Posted by
Martyn Drake – August 27, 2010
I’m beginning to see a rather large number of posts on the Google Apps Help Forums from customers of Virgin Media (with ntlworld.com email addresses) asking for help regarding their ntlworld.com email addresses. I’d quite forgotten that Virgin Media had recently migrated over to Google Apps Partner Edition and, like Sky before it (and during my short tenure with Sky Broadband at that), caused many customers to jump up and down in frustration over the migration process.
Now customers (some have cancelled their broadband, others I don’t know – it’s not mentioned) are complaining that their accounts have been disabled. I would have thought that if you’ve cancelled your Virgin Media broadband account you’d expect to lose your associated ISP branded email too. After all, the ISP has no obligation to supply your with any associated free service now that you’re not paying them.
This is why I always recommend to people to consider buying their own domain name and then either taking out web hosting somewhere that can provide email accounts with it, or specific email-only hosting. Google Apps (despite my grumblings here, and only then it’s really only related to Postini these days) is still a very good option – providing you (via the free edition) with up to 50 free user accounts/email addresses and using the fantastic Gmail interface. You can use Outlook, Windows Live Mail or any other IMAP or POP3 client if you wish. No more being tied to any ISP.
The downside is that you’d have to tinker about with DNS settings – MX records and CNAMEs. But this isn’t too difficult and you’d always be able to find somebody to help you. A lot of domain registrars have specific Google Apps DNS wizards to help you configure for Google and an external web host. Heck, I’d even be able to help you get set-up on Google Apps on a strictly non-commercial basis (and out of hours – if you want me to help you with Google Apps during the day and on a commercial basis, you can get hold of me at Memset and I’m sure we’d be able to arrange the set-up work on a contractual basis).
You could use the non-Google Apps Gmail service which is, my opinion, the best non-personal domain free email account. But I’d like having my own domain – it’s personal, portable (if you were to ever get fed-up of the non-domain Gmail.com account, you can’t port your email address to another service provider) and not at all expensive.
So ditch the ISP freebie email – and just set your email free.
Posted by
Martyn Drake – August 9, 2010
The thought has occurred to me that, as web hosts, we’re dealing not just with raw numbers when customers come asking us for dedicated servers. You can tweak and test for 10,000 vistors per second, minute, hour, etc. but when it comes to the big time, I feel we need to deal with a whole new set of quantifiers.
People like Stephen Fry and Neil Gaiman have been known to cause web servers to go into fits of hysterics whenever a word or link from one of them gets Tweeted or blogged about. The poor sods on the receiving end usually both freak out by the number of visits, despair at the constant wait for their web server to wait for spare requests, or faint at the sight of the bandwidth bill from the onslaught.
Thus I feel that us web hosts should start considering offering servers based on an average based around the average number of visitors that Stephen Fry and Neil Gaiman (amongst others – we’d base it on a scaling system starting, say, with Mrs. Miggins of Lancaster through to Oprah Winfrey) bring to previous sites. Obviously one would have to get numbers from those sites to be able to work out an average between the two and then set-up a scaling system so that you’d advertise a web server capable of dealing with two Stephen Frys or four Neil Gaimans. The exact scale of Fry to Gaiman is debatable at this stage. But it could be done.
A false economy of scale? Perhaps. But the PR people would LOVE it.
This virtual server weighs in about 0.25 Neil Gaimans before #NeilWebFail and 0.15 Stephen Frys before I’m presented with a bill from my employers, although Stephen Fry has yet to visit or me having to collect previous statistics of visits to other sites he has mentioned.
Posted by
Martyn Drake – July 21, 2010
This printer is seriously getting on my goat. Not only does the supplied ink last about 20 seconds, Jennifer and I have had to reinstall the printer drivers THREE times. They seemingly disappear. Where? I don’t know, but I’m strongly suspecting the pub.
Posted by
Martyn Drake – July 16, 2010
.. why is there no “Wargames” episode? Wargames, for those not in the know, is a classic 80′s film in which a teenager messes about with a remote computer system thinking that it’s just a gaming BBS (remember BBSes?), only it turns out to be a military installation and a link to a live tactical computer simulation system. Hilarity ensues as teenager thinks he’s playing an advanced game, but when in reality the American and Russian military are pooping themselves silly thinking each of them are plotting to nuke each other.
I’d LOVE to see Moss play “a nice game of chess” except the game is malware deliberately targeted at Reynholm Industries (probably by the angry feminists) that disrupts ordering systems and critical system infrastructures of companies that RI works with. With each move, something different and crazy happens. The opening gambit sees 250,000 packets of condoms, vibrators and butt plugs sent to the Pope with lots of love from Douglas. Cue confused but happy senior Vatican staff and cardinals. As each move progresses, the outcome is more outrageous than before. The only way to defeat the oddness is to win the game of chess. Will Moss do it?
That’s the idea, anyway. Personally speaking, my favourite episodes to date are the Final Countdown, The Speech and Friendface.
Posted by
Martyn Drake – July 7, 2010
From the forthcoming musical, The Sound of Martyn Grumbling About Stuff.
But seriously, whoever at Microsoft decided Windows 7 Starter Edition would be a good idea should have been fired. From THIS cannon. I have spent two days attempting to figure out why our software has been causing the user massive problems – which ran happily on other editions of Windows – and today I’ve been thwarted by Windows 7 Starter Editions lack of anything useful – namely the ability to run SyncBackSE automatically on backup. You attempt to give the right credentials for starting up and Windows 7 Starter bitches about user policies. No problem under Home Premium. No problem at all! So I’m awarding Microsoft the Golden Arse of Fail for their implementation of a next-to-useless OS. And it frightens me that most netbooks ship with this version of Windows.
Next on my list of least favourite things is Rupert Murdoch, who wants to increase his vice-like grip on BskyB from 40% to.. 100%! It’s bad enough he’s got more fingers in media pies (and let us not forget that BskyB had a stake in ITV at one point), but for him to take BSkyB ownership to 100% would mean total control and the possibility of bringing Fox News style political bias to the UK. So I urge people to sign this petition at 38 Degrees.
And then there’s Facebook. But I’ve said enough about that on the previous post. All I can add to that is that it seems that companies are abandoning original content and sticking it all on Facebook instead because they can’t be arsed to do anything themselves. Let social media do it all for you. Yeah. Groovy. Except there is better and more interesting and less invasive social media systems out there. Explore them. Find out what they are. Facebook is not the be all and end all of “social media”.
Posted by
Martyn Drake – July 7, 2010
Popped along to YouTube to see what’s new on my subscription list and found a link to the new Kodak Playsport HD video camera. Clicked on it, and found they had a competition to win one of 20 bundles. Imagine my disappointment when you have to have a Facebook account to enter.
Note to Kodak and all other big companies: not everybody wants to hand over their personal information to Facebook for them to exploit. In effect you’re having to deal with two lots of privacy information – Facebook and Kodak’s own internal data handling policy. That’s not good enough. Why should non-Facebook users be put out just because a company thinks that Facebook is the best thing since sliced bread? You’re running the promotion on a site that doesn’t necessarily require you to sign in, but the competition itself is closed to a particular group of people.
It’s not just Kodak that are doing this sort of thing, of course, but it annoys me that so many companies assume that everybody has or wants a Facebook account. On one hand it reduces the number of entries for competitions, but it also alienates those that may want to join but can’t because of Facebook’s policies of delivering your personal information to advertisers regardless of whatever your privacy settings are set to.
So, Kodak, you can shove your Playsport up your Facebook. I ain’t buying.
