about ampsig..

how does it work?

The principle is simple enough. The signature image that you see is dynamically generated the moment you request it, which is how we can put "your IP is ..." and other such information into the image.

Your media player (we use Winamp, but other media players can do this stuff, too) sends a POST request (in AMP's case, via the excellent cURL) to our php script whenever the media player experiences an "event", like a "play" event, and the ampsig updates the current data.

On Windows, you can use the otherwise excellent AMIP plug-in to send the "event" messages from WinAMP. At the time of writing, AMIP doesn't have any built-in HTTP POST facility (though we are assured this is on its way) so it in turn uses the incredible cURL to send these events off over the wires to ampsig (amp.php) which collects this information and uses it to generate the dynamic signature. If you feel all this AMIP and cURL stuff is beyond you, you can also use the "NowPlaying" plugin for Winamp, though with a slightly reduced feature set.

Mac OS X users can utilise the services of the simple-yet-wonderful macsig.

On Linux/UNIX-like systems you can use the signux package [included].


For simplicity, and because it's a good idea, one single script handles both sides of the server-side magic, collecting the data, and generating the image, automatically switching to whatever mode is required.

Since starting this, we've developed the basic idea of the dynamic sig, adding features and facilities along the way, messing with ideas, toying with code, learning new stuff. We have the world's first dynamic sig with a live song progress bar, syat, amongst other fun things. We've messed around in C to produce "uTu", the ampsig uptime updater. more to come, for sure.

If this all seems a bit complicated, worry not. Firstly, our documentation is pretty good, and secondly, help is at hand! Feel free to jump in at any time, for help advice, a quick flame, whatever.

what goes around..

note: everything here is FREE FOR PERSONAL USE, the code, the advice, the works! so please, if you use ampsig for yourself, don't go passing it off as your own work, that's rude! and shows a distinct lack in your understanding of Karma!

If you want to use ampsig for some commercial purpose, get in touch.