Several software applications provide feedback forms in case of an error or crash (Windows, Firefox, etc.). Today I was browsing a blog that had an embedded VideoEgg player and it popped up a unique error report, requesting help and offering a free t-shirt for helping them track down the problem: I like this approach. It’s very hard for developers of free consumer applications to track down and solve reported “crash” problems in the field. At Palm we had a couple cases where we contacted individual users and did remote troubleshooting with them. I think we sent them some free Palm…
It looks like SixApart has acquired SplashBlog, the mobile photo-blogging site created by SplashData (creators of several nice mobile applications). The press release was light on details, but I’m anxious to see what kind of integration they are planning to do. when I last commented on SplashBlog, they had changed their client software to only support their own web service (previously they had support for TypePad). The SplashBlog Palm client is really well done, giving users a clean application for posting photos and accompanying notes to their blog. I keep an eye on this app because it would make a…
Amazon’s Simple Storage Service just launched: Amazon S3 is storage for the Internet. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers. Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. The service aims to maximize benefits of scale and to pass those benefits on to developers. This looks pretty interesting —…
I first heard about VideoEgg from the excellent Venture Voice podcast (shows 14, 15). At the time, they had an initial deal with TypePad blogs, but now they’ve opened it up for other publishing destinations as well. Perhaps as a testament to the site’s design and interface, I was able to upload and publish a sample video in under a minute. (Click below to see the extended entry.)
My hosting provider provides built-in support for two different web log analysis packages: Analog and Webalizer. I’ve tried both of them, but neither gave me very good control over the data, so I decided to switch to AWStats which seems to be fairly popular. At first the installation steps were kind of painful, seeming to focus on an installation where I had full control over Apache (which I don’t). I finally found a short write-up from another Pair user that didn’t need the AWStats install script. Some background: My site has recently become bombarded with thousands of requests originating from…