Google Blogger vs. WordPress, Blog Wars Part 2: The Results

So as you know from my first post on this "Google Blogger vs. WordPress, Blog Wars Part 1: The Test", I am reviewing and evaluating several different blog engines, with an emphasis on Google Blogger and WordPress (.com and .org). You can see my previous post to see the different blogs in action. And I'm sure this is going to be a large post, just reviewing the Blogger and WordPress blogs, so I will have a "Google Blogger vs. WordPress, Blog Wars: The Other Options" post following this one where I'll talk about the other blogs I looked at. But for all intents and purposes, it came down to Blogger and WordPress (2 ways).

I wanted to decide which type of blog would work best for my needs and which one I would recommend to others. It turned out to not be quite that simple. Each of the 3 main blog engines (Blogger, wordpress.com hosted Wordpress and self-hosted Wordpress) had some serious advantages and some serious drawbacks. So as it turns out, rather than recommending one above all others, I will give an overview of each, what is good and bad about them and why and for whom I would recommend each particular one.

And to make a long story short, I recommend Blogger for people who want someone else to host their blog, don't want to pay for a web hosting service and/or who want a quick and easy blog that takes hardly any maintenance or technical know-how.

For people who want the all-around best solution, who have their own web host and like to get 'techie' (and know how to do installs, use unix and ftp, etc), it's definitely WordPress from wordpress.org. This is the most flexible, you have the most control over it and your data and it will do almost anything you want if you find the right plug-ins or code. But you have to have the know-how and desire to use it and it is only as good as you make it. And you have to have somewhere to install it like a web hosting service.

Google Blogger: I personally give Google Blogger the edge over WordPress.com hosted WordPress for anyone who doesn't have their own web host and/or wants an easy and quick blog. I think it is good for:

1. Anyone who doesn't have a lot of programming, moving files, installs, bits and bolts of how things work experience
2. Anyone who wants an easy setup with the most features for a blog hosted by the blog provider and the most options for adding plugins and html code easily.
3. Anyone who wants to have their own domain name, but use a blog hosted by the blog provider. In other words, who wants to buy a domain name like say, www.allaboutme.com (costs about $10/yr) but doesn't want to have their own web hosting service where they can put and maintain their own data and blogs (costs about $10/month). Redirecting is free in Blogger, it costs $10? (10 credits) in Wordpress.com
4. You might want to have commercial usage on your blog. WordPress.com's term of service prohibits 'commercial usage' (although its unclear to mean exactly what they mean). It appears OK on a Google Blog (see this post from the Blogger Help group).

Google Blogger has the most features, the most choices and the ability to add html code easily including that using javascript. That means that when you find something you like (like say Odiogo, which is the text-to-speech widget you see at the top of my posts on my google and personally hosted wordpress blog), you can add it to your blog posts very easily. You cannot add Odiogo to a Wordpress.com hosted blog because it doesn't allow javascript. I've run into several widgets that I wanted to add to my blogs, but could not easily do it in Wordpress.com. You can easily redirect it to your own domain name so when they type either your original blog name or your domain name, both will go to your blogger blog. It is an easy, attractive and flexible blog engine. It doesn't have as nice a built-in statistics page as wordpress, but you can use Google Analytics (which is nice, but isn't real time) or any other stats tools like ActiveMeter or Sitemeter or ShinyStat (or I'm sure there are others) to keep track of it.

The one thing that seems to keep a lot of people from recommending Google Blogger is that it does not allow you to back up your posts. Therefore, if anything happened to Blogger, you could lose your data. Also, you can't move the data to another google blog if you wanted to. And looking at the hacks to backup your data, there really isn't a good way to do it. Except...

What you can do is to create a WordPress.com blog and import your blogger data into your wordpress blog. It is very easy in WordPress.com to import posts and comments from other blog engines, basically just point and click. Then you can export the data from your wordpress blog into a file of your own. You can't reload that file back into Google Blogger, but you have all your data and can recreate it in wordpress easily. Which is better than losing it all. And if you use a redirect to your own domain name in Blogger, if something happened, you could change the redirect to point to your Wordpress blog (for $10/credits per year, I believe). It's a work-around, but I tried it and it works just fine.

There is some concern about losing your rank if you move (which I don't totally understand about rank and all yet) but here is a post that explains things you can do to help with that, called "Moving from Blogger to Wordpress without Losing Traffic and Page Rank" (Actually, when I qit blogging on all my blogs and switch to one (clear.bluedei.com), I may have to figure out what all this means.) Also, as I understand, Blogger (as would be expected) integrates very well with Google Adsense, which I gather is a way to make money from your website, with advertising, I guess.

Also, if you start with Blogger, you can choose later to go to WordPress. You can't go the other way because Blogger doesn't have an import or export function. For the life of me, I don't know why.

WordPress on wordpress.com: This is the most middle-of-the-road bet. It doesn't really do anything as well as any of the others (except for import/export) but it doesn't have anything really wrong with it either. Many people would recommend it over Blogger. But it seems that it is mostly because Blogger doesn't provide a way to back it up and my work-around takes care of that, in my opinion. One thing that I really like about wordpress.com is that they provide an easy to use stats page that tells you how many page views you've had each day, which pages were viewed, how people got to your site and what they clicked while there. The one thing it doesn't tell you is who actually viewed your site. You have to use another stats package like sitemeter or ActiveStats to see that. And Google Analytics will not give you as much information using wordpress.com as it would if you were using Blogger because it requires some code to be added that you cannot add to Wordpress.com blogs.

This appeals to all the people that Blogger and would be a better choice if:

1. You really want to be able to export your data and import it back into Wordpress easily, or want to be able to import posts/comments from other blog engines.
2. You plan to go to a WordPress blog that you host yourself and you just want to get started now with WordPress.com and then import your posts and comments into your own hosted WordPress blog.
3. AND you don't plan to have to have commercial usage on your blog. wordpress.com's term of service prohibits 'commercial usage' and you are supposed to use wordpress.org (your own hosted site) if you do...
4. UNLESS you are a big business and want wordpress to host your blog using their VIP Hosting Service that costs $600 to setup and $300/month hosting fee. If you have that kind of money, you can decide if that is worth it. Briefly looking at it, I would think not. For that kind of money, you have many, many options. But if you have that kind of money for a blog, I doubt that you are reading my post :)

As I said before, Wordpress.com has some drawbacks. It is not as flexible as Blogger. There are things you want to add that you can't (but you can in Blogger). You can't use javascript and you cannot have any commercial usage or you run the risk of being shut down. You also have to pay to redirect your blog to your own domain name (this is something you very well may want to do at some point) and for many other things too, like more upload storage space or the ability to customize your css or unlimited users.

Self-hosted Wordpress from wordpress.org: This is, in my opinion, the very best option for:

1. anyone who is 'techie' (understands files, uploading, ftp, unix, etc) and
2. who likes dealing with the bits and bolts, likes installing, maintaining and customizing their own blog and templates and all and
3. who has a host server to put their install on.
4. who wants to be able to do pretty much anything they want to their blog, wants to add all sorts of plug-ins and who wants to really 'pimp their ride'.

Self-host Wordpress offers the most options and is the most flexible of any of the choices. Really, it is about the only option I've found for being able to have total control of your own blog, outside a CMS (content management system) like Drupal, which is extremely more powerful than just a blog engine and requires a lot more knowledge and programming know-how.

Some drawbacks of it are that you have to have a host to install it on (either your own, or from a web service that costs about $10/month) and you have to install and maintain and customize it yourself so you have to have some experience with these things and you have to want to do it or it will just be a hassle and frustrating. And your blog will only be as good and functional as you make it. It comes as basically vanilla and you have to add everything to it.
You also have to be sure your host is stable and has good backups in case something happens. The other blog engines are as stable and well-backed up as google.com and wordpress.com can make them so it doesn't vary so much. But your own host system can be very good or very bad, depending on who you are going with.

Also, I tried exporting from my wordpress.org blog to import into my wordpress.com blog (as if I had a problem with my web host and had to move) and it didn't move my extra pages (like about me and books I am reading). Nor of course, any of my plug-ins or customization. So it is important to save your plug-ins and files. Since they are just files on a server, you can back-up any or all of it any time you want.

Here is an article that talks about the differences between Google Blogger and self-hosted Wordpress from wordpress.org that has some good information. It is part one, but for the life of me, I can't find part two. It still has good info.

So to me, it comes down to Google Blogger for flexibility and ease of use vs. self-hosted wordpress for control and customization. And that is a choice that depends on what you are looking for and how much you want to do.

I will post my reviews of the other, less well-known blog engines in my next post on this subject.

-Susan Mellott

Skype - Their Outage explanation doesn't make sense

We use Skype and we purchased the SkypeOut plan for unlimited calling in the U.S. and Canada and we buy Skype minutes to call New Zealand since my husband's family lives there. We also use it to talk to his brother in Italy and we use the video sometimes too, which is really nice.

I like Skype a lot and have been a strong supporter of Skype. And it has been very reliable. But I've always said that you can tell more about a company when it has problems and you can see how they handle them, than when everything runs smoothly. Every company has problems and there have been many times that what I thought was a good company, turned out to be bad in a crisis.

I took a cruise on Royal Olympic cruise lines to Greece and Turkey and I really liked their itinerary, their food and the ship (not my cabin, but that is another story). But I had problems with my luggage when I arrived and they were unresponsive and when we were to disembark, they had put me on a bus that gave me almost no time to check in at the airport and they refused to allow me to get on an earlier bus. Naturally, I ended up missing my plane and standing in the middle of the Athens airport crying (the trip was amazing, but was so exhausting that my reserves were absolutely shot). And they had just dropped me off at the airport and split. After much problems, I eventually got home.

But that soured me so much on Royal Olympic that I would have nothing to do with them, even though they had interesting cruises and had (after much hassle) offered me $500 towards another cruise. They have since gone out of business and I am not surprised.

Anyway, I think Skype dropped the ball on this and I think their post that they finally issued today on why they had the problems, just doesn't make any sense to me. And not just to me. Just read all the comments on their post - it is up to 320 comments so far. Mauricio Freitas speaks on this in his post Skype Outage caused by Windows Update? Yeah, Right. As he points out: the Windows Updates run at 3am local time. So everyone's PC does not reboot all at once, they would reboot as their own particular local time hits 3am. And by the time the update would take effect in New Zealand where he is, the outage would have already been in affect for a ridiculously long time. Also,Windows Update is delivered every second Tuesday of the month, and has been for the last three years so what makes it cause a problem this time?

The Microsoft Security Response Center blog posted a response to Skype who asserted it was caused by all the PCs rebooting from the Tuesday Windows update and basically said that they were in contact with Skype and there was nothing unusual with this particular Windows update and there was nothing in the update that would have caused any problems. They said "Fortunately, Skype has identified the cause. As Villu Arak notes, "a previously unseen software bug within the network resource allocation algorithm" was the cause, and they have corrected it." That doesn't say anything bad about Skype, but essentially says Skype found a problem in their software and fixed it.

But what does Villu's statement mean? What specifically was the problem and what caused it to occur then and why do they feel it won't happen again? I would not necessarily be able to understand a full explanation, but the beauty of the internet is that there are people who would and who would determine if what they said made sense and would work to fix the problem. But who can say one way or the other when all they say is that it was "a previously unseen software bug within the network resource allocation algorithm". And there is a real concern about it being a P2P network model.

And as MyITForum says in their post on this, "Skype's main development unit is in Estonia. Estonia's infrastructure was targeted by massive denial-of-service attacks earlier this year. This tied together with the fact that a new Denial-of-Service exploit against Skype server software was posted to securitylab.ru just hours ago has created lots rumors about what's really going on."

Infoworld had a very good article called "Skype Users don't Buy Outage Explanation. CSO, the resource for Security Executives asked some specific questions of ennifer Caukin, a Skype spokeswoman. The answers were weak, at best and she said there was no one in the U.S. who could answers the questions today (maybe tomorrow...?). The Skype Journal writes about this and has several thoughts on what Skype needs to do to address this correctly with its users. And Computerworld had a good article asking "Does Skype's Windows update story fly?" (Thanks to Greg of Voip Spider for turning me on to this article.)

I like what Mike McGrath said on his comment to Skype Journal's post: "

The great Outage of 2007 has some important lessons. The most surprising to me is that there are many folks out there that believe you have no right to complain about something that's free. Does that mean I have no right to complain about polluted air?

Still, I like Skype and will continue to use it. I hope Skype takes this opportunity to understand the blogoshere's reaction, good, bad or ugly and make some adjustments that will be good for everyone."

Skype should had sent emails to every user of Skype (especially the paying customers) and continued to update with real information regularly. Now they need to answer the questions still being posed and answer them thoroughly. I expect nothing less of them, or of any company.

~Susan Mellott

Skype - It's not the Problem, it's how They Handled It

Skype appears to be starting to become available. I have been able to access it consistently for several hours. But it is hard to find out how many people are still without Skype and if you cannot get Skype yet, please send me a comment so we can keep track of what the real picture is.

Skype has not been forthcoming at all with what the problem is and there is much speculation that it was caused either by the planned maintenance that took place right before Skype went down, or by a hacker attack or both, through an opening while performing the system maintenance. Here is a good article by PCWorld on why people feel it could have been an attack and it says:

"eBay attributes the outage to a problem in a Skype networking algorithm, but code has been posted to a Russian security discussion forum that could supposedly be used to knock the service offline in a DOS (denial of service) attack.

The code, which was published anonymously, appears to be capable of forcing Skype’s servers to freeze up, said the discussion forum site’s editor, Valery Marchuk, in a posting to the Full Disclosure security discussion list. “Reportedly, it must have caused Skype massive disconnections,” he wrote."

Even though Skype/ebay denies either of these and is blaming it on a "software problem" (could they be any more vague?), they are both not unreasonable scenarios. Skype is only going to quell any rumors if it gives a good and specific reason as to what happened. They can, and obviously would, say whatever they felt was the safest and less likely to frighten customers away. And that is not unusual, that is what any company would do.

Look at 365 Main when the big outage hit San Francisco a couple weeks ago. Rather than saying they didn't have proper power backup systems (UPS), a company representative said "Someone came in sh*tfaced drunk, got angry, went berserk, and f**ked up a lot of stuff. There's an outage on 40 or so racks at minimum." ValleyWag had a good article on this with lots of interesting links.

While Skype is not updating us on the situation, you can go to the original post on the Skype blog about Skype login problems and read the comments to see what is going on with people in different areas. And here is the latest update at midnight GMT August 18 on the heartbeat.skype.com official Skype site. Basically, it says "We are pleased to announce that the situation continues to improve. The sign-on problems have been resolved. Skype presence and chat may still take a few more hours to be fully operational." I wonder if all the sign-on problems are now resolved. There are about 4 million users online at this moment. That is less than usual, but some may not have tried to get back on so it is hard to tell.

Skype has been really reliable and this is a rare occuraence, but I think that Skype did a very poor job of keeping people updated. Many people didn't even know there was a general Skype problem and spent a lot of time trying to figure out why their Skype was not working.

Skype has everyone's email address that uses Skype and they could have easily sent out emails to everyone stating the situation and giving regular updates (and specifics on what they are finding wrong and what they are doing to correct it).

People say "Skype is free so who are you to complain?". Well, many, many people actually pay for Skype, believe it or not, and use it for their businesses, their help desks, their contacts and their phone system. I am a paying customer of Skype. At the very least, they owe it to the people who pay for their service to provide a better communication than just a couple posts on their heartbeat website saying nothing more than Skype is having problems and they are working on it.

According to GigaOm's post on Skype Groans and SIPhone Gains: "The company saw a 400% increase in traffic this morning, with 4 times increase in sales, calls and downloads of its Gizmo Project software. “It is interesting to see that voice callers are transitory,” Michael Robertson, founder, SIPphone wrote in an email."

Yes, voice callers ARE transitory. And people who change to Gizmo Project, or use Jajah or any of the other ways to make calls, very well may not go back. And while you can say that these may not be the paying customers, people who use Skype for free today, are the paying customers of tomorrow. I used it for free until I decided it was good and I wanted to expand what I could do. And I recommend it to other people who do business in other countries.

I am going to wait and see how this plays out before I recommend Skype again. I have always said that you can tell more about a company by the way they handle problems, than by how well they do when there are no problems. Every company has occasional problems, its how they are handled when they happen that makes the difference.

~Susan Mellott

Skype is Back! Well, up and down...

Skype is up again! Well, it is fluctuating on and off but it appears to be getting there. Skype Heartbeat issued this statement at 2:15am GMT saying essentially that they are working on the problem and feel they are making progress (could they say any less and still issue a statement?).

I'm going to bed and hopefully it will be good to go tomorrow morning. And I do have to say that I think Skype is in general a very reliable piece of software. I can't remember it going down before. But the problem is that so many people rely so heavily on Skype now that Skype going down is like losing your entire phone service.

I got an email from someone who said that their business phones were run completely through Skype and they are having to try to contact people (and be contacted by people) completely through email until this gets resolved. But I'm betting it will be fixed when I get up (fingers crossed).

And if people doubt that Skype is a major player and extremely important to people, just because of my posts on Skype being down, My first Skype post was #27 on the Top Posts on WordPress.com today and my All Things Web 2.0 blog was #5 in the WordPress.com list of fastest growing blogs. Ah, the fame! It will be back to reality tomorrow though :) So Thank You Skype for that, anyway :)

Susan Mellott

Skype Down! Many users unable to log in or make calls

We had a big thunderstorm/tornado warning last night and lost power several times so I disconnected my computer. When I reconnected it this morning (and reset a couple of power strips), everything was fine except Skype would not connect. I wondered what was going on, but was just happy to be all up and running except for that so I just let it go and kept waiting for it to connect.

Then I started reading all my "My Yahoo" feeds and I have one for Skype and saw that there were big problems with Skype. Here is an Associated Press article about it from Germany.

Infoword said in its article that "The problem appears to be affecting users particularly in Europe, according to blog postings. Users in the U.S. don't seem to be having problems.". I'm afraid they are mistaken, because I can tell you this U.S. user is having a problem!

According to the Skype blog post called Problems with Skype Login, dated August 16 (today):

"UPDATED 14:02 GMT: Some of you may be having problems logging into Skype. Our engineering team has determined that it’s a software issue. We expect this to be resolved within 12 to 24 hours. Meanwhile, you can simply leave your Skype client running and as soon as the issue is resolved, you will be logged in. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Additionally, downloads of Skype have been temporarily disabled. We will make downloads available again as quickly as possible."

And if you read the Skype blog post from yesterday Aug 15, they had planned to do maintenance and some services would be unable yesterday and then they added an update: "The planned maintenance was completed at 15.08.2007 7:10 GMT and now all systems work normally again." Oops! maybe not... :)

Skype is courting businesses right at the moment and has a lot of marketing going on and this is not going to help one bit. Reliability of phone service is paramount to business and there are several other internet phone systems competing for their business.

And many, many of the individuals who use it really count on it too. It has millions of users and if you read the comments from them, this affects many of them, as of course you would expect. And it is even easier for an individual to download and use another option for now because they can't use Skype and then very possibly, stay with the new provider instead.

I know that a lot of people use and like Gizmo which is another "free phone for your computer". I had thought of looking into Gizmo but was happy with Skype. If the outage goes on with Skype, I will probably install Gizmo just to have an internet phone. And if I like it better, Skype may have lost a customer (paying customer, too). It will be interesting to see what effect this has on Skype.

~Susan Mellott

Television 2.0 - what you want when you want it

A few months ago I discovered an app called Joost that is TV on demand through your PC. At the time it was in testing by invitation only (I finagled one). Now it appears as though you can just sign up for it. Here is what it's website says:

"Joost™ provides a new way of watching TV that combines the best of full-screen television entertainment with the interactive and community benefits of the Internet to bring broadcast-quality video to viewers anytime, anywhere. Based on a state-of-the-art, secure, peer-to-peer streaming technology, Joost can be accessed with a broadband Internet connection and offers video programming to viewers for free. Joost features more than 150 channels with programming across all genres, including: cartoons and animation; entertainment and film; sports; comedy; lifestyle and documentaries; and sci-fi. Channels and programs available on Joost vary by geographic region, based on copyright ownership."

There are a lot of good things about Joost. It has a very good picture and a ton of programming from many, many different television stations. And I believe they have even added some movies. There is a lot to watch! The bad things were that I found it complicated to use as far as changing channels or watching another program. It is not intuitive (to me anyway) at all. I would have loved to just see a taskbar that looked like your basic remote. Why not? Everyone knows how to use one and it would have been much more intuitive. Also, there were some things that I really never have figured out, one being how to exit the app. It sounds strange but I just have not found how to do it without going to my Windows taskbar and closing the app. Now that seems like a problem. If I can't do it, I'm sure I'm not the only one.

The other perhaps unfortunate thing for Joost (but great for us!) is that more and more, the different television stations are providing full episodes of their programs online. Just within the last 2 days I have watched episodes of a martial arts show called Human Weapon that was being talked about on aikido-l and episodes of CBS' Pirate Master, which for some reason our local CBS station has quit carrying (after we got hooked on it and couldn't figure out where it went).

And my sister is a traveling surgical tech and watches most of her TV through her PC because the picture quality is so much better than her TV, especially since she doesn't have cable in her apartment. But she doesn't need it. She can go home after work, whenever that may be and watch her soaps and other shows whenever she wants. She really only needs her laptop and a wireless connection and she has all the great TV she wants.

Good quality TV when you want it. For free. Without a TV. It doesn't get much better than that.

~Susan Mellott

Celebrity 2.0 - Wil Wheaton is Web 2.0

I imagine most of you know who Wil Wheaton is. He is an actor who played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Actually, he has done a lot more than that, but that is mainly how I know of him.

But what makes him interesting is his love and knowledge of technology and his leading edge use of Web 2.0 tools. Here is the wikipedia entry that talks about him and what he has done.

From wikipedia: "After leaving Star Trek, Wheaton quit acting altogether. He moved to Topeka, Kansas to work as a programmer for Newtek, where he helped develop the Video Toaster 4000." (I assume they meant he temporarily quit acting)

Wil was a very early adopter of blogging, creating his site wilwheaton.net (see the wikipedia article on his blog) which is currently being updated (since about last June) and is replaced for now by his blog WWdN: In Exile - Wil Wheaton's not-so-temporary blog. Per the wikipedia article on his blog: "Rather than just a fan forum, it was a place where people could gather to talk about various subjects including movies, music, books, religion, politics, gaming, geocaching, and miscellaneous topics; the original emphasis was on topics of interest to Wil Wheaton and not the man himself." He has entries on his blog dating back to July 2001.

Wil also has written 3 books, and most of the entries are extended versions of his online blog entries. (Take note, bloggers, this is not a bad idea if you have a following).

Also from wikipedia: "In late September of 2006, Wheaton began hosting a Revision3 syndicated video podcast called InDigital along with Jessica Corbin and veteran host Hahn Choi. " Of note: Wil found an error on the wikipedia entry for himself and asked on slashdot for someone to correct it.

Wil also twitters regularly and has just recently twittered on the Comic-Con he attended. Interestingly, he is having a problem at the moment trying to remove people he no longer wishes to follow and is talking about it on twitter. Update: as of about 4 hours ago, he twittered that the problem was a bug in twitter and was fixed by Biz Stone.

Wil also uses flickr and has some very interesting photos. And something I found interesting too that Wil has been doing on buzznet is "What is Wil looking At?" which is sort of a cross between flickring and twittering (flittring?). It looks like he is taking pictures with his phone of whatever he is doing and uploading them. It's a neat idea and I'm sure at some point, people will be doing that just like they twitter now.

And of course, he checks technorati for links to his blog and has a profile technorati for wilw. Here are some other things of his (from his blog):

• My Netscape Submissions (he's a navigator at Netscape News)
• My delicious bookmarks
• Geek in Review
• blogging.la

And there are quite a few interesting videos of him talking about technology on YouTube. Here is one where Wil talks about Podcasting (answering fan's question at reading of his book, Just a Geek)

And there is a lot more that he is or has been involved with. The wikipedia article and his blog has more information.

To be honest, although I knew who he was, I'm old enough that I watched the original Star Trek more than I watched The Next Generation. But I think he seems like an interesting person and certainly one who is Web 2.0.

~Susan Mellott

Web 2.0 - Code4Lib addresses Data Mgmt - When will You?

As you know, I've been concerned about the institutions that host data for Web 2.0 applications. Code4lib, a major library 2.0 site (and everything else hosted on anvil.lisforge.net) was hacked on July 21 and is still not available. They are hoping to have everything back on Aug 1 - we'll see.

And 6 back-to-back power outages hit the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco last Tuesday afternoon causing major havoc with popular web services. 365 Main was down, along with craigslist, Technorati, Yelp, AdBrite and SixApart (including TypePad, LiveJournal and Vox). Many other popular sites such as CNet were unavailable too.

I wrote a couple of posts about these problems and suggested that it is is greater issue earlier - this one on the 365 Main Outage and some thoughts and this one on if you trust online sites to protect your data re: Code4lib.

Well, Code4lib is taking this seriously (as they certainly should) and is hosting a special discussion on August 1st to discuss this. Here is the announcement from their Planet Code4lib website (the only code4lib site currently available).

"You are invited to a special discussion in #code4lib on irc.freenode.net on 1 August 2007 at 1900 GMT about how to prevent this from happening again. We're going to be talking about moving some of the web applications to institutions that are better set up to manage them."

I am thrilled that code4lib is now thinking about this and I hope they can recover all their data in a timely manner. And I hope that other organizations that are heavily web-based will follow their lead and seriously look at who is hosting their data and that they are thinking about ensuring that they know what is in place to protect them.

In the Web 2.0 world, it isn't just about content and collaboration and new ways to interact. Now that these Web 2.0 concepts are coming to fruition and are becoming valuable resources, it is time to look at making sure they are operating in a stable and protected environment.

~Susan Mellott

Web 2.0 - What does an Organization Really Need to Get There?

This was originally written to update my "About Me" page. But it turned into this. These are the posts that prompted this post - MLS and Library Technology, a post on Why require an MLS for library technologist about a post on code4lib regarding an MLS degree for library technology postings (which unfortunately is currently unavailable since all code4lib.org sites are down). And here is an interesting post about an opposite perspective called I Didn't Get an MLS to do That and another about the MLS degree in general called The Embattled MLS in the Library Journal. Which begs another question about whether or not an IT degree should be a requirement for librarians. But that is a post for another day. Anyway...

I said I am a coder. But it is better to say I was a coder. I did love to code. But honestly, I've gotten less interested in it since I've retired. What I really love to do is to listen to what people want to do and then translate that into something that solves their problem and/or enhances their technology environment.

For as long as I worked, I was what was known as a Programmer/Analyst. That means that the majority of my time was spent conducting client interviews, learning the ir processes, creating client/IT teams to discuss what the goal is and then doing a lot of analysis and design to get to where they want to go. The coding, although fun, is the easy part.

I had to take a concept that someone had and translate it into something functional that transcends their original thought and turns it into a working, creative, useful application. You might not realize what this involves. Most of the time, people don't know exactly what they want, they just know they want it. This is actually the best scenario. It is really harder when people think they know how to design what they want. There is a reason why there are special IT analysts/architects. We spent a lot of time and have a lot of experience designing technology solutions.

Just as people are experts in their own field such as financial organizations or non-profits or libraries, so are IT analysts experts at translating what someone else does into a technology based solution. And just as I could not tell you the formulas for calculating statistical risks for life insurance, neither would a risk assessor know how to take what they do and make it user-friendly and technologically innovative.

I think one of the problems organizations are having with going Web 2.0, is that they don't recognize that they need a person who can look at their processes and design a Web 2.0 solution. I've done that for many, many years and I really find it surprising that other organizations (such as libraries) that say they are wanting to have an online presence and to go Web 2.0, don't even seem to realize the need for someone with those skills.

I worked with various functions in life insurance most of my IT life. And I have little to no background in life insurance. It is not my field. But it never needed to be, nor should it have been. There were ample experts in all facets of life insurance that could determine the formulas needed and the results expected, and could take me through the processes. My expertise was knowing how to listen to what people want, to learn how they currently do it and to design a technologically progressive solution that goes beyond what they envisioned and yet still satisfies everyone and is not intimidating. It's really a very complex job.

I have to confess, I find it funny (sad) that the IT positions for libraries all seem to require an MLS (master of library science) degree. That makes no sense to me. There are plenty of people with library skills and knowledge already in a library. What is lacking is anyone who is able to look at the processes from an IT design perspective and to pull all the areas and processes together into one, creative, innovative and functional design.

I also hear the arguments that you can't talk to a librarian or understand a librarian unless you have an MLS. How can that make sense? I've talked to actuaries and lawyers and accountants and life risk assessors and all sorts of people with their own expertise and language and ways of thinking. Why would a librarian or academic or anyone else be any different? I'm not stupid. I think I can grasp how most jobs and functions work and I think I can talk to most kinds of people and be understood and understand them. And I know how to create a team that includes expertise from all areas so that everyone contributes in ways only they, with their knowledge, can.

Next time your or your organization are thinking about hiring an IT person, think about what you are trying to accomplish and what needs you have that you don't have internally already. Then look for someone who can determine where you are, where you are going and how to get there in a way that includes everyone and appreciates their expertise while contributing their own expertise. Be understanding of each other and teach each other. Then sit back, let go of the reins and see how far you can go.

~Susan Mellott

Phone 2.0 - Skype!

Have you tried Skype yet? If not, why not?! Probably because you couldn't think of a good reason to use Skype over your regular phone or cell phone, especially since you can make free long-distance calls with your cell phone, which at one time would have been a good reason to use something like Skype.

I had the same thoughts when my mom and uncle started using Skype and were trying to get us to set it up. I waited quite a while before setting it up, just because it seemed like a hassle and I couldn't think of a good reason for it.

Well, I have changed my mind! I installed Skype for us and surprise! It was a piece of cake to install (really! even for people who are not comfortable with computers) and we found so many uses for it that I am surprised that we did without it before. Here are some of the things we use it for:

1. For absolutely free, we can talk to my husband's brother who is going to school in Italy. And since it is much easier for him to be online than to be near a phone, we can talk to him frequently where otherwise we would not easily be able to get a hold of him. Skype makes it very easy to know when someone is available and online, the symbol for that person turns green.

2. Again free, we can all talk to him in a family conference call where anyone who is online can be conferenced into a call. So we can all catch up on everyone at the same time and we can also make plans or discuss things in a group instead of playing "he said, she said".

3. My sister just moved to Florida for 13 weeks (and will be traveling around the U.S. since she is a traveling surgical tech). She has set up Skype and a web cam at home and on her laptop. So she and her husband can talk to each other and see each other at the same time. When you are away from loved ones, seeing them is very good. Free!

4. And my sister just became a grandmother for the first time. So she can use Skype and the webcam to see her granddaughter and to see her get bigger and all the new things a baby does. It just isn't the same at all to look at pictures. And of course, she talks to Grace and Grace gets to see and interact with her too (or at least hear her voice, she is still a a very new baby). Need I say it - free!

5. My husband's father and mother live in New Zealand. So of course it is expensive to call them. And one doesn't even have a computer and the other is not very computer-literate so she doesn't have Skype installed (and may never). But for $29.95 a year, we can call any regular or cell phone in the US and Canada. And for 2.1 cents a minute (plus a small connection fee), we can call any regular phone in New Zealand. This is much, much cheaper than calling international long distance on our land line.

Having this, we could get rid of our international calling plan and for that matter, we could get rid of our long distance on our regular phone altogether since we can use our cell phone or skype to call national long-distance and Skype for international. Take a look at your phone bill sometime, especially if you call international long distance, and see how much you spend each month for that service. It's not just the per-minute fee, but all the taxes they add on each month, and you only have to make 1 long-distance call to incur a ton of extra charges.

The different countries have different rates but for the vast majority of them, they are considerably cheaper. And of course, if the other party has Skype, it is absolutely FREE!

6. A friend of ours has a business that takes him out of the US regularly since he has offices both here and in England. I think that what he has done is to set up two SkypeIn phone numbers, one for the US and one for England. That way people in either location can call a long-distance number in their own country (so it is free from their cell phone). And he can be anywhere and get the call. He can be sitting on the shore in England and take a call to his US number. To get a SkypeIn number (a number that anyone can call from a regular phone, it looks like a regular phone number), it is $60 a year and includes free voice mail.

Also, even if you live in the US, if most of your business is done in a different country, you can get a SkypeIn number for that country and people can call you on a phone number that is local to them. I have another friend who does a lot of business in Japan and if he is not using this, he really should. I'll have to ask him because it would be really useful for him.

7. Until we had a lightening strike that took it out (!), we had set up a small device that plugged into our phone and into our computer. We have a phone setup that has 1 base phone and then 3 phones you can plug in anywhere, they don't need a phone line. We plugged the base unit into the device and then we could make and take Skype calls from any of our regular phones. We got it from and it worked great. It had lots of great features including call recording, voice mail, routing calls to and making calls from other phones (like our cell phone) and all sorts of neat things. They probably have newer models out now. We bought ours from von-phone.com. This is what we got:

AU-600

Skype Gateway with Remote Calling and Call Recording

1

$38.9

There are also many add-ons to Skype. Here is a list of Skype add-ons to record calls and take messages:

http://www.masternewmedia.org/online_collaboration/skype-recording/how-to-record-Skype-calls-tools-guide-20070624.htm

Note: PrettyMay and KishKish Sam are free

8. We have not used this yet since we haven't had an international vacation lately (and I am NOT happy about that). But since we do normally do a lot of international traveling, we will be able to call people easily very easily, which is not usually the case. And as I understand, we will be able to call any US phone for free, regardless of where we are, because we have a Skype Unlimited US account. And of course, we can call other countries for the regular Skype Out International Rates.

Sean has also taken an old cell phone that doesn't work anymore (was replaced with a different one) that has a wireless card and set Skype up on it. What that lets us do is to connect through the phone using a wireless connection rather than needing a computer. Since wireless connections are becoming ubiquitous really, throughout the world, it's a good way to call people without having to haul a computer around.

I remember when I was "backpacking" through Thailand for a month in 2001 and even then, I could always find a computer with an internet connection, although finding a phone to call from was difficult and a hassle to use. Even in the tiny village of Pai (which took about 8 hours to get to from Chang Mai, riding on a big pickup truck with benches in the back), I could find a couple internet cafes. But there was only 1 public phone in the whole village, in the post office on the farthest end of town. To use it, I wait in this long line, then I had to fill out a bunch of paperwork (and didn't really understand it all so they made me correct it several times) and then I had to dial a bunch of numbers that I couldn't get to work and then there was a time limit of 10 minutes. And I knew I would be going at least a week before I could call him again. ...But I digress... :)

Anyway, as you can see, these are uses that we have found for Skype so far. And I know there are many other great uses. But this made it worthwhile to us.

Do you think it might be worthwhile to you?

~Susan Mellott

Major Web 2.0 Sites Down from Power Outage - They need a lesson from Big Business.

Power Outage in SF Tuesday brought down major Web 2.0 sites.

6 back-to-back power outages hit the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco Tuesday afternoon causing major havoc with popular web services. 365 Main is down, along with craigslist, Technorati, Yelp, AdBrite and SixApart (including TypePad, LiveJournal and Vox). Many other popular sites such as CNet were unavailable too.

Interestingly enough, a "source close to the company" (365 Main) had this to say:

"Someone came in sh*tfaced drunk, got angry, went berserk, and f**ked up a lot of stuff. There's an outage on 40 or so racks at minimum." ValleyWag had a good article on this with lots of interesting links.

This however was unlikely as the cause since the area had been having power outages and clearly their UPS system did not function properly.

The San Francisco website Laughing Squid has a write-up of the power outage .

Here is another informative post from Radar.OReilly.com

Six Apart, in a very 2.0 move, kept everyone updated via its twitter stream.

But the real question is, what happened to their power backups? They should be able to keep running regardless of any lack of power. This is a good post about what 365 had to say regarding its "Credibility Outage" (and basically they made a bunch of excuses).

So again, do you trust your Web 2.0 online providers? Clearly there is a gap between what "should" have happened and what actually did happen. Datacenter 365 Main released a self-congratulatory announcement celebrating two years of continuous uptime for client RedEnvelope, mere hours before today's drunken blackout.. [PR Newswire]

And without extensive testing and backout plans, it is hard to know what exactly would happen if something happened like a server being hacked or a major power outage. I would be more interested in the disaster recovery plans and testing they (or any major player) had done than in what they theoretically think might happen, based on the things they think they have in place.

Coming from a big business background, where their only real commodity is data (in my case, insurance), I have seen and been involved in a huge amount of disaster recovery testing and planning. I remember what they, and other businesses went through for testing for the 2000 rollover and for any number of other potential disasters. September 11th tested their and many others disaster recovery plans. The Stock Market and major banks and other financial firms simply cannot just go down or lose data, for any reason.

But as we move to a Web 2.0 world, companies like 365 Main are now also the repositories of major amounts of data and for many Web 2.0 companies, their business is data, just like financial institutions. It's not small potatoes anymore. Face it, they are big business now and need to act like a big business. I'm sure they are bringing in big business income. So who holds them accountable? I'm wondering if many of these Web 2.0 companies didn't grow from such small beginnings that they may not even be aware of what they need to ask and know from their provider.

And unfortunately, I hear people with a business background being dismissed as "luddites" or "1.0" or "dinosaurs" or just not with it, supposedly not able to comprehend the new 2.0 world. It reminds me of when PCs first came out and I started programming them after having had a mainframe background for several years.

PC programming was wild and wooly. There were no standards, no one documented their code so maintaining it was a nightmare, and people would see how many functions they could put on 1 line of code (more being better in their mind). An "elegant" piece of code would be completely undecipherable by anyone (which seemed almost to be the point) and would have no documentation. Which meant of course, that the code for most of the programs were a mess because no one could figure out what the last person did so they hacked around it. But if you were from a mainframe background, you supposedly could not "understand" PCs and were basically a dinosaur. Well, I know that is a bunch of nonsense because I didn't have any problem understanding PCs and PC coding. What I didn't understand was why they allowed projects and programs to be so sloppy and poorly run and written.

It was a real case of 1.0 technology meets 2.0 technology. In this case, Mainframes vs. PCs. Now it is happening again with Web 2.0. And regardless of what the current "New Thing" (tm) is, one thing they all have in common is the belief that they know more than the people who have used the 'old' technology. But what they don't realize is that they really haven't learned anything at all yet. They have a great direction and new ideas and concepts and great plans, but if for no other reason than that the technology has not been around that long, they don't have practical experience and a background to build on. I'm sorry, but while college gives you an in and a piece of paper to say you are somebody, the real learning starts when you start applying the knowledge in real world situations.

I remember taking a LOMA (life office management) test on data processing and thinking it should be a piece of cake. It turned out to be one of the hardest of the set because I had to learn what they thought the right answers were, not what was actually correct. I had the same experiences in higher education where what was being taught was so outdated that it was really completely wrong and in my opinion, was harmful in many ways to learn, especially if you thought you knew something afterwards.

And this is where I think the 2.0 arrogance is showing. It is a wonderful new way of doing things, but there are many foundations they could and should build on that have already been figured out. They can take what has been done to new and exciting levels, but reinventing the wheel for every single thing is pointless and causes the new technology to be without wheels for a while.

~Susan Mellott

Web 2.0 - Do you trust online sites to protect your data?

Per the web site Planet Code4lib, the entire code4lib.org websites have been rendered unavailable. Here is what was said: NOTICE: The other code4lib.org web sites, and everything else hosted on anvil.lisforge.net, are unavailable. The server was hacked on 21 July 2007 and will be restored in a week or so. Join #code4lib on irc.freenode.net if you need to know more.

I found that out when I tried to follow a link on Technosophia about a post on Library Web Chic about a post on code4lib regarding an MLS degree for library technology postings. Since this is something I have some opinions on and am thinking about for a post, I was very interested in what others had to say. But when I tried to access code4lib.org, the site (and all related sites) were completely down.

Oddly enough, I had also tried to access the site earlier to see what Code4lib conferences were coming up and could not access the site but did not realize the problem until I saw the announcement on Planet Code4lib.

I know what a wealth of Web 2.0 information and collaboration is on that site. This is an interesting test of what happens when something like this happens. Hopefully code4lib has good backups. But what is to guarantee that this site, or any other sites, are able to restore the data the people have entrusted with them?

Are we carefully considering where we put our faith and our important data? Do you know what the backup capabilities are of places where you have your online data? If you host the data yourself, obviously you are responsible for it. But what about all the sites that host data for other people? There are many of them and I'm sure we all use and put our faith in several of them each day.

What if the site that hosts all the Google Blogger blogs (blogger.com) crashed and the data could not be recovered? What impact would that have on everyone? I use Yahoo! mail and there have been a few times that it has been unavailable for several hours (even up to a day or so) and I was really, truly messed up. I had appointments with people and people I needed to contact and all their contact information and arrangements we had made were trapped in my Yahoo! account that I could not access. I was sweating bullets hoping it would come back up before I missed an appointment or something important that someone emailed me.

Granted, it is my responsibility to keep my important data, but how many people don't think of that until it is too late? People are learning and exploring and using the new Web2.0 technology, but is it growing faster and more wildly than can be sustained? Do people even think about things like this? Should they?

~Susan Mellott

Politics 2.0 and the Digital Divide

So politics and the presidential campaign is going 2.0. While I am certainly a strong proponent of this, it does raise the question that this is slanted towards the technologically advanced and/or those who have the means and knowledge to use the Web 2.0 technology. This potentially excludes large segments of the population. Many people who were not raised in the era of computers and PCs do not understand even what is available, much yet how to use it. This would seem to greatly lean towards and garner a younger audience then. And those who are older who do know the technology are probably those who work in technology and/or have had access to and knowledge of all the new Web 2.0 technology. Therefore, this would encompass a primarily white-collar, upper-class population and exclude those who have not had the means or did not work with technology.

I think this is one area where our school system and our libraries play a huge role. Our schools need to provide training and funding for every student to learn and be able to apply technology. And our libraries especially, can educate and enable everyone, regardless of age, ability or economic status. I think this is a direction that libraries need to go and I think they need to get the funding to do it. I don't know that I think the libraries are where the sole responsibility for this lies, nor do I even know if they are necessarily the places that should take this responsibility ultimately. But I do know that if the Public Libraries don't do it, there will be a large portion of the population that will be left behind.

I cannot think of a public organization / facility that could come anywhere near the ability that libraries have to reach and educate the public and to provide access for all people. I know what a difference it has made to have public computers in the libraries and when I see someone who probably isn't sure where they will be sleeping that night, come in and sit down at a computer and and be the equal of anyone else, I am proud of what our libraries can give and this is something that I think we all need to encourage and promote and consider when funding is needed for our public libraries.

I find it interesting that of any or all of the public institutions that we have created, I can really only think of libraries as one that has the capacity to serve the entire public in so very many ways, regardless of age, means, ability or any differentiating quality.

And the only problem that someone might run into with using a library is that they have difficulty getting to the nearest branch. So I think it is very important for libraries to keep their small neighborhood branches, including (especially) those in poorer areas since they can serve a population that perhaps can't easily get farther than they can walk. I do worry that the tendency may be to improve the branches in the richer areas and neglect the ones in the poorer areas, especially since the richer branches may be more used. But the poorer ones may be more valuable. Actually, I remember when the bookmobile used to come down our street. They are no longer running and I think that is a mistake. But this is fuel for another post :)

Anyway, along the digital divide lines, here is a post from the PBS.org teachers blog where after a June debate, the political candidates were asked about this. Here is a quote from that post "After the event, I had a chance to speak with four of the candidates about their perceptions about the digital divide and the role schools might play in bridging it. The lesson learned: it’s hard to get more than a sound bite when the candidates are in spin mode." And here is a link to this very interesting post.

~Susie