GB of RAM in each of our two SANs.
This:
http://www.intel.com/design/servers/storage/ssr212ma/index.htm
...is the SAN we're getting rid of. The new one (which isn't on Intel's site yet) is a 16-bay version.
We sell RAID5's and SANs too.
http://www.rackable.com/products/s-OmniStor.htm
Thanks for sharing these new AIM "TheMacResource" buddy and its working well this morning, thanks for the effort to make it useful. Can you please tell me if there are any other of these bots available as buddies? And also can you tell us if you want to more or less keep it quiet or if you'd like us telling all our friends? I want to act according to your wishes since you made it happen.
TheMacResource is open to all. I made it, and even though I no longer work there, it's mine, and I don't mind at all. All of the ones I've listed here are free and clear to share with other people, as they've been posted on other websites.
BYOMS members have made probably hundreds of these chattable buddies by now. But I know of the following screen names you can add to AIM:
As Jon pointed out, AppleKnowledge (Apple's KB)
A few more I made myself:
fordfocusinfo (Ford Focus information)
DefineAWord (Tries to find a definition or synonym for whatever word you enter)
Others I know of:
ByomsWikipedia (I posted it earlier)
biomecraigsf (Craigslist's San Fran site)
AskBYOMS (A general whole-internet search)
AIMCityNYC (one based on AOL's CityGuide for New York City)
AIMTicketMaster (based on AOL's ticketmaster interface for finding shows)
BYOMSWebMD (Web MD, obviously)
GossipCeleb (Celebrity Gossip. Gag me with a spork. Lawlz.)
byomsIMDB (The Internet Movie DataBase)
ByomsGhia (For finding Karmann Ghia parts. And you thought my Focus Info one was unique)
SKCByoms (SunSolve search, made by a guy who works at Sun Microsystems)
SearchTechCrunch (Techcrunch.com's founder made this to search his site)