jacktams.co.uk

A Bad Week For The Cloud.

// March 1st, 2009 // No Comments » // Blog, Technology, Web

The world is abuzz with talk of the next big thing in computing, the cloud. Well this week my experiences have told me one thing, the cloud sucks, it is the biggest pile of BS since the bailout of the banks.

First, Google Mail (gmail for the US) failed. Leaving customers both on hosted and the standard accounts, then my favourite hosting provider of nearly 5 years fails on me, there (gs) or GridService. The cloud based shared hosting system, which I decided to put some of my clients on to allow rapid scaling or as it has turned out rapid failing.

The storage cluster of which my server is a part has failed, in a whale like fashion - Spewing its entrails all over the server. Thankfully my managerie of dedicated servers are still up and running, but I hadn't transferred the remainder of the sites out of the (gs). Meaning the biggest of all my sites is no down for the count, and has been down for over 24hrs.

I love (mt) mediatemple, and there support staff are not doubt taking flak from every corner. But, I would really appreciate it if I could edit my DNS entries so I can get something up to explain to customers what the hell is going on, and no we haven't gone bankrupt.

I would like to add, that I still would recommend mediatemple to anyone, but just not the (gs). If you want cloud Amazon EC2 or mediatemple (cs) when its out is what you want.

MediaTemple Cluster2 Status

TechCruch GFail

Good God – Redmond makes offer for Yahoo!

// February 1st, 2008 // No Comments » // Blog, Computing, Microsoft, Web

2008 has just got a whole lot worse if the deal comes off.

Microsoft has offered $44.6billion to buy Yahoo! At least if Microsoft does by Yahoo!, Live! search becomes half decent and there are some real brains in the web division, it could also go the other way and Yahoo! becomes what Live! is now. 

Even with the combined forces of Microsoft & Yahoo there will still be a long way to go before, they can topple the impressive lead Google has over them both. Only time will tell. 

Podcast Replace Classrooms?

// February 27th, 2007 // No Comments » // Blog, Ideas, Web

In the beginning, the iPod let you listen to every CD you owned, even when you were stuck on the Red Line. Then Steve Jobs said, "Let there be video," and lo and behold, you could watch "Lost" die a slow, overwritten death on a two-inch screen. But while people seem content to load their little devices with as many songs and TV shows as possible, podcasts (think of them as radio programs that you download) tend to be neglected.
Listen and Learn With Podcasts - washingtonpost.com

The Answer = Not anytime soon
Why? it all falls down to the mentality of the person learning and the fact that listening to a podcast is a passive occupation, were as good learning will always be active.

Increasing technology use within schools, colleges and university's can do nothing but help the way we learn and consume that learning materials. Being able to access course materials 24/7 is a great resource to have but you don't remember the stuff you do aswell as you would from a classroom.

I think there will inevitably be some invention that takes podcasting and vidcasting out of the passive domain into the interactive and maybe then we can consider replacing the classroom. Until then I think classrooms are safe.

forget office, Oo.org get ThinkFree Office

// December 2nd, 2006 // 1 Comment » // Blog, Ideas, Web

I have dabbled in many office applications google's offerings microsoft open office and some i cant even remember.

I am amazed at ThinkFree Office it is exactly what a web app should be and the learning curve is 0 cos it looks just like office on you desktop. Wel done guys, and ThinkFree Office is my default Office of choice.

And I got this from 5 minutes using it.

http://blog.thinkfree.com/

Note To Self: Crucial Things When Updating theme

// October 23rd, 2006 // No Comments » // Blog, Web

Don't forget to put the google analytics code into the footer part of the new theme, else you think your site has had no hits for a week (might not be far wrong)