Let me do a little side note, before I start – Mom, you should really read this post! :)
Now, just a couple of days ago I wrote that I decided to try Skype. I downloaded it and installed on my computer. There were few nice things about it that I noticed immediately, but there are so many more that need a second look!
Here we go…
Continue reading More on Skype
I think I’ve heard about Skype from more people than there are in China. I’ve finally decided to download and try it out.
Cross-platform – nice.
RPM package is available for Fedora Core 3, which worked just fine on Fedora Core 4 – nice.
I don’t have not even a single microphone – not nice.
Even if I had, talking would have been difficult most times (office people or kid shouting or sleeping at home) – not nice.
Possibility to call regular/mobile phones from the computer for an extremely low price – nice.
Chat is built-in – nice.
User identification is based on nicknames, not emails (which change) or ugly long numbers (which are impossible to remember) – nice. (My nickname is mamchenkov, by the way).
Without any contacts and without microphone, I can’t really check the functionality or the interface thoroughly.
Do any of you, guys, use Skype? How do I contact you?
If anyone of you guys knows of any good hosting company that offers managed dedicated servers, now is an excellent time to let me know via comments or the contact form. So far the best I’ve found is XLHost.com . I am also talking with Rackspace.com, but something tells me that they will be a bit too expensive – not that I am jumping to conclusions here though.
I’ll need two servers to start with. I might grow up to anywhere from 6 to 20 in the next 6-8 month. Servers should have fast processors (3.0 GHz is ideal). Better even if they will be duel CPUed. 2 GBytes of RAM should fit me fine. I am not yet sure about the storage. I know that it has to be SCSI and that there should be at least 40-60 GBytes of it. Maybe more. I’ll have better numbers later. I will also need a lot of bandwidth. Both incoming and outgoing. 20 GBytes per month is the red line minimum. 200 GBytes per month is something I feel more comfortable with. 2 TBytes will make me smile one extra time.
Software-wise, I’ll need a Linux-only setup. Fedora Core 4 is preferrable, but anything Red Hat labeled should do just fine. I’ll need MySQL 4 or above, perl 5.8 with A LOT of CPAN modules that I’ll need to install myself, python 2.4, and a Subversion client.
What do I want from the hosting company? Well, I want my servers to be available 24×7. That’s the main requirement. Then, I’ll need their help with backup configuration. I’ll have a large MySQL database to backup and a lot of small files (think mail spool and proxy cache scale). Also, I would expect them to manage security updates and fixes for all the servers – I’m really out of time to keep up with that right now.
An additional strong wishlist item would be a LAN interconnecting all my servers. I’ll have a lot of traffic between the servers and I don’t see any reason why I should pass it via a outside network, where it is slow and expensive.
That’s about it.
Oh, the budget line? Let’s say anything within $300 USD.
Are you still with me?
http://30boxes.com is a brand new webservices. The public beta was launched last Sunday.
The purpose of the site is to solve the surprisingly difficult problem of calendaring. What’s wrong with calendaring, you might ask? Well, lots of things. Existing calendaring applications are complicated and clumsy, unpractical for sharing and social interactions, and, well, “traditional”.
http://30boxes.com chose a fresh approach. They have totally and completely minimized and simplified the user interface.
Entering events can be done with as little as filling in one single text field. Application understands human language like “tomorrow”, “yesterday”, and “next week”. You can have “buddies” which is just their term for contacts. All you have to do to add a contact is specify email address. You buddies can have calendars of their own, you can share calendars and even use the system to send invitations and confirmations/denies for events. You can track a lot more information about your buddies too – Flickr photos, LiveJournal entries, MySpace blog, and any other RSS feed. When there are new items – you get a small icon on the appropriate day of the calendar and can quickly check what they are up to.
The interface looks very clean and works pretty fast. It’s also based on AJAX technology which allows you to see updates without refreshing the page – feels nice.
Check it out – it costs nothing, and can do a lot for your organized life!
One of the thoughts that I had recently, due to a couple of projects that I am involved in:
It is practically impossible to comprehend the size of the web until there is a need to download and parse a large part of it.