Subject:
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Re: Crazy idea for third-party Factory-like service
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad, lugnet.inst
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Date:
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Mon, 29 Aug 2005 20:51:24 GMT
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Viewed:
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7071 times
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In lugnet.cad, Joe Strout wrote:
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In lugnet.cad, Jake McKee wrote:
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Although not addressing the “cheapest parts list” desire, the Building
Instructions Portal (http://www.bricksonthebrain.com/instructions) has
something similar. Users who add a link to their Building Instruction can
also upload the LDraw file and, thanks to BrikTrak and Richard Morton, add a
link on their BIP instruction description that goes to Bricklink to find the
parts for that specific model.
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I just tried this, but with mixed success. For example, I tried to buy parts
for your Intermodal Spine Car. This produces “Oops! There was a problem
processing your request: 1. Item #21: Item Not Found in Catalog.” (You’d
think it would then provide a way to go on and find the other items, but it
does not.)
Then I tried the Older style Boxcar, and this did work better. I’m a little
unclear on exactly what it’s doing when I click through to one of the
sellers; I think it’s showing me all the parts they have that match the
inventory parts. The quantities don’t carry over, so I’d have to keep the
parts list handy and fill out the order myself, but it is indeed a good
start.
Then of course there’s the more general problem that half the instruction
links on BIP seem to be broken... I wish BIP would just host the instructions
themselves.
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Heh...yeah, clearly it needs some updating. Honestly, I sorta lost interest when
I couldn’t get any feedback or help from Bricklink - that was the lynchpin in
the system and without it, it was tough to make much more happen.
Of course, that doesn’t address my personal broken link problems. :) I’ll take a
look at that tonight.
As far as hosting.... well, that’s going to be a tough nut to crack. I’m not
sure I want to (or would be able to) get into the content hosting biz. And
hosting images, ldraw files, PDFs, videos, Flash animations, and other Building
Instructions methods would be a level of magnitude more complicated adn complex.
Plus, the site has been able to cover it’s own costs (or more importantly, I’m
sucking it up now) as it current works. Adding file hosting to the mix would
certainly not allow for that.
As a side note, MOCpages does basically the same thing I’m doing here - content
is actually hosted elsewhere, with the MOCpages.com page wrapper and content
wrapped around the off-site images.
The other problem was, of course, legalities. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to
worry about having a lawyer scrub the site to ensure that all was kosher when it
comes to people uploading their own content onto my site and still being able to
retain the rights to that content. It’s a tricky game. Before I go down that
path, I’d want to ensure that the site would be able to support itself through
some long-term business model. I’d hate to have a new expansion concept actually
kill the site!
That said, I’d love to be able to handle precisely that concept some day. Don’t
rule it out, just don’t expect it next week either. :)
Jake
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Jake McKee
Webmaster - BIP
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Crazy idea for third-party Factory-like service
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| (...) I just tried this, but with mixed success. For example, I tried to buy parts for your Intermodal Spine Car. This produces "Oops! There was a problem processing your request: 1. Item #21: Item Not Found in Catalog." (You'd think it would then (...) (19 years ago, 29-Aug-05, to lugnet.cad, FTX)
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