Informed Networker Blog

Finding local news is still not as easy as it should be. Sure, you can go to most popular news sites these days and tell them you want to follow a zip code, city, or state’s news. I utilize Topix’s RSS feed feature to track news. But its not enough and here’s why:

• Zip Code - Is imprecise. While it covers a general geographical area it doesn’t necessarily cover the exact geographical area you are interested in. For example, you may be at the northern part of a zip code and better know two or three zip codes that surround you, than the rest of your zip code further to the south. This also holds true for counties. I used to live one mile from the border of Greene County, but actually lived in Albany County (New York).
• City - While giving news on the city you live in it ignores surrounding areas. In my area the cities are so meshed together you can cross through one and end up back in the same city you originated from. In states that are old and not built on grids city lines follow nonsensical traditions.
• State - I might want to know the state news, but if I get a local view of the entire state, I’ll be overwhelmed.

Okay, enough complaining. How do we fix this problem? Well, right now I’m focused on Informed Networker and don’t really have time to spend on this project so I’ll share my solution, take it for free (though you can give me some money if you wish when you are successful):

Take a map (e.g. Google Maps) and allow people to trace an outline of the area they want news on. This lets them include just the right number of cities. The area that ends up highlighted is the area they want news on.

The company best in a position to take advantage of this methodology is Google. Why? Because this method works best if each article is tagged with its geographical coordinates (longitude/latitude) and everyone jumps when Google hollers so one could expect instant adoption of the inclusion of geographical standards in nearly every major and minor paper - who wouldn’t want their stories listed on Google?

Yes, its simple - but it would work and sure would give us better news targeting than we currently have. A startup or other established company could utilize this idea as well, just don’t expect all the news publishers to immediately implement the coordinates system. Instead you would probably need to search stories for coordinates, then map them automatically. Still, very doable, even as a mashup.

I’ve been for Bluehost for a little over a month now and figured it might be a good time to give my first impressions of this shared hosting service. Bluehost is a humongous web host - currently hosting over 370,000 domains. It is also a budget host - costing the relatively low rate of $6.95/mo. It is different from many similar hosts in that it only offers one plan - there are no options for virtual private servers or dedicated servers - everything is shared.

Bluehost is a LAMP based service. LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. In other words, it is not a Windows based environment - which generally includes Windows Server, Internet Information Server (IIS), SQL Server, and ASP.NET. Since for the particular set of sites I was working on I was interested in utilizing application code from WordPress and Pligg - both written in PHP, it made sense to utilize Bluehost rather than attempting to scrunch these PHP applications uncomfortably into my current Windows server hosting.

Let’s take a quick look at the distinctive features of Bluehost’s offering. Storage includes 300 GB. If this isn’t enough for you, you shouldn’t be on shared hosting. In fact, if you get over 10 GB you probably shouldn’t be using shared hosting. Each month you receive 3 TB of bandwidth (3,000 GB). This is a significant amount of transfer, equivalent to around 9 Mb/sec.(1) - thats five T1’s. Granted, again, if you are using anywhere near this capacity you shouldn’t be on shared hosting.

Language support besides PHP includes Perl 5, Python, and Ruby. This runs the gamut of popular server-side languages that operate on Linux. The database servers is another impressive portion - you are allocated up to 50 MySQL databases and 50 Postgre SQL databases.

There are dozens more features that could make this an encyclopedic post - but that wouldn’t be very helpful. I’ll just mention in passing a few and then move on to the final features and a few weaknesses.

Additional standard features include FTP, POP3/IMAP email accounts, email forwarders and autoresponders, cgi-bin, ssi support, frontpage extensions (please don’t tell me you actually use this feature), SSH, webmail, SSL support, and automated backups.

Finally, a few features I consider personally attractive that aren’t standard with many web hosts:

• Marketing - Includes a free PRWeb release ($70 value, sends out a press release to major news venues) and a $50 coupon for Yahoo! Search Advertising (pay-per-click based). Occasionally they also have offers for free coupons on Microsoft and Google advertising as well.
• File Manager - They have a very nice file manager. It is a pleasure to work with and includes features such as uploading a zip and then extracting it all through a browser. It also offers editing options, including code editing right on the server with line numbers, code organization, etc.
• Fantastico De Luxe - Fantastico is a large number of web applications that you can deploy to your server with one click. It includes applications such as WordPress (blog), Drupal (CMS), Joomla (CMS), PHP-Nuke (CMS), phpBB2 (Forums), PHPList (Mailing Lists), TikiWiki (Wiki), and Moodle (Classroom).
• Domain Management - You don’t have to buy a new hosting package for each domain, rather you setup your main domain and then can configure other domains, as well as sub-domains. Essentially, Bluehost is ensuring you never have to buy more than one hosting package (unless you hit the high limits they have set, for example 50 SQL databases).

Now it’s time to discuss the bummers. Here are the areas that Bluehost is really lacking in - though I think you will find them largely comfort items rather than show-stoppers:

• The Control Panel is based on an unfriendly IP based scheme rather than a friendly name based scheme. So you can’t just type in cp.bluehost.com, its more like 69.89.31.96:2082.
• The statistics are way slow. Don’t bother looking at your statistics for the current day, they are entirely inaccurate. You have to wait several hours after the day is done before you can expect accurate statistical tracking.
• You have to register your domains with Bluehost. They serve as your domain registrar. This is a little frustrating for those who already have registered domains and for those who don’t like to place all their intellectual property eggs in one basket.
• The servers are reasonably speedy, but my monitoring has shown ping responses at several hundred milliseconds compared to Google’s sub-hundred millisecond responses.
• This isn’t really Bluehost’s fault, b/c Fantastico doesn’t support these applications currently - but I’d really like to see one-click support for Pligg (Digg Clone CMS) and MediaWiki (the same Wiki that powers Wikipedia).

These complaints aside, if you are a small business or an individual looking for inexpensive LAMP based hosting (as opposed to Windows-based), Bluehost is an excellent and generally reliable option. The ability to one-click deploy the popular WordPress blogging application and other similar applications make it a no brainer for anyone who isn’t technically experienced but wants to move quickly into a live website scenario.
(1)3,000 GB * 1,024 = 3,072,000 MB / 30 Days = 102,400 MB per day / 24 Hours = 4266.67 MB per hour / 60 Minutes = 71.11 MB per min. / 60 Seconds = 1.19 MB per second * 8 (to convert bytes to bits) = 9.48 Mb/sec.

Update: I received my first reply from StumbleUpon via email at 12:41 p.m., around 10 hours after I had made the initial post. The issue was resolved by 5:40 p.m. on the same day. Apparently it was an issue on StumbleUpon’s part though I don’t quite understand what. The fact that there was an issue isn’t what concerned me, it was the lack of communication. Aaron, the guy who contacted me in regard to my issues was very kind and polite and moved quickly to resolve it. He didn’t know exactly where the disconnect was in the whole communication area, but has moved quickly to resolve it now - so I’m happy.

I love StumbleUpon. For those who don’t know what StumbleUpon is, its a social network of types - and an extraordinary time consumer. Essentially it allows you to define a number of topics that interest you and then stumble through websites that people have tagged with those terms. You vote a thumbs up or thumbs down on each site and can tag the sites with your own keywords. Over time StumbleUpon refines what sites it shows you based on how you vote.

I’ve been using StumbleUpon for quite some time now - long enough that I’ve stumbled across 8,000+ pages and 100+ videos. I tell everybody about StumbleUpon - because its a great service.

Recently I launched a new website, in fact its this one. InformedNetworker is a social news media site for Information Technology Professionals. Similar to Digg(tm) but focused on professional computing interests rather than the (seemingly) ever more consumer oriented Digg(tm).

I decided as part of the marketing campaign for this new site to promote my site on StumbleUpon using their StumbleAds program. Essentially, this program allows you to pay for each visitor - at the cost of $0.05 per visitor. Not a bad price, especially since these visitors are hitting you based upon tags you define. I plopped down $25.00 and opened an account on 8/30/07. I created my first campaign - targeted for the tag it and pointing towards my informednetworker site. Over the next several days nothing happened. I guess I was in a manual approval stage. Once the approval stage had passed the money began disappearing from my account till I reach $0.00. What was strange was that I wasn’t receiving any hits as my money disappeared - or at least the control panel didn’t (and still doesn’t) reflect any. So what happened? My money is gone and I didn’t receive any hits.

Okay, I’m a reasonable guy. So I sent an email to StumbleUpon on 9/4/07, 9/12/07, and 9/22/07 - none of which have received anything more than the form response informing me that the response had been received. Furthermore, I posted in both the StumbleUpon general help forum and in the ads forum - no replies from any officials there either.

So, here I am - nearly a month later and I haven’t received any clicks for the $25.00 that magically vanished. I’m frustrated. If I received even a one line email saying, “Sorry we are busy. But don’t worry we are working on it.” I would wait and wait…But right now I am a voice crying out in distress and they aren’t even acknowledging my existence.

Final step? Write a blog post about it and submit it to several social networks, including StumbleUpon in hopes that someone at StumbleUpon will find that CSR with an ignored email in their inbox and give me a response - any response that can resolve this issue and let me continue my intoxication with StumbleUpon.

Facebook is all the rage. Many would argue that it has become a hotter property than MySpace. It has become a must for new application developers looking for instant fame and glory and many are writing articles about the utilization of Facebook not only for personal communications but also for business use (see Ricardo Sueiras, JP Rangaswami, Gordon Cook).

Still, I’m not sure that Facebook is ready for business use. Take for example Jason Calacanis who recently admitted Facebook bankruptcy because of the overwhelming amount of data streaming in from the massive number of friends he has. Now, I must admit I am not such a personage as is overwhelmed - currently most of my friends are either family members or real life associates (excluding Calacanis) - but someday this may change. In that instance I will become one amongst many who are attempting to keep in contact on several separate levels:

• Friends & Family - Those we know and love on a personal level.
• Close Business Associates - Individuals we regularly network with for business concerns. Partners, VARs, employees.
• Business Card Associates - Individuals who in the old days we would have exchanged business cards with. We don’t have a significant relationship with them, but do want to keep the line open, knowing we might be able to utilize each other in a mutually beneficial way in the future.

Thus a dilemma arises. Facebook offers a way to rubbing shoulders with those whom we might not have had any opportunity to interact with in normal, every day life but on the other hand can result in an overwhelming amount of data continually being poured down our throats. Solution?

Facebook needs to allow its members to segment their friends into various groupings - not just geographic or interest based, but relationship level. On my News Feed I should be able to create multiple tabs noting any delineations I like such as “close friends”, “business associates”, “other”, etc. The same applies to my status updates and other posts. Do I really want my business associates to see pictures of my cat Fluffy? Me bare-chested on the beach? Do I want them to know details about my personal life? On the other hand, do my friends care that I spent more time reading about XML, XSS, or NAS than talking about cars, movies, or home improvements?

By implementing these two features Facebook would allow me to segment data in such a way as allows me to focus on the people I want to interact with most regularly while not undermining the “exchange a business card” effect of Facebook. Would these changes make Facebook a better business social networking tool for you?

I received a polite letter in the mail within the last week from Verizon. Today was the first day I had a chance to read why “The only thing better than FiOS today is FiOS tomorrow.” Well, apparently it has something to do with the reason they are increasing my monthly 5.0 Mbps FiOS connection from $36/mo. to $53/mo. A minor price jump of $17/mo. or nearly half of my current FiOS bill.

Now, I like FiOS, don’t get me wrong. In fact I love it. When they initially installed FiOS it was a bit of the pain. The telecommunications guys they sent out to configure FiOS didn’t know much about routers or IP addresses - but thats okay, I don’t know much about traditional copper lines (though I’ve learned more than I wanted to). Then there was the fact that several weeks later my FiOS was abruptly canceled - apparently a paperwork detail on their end. But it was restored and since then, other than occasionally having to reboot my Actiontec router and remount the FiOS box inside my house, everything has been just dandy.

Still, a 50% price increase seems steep - especially with no additional features or benefits as a result. What caused this price increase? It seems to me to be a ploy to push consumers into purchasing a bundle. You thought you could have TV through another provider? Well, now it’ll cost too much - switch over to Verizon. You thought you could use a third-party VoIP provider for phone? Forget it, you need the bundled Verizon deal.

I’m still happy with my Verizon FiOS as a service, but I’m less than happy with the price increase, so Verizon, please consider this my open letter expressing my displeasure over an unexplained, significant price increase. I don’t need your digital TV, I use Joost, iTunes, Movielink, Blockbuster, etc. I don’t need your phone, I’ve got Skype In/Out. All I need is the reliable internet connection you have provided without being robbed blind in the process.

Am I crazy or is this a real smack from Verizon? In my opinion, a business which wants to succeed long-term needs to place the cares of its customers high on its priority list - this (especially without explanation) is no such action and one of the reasons I moved away from Verizon in the first place.