Syakhir Jaafar

First, preview of the 3 services:

• LastPass is a Cloud based password manager. The auto login and favorites are awesome. Though for me, the killer function here is the plug-ins for most major browser.
• WordPress.com is a blogging platform (like Blogger, only better). A child of my favorite Automattic. You don’t need to blog there to take advantage of it. You just need an account.
• IntenseDebate is a commenting system. Also a child of Automattic. You don’t need to register for this one. Just use your WordPress account.

The facts:

1. WordPress, Gravatar, IntenseDebate (and some other Automattic services) exchange data among themselves. So your Gravatar’s avatar is used on WordPress and IntenseDebate, vice versa.
2. IntenseDebate recently announce that logged in WordPress users are ‘automattically’^^ logged in on any blogs using IntenseDebate.
3. It’s still a hassle to login to WordPress.
4. With LastPass, you can login to all your favorite services, in one click!

I think you can figure the rest by yourself right now. Plus I’m damn lazy to elaborate anymore.

If I raise this question, how would you feel? Is it okay for me to have it? Am I classified as a stalker? Am I creepy? How close do I need to be before it’s ’safe’ for me to have it?

Over the few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we keep our contacts. I have my schoolmate, college buddies, coworkers, business contacts and relatives to keep track of. So in theory:

From the image above, what optimal for me to have is just:

• Name
• Phone Numbers
• Email addresses

These information is not that hard to grab. When you meet a buddy, you can just go ahead and ask them. Or ask somebody else for them. “Hey, do you have Johnny’s phone number?” then you call them and get their email. Simple. Then we have the hard part:

• Birthday
• Picture
• Address (company and position for business associates)

Go ask a girl about their birthday and they’ll go “He forgot my birthday?” Ask her address and they’ll go “This guy is dangerous.” Ask for a picture and they’ll start treating you as a creepy “hentai”. These are considered private to most, which I think is kind of irony.(I will explain this later) But first, lets see how we can manage the most important data; name, phones and emails.

Ever since Google releases Google Sync, my contact management became so much easier. Google Sync is a service to synchronize your mobile phone data, with you Gmail account. For crappy phone like mine, I can only sync my contacts, which is awesome enough. With this, the “Johnny(+60123456789)” on my phone will be exported to my Google Contacts.

The step are like these:

1. Export your other email services to Google’s.(hint)
2. Clean up repeats, rename, merge and delete on your Google Contacts. (And preferably group them)
3. Run Google Sync on your mobile.(After backing up!)
4. Now your Google Contacts and mobile will be cluttered with repeats, and will be messy. Like “Johnny(+60123456789)” from your mobile, and “Jonathan K.(jonnybgood@blah.com)” from Google Contacts are the same person.
5. Repeat step 2, on your Google Contacts. (Forget everything on your mobile for now)
6. Now delete all your contacts from your mobile. (I know it sounds scary, hence the backup on step 3)
7. Run Google Sync again and you now have your shiny Google Contacts on your mobile. Complete with their email addresses, and more if you add any.

Next time on this series, getting the rest done.

p/s- Comments, retorts, and suggestions are encouraged.

Screenshot

Shared hosting sucks! I learned my lesson(s) a few times already. Especially local ones(Malaysia) and yes, I’m talking about YOU. The problem about normal shared hosting is:

• They offer all those fine and dandy features like unlimited database, emails, fancy control panel, statistic and whatnot without telling you about the most important thing. CPU and Memory Resources. Even if you ‘can’ have unlimited databases, you can’t actually achieve that, without the host slapping you on your face about resources or worse, block your sites.
• They give you every damn thing you don’t need, and don’t give you everything you need. 1 click script install, Fantastico, multiple statistic software, multiple webmail interface when actually you just need raw log files, smtp access to email, and preferably ssh.
• Very limiting AUP(Acceptable Use Policy). This policy is there to screw you. TM ISP screw you using the same thing. It’s  there to limit your usage. No flat file database, don’t use too much resource(without telling how much). It’s created to be vague, open for interpretation as they say, for 1 sole purpose; to effing screw you.

After they screw you with the 3 things above, they start offering you alternative, “you should get a VPS or dedicated hosting” they say. Migration is free. That’s fine until you notice VPS or Dedicated Server ain’t cheap. It’s a huge leap. This is the part where they leave you on your own, with a decent control panel for an extra fees(money). Or just pay them extra for support(money again). About VPS and Dedicated:

• Cool, now your site is too big for shared hosting! Said the guy on support, after blocking your site. You get a vps, only to know that they don’t come free with a decent control panel. You need to pay more for it. This is actually very good if and only if you’re good at managing a server. Since you can save a lot of resources by not installing things you don’t use(like statistic, alternative database system), and installing some good stuff(like lighttpd)…….. Or you can pay them (by hour) to do those things.
• This is the part where you will start being paranoid about memory and CPU usage. You’ll need caching, doing everything you can to bring the resource usage down. At the same time you want your site to grow. And your site do grow. You start to panic, uninstalling some stuff, upgrade your software try to bring the resource usage down.
• You start to upgrade your VPS, extra ram, extra processing. And then you switch to server. Now you start to think about the cost. A dedicated server cost a lot. A.LOT!

And still, your site grows beyond expectations. It’s a freaking single dedicated server! What else is out there?! Now you learn about load balancing, you start to think about multiple servers. Then the money figures start kicking in. How much money is needed to actually host your Book Lover’s forum? What if I can actually scale from the start? Where I can bring my site from 1 hit a day to a trillion? Fear not. There’s actually a haven called “Cloud Hosting” where you site is hosted on servers scattered throughout the world from the start. You pay for your bandwidth and resource usage. Simple as that. Slow month? that’s $30. Got featured on some high traffic site? That’s $50. Your site works just fine.

Why Rackspace?

1. It comes with a worldwide CDN(Content Delivery Network) which is assuring. You can save a lot by using that. (plus it’s cheap)
2. You can host .NET and PHP applications, and manage them on the same similar interface. No Windows vs Linux dilemma.
3. Need a server for video transcoding, or anything else? You can have that too.
4. You can also resell your resources(!!!) to your clients or friends if you want. Plus they’ll be happy that they got in on the cloud as well.
5. Their support is Fanatical♥, as in overly enthusiastic about your troubles. Which in turn, troubles me(seriously).

Seriously, check it out, like, now! And if you somehow want to switch over, I’m sure their fanatical support staff will fight among themselves to give you help. Drop me a comment if you have any question.

p/s- If you’re unsure about Compute Cycles, my Pagerank 4 WordPress Blog takes about 20 cycles per week.

Im moving the this blog.. to a new infrastructure(because its not a server anymore). It’s the cloud. Clusters of server. This is a preparation for the next big thing. So expect a few downtimes(which I’m sure that nobody cares since I write less now).

YouTube – Panda Cloud Antivirus In Black and White.

Although I would suggest using AVG if you are not connected to internet most of the time.