Leo Laporte Quits Facebook Video RAW AVI
Leo Laporte Quits Facebook Video RAW FLV
Leo Laporte Deleting Facebook on Live TWiG
The internet is huge. And it’s really volatile. Millions of people visit millions of websites each day. Digg, Reddit and more create a world in which a small site can get slammed into errors and unable to serve users. And it’s growing.
Take Twitter, one of the most successful web social products on the internet. Twitter goes down often. It’s not because they have one server. I’m sure they have several dozen in different locations (they wouldn’t comment on the statistics).
Digg constantly takes down sites. So do other ‘article discovery’ sites. It has become a normal occurance to use rorrim or Google Cache in lieu of a site going down. This is common.
But the thing is, it’s not completely horrible. People come back. Word spreads. And the next thing you know, people are writing blog posts about your blog going down. It’s a compliment. “Oh, my site just got crushed by Reddit,” “Awesome, dude!”
So if it’s not such a bad thing, why am I writing about it? Well, we need a solution. This issue is just going to get bigger and bigger, because more and more people are going online for more than to check their email. Because I want to be able to check out someone’s Twitter account when I want to. Because there are solutions.
I could say that more people need to use Squarespace. After all, Squarespace is an amazing site and blog creator that’s designed to keep your site up no matter what. With virtual server space, the guys at Squarespace automatically give you more bandwidth when you need it.
But that’s an utopian idea. And, not everyone wants to fork over $8 a month to keep their website up. I could also say that more people should be using Blogger, and WordPress.com to host their blogs. But even that can be volatile.
No, the solution does not lie in which server or service you choose. It actually lies with the regular computer user. Yes, the change needs to happen in the browser. Opera has gotten close with its browser that hosts your website for you. But it’s simpler than that. Not one server or computer should host a website. Not one service should be relied on as a backup for the internet. It should be every computer.
What I’m proposing is a torrent-like system of extra website hosting. Built into browsers should be the capacity to visit a site, download the webpage you just visited into a secure location on your computer and be able to push the webpage to other computers with the same browser capacity installed.
This would be demanding. It would also have to be set up in the most secure fashion. And it might not even be able to work with some sites, especially ones that use log ins and massive secure databases. But can you imagine it? I can:
Twitter goes down, again. But when you visit the site, a small pop up notifies you that you are grabbing @joeschmoe’s tweets from another computer, which downloaded the page 5 minutes ago when Twitter was up. Nice.
All of a sudden, the world’s internet infrastructure takes a huge load off of individual servers and lets computer users help each other out. Similar to Folding@Home, or The Pirate Bay, this would give the power to computers around the world.
This is a radical idea, and one I hope to see in the future. I hope that it can be built well enough so that a stable internet is not far away. Because technology is amazing. We owe it to ourselves to enable the ability to spread it.
Andres Max Salmeron is the writer behind Squealing Rat, Lone Iguana, Empty Quotes and more. Find him on Twitter. You can also support him by donating to The Jimmy Fund Walk or just clicking one of the affiliate links here to give him some more storage space.
I’m also looking for collaborators to work with me on other, less intensive web projects, so contact me for information if you’re interested!
Due to an odd error on this blog, we’ve had to wipe squealingrat.org/word. Sorry about that. Fortunately, some of the good stuff has been restored, and we’re on track to restore even more soon. In the meantime, stay tuned! Thanks.
MOVED TO TED.SQUEALINGRAT.ORG
TED is one of the best knowledge resources on the web. It includes wonderful, educational talks that provide insight and charisma to you day. The only issue- there are way too many to watch. Below is a list I have made of the best TED talks. Watch a few at a time. Enjoy!
New:
More:
Screengrab says it all. Check it out at youarethetechnology.com
How to Upgrade to WordPress 3.0 Even if You Can’t/Don’t See the Upgrade Button: It’s actually really easy: simply go to yourwordpresssite.com/wp-admin/update-core.php and press upgrade. Voila!
In a recent instance, I discovered a horrible flaw in iWeb. I wanted to separate a site from all of the sites I created, so I duplicated the iWeb file, and then began to delete sites individually. Much to my surprise, my site was also deleted from its server as well as the iWeb file. Here’s the fix:
A Guide to the Internet For Your Business at Lost in Tech. This might be one of my favorite articles, just because it is so helpful for businesses.
