Tech

Tech-focused ramblings. Computers, blogs, and whatever else fits.

The great bit bucket in the sky

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I haven’t been following the story too closely, but there’s been a small amount of ruckus lately because the CEO of Userland Software, John Robb, abruptly left the company, and when he did, his entire weblog disappeared from the web.

Nobody seems to be too sure just why his entire archive of posts disappeared. Did John take them down? Did Dave Winer (founder of Userland)? Were they just deleted because they lived on Userland’s server, and as an ex-employee, John wasn’t allowed to use Userland’s hosting anymore? Lots of questions, as as yet, few answers.

Rick Klau is concerned about the situation (rightly so), and ends his post with the following advice:

Final lesson from this situation: never, ever blog at a domain that’s not owned by you. Don’t blog on your employer’s site, don’t blog on your blogging application’s site — make sure your blog lives (and stays!) on your own domain.

This comes at an interesting time for me. Part of my motivation for applying for the TypePad beta program was that, after running my website off of my own server under my desk for years, I’m considering finally relinquishing that amount of control and moving to a hosted solution. Should I do so, I’d be doing exactly what Rick advises against, and, admittedly, there is a small amount of risk in that. Should Six Apart (creators of MovableType and TypePad) fold, my site and all of it’s pages could go up in smoke (for what it’s worth, I don’t think there’s a very high probability of that).

However, it seems to me there’s a very simple solution to this, that, for me, outweighs any risk of my web-based life disappearing into the great bit bucket in the sky, and that’s simply this: back up your files. I know that MovableType has an export feature that allows you to save a local copy of every post on your weblog, and I would assume (though I don’t know) that the other blogging systems have a similar feature. It’s useful both as an importing mechanism when changing sites or weblogs, but it also makes a great backup mechanism. Ever since I suffered the loss of my last webserver, I’ve been making sure to export my site on a regular basis. If anything goes all aflooey (a technical term, to be sure), I’m covered.

It may very well be that John has done just this, and, once he’s settled in at wherever he’s going, his entire website will reappear on the web at a new address. From the number of posts I’ve seen about his ‘disappearance’, I’d say that there are a fair amount of people hoping for that to be the case. Hopefully it’s not too long before we find out.

In the end, then, I’d worry less about relinquishing control of your archives to an employer or to your blogging host company, than I would about making sure you have a current backup so that, should disaster strike, recovery is just a few clicks away.

(via Erik)

Discovering TypePad

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Shelley noticed TypePad weblogs starting to pop up out of the woodwork today, and points out a few that she’s found.

As was mentioned in one of the comments to her post, it’s definitely interesting being in a beta test period with weblogs that are public, and yet being bound by a (limited) NDA that prevents me from saying much of anything about the service itself. This isn’t a complaint at all, mind you — it just means I can’t flood my weblog with “Oooh! Look at that!” and “This is so cool!” and “Check out what I can do!” posts.

In other words, it’s a good thing. ;)

Obviously enough, some of the new toys are going to be fairly obvious, if you know where to look. All I feel entirely safe saying is that everything on this site is created and managed through TypePad — and that’s also a good thing.

And now, I’m off to play some more…

Putting The Long Letter on hold for a bit…

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NOTICE: This weblog (The Long Letter) will be going on hold for a bit. I’m not disappearing, though — I’m just going to be using Eclecticism as my primary weblog for the duration of the TypePad beta testing project.

As I’m already signed up for the 26 Things and Blogathon projects on this website, though, those posts will be appearing here when they’re ready to go. Just about everything else, however, will most likely be showing up on Eclecticism.

Once the beta test period is over, one of two things will happen: either I will close down Eclecticism and import all of its entries into The Long Letter, or I will move The Long Letter (and djwudi.com) onto TypePad. When the time comes, I’ll be sure to make a note of that.

In the meantime, though — see you over at Eclecticism!

iTMS Exclusive: LXG Soundtrack

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Looks like Apple’s iTunes Music Store is catching on (or, at the very least, getting enough interest to warrant an interesting experiment): in the US market, the soundtrack for the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen will only be available through the iTMS — no CD’s will be pressed.

I’ve got mixed feelings on this, personally. One of the things that has kept me from jumping full-bore into the iTMS for my music is the paucity of full ID3 tags in the purchased files. As I’ve been importing my CD collection, I’ve been working on being very thorough with the metadata included with each song: Artist, Title, Album, Year of release, and Composer are all information that I want available in my collection. Unfortunately, with the tracks I’ve purchased from the iTMS so far, Artist, Title, and Album seem to be all you get.

With a soundtrack release that (at least in the US market) has no physical media, how easy is it going to be for me to track down the rest of the metadata that I want included for search and organizational purposes? Not very, would be my guess, which concerns me. I like the idea, concept, and execution of the iTMS a lot, and I do support this experiment — just gimme my metadata!

(via MacRumors)

How do I do this?

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Okay, so I’ve got this new toy to play with, and I do need to make sure to play with it. I just need to figure out how to play with it.

Possible options:

  • Duplicate my posts: Copy and paste so that what I’m posting here also shows up on The Long Letter, and vice versa.
  • Keep both blogs active: Put some posts over here, and some posts over there. But which ones where?
  • Move over here: Put The Long Letter on hiatus for a bit, and just use this as my primary blog.

There’s pros and cons to each of the options, of course. Hmmmm…

TypePad beta testing!

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I got a surprisingly cool e-mail when I got home today — I’m a TypePad beta tester!

I can’t really say much more than that, as is to be expected with something such as this, but one thing I can do is point you to my TypePad weblog: Eclecticism! There’s not a whole lot there yet, I’m still more or less randomly poking around and getting the hang of the new digs, but more will appear before too terribly long.

Now I just need to figure out how I’m going to manage keeping two weblogs current and up to date, without letting either one languish too much. Should be interesting. We’ll see how I do. ;)

They Might Be Monitors

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Help raise money for Amnesty International and sponsor me for Blogathon 2003! Looks like TMBM is going to be keeping an eye out on all the various Blogathon participants, compiling a live-as-we-go “best of” list. Should be interesting to see what pops up as things progress!

They’ve already found a few ‘concept’ projects: one site will be focusing on Harry Potter, and another will be posting in haiku. I’m thinking about focusing on some of the music I listen to that isn’t overly well known, especially now that I can let people listen in, but I’m not entirely sure yet. Still have a couple weeks to plan!