Entries Tagged 'tech' ↓

This isn’t new, but it’s mad interesting (and I’m slow sometimes):

If you like it, try watching his other videos too, they’re all worthwhile.

I could say growing pains in reference to, say, the life of this website, but really the most recent change is that I have, essentially, downgraded my web hosting, so “growing” doesn’t really seem appropriate. Moving pains would also work, but then you would lose the irony.

Hosting with DreamHostfor the past some-odd years has been fine. They have decent starting prices for the first year, competitive prices after, and they offer ridiculous amounts of both storage and bandwidth. More, in fact, than anyone should ever need on a shared host. They’re inconsistent though, when it comes to uptime, though I hear rumors that this is pretty much on a server- by server-basis, so maybe I just got unlucky.

I’ve been investigating DreamHost alternatives for a long time now, with some good leads now and again. I used Precision Effect when I created the lissat.org website (one that, sadly, I’ve never developed), and was happy with their speed and support, though at $6 a month for their smallest package, they still weren’t inexpensive.

After more recent browsing, I finally moved this site over to NearlyFreeSpeech.Net, which is a hosting service with a neat idea. It’s essentially a pay-for-what-you-use service: you charge your account with moneys, and then pay as you go, starting at $1 for the first GB of bandwidth and then getting cheaper per GB as/if your site becomes more popular. They don’t have any one-click installs, no user-friendly services. They have a knowledgeable user base and a well-used forum for when you run into trouble (as I did quite a few times getting WordPress installed). Pricewise, I expect $10 will get me through a few months, at least. Speedwise, so far, I find it much improved over DreamHost. And no, NearlyFreeSpeech.Net does not have an affiliate program, so I’m not trying to sell you anything. Fact is, the all-manual approach to site management is probably more than most people want to deal with, so NFS isn’t for everyone.

I’m in the process of moving La Casa Comics over to A Small Orange. That was also a swinging deal, $20 for 14 months of hosting in their “Tiny” package, which will most likely be enough for us, obscure as we are. I’m still waiting for the DNS to propagate (after a freak accident where it propagated immediately, and much sooner than I thought it would, and I have to switch it BACK over to DreamHost to ftp some files out before the switch). Once I get things set up, I’ll report back. But so far so good.

I moved all of the domains over to name.com, which has been nice and easy so far, and cheaper than anywhere else (currently under cost, actually, for new domains). I always heard that domain registrars should be separate from hosting services, but I’d always been too lazy to change it until now. It’s nice to know, though, that is for some reason the hosting company really decides to suck, there’s no chance of losing my domains on top of everything else.

Alternative hosting sites that I looked at (of note) include: Laughing Squid and Bluehost. Laughing Squid is neat because it’s based out of San Francisco and claims to serve the artist community particularly. Still, even if you use their “starving artist” discount, it’s $8 per month, so I thought I’d hold off and try some cheaper plans first. Also, you can see their sticker in the photo above. Bluehost seems like a big, but good, solid web hosting company, with lots of space and bandwidth and a free domain for $7 per month, but still a little too pricey for me, who is trying to save ALL his pennies for the time being. What can I say, I’m cheap yo!

If you’re interested in hosting and you have no idea what you’re doing, find someone like DreamHost who has nice one-click installs on a variety of applications (they really are easy for first-time host users). Bluehost evidently has a WordPress one-click install, though I’m not sure what else. If, however, you want cheap and complicated, so far I’m pretty happy with both NFS and ASO. I’ll be sure to let you know if anything changes. In the meantime, things should be much more stable around here (and eventually over at la casa); that is, if you even noticed anything going on in the first place.

So that’s my story. What about you? Do you have a great host? Who with and why are they awesome? I’m always on the lookout for the best deal. On the other side of the coin, who is completely worth avoiding?

What I Learned Today had a link over to Tux Paint, which looks awesome. From there I burrowed my way through to Tux Typing and Tux, of Math Command.

Tux Paint is an open source drawing program supposedly for children ages 3 to 12, but the way it looks, I kind of want to use it myself. I haven’t tried it yet, but just from the screens I can see it has cool stamps and a fun, bubbly interface. I think we should design all our programs as if we were making them for kids.

Tux, of Math Command is an arcade-style, comet-blaster math game, much in the style of that typing shark popcap game that everyone has played. Alongside with a training academy, you can choose what type of math problem you want to work on, or you want your kid to work on if, you know, you’re gonna actually use these things for their intended purpose. But who would want to do that?

I don’t see any nifty screenshots for Tux Typing, but I can guess that it’s pretty straight-forward, and that it’s meant to teach kids typing skills. It probably even has cute graphics and nifty sounds. Really, what more do you want from a typing program?

Here are the download links for math and typing. If you’re a Windows user like me, go for the installer.exe files. You can download Tux Paint over on its website.

If you’re interested in other free entertainment software, check these guys out. They seem to be behind the Tux4kids apps, among others.

Flash memory, that is. If you’re in the market, this is a swingin’ deal right now. I just bought two of ‘em the other week.

Check it out.

Looking for the perfect IM client? Sorry, it doesn’t exist. Well, I don’t know. Maybe Adium is perfect, but it’s for OS X, so I’ll probably never know. In the meantime, here’s what my search has revealed (without value declaration or filtering). I’m specifically trying to measure things up to Meebo, and the MeeboMe widget, so I’ll start the list with that.

Meebo (& MeeboMe): I like the support for all the major IM services (including gtalk / jabber, which many others often ignore). However, I do wish that there was a downloadable client (all browser all the time sucks). The MeeboMe widget isn’t as customizable as I would like (particularly in colors / transparency). Some safety concerns, though you can make it more secure by using https:// if you want.

www.meebo.com

Wablet (in Alpha): Sign up to test it. Strange caller id feature, but the tech mags seem to like it so far. I’ve not yet received my invite to test it, so who knows.

www.wablet.com

Plugoo: Supports all the right clients, but you have to pick one of them. Also, you can only chat with one person at a time. Lame.

www.plugoo.com

GAIM / Pidgin: As of April 2007, GAIM is now Pidgin. Pidgin runs on a boatload of OSes, supports a metric boatload of IM services, and overall seems very cool indeed. Sadly, there is no widget support. Apparently, Pidgin is the Adium of Windows (or vice versa). Maybe they’ll develop some fun widgets, eventually.

pidgin.im/pidgin/home

Miranda: Miranda touts itself as the “smaller, faster, easier” IM client. Personally, I hate it. I guess maybe it’s just not for me (e.g. it’s for developers and skinners and the like), but I find it to be the most unintuitive and clumsy program of the bunch. If you want, you can get an Adium X skin for Miranda (http://aqua-soft.org/board/showthread.php?t=30032). Maybe that would help.

www.miranda-im.org

Trillian: I like Trillian, but it doesn’t support GoogleTalk, so it’s a bust. I’m firmly convinced that everyone worth chatting to must have a gmail account by now. Right? Right!? Also, no online widgets. Trillian is working on a very, very, very feature-rich new version though, called Trillian Astra. If memory serves, it’ll do everything for you except make you coffee in the morning (and still may not include an online widget). Whether or not the features are actually worth the cost of developing, I guess only time will tell.

www.ceruleanstudios.com/learn

Gabbly: This incredibly odd little app allows you to discuss any website with anyone else that wants to discuss that website. Simply put gabbly.com/ before any url (e.g. gabbly.com/ahniwa.com/blog) and you’ll see the website with an included gabbly chat box. You can chat with anyone else who did the same thing. Technically, this is more a chatroom than an IM, but it’s kind of neat. Someone noted in my web perusal that you could use Gabbly in an online learning environment by pushing Gabbly links out to a group of people, thereby jumping with an entire class (for instance) from page to page.

gabbly.com

eBuddy: Supports AIM, MSN, and Yahoo. So no GoogleTalk / Jabber, which is annoying. Also seems fairly commercial (i.e. there are a lot of adverts on the website). Sorry, that’s all I got. Doesn’t appeal to me.

www.ebuddy.com

IMHaha: Very similar to Meebo, except drop GoogleTalk / Jabber and add QQ instead. Claims to use https:// so that you can IM securely. I don’t see any mention of a widget, and the lack of GTalk is a dealbreaker for me, again.

www.imhaha.com

ILoveIM: Allows web-based access to any one service: MSN, AIM, Yahoo, GTalk. That’s it.

www.iloveim.com

KoolIM: Meh, same sort of deal. Supports the same four as ILoveIM, plus ICQ. They claim they’ll add SMS support “soon”, which would be neat, but looking at their set-up, I somehow doubt that it’s really gonna happen.

www.koolim.com

Chatango: Chatango is all widgety, which is nice, but only supports it’s own service. Which means, in the end, people can only chat with you through the widget. The library at Oregon State University is using it, and I was impressed with how nice it looked (and subsequently disappointed that it didn’t support any third-party services).

chatango.com

Snimmer & Interaction: Both along the same lines as Chatango, in that they’re web-based. Snimmer uses one of your choice of messenging services, whereas Interaction uses its own service exclusively.

www.interactionchat.com
www.snimmer.com

As far as embedded chat goes, MeeboMe appears the clear winner, despite its imperfections. Chatango and Plugoo are the runners-up. As for non-embedded chat, at least you’ve got choices! Unless you’re on OS X, and then your life is blessedly simple. Still, for windows, I’d recommend Pidgin. Trillian gets the silver.

As far as embedded chat in libraries, LibSuccess has a nice list of who is using what.

At some point I’ll try and clean this up a bit, add better links, and rate things in more detail (just in case people find it useful).