Burningbird

Web

Web 2.0 way of running a web application

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date May 30, 2007

Question: How do you turn a Web 1.0 application into a Web 2.0 one?

Answer: Pull the plug.

I’ve been involved in comments over at Robert Scoble’s on the Zooomr crash and burn, and make no mistake: the application is down and out, and there is no plan in place to get it back up other than asking for donations. Donations for what? Well, we heard about server problems, but then we heard about RAID controller problems; discussion about the database server failing was followed by discussion that 10TB is not a big enough server. This was then followed by the problem isn’t CPU: It’s I/O because of the static pictures being served. Kristopher Tate doesn’t seem to be a consistent idea of what the problem is. Other than, We think the controller on our main database server is bad.

What?

This is what I dislike about Web 2.0. Kristopher Tate and Thomas Hawk are darlings of the A List set, so therefore these aren’t two men running an application, neither of whom really has a clue in how to keep an application of this magnitude up and going. No, these are two brilliant, far thinking futurists who only need money and help from someone to keep this going, as the troops rally around with “Way to go, guys!”

This application has been down over a week, after it went down once before with a promised rollout, after missing its initial rollout at its own startup party, following on what sounds like other downtime problems. Do you think system users should be concerned? Perhaps even, dare I say it, critical? Not on your life. Being critical is not the Web 2.0 way.

There isn’t a note on the front page about the server being down for the count. No, they’ve pasted some UStream videos where people can watch Hawk and Tate stare at a computer terminal, drink wine with ice, and talk to people who are asking them questions via some form of chat. However, when the server failed this last time, Thomas Hawk did write about the the little train that could.

(I would pay money, real money, for one of you developers at, oh, Citibank, Boeing, John Hancock insurance, or so on to go into your bosses office next time you have problems with your applications, and tell him or her about the little train that could.)

I have had more than my share of problems with hardware in the past, and normally I would be much more sympathetic. In fact, since the application is database-driven and PHP, I believe, I might even have offered help–I’m better at troubleshooting problems than building apps from scratch. Not for an application and a company, though, that keeps billing itself as the place for photo sharing, with such grandiose pronouncements that one is forced to imagine that Flickr is the po’dunk site, while Zooomr is the tasty noodle waiting to be snapped up.

So now people are being asked to give, Kristopher has bills to pay, and Zooomr needs a new server. Personally, before I started throwing money at the site, I’d ask to see a business AND technical plan upfront, including a detailed estimate and listing of hardware Tate and Hawk need, now and for the next six months to a year. But, as Thomas Hawk has pointed out, I’m not really a part of that whole Flickr/Zooomr scene, so I don’t really understand.

True, I don’t. I don’t understand solving server problems by doubling or more the burden on the server; throwing new features on when the server can’t reliably support existing ones; and not putting an honest, blunt, note in the front of the site telling people exactly what’s happened, and how the site, and their photos and data, will be recovered. However, before other startups think to follow this as an example, all I have to say is: don’t try this at home, kiddies. Not unless you’re good buds with the Big Names.

I’m sure the company will get the support they need. After all, they have all sorts of friends among the movers and shakers. That’s the only thing that really matters in a Web 2.0 universe.

Speaking of movers and shakers, I have an idea for the company: Get Mike Arrington and Techcrunch to fund the equipment they need. After all, Techcrunch has been pushing the company as a Flickr buster since the very beginning. As much as Scoble and Arrington have been touting this site, you’d think they’d both be fighting each other for the honor of investing.

Media

Choices: Good Customer Support or Death by Tweety Bird

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date May 27, 2007

I swear, it took every ounce of strength I had to keep from running to the nearest souvenir stand, buying a giant fluffy Tweety tie, and beating that guy to death with it.

Rob Rybarczyk at St. Louis Today.

History

Women soldiers

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date May 26, 2007

From a story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that’s no longer online:

Jennie Irene Hodgers was born in County Louth, Ireland, on Christmas Day in 1843 and later sailed to New York with her family.

But she already was calling herself Albert D.J. Cashier when she turned up in Belvidere, Ill., and enlisted in the 95th Illinois Regiment in 1862. She served as an infantryman through three years and some 40 Civil War battles.

Later, it was as Cashier that she lived and worked in Saunemin, voted in elections, collected her Army pension and moved in 1911 to the Illinois Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Home (now the Illinois Veterans Home) in Quincy.

She became Jennie Hodgers again only when she was transferred in 1913 to the former Watertown State Hospital near East Moline and psychiatrists forced her to wear female attire.

But while she was confined at Watertown, men from her old unit rallied to her defense, convincing the federal Pension Board to rule in 1914 that she could continue to collect her pension as Pvt. Albert D.J. Cashier.

And at the insistence of Saunemin residents, that was the name she was buried under — clad in her Civil War uniform — after her death in 1915.

Interesting story about women who disguised themselves as men in order to fight in wars. About Jennie Hodgers, historians say she may have taken a male persona for economic rather than transsexual reasons:

As an illiterate immigrant girl, Hodgers could have found lawful employment only as a domestic servant. But in male disguise, she could work in factories or as a farmhand. At enlistment, Hodgers gave her occupation as “laborer, farmhand and shepherd.” A private in the Union army earned more than an agricultural worker.

Weblogging

Tiger marketing

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date May 25, 2007

It’s a bit surprising, at times, to look around and realize how many webloggers have been hired by big companies. For the most part, such hiring is based on the person’s skill, drive, and interest, and I celebrate their good fortune and the company’s good sense.

There are occasions, though, where the hiring seems less based on obtaining the person’s expertise and more an effort to ‘buy’ goodwill–to put a ‘human face’ onto the big soulless corporation. Oh not because the company is going to stop being big. Or soulless. It will just seem less so because Jack (whom we love) or Judy (whom we respect beyond all measure) now works for the company. Now, when we say the company sucks, we’re saying our friends suck.

Weblogging is also a popular approach with these companies, as is the use of other social media. Look, it has weblogs. Look, it goes to the ‘unconferences’. Look, it has podcasts, and vidcasts. The company invests time and energy for the ‘greater good’; provides APIs and data web services; even open sources fragments of its technology–all of which demonstrates that the company is part of us. It ‘gets it’.

It’s a familiar approach, too, but I couldn’t figure out what was so familiar about it until it came to me this morning, while I was on my second cup of coffee.

When I was very young, I and my brother used to visit my aunt and uncle in Seattle every summer, and my uncle would take us to the zoo. This was back when the zoo was just starting to add natural habitats, and at the time, most of the animals were still in the large cages with iron bars and glass fronts. It wasn’t a good place for the animals, but it did allow visitors to get closer to the animals.

One summer, there was this tiger that was about a year old that was quite popular with visitors. I can’t remember its name, but I remember the tiger quite clearly. Beautiful creature and very engaged with the visitors on the other side of the glass. What was interesting, though, was how it reacted to me when we visited.

As soon as I appeared in front of the glass, the tiger’s focus became riveted on me. It wouldn’t look at anyone else, and its eyes would track me as I moved back and forth in front of the glass. My uncle even made a comment about it. “Looks like you got a new friend, Michelle”, he said (Michelle being the name I was born with before that damn Beatles song killed any fondness I ever had for it). It did seem, as my uncle noted, that the young tiger really was interested in me.

For the rest of the summer I would beg to visit the zoo and each time, the tiger’s attention would, again, become fixed on me. I grew to have a real fondness for that creature, and would later brag that I had a ‘special’ gift with animals and tell the story about the tiger and its special interest in me. He was my friend, I would tell people, and I really believe it.

Of course, as I got older and a lot less self-centered, or perhaps a lot less self-deceiving, I grew to realize that the tiger wasn’t interested in me because it liked me, or wanted to be my friend. It was interested in me because I was the same size as the deer, bison young, wild pigs, and other beasts of the jungles and forests that served as food for that type of cat.

In other words, the tiger didn’t see me as friend. It saw me as prey.

Just something that came to me today, on my second cup of coffee.