Publishing

Serving Files with a Cache to Save Cash

Some podcasters and other publishers who serve large, high-traffic files have begun using the Coral service to keep from going offline or going broke. The iPodder client added support in March. Coral's a network of several hundred servers that can store and serve copies of any file on the web. To offer a file via Coral, all you have to do is add .nyud.net:8090 to the host name in its URL. Here's an example -- the trailer for the underappreciated Brat Pack thriller Bad Influence starring James ... (read more)

2005/05/14

25 Will Enter, 5 Will Leave (with Books)

From around 25 entries received in the book giveaway, four copies of Radio UserLand Kick Start were mailed today to Rod Kratochwill, Ole Olson, Gary Secondino and Nick Starr. Steve Kirks is working with UserLand Software on Radio 9, a major upgrade to the software. Though I suspect that the upcoming release will affect weblog publishing features covered in early chapters of my book, Kick Start emphasizes two aspects of Radio that are important to learn and unlikely to change much in the future: ... (read more)

2005/05/13

Boy Meets Girl, Girl Seeks Bob

An e-mailer asks Workbench for relationship advice: ... it's me and my boyfriends anniversary coming up and he always seems to somehow mention it and say how he wants it and I thought it would be a great thing to give him, no matter how weird it sounds. But I think it would be something he would enjoy, or like at least. I've looked around in all shops that could have a chance of selling older software but there aren't many where I live, I've looked around on eBay too but have had no luck, do ... (read more)

2005/05/09

Take a Bite of the Apple

Michael Moore is swimming in money after Fahrenheit 9/11, according to a Slate analysis that describes how the filmmaker and Disney rode the controversy over the movie all the way to the bank: Under normal circumstances, documentaries rarely, if ever, make profits (especially if distributors charge the usual 33 percent fee). So, when Miramax made the deal for Fahrenheit 9/11, it allowed Moore a generous profit participation -- which turned out to be 27 percent of the film's net receipts. ... (read more)

2005/05/06

Giveaway: Radio UserLand Kick Start

We adopted a kitten from the humane society nine months ago who thinks he's a dog, and there's nothing he likes more than the taste of a computer book. A stack of them make an excellent scratching post, as I learned when he shredded a dozen copies of How to Use the Internet Eighth Edition. This situation adds urgency to my need to give away more of my books, before they become either out-of-date or drenched with saliva. I'm giving away four author's copies of Radio UserLand Kick Start, each in ... (read more)

2005/05/03

Close But No Cigar

I publish several web sites that run advertising sold by BlogAds, a broker that has been a financial boon to hundreds of weblogs. I rejected an ad today from a site that sells Cuban cigars. The site claims that it's legal for Americans to import two boxes, but the language of the site's frequently asked questions page gives me the willies: The original embargo on Cuban products has been revised by the US Dept of Justice to allow importation of small quantities when returning from a licensed ... (read more)

2005/04/29

David Raynes has released Workflow, a plug-in for Movable Type that adds fine-grained editing capabilities to weblog authors. As Anil Dash explains: Workflow lets you limit control of publshing rights to certain authors in your Movable Type installation, allowing other people on the system to act as editors and review entries before they're published. Administrators can control who has rights to any of these levels of permissions. Plus, authors can transfer ownership of a post to other authors ... (read more)

2005/04/16

Laura Lemay, the legendary Teach Yourself uberauthor who cowrote several of my Java books, solved a 20-year-old mystery by turning to the last place anyone would expect to find information: "I'm looking for a book," I explained to the librarian. "Published probably in the 70's, about a psychological experiment done on teenagers. They are imprisoned in a maze and have to dance in order to get food pellets. It was a really dark book. There were escher-like stairs on the cover." The one-minute ... (read more)

2005/04/11

Server Attacked at Random

My server has been under attack for three days by a user in Colorado who requested the same URL 8.3 million times (and counting). The user, making simultaneous connections from eight IP addresses in a block controlled by Time Warner Telecom, requested a URL on URouLette that redirects to a random web site -- as many as 30 requests a second to a PHP script that made a MySQL database connection. I'm guessing the motive was to acquire web addresses for e-mail harvesting or some other form of net ... (read more)

2005/04/06

Matt Drudge: The Hits Keep on Coming

The New York Observer covers the upcoming launch of the Huffington Report and the need for liberal competition to the Drudge Report. Reporter Joe Hagan has overlooked the fact that there already are several wanna-be Drudges on the left, including BuzzFlash, Raw Story, and my own Drudge Retort, which I copublish with television writer Jonathan Bourne. Judging by our traffic, most of the world is overlooking us too, though Raw Story is growing fast. According to the Observer, for fun Matt Drudge ... (read more)

2005/04/06

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