The History of Downloading Diggnation Early

Early in Diggnation’s lifetime, Revision3 made the decision to offer a subscription model. Paying member (cheapest $50/year) would receive Diggnation on the usual Saturday and non-subscribers would receive Diggnation on Tuesday (has recently been changed to Monday due to new shows). Diggnation viewers supported Revision3′s decision because at the time subscriptions were their only source of income.

A few weeks after announcing the subscription model, sites cropped up offering Diggnation for free on the day of release. This was allowed due to Diggnation’s Creative Commons license, and Revision3 unofficially allowed it with the condition that the number of downloads be reported to them.

All was good until about a month ago. Diggnation publicly denounced downloading via these sites, claiming it hurt their advertising revenue. The most popular download site, Diggdown (recently taken offline), thought they were in the clear for reporting download numbers to Revision3. It became apparent this was not the case when they received a Cease and Desist letter. The Cease and Desist cited Diggdown for Digg trademark infringement and hosting works of Revision3 illegally.

Diggdown willingly changed its name to Iggdown, but disagreed with hosting Diggnation illegally. After all, Iggdown reported their download numbers to Revision3 and Diggnation was distributed under Creative Commons. However, the problem was not Iggdown reporting the numbers; the problem was Revision3 could not trust the numbers. Iggdown then closed its doors in fear of a lawsuit.

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

I would sympathize with Revision3 if their subscription model was their only source of income, but it’s not. For the last year Diggnation has been sponsored by well-known (and most likely well-paying) sponsors such GoDaddy, Microsoft’s Zune, Dolby, and Audible.com. Not to mention they recently received another round of venture capitalist funding totaling $8 million. Diggnation is obviously doing well without the subscription revenue, which leaves me to wonder why they are still pushing for subscribers.

From a viewer standpoint the subscription model is not worth it. For around a dollar an episode, subscribers receive Diggnation two days early. Every once in a while a subscriber-only bonus short is thrown in there, but that hardly happens enough to even consider that a membership perk. To further deplete the usefulness of the subscription model, Diggnation does not even discuss this week’s stories the majority of the time. There is usually a few days time-lapse between recording and publishing, making stories old news by the time of release. So, unless a subscriber plans to watch Diggnation on Saturday night every week, an extra two days is hardly worth it.

What’s Really Wrong With This Picture?

At this time, it’s apparent Revision3 still is not successful enough to sustain itself, which is why they are being funded by venture capitalists. So, I can see why Revision3 is not willing to sacrifice their subscription revenue. However, look at the big picture. Venture capitalists are investing in Revision3 with hope that the company becomes successful enough to make them money. For that to become a reality, Revision3 needs to grow. What’s going to help them grow the most? Advertising. Advertising is where the big bucks are. That’s why television has advertising (you only pay to get the television signal in your house), and that’s why magazines are practically given away (Kevin Rose even said this).

To make the advertising model successful, Revision3 needs viewers. The very same viewers who are being turned away by the subscription model. Instead of downloading Diggnation on Revision3′s servers where they can monitor the downloads, viewers are downloading from other sources. Those sources are not reporting the numbers (or can’t be trusted), therefore causing lost revenue. Advertising and subscriptions cannot coexist; one must be chosen over the other to make the maximum amount of income.

A Sign of Change

Thankfully, Revision3 is starting to see the light. Kevin Rose announced during an episode of CrankyGeeks that eventually the subscription model will disappear. Sure, he only said it after John Dvorak caught him in a string of excuses, but at least it’s a start. A more promising move comes in the form of Revision3 naming Jim Louderback as their new CEO. He has worked in the technology journalism field for years and wants to see podcasting become a profitable medium. With a little luck, he’ll bring a change of pace in the coming weeks.

I’m now regretting updating my MacBook, as the sound is enough to drive me insane. Hopefully Apple fixes this issue soon, but to ensure they do, I’m asking for your help. If you’re affected by this new audio power management change, send Apple a quick feedback message. The more people who submit feedback, the more serious Apple will consider this issue. In the mean time, I recommend constantly playing iTunes with the sound muted. It’s not the perfect solution, but it allows me to keep my sanity.

Following in the footsteps of 9rulers Matt Brett and Ben Gray, I have packed up and left Media Temple’s Grid Server for A Small Orange. While I’d like to have faith in Media Temple’s Grid Server, I simply cannot. I have tried and tried, but no matter what I do Media Temple continues to fail me.

The Promise

My story starts out back in January. After roughly two month of undergoing constant downtime, I finally called it quits and moved my site to a A Small Orange. Just as I was settling in with my new host, Media Temple posted its infamous Anatomy of MySQL on the Grid post. A (mt) rep contacted me and convinced me to switch my site back.

I was promised that the Grid server would improve, and the rep claimed it was only a matter of time before (mt) was back to its old self. Coupled with (mt)’s promise of MySQL containers, I believed the hype. I thought I only had to undergo another month of bad service before it was smooth sailing. I could not have been more wrong.

GPU Issues

In addition to the constant downtime that was still occurring, (mt) decided to start tracking GPU usage in late January. Sure enough, my site was over the limit, and I had to pay extra. At first I was not mad at all. I wanted to know why my site was consuming so much GPU. So, I contacted (mt) and inquired about my GPU usage. The support representative told me they have no way to track individual GPU usage and couldn’t tell me what was generating my overage.

Upset, I took things into my own hands and optimized my site like mad. I cached nearly all database calls and removed scripts which I deemed unnecessary. By the middle of February, the results were clear; I was still going to go over my monthly GPU allowance. Frustrated that I had run out of ways to optimize, I decided to suck it up and wait for the MySQL containers. Surely they would reduce my GPU usage. Besides, the release was only a couple of weeks away.

MySQL Container Beta Testing

Right before (mt) announced MySQL containers were delayed, I received this email:

A quick note to say you are on our list and we’ll get you provisioned soon. Looking forward to your feedback (good and bad – all is welcome)…

Would love for you to blog about this private beta, but we are asking everyone to be in stealth mode for a little while longer. Thanks again for signing up!

I was thrilled to have the opportunity to beta testing the MySQL containers. However, that excitement quickly dampened. After waiting several weeks and sending a number of emails, not once did Media Temple contact me. Furthermore, I noticed in the gibberish that accompanied my beta invite was this little note:

He has three posts about (mt) on his blog and one is pretty negative. He may still be a good candiate who could give us some positive blogging. This guy has a ticket in regarding MySQL problems and his ticket was attached to the MySQL incident. He has also received gpu overage courtesy emails and may have exceeded GPUs in previous periods. Doesn’t appear to have been tahitied.

So, it’s positive blogging you’re after? What a great way to enhance your image. Forget about the person who you’re looking for positive feedback from.

The Last Straw

Anyway, the MySQL containers launched and of course I never got to beta test them. However, being forgotten in the beta program was the least of my anger. Media Temple decided to charge for the originally promised free containers. The containers are of course priced way out of my pricerange with lowest container costing more than my hosting.

Update: Jason Mcvearry of Media Temple claims the new SmartPool v.2 system will give Grid customers a dedicated 64MB MySQL container should they require one in a burst of traffic.

I’ve been known to tolerate a lot of crap, but Media Temple just dished out way too much of it. Between the constant downtime (which is still going on), being charged for something I have no control over, and the horrible customer service, I’ve just had it with Media Temple.

Update: April 14, 2007

I’m back on Media Temple. I guess I didn’t completely loose faith in Media Temple after all. They contacted me and helped me work through my issues. If you think I’m a hypocrite, I understand. If you don’t, thanks for understanding.

Update: April 19, 2007

For those of you who are having trouble with GPUs, read my follow up post. I have some helpful tips to lower your GPU usage.

This past week I decided to join great bloggers like Paul Stamatiou, Derek Punsalan, Alex King, Glenn Wosley, Matt Brett, and James Mathias and purchased myself Logitech’s MX Revolution. I was planning on giving this mouse a thorough review, but judging from the number of bloggers who own this device, I think that’s been covered. Instead, I’m just going to go over my basic impressions of the mouse.

The Difficult Packaging

First off, no one seems to mention this; Logitech packaged the MX Revolution in the worst packaging they could find. Opening up my MX Revolution took nearly fifteen minutes due to the layers of cardboard and tape inside the box. The worst part of the whole ordeal was getting the mouse out of the airtight layer of plastic. Logitech gives instructions, but the instructions were not much help. I had to use excessive force on the plastic, praying that my new $100 toy would not go flying across the room.

The Horrible Mac Driver

After fighting my way through the packaging, setup was simple – until I had to install Logitech’s driver. While OS X recognizes the basic mouse functionality out of the box, all the extra buttons do not function without a driver. Logitech provides a Mac driver, but it’s the most horrible driver I’ve ever used. I found the Logitech driver does not recognize the receiver if it’s plugged into a USB hub, forcing me to plug the receiver directly into my MacBook. After recognizing the receiver, I had to configure the mouse quickly since the Logitech Control Center crashed often. Configuring it quickly was out of the question as any new application profiles had to be configured completely from scratch. Yeah, no default configuration here. Oh, I didn’t even mention LCC installs Unsanity’s Application Enhancer but hides the program from use. That would not be a problem if APE stopped recaching drivers on every reboot, and Logitech uninstalls APE with the driver.

As you can probably guess, I hate Logitech’s driver. After realizing my mistake, I saved myself the trouble and purchased SteerMouse. SteerMouse recognizes the receiver no matter what USB port I plug it into and does not crash or install extra bloat like Logitech’s driver. SteerMouse also offers greater flexibility in configuration, allowing me to assign any button to anything. Not to mention it natively supports the MX Revolution, giving me full control over the MX Revolution’s scroll wheel. Yes, I know the software costs extra and Logitech should provide a working driver, but I paid $100 for this mouse. I might as well spend a little extra to get the mouse to function correctly.

Conclusions

Barring setup, this mouse truly is wonderful. I know that’s hard to believe after my long rant, but I only need to setup the mouse once. The MX Revolution feels comfortable in my hand, the redesigned scroll wheel is natural, and the wireless functionality offers no noticeable lag. As far as battery life, I seem to get 4-7 days of battery life. The included docking charger is simple to use, making recharging the mouse not an issue. As far as productively, I setup my mouse identical to Matt Brett, which offers me lighting fast application switching.

Sure, the MX Revolution is expensive, but if you spend as much time on a computer as I do, investing in your number one input device is worthwhile. Just don’t make the same mistake I did; ditch the Logitech Control Center drivers before they cause you pain.

In the last several months, there has been a number of highly promoted Mac application giveaways and such. There was My Dream App, MacHeist, MacAppADay, and the iClip 4 / Disco promotions. While most of these promotions have been run by different people, they all seem to have a common theme. They generated a ton of hype then disappeared, leaving followers of the events wondering what happened.

Let’s take My Dream App for example. The site began as a voting platform for your favorite future Mac shareware application. After the voting was over, My Dream App was supposed to stay active with constant updates on the development process. Well, guess what? That didn’t happen. Since the contest ended, we’ve only seen a few minor updates, and still no applications.

Then we have MacHeist, another promotion run by the My Dream App crew. The site was created to have participants solve mysteries in exchange for free applications. After the six heists were completed, a bundle would go on sale offering great software at a cheap price. Can you guess what went wrong? They only got to five heists instead of six, and promised that the sixth heist would run parallel with the bundle. Then they promised shortly after the bundle, then during Macworld, and now in the next few weeks. Don’t forget, there are still a number of participants who had transaction troubles and were promised an application in exchange. That still has yet to happen. Seems like the real heist is the way the creators are handling it.

Don’t forget about MacAppADay, a site which promised a free application everyday during the month of December. Remember what happened? The site never was able to offer an application everyday, and the grand finale was a flop. While the users technically never lost anything, the site still turned out to be a waste of time.

Finally, we can’t let two highly promoted application get away. iClip 4, which has been in development for over a year, still has not been released. To be fair, the application will be released on Monday, but that doesn’t make up for the months of broken promises.

Then we have Disco. Disco had promised a beta version before Christmas with the release of the final version before the end of the year. Then they promised the final version out sometime after New Year’s. Now they’re claiming it won’t be until February 11th. Kind of annoying considering people have payed for the application.

I don’t know about you, but with all these failures, I find it really hard to trust these promotions anymore. Sure, the hype always looks good, but when the dust settles the results aren’t. I just wish the people running these promotions would be more upfront with their audience. Let us know when things go wrong. Let us know when something takes longer than expected. We’re an understanding group, you just have to tell us what the problem is and we’ll settle down.

While I’m no fan of HTML mail, the occasional use is tolerable. If you have to spice up your mail, HTML and CSS is the best way to go. Since not all email clients support HTML mail, CSS offers the ability to degrade to plain text. Not to mention a CSS-based email is much lighter than one filled with tables and other HTML styles.

As you may have guessed, one of many weaknesses of Word’s rendering engine is CSS. The crippled engine only supports basic CSS styling with little to no support for positioning or other layout properties. By using this rendering engine’s functionality in the most popular email client, Microsoft is effectively crippling CSS email designs for the entire internet. No one is going to send a CSS-based email if only 10% of the recipients will be able to view it.

While I can’t complain about the security benefits of the switch, I can about the rendering engine choice. Sure, Outlook has used Word to render composed email for years, but that doesn’t mean that received mail now has to suffer the same fate. And let’s not forget, Word isn’t exactly top class in security either. Microsoft could have chosen a better alternative and they know it. I just hope people continue to stick with CSS-based mail or fall back to plain text. I’m not looking forward to receiving tables in my email again.

Alright to be honest, I did enjoy the keynote. I enjoyed every moment of the keynote up until the last moment. When they announced that the iPhone would be a widescreen iPod also, I was practically foaming from the mouth. However, when the Steve Jobs walked off the stage with not one mention of Leopard, the foam dried up quickly and the excitement level dropped.

Sure, the Apple TV and iPhone are amazing; it’s just they’re not obtainable now. The Apple TV doesn’t come out until February and wasn’t a surprise to begin with, while the iPhone won’t be released until June and is way out of my price range anyway.

Still, that’s not main reason I’m disappointed. I’m disappointed because the keynote has always been about the Mac. Steve Jobs always tells the crowd about Mac sales. He always talks about how well the Apple stores are doing. He always releases a new iLife and iWork during the keynote. And, he always has a new Mac or something OS X related to show us.

This year we got nothing. Nada. Not even a sales report. Kind of hard to swallow when Vista is being released in three weeks. You usually use the time before your competitor’s product release to talk about how good your product is. Why people should hold off on buying the competitor’s products and wait for yours instead. But, no. Steve doesn’t even mention that Leopard exists.

If Leopard isn’t ready to be shown yet, then Apple should have at least talked about iLife and iWork. Both of those application suites are something which can enhance Tiger and make new Mac more appealing. The suites also have the benefit of giving people something to buy right after the keynote; a tradition since the beginning.

Maybe I’m just crazy, but I was really hoping that Apple would have shown some attention to their business’ main product, the Mac. Maybe they’re still going to do that sometime during Macworld, or they figured the iPhone would be so popular it would overshadow anything they mention about the Mac. Either way, it doesn’t make me happy and leaves me wondering how Apple is going to compete against public enemy number one, Vista.

I think what’s annoying me the most is the lack of response from Bloglines. There is nothing noted anywhere on their site that they’re experiencing technical difficulties. On top of that, they’re not responding to my emails reporting the issue. It becomes very frustrating when there is a major issue and you’re not receiving any acknowledgment that there’s a problem. All I want them to say is “We’re experiencing some updating issues with feeds. Give us XX hours and things will be back to normal.” Is that too much to ask?

All that for what? A chance at buying a PS3. You’re not even guaranteed the system. Sure, if you score one you’re going to make a ton of money; but considering most stores are only getting around 10 systems, I’d hardly consider it worth it.

So, what’s your take on waiting for one? Do you think the payoff is worth it? I have a friend who’s contemplating heading over to Target (they’re not letting the lines form until 10pm) in hopes of a big payoff. Personally, I think he’s insane considering the weather is high winds with massive amounts of rain. I guess I won’t be calling him crazy if he walks off with a $2,000 profit, but until I see the money in his hands, he’s a lunatic in my book.

This time it has to do with Digg’s algorithm. The recent changes have left top users alienated. Their submissions are becoming meaningless, and some are even getting banned without justification. A long time visitor of my site, Smaran, who is currently ranked 28 on Digg, has expressed concern in his Newsvine column. I agree with him completely; if the algorithms are being changed to prevent the same old submitters from having articles promoted, what’s the point? Digg offers no monetary compensation, unlike Newsvine, making ranking (number of promoted articles) the only thing fueling users’ submissions.

From an outsider position (I rarely submit Digg articles), Digg has changed noticeably since the algorithm adjustments. Less articles are being promoted, and it’s taking longer for breaking news to reach the front page. This is not something I’m enjoying. While there was a lot of crap reaching the front page, there also was a lot of gems making the front page. Now the gems are harder to come by since there are less promoted articles.

I’m sure just like last time, changes will be made, and people will be happy again. However, I have a feeling it will be a different set of top Digg users. Maybe that’s not a bad thing, but I believe the top Digg users should be rewarded for their contributions. They’ve dedicated their time sorting through the crap of the internet; Digg should reward them by giving them the only thing they ask for, acknowledgment.

Has this ever happened to you? It doesn’t have to be as dramatic as my incident; just a simple case where you thought someone was talking to you, and they were really on their phone. Maybe I’m crazy, but I run into these misunderstandings all the time working at a supermarket.

These incidents seem to be occurring more and more with the introduction of Bluetooth headsets. Sure, occasional conversation confusion arose long before Bluetooth headsets, but the headsets are making the problem worse. They’re getting smaller and smaller, making it harder to distinguish if the person is talking to you, talking on the phone, or downright crazy and talking to themselves.

I just wish there was someway to identify if a person was talking on their phone without having to hunt for a Bluetooth headset. Maybe a universal signal, or some super-bright LEDs radiating the area around the Bluetooth headset. I know, people can have some manners and stop talking on their phone in front of people. Like that will ever happen!

To make my life easier when switching to desktop mode, I came up with a cleaver USB setup. I was able to reduce the amount of USB cables which needed to be plugged in by running everything through the hub in my Apple USB keyboard. When getting setup, all I would have to do is plug in my keyboard which contained my mouse and a powered USB hub. The powered hub contained the rest of my USB gadgets. While this setup certainly worked, I didn’t take into consideration what was going on behind the scenes, which came back to haunt me tonight.

Tonight, I was setting up a new external hard drive, and noticed transferring data took forever. I was trying to copy an episode of Family Guy to the drive, and it took around 30 minutes to copy. Something didn’t seem right, considering it was a local drive. After a number of performance tests brought me to the conclusion that the drive was only operating at 2 Mb/s, I began to troubleshoot why the drive was performing that slow.

Thankfully, my first idea was right on the money. I opened up System Profiler and checked out the specs on the drive. It was only reporting a transfer speed of 12Mb/s. Not what I wanted to see. I then began going through the chain of USB devices, checking their speeds along the way. Wouldn’t you know that the Apple keyboard’s hub only supported a transfer speed 12Mb/s. While that’s fine for an additional device such as a mouse, I wasn’t going to get far with my new external drive.

A few minutes later I was reconfiguring my setup. This time my powered USB hub is the first device, with my keyboard feeding into that. Now all my devices receive their full intended transfer speed, and I still have the convenience of only having to plug in one device.

So, what does this all mean? Just because something works, doesn’t mean it’s the best possible method. This applies to everything from coding to the real life. Double check your work and consider alternatives before signing off on the first thing that comes to mind. It will save you a lot of time in the end.

I’ve personally been running the Firefox 2 nightlies since shortly after beta 1, and things just aren’t right on Mac. I could go into a long spiel, but instead I’m just going to present you the visuals and let the images speak for themselves (click images for larger versions).

This first image is the current state of the default Firefox theme on Mac:

Here’s the same theme on Windows:

Now, here’s what the Firefox team is currently aiming the theme to look like on Mac:

Finally, this is the proposed final theme on Windows:

I don’t know about you, but I think the Mac theme is coming off looking very XPish, and I can see why. Right now Mozilla is in a heated battle with Internet Explorer. IE7 went through a complete graphic overhaul, and Mozilla is just trying to keep up with IE. That’s fine for Windows, but Mac Firefox users should not be feeling the effects of this battle. Instead, Mozilla should be focusing in competing with Safari on Mac, not Internet Explorer.

If this bugs you, help change this. The Firefox team is supposedly listening to user feedback during this beta testing phase; so if you don’t like something, let them know! There are tons of bugs related to the Mac theme currently stalled in Bugzilla. Put you support behind them and Firefox 2′s theme might not come out looking so crappy.

While the new features are certainly welcoming, I’m not completely thrilled with the way the features are implemented. First of all, Google Calendar has its own icon, which creates more menu bar clutter. Luckily, the icon can be removed, but that disables all notification support for Google Calendar. It would be nicer if Google combined both the Gmail and Calendar icons into one icon, or provided the option to still receive notifications with the icon disabled.

Next, I’m not too fond of the notification window. It’s big, it’s bulky, it doesn’t scale to its contents, and it just looks plain ugly. Thankfully, the notification window can be disabled. It’s not that I don’t want a visual notification; I just don’t want an ugly blob taking over my screen.

Hopefully, the person behind Gmail+Growl creates a new version for Google Notifier. Maybe once I get Gmail+Growl (Google+Growl?) installed I’ll feel better. It’s the notification issue which is bugging me the most right now. I’m sure I’ll eventually get used to the additional menu bar icon, but until I have a Growl notification, I won’t be happy.

If you follow the tech industry closely, like I’m sure most of my readers do, you know the Blu-ray does have some significant technological enhancements. The quality of the video is enhanced, the disks have more storage, etc. However, that means nothing to average person. Most people are satisfied with the quality of DVDs now, giving them no reason to look for better quality movies.

So, when Sony chooses a name that doesn’t say anything about their product, consumers aren’t going to know what the heck it is. That’s a problem when you’re dealing with a future product whose technological advances are miniscule to the average person. HD DVD has it right. They picked a name which says something about their product. Even if you’re completely satisfied with current generation DVDs, if you purchase an HDTV and you see disks called HD DVDs, you’re going to associate better quality with them. The name Blu-ray just doesn’t do it.

Does that mean that Blu-ray is going to fail? It depends what you classify as failed. The format certainly will be around for years to come, I just think that Sony is going to have a difficult time getting people to switch to their player. For the first year or two, I think the only reason why most people will have a Blu-ray player is because of the PS3. Sony knows that too, but they’re hoping that people will slowly start to buy the disks then, and eventually buy standalone players. While that may work, Sony certainly has a long road uphill to prevent Blu-ray from following PSP’s UMD format.

Now some applications are smart, and either include an alias to the Applications folder or show the Finder’s sidebar in the DMG. Why can’t all DMGs be like that? Who’s to blame? Is a DMG’s default view missing the Application folder, or do developers just like trimming down their DMG windows? Whoever is at fault, something needs to be done about it. I know it sounds stupid, but I’m just sick of going that extra step just to drag and drop an application.

After reading this message I began to look into what exactly I was agreeing to. After looking over the Premier terms of service, I found that there is a service charge associated with a Premier account. On every payment received, PayPal gets 2.9 percent of it. I wasn’t too pleased with that service charge, but what was I going to do? Tell the buyer that his money wasn’t good? I felt that I had to sign onto this Premier account, so I did.

Now, I always knew that PayPal collected a fee somewhere, but always thought that fee occurred when withdrawing money from your account. After thinking about it, I have a feeling most PayPal users have Premier accounts, and I’ve just been the odd one out. I’ve done about twenty PayPal transactions, and I must have just been lucky that I never had someone pay with a credit card. Then again, maybe I got shafted. However, considering I’ve always been pleased with PayPal, and haven’t complained about the high fees like everyone else online, I’ve most likely been the odd one out.