Think Basis It's Good For Business

Being a “web guy” means that hosting is kind of a huge part of what keeps everything going from day to day. In the past we kept and managed our own servers at The Planet. It was largely good, though not perfect. But, after 4 years of self management we decided to go less stressful and also get some “Digg proofing” from the Media Temple (gs) service. In theory the service sounds great and their site makes it sound like the next best things since Twitter. Unfortunately the reality is a bit different.

Here are some things that have really bugged me about (mt). I’m not saying this because I hate the company. In fact I like their philosophy but…

1. They say you can host 100 sites on the service but you can only really host 1 SSL site.

I wrote to them about this several months back and they still haven’t updated their site. They state that you can host up to 100 sites on the (gs) service. Sounds great right? Well not if you have to have more than 1 SSL site. So if you run 5 e-stores you’re SOL. I asked them to clarify that small point in their marketing copy and they never did. I find this borderline deceptive and at the very least absolutely useless to making a purchasing decision between their (gs) and (dv) offerings. Especially if you already go through the arduous task of moving to their service. (see point #3)

2. The (gs) service has constant downtime and they post photos of their office parties online.

As I write this we’re going on over 2 hours of downtime. Thanks for nothing (mt). This was happening at the exact same time a client was on the phone with me inquiring about our service. Looks really good for a web developer when he can’t even keep his own site up and can’t get through to tech support. In fact I think this may have cost me the sale for an e-commerce site development project today.

Finally I said enough is enough but step #3 will explain further.

Did I mention the office parties? I wouldn’t really care but promoting their extravagant parties through Twitter at the same time my site is down is kind of rubbing salt in the wound. (This actually happened.)

3. There is no way to migrate to, from or between their services. #lame

We ran Cpanel on our server for over 4 years. During that time we could migrate sites between our servers, to and from other services with the push of a button. When moving to Media Temple we had to manually port over 30 sites including files, databases and e-mail accounts. A stupendous pain in the ass. Now that we’re here I decided that the (gs) is (bs) and wanted to upgrade to a virtual dedicated server solution and take up managing our own server again. Hell, I could keep a server up with only 2 incidences of downtime in 4 years (5 minutes total). But wouldn’t you know it, Media Temple couldn’t be bothered to come up with a migration solution between their own services. This is really inconvenient and an extremely stupid business practice. Not only are they giving me a good reason to just move to a proper dedicated server again, but they lost my business today because I can’t easily move 30 sites that are on their own servers. This one really boggles my mind.

4. Their MySQL solution is always going down so you have to upgrade.

Unless you upgrade to a MySQL grid container don’t expect your site to stay online for any reasonable amount of time on the (bs), I mean (gs). If I had a dollar for every minute I spent dealing with issues before upgrading, I’d be a rich man. It’s much easier to just pay the extra $20/month and save yourself the headache.

5. Putting in a support ticket takes at least 8 hours (and sometimes 24 hours) to get a response, and the phone wait time today was 27 minutes.

‘Nuff said about that.

6. Useless SSH access to anyone but the main user.

If you’re on the (gs) and want to give SFTP access or SSH access to a developer you’re boned. I mean you can set up the user and give him access but he will only be able to access a subfolder within his own account. Unless of course he wants to use plain FTP. Does (mt) even care about security? My answer here is going to be “not so much.”

This is rudimentary stuff for any business. Do you want to give your web guy your master password? What if things go wrong? It just doesn’t seem very useful to me. I can’t even figure out why you’d want to give someone SSH access to a useless folder. “Hey super cool programmer. Here is command line access that you can use to do absolutely nothing of use within this one folder that only you have access to.”

I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that the company will improve things drastically because I like the idea of a clustered service. But Media Temple, next time you have a party, please make sure that my site is up before you post the pictures.

I’ve started to develop an allergic reaction to Twitter lately. Not everything about it, just some of the specific types of tweets that seem to be tainting our stream with the unwanted taste of urine and self-importance. Although most of us have been guilty of at least a few of these from time to time, it’s the habitual offenders I’m taking issue with. Overusing these 8 types of tweets is a quick way to get yourself classified in a group you might rather not be a part of.

1. The Validation Seeker

I like to call this the attention whore. It’s usually someone who thrives on having other people inquire about their life so they can tell everyone how great things are while simultaneously receiving that special little “I’m important” feeling. It would be just as easy for them to write the actual news, but doing that would take away from the extra attention they get when someone finally decides to indulge them and ask the question they’ve been desperately waiting for. Plus, it’s a good way for them to test who their “real” friends are, and who actually has a life of their own.

2. The Perpetual Victim

Rarely stemming from legitimate hardship, this style of tweet typically centers on something so trivial that the rest of us probably wouldn’t even give it a second thought. Things like long lines at Starbucks, slow service, or a disappointing meal aren’t nearly the tragedies some people make them out to be. Everyone’s entitled to a bit of complaining now and again, but sometimes you need to nut up a little bit and pick your battles.

3. The Existentialist

There’s a fine line between being thought provoking and being a douchebag that tries too hard. While there’s always a place for a well-quoted song lyric or literary passage, trying to dress these up as a showcase for your depth of thought and incredible insight is questionable at best. Just because you’re quoting Thoreau on a regular basis doesn’t mean you’ve found some deeper meaning that we’re all lacking. You’re not the only one who’s read Walden, and the fact that you’re also on Twitter tells us you couldn’t have found it that inspiring.

4. The Too Cool for School

There’s a huge difference between informing people of what you’re up to and bragging about how awesome you are. We get that we should be envious of your carefree lifestyle and VIP status, but the fact that you’re Tweeting about how you’re shopping for a Ferrari makes us wonder whether you’re not actually sitting at a stoplight in the backseat of your parent’s astro minivan. What’s the deal, are you trying to compensate for something?

5. The Negativismo

Named for the fictional superhero that incapacitates criminals simply by bumming them out, this person thrives on sucking the fun from people on a daily basis. Although slightly less annoying than the people whining about their own (often imagined) hardships, you can still rely on this joyless soul’s tweets to put a damper on even the best of moods. Sure, there are a lot of sad things going on in the world, but sometimes we want to forget all about those things with amusing pop culture references and comical video links. Thanks for keeping us grounded in despair.

6. The Baller

Seemingly breast fed on hip hop, despite growing up in a cozy suburban home, this user is tweeting at you straight from the hood. His updates consist mostly of over-the-top-trying-too-hard-ebonics that are barely discernible to even the most studied linguists. Although there’s nothing wrong with tossing around a bit of slang from time to time, The Baller operates on a completely different plain. Fortunately on Twitter it’s easy enough to ignore this confusingly chest-beating macho gibberish once you’ve pinpointed a repeat offender…now if we could just find a way to keep him from commenting on YouTube.

7. The Self Promoter

Usually someone with the word “guru” in their title, the shameless self promoter sees Twitter as their own personal medium for evangelizing their products and/or services. The updates usually consist of projects they’re working on, projects they plan to be working on, and the occasional update on projects they have recently accomplished. It’s like an RSS feed of minutia about a business you have no interest in learning more about. You can usually spot these people by the auto-DM you receive the moment you’re foolish enough to start following them.

8. The TMI-er

Taking the concept of micro blogging to embarrassing heights, this is the person who doesn’t understand where to draw the line between public and private. Just because you have the ability to tweet something while you’re sitting on the can doesn’t mean anyone wants to hear about your most recent contribution to the Regal Cinemas men’s room. It’s bad enough that there’s plenty of noise on Twitter as is, you don’t need to go around adding your flatulence to the mix.

Seriously, there’s enough clutter already without people starting up blogs to just cut and paste other people’s material. It’s kind of like asking someone to watch your cam copy of a movie when they’ve already got their own copy of the DVD.

Today I was alerted by someone that one of the articles I published on the food site Daily Fork had been blatantly plagiarized by a site called All Top Movies. At first I assumed it was one of those sites that pretty much republishes articles in their entirety, but at least has the courtesy to include the author’s name and a link back to the original source (the online equivalent of leaving a little bit of cash on top of the dresser). Unfortunately, in this instance absolutely no effort was made to either link to the original or give me credit for my work. It’s posted as if it’s their own original content, when in fact, I’d argue it looks pretty sloppy when compared to the original.

The article in question is a stupid little list on 10 Fictional Diners and you can see the impressive placement the story is getting on their site.

Flattering...but still stealing.

After doing a little bit of digging I found the following statement on their about page:

Alltopmovies.com does not claim to own exclusive rights on all posts, images and videos published. All sources we use to create our articles are and will be credited with a proper linkback. However, we are hosting a lot of uncredited material from unknown authors we recieved via mails, from friends and our readers. If you own copyrights to some material such as images or data and you want us to remove it from our pages, contact us to claim your ownership and we will either credit you and your website, or if you wish – completely remove the content.

Sure, I get it, you can’t always track down the original source of something a person sends your way. However, I’d argue a quick google search would be a decent starting point to see if you could pinpoint exactly where the article you’re about to steal came from.

See how easy that is? It's almost like magic.

It seems like All Top Movies is basically just saying, we’ll steal whatever we want and if you don’t like it, ask us to take it down. Obviously I’ve already contacted them and asked that the article be removed, however, I think the more important issue is, if you don’t have anything worth writing about, don’t start a blog in the first place. Asshole.

UPDATE: The list on All Top Movies has now been updated to include a link to the original article at Daily Fork, and the pictures and text have been removed.

However, articles like this are still being posted when the original would be easy to find and provide with proper credit. Also, for some reason in this example they actually took the time to include “seen on AllTopMovies.com” to each of the images. Presumably so no one would steal their hard work.

Alright Digg, the honeymoon’s over, so I want to cut right to the chase. When we first met I was pretty much smitten. I loved the way you showed me new and exciting things, and took me to wonderful places I might never have found without you. However, as time went on, you started to grow more distant, and I quickly learned that despite all your talk about community you really didn’t care about my needs at all. You don’t care about anyone but yourself, and to be quite honest, you’re kind of an asshole sometimes.

Now don’t get all defensive and start telling me I’m the asshole. I’m only telling you this because I do care about you deeply and I want us to be happy together. Consider this an intervention of sorts. I’ll be the first to concede I may not be the perfect user all the time, and there are probably a few things I’ve done that you weren’t particularly fond of. For starters, I’ve been cheating on you with reddit for a couple years now. But you know what? It’s because reddit gives me something you don’t: honesty.

So, in the interest of honesty, it only seems fair to tell you where we stand, and point out a few simple ways we could right this sinking ship and regain a healthy respect for one another:

Make Up Your Mind About Shouts

Alright. So you say you want people to be able to promote their stories among friends? Seems reasonable enough. But, then you turn around and seem to devalue a person’s digg if it comes from a shout. How does this make any sense?

So, just level with me. Should I shout my stories or not? Don’t talk out both sides and tell me the variety of people digging a particular submission is important, and then provide a feature designed explicitly to solicit diggs from the same people over and over.

All I can figure from what you’re telling me is that I’m better off just digging as many different stories in “upcoming” as I possibly can so 1) friends will feel obligated to digg my stories back, and 2) my submissions have a better chance of showing up in the recommendations for other digg users.

Eliminate Blind Digging

This brings me to the next point: please eliminate blind digging. Sure sure, you’ve slowed people down a bit, and you can’t just go around digging a story a second like the gold-ol’-days. But, the fact remains you can digg a submission without ever even clicking through to look at the site, and to be fair, I’ve found myself guilty of doing this on more than one occasion. For the most part it’s an innocuous thought process of “sure, who doesn’t love zero punctuation reviews, I’ll digg it now and watch it later.” But, this can be taken to ridiculous extremes and people digging several hundred stories in a day can’t honestly say they even looked closely at the majority of what they were digging.

And yes, Digg, I blame you for this. Sometimes it seems like you’re more caught up trying to be the hip parent / best friend instead of an authority figure. Just grow a pair and decide when enough is enough. Tell us how much is too much and then stick to it. We might be mad at first, but at least we’ll respect you for it.

Show the Number of Buries

Speaking of respect, let’s use the “if you have a problem with me, then say it to my face” mantra as a start and at the very minimum begin publishing the number of buries a particular story has gotten alongside the number of diggs. You do it with the comments, so why treat a bury like some big secret when it comes to the actual stories themselves?

How many people who have had submissions with 200 or more diggs fail to make the front page are left wondering “why didn’t my story go popular, dammit?” At least it would help eliminate the frustration if you could quickly see your picture of a beagle reading the newspaper wasn’t as newsworthy as you’d initially thought.

Allow for Customization

Similarly, it would be nice if I had a little more say when it comes to what I’m greeted with when I come running to you in the middle of the work day for a quick reprieve from productivity. Yes Digg, maybe reddit has spoiled things by letting me be so picky about what I want to see, but I’d appreciate it if you were at least decent enough to respect some basic allergies from time to time. Can’t I at least opt out of the war on Scientology and have a brief respite from reading headlines about the RIAA becoming even more bastardly?

I don’t see how it would hurt things if you gave your friends a chance to choose what interests them the most. You don’t even have to let me choose anything significant, I just want to pretend my say matters. Let me eliminate a category that doesn’t interest me from showing up on the home page when I’m logged in. Let me pick title keywords that I don’t want to see ever again. You can start by providing me a way to filter out anything with the words “best” and “ever” in the title.

Honestly, if someone can write a whole book that lets me choose my own adventure, the least you can do is give me the flexibility to only see upcoming stories with titles in the English language.

Provide Some Transparency

Really, I think all of my complaints boil down to this last criticism. You don’t tell people where they stand. The open letter to Kevin Rose from a few months back actually did a pretty good job of pointing that out. You hide behind an algorithm because it lets you keep us at a distance and you can easily sidestep people’s questions without ever having to let things “start getting real.”

It would be wonderful if there was someone who actually took the time to interact with interested members of the community and treated the users with a little respect. Obviously you’re not going to be able to respond to every email wanting to know why a submission didn’t make it, or what you can do to make the front page more often, but developing some clear standards and then communicating those to the community at large would be a fantastic start.

So, even though I do feel bad for kicking you while you’re down, now seemed like as good a time as any to pull you aside for a little heart to heart. However–and this might just be me being paranoid–I have a sneaking suspicion you aren’t even listening to me. My guess is anything I said was only falling on deaf ears while your eyes darted around the room getting sidetracked by pictures of anteaters and nerdy comics.

Yeah, I know, that stuff is amusing. And you win, I’ll probably keep coming back. But, if you actually took a few minutes to really think about what I said and considered making a couple of changes on your side of the fence, we might be able to rekindle a little bit of that excitement we’ve been missing for a long, long time.

At least think about it. Please…