The folks at MediaSilo have posted compression specifications for uploading videos to their review and collaboration system.
It’s refreshing to see a hosting service offer guidance on this topic rather than the typical catch-all “upload your MOV file and we’ll do the rest” because “we’ll do the rest” typically results in lousy video.
For years I was disappointed with shared web hosting because of slow page loads or spam blacklisting because another user on the same IP address abused their email privilege.
Server performance isn’t an issue with static HTML pages but it’s critical for PHP and MySQL platforms such as WordPress, Gallery, etc. Dedicated hosting was (and still is) too expensive for my budget but I discovered that a virtual server (VPS) provided the control I needed. With proper balancing of customers per server performance should be acceptable.
Unfortunately my experience with HostForWeb’s VPS wasn’t stellar; decent customer support but the performance was terrible. I compiled a list of wants and needs in search of a new web hosting provider.
The provider I found was Rackforce out of Canada. Mostly self-serve with on-line and telephone support but at $79/month it wasn’t cheap. Tech support was responsive and the server performance was excellent, unfortunately I winced at the fee during the years I was a customer.
Enter the economic downturn of 2009. All good aside $79/month is too much when competitors are offering shared hosting for $5/month. Dare I consider shared hosting again? It must have improved all these years later and the sub-$25 monthly fee was looking attractive. Some things might need to go (VPS and unlimited bandwidth) but others must stay (cPanel, PHP, and MySQL).
I took the plunge with a $24/month reseller plan at HostGator. Middle-tier pricing but a solid feature which met my needs. The cPanel interface is stripped compared to my Rackforce VPS but transferring a Linux hosting account isn’t difficult. A few days later I had everything transferred, DNS updates and all.
It’s been a month and no problems to report. PHP/MyQSL-based services such as WordPress are fast. According to mon.itor.us there is 100% up-time on the domains I’m hosting. Let’s hope I never get mentioned on Digg because the bandwidth fee could bury me. Maybe that’s not a bad thing either.
The Apple Genius didn’t mention it although a thought was swimming around inside my head. Would my software would need to be re-activated or re-licensed with a new logic board installed?
Not many of my applications (that I’ve re-launched) have required me to re-enter my license key; none have complained about already being registered. However, other services are more strict.
My Carbonite backup required a “transfer” operation via their web site which didn’t work. It took four days to re-upload my User folder.
MobileMe was no longer syncing. No errors, just out of date; events added on iPhone didn’t show in iCal and vise-versa. I re-registered my MacBook Pro in MobileMe System Preferences, backed up iCal/Address Book, and re-synced. Fortunately, no data loss or duplicate items.
iTunes informed me the computer wasn’t recognized and needed to be re-authorized, taking one of my five precious slots. Further reading revealed these slots can be reset to zero once you reach 5, thus recovering wasted slots.
That’s the worst of it…so far.
I thought my world was going to fall apart without my MacBook Pro. Not quite.
Maybe it was the rapid turn-around of Apple's repair depot, my iPhone being well connected, or simply because computers and an Internet connection are never far away. Staying in touch with Facebook, Twitter, and email was easy with the iPhone. I had no trouble accessing documents in the cloud via Google Apps.
What, then, was inaccessible to me during my Mac's repair? My most sensitive and critical documents which should not be in the cloud or simply too large for it: finance, photos, music, project files. Another catch… These files need their parent applications to operate properly: Quicken, iTunes, DEVONthink.
Am I really tethered to those apps? Perhaps it's time to look at migrating from Quicken to bank and investment web services or leverage DEVONthink's off-line database archives. But what about the iTunes library? Like iTunes, there are many apps which do not have web-based or proxy replacements. How then to ensure everything is always available? That's a future post.
What did I miss the most during the downtime? iPhoto and Final Cut Pro.
