Global Geek Podcast 004 is Out Now: Go Get Some Geek

Well I am very happy with the end result of the published podcast. If you have not listened to it before now then please give it a go.

I was very, very peeved that I initially lost two and a half hours worth of editing work. I am not sure what I did in Audacity but I think in blaming myself I am blaming the right person and "thing". So tonight I sat down and started again, from the beginning. Now I am very pleased to be finished. I had a lot of editing and splicing of tracks to do in this one, which was a challenge but well rewarded in the end product. I am leaning heaps as I go.

The one thing that I was absolutely stoked about was the fact that the audio levels were spot on, I had to do very little stuffing around using the compressor. I did normalize the final edit and amplify it and that's it. Setting our levels is always tricky with the methods that we are employing to record as I might have said before. But the attention to detail has been worth it.

One thing that has irritated me is the fact that when I uploaded the podcast tonight the LibSyn player in the top right of the page did not update! So please if you listen to it using this method please either download it, or click the symbol next to the post with "POD" on it. Alternatively the widget here has been updated so that you can listen to it from here! I have shot off an email to LibSyn and await a response from them. I do know though that over the last couple of days they have been working on their servers so this might be the reason. Also because of this, if you can not connect to the website please try in an hour, as LibSyn believe that this is the only length of down-time to expect.

Other than that, enjoy the show! 

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WordPress Response

I am not going to move the blog. Great response and in a timely fashion impress me, to the point of me totally deciding to stay with WordPress.

I got a response from a previous email that said that we are working on the problem and that it should be fixed now. Well that was before the problems last night. So I wrote a fairly pointed email back saying that in no way was it fixed. In addition there have been a few mentions in the blogosphere about the issues.

Seems that WordPress has grown at a rate that they were not expecting and that they have had some difficultity keeping up. This has resulted in servers slowing down and being unreliable. I got a response from my email in under an hour, you can not get better than that! The first thing I got was an apology. The second thing was that I was informed that they have purchased more bandwidth which should speed up things around WordPress. I have been informed also that as fast as they install new hardware (by that I presume hard-drives) it fills up. I think this is just a reflection of the growth of the blogosphere, it is growing at a phenomenal rate and doesn’t look like slowing down. However this week it looks like they are having a mass install of new hardware in their data centres and that will make a world of difference, I hope it does.

This is evident in the WordPress Blog so that’s good to hear:

We’re in the very final stages of bringing the new systems online, just waiting the last few bits of configuration to come online. As we’re more than doubling the servers we’re using, it should address all performance issues and help us prevent any for a long time to come.

Finally, I was told that they are working very hard at making WordPress a great domain that just works. The response also said that they have not been achieving that recently and that they have dissapointed their users. But they have the solution and they are working on it. So hang in there bloggers there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Interestingly Sebastian and I mentioned in the podcast last week that the ping times for WordPress to Technorati are terrible and that bloggers need to manually ping Technorati to see some benefits from it. This is a problem with Ping-O-Matic and Technorati recognised by WordPress as Matt has been talking to Technorati about resolving the issue. My advice keep doing it manually as this has not been resolved yet, I will try to keep you posted.

Great response from WordPress and I hope that I can continue to support WordPress as I like their style and they are excellent in the support stakes.

FeedDemon 2.0.0.22 Beta Tested: Positive Results

Tonight FeedDemon was tested with an unable to connect to server error. I was impressed with the performance, there were a few bugs but nothing major. This may or may not have been a NewsGator Server problem.

I fired up FeedDemon and got the "cannot connect to server message". I got the option to un-synchronize the feeds and to manually page each feed for updates. I selected that and I was presented with a message that informed me that the feeds would be updated directly from the feed URL's and that it would be slower. So I selected OK.

To say that the feeds would update slower is an understatement, it is really slow and I have a 1500/256 connection (that is pretty quick here in Australia), so bear in mind that with functionality comes a slowdown. That said it was not something that bothered me too much. One error that occurred was that when the feeds updated it imported "old" updates. I got posts from January 2006 and they were out or order by date and some were marked read and others not read even though I knew I had marked them as read previously. I did however get the new feeds at the top, which is what you want.

While this was going on Sebastian had asked me to listen to a podcast he had done the day before, so I went to the folder, I did have to manually update the folder with the "update feed" command; but when I did I got the new podcast listed. I clicked the "paper-clip" and FeedStation opened and started to download. It noted that it could not connect to "my podcasts" but it did not seem to bother the download. The podcast downloaded and synchronised to my sync folder on my local machine with no problems.

One thing that is not made as clear as it could be is how to re-synchronise your folders. Basically; you get an icon in the bottom left corner of FeedDemon that has a disconnected symbol on it – or something like that. You can click this icon and get options, one is to test the connection and another one to say you are not synchronised with a tick – selected next to it. I just presumed that to resynchronise you "deselect the box". I was right, but it is not indicated that you have; or are trying to synchronise again. The indication that you are trying to connect and have been successful is the fact that the synchronising with NewsGator splash comes up. I think this needs to be improved.

A new feature is the "test" connection option, again an option within the click icon at the bottom left. So every once and a while I tested the connection and I eventually got a "good" result back and I went through the resynchronise process described above. No problems. FeedDemon synchronised and updated the feeds and did not have a problem with the fact that I had read some new posts and download an enclosure. FeedDemon even marked those as read – so it performed better then expected there.

As far as the reason for the outage, I am not sure if the NewsGator server was down or that I could not connect to it because of the connection between my machine and the server. If it was the server, it was not down for long, which makes me think it was a connection problem. Well done Nick, this is what I expect from you guys, thanks.

Global Geek Podcast #002 & WordPress Down

We have the second Global Geek Podcast done and dusted and available for download. The second thing is that I am contemplating moving the blog due to technical problems at WordPress. [This is the second attempt at uploading this post!, the “published just failed… again]

Sorry that I have been all silent for the last 48 hours. This has been due to WordPress being down. Well not completely down. Sure I was able to login and I was able to view my statistics, I could even write another page for the website! But do you think that I could write a blog entry? No. This has been the situation for the last 48 hours. I tried last night, this afternoon and now and now is the only time I was able to do so. The other thing of note is that the whole site is as slow as a duck in treacle and that’s bloody slow! It takes ages to log on, it takes ages for the pages to display, it takes ages to do anything and I am not the only one! I am not even sure if this entry will “work”.

To say that I am a bit peeved would be an understatement in the least. I am genuinely disappointed as well. As I write this blog Sebastian is trying to publish a blog and what do you know WordPress is down… again; failed to reach server error!

I rely on this blog to let everyone know whats going on and publicise the Global Geek Podcast. The other thing is that some of my posts are generating some interest in the wider blogging community. This is a real let down.

The fact is that WordPress have an obligation to provide a reliable, stable service and thus far this has not been the case. I am seriously considering moving to a payed service like TypePad, I would not mind the US$4. 95 a month for reliability and stability; a small price to pay.

WordPress should be a bit concerned about this as blog entries such as this will quickly tarnish their reputation and they will be known as unreliable. For those of us that have bugger all understanding of PHP or HTML or maintaining a server; they rely on services such as this. Please WordPress make good on providing us a more reliable service, I don’t want to have to cross my fingers every time I click “publish”.

Just as a side note I notice that the RSS Feed widget for the Global Geek Podcast isn’t working, don’t know why; the RSS is valid… another thing that’s not working I guess…

Rant over. Please head on over to Global Geek Podcast and take a listen to the latest podcast; which is I do say so myself isn’t too bad. A much better poodcast, the audio is better and the content quality is high. I urge you guys if you have not got an aggregator to subscribe to the podcast (and any others that you might want to) then drop me a line and I do not mind pointing you in the right direction. By the way when I say subscribe – don’t worry it is free!

FeedDemon: Not Happy!

As you might know from previous posts; I use and adore FeedDemon. It is a top RSS and podcast aggregator. It works well and has some great features to make keeping track of my feeds a breeze. Plus I like the fact that it is all in one spot and I don’t have to go sailing all round the web to check if a page has been updated.

Having said that, I recently updated to the latest version which is 2.0. The most significant change in this version is not a feature as you might assume; rather it is the fact that FeedDemon was “acquired” by NewsGator. This meant that with the latest version your feeds are synchronized with NewsGator. NewsGator is an online RSS reader. So theoretically this can keep you synchronised in FeedDemon on multiple computers. Great idea if that’s your thing. It isn’t mine by the way. So I selected to only synchronise with NewsGator on start-up, that means that feeds that have been updated are only checked.

However, I thought this was all very well but had little bearing in the way that I used the program. Until last night. I went to use FeedDemon and I found that I got an error message to the effect that FeedDemon couldn’t connect to NewsGator and to check my login id and try again, which I did. Nope; same error message, and the result was that it said that it couldn’t access feeds but not to worry I could view my feeds online. So I try to log onto NewsGator on the web and I get this message:

NewsGator Online is currently down for maintenance. We expect to be back online shortly.

So I guess I can’t really read my feeds online!

Today on the NewsGator news archive I see this message:

As you may have noticed, NewsGator Online experienced an unexpected outage early Tuesday morning. The problem has been corrected, and as of approximately 10:30am MST, all systems are operational.

Many feeds have not been updated since late last night; they will refresh over the next couple of hours, and then everything will be back to normal.

Our apologies for any inconvenience this has caused.

I appreciate the explanation, it does not however address FeedDemon’s reliance on the service.

The only conclusions that I can make from these events are that with NewsGator taking over FeedDemon they have integrated NewsGator Online to the point that FeedDemon only reads or downloads feeds as long as the NewsGator server is online! That in turn makes FeedDemon that used to be a stand alone program not a stand alone since it’s takeover by NewsGator. It also means that it’s functionality is governed by another service. Before the NewsGator takeover FeedDemon was an excellent stand alone reader which worked regardless of other synchronisations or server service.

In my opinion if this is the case then it has severely crippled a once excellent RSS reader. While these “extra” features have added some seriously powerful tools, the fact that they affect the stand alone capability of FeedDemon is a serious problem that should be addressed. Or in some people’s opinion a very cleaver marketing tool. It enables the company to have complete control over it’s product, when and how it is used.

I do not mind the fact that the synchronisation has been added as a feature. But I do think that FeedDemon needs to be able to be used as an independent program, should the user want it. I will be interested to see what this may mean for the future of FeedDemon, and what others are saying about this issue. I must say that this is the first time that the NewsGator server has been down and up until this point the server has never failed.

Again, I see a program trying to be everything rather than specialise at being excellent in one function.