Streambadge is my first attempt at a "startup" in an accidental sort of way. It came about after seeing a need for such a service, for my own needs and for others. I first released the Twitch TV Widget and saw some traction with that, so I decided to make it an actual service.
The Name
When I was thinking about what to call it, I first came up with "TwitchBadge" since Twitch.tv was the only API at the time. Then I was thinking, why limit myself? Why not include all APIs available? And that's how Streambadge came to be.
Some Tech
I spent a few weeks in my spare time putting it all together. It was a fun project, something to hack away at an try some new things. The tech behind it is really quite simple. Use jQuery's ajax lib to get data from various sources. Then output that data into a little page, filling in the content on each page load. That's the iframe part.
For the img badges, it's using PHP to dynaically draw the canvas with the data. Using some apache web server redirect action, I'm able to request the data based on the incoming image file name. It's probably one of the neatest things I've done and I'm quite proud of it.
Let's just see if anyone uses it!
Here's the README from the GitHub repo:
Streambadge helps you gain viewership by displaying your live stream status. Select your video stream service, add your username, and grab the code! Paste the code to your website, blog, forum signature, or where ever you like!
Streambadge accesses your live stream information through various service API requests. Current services include; Twitch.tv, Justin.tv, UStream.tv, GoodGame.ru, hitbox.tv, and Livestream.com.