The site where this is available is different for various countries. Here in Canada it is: http://www.ctvolympics.ca/

In the USA it is: http://www.nbcolympics.com/

What is so special about these sites? I find that I am able to watch the television feeds over the Internet, on my computer, in almost-high definition, and in almost real-time. I don’t understand how this possible.

The local authorized broadcaster of the Olympics is the Canadian Television network: CTV. I can watch that broadcast feed complete with the commentary and features. What is better is that I can see the schedule of each event and choose to watch that instead. Those events do not have any colour commentary (or commentary of any kind) but the page is constantly updated with the current stats about the next contestant and the current times and scores. In other words, I see the same data as any commentator would have. I also hear all of the audio captured at the site; so I hear the PA announcements, the sounds of the audience, and often closeup sounds and voices of the competitors.

These streams, or Internet broadcasts, are available for all of today, as well as everything for the previous day.

I said almost real-time because I’ve found that this data falls behind real-time during an event. If there is an Internet gap, there is a freeze, and then the program picks up without missing anything. I can always go back and watch something again.

I said almost HD because the resolution seems variable. When I first begin to watch it is low resolution, but within about 30 seconds it becomes sharper. The technology seems to involve a Microsoft product called, Silverlight. I understand that Silverlight is supported only on Windows PCs and Intel powered Mac computers. Linux users are advised to install Moonlight 3 preview.

No it is not perfect, but it is pretty good. It shows what we may expect from broadcasters and the Internet. In the days when I watched broadcast TV I was accustomed to commercials. The commercial are all here. The difference is that on the Internet they are such a shock that I found the sponsors and their often-repeated messages highly objectionable. I don’t have a warm glow of gratitude for the official Olympic sponsors… on the contrary. I think they’d be more effective being more clever and subtle. Interruption marketing belongs to print and cable, but it may not be as effective in this new medium.

In earlier posts I (Robert) was enthusiastic about Dreamhost. As time passed I found it sometimes very slow and occasionally not reliable. Help is available, but not as fast as I might like it. It is not expensive and I maintain it as a place for some experimental domains.

My preferred web host is now WestHost. Usually they have a special for about $10 that includes 50 GB of space and unlimited web sites and emails. In our tests we found that Westhost served content faster than the competition. This was especially true for CMS programs. It seems that all of our sites are using databases now. What really sold us on WestHost was the outstanding service. I’ve never had to wait long for a representative and these people all seem to really know how to recognize and solve problems.

WestHost claimed to offer virtual private servers (VPS) accounts. It is moving to shared hosting, so the VPS feature is no longer promoted. I was concerned that one of the reasons for speed was having a VPS, but the staff assure me that the speed will not suffer with the change. We’ll see. Apparently, if a client wants a real VPS, they offer that service through a partner, VPS.net (VPS.net is interesting and innovative, so it is worth visiting the site).

Speaking of partners, WestHost was purchased by http://www.uk2group.com/ which owns many hosting sites. At first that transfer of ownership was a big concern of mine. Over the years I’ve found great web hosts, only to find that host was bought by a big faceless giant that provided crummy service. The last episode was when Neureal.com was acquired by EMC. Actually, I’ve not found that service at WestHost has suffered. I follow the CEO of UK2 Group on Twitter, and I’m under the impression that these folks are really interested in providing good hosting services.

One piece of advice that I learned from Deepak was to separate my domain registrations from my web hosts. My rule for my registrar is that the registrar must have an office at a real address that is in the same country as me, and within a day’s driving of my home. Also, I’d like to be able to talk to the people who work there. Since I live on Bowen Island, near Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, I’ve chosen BareMetal as my registrar. Why do this? Should I have a problem with a web host, I can easily upload my whole web site to a new host and then at BareMetal change the pointers to the new site. My domain, and therefore my business, cannot be held for ransom by a web host where the relationship has gone sour.

My first blog was cranked up in the summer of 2006. Now I’ve helped several people with theirs. WordPress has emerged as the best of the blogging platforms, and the software is sufficiently rich in features that it can now provide the foundation for an excellent web site (that just happens to include a blog).

My final note here is that I am amazed at the extent to which Twitter impacts my day. It has been over a decade since my family has had the cable and therefore broadcast television. We do receive a newspaper — but I never read it. I find that now most of my news arrives as a result of my RSS aggregator plus from the posting of the people I’ve chosen to follow on Twitter. I usually know about breaking stories hours and even days before the people who rely on the traditional media.

In looking for the method, I found the reference documents to be rather foggy, so I thought I’d post the solution that worked for me.

I downloaded a trial copy of Navicat (you need the full version) in the query editor I entered the following code:

——————————

UPDATE table_a
INNER JOIN table_b
ON table_a.field_x=table_b.field_y
SET table_a.field_title=table_b.field_title

———————————

In the code above, table_a is the table that contains field_x which is to receive the data,  table_b contains field_y which has the data to be updated into table_a.  The fields that act as the key contain the same data are field_title in table_a and field_title in table_b.

It worked like a charm!

This week I am researching an email anti-spam technique that is certainly geeky, and is not for everyone, but may be the solution I am seeking: it is called greylisting. It was tested in 2003 and described in a white paper entitiled, The Next Step in the Spam Control War: Greylisting, by Evan Harris.

I am grateful to Gary Jones of BlueFur.com Web Hosting for suggesting this solution in this thread at the TAZZU Vancouver Business & Technology Community forum.

Technorati Tags: BlueFur.com, spam, greylisting

Technorati Tags: Axion, emcwebhosting.com, NeoOffice, Neureal, OpenOffice, phpbb, Uniserve

Frustration with web hosts
Yes, I know it means putting all of my eggs in one basket. It will also save me money. I also hope that by choosing a host with lots of backroom toys, the range of services I can offer my clients will improve.

My main web site has been with Uniserve in Canada ever since the giant bought Axion. When my first ISP, Cyberstore, gently asked me to leave because they were no longer hosting, I searched for a service that was demonstrably fast and had folks I could visit if I had a problem. I found Axion, and I’ve been pleased with their service. Uniserve bought them. The service at Uniserve has been much less personal, but adequate. My main problem is that $15 buys 50 MB of space. That limit has been reached and I need more space. Every time I want to post a picture, I stash it at Allyoucanupload or flickr. I am also using the free blog subdomains at Wordpress.com instead of making blogs part of my site.

In addition, I have two web sites at a single account with Neureal. There was a time, if I had a problem, it was the CEO of Neureal who would both respond to me and solve the problem. Service was very prompt as well as personal.

Recently, some outfit called EMC seems to rule the shop, and problems are managed by trouble tickets. Problems are solved over a period of days instead of hours. No one ever bothered to let me know about the changes - but the situation is worst than that: I see that if I try to access Neureal.com, I am bounced to emcwebhosting.com. At the EMC site I see that EMC offers 10 GB for $4 while I am still receiving Neureal invoices for $8 which buys 250 MB. So, I am receiving half-baked goods from the supermarket, while paying for boutique service.

EMC and Uniserve have me as their client, but probably not for much longer. Have I ever talked to them? EMC have proven that they are not worthy of a followup from me. Twice I’ve called Unserve to see if they could improve their offering. Frankly, I don’t think that hosting is Uniserve’s core business. Can anyone in business today allow their customers to walk away?

Moving Domains, Forum, Database
Much as I dread the process, over the next two months I will plan to move three domains and all of their contents to a new and better site. I run a small phpbb2 forum which means moving the database too. I don’t know what will become of the blogs.

Since Deepak and I have been working with databases, I’ve been experimenting with NeoOffice (the Macintosh version of OpenOffice) and especially its built-in database module. I am trying to use it to create a MySQL database that is stored at one of these websites. I’ve not been too successful in spite of hours of work — but stay tuned for developments.

UsingIweb.com is not part of this move.

The test system is a retired Athlon 600Hz system with 520MB of ram, a CD player, a good Invidia video card, 4 USB ports, and an ethernet card. The system bios is an old _____. The computer is connected to a Dlink router with an Ethernet cable. I cannot capture screen shots during the install process - So I’ll use a tiny Nikon digital camera to that.

I didn’t have to burn the install CD as Dave at Free Geeks loaned one to me. I could have downloaded the Ubuntu 7.10 desktop edition at disk at Ubuntu.com, and burned a disk image from an .iso file. I’ll describe how to do that when I review the next Linux system.

I’ve read that Ubuntu is one of the most popular Linux desktop systems. It is based on Debian, which is also a popular version of Linux. Apparently some Debian followers felt that Debian management was too conservative in releasing new functionality, and that releases should be made much sooner - so they started Ubuntu, which has new releases every 6 months. Ubuntu and Debian are very similar… I’ll download Debian as a future trial and report on it in a future blog.

To have a consistent start, I used a Windows XP install CD to delete the existing partitions on the hard drive. My thought there is to limit the variables in the different install trials. It took about 3 minutes to boot XP and delete the partitions. Although its possible to do a dual install with Windows and Linux on one computer, I’ve decided that I’ll do these trials with only Linux on the system. I think I will try a dual boot install only after I’ve decided on the Linux system I want to install permanently.

To start the install, I put the Ubuntu 7.10 disk in the CD player and pressed <cntrl><alt><del> to get started. I set my timer to 0:00 so I could keep track of the install time.

An Ubuntu screen came up. It recognized the out-of-date bios immediately and made some screen comment “Bios out of Date range (1999) force…” and jumped to a new screen before I could read the whole sentence.

All I saw for the next two minutes was some orange blocks going back and forth in a horizontal bar on the screen. I would have liked to have some feedback… The light on the CD player was flickering regularly, so I knew it was not dead.

Next, I heard a short snippet of music and the screen went black. I watched for a full minute as nothing happened… finally, I hit <enter> to see if that might get it moving.. and surprise!!!, a pretty new screen popped up - a brown and orange swirl.

I noticed an install icon in the top right corner of the desktop, so I clicked it and a short questionnaire popped up, asking me my location, keyboard type, language type and such.

After a few moments a hard drive install screen came up giving me a number of options. I chose a Guided install for the whole hard drive. A very clear warning came up saying that all data on the disk was going to be lost - did I want to proceed. Yes.

The install began, and I went to make myself a cup of coffee. I peeked in at the install screen from time to time, and it gave me regular updates about what it was doing. It recognized and installed the HP 3015 printer I had plugged into a USB port.

At 31 minutes the CD drawer opened, and an instruction to remove the disk appeared on the screen. So I did that, and once again a black screen appeared - I waited a couple of minutes this time to see what would happen, and became impatient at 34 minutes, and pressed the <enter> key. There was a short burst of music, and the screen went black. I pressed <enter> right away this time, and a new screen came up telling me that I could install a non- open source driver for my NVidia card if I would like to. I accepted, and the system downloaded and installed the driver.

At 37 minutes I was told that 124 software updates were available - would I like to do that now? I accepted, and a screen came up telling me that the updates were being downloaded at 608kb/sec and it would take 5.5 minutes to complete.

At 49 minutes I got a blank screen again. Pressing the <enter> button go the install screen back telling me that updates were complete. Checking around the desktop I saw that the windows network was recognized, I tested the printer, and it worked.

The install was very smooth. I would have preferred not to have had the black screens, but pressing <enter> got it all going again so aside from some anxiety, it wasn’t a problem.

I like the “Gnome” interface. The alternative is KDE - I’ve talked about the difference in another post.

To test out the installation of some new software, I called up Synaptic, the program installer and did a search for blog clients. Three came up, and I chose to install all three of them. I noticed that there were 23,132 programs (”packages” in Linux speak) available to chose from… I’ll spend some time in the next day or two looking through the catalogue to see what might be useful.

I was finished at 61 minutes.

It looks like a good system. I’ll play around with it for a few days to see how it looks and feels, and report on that in a future blog.

Technorati Tags: Linux,Ubuntu,Ubuntu 7.10,Free Geeks,Debian

Technorati Tags: dreamhost, Seth godin, Trojan Room, web site design

Some of us old farts were active on the Internet before there was a World Wide Web. When a business managed to set up its first web site, it was often done by one of the geeks on staff, and management was barely aware that the firm even had a site. Most of those sites were a view into the organization. (Remember the Trojan Room coffee pot?).

Somehow that all changed, and now most corporate sites seemed to be designed by the same people who organize the half-truths and fictions that are published as the Annual Report. Instead of inviting the browser into the company, the site becomes a barrier to understanding what the business is really all about.

A tip-off is seeing smiling models on the home page. You know that they were hired by the agency and don’t actually work at that firm. They seem to be selling perfect teeth and ethic diversity.

Usually I am at that site because I want some information or I am considering doing some business with the company. In the latter case, I am the most valuable browser possible, I am a prospect. Probably my visit is the #1 reason the site exists. I have arrived with my bundle of wants (if the web site can fulfill my wants, then I am a qualified prospect!), and the company has the opportunity to advance me from a prospect into a customer.

If this is going to work, two things need to happen.

1. I need to find what I am seeking
2. I need to trust the firm enough to reveal the precious information on my credit card

Navigation at many sites seems to be a function of the pretty design, and not really there to help me find exactly my target information, product, or service. I know that the site-navigation has failed when the fastest way for me to find my target is to abandon their menus and to search their site using Google.

If I am a potential client, you’d think that the reason that I am there is that I might buy something. If I am going to buy something, then, at some point I will have to pay for it. Why, then, is it often so hard to determine the price? I think they imagine that the sticker shock is so great, that unless they soften me up with 20 minutes of obligatory perusing many pages of information, and then insist that I walk through most of the check-out process, before they show me the price, I will leave.

Tell me… are there market studies and focus groups that have demonstrated that this makes sales? It make me leave.

So, what would I like to see?

First, I need to find what I am seeking. Fast. If I am to buy something, I need to know what it will cost right away. Since I am probably visiting several similar sites, I already know the range of possibilities, so I will not be surprised.

Let me be clear about this next point: it is only after I can see that the product that I am investigating might solve my problem that I will want to drill down to explore the details. No, I am not going to warm to your offering by reading the details first. I will not spend the time.

Yes, I like details. When I can see that you might have what I need to solve my problem, then I want to know everything. Now I have time. My credit card is beginning to vibrate.

My next problem is that the answers to my obvious questions are not available. Didn’t you think I might be interested? Have you omitted the details because when I read them you think I will be disappointed? That’s what I will conclude (and my credit card just went limp). You lose.

Let’s suppose you have what I am seeking, and now I am considering consummating our deal.

Here, I can provide an example. We wanted a web host for this blog and a place to experiment with a number of applications. You have probably noticed that there are lots of Internet providers out there. So, we had our short-list of requirements: reliability, support, capacity, speed, and a few special toys in the back room that we felt we needed or wanted.

In the process of our search, we actually tried several services — and that’s a story all by itself. If you do a domain search of this blog, you will see that we are using Dreamhost.

The home page of Dreamhost (as of writing) has:

• only 120 words on the home page
• lots of white space

4 lines of largest type told me what I was seeking:

• 500 GB Disk Storage
• 5 TB Monthly Bandwidth
• Plus many more features!
• Sign up now for $5.95/mo*

“more features” and “$5.95/mo” were both links so I could immediately drill down to find the details I was seeking.

Our community seems to accept that if an organization or an individual achieves a passing grade, that is good enough. There is lots of competition, and on the Internet your competitor is only a click away.

I believe that good enough is not good enough. If all you can do is meet people’s expectations you must find a way to do better. You must always exceed their expectations. Always.

500 GB storage (writing in late 2007) is a whopping amount of storage for $6/mo. But there are other sites offering that. It is only when you examine the details that you find that the 500 GB is available at signup, and it automatically increases weekly by 2 GB. Okay, our expectations were exceeded.

Can we trust Dreamhost to host our web site? Our personal reputations are at stake. Over the years I’ve found that 3 times my Internet Service Provider has been bought by a larger firm. Where once I had reliable personal service from someone I’d actually met, I am now filing trouble tickets with strangers. At least the server farms were within driving distance, and I felt as if I could go and visit my data. No, I never did.

Dreamhost is in another country!

Before my credit card comes out of my wallet, I have a few more tests. I do this whenever I am buying equipment or software online, or just checking out a company.

First, I’ll want to know where the organization does business — the street address. In doing this test, I’ve found that some addresses are not real. They are just mail-drops. Google the address and you will find that dozens of companies share it.

Why do company web sites hide the address? For many companies, the only way to find the real address is to look in the section where they are offering employment and see where hopefuls have to send their resumes. The page called “Contact Us” is just a form I am supposed to fill out.

Sometimes I’ll need to do a search on the domain name to find an address. But lately, that is often hidden.

Usually, I will take a couple of moments more and use Google satellite maps to look at the place that the company calls home. For some small shareware providers, it may turn out to be a house in a subdivision.

Now, at least I know where my money is going. If I cannot determine this, we don’t have a deal.

Finally, I will want to know who is in charge of the company. Most sites have an “About Us” page. As I understand the word, “us” means people — not the corporate entity. How often have you gone there to find out about THEM and read more hype about what a wonderful firm this is.

When I can see who are the head honchos, I may do a fast search of their names on Google to see what they are up to and what people have said about them.

All of this happens in much less time that it has taken for you to read this. Try it yourself with Dreamhost.

In spite of the spam and malware on the Internet, one of the aspects of doing business on the bitstream seems to be that people have to earn your trust and your business. Seth Godin describes this in his book, Permission Marketing. I like this.

Why do so many corporate sites fail my tests? They are designed by designers who are trying to please the people in the company who know more about what what they want to say to the world than they know about me, the potential customer. The designers ask, “Do you like the way this looks?” They should say, “We’ve tested this with a range of people in your target market, and here is what they do with the site.”

And so we end up with corporate sites that look like brochures or the Annual Report. Pretty design. Annoying interface.

The folks who have worked on this point out that the program is offered for free, but, “the cost and time spent on NeoOffice are trivial for a large corporation, but they are very large for the two people that operate the NeoOffice project so donations are used to help pay for NeoOffice cash expenses like bandwidth, machines, and webhosting fees that we would have to pay for ourselves.” If you plan to use this, please consider a donation.

In addition to the trinity of office programs: a word processor, a spreadsheet, and a draw program, there is a database and a presentation program. The database looks very similar to the one in OpenOffice. and that one looked at least as robust as MS Access. We’ll see.

Technorati Tags: Macintosh, NeoOffice

My plan is to download five or six different versions of Linux as I discussed in this post to try out how each works. Once I’ve chosen one, I’ll use it for a month to see if it can become my main computer.  Along the way I’ll post my findings for anyone who is interested.

I learned from Hall and Sery in their book "Red Hat Linux 7 for Dummies" (previously referred to in this post) that unlike the Windows operating system, the Linux user interface is a distinct layer, separate from the operating system’s "kernel". The user interface is what we see on our monitors, and it passes on our instructions to the kernel where the computing takes place. The kernel’s results are passed back to the user via the user interface  Because the interface is a "shell" around the kernel, different user interfaces have been designed for different user priorities.

In Linux’s early days, limited computer capacity made it important to focus different interfaces for different user needs, and several different shells were developed.   Two became popular - KDE and Gnome.

Now that computers have a greater capacity, prioritizing different functions is less important than it was in past times, and so now both Gnome and  KDE have similar capabilities and they both work well.  I’ve read that the main difference is in look and feel.

Computer journalist Bruce Byfield has written a short, well written historical background to the Linux shell and the origins of KDE and Gnome. He’s also compared the two in "KDE vs Gnome: which has the best Apps?"

My reading has lead me to the conclusion that both are good interfaces, and that the choice should be based on what feels best for the things I need to do with a computer. So I have to try out both interfaces. 

As I go thorough the various distributions I am sure I’ll come across both Gnome and KDE, and its likely one will appeal to me more than the other.  I’ll write about my thoughts and feelings as I see the various choices.

After all that research, I decided that my first review should be a distribution that doesn’t give me choices I’m not ready to make.  Freespire

looks line a  good candidate, which I will report on in my next post. 

That’s okay, especially if you think that visitors to your site would appreciate the link. That is more than okay, it helps build the web.

But if that link is so valuable to other webmasters and their wretched sites, perhaps they would pay you to have that link.

That would make mother Google really angry.

Actually, mother Google is really Matt Cutts, and he has spoken… Information about buying and selling links that pass PageRank.

Technorati Tags: Google, Matt Gutts