I've built myB.TC, and am looking for some gentle testers and some feedback.
myB.TC - A bit.ly type service for your wallet IDConcept:Each user can set up their own web page, accessible from a tiny URL of your choice (a short name), that lets you store your wallet ID on the net. That way, when your drinking buddy says "I'll pay you for that last round in Bitcoin", you don't have to rattle off a 34-character Bitcoin address. Instead, you can direct him to your personal webpage that holds your wallet ID. "OK, my Bitcoin shortname is jerfelix."
The User pages look like this:
myB.TC/jerfelixYou, the user, can maintain your public page. You can put a unique phrase on that page, like "I'm John Smith, the car enthusiast from St. Louis". That way, when people look you up, they can have some reassurance that they got the CORRECT John Smith.
Later, if you want to update your public wallet ID, you simply log in, and make a change.
In fact, you can use multiple short names. If you want
myB.TC/GiftForTheBoss, you can reserve that one, and direct your co-workers to pay you through that, as you collect money for the Boss's birthday gift.
New Convention Proposal:In addition, I'm proposing a new convention. Instead of including your wallet ID in your signature, I propose we begin using the convention ฿shortname or B/shortname. What do you think of, when you see "@name"? Twitter, right? Well, with ฿shortname or B/shortname, let's get people to think Bitcoin. And more specifically, that you can be found in the Bitcoin directory myB.TC, under that shortname.
I'm proposing that you use this convention across the net, in forums and on web pages. What do you think?
So, I'm ฿jerfelix (alternately B/jerfelix, for the unicode-impaired) and you can see my page at
myB.TC/jerfelixReserved Names:I took the liberty of reserving people's forum names, so that you can claim your name. This was a little tricky. I thought it would be nice for people to be able to grab the name that they use in the Bitcoin Forum, and the only way I could think of to confirm that you are who you say you are, was to have you post some specific text in any forum message, and then tell the software the URL where it can be found. So try to claim your forum name as a shortname. You can post your claim text in ANY message - preferably a witty message that you were going to type anyway. I am a little hesitant about "spamming the forum", so hopefully people will keep their claiming messages all in one thread. If this gets to be obnoxious, I'll turn it off.
I doubt that I got the claiming part of the software working exactly right, so gentle testing is encouraged! (This was very hard for me to test without spamming the forums!)
Note, I made some names unavailable. If your forum name doesn't meet my shortname criteria (because it contains illegal characters based on what's permitted in URLs, or because it's under 4 characters, or if it's a collision with some famous name (like walmart)), then this feature may not work for you. I did extend some shorter names with underscore. So if your forum name is ab, it would be ab__ (that is, 4 character minimum for now). If your forum name is walmart, tough luck - pick a different one.
Bounty Hunter:myB.TC was developed in response to the 200 BTC bounty posed at
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=1429.msg145713#msg145713 . Unfortunately, just prior to me publishing the site, the bounty was lowered by 95% to 5 BTC. Needless to say I was bummed. But I reworked the site to allow people to buy shortnames for a nominal fee, and to claim their own forum name.
So, if you like the site, I won't complain if you help to make up that 195 BTC discrepancy!! remember, I'm at ฿jerfelix and you can see my page at
myB.TC/jerfelix - (the old fashioned way is for me to post 1BZbpx7wHAUcBgzAtH4KeogTmtgUrq5Nkk ).
~Ain't to proud to beg, sweet darling ~
Please check it out, and let me know what you think. Be gentle. Ideas, comments, enhancement requests, and bug reports are ALL very welcome! Is there anything else out there like this?
myB.TC
