Temporary failure in name resolution

Yep.. what the heck is that?! Temporary failure in name resolution...

I think this is why the Amazon links stopped working, it also explains what happened to a couple of the feeds.
This code:

$request = 'http://ecs.amazonaws.com/onca/xml?
Service=AWSECommerceService&AWSAccessKeyId=xxx&
Operation=ItemSearch&SearchIndex=DVD&Actor=Brad%20Pitt';
$response = file_get_contents($request);
echo htmlspecialchars($response, ENT_QUOTES);

Gets this error:

Warning: file_get_contents(): php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /var/www/html/includes/amazon_cart_small.php on line 16

Here is the most annoying part.. NOT all the time. I google'd it, tried a few things, emailed support at our host.. still nothing. Any clues?

BFN

REST did not solve anything..

Seems there is seriously something wrong between us and Amazon.. we're not speaking.. sometimes.

My favourite kind of error, the intermittent kind! I'm ignoring it for now, sadly we will lose revenue while buy links are down, but I can't see a way around it yet. I'm having similar, although not as fatal errors with REST as I had with SOAP.

On a completely different note, I found a link to a member of my Clan from Tabula Rasa (video game) who actually makes a podcast.. huh: http://rumheroes.mypodcast.com/
The funniest part is this post: http://rumheroes.mypodcast.com/2007/11/Photonic_Cramps-57445.html

Whoa nelly.. People really like this stuff.

BFN

SOAP problems making me go REST

The Amazon buy links have been live on the main site for almost a month. Yesterday they all stopped working. Strange.. I took them all off the site, so it's now like they were never there.

On further investigation (googling the error) it turns out _lots_ of websites are experiencing the same problem. The question is where to go from here. I read some more about ways to communicate with Amazon, and it turns out that REST is supposedly faster than using SOAP.

Luckily I'm familiar with some of the steps involved in setting this up, so perhaps later today we will be live again with buy links for the main site, and they won't take 15 minutes to load!

BFN

Stargate updates are live!

Finally.

Woot!

Tired.. sleepy.. so glad it's Friday! OMG.. it's not *cries*

I guess tomorrow will be the "whoops it broke" day. Give me strength!

BFN

No new Stargate.. yet

We had planned to launch today, but for some unforeseen circumstances, the launch has been put off for a few days.

It was finished though!

I was a little excited at some of the new things we got to do, but I guess only a few more days and you can all see it yourselves!

Loui and I had free tickets to a pre-screening of Beowulf today, but traffic worked against us, and by the time we got there it was going to be a long wait in a queue. We quit while we were ahead, and ate some sushi for dinner.

Unfortunately no interesting code to report today, all bug fixes and what not.. boo hoo!

I met some of the people working on Stargate Worlds, and they have promised to let us have a peek at the closed beta, so I'm hoping they remember me (I snagged a business card from someone who seemed important!) when the time comes for me to play!

BFN

Amazon unbox episode links

Ah ha!! I think I have it.. well sort of. Not as wonderfully automatic as on mgm.com, but passable. I've added an extra field for each episode, which unfortunately will have to be manually entered when the episode is added (and ones already up will have to be retroactively done) for the ASIN. This is the ID Amazon gives for each and every product in it's catalog.

Using the ASIN, I can do an ASIN Search using the AWS API, to get the buy link for each episode. It won't be ready for launch, but as soon as our Content Queen gets a chance, she'll have the arduous task of adding all the ASIN's to our DB, then the buy episodes will work!

In the meantime, I am hoping that Amazon does something to it's IndexSearch in the AWS API to allow me to search for "Stargate Atlantis Missing" and find the right eps. Oh well!

BFN

Stargate site updates go live tomorrow

All the work our designer, and front end developer has put in (with a tiny help from me) will go live tomorrow! That's the plan anyhow. It feels like whenever we get mostly done with something, TPTB push us in an entirely new direction. It's hard to make a kick ass site when you don't know what the goals of the site are. Is the site supposed to sell more DVD's? To sell more digital downloads (iTunes/unBox)? To get more people to watch SciFi? To get more people interested in general?
Who are we trying to get to watch Stargate? Is it people in their 20's? 30's? It's hard to go in a solid direction, and then be able to gauge our success without any particular goals.

Anyhow, we're at a point where a new version will be out of the site. It looks good, not a whole lot has changed, there is no new content, only some new looking bits.
The part I'm most excited about is the amazon unbox buylinks on the episodes. I ran into a snafu however. It seems that Amazon UnBox doesn't let you link to a particular episode, only to the entire series! Not even just to a season!

This afternoon I'll be messing around more with SOAP to see if I can get it down to episode by episode purchases, otherwise the whole thing will be rather simple (one link for Atlantis, one link for SG1!)

Anyone linked directly to episodes on Amazon Unbox before?

BFN