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

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.

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.

[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).

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).

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.

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.

To me that sounds pretty reasonable. Amazon’s S3 service charges based on size, but only like 15 cents per gig and 20 cents per gig of bandwidth. The storage part is waaaay cheaper than the Dreamhost solution, which ranges from $0 to $8 per gig based on God knows what (account longevity maybe). I’m at $3 per gig.

Also podcasting solutions like Libsyn are pretty expensive when you look at it in terms of per gig storage. Libsyn’s largest plan works out to $37.50 per gig ($30/month with 800megs) , and smallest plan is $50 per gig ($5/month with 100megs). Neither of these plans even allows you to store 1 gig per month…although as a podcaster what are you REALLY doing with that much storage. Lisbyn doesn’t charge for bandwidth, so if your show even has only 1000 listeners at 4 shows per month, Libsyn is cheaper than Amazon’s S3 service.

That being all aside, how does this Files Forever service work in terms of downloading podcasts? IT DOESN’T!!! Once you upload your file, it gives you a “direct link” to the file. This “direct link” isn’t so direct. (example: https://files.dreamhost.com/10478/MMTT-6a.mp3). It takes you to a Files Forever page, where they want you to “pay” for the file. Dreamhost charges 50 cents and 5% of the transation per purchase. You can charge $0.00, but it says that your charge will be what your hosting cost is per user.

Does this make any sense to anyone? So if it’s free, it still costs YOU $0.03 (as in this example) per download? I can see that getting quite expensive. I’m not even sure if that is accurate, they don’t give good details. Even if it was free, which it might be, you still don’t have a direct link to the file to be used in your RSS feed. You get some stupid link to a service where you have to add it to your cart and download.

I have to say this can’t be further from the way a podcaster would want to distribute their regular content.

I will say, that this might be a good method to use if you are selling episodes of your show, like Keith and the Girl are doing on episode 300 and 354 of a live show shot on film. They are currently using Lulu for this service at a 25% fee per transaction. They are selling the shows for $5 and paying $1.25 per download. With Files Forever, they would be paying a $0.44 one time fee and $0.75 per download. The savings alone with 1 download make it worth it to switch to this service.

They couldn’t use this service for their regular shows, because of the lack of a direct link to the media.

All in all, this service is great if you are planning on selling digital downloads, but for podcasters stick with Libsyn, Switchpod, or accept Podshow’s ads and use them for free.

The Apple site shows that you can use an external drive or an OS X Server for backups. If you could use a program like Jungle Disk or Interarchy to map a “disk” to your mac, you can link it to Amazon’s S3 service.

Amazon’s service seems to one of the cheapest out there for backup needs, as they only charge for what you use at 15 cents per GB of storage monthly and 20 cents per GB of data transferred.

Now the main reason I was thinking about this, is my main mac is my MacBook, and I don’t want to have to plug it into an external HD simply to backup every night, when Time Machine is supposed to be so seamless.

Are there any developers out there that know if a solution like this would work? What would be the estimated cost? Would it allow instant access to recover files? Also, are there going to be solutions from companies offering online storage of your Time Machine files or will it be a part of .Mac (unlikely since Apple says use an OS X Server)? (digg this)
tags: apple, os+x, 10.5, tiger, leopard, time+machine, back, backup, solution, backup+solution, amazon+web+services, amazon+s3, s3, jungle+disk, interarchy, wwdc, offline, offsite, offsite+backup, external+hard+drive, external+hd, os+x+server, os+x+leopard

It costs 15 credits to enable this feature in your account. 1 Credit = $1 USD.

It’s a step into being able to customize your blog anyway you want. Personally, I think that Blogger has a bit more customizing that can be done, but then again I prefer to host myself and have complete control with my WordPress installations.

You can save $50 off your first year of hosting with code: NickStarr or only $5 Setup Fee (Save $45) with code: NickStarr2.

Thanks again Dreamhost for keeping the site going (especially after the digg/gizmodo/ZDNet/Unboxing influx of traffic the other day). Happy System Admin Day!

Well I’m glad I didn’t make it past the free 2 weeks. They canceled my account. Here is the email they sent me:

Dear Carbonite User,

We regret to inform you that you are in violation of Carbonite’s Terms
of Use –> www.carbonite.com/termsofuse
Your pending backup size exceeds that of our average user by at least a
factor of 10. Your account has been disabled temporarily. You must
either reduced your pending backup size so that it falls below 100GB or
cancel your account. If you have already purchased Carbonite you may
request a full refund. Please let us know how you would like to proceed.

Sincerely,

Carbonite, Inc.

So, wait…why does it have to be under 100gigs if it is UNLIMITED?!? Let’s check the TOS:

YOU WILL BE IN VIOLATION OF THIS POLICY IF, WITHIN ANY MONTH, YOUR USAGE GREATLY EXCEEDS MORE THAN THE AVERAGE LEVEL OF MONTHLY USAGE OF CARBONITE’S PAID SUBSCRIPTION CUSTOMERS GENERALLY. FOR PURPOSES OF THIS POLICY, “USAGE” MEANS THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF BANDWIDTH OR STORAGE REQUIREMENTS GENERATED BY BACKING UP YOUR COMPUTER, AS DETERMINED BY US IN OUR SOLE DISCRETION. (I.E., USAGE WITHIN ANY MONTH IN EXCESS OF MORE THAN THE AVERAGE LEVEL OF MONTHLY USAGE OF OUR PAID SUBSCRIPTION CUSTOMERS GENERALLY).

So unlimted is limited to the average of all users? That is false advertising if I’ve ever seen it. The ironic part is the above image is directly from their main page and even trademarked. How can you trademark UNLIMITED, if you aren’t going to offer it?

In my Media Center PC I currently have 5 hard drives (2 x 80 gigs, 120 gigs, 160 gigs, 300 gigs). My Mac Mini has an external 250 gig hard drive, and I have a 100 gig external self powered 100 gig hard drive. THAT IS A LOT OF SPACE, and a lot of that space is used up.

Enter two new-ish online products that I think I am going to test out.

The first is called Avvenu. It allows you to access all of the files on your computer from anywhere, including a mobile phone. It recently was placed 14th on the Top 100 Best Products of the Year by PCWorld. You can stream music files to a Windows Mobile 5 phone….best part it is free.

There is one catch to the free account, if your computer or internet connection has to constantly be connected. If you fear that you can’t maintain a constant connection, you can pay $3.99 a month and they will backup all of the files for when your computer is offline.

Now the $3.99 option is technically a backup, but they don’t list it as that and I am not sure how easy it would be to recover all your files if you lost a hard drive. I think I’ll use the free service.

The second service is called Carbonite (insert Star Wars reference). They specifically are a backup service. It is only $5 per month for an unlimited amount of space for backup.

There are a few things that concern me:

1) Backs up approximately 2GB per day. With having over a terabyte of space to be backed up, this would take 500 days to backup everything I have?????

2) Restores using Windows “My Computer” Restores at 10-15GB per day over DSL or Cable. So restoring a backup would take 66 days?

That is unacceptable. No wonder they offer unlimited space…Now there is a free 15 days of trial. I will try that and see how much is able to be uploaded in 15 days.

Finally, both of these services are PC only. Carbonite says it is in works to develop a mac version by the end of this year.

Feel free to post your results and try these two services.

Well looks like Pirate Bay might be closed for good. They were served a search warrant by the Swedish National Criminal Police. Looks like they will have to fight it out in court.

See ya Pirate Bay, it was nice knowing ya.

Update (June 3): And TPB is back up & running! Hopefully they’re safer

No bandwidth limit. No size limit. FREE!

You can register so you have a way to track all of your uploads. One of the coolest parts is that it automatically writes the code to insert the picture for MySpace, eBay, Xanga, Blogger, a forum or message board, email, or instant messenger. Look out Flickr.

Check it out

P.S. The logo from this blog post is a image I uploaded with their service.