The BlogTalkRadio Blog

A flickr user, choiceshirts, favorited one of the four Cinch designs today. Thank you!

At SXSW in Austin, TX a couple weeks ago the BlogTalkRadio team was there to represent and produce shows for our hosts like DoC and Wiley. We handed out hundreds of BlogTalkRadio stickers (made by the great Sticker Giant) and over 130 original Cinch t-shirts to attendees.

The shirts turned out to be an unexpected hit. Sure, we thought we could give out quite a few but we expected to have many left for other events - not the case. It made traveling home easy!

The takeaway from this post should be that if you are designing promotional products make schwag that doesn’t look like schwag and that your conference team will get behind with a passion. Get feedback from your co-workers about designs and ask them if they would wear or use the item you are creating while not in the presence of your CEO. And, lastly, know your intended audience.

Here’s a look at we made:

The time has come to share some of the code goodness that I cooked up on my own last week to test Cinch. What have I got for you? One homebrew kit with a handful of PHP5 files in it.

These PHP5 files are presented to jump start a developers access to using Cinch as an API.

Included scripts: cinch-api.zip

* cinch-api.php - Parse the original RSS feed from Cinch for a given phone number and display the information. This script is meant to demonstrate how the variables work.
* cinch-api-rss-now.php - In real-time this file removes a users phone number from the Cinch RSS feed and generate a new feed. Some variables need to be defined by you.
* cinch-rss.sql - MySQL table to cache the Cinch RSS feed. Once in the table it is open season on how to work with it.
* cinch-api-config.php - This file is used to fill in user data for a RSS feed that is generated from the cached data.
* cinch-api-insert.php - Reads the Cinch RSS feed and inserts the item data into the MySQL table. In this file you can modify every aspect of how the original Cinch data is rewritten to remove phone number, etc.
* cinch-api-rss.php - Pulls the cached data and generates a new RSS 2.0 feed.

If you simply want to remove your phone number from your Cinch feed check out the cinch-api-rss-now.php script. All you need to do is plug your phone number into it and upload it to your web server.

Before I close this out, I’d like to say that if anyone else has some RoR, .Net or Java chops and feels the need to create some Cinch starter scripts you should forward them on.

And last but not least, we are working on the login system here at BTR. Our engineers are sweating in a hot server filled room making it happen. But they won’t stop at logins. You’ll have to check back with us to see.

Today we launched a new service called Cinch. What is it? How about the easiest way to produce and syndicate a podcast. Or as Dave Winer called it, “The simplest podcast API ever.”

Introducing Cinch, the easiest way to produce and syndicate a podcast.

Using Cinch is simple:

1. Call (646) 200-0000
2. Talk
3. Subscribe or use as the RSS feed as an API - http://cinch.blogtalkradio.com/YOURPHONENUMBER

We provide the network, storage and feed. What can you build on top of this service?