[Linux-aus] Assistance in starting a new Open Source project

[Silvia Pfeiffer]

Hi Avi,

You're asking for a web analytics solution that can deal with web audio and
video. I think rather than inventing a new system, you're better off
improving am existing open source web analytics solution.

You've already found piwik. There is also
http://www.openwebanalytics.comwhich seem to have a modular extension
api. Apparently three are some
others, but I don't know how good they are:
http://sixrevisions.com/usabilityaccessibility/10-promising-free-web-analytics-tools/
.

Building a web analytics app is not trivial and requires a certain kind of
community to maintain it. I highly recommend talking to existing
communities rather than trying to build your own.

Good luck!

Cheers,
Silvia.
On 16 Nov 2013 17:42, "Avi Miller" <avi.miller at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey everyone,
>
> This is probably going to sound like a ridiculous question, given the time
> I’ve spent in the Open Source community, but I’m looking for some advice on
> how to start what appears to be a brand-new Open Source development
> project, i.e. developing something that doesn’t seem to exist in any (open)
> form right now.
>
> While I could probably bang away for months myself, I’m self-aware enough
> to know that my programming skills (or lack thereof) would probably make me
> abandon the project before it became useful. My personal skills also lie
> pretty much in the PHP-MySQL camp, and that may not be the most efficient
> toolchain for this project either.
>
> So, because I’m not precious about this at all, and someone may know of a
> solution my google-fu hasn’t yet been able to find, here’s what I’m after:
>
> "A podcast/media delivery statistics gathering tool”
>
> Here’s how it [should|could] work:
>
> 1. All media on a website is prefixed with a tracking URL, i.e. if the
> media is http://server.com/path/to/music.mp3 then the CMS would write
> that out as http://tracking-server.com/track/server.com/path/to/music.mp3
>
> 2. The tracking server would track requests for the media file. This is
> where things become interesting because of HTTP 206 range requests - it
> would be great to track individual range requests and combine them so that
> we get a better view of listener/viewership.
>
> 3. The tracking server would either have an API or a pretty front-end with
> lovely graphs and statistics one could show a non-technical user to show
> them how their podcast/media delivery is going. This [should/could] be
> combined with GeoIP stuff, so we can get an idea of demographic information
> as well as player information, i.e. what device was used to listen to the
> content.
>
> Along with this, I have some specific requirements for my own nefarious
> (i.e. volunteer) ends:
>
> I want a hierarchical account/profile system where I can create a master
> account, say for a radio station, and then sub-accounts for each of the
> radio programs. The tracking URLs would then have to refer to the
> master/program combo, so for example, it may look like
> http://tracking-server.com/track/master/program/server.com/path/to/music.mp3
>
> Then, users with sub-account access only get to see the statistics for the
> program(s) to which they have access, while users with master account
> access get to see the statistics for all programs that are children of the
> master, i.e. to get a view of the entire station.
>
> I’ve found commercial operations that will provide this as a service, but
> even with a not-for-profit discount, to track the number of programs I
> need, it would cost me in excess of US$3500/year. And, I figure that if we
> can get this working, a number of small/medium community radio stations in
> Australia (and internationally) could strongly benefit and get off
> third-party podcast mechanisms.
>
> Anyway, that’s my pitch. If you’re interested in this as a side-project or
> if you know of something that already does what I need, I’m all ears. I
> suspect something like this could possibly be created as a plugin to
> something Piwik, but I have a preference for a standalone solution.
>
> Assuming I get some responses, my plan in mid-December/January is to apply
> for a funding grant to assist with the development of this. So, if you feel
> that you could contribute, but it may require some funding, that could
> possibly be arranged.
>
> Thanks for reading!
> Avi
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