My blog archive 2009-2014
If you remember the pre-historic web before blogging, Facebook or even Google, then you have surely been to more than a few sites hosted at Geocities.
Now you have the chance to take a trip down memory lane and revisit the Internet from the 90’s, courtesy of the Geocities-izer by Wonder-Tonic. For example, you can remove all the Web 2.0 nonsense from this blog of mine by viewing it through Geocities-izer instead:
Ah, the good old times. More great examples available here.
Posted in Web.
– May 2, 2010
It’s been almost 13 years since I purchased my first mobile phone. I think it’s about time to look back and admire the evolution of the small handheld devices that we carry around with us today everywhere we go.
The most lengendary mobile device of them all. Bought it when going to the army for one year and it happily survived even the worst conditions in the cold and wet forest camps. Later on I gave it to my mom, fitted with a brand new red colour cover and it again duly served as the first mobile phone for a new user. If you only need your mobile for phone calls and SMS’s, then this baby pretty much had it all already in 1995. Why didn’t we just stop right here?
Even though the battle between Finns (Nokia) and Swedes (Ericsson) was fierce in mobile phone manufacturing back in the 90’s, I still had enough courage to take a step to the dark side and replace my trusty Nokia with a more compact device from Ericsson. In addition to the smaller size, it had support for dual-band GSM and, most importantly, custom ringtones! No, not the ones you would purchase online and get delivered through SMS. I’m talking about the possibility of composing your own ringtones by entering the notes of the tune into the phone with the keypad. Yes, you bet this was a painful experience, but boy was I proud to have my phone ringing in a public place and have the riff from Café Del Mar by Energy 52 played by the monotonic beeper of the GH-688.
The new millenium had dawned and it had started to look more and more obvious that Nokia was pulling away from the competition. Sleek and simple phones like the 3210 had pretty much perfected the usability and user experience that was to be expected from a traditional GSM phone, plus they were being offered to the mass market with highly attractive price tags. The external antenna had already been eliminated, making 3210 a real easy object to just slip into your pocket, while T9 made writing SMS’s a joy for sore thumbs.
Posted in Tech.
– March 30, 2010
So you’ve got a website. That’s not too difficult, given the number of free site builder services or cheap web hosting available out there. But if you sign up for these services and decide to invest your time and effort in producing content for the site, how can you tell if you’re in fact getting what you’ve paid for (nothing or next-to-nothing) in terms of service reliability? That’s where website monitoring services come into play.
I used to be tracking my sites with a free account from Mon.itor.Us for over a year and was quite satisfied with getting a weekly report delivered to my inbox, with the average uptime and response time stats for the week. However, trying to do anything within the service’s web interface, like examining the performance statistics or configuring monitors was just really painful, thanks to the poor usability of the service UI.
Enter Pingdom. Wow! Talk about the difference that a good UI design can make to the same underlying service, which at the end of the day consists of pinging different URL’s. It’s never just about how you collect and store the data, it’s the presentation layer that really counts. Pingdom does an awesome job on this front, delivering a Google Analytics type of a user experience. They offer a free account for one single monitor, so trying out the features is a breeze. 5 checks is already $9.95/month, but if you’re actually making money with your sites, then I’m sure you could make worst investments.
So how’s the uptime then? Here you go:
Uptime report, last 30 days
Response time report, last 30 days
In addition to the widgets above, you can also access the monthly summaries over here. The reports inside Pingdom are much more detailed, one particularly nice feature being the possibility of filtering data based on different tracking locations, ranging from Stockholm to Los Angeles.
I’ve got a dirt cheap hosting package from Suncomet, which gives 2 GB of disk space with unlimited traffic & DB’s for just €30 per year. It’s not a lightning fast service and the P2 server does have it’s share of downtime, so every now and then I think about if I should bother to switch to another service provider. With a monitoring service like Pingdom I won’t need to make guesses on what I’m getting for my next-to-nothing investment. As for knowing the performance of other potential providers, well, that’s still going to be to some extent guesswork and leaps of faith. At least until we get more universal hosting service monitors like HostPeek.
Posted in Web.
– March 8, 2010
Nothing but a groovy bassline in this track, nothing but a whole lotta booty shakin’ in the video. Still the end result is a real party starter. Hit it!
Posted in Music.
– March 7, 2010
