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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.
A little more than a year ago I made an entry about Studio Traffic, about how such business have no solid base and can't make no money. Today, I just found out that the website itself dissappeared and turned into something called myFileHut.com that offers free image and file hosting. How oddly obvious?
Curiosity and procrastination has brought me into Googling the latest news. Secretly laughing out loud inside repeating "Told you so". So anyway, I digged up some rather interesting news (and somewhat odd).
For those of you who doesn't know what StudioTraffic is, here are some quick links.
http://www.studiotraffic.co.uk/ - A Uk website with some pretty good coverage of the aftermaths.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studiotraffic - A pretty messy explanation, loads of grammars mistake as if it was done by some pretty unstable members of Studiotraffic who had their money stolen.
http://www.answers.com/topic/studiotraffic - A very good overview of the whole StudioTraffic. You should read this if you have no idea what I'm talking about until now.
Doing a trend-region study on Google return this interesting details. It appears South East Asian countries are the worst hit.
I don't know how to say this, but really. How can anybody be so stupid? I know I've probably asked this more than a million times, but I can only think of these:
1) Making money online is so COOL. - It's easy and you don't even have to leave your house. You can even make money in your underwear.
2) The so-called "John Horan" was very CONVINCING. - Okay, I got to admit to this one because I actually took the effort to study it's business model after reading his writings. He has a way of selling himself that even my mom would buy without second thoughts.
3) They don't know how to do MATHS. - The only reason I didn't believe this "scam" has everything to do with my mathematical ability and has totally nothing to do with my common sense and/or instincts (which I'm terrible at). As mentioned in my blog entry a year ago, I calculated using complex calculations (brag) and advanced numbering series (brag) along with Euler's partial differential equation (brag) the amounts of money involved in this business structure (brag) and it's flow patterns (brag). And then I compared them to what "John Horan" has said, it didn't made any sense at all. See, Maths is for love and not hate.
4) Strong StudioTraffic SUPPORTERS all over the Internet. - this has to be one of the most fascinating thing that I've ever come across (I'm still very impressed). A big supporter / fan / cheerleader club for a SCAM website. Anybody who initially regard it as a scam would believe it's real if so many people are defending it. It goes with the saying: "If everybody believes it, it's bound to be true!" It's like religion.
That's it, its' a religion.
5) The power of WORD of MOUTH. - "John Horan" obviously played the game very well, I'm not entirely sure how but I've received many recommendations from friends and relatives. They came to me only to be dissappointed when I told them it's a scam (having to explain with graphs and diagrams (brag)). I think this says a lot about building a network-based business. See, POWER of Networking!
6) They are Young, Naive and Ambitious. - As opposed to old, lonely and seeking attention. I might be wrong here but I'm pretty sure nobody will easily believe this form of scam again.
Well, I guess the supporter (part 4) can be reasoned by people who have actually "invested" some money and really can't bare to realise that they have been cheated. It becomes a sensitive issue and they form a cult-like army.
I know whatever I say here may potentially offend many especially those who have been faithful to the programme. I can't help but feel sorry for them (and writing this entry). A little community service brought to you by me.
Tags: studiotraffic, studio traffic, scams, ponzi scheme, make money online,
This is good stuff. I would have said it myself but I'm too gutless to do it. What's worth nothing is this:
Anyone who doesn't mind their site being inaccessible for hours, or even days, with no advance notice. Anyone who has no desire to have more growth potential for image loading. Anyone who doesn't care if the tech support for a paid account is not "priority tech support." It's really non-existent tech support. Basically anyone who doesn't take what their doing seriously. It's great for practice.
Here is the entire post: Seige, I appreciate your efforts to help. I really do. Funny, no not media power. But, I am motivated to get a solution to this quagmire. I'm sure most of you would agree that the best way to tick someone off even more is to make them feel that their concerns are irrelevent and frivolous. So I appreciate those of you, and us, who assume someone has a bona fide reason for flying off the handle because there really is validity to many of the concerns raised here. The frustrating thing is that I never in a million years thought that I was embarking down a road with BD that was a virtual dead-end with no chance of expanding with growth. You can see what I'm describing at my site: http://www.carrienews.blogdrive.com I suppose I didn't know anything about what growth requirements there would be. Now I do. I'll see what I can come up with as far as alternatives. I may need some suggestions as far as how to migrate blog entries to a host that has growth potential with more reliable software and servers. My suggestion is for anyone reading this who plans on having growth potential, be careful of putting all your eggs in the BD basket. It will be an exercise in futility and a good lesson for anyone in the business world of how not to treat customers. I used to rave to people about how great BD is. But, I can't do that anymore. So sad. Here is who I would recommend BD to: Anyone who doesn't mind their site being inaccessible for hours, or even days, with no advance notice. Anyone who has no desire to have more growth potential for image loading. Anyone who doesn't care if the tech support for a paid account is not "priority tech support." It's really non-existent tech support. Basically anyone who doesn't take what their doing seriously. It's great for practice. What's sad is that many of us have been offering suggestions ad nauseum for months now. Oh, well. Life goes on. Thanks, Seige, for pretty much taking my concerns seriously. After all, unstable hosting, non-expandable bandwidth, and no tech support are pretty serious issues. IMHO. Those aren't great selling points, are they? Who's fault is it? Why do they do what they do? Is a mystery.
The last couple of weeks I see an increased amount of contact forms asking for advices on useless and a-waste-of-time stuff. Well, it's rude to say that but when you get questions that can be answered if the question-er knows where to look for answers instead of asking.
Sad. Isn't it?
Don't get me wrong. I actually LOVE to receive contact forms, doesn't everybody? It's always such a merry thing to see a contact form. Besides, it's the best way to know what people are thinking about your site. And it also tells you of any bugs that's been floating around. 
One of the messages I received was regarding Azwani. She complains (everybody complains) that the Referer.org script she implemented on her site isn't working. She provided a very good follow up of what she did:
1) contacted Referer.org
2) got a reply from Referer.org
3) contacted Blogdrive.com
4) no reply from Blogdrive.com (not surprised)
Anyway, the responce she get from referer.org is pretty amazing. The team told her that her script, despite being inserted correctly, isn't being indexed by their spider bot. They (Referer.org) claim that Blogdrive.com has filtered the script out of the source code.
Damn, that's one very bold statement to make coming from Referer.org.
But anyway, I took a look at the site and found that it's somewhat true. Their mirror page did not actually showed a filtered version of her blog, rather it's showing a 404 page.
Now, there's only two explanation to this scenario:
1) Referer.org hasn't updated their database with the Azwani's blog, Or,
2) Blogdrive have set the 404 page to turn up when it's being queried by Referer.org
Could it be true? I have no idea but I do know that the BD admin did mention about some third party websites spidering their pages taking up bandwidth. Makes sense but why block them?
Or, I could be entirely wrong because I overlooked certain things. What do you think?
Reference: Referer.org,
Tags: referer.org, blogdrive, javascript, spider, internet, robots,
In the previous year, we see lots of small startup or small companies being bought up by big media giants to be key players in their industrial roles. Sites such as blogspot being acquired by Google and hotmail acquired by Microsoft.
Not that I want BD to be sold to other parties, but it's an interesting speculation.
Here's an interesting read on what Hungry Media giants are looking for in small companies:
Also of interest are sites that allow people to play casual interactive games; store, send, manipulate and print photos; build and store blogs; and research and shop for big-ticket items like cars. Also eliciting interest are "next generation" Web sites, like those focused on allowing people to search the universe of blogs more effectively.
The media companies' interest has to do with the continuing shift in the ways Americans consume entertainment and shop. Just as the advent of cable television carved up a once-concentrated block of network TV viewers, so has the Internet — with its literally millions of Web sites — created highly fragmented niche audiences.
For big companies, the key is to build or buy Web sites that attract those niche audiences, but in substantial numbers. For a Web site to pique the interest of mass-market advertisers, it needs to have at least a million unique visitors a month; to be considered a major takeover candidate, it needs to have five million unique visitors, said Sharon Wienbar, a managing director with BA Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley venture firm that invests in Internet content companies.
Note: Photobucket was mentioned in the article. Seems like Photobucket's most valueable asset it's their user base.
Tags: blogdrive, photobucket, internet, media, companies,
It appears some members have been experiencing trouble viewing blogs on BlogDrive for the past few days. Somehow the problem has gone from bad to worst today as most blogs can't be accessed at all, not even after refreshing the page. According to most members, this affects only blogs and not the administration section. This is a relief as we can still create an entry without much trouble. There has been no responce from BD regarding the issue, the person in charge could be working hard fixing the problem as of this moment or he is asleep and will get to it soon. (It just means human needs sleep) Since there's not been an explanation, we can only make assumptions of what might be causing this uneasiness: Server overloaded would be the most likely explanation. It's could be fixed pretty soon. BlogDrive could be upgrading server, hence we get a temporary outage. In the past, there has always been a notice about server upgrade but currently we get nothing after . There was even a homepoll surveying what members message members prefers but the BD admin must have decided to obmit it. To be honest, I would rather have the server upgrade message than nothing. Exceeded monthly bandwidth. Sounds stupid but it is one of the possibilities. Could be a DoS attack. DoS attack is an attack on a computer system or network that causes a loss of service to users, typically the loss of network connectivity and services by consuming the bandwidth of the victim network or overloading the computational resources of the victim system. Let's all hope this is not the case. It could be something else, if you have any suggestion you can post a comment. Let's hope it's just temporary. Reference: DoS attack, BlogDrive forum, BlogDrive User's Review,
Technorati Tags: BlogDrive, bandwidth, denial of service, Internet, *Update: there's word on the main tagboard from the admin, about some new software updation. Let's keep our finger's crossed as this disaster comes to past.
Helpee » I'm going out to the data center again. Things will be bichen soon. Been updating some new software. - There you have it.
As we've long been aware of the kind of dodgy service that iwebtunes or iwebmusic offers, it's just about time they are taken out of business.
Here's the news:
The US Federal Trade Commission reported yesterday that a court had shut down three Internet companies on charges of distributing spyware without users' consent. Enternet Media, Inc. and Conspy & Co. Inc, based in California, and Iwebtunes, based in Ohio, had their assets frozen.
As InternetNews would say:
"These guys are dirty," said James Manning, spyware research director for Aluria Software. He said iWebTunes sends users a snippet of JavaScript code to add to their own sites' code. But it includes not only links for SearchMiracle, purveyor of the Elite Toolbar and Crazywinnings, but also update links. Every time someone hits a site containing iWebTunes JavaScript, he's hit with more stealthy installs.
Rejoice, everyone! We've won one battle against spyware. Sadly, there are still more to fight on. Reference: iWebTunes/iWebMusic - Music on your blog, Three companies shut down on spyware charges, A Higher Google Standard?,
Technorati Tags: iwebmusic, iwebtunes, spyware, adware, javascript,
This is taken from the stats package by Google Analytics. Man, I just love to look at the orange dots over and over again because it shows where the majority of BlogDrive users are in this tiny little world. The bigger dots shows a higher concentration of BlogDrive visitors.
(click for a larger image)Somehow, it does makes you wonder: 1) What happened to the Canadians? Don't any Canadians uses BlogDrive at all? You can only spot a couple of dots, and that's it. o_O 2) What about China? Are they all blocked? 3) And Russia? 4) Where are all the South Americans? Weird... Maybe BlogDrive should now morph into multi-linguality to accommodate other countries. As you can see, most (actually all) of the countries which are active in BlogDrive are English-literated regions, and then there's the rest of the world. No matter, it's still beautiful to look at.
With the ladies, you have to sacrifice the internet. Likewise,
With the internet, you have to sacrifice the ladies.
Let's say, you are in such a situation to choose one among the two. Which would you pick?
A gorgeous lady just approached me a minute ago seeking directions to the nearest computer printer. As I was in a hurry (to get to my room so that I can get online), I didn't bother to talk to her much, eventhough this is such a rare case of oppurtunity when such a lady showed some real interest (likewise).
This is the result of Internet Addiction. A decease I've been trying to fight ever since... I don't know. But it certainly is getting towards the lethal level, i.e. I could Die! It's much stronger than tobacco addiction, or maybe coffee. It might even be the same level as lethal drug addictions.
Now, diagnosis would include: a condition in which my attention shall be allocated towards a wider scope of generality and thus allowing me to come out clean. Situation such as above should help but apparently, the lady failed to lure me away from my computer. How sad is that?
A beautiful lady who had a wonderful friendly smile, failed to stop me at that. We could have stood there and talked more about stuff, possibly get her number. I could've given much more help than I had given, such as an escort to the nearest computer printer and step by step instructions on how to print.
Man.
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