g7uk » Net & technology

Web hosting changes – how is it for you?

GS — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 22:16:03 +0000

This website is on shared hosting. For those who don’t know, that means that a number of websites all share one server. It’s cost-effective and works well providing no individual site hogs the resources.
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Google Video likely to disappear

GS — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 20:55:26 +0000

In the latest example of free hosting services not being forever, Google is planning to close down its Google Video service.

Originally the service was due to close to visitors on April 29th with another two weeks for users to download their videos (until May 13th). Those dates have now been scrapped but it’s obvious the direction this is heading in. So, if you need to, save any videos you have on there while you still can.

When the closure happens, anyone who has linked to any content on Google Video or has embedded videos on their pages will end up with a bunch of links that don’t work or that redirect somewhere else.

Google is wealthy and could easily keep this service running so those pages and videos are online ‘forever’. But it’s a commercial company and primarily concerned about its image and business plan.

If you want a sustainable presence online in the longterm, get proper web hosting, run your own website and link to your content on there. That way, you are in control and really building something for the future.

You won’t be handing over rights in your content or suddenly have the rug pulled from under you at a few weeks notice. How long before Facebook goes the way of MySpace?

Meanwhile, Amazon’s cloud continues to be down for some customers.

Crash 2.0: Amazon battles to restore confidence in cloud computing as web chaos continues into second day Daily Mail.

Audio cassettes go digital

GS — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 15:43:52 +0000

I’ve been transferring my audio cassettes to digital. It’s a job I put off for a long time, as there are about 250 of them.

Those that date from 1980 onwards are played in my Tascam Porta05 Ministudio — a multitrack cassette recorder that I bought in 1988.

Tapes from the 1970′s are more tricky.
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Another reason not to trust Google and GMAIL

GS — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 23:54:33 +0000

I have an arab friend from Saudi Arabia. Normally I message him using an email address that is attached to one of my domain names. But this weekend I am moving some domains including this one to different web hosting. So, via my domain registrar, I forwarded this particular email address to a GMAIL account temporarily.
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How image thieves can unwittingly provide free ads

GS — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:28:21 +0000

If you run a website these days it’s fairly common for people to copy the address of an image file and paste it on a forum or blog.

This is known as ‘hotlinking’ a file and it’s frowned on because it’s theft. The website pays for hosting the image while the forum or blog gets the benefit and of course there is no link back to the hosting website. Not that a link would make the theft of content OK even there was one…

However the people who do this don’t realise to what extent they are playing with fire…
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Making MP4 files stream

GS — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:54:20 +0000

Mp4/H.264 files give great quality for online video in web players such as the free Flowplayer. But they must ‘stream’. In other words they need to start playing before the whole file has loaded (which may take several minutes).
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My 18x internet speed increase

GS — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:52:17 +0000

About ten days from now I should have a much-improved internet connection. For a number of years I’ve been on 1Mb broadband with UKOnline and have paid just under £10 per month.

As I live in Manchester city centre, far faster broadband has been available to me for some time.
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The highs and lows of film-making and why relatively few good videos get made

GS — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:29:05 +0000

Watching the G20 protests on TV it seemed that every other person had a camera. Yet only two video clips of the Ian Tomlinson incident have come to light so far. One was shot by a member of the public, the other by a broadcast news team and despite professional cameras being outnumbered by ‘activist’ cameras to the tune of hundreds to one.

A fluke? I suggest not.
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Conditional server side includes and cookies

GS — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:24:36 +0000

I can’t write PHP or Javascript. I could learn, but I don’t have much interest. Most of my websites are good old-fashioned static HTML and I use server-side-includes a lot.

I thought I would write, in simple terms, about some of ways I’ve used them.
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Speaker of the US House of Representatives infringes rights of music composer

GS — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:27:09 +0000

Incompetech.com is a wonderful website that offers hundreds of original music tracks for free use. Most are released under a Creative Commons licence (a few are now in the public domain) and the only stipulation is that you must include a credit for the composer: Kevin MacLeod.

It isn’t a lot to ask. But