HamiltonBernique

Hello soap fans!

I am happy to announce a milestone in soap opera history with the launch of my website HamiltonBernique.com, home of The SoapJack Project.

The SoapJack Project is the beginning of the inventory of classic soap opera video links on YouTube in the exact to wildly approximate chronological order of their broadcast dates. There are currently over 26,000 links (YouTube IDs specifically) in a dataset provided in JSON and CSV files on an accompanying GitHub repository.

This started off as an iOS app named SoapJack that I developed using Xamarin tools in Visual Studio for the Mac. It got quite robust and was a couple of months or so away from market when Microsoft discontinued VS for the Mac. But as the years slip by, I feel it would be better to make the data public and build an effort around it as the priority. The app is now a proof of concept and is documented on the web site.

As you know, such a dataset has a lot of churn. Channels get terminated, videos get blocked or made private, and new videos need to be included. But the historical and entertainment value far outweighs the churn. All channels (currently 86 and growing) get checked for changes once a month.

I encourage channel owners to put dates in the titles or descriptions of their videos as to when the episode was originally broadcast. Even a wild guess on the year, such as “circa 1985” is a great help. 

You can reach me at Bruce@HamiltonBernique.com. Especially eager to learn of new channels and classic soap opera videos, spanning 1950 to roughly 2012 or so. Sorely need Days of our Lives and Young and the Restless clips.

Please visit HamiltonBernique.com for details including a gallery of the channels that host the videos. The data is free and there are no sign-ups. 

Thank you,
- Bruce Hamilton

8 months ago | [YT] | 8