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Everything is officially back to normal, no not normal, I mean up and running. Since normal would mean its down or still under maintenance or unavailable in Blogdrive terms.
This is yet another major disaster. Seeing that more people participate in the forum doing the "complaining" dance. And as usual, the Blogdrive defenders (as in Sinja, JfZ and others) would step in to "defend" Blogdrive.
These people are the saviours of Blogdrive, although they are very much unappreciated both by Blogdrive and people who are angry with the service. The defenders would stand up for Blogdrive no matter what it takes, including snapping pirate's neck, being insulted for masturbating in the server room, or having sexual intercourse with one of the server wire host. (eww...)
I, in my opinion, to be honest, in my honest opinion don't like the attitude of these defenders one bit. Here are the stereotypes:
1) they lie, that the service is running smoothly when it isn't.
2) they make fun of angry Blogdrive users posters, a big NO to customer services and professionalism. Though I must admit, they don't have one single bit of reason to provide professional customer service to these people, they are VOLUNTEERS.
3) they think, it's just blogging, it's just a blog, it's just a blog host, it's just a downtime. They fail to understand the importance and economic value of service downtime. OR they knew but they are just doing what they do best, defending Blogdrive.
4) they think, it's a free service, don't complain. And if you pay, just be patient.
What I really hope for them, at the very least is to be honest with the users, do not insult their problems, and do not ever, EVER say that blogging is just another piece of toilet paper.
Sigh. Will they ever understand? Guess not.
From a topic in the forums, in responce to Klubbkidd's frustration and many other fellow bloggers: http://www.blogdrive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=25338#25338
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I paid (for three years), I get kicked in the ass too.
Klubbkidd, I've been following your blog every now and then. I also know the volume of visitors you attract, I believe it's in the thousands per day category making it one of the most popular blogs on Blogdrive.
However, seeing that you are doing a serious business you should have left Blogdrive a long time ago. There are better service out there not to mention they are free too.
When BD announced that they are moving data centers, I crossed my fingers and hoped that this'll be the last time we'll be having any problems or discomfort. Till now, one month later it's just as it is before. Pointless.
I guess the only thing you'll lose when you switch, which would also be the most crucial part of it all, is your current blog address. That alone bring many other big disadvantages: Your permalinks and status that you've gathered up until today will all be lost, losing out in search engine rankings. And the complication with what your visitors are familiar with.
My advice to you is this: give BD one more chance, say two weeks. If this big moving of data center doesn't get better in two weeks, by all means, MOVE. Get outta Blogdrive, don't let your potential be hold back by some Californian startup. Flap your wings and fly.
Blogdrive is a great *cough* blogging software, however it isn't the most search engine friendly blog platform around.
New entries or blogs tend to get higher ranking than old post because of Blogdrive's way of handling 404 pages. These new content, either entries or blogs receive a large amount of incoming links from Blogdrive main page and 404 pages. (The number of incoming links is porportional to your page rank.)
As a result, if you regularly updates your blog, your blog will naturally have higher page rank due to these incoming links. (Tip 1)
Other methods, will largely depend on the design and internal HTML coding of your blog.
Tip 2: Insert permalink of important post you made to your sidebar. Since your sidebar appears in every single page of your entire blog, it naturally gives a high number of incoming links. It helps a lot.
Associating keywords to your individual post have a tremendous help of relating to relevant searches. This, however is difficult because Blogdrive system doesn't help in this aspect, at all.
A little hack here and there in the HTML makes a difference.
Such as this blog, each permalink pages have it's Blog Title in the title bar. This is done by forcing individual blog post title into the <title> tag. (Tip 3) This method makes your permalink page rank goes up a significant one PR (PageRank)
Another method, is to link to your individual post with the relevant keyword. Either in your blog, or your friend. Let's consider this as Tip 4.
Tip 5: A newly discovered method by myself, is to insert your blog title into your permalink. Currently, all permalink has the format http://seigey.blogdrive.com/archive/360.html with no specific keyword in the URL. If we make it look like this:
http://seigey.blogdrive.com/archive/360.html?Search+Engine+Friendly+BlogDrive
I consider this as another genius idea of mine and I gladly share it with all. Have fun.
As everybody already know, Blogdrive has recently moved their data center, promising every blogdriver a better service with less down time. I was very looking forward to this event as this would definitely make Blogdrive a competent blogging platform. (And benefit my fellow readers  )
To me, Blogdrive is a wonderful work of art, programming, business and internet technology. Of course by saying that, I did not take into consideration the frequent downtime, the rude customer service, the slow responce time (in terms of everything: customer service, releasing new upgrades, and server fixes), the defensive sensitive forum regulars, and of course the deadly-inconsiderate-evil-money-minded spammers.
There are a few conspiracies regarding what actually happened behind the scenes. AH hah! I knew you love conspiracies. 
The move started on June 29th, as indicated in this entry. But by July 21st, it still wasn't completed. It was until Auguest 30th where there were signs of "almost done". Till now, I'm not sure if they are completely finished with the move but the red notice that was in the blog management area were now removed. After two months.
Michael has always been very good at telling stories, I loved the way he put things into an easy to understand, emotionally touching story line. But what really happened isn't always what the story claims, usually. It's true that the real Blogdrive crew consists of Michael, Tim, Jeff and Rick. Each specializing in different areas.
What's untrue is... the number of servers claimed. There's only one server, for all I know. And judging from the quality of server responce time, nothing has changed.
It is kept very cold inside to keep the thousands of servers safe from heat damage. It is also very loud in the data center due to the monster ACs and the thousands of server fans running.
Thousands of servers... right! Has Blogdrive improved their service so far? I, still see no difference.
I wonder why no one has requested this until now, Gloria proposed we create a wikipedia page for Blogdrive in the forums. With failed attempt.
So, I'm proposing a different approach. We'll have to show wikimods how important Blogdrive is to be included in the best online encyclopedia. In order to do that, we should do what we does best, blogging!
So people, start blogging for Blogdrive!
Tags: wikipedia, blogdrive,
Update:
We'll be moving data centers on 6/29/06. During this time Blogs will be displayed but will only show posts that were made up until 6/28/06 5 PM PST till after the move is complete.
That was about a month ago when the notice is put up. I wonder when will the work be finished, or if they have already completed the work. Speaking of being efficient.
An article on New York Times have a very good article about this trend.
At Facebook, a popular social networking site, the executive found the candidate's Web page with this description of his interests: "smokin' blunts" (cigars hollowed out and stuffed with marijuana), shooting people and obsessive sex, all described in vivid slang. It did not matter that the student was clearly posturing. He was done. I know of a few friends who was hired by their company because of their blogs or personal social networking online profiles. Come on, if a company were to hire reliable worker an extensive background study has to be made. Isn't it? Looking through whatever is available online is just (honestly) very brief and basic. So people, be careful of how you express yourself online. Maybe Abby may want to add this to her research project.
But why can't I see my blog?
I hear you. It's not just you, me too (and as ARS reported it in the forums too)
As many of you know, I'm a computer nomad. I don't make love to the same computer all the time. It's not that I'm cheating or unloyal, I do have feelings for these machines but it's just that ... I'm non-commitment kinda guy. I just want to enjoy myself as much as the computer does. Live for the moment, Carpe Diem. You know what I mean?
Anyway, back to the main topic. I had no problem accessing the admin section or the Blogdrive forum but I can't get to my blog, or any other blog for that matter. The funny thing is, I can access all blogs that are FEATURED as Blogdrive Favorites. Not any others.
This is racism. Just because I'm not on the favorites, shouldn't I get to access my blog?
As I was saying, I travel around, a lot. I've had experience with young, beautiful and energetic new flat-screen desktops with smart, intelligent operating systems (winXP). To old, mature but rock solid late-90s computer who likes long walks around the lake, dogs and cats. One of these days, I'll try to get my pants into the new Vista baby. And no, it's not paedophile.
My point is, from all these different computers there are some times (especially these few days) where I CAN or can NOT reach my blog. And guess what, it has nothing to do with the differences of these computers. It's their location or rather ... their connection source, a.k.a. Internet Service Provider. It became harder to get to my blog if the internet connection I get is rather dodgy, like a wireless network, proxy connection or dynamic IP addresses.
SO,
speculation of the day is:
Blogdrive disables blogs connection to dodgy computers.
why?
 my guess, based on what I've been suffering for the pass few days is to fight spam. I've received more than 50 odd contact form spams in two days. Click on the image to have a better view.
Now, how is this fair? I'm a subscriber but I can't get to my blog. What about my visitors? For your information, my visitor stats have been down by 50%. It's a huge traffic blog so stats differences are very notable despite daily fluctuations.
Lets look on the brighter side of things. By cutting connection to dodgy computers, spam attacks can be reduced and this saves the server from crashing again. At least, Blogdrive isn't entirely down. Right?
But what about those that do have an account here, are loyal Blogdrive users and even are subscribers. Why can't they be exempt from being classified as dodgy? Why can't they get access to their own blog? at the very least.
Dear readers, do you have other ideas as to why I can't get access to my own blogs?
 UPDATE: ~justme~ » "Posting from this IP is not allowed. You are posting from an IP/proxy server that is known to distribute SPAM and the author of this blog blah blah blah
justme was having trouble commenting, whatever happened to the antispam feature introduced not too long ago?
Tags: Blogdrive, ISP, spams, internet service provider,
Google Trends plots how popular a search term is over time. Basically, how many times people type into Google to look for such information. So, the previous entry shows you the search volume over the last two years and where those searches comes from.
Google Trends can also show you the comparison between two search terms. Such as: Blogdrive, Blogspot.
skype, msn messenger, google talk, icq, yahoo messenger
What about Love and hate?
What about sex, porn, nude, naked?
What about boys and girls?
What about Brad pitt, orlando bloom and johnny depp?
This google trend thing is really addictive.... it really is!
John of Darkskies just send me a contact form on one of his new ideas.
It's pretty cool and I can see he has had some thoughts put into it. It's a set of tags for different tagging services.
I'm not sure social networking is the right term to use here since it's basically just tagging. And tagging has got nothing to do with social, only helps with search engine rankings and search engine traffics.
Let me give you an example: Windows Live Mail beta. This entry, more than any entry in this blog received a huge boost due to those taggings.
Anyway, it's still a pretty good idea. Should your reader feel like they want to find out more about the related topic, they can just follow those links and see what other people are talking about.
We still lack enough reasons why people should start tagging. It's like, what's the point of using "Extended entry" or "keywords". What's the point of having them? What do they do? Until now, eventhough I'm using them, I'm still not exactly clear what they are for.
J f Z has some pretty nice logos to help promote this habit. Although unnecessary because you can do it without them, but it adds style and class to it.
Tags: Blogdrive, tags, tagging, category,
Gah, I hate that friends service. It just isn't my cup of tea to camwhore all day long. Besides, I hate to see other people more sexy than my sexy self. No room for competition.
The fundament power that drives these online social networks so successfully is non-other than social sex. Of course not directly, you can't expect them to "produce" a massaging hand out of the computer screen to give you any pleasure. It's more of a dating thing, they promise you sex and it's all up to you to bring it back home.
Friendster offers you an online profile, testimonials (from your friends), a kick-ass friends network, blog (typepad), personal messages, and other mini-and-cool-but-not-so-rare features such as css editing of your profile page.
I must say, the part I love most about friendster is the friend's network. It shows you who you connect with other people if they aren't immediately your friend. It's one of the best way to get a date make new friends.
Then there's the testimonial part to boost yer ego. You write something good about others, they'll write you back in return. The more testimonials you have prooves how likable you are and the more number of friends you have tells how popular you are.
Friendster makes it easy for you to stalk update on your friend's current affairs, much like how some personal blog works. It even allow you to stalk learn more about that hottie you met last week in the bar. (talk about privacy)
Brilliant, isn't it? Wait there's more. Friendster even allows you to blog. You hear that? Blogging, on Friendster. That's even more brilliant than sleeping naked. (right)
It does have some limitations which really isn't that much to complain about. To make custom templates is pretty tough there, it's all CSS. You have to find out all the classnames before you can come up with a CSS hack. But, I guess that's just about the only limitations.
Summary of what I like about Friendster:
1) Friends network
2) Testimonials
What can Blogdrive learn from Friendster?
Duh, the Friends Network. Blogdrive currently have profiles enabled for blog owners and there's also the tagging feature. Honestly I don't know what the tagging feature can really do other than a form of measurement who have seen your profile (or blog in some cases)
The new feature ideas would probably be something like this:
1) You are able to add Friends on your profile page,
2) You can see how other people connect to you,
3) You can leave a quick testimonial on the profiles page,
4) Personal Messages,
How would this benefit Blogdrive?
A wider userbase. Currently there are only around 300000 signed up accounts on Blogdrive including the abandoned/deleted account. That's a very small percentage in the world of online social/community. Wider userbase would also mean greater traffic and that would add to the bandwidth cost and server overload problems. But that would really depend on what they want really.
Note: Everything said here, just like everything else in this blog are my personal comments and observation and doesn't represent the views of our beloved Blogdrive.
Tags: Blogdrive, Friendster, Social Networking, Blogs, Friends Network,
ComScore Networks published the list of the top 10 blog destinations in first quarter of 2005. Blogspot.com, LiveJournal, TypePad, Xanga, AOL Journals, blogs.com, MSN Spaces, BlogDrive, GreatestJournal and DiaryLand are top blogging destinations. 
http://www.comscore.com/blogreport/comScoreBlogReport.pdf
Once again, BlogDrive is still pretty low in the chart. In fact, it has dropped (with reference to my earlier post using bsentinel.com as source) This may be a different source. But it gives us a rough figure and estimation. Let's make BlogDrive a better place.
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