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I took a few screen shots from the internet only ad that didn’t make it into the main commercial. Mainly two images of Web 2.0 stars, Alex Albrecht (of Diggnation and formely TechTV) and Cali Lewis (Geek Brief TV & fill in Call for Help co-host).

Alex was able to be seen a little bit in the scene where Kevin Rose (of Digg.com) and Alex are dancing with 2 girls, but this is taken from a scene where Kevin doesn’t appear.

Cali’s spot didn’t make it into the main ad from what I saw, but it is in the internet version.

There are too many in this ad to spot out where they are all from. I’m sure there is quite a few others that I am missing out on that I have seen around the web.

Watch the ad here

Well this blog is now running on the new version of Wordpress, 2.1 in it’s first release candidate. So far, no problems at all. I made sure to backup my database before, and as far as I can tell all of my plugins just work with this new version (Viper’s Video Quicktags is the only one that doesn’t seem to function).

LOTS of updates, including the first major one I’ve noticed is the speed. IT’S WAAAY FAST. One thing I found disturbing is that my default category was changed to “Blogroll,” a category which didn’t even exist previously. I can’t seem to find where to switch it back.

Here is the list of new user features:

• Much more efficient database code, faster than previous versions
• Autosave
• Tabbed editor
• Lossless XML import and export for moving between WordPress blogs
• WYSIWYG spellchecker
• Search engine blocker for private blogs
• You can set any “page” to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else
• Links can now have sub-categories
• Redesigned login screen
• More AJAX to make custom fields, moderation, deletions, etc all instant
• Pages can now be drafts, or private
• Minor admin redesign
• Upload manager
• Faster dashboard

There is FINALLY a WYSIWYG spell check, granted it doesn’t work for me on Firefox or Safari on the mac. Firefox has a built in spell check that seems to work just fine (as well as OS X having it built right into the OS).

I REALLY don’t like the Visual vs Code tab in the posting screen. If you want to use any of the code features like a hyperlink, block quote, images, etc. you have to switch over to the code side. Switching is fast, but I’d rather insert the hyperlink codes and images right in the WYSIWYG tab. You don’t have the insert options you previously had either like open link in new tab, and align the picture.

Download it here at your own risk.

UPDATE: I’m not on a PC with Firefox, and the Visual WYSIWYG editor is now working. Seems there might be something wrong with the way FF on OS X views the site. The Spell Check also workson FF on the PC.

This will be one Windows machine that I will be happy to purchase. It’s a new file system, not RAID. Isn’t RAID an insect spray anyway?

It uses a Distributed File System, where the drives are hot swappable. 4 SATA internal drives, and lots of usb ports for additional external drives. This is going to be a great way to have a copy of every piece of important information on your computer.

It backs it up by distributing it across many computers. Here’s the part I am not 100% sure of. Read this from Paul Thurrott’s site:
Mac user? You can access the WHS shared folders as you would any other Windows share, and that means your backup program–like Apple’s Backup–can use a share as a save location as well. “We’re a great back-end store for Time Machine,” Headrick told me, alluding to the new backup feature Apple recently announced for Mac OS X Leopard.

Now that sounds well and good, but I’ve used Time Machine, and the volume HAS to be formatted for OS X with journaling enabled. I’m almost 99% sure that this system won’t allow itself to be formatted for OS X. So, is this really the Time Machine backup system that we are hoping for? I seriously doubt it.

That being said, it will mount as any other windows share, and allow for access to your files whenever you need it. Sounds like a great way to have access to your iTunes & iPhoto library without cramming it into your mac laptop.

They will retail the second part of this year for around $500, and I am sure that I will buy one.

Found this video floating around YouTube of a .Mac drive showing 30 gigs in XP through Parallels, but not in OS X. My .Mac account is about to expire, but it is still active. I decided to check for myself.

[youtube]1pIt0lzUrag[/youtube]

In my test, I showed 1 gig of space on my iDisk under OS X and 15 gigs under Windows. I’ve never used my iDisk for anything, so all of the space used up is items Apple puts in there like widgets, garageband files, etc.

The question I have, is this how it’s always been, or is Apple planning an upgrade to .Mac, especially that iLife is so tied into .Mac? The size of podcasts alone can easily cannibalize your entire iDisk pretty quickly. What if Time Machine or iTV are meant to tie into .Mac as well? That would seem like a good reason to boost the storage space on .Mac.

Maybe I should renew my membership. (You can do so through Amazon for only $79).

…and bandwidth.

They are afraid of being tagged as an “overselling host,” and thus as of some time today will be changing the starting amount of bandwidth and storage. Right now you get 200 GB of space and 2TB of bandwidth on a Level 1 account.

If you are a current customer, like myself, you will continue to maintain your current amount, and the plans will go up weekly like they have. THERE IS NO CHANGE FOR CURRENT CUSTOMERS!

They don’t say what the new sign ups will start off at, but you can be sure that it will be more reflective of what “normal” hosts offer.

If you want an account under the old plan, before it changes, click here to sign up ASAP! You can use code: NickStarr for $50 off your first year of Level 1 hosting, with no setup fee. If you prefer a month to month plan, use code: NickStarr2 for a $5 setup fee (savings of $45).

Google’s Picasa Web Album service has expanded beyond the one price mindset that Flickr has instilled in us all. They started with an additional $25/year for an additional 6GB.

They now offer more options up to 250 gigs of space of your photos.

You only have 250 megs of space when you first sign up with them, which with the megapixel race at around 10-16 megapixels right now, you won’t be able to get many photos in the amount of space.

If you upgrade, you are also able to upload videos as well to the service, although I don’t see why when Google Video and Google’s YouTube will allow you to do the same. For free hosting of videos online in a downloadable format, there is always PodShow.

I understand where Google is trying to go with this, it does eliminate some of the confusion with monthly upload bandwidth meters, but I think Flickr’s going to be number 1 in photo hosting/sharing for some time to come.

Now I’ve been interested in how to leverage the use of Amazon’s S3 service for quite some time now. I think this solution is the closest to a great one that I’ve found so far.

Zettabyte sends you a NAS drive with a gigabit ethernet connection. The drive ranges from 30 gigs to 690 gigs. You can use it as a network drive to backup all critical files, just like any other network drive.

Here’s the kicker; they upload all the information on the drive to Amazon’s S3 service in a secure 256bit encryption. There is no additional fee of the Amazon service, so you can download and upload as much as you want without fear of Amazon’s 20 cent per gig bandwidth, and 15 cents per gig of storage.

So not only do you have a local backup, with quick instant access to, but you also have an online backup which you can access anytime you need.

There are a lot of other bells and whistles, like roll back features, password encryption, self-monitoring (ie. when the drive is going bad they automatically send you another one), etc. All of this comes at a price.

This is the downside of Zettabyte’s plan. Well I understand the need to make a profit, and profit they will make based on their rate plans. Let’s analyze a few:

• Cheapest plan: 30 gig HD $49/month
• Simply using Amazon S3 w/o Zettabyte: 30 gig storage/bandwidth: $10.50

I don’t know that 30 gigs is enough for anyone to backup the vast amount of data is on computers now-a-days, so let’s try a higher plan:

• Zettabyte140 gig HD plan: $89/month
• Amazon S3 140 gig storage/bandwidth: $ 49.00

Okay, so I understand that they must take some additional money for the NAS drive “rental”.

• NAS external case: $54
• 40 gig HD: $39
• 160 gig HD: $53

Okay so at $49/month, if you were to buy the external NAS case and 40 gig HD and pay for Amazon yourself, starting cost is $103.50, and your third month total costs would be at $124.50. By your third month you would be at the cost of $150 and going up $49/month, thus saving $25.50, and increasing that savings by $38.50/month. Doing it on your own you would only be increasing by $10.50 per month.

Let’s try the $89/month plan. On your own, initial startup fees are $141. By your second month, you would of paid an additional $12 at $190 vs $178. On the third month the savings of $28 kick in, with $239 vs $267.

There are plenty of solutions for automatic backup to S3 that you can implement on your own without a NAS drive that does it for you. Is the no-hastle worth the extra money? In the long run, I seriously doubt it.

Still the concept is truly what I’ve been looking for, it just is implemented at a slightly higher price than what I am wanting to pay currently.