creeva

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Last Saturday morning my blog was down for the count.  I had received an email from Are My Sites Up stating that Creeva.com was down.   It told me that my blog went down late night on Friday.    I verified on Saturday that it was still down, and I had wanted to do some writing on it.  I waited.    I attempted to call tech support but after being the first caller inteh queu for over an hour I surrendered.  Saturday came and went and no blog.   Sunday morning site was still down.

I called into tech support again Sunday afternoon.   I was fifth in the queu and I was moving forward about 15 minutes at a time.  Either people ahead of me were getting help, or they were giving up like I did the day before.   I held on and finally managed to get through to a person.  Upon talking to the tech support I learned that my hosting server had moved.   Not only had it been moved, it was moved back in October.

I had known that they were going to move servers, but the e-mail announcing this stated that most people would not notice an changes.   What this says to me is that a new server will be put up with the same IP address with very little down time in the migration.    This however was not done, so all of my data was moved to a new server.    Since October I had been updating my information and blog on the old server.   When I managed to correct my DNS entries at my registrar, I discovered my blog was out of date since early November.   I was missing literally hundreds of articles once you take into account my lifestreaming posts that don’t make the front page or RSS feeds.   I was livid.

I called back and they stated they would get it synced back up off of the old server.   Ten hours later there was no change.     I waited until Monday when I knew there would be more then just support in the office.   Since I’m a reader of the Consumerist I followed on of their recommended ways of dealing with this is, I sent an executive e-mail carpret bomb here is what I wrote:

To Whom Can Help Me,

I have been a customer with AN Hosting (anhosting.com) a division of Midphase Hosting (midphase.com) since 12/24/07.   In October you were planning a server consolidation/migration plan (notice sent out is given below my e-mail (removed from blog article)) - which stated that some of our accounts would be migrated to new servers.   At that time I created an offline backup of my domain. Things went on working as they normally did until Friday night 1/16/09 7:15 PM.  At this time my site went offline.  This was verified by the service Are My Sites Up? (aremysitesup.com).   I was not aware and didn’t check my email to be informed about this until Saturday 1/17/09 early evening.   I called the support line and though I was the first customer in the queue I waited over an hour before I gave up.

On Sunday 1/18/09 I called in with my problem.  It seems my “free” domain was working properly - I don’t really use this site so I hadn’t checked it.   My add-on domains however were not working at all.   My main site which is an add-on site (creeva.com) was not working.   The technician stated that I had been moved to a new server and the old server was turned off, but my data should still be available.   My old server IP address was  [REDACTED], the new server you had migrated me to was  [REDACTED].   The technician on the phone stated that if anything was wrong with the site to call back and they could pull the back-ups off the old server.  I thanked the technician and got off the phone to start relocating my DNS and testing the site.

Before I migrated my DNS I adjusted the local host file on my computer to make sure everything was working on my main site.  Upon loading it and checking the entries it seems at the closest date I could pin down my latest blog entry was written at 11/10/07.   It’s hard to pin down since in October due to other concerns I had written and scheduled blog posts for most of the month of November and some going forward to early December.   The data may even be from October because I use these functions of wordpress.  I called back in to the support line and explained the issue and asked if I could get the backup loaded that he previously mentioned.

He opened a ticket for me and stated he would get this assigned.   In the ticket language he was vague - here is was he entered on my behalf:
Hi, I am having issues with my addon domain(creeva.com). My account was migrated
to another box. I am not able to view the latest version of my website, its
pointing back to November 10. I’ve been posting updates to my blog. Can you
please look into my account?

thank you

I’m not sure why it had to be opened under my name using the “I” reference - since the technician opened the ticket (ticket number  [REDACTED]).  I would think this is misleading to the technicians working on the case.   I checked out the language after I got the auto-email generated when the ticket is assigned to another technician.    I added the following entries after the auto reply to clarify the situation:
None of my add-on domains to my account are up to date - these have been
constantly updated through the last few months - yet under the current server
migration I was told I was migrated about 3 weeks ago.  So there would still
have been a discrepancy of a month during hte migration.

The migration letter stated that it would be seamless to the end user -
normally in most scenarios this would include making sure that the data was at
the latest possible and maintaining the same IP address - since I’m sure I am
not hte only customer that use another registrar.  If monitoring this was made
more apparent in the letter going out about the migration I’m sure this would
have saved the technical support some headaches.

I was finished some major changes on my add-on site creeva.com at about 4PM
1/16/09 - if a backup of the previous server ( [REDACTED]) can be found after
that time that would be terrific.  Is it Midphase’s policy to make backups
before taking a server offline?

Also wanted to ad - my blog at creeva.com may seem up to date more Nov. 10 - but
everything going through a publishing right now was written to publish at a
future (now past date) and the blog is catching up with it’s scheduled posts.
The current date of the latest post is not an accurate reflection of the latest
data from a back up - the bet I can ascertain the date was at least Nov. 10th
if not earlier.

A while later one of your technicians had checked on the issue and issued this reply:
Dear Brent,

We have investigated your issue. We could find that your account was migrated
from our old server  [REDACTED] to our brand new server  [REDACTED]. Please let me know if
you are using any ftp clients to upload the files. If so please use the details
that we have mentioned below to upload the files and update your website. Please
check the settings of your FTP client.

Server name : [REDACTED]
Server IP :  [REDACTED]
Username : [REDACTED]

We have also checked the blog site creeva.com and entered a post and the post
was successfully updated. We have attached 2 screenshots along with this mail
for your reference. Please check it.

Please let me know the exact issue regarding your subdomains. It seems that you
are uploading the new updates to our old server. So please use the above details
in your ftp client so as to upload the files to the new server.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Regards,
[REDACTED]
Technical Support Representative.
Hosting Services Inc.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Since he didn’t seem to understand what I was asking I reiterated my request - also notice in  [REDACTED]’s reply that he gave me a third IP address that I should be using:
I need the data off of  [REDACTED] - which is where my add-on host was before
yesterday - I wasn’t using an FTP client - I was directly entering the data via
the wordpress interface - I checked my e-mail  logs and at no time was I alerted
there was going to be a server move where I would have had to adjusted the IP
address records of my add-on domains, if I had received that I would have been
more pro-active and migrated the DNS earlier.

The problem is I need the lastest information from Friday off of the
[REDACTED]  - one of the advantages on your home page is the fact that you
do nightly back-ups - so the backups should still be available.

I’m missing approxiamately 200 posts on my blog - affiliates update
information, theme updates - and that’s just for one add-on domain.  I also
find it odd that you give me the IP address  [REDACTED] - earlier tech
support gave me   [REDACTED] - which restored my access to the site  - I added
the IP address you gave me and added it to my hosts file locally before I
updated my registrar - I was hoping it would give me a more up-to date version
of my blog - it didn’t and just delivered me to a CGI page and the site doesn’t
load at all.

The problem is not access - and I can re-adjust my own FTP software - my
problem is data -freshness

Can I please get my data restored from the old server?

While you stated that during the migration - “In most cases, the migration is completely seamless. We have brought in a team of experienced migration experts to ensure this effort is handled with the best of care. If you should have a problem relating to your site, please do not hesitate to contact us: support@anhosting.com. We have a team standing by 24/7 to help out!”  I question the migration experts that performed this migration.  Currently at my place of employment we are performing similar actions with our infrastructure - and there was more customer outreach then you have given.   Since you know what are add-on domains are are your servers - any customer with a third party registrar should have been alerted by e-mail that their DNS records would have had to be adjusted.

Further action should have been done to sites on the old servers that were still getting traffic.  Since my site was receiving regular and steady traffic that should have been a tip off to action by your IT personnel that the customer should be alerted to adjust their DNS records.   This is all a failing on your team of migration “experts” by things that could easy have been prevented by a little due diligence on their part.

The biggest coincidence is that over hte last week I’ve been in discussion with someone to move over to your service.  I also had planned on migrating one of the non-profit organizations ove to your service next year to a VPS plan when their contract runs up.  Currently in good faith I can’t advise this to either of those accounts.   This disruption and loss of data is just not acceptable when it could have been easily prevented by checking what was going on the old server before you took it offline.

I am merely asking to have my backups from  [REDACTED] restored to my account.   Is this possible or do I have to make some other plans?  I am also sending the Consumer Advocacy blog “The Consumerist” (consumerist.com) a copy of this e-mail.   While the migration diligence seems to be in error you can still correct this problem and an unhappy customer by performing adequate customer service.   One of your features of An Hosting that is touted on your site is ” Backup Storage -Nothing is more shocking and heartbreaking than losing ones data and hard work. We back up our servers nightly to ensure you always have ANHosting to depend on!”  I am solely asking for my data to be restored as close to 4PM 1/16/09 as possible and my faith that I can “always have ANHosting to depend on!”

I sent this e-mail out to the American general manager of the company, the consumerist, the European Executives, and support.   I received an e-mail from the general manager and he got a technician working on the issue right away.   The issue was resolved in a couple hours.   They pulled my data off the old server and synced it to the new one.   There was still some minor issues that I had to correct - wordpress needed to be re-upgraded, but all my SQL databases were up to date.   They also kept me informed during the whole migration.

I really wish I could have had that level of care taken of me on Sunday, or at least a time frame when the data could have been restored.    When they try to equate a blog with a normal static website, it just shows ignorance on their part.   It does show the problem I have with doing regular back-ups - which is in the architecture stages right now.    The only thing I ask of my hosting provider is to live up to the promises they have given me.   I don’t open tickets - really I’ve talked to them only about 3 times in the last year.   The first being a simple problem I had while waiting for my account to activate, the second inquiring about the share SSL certs, and the third this issue.    I’m glad even though I “yelled” across the Internet more then I should have, that they came through and everything is now working.

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Between posting my mother’s email to me, or some random notice I get from a website.  It would seem that sometimes I either do not value privacy or exploit others.   This isn’t the case.    I post things I think are interesting - sometimes it’s the personal moments in my life.    If you send me an email in confidence and ask me not mention it to anyone, or post it online - you don’t have to worry about it making it out for public consumption.

Yes this post is short - kind of a blah type of thing post - kind of how I feel right now anyways

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Picture from here

Just the other day I wrote about cloud computing versus SaS terminology.   A web application isn’t necessarily a cloud computing or SaS platform.   It can be one or the other, it can be both, it can be neither.   Now that, that is out of the way let’s move onto the meat.

I think that all web application developers would do well to look at Wordpress and the product they offer as key points for their own designs.   Obviously I use Wordpress as a blog, I also use it as a CMS, a middleware application system, a database, a word processor and other uses.   Wordpress is extensible far beyond the original blog software it was designed to be.

The reason that Wordpress is so transformative is the ability to use a fairly easy (well not for me but I suck at PHP and programming in general) API that the users can use to extend and transform the core product.  This is done through the use of plugins.   In theory the expandablity of Wordpress would allow it to transform into any functional web application you can imagine.   I’m not saying this should be done however.   Wordpress plugins a lot of times just add band-aids to a product to extend it further then the core company can imagine or support.

Think of your ticket support system.  Most of these are moving to a web based interface.  Easy to manage, no software to install on users computers, easily updated since you only have to update the core server - it’s a no brainer to move everything you can over to a web based centrally managed focus for a company.

Why can’t you extend it though?

Most of the web application companies MAY ALLOW YOU to go as far as put your company logo in the interface.  Allowing you to brand a product to some extent is not the same as extending the product.  I don’t want color changes.  I don’t want a simple image swap.  I want feature sets being implemented without waiting 18 months to have it done.  If you have a robust CRM application, in this modern time wouldn’t you want a spot to add a LinkedIn Profile section?  This would be as easy as allowing customers custom fields that they can rename on the back-end.   What about adding an image?  This would be a bit more difficult then a simple custom field, but still possible doable.  How about however a full blow plugin that looks up the LinkedIn contact info.

This is all hypothetical, but let’s say this is how the plugin would work in generic CRM system.

1.  User logged into the CRM would associate their own - or a corporation profile with Linkedin

2.  User plugins in new contacts e-mail address

3. User is prompted with “Would You Like to Request Connection on Linkedin?”

4.  If users states yes the plugin would go into a state of “Waiting for Remote User to Confirm”

5.  At this point the user could add in all the information they normally would in the CRM database

6.  Later the user would receive an confirmation (or decline) of linking up in LinkedIn

7. If the receive a confirmation they could then pull in the information to the CRM application.

8.  Then the CRM application would have connections and how they relate to each other in their database, home pages, Resumes, etc. - all from a couple clicks.

That is a scenario that would appeal to sales personnel.   Let’s look at something more urbane, a library look up system. A library lookup system is something very simple  and single tasked.  It works well and returns (normally) the following information:

• Title
• Author
• Subject
• Location
• If it’s in or checked out
• Sometimes a Summary
• Sometimes an Image

Now let’s look at methods we can use to extend this functionality.  The first thing I would make sure is there a public internet accessible site where either the general public, or the Library chooses just card members can access.  Library users are normally people that live in the same town and there are a good number of them that know each others.  What does that buy you?  Word of mouth.  What about a a secondary revenue stream outside of donations or overdue fines?  How can you leverage more people to show up at your fund raising drives?  I’m assuming these are question that library officials ask themselves.   How can we turn that simple search to find a book into something more?

Let’s give the users an option to use the search page as a social platform.  I would give the a users a choice of using the old style simple search functions, but also give them a chance to leverage the public you are serving to work with you instead of you working for them.

Let’s go over an imaginary social library platform.

1.  User opens up a search window into the library database and enters a query.

2. User gets back the title, author, and subject - then a link that states more information (this is where a plugin would take over)

3.  On the plugin page users could get back an image of they are searching.  They also see where it is located, if it’s in or not, and more.   What about a sidebar that allows them to purchase the book/movie/CD at Amazon?  Reviews from other library patrons?  A list of who checked out which book (make this opt-in only on a per title usage - don’t compromise a users privacy).  A listing of library events where the author is signing books, giving a reading, or there is a book discussion covering these topics?

You just made something that is infinitely more “sticky” and let’s the users interact with your site on a much larger scale then previously.  They are no longer browsing alone, but in a group, with people they know from town.

All of this is possible with a platform that allows plugins.  I’m not asking for web application developers to support any plugins directly.  If a plugin breaks or crashes the core site (shame on the user that puts an untested plugin in a production environment) - the web application developer should tell the user they will not support the product with any plugins running at all.   It doesn’t mean the framework, APIs, and access shouldn’t be there.

I’m pleading with web application developers that allow the users to have self hosted servers to please build this extensiability into their products.   I can hack around another platform and get these functions, but sometimes we just want to buy a program from a vendor with support.   Currently your making us choose between function or support.   It should not be that way.  Opening up can only gain customer loyalty in the long run.

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Picture from here

Originally Published at Journey To Get Paid in this article.

So a couple weeks ago I moved all of my blogs over to the Disqus commenting platform.  So far so good.  The best thing is that I now have an offsite backups for all of my comments.   I had held off using any commenting platforms until they could sync back to the local wordpress database.

I backup all of my blog posts in e-mail and google documents, but there hasn’t been a good offsite backup system for comments until now.   If I loose my blog or migrate to another platform Disqus (supposedly) will be able to sync the contacts back correctly.

Check them out, and leave a comment to test it.

Originally Published at Journey To Get Paid in this article.

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Here is what has been published this week.

Articles:

Traffic Does Not Equal Money

My Copy of Little Brother Arrived Yesterday

Rant On The Myspace E-mail System

Out of Date and Unpatched Computers

Sharing Information - Who To Share It With

Being Excited About a New Browser

What Do The Brain Dead Write When They Have Nothing Else - Reviews

Mashable Doesn’t Really Like Ping.fm

The Crossposting God Series Part 8 - Using A Lifestream to Keep Track of Your Crossposts

Movies I Own - American Psycho

Why Did I Start Writing Reviews

Thou Shalt Not Covet - Really?

Rebloggers - Why Are There So Many of Them?

Movies I Own - Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure

Movies I Own - Harsh Times

Daily Activity Summaries:

Online Activity for 2008-08-29

Online Activity for 2008-08-30

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Picture from here

In part 8 I was going to write about crossposting to blogger, but that’s been delayed for the time being.  I’ll get back to that subject as soon as I get a chance.   Let’s move onto monitoring your crossposting.

Some people may have noticed that on my lifestream there seem to be duplicate posts.   This is because I’ve been working on adding all the RSS feeds from all the services in one trackable lifestream.   The benefits are that you can see and track how long information takes to get from one site to the next.   This also allows you to see where your crossposting is failing.   For example I’m noticing that my posts going to pownce are not getting through so when I get a chance I’ll look into what is actually causing that.

Lifestreaming all of our sites into one endpoint site that you can control and maintain allows all the little maintance to happy at a single glance.   We all know that crossposting is usually best effort delivery.  Not everything shows up in all the sites, but that happens because your not actively maintaining those sites and sometimes things just go wrong.

By having a single stream of all of your sites you are not bogged looking at RSS items for every site all together.  If I put all my feed items in google reader then it would take me an hour each day to get through all of them.  Having a quick glance allows the information to be singled out in a daily quick view.

Currently I’m using the wordpress lifestream plugin to handle my lifestream page.  It gives me the benefit of having a daily summary post generated automatically.  This allows me to have a permanent archive of all of my daily archives that I can go back search and vault away in my own life vaulting fashion.

Life is good.  Maintaining and monitoring in a single glance - that’s great.

Previous Entries in The Crossposting God Series:

The Crossposting God Series Part 1 - The Introduction

The Crossposting God Series Part 2 - Vox

The Crossposting God Series Part 3 - Live Journal and Derivative Sites

The Crossposting God Series Part 4 - Entry, Distribution, and End Points

The Crossposting God Series Part 5 - Myspace

The Crossposting God Series Part 6 - RSS Feeds to Crosspost

The Crossposting God Series Part 7 - Where Can You Post By E-Mail?

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Picture from here

First and foremost I don’t believe there is such a thing as sharing too much information.    That being said I want to control what I share, I also want to be aware of what is being seen, searched, and digested.   I will happily write about anything and everything in my life, even to the annoyance of friends, family, and of course readers who have to put up with my inanity.

I dislike however background checks, interview questions that deal with your personal life outside of work, and assumptions based on the findings of those two things.   What I do outside of work as long as it’s not illegal is none of our business.   It is my life and if it has no bearing on our company or business sector, then buzz of.  If you are so concerned about it subscribe to my RSS feed, I’m sure something on that subject will eventually arise.

During background checks I’ve been ask who my neighbors are.  I don’t know I’m not the neighborly type.  I don’t hang outside with a beer and play the “get to the know the neighbors routine” - just because they live in a geographic location adjacent to me doesn’t mean I want to know or hang out with them.  I’m a picky person on who I waste me time.   The ones that I do waste time with have some degree of amusement or I gain something from it.   My neighbors are not these people.  The simple answer is that maybe if I got to know them they would be.   That’s the rub and catch-22 now isn’t it.

The reason I’m writing about this is the fact I was talking about a background check with someone via e-mail the other day and she said that I shouldn’t worry about it, that her life is more interesting then mine.  She may be right.   That’s the not the point, I’m pretty in control and aware of what I write online, how I share, and how it’s reused.   Check out my lifestream page for m activities pulled and duplicated from many different services.   I spread my dataphonic seed across the blogosphere.

I’m aware and to an extent I’m in control.  It’s when information is forced from me in which I take issue with and will clam up.

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Now you know if you read my blog regularly that I don’t have the higest respect for Myspace.  I have been using Myspace more and the issues of it’s flaw just become more glaring with me over time.
Issues:

1.  There is no method for saving e-mails.   None, other then copy and paste - which is a huge pain in the ass.   While I do have the first snippet saved in a gmail notification I would prefer to have the whole message saved off and archiving.

2.  After two weeks it deletes your sent messages - WTF?  Why can’t I decide to clean out my inbox - if you want to clean them out why don’t you give me the option to automatically export a copy out for myself in my home e-mail account?

3.  Notifications - theoretically it wouldn’t take much more bandwidth to send me the whole message - I have no problem logging into your site to reply to email - but send me the complete email and not the first 140 characters.

I understand e-mail is not a priority for them, and not a focus of the site.  I understand they are a walled garden.  Dammit though, with the user base some interoperability with their e-mail would be nice.

I hate you Myspace.

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Picture from here

I get distracted when I get home from work.  I’m easily amused and have the “Ooooooooooooooooooooohhh Shiny” mentality type of distraction.  I don’t deny it.   I don’t exactly revel in it either.   By the time I actually get around to doing some of the things I need to get done, it’s late, I’m tired and cranky.   If I put things off until the weekend we end up doing stuff and getting involved (”Is that a shiny over there?”) and so things once again get overlooked.   I’m not sure I would actually sleep if I didn’t know for certainty that it helps save my job and my marriage.   So what can I do about it?

Picture from here

Things I have tried with little or no success:

• Wall Calenders
• Sticky Notes
• Todo Tasks in Outlook
• Todo Tasks on Google
• GTD sites
• Web Calenders

Nothing so far seems to work for me - I’m mundane blind.  When there is a shiny I don’t even notice the mundane.

Like many geeks, corporate types, etc.   I live and die by e-mail.   This is something I greatly increased in focus when I was a consultant.   Now I can handle literally hundreds of e-mails a day, and I can’t stand a cluttered mail box.  I normally use Gmail’s interface just through a browser, but I’ve been known to dabble in POP3 and IMAP access (the insanity!!).  Mostly though I just use the web browser.  It’s the same at work, home, and on the go.   The one thing I hate most about my mail box, is when it get’s full.   I hate a cluttered inbox, I hate coming back and seeing more then one page of e-mail waiting for me (which does happen if there is some strange reason I don’t check my email for two days).

Picture from here

So I stumble on the idea of combining these two things, hatred of e-mail clutter and a need to get motivated and GTD, so now I’m email my tasks to myself (and now Xie has joined into the game).  The first thing when I went down this road is to send myself a daily list of tasks to do, well I tried that once in the past and that doesn’t seem to help.  Neither do reminder services, since I easily dismiss them.

The format I use when I mail myself is TODO (task) - this forces me to stare at it every time I look at my e-mail.   I’m hoping it will succesfully burn the task into my brain.   When I actually complete the task it get’s archived, thereby saving me space in my inbox.   Too many tasks and it will roll over to a second page, I would be highly annoyed if that happened.   So essentially I’m going to be GTD by annoying myself.

Meh.

But it may work.

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

In the picture above is my maternal grandfather and my great grandfather, it seems I am going to be joining on them on the ability to reproduce and pass down genetic material to the next generation.  Yes I am going to be a father, Xie want and annouced the pregnancy on Twitter just a few hours ago with the following message:

As of yesterday I am 7 weeks pregnant - coming from the person who would never in a million years want kids, I am very excited & happy

I sent the follow up:

@xielanthia congratulations who is the father……nm

Then I sent this:

As of yesterday @xielanthia is 7 weeks pregnant and I’m going to be a father - wish us luck - we’ll need it.

So we have announced to the Web 2.0 World (WTW? W2W?) that we are having a baby and doing it in true web fashion.  We have known for about 3 weeks and over that time eeked the information out to family and friends.  The first person I told was the IPS guys I played SWG with that I have constant e-mail communication with.  The first family that knew was my in-laws and followed by Xie’s grandmother (I wish she had a blog i could link to).   Then it was ghoulishcharm.  From there I told my father and my brother who was also there.  I went and told my grandparents last Sunday and drove over to tell my sister, but she already knew it seems that she found out from my father who knew the week before.

I did find out from my sisters that my grandparents had already known about the pregnancy (having heard it through her) but yet they acted like they didn’t know anything.   Welcome to my family, we can act surprise even if we have known something for months.   I know I used to unwrap my Christmas presents before hand and rewrap them - I got that trick from my godmother.

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Picture taken from here

Introduction

Picture from here

E-mail in the clouds.   Essentially back in 1996 when Hotmail was first released (in the pre-purchased by Microsoft era) the dawn of popular cloud computing for e-mail began.   The main issue was storage space.  I believe that Hotmail launched with 5 megs of storage space for all of your e-mail.   It is frustrating to know all the e-mail that’s been lost over the years due to inadequate storage space.   I now have single pictures in my email archive that are larger then 5 megs.   Times change and space get’s cheap.

Picture from here

When Google released Gmail into the wild it was a game changer.  By offering 1GB of storage space it made it seem that you literally could keep your e-mail forever.   Other providers such as Hotmail and Yahoo were maxing out at 25 MB at the time, this seemed ridiculous in comparison.

Currently Gmail supports almost 7 GB of storage space and Hotmail and Yahoo went to “unlimited”.  I consolidate almost all of my e-mail to Gmail.

Data Types

To utilize e-mail storage you can attach any (supported) file and keep it in your mailbox.

Data Security

While you have to rely on a username and password to access your e-mail as the security barrier entry, if you want true protection from snooping it is suggested that you either get a web plugin that allows you to do encryption with Gmail, or keep your private messages encrypted and use them with an offline client.

Data Redundancy

Since you can forward e-mail from Gmail, I have it configured to forward all incoming mail to both my Yahoo Mail account and my Hotmail account.  If for some reason GMail loses my data or in the unlikely event Google goes out of business I’ll still be able to access my e-mail messages.

It is recommended that you keep an offline backup of your mail messages so they can be accessible while being off the grid.

Data Accessibility

With Gmail offering accessing via a rich web interface, a basic web interface, a mobile web interface, POP3, SMTP, and IMAP; it seems unlikely that you are going to find an Internet device that can not access it in some way or fashion.

Conclusion

This is the e-mail scenario that works for me.  Since encryption really isn’t ubiquitous across the board I don’t use it like I should.   Beyond that this scenario is highly redundant and should allow you operate from anywhere with a network connection without worrying about losing your data.

Previous entries in the Living in the Clouds Series:

Living In The Clouds Part 1 - Introduction To Cloud Computing

Related posts

• Creeva’s Shared items in Google Reader (4)
• Web Wandering Dump (0)
• Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.0 (3)
• News dugg by creeva (0)
• Creeva’s Shared Items in Google Reader (0)

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Image from here

Where can you post by E-mail?  Well this is the easiest of crossposting methods (especially if you use Blogger).  There are lots of plugins for wordpress or movable type that can send out your full post as an e-mail to another address.   In most cases you would send this to your own e-mail address so you had it for reference.  What about sending it to another site entirely?  What if that site could send it to another site?  You can see how this chain can work.   If you are using Blogger then you can send out your post to ten e-mail addresses.   This means that your post can replicate like bunnies.   What are some of the sites that can receive e-mail posts?  Let’s get into that.

The original Creeva’s World was hosted on Blogger at creeva.blogspot.com.  This is where I started writing and I didn’t want to abandon it after migrating over to wordpress.  This was the very first site I crossposted to from my wordpress blog.  Crossposting allowed me to not abandon my site and any readers that may go to that address, but I could enhance my own experience while keeping theirs the same.

Lifelogger is the “cooler” blogging service, at least that’s what they say.   I’m not going to use any blogging platform again that I can’t customize to the fullest extent.  Wordpress has spoiled me.   Though I do maintain a site there.

Unlike some major social networks (I’m looking at you Facebook and Myspace), Friendster does support e-mailing in your blog messages.

Blogr is just another blogging host that accepts e-mail.  Very blogger like, but crossposting friendly.

Evernote is unique unlock some of the rest of these sites, Evernote is a notebook service.   It allows you to e-mail in snippets (or use the desktop applications) to send in information that you can then share with your friends.  You can e-mail in text notes, audio, or video.

Busy Thumbs is a simple moblog site that accepts posts via e-mail.

Twine is similar to Evernote, but it’s about collections and community.   Think of it as sharing what you have with your friends.

Google Groups is a spot that I used to use as an online backup for my blog.   I have a private google group that only handles my own blog posts.   No you can’t join, not like you would want to.

I’ve just recently start crossposting to an old Yahoo Group that I used to moderate.   Mostly this is because I can share my thoughts with my friends that are still in that group, but that group is essentially dead.   So this is the only thing that it’s around for to keep me from pulling the complete axe on it.

Each Day is designed to handle your memories and save them so you can go back over your life.  It handles multiple media formats but all I’m concerned about is the e-mail option.

Multiply is a social network in the same vein as Friendster, Myspace, and Facebook.

Over at Vox I maintain a page to integrate with their community.  I’ve posted in the past how vox is a unique community and because of that I receive unique feedback.   They refer to their e-mail inbound service as moblogging.

I like to think of all of my blog posts as separate documents.   After working on this for awhile, I decided to start e-mailing all of my entries to my google docs account let’s me to search and repurpose documents a little easier then searching through the blog.   It’s my dump all account for documents.  I am annoyed that I can’t e-mail blog posts to Zoho Writer for redundancy, they only take documents as attachments.

When you are looking for a new site to crosspost to check and see if they have an option where you can post by e-mail.  Some sites may refer to this as moblogging.  Also remember to e-mail your post to yourself so you have a backup you can control.

Oh, I use the DJ E-Mail Publish plugin to push out posts from Wordpress.

In the next part of our crossposting god series we are going to cover Blogger more in depth.

Previous Entries in The Crossposting God Series:

The Crossposting God Series Part 1 - The Introduction

The Crossposting God Series Part 2 - Vox

The Crossposting God Series Part 3 - Live Journal and Derivative Sites

The Crossposting God Series Part 4 - Entry, Distribution, and End Points

The Crossposting God Series Part 5 - Myspace

The Crossposting God Series Part 6 - RSS Feeds to Crosspost

Related posts

• Utterz - It Allows You to Cross Post to The Blogosphere (0)
• Internet Deadman’s Switch Part 1 (2)
• Creeva’s Shared items in Google Reader (4)
• Web Wandering Dump (0)
• Life Caching is better then Life Streams (4)

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Live journal is another online blog that focuses on community.   While it is not as active and communal as Vox, it is infinitely more focused on true interaction between users compared to Myspace, Facebook, or any other of the more traditional collect as many friends as you can pokemon style social network.   I can say that in rankings of comments and feedback I get back from readers that my live journal is only to third to my vox and my main blog in terms of interaction.  Live journal has been so successful that there are derivative sites that use the live journal engine, the steps listed below should allow you (with some tweaking) to post to any of those sites as well.

I really wish I could say that I had options for you to crosspost to live journal from Vox or Blogger, but currently unless you have a paid account you won’t be able to use the post by e-mail method I mentioned in the Vox article.  If you do however wish to use a method and have a paid live journal subscription the steps are similar to the steps in the vox article.

Since my main blog is wordpress I of course us a plugin to facilitate the crossposting - LiveJournal Crossposter to be exact.   When wordpress 2.5 was released there was some issues with this plugin, but it’s since been updated and corrected.   To configure this plugin you do the following steps.

1. Download and install the plugin

2. Activate the plugin in your wordpress installation on your plugin tab

3. Go to your settings tab and click on the live journal option

4.  Fill in the following options:

• LiveJournal-compliant host:  (If you are using a LiveJournal-compliant site other than LiveJournal (like DeadJournal), enter the domain name here. LiveJournal users can use the default value)
• LJ Username
• LJ Password
• Community: (If you wish your posts to be copied to a community, enter the community name here. Leaving this space blank will copy the posts to the specified user’s journal instead)

That gives you the most basic configuration of this plugin, however unlike many other wordpress plugins that would end there, livejournal crossposter gives you a myriad of more options.  Here are a few more things you can tweak:

• Crosspost header/footer location - choices at the top or bottom of the post
• Set blog name for crosspost header/footer - you can use your own blog’s title or a customer title
• Custom crosspost header/footer - gives you the option for custom coding in the header or footer
• Privacy level for all posts to LiveJournal - choices are public, private, or friends
• Should comments be allowed on LiveJournal? - You can force commentors to come back to your blog to comment or allow them to comment directly in live journal (I just let them go directly onto live journal’s site)
• Tag entries on LiveJournal? - Choices are -Tag LiveJournal entries with WordPress categories only, Tag LiveJournal entries with WordPress categories and tag, Tag LiveJournal entries with WordPress tags only, and Do not tag LiveJournal entries.
• How should LJXP handle More tags? Choices are - Link back to WordPress, Use an lj-cut, and Copy the entire entry to LiveJournal.
• Select Categories to Crosspost - You have the option to choose which categories of posts you wish to send over to live journal.  This allows you to target which posts and topics you wish to share, a big boon for some online publishers who are capable of writing on topic.

I think livejournal crosspost should be a benchmark plugin for all other crossposting plugins to come.   You can crosspost to live journal from other services, such as Utterz or Ping.fm - and I’ll be covering the Live Journal crossposting functions from those sites when I get to those articles.

The next article in the series will cover the difference between crossposting endpoints and crossposting distribution points.

Previous Entries in The Crossposting God Series:

The Crossposting God Series Part 1 - The Introduction

The Crossposting God Series Part 2 - Vox

Related posts

• The Crossposting God Series Part 2 - Vox (0)
• Internet Deadman’s Switch Part 1 (2)
• Spamming Myspace? (1)
• Ok last test for awhile (0)
• Life Caching is better then Life Streams (4)

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

This is originally from Journey To Get Paid.

So you have your own blog but it’s something such as creeva.blogspot.com or creeva.wordpress.com, Both of these are acceptable, but if you read my previous about brand management you’ll know that building your audience to your personal brand can help get you a larger following.

Do I need a domain name?

In all honesty I can’t fully answer that question for you. What I can do is give you some pointers on how to choose a domain that can be personal or directed towards your target audience. There are a few questions you should ask yourself before you register any domain name:

• What are you trying to do with your site? Is it a personal site? Is it a tech site? Is it a business site? Now none of these really have any bearing on if you’ll ever make money - or at least that is out side of the scope of this article.
• While some people are just trying to drive massive traffic to their site, what do you want to do? There are loads of spam blogs out there that just show ads and may get thousands of hits a day. I think this people have ethically sold out, but I’m not here to judge you so pay me no attention. You could register a name based of typos and drive traffic that way or come up with something unique that helps you stand out from the crowd. The more unique the site is the more cliquish and faithful your users may become, but this is at a sacrifice of larger traffic goals. This is one of the things you need to consider if your going to be driving traffic to your site. The name is part of the brand and can make or break some sites.
• Is it worth the cost to you? There are many benefits to owning a domain name. Essentially at under ten dollars a year it really is a cheap investment, you can host your website, have personalized e-mail, and build upon your brand name in ways that aren’t really possible with blogger or wordpress hosting your site without owning your own domain to redirect them to these sites. Over time I’ll be writing more articles on what you can do with your own domain name and choosing the correct hosting service

How do you choose a name that’s right for you?

The questions here are similar to those from above so I won’t rehash them. My suggestions is make it memorable so no omgihavefreestuff.com. Choose something that something something about you or at least your site. Your brand is something you’ll build. Do not choose anything too long, this makes it harder for people to remember your address and it will effect traffic from return users. The shorter the better.

I personally know the agony of choosing a domain name for a project. A couple weeks ago for a project I was working on with some others I spent a good 10 hours running domain names by other people. We had a few that could work and others they thought were great for personal blogs, in the end it’s still an ongoing discussion - and we’re looking how we are going to proceed with that project. Not all of my domains that I have purchased have taken this long. I settled in on journeytogetpaid.com in a matter of minutes and had it all set up with the blog running within an hour of conception. Your strategy and length of time it takes to decide on a domain name is only limited by your creativity and your ideas.

Who do I buy from and how much do I pay?

Like everything else this is a personal choice, but let’s look through what I look for. First and foremost I check out price. I would not pay more then $9.99 for a domain name in this day and age and most people look at that as too high of a price. With coupons and cheap registrars there is no reason you need to pay $9.99 a year. The prices I usually go for is between $6.99 and $7.99.

Normally I register all of my domains in one spot and this is with goDaddy.com and they’ve served me well. Some people have issues with goDaddy.com, namely there are stories of yanking a users registration at a drop of a hat if there is a complaint (spammers be warned your domain will be yanked for e-mail spamming from what I’ver heard). Because of this I decided to track down another registrar that is not goDaddy but also is offering domains for $6.95 (not a bad deal, huh). The second company is Blackbeltdomains.com. This should give you two choices to choose from at around the same price range. The latest goDaddy coupon code I’ve used “OYH3″ - this will get you $6.95 .com domains.

Hopefully I have given you something to think about now go ahead and grab yourself a domain.

UPDATE: Wanted to let everyone know I received an e-mail from the original “owner” of the “OYH3″ code.  To support this user and get his other coupon’s go to his page that contains all of his godaddy coupons.

–
Posted By Creeva Murkado to Journey To Get Paid at 2/07/2008 09:19:00 AM

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

testing posting by e-mail

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

So reading my RSS feed I came across an article from Mashable - the article was a poll that asked what was your first web browser. While many people are mourning the loss of Netscape, which AOL announced today would be discontinued, it was not my first web browser.

My first internet connection I could use regulary was at college and the connection was a shell connection not a PPP connection. For those that haven’t guessed yet, my first browser was lynx. The browser that originally powered the web back in 1994 when I first actually made it onto the Internet. I did previously have access to a local BBS that offered to be an e-mail relay so my Internet e-mail addressing days actually predates my Internet exposure by almost a full year.

The odd thing was that the 1994/1995 school year was the first time there ever was Internet publicly available to the students (great time to be a freshman) , it was also the year that there was the largest amount of students that flunked out in the school history as legend tells it. Who knew Internet addiction started so quickly. I can say that I don’t see college girls today hanging out in Talkers, MOO’s, MUSH’s, or MUDs, - but they did back then. Almost everyone student understood telnet.

I was still at college (didn’t understand PPP or what it was) and installed OS/2 warp since it came with Mosaic web browser that gave you a graphical Internet. Mind you I had a 368 DX40 and OS/2 literally took 28 minutes to boot - but graphical Internet would have been worth it. Alas since I only had shell access I couldn’t use the funky picture browser so I went back to windows/dos fired up telix and dialed into my shell account back to lynx.

Following year I had an account with delphi I believe - it was a shell account so more lynx for me at 9.95 an hour for dialup (after the first 10 hours for 14.99). I wasn’t go to go the AOL route even if it meant foregoing graphics. I then managed to get a PPP connection but i never actually managed to get Mosaic working on windows with it. More specifically I couldn’t get the PPP drivers to work.

Finally a few months later after I got my first computer tech job I managed to get a computer working on a 14.4 baud modem with Netscape Navigator 2.(something) and the world was graphical. I remember Internet Explorer coming out and being inferior to Netscape and laughing at the idea Netscape could be dethroned. A few years later when Netscape Navigator 5.x came out I jumped ship to Microsoft.

I stayed with Internet Explorer for a few years complaining about the problems and security issues with the product. I came to find something my Linux friends had latched onto. It was a new browser called Firebird, had some of the feel of the old Navigator browser without the problems of Internet Explorer. Sure I used Internet Explorer occasionally then (like I do now but less often) because some web sites didn’t support it. Firebird got sued over teh name and became Firefox.

The two web browsers I use most today are Firefox and Flock, both Mozilla derivatives. For those whipper snappers that are ignorant and don’t know though. Netscape eventually was purchased by AOL for 4.2 billion dollars in 1998. AOL knew the community was bothered by this so as good PR it gave the right to give part of the Navigator source code to the open source movement. The open source organization that went forward and was the main force behind the Netscape open source software was the Mozilla foundation. If you are interested in the exact licensing and history of this movement please visit Mozilla’s Website to find out more.

So if you are using Firefox or any other Mozilla derivative on your computer please a take a minute and mourn for your browsers biological grandfather has past away. It is a sad day and a long strange journey. Netscape you have inspired many of us and made the web as mainstream as it is today. You were a visionary of a company and a browser. You will be missed.

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

To my friends with Children: Why parents drink

The boss wondered why one of his most valued employees had not
phoned in sick one day. Having an urgent problem with one of the main
computers, he dialed the employee’s home phone number and was greeted with a
child’s whisper. ” Hello ? ”

“Is your daddy home?” he asked.

” Yes ,” whispered the small voice.
May I talk with him?”

The child whispered, ” No .”

Surprised and wanting to talk with an adult, the boss asked, “Is
your Mommy there?” ” Yes .”

“May I talk with her?” Again the small voice whispered, ” No .”

Hoping there was somebody with whom he could leave a message, the
boss asked, “Is anybody else there?”

” Yes ,” whispered the child, ” a policeman “.

Wondering what a cop would be doing at his employee’s home, the boss
asked, “May I speak with the policeman?”

” No, he’s busy “, whispered the child.

“Busy doing what?”

” Talking to Daddy and Mommy and the Fireman ,” came the whispered
answer.

Growing more worried as he heard a loud noise in the background
through the earpiece on the phone, the boss asked, “What is that noise?”

” A helicopter ” answered the whispering voice.

“What is going on there?” demanded the boss, now truly apprehensive.

Again, whispering, the child answered, ” The search team just landed
a helicopter .”

Alarmed, concerned and a little frustrated the boss asked, “What are
they searching for?”

Still whispering, the young voice replied with a muffled giggle… ”
ME .”

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Article Date 3-1-00

This message was forwarded to me

>In a message dated 02/27/2000 6:47:22 PM Central Standard Time,
kirkwoods@innernet.net writes:

EMAIL…….

CNN has reported that within the next two weeks Congress is going to vote on allowing telephone companies to CHARGE A TOLL FEE for Internet
access.

Translation: Every time we send a long distance e-mail we will receive a long distance charge. This will get costly. Please visit the following web site and file a complaint. Complain to your Congressperson. We can’t allow this to pass! The following address will
allow you to send an e-mail on this subject DIRECTLY to your Congressperson. http://www.house.gov/writerep

Pass this on to your friends. It is urgent. I hope all of you will pass this on to all your friends and family. We should ALL have an interest in this one. WAIT, THERE’S MORE. IN ADDITION, The last few months have revealed an alarming trend in the Government of the United States attempting to quietly push through legislation that will affect your use of the Internet. Under proposed legislation the US Postal Service will be attempting to bilk email users out of alternate postage fees.” Bill 602P will permit the Federal Government to charge a 5 cent surcharge on every email delivered, by billing Internet Service Providers at source. The consumer would then be billed in turn by the ISP. Washington D.C. lawyer Richard Stepp is working without pay to prevent this legislation from becoming law. The U.S. Postal Service is claiming that lost revenue due to the proliferation of e-mail costing nearly $230,000,000 in revenue per year. You may
have noticed their recent ad campaign “There is nothing like a letter”. Since the average citizen received about 10 pieces of email per day in 1998, the cost to the typical individual would be an additional
50 cents per day, or over $180 dollars per year, above and beyond their regular Internet costs. Note that this would be money paid directly to the U.S. Postal
Service for a service they do not even provide. The whole point of the Internet is democracy and non-interference. If the federal government is permitted to tamper with our liberties by adding a
surcharge to email, who knows where it will end. You are already paying an exorbitant price for snail mail because of bureaucratic inefficiency. It currently takes up to 6 days for a letter to be delivered from New York to Buffalo. If the U.S. Postal Service is allowed to tinker with email, it will mark the end of the “free” Internet in the United States. One congressman, Tony
Schnell has even suggested a “twenty to forty dollar per month surcharge on all Internet service” above and beyond the government’s proposed email charges. Note that most of the major newspapers have
ignored the story, the only exception being the Washingtonian which called the idea of email surcharge “a useful concept who’s time has come” (March 6th,1999)

Editorial. Don’t sit by and watch your freedoms erode away! Send this e-mail to EVERYONE on your list, and tell all your friends and relatives to write to their Congressman and say “No!” to Bill 602P.

It will only take a few moments of your time, and could very well be instrumental in killing a bill we don’t want.

PASS THIS ON TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW WHO USES EMAIL

REMEMBER THESE ARE TWO SEPARATE ISSUES THAT EFFECT ALL OF US ONLINE.

LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD NOW, NOT
AFTER!!!!!!

END Message

********************************

Now read my immediate response.

First off this would be impossible to implement if you take into effect the current infrastructure of the internet. This message has always been a hoax since I’ve been using the internet the past 6 years. Let’s look at some major points involved.

1. How can the phone company know that you are sending long distance e-mail from a service such as hotmail, yahoo, mytalk etc. These companies express the right to privacy and would not tell the phone company who you emailed and where.

2. If CNN reported this why is not big news. The internet censorship at of 1997 was huge and the public had it later repealed after a year of petitioning and a bill such as this would be much bigger. The reason is CNN reported no such thing and no such law is in effect.

3. The government just passed a law this year keeping internet sales and commerce tax free to enhance the growth of the internet infrastructure, a law such as this one would ruin all of the work the World Trade Organization just did. This is another proof that it is a false claim.

4. Telephone companies would love this type of law to be passed because of missing revenues they are losing. Such internet site such as www.dialpad.com allow you to make long distance phone calls for free. Multiple internet software packages allow you to talk like a telephone conversation over the internet for free. Why would they go after e-mail when this hurts them more directly.

5. Due to deregulation of the phone commission any company such as your cable company or even private enterprise has the right to offer telephone service to any individual at areas where it is offered. Under these Conditions who gets the money.

6. Your local phone company and you ISP is not allowed to check what sort of data you send from your machine. THIS IS AN INVASION OF PRIVACY. Check you terms of agreement you had for your ISP and if they have violated this you have a major lawsuit on your hands. Hence they do not know where your e-mail is coming from either.

7. Finally who is going to track and figure out the cost of the nearly 2.5 billion e-mail messages sent each day to figure out the tax. The cost alone of setting this up would cost billions and would not be financially sound because it is not electronically feasible.

8. It would just be blatantly stupid.

Forward this response to everyone that sent you the original message and tell them they are ignorant to internet feasibility for believing it, but then you never believed it anyway did you?

If anyone else has any software, internet, computer, or electronic age questions you can e-mail me at bgueth@mytalk.com

Sincerely

Brent Matthew Gueth

Since this message I have done some research just to make sure I was not wrong. I wasn’t. Hear what the Toronto Post said when the same scam went around Canada last year. The article is linked here