Well, they noticed my review, and i’m not sure if it was just a coincidence, but the next time i logged into their system – there were even more new features available to me.

For one thing, it looks like the number of protocols that Mon.itor.us can test has almost doubled.

You can now monitor the following 11 internet protocols:

http, ping, https, ftp, pop, smtp, dns, tcp, udp, imap, and sip (for VoIP).

I just wish they would add a way to monitor mysql servers. Not exactly sure how that would be done, but for now i suppose i can just try monitoring the URL (http) of the phpMyAdmin page for my database server. If that page doesn’t respond – but the URL for the webserver does – it’s like my database server is down.

The other thing i noticed was the addition of 3 new icons on the “Test” module that make it easier to switch between real-time table, bar chart, and line chart views. [ more screenshots ]

Now, if only Mon.itor.us would remember the view i was on the last time i logged in – i’d be set. See, the problem is, once i actually went ahead and setup a bunch of servers to monitor, i also decided to take the time to manually switch each “Test” module from table view to line view. i prefer the line view but then if i leave the Mon.itor.us site, the next time i come back and log in, all my views have been reset to table view again. Very frustrating. I wish it would just stay on line view.

Fortunately, the “Snapshot” module is always a quick way to see the status of all your servers – so that can definitely save you some time. But, in my opinion, the best way to see how your servers have been performing throughout the day, is to use the line view. i’m not exactly sure how hard it would be to impliment this kind of memory feature, but i think it might be worth considering. At the very least, offer a global “default” view in my settings, where i can choose between table, bar, or line view as my preference.

Another fix they seemed to have implimented solves the problem of “constant page refreshes” – something else that i had mentioned in my earlier review of Mon.itor.us – which was a real problem for me if you’re using Firefox and have a billion tabs open with one tab that just won stop refreshing. Now i can leave the tab open all day with no apparent performance issues.

The last thing i’d like to see from Mon.itor.us would be a way to make the google gadget (or rather the javascript used to put this gadget on any webpage) publicly viewable. That is, once i put the code on my website, i noticed that i had to be logged in to see the “Snapshot”. Meaning, nobody else could see the little green “online” lights but me. It would be a lot more useful to me to be able to show my clients (or anyone) that all my servers are online. It’s not exactly sensitive information (anyone could just ping the server to see if it’s online) and making this widget “publicly viewable” would likely make it more attractive to other webmasters, since it becomes a useful tool to share with all viewers, not just 1 person (yourself).

Anyway, i really like this service and i’m sure they’ll find a ton of ways to refine and expand it’s capabilities. I did happen to notice that there is a “Click to Start” button on the top-righthand side of the homepage, that if you click on it, remembers you from the last time you were logged in. This was something that i must have missed when i wrote my original review because i kept having to log in over and over again (every time i came back to the site). i’m going to go back and update that section on my ealier post as soon as i get a chance. i’ll definitely be using this service regularly from now on.

Both of these services still have their quirks, but such is the case with most things in life (and on the web) that are free. Still, i have been using them both for a few days now and together they have already proved to be quite useful. Here’s why..

I’ll start with Montastic, since it’s key feature is simplicity and ease of use.

1. after signup, you just need to click on the link that says: “Add a Web Server to Monitor”
2. then enter a URL to begin monitoring that web server (it takes a few seconds to start working)
3. a green “computer icon” means your server is online (red means offline)
4. optionally, set a “name” for this URL to make it easier for you to identify

that’s it. everything has a nice, clean ajaxy feel. the site is fast and relatively easy to navigate.
you can also get some extra details, like “last monitored” and “status change” by clicking on the “info” link next to the icon for the server you’re monitoring.

both of these services have an email notification system. but, so far, my experience has been that only this one (montastic) actually works. a recent server outage (not this site) proved that for me today. Both of these services also offer alerts in the form of feeds that seemed to work fine.

3 features that make this service unique:

1. they offer a yahoo widget that reports the status of your servers in real-time, right on your desktop
2. the offer a netvibes module which is slick as a brick (it’s not too pretty by it works great)
3. they offer: “the green page” (you’re totally going to have to see this page for yourself to understand)

On to Mon.itor.us – which is a slightly more complex service, allowing for a flood of potential awesomeness and quite a few annoyances as well. Basically, my biggest problem with this service so far is: “It’s Flaky”. By that, i mean, it’s plagued with all the same bugs and buggers that PageFlakes has, even burdoned by the same ajax desktop interface – it seems. Without going into too much detail (ie: constant page refreshes and a login that will never remember you), this would be another example of one of the reasons that i have been a strong supporter of Netvibes for so long.

That being said, Mon.itor.us has a lot of already working features that come packed in with it’s service.

From their site (and because i’m sometimes lazy), here are the ones that stood out the most for me:

• Site performance archive
• Inline site previews
• Personalized pages and tabbed views
• Drag and drop interactive interface
• Todo tasks with notification and ability to add notes
• Support these protocols for testing: http, https, ftp, smtp, pop3, and ping.
• Daily/weekly/monthly uptime reports and statistics

And in case that wasn’t enough for you.. here’s a few more things that i noticed mon.itor.us can do that wasn’t already mentioned in the previous list. These are the real clinchers for me.

6 more features that make this service unique:

1. there’s a cool Google Gadget for this service out there somewhere
2. you can tag each URL / server you are monitoring and then organize / view them by groups
3. you can switch between real-time table, bar chart, and line chart views.
4. view stats for each protocol, snapshots of all your servers
5. view from three seperate geographical locations (US, DE, AT)
6. there’s some javascript code that goes along with the google gadget that will let you put your “snapshot” on virtually any web page

All in all, i would say that it’s a little harder to setup each URL with mon.itor.us, when compared to montastic. But once you get all your servers setup for monitoring, there’s a lot more you can do with them too.

Still, as i mentioned earlier, i was quite pleased with both of these services and will continue to test each one more thoroughly in the coming months.

This time around i’ll be reviewing 3 relatively new web services. Each of these sites is unique in some way, and offers its own twist on what is quickly becoming the new mantra for web2.0: “create, upload, and share”.

The 3 services are:

• Grouper
• muveeMix
• VideoEgg

I’ll be looking at:

1. Ease of Use (obstacles, barriers, any software to install, limits on number of videos i can upload)
2. Accessability (what if you don’t have Flash installed, or you’re not running Windowz)
3. Distinguishing Features (something different, revenue sharing, partner programs)

Grouper:

1.
- Max file size for uploaded videos is 110 MB

- This has the best upload indicator (progress bar) i have seen so far. You can see the amount in MB that remains to be uploaded, this figure is also represented as a percentage remaining, you can see your current upload speed, and the time remaining. awesome.

2.
- I was able to upload my video using FireFox without Flash installed or having to download any extra software

3.
- Intergrated partnership program, no need to sign up a second time (although some additional info is required for this)

- Generate income from video ad impressions

- Ability (as a partner) to include an upload feature directly on your website (so visitors can add videos )

- Make Your Own Video With Groovie Editor software (download but extra email verification process required)

- Get the main Grouper 2.0 software which is a complete video sharing solution (download but extra email verification process required)

- Publish Any Grouper Video or Filmstrip to MySpace, Friendster and other Blogs

muveeMix:

1.
- Free account is limited to only 10 video uploads. But if you refer 5 friends to muveeMix you get upgraded to a “bumper” account which offers unlimited video uploads. It is unclear to me whether this upgrade would be for a single year or indefinitely

- Either way, there is also a 100 MB limit on all uploads

- The upload process seemed a little overly complex and certain features (like the ability to add sound) actually stumped me because my video already had sound and so i didn’t know what to do at this point. Furthermore, you cannot move forward from this point until you choose a sound file (ie: this is not an “optional” feature). Oddly enough, leaving out the title and credits is an option.

2.
- This service is entirely Flash based. i can’t even see the site without it. too bad. at least let me edit my profile and add a photo in the meantime. oh wait, there is no profile or place to add a photo.

3.
- Mix video, images, and sound into a movie all from within your web browser (unlike Grouper, no software to download and install)

- Ability to add styles to movies (i should probably be saying muvee)

- Publish you muvees to sites like: Multiply, MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Blogger, LiveJournal, Xanga, Typepad, Tagworld and many others.

VideoEgg:

1.
- The maximum video length has been set to 5 minutes

- You must install the VideoEgg Publisher which seems to be downloaded as a browser component through InternetExplorer but once this is done everything becomes as easy as drag-and-drop. Also, FireFox “just worked” after i installed through IE

- Unforetunately, under FireFox, every video i tried to upload appear upside-down in the preview window, and under IE6, every video was noticeably crappier quality in the preview window, not sure what is up with that..

2.
- Despite some minor bugs, this service offers a relatively Flash-free interface. I was able to upload my video, name it, and give it a description. You do however still need Flash 7 to view the actual videos.

3.
- Partnership program similar to Grouper except there’s some added confusion here due to the fact that i have to sign up seperately for this program (despite having already set up a normal account with username/password) – oh, and the form you need to fill out is 10 times as long, it’s like 5 forms in 1.

- Publish your videos directly to Blogger, TypePad, or eBay (auctions) – no community component or browsing of user’s videos on the actual VideoEgg site though

- Upload from your camcorder, webcam, or mobile device

- Edit the start/stop times of your videos before uploading them (potentially very useful)

Some of you may already be thinking to yourselves: “YouTube, YouTube, when is he going to say YouTube already?”. This is because they are so damn popular now that you couldn’t even help but make that association. So, yes, one of the three services i tried out was in fact the one and only YouTube. Although, if you’ve read my previous post, you probably know that i already wrote an article on Jumpcut and it was actually the first of these services that i tried out. i was impressed by their web-based video editing software and so it is the second service i will be looking at. The third service is called Guba, and when i read about their unique marketing strategy on Techcrunch i became intrigued and signed up almost immediately.

The low down..

All of the submissions we received from our 24hr Music Video Making Contest (MVMC) on Indyish were in DVD quality (.vob format). My task was to compress these .vob files into .avi files for easy uploading and sharing via any of these services.

i chose to compare and contrast my experiences with these 3 services in the following ways:

1. Ease of Use (always one of my favorites – obstacles, barriers, like how hard was it to upload, or what is my upload limit)
2. Content Management (what can i do with my uploaded content, what tools do i get, etc.)
3. Social Component (can i edit my profile, are there groups, contacts, tags, etc.)

YouTube -

The signup process was pretty simply aside from them asking for your zip/postal code which seems a little strange to me. Once i got inside the system, i must say that it did feel intimidating at first. There are a ton of choices you can make as well as new lingo to absorb. For example, on YouTube, your “profile” page is actually called your “channel”. The upload limit is 100Mb and seemed slower to upload than i would have expected from the top video sharing site. Also, you can’t upload until you go through a second email confirmation process to prove you are not a spambot. The uploader crashed on me the first time i used it, granted i tried to upload to 2 of these sites at the same time (it seemed to be working fine until i did this). Lastly, any changes you make to the title or description of your recently uploaded video files are not immediately visible (in real-time) which can be frustrating and confusing to the user (it was for me) because they would be unaware of the delay and wondering why they can’t see their changes take effect.

Once i did get used to the interface and found my way around the site i realized that there was a lot of info and features available to me. i could easily organize my video files, save them to my favorites, create playlists, organize by category, add a description, tags and all kinds of other details. There is also a tool that will let you configure your account for sending videos directly to your blog (if you own one) although i haven’t tested it. They currently support Blogger, BlogSpot, and LiveJournal “with more blog platforms on the way”.

But i think it’s definitely the social networking aspect of the site that sets it apart from the others. Once you get used to the idea of a channel instead of a profile (like a TV channel only of You) – you can start making it you own through a variety of customization options. You can edit your channel info, channel theme, even customize your own channel URL (although there are additional requirements to get this feature working). You can also setup or join Groups where content and conversations are centered on common topics and interests. Lastly, you can add friends, family members, send and receive messages from within the system, subscribe to your favorite channels, vote, add comments and more. i think i get why it’s so popular now.

Jumpcut -

This service is great. Jumpcut lets you try their web-based video editing software even before you’ve actually signed up. i think this is the best way for a new web service to help potential users “get” what it is they are doing that makes them special. The signup process was very simple and straightforward. i like the fact that you get asked both an email address and a username write from the start because i waste time wondering whether i’ll be logging in with my username or email (but maybe that’s just me). Once inside, again, i was a little bit confused by all the new terminology surrounding the distinctions between clips, movies, group sets, grabbing, sharing, etc. I particularly liked the multi-file uploader feature, something neither of the other two services offered as far as i could tell. Uploading one file at a time can get pretty tiresome – this helps to make up for the fact that Jumpcut has a maximum file upload size of only 50Mb (way too low in my opinion). Also, the uploader hangs at 53% on the progress bar every time i used it (although uploads seem to have been completed successfully) so definitely some confusion and time wasted there. On the upside, you can update the title and descriptions of your videos in real-time (a la AJAX) – no delays, not even a page load – so that’s good.

The tools are really what this service is all about. i already mentioned the multi-file uploader, but the Jumpcut Editor is really the crown jewel of the site. You can edit, add transitions and effects, as well as mix in sound and clips shared by other users on the site. No software needs to be installed although the newest version of Flash is definitely required (all these services require Flash 9 for viewing video files but you can still do stuff like browse the community, upload clips and a few other things). Creating a movie from multiple clips is both really easy and convenient in that it lets you overcome the file-size limitations that plagues everyone one of these video based services by editing together a series of smaller clips to form a much larger movie. You can also do some more advanced things like organize your clips into group sets, tag them, and then quickly share or make a movie out of all of them. Another great bonus is the ability to add photos (you can even import your entire Flickr photostream). Pictures, a feature that is almost entirely overlooked by these types of services, is not something to be taken for granted. For instance, i couldn’t figure out how to upload an image to my profile (i mean channel) on YouTube. The only thing you seem to be able to do is use the first frame of one of your uploaded videos. Well, half of the clips i uploaded started out with a few frames of blackness severely limiting what i could use as my profile pic. why?

Jumpcut is probably the second most social site of the three i’ve tested. They have clear, easy to use features like friends and fans, i already mentioned groups but there are events too. We posted the 24hr. MVMC as an event on Jumpcut, even created an Indyish group for future projects. They also have a feature that lets you or your friends email video clips directly to your account or group. Users can add comments and vote for their favorite movies. Finally, they have a great set of export features that not only make it easy for you to email, link to, or embed your video into a website, but there’s also specific code for popular blogging systems like WordPress, TypePad and Blogger, as well as social networking services likes MySpace, and even bookmarking services like Digg and Del.icio.us.

Guba -

This service is an interesting one. The signup process is similar to that of Jumpcut with the extra choice to become a Guba Affiliate. There is definitely a more commercial feel to this service but i was impressed by their system and found the user interface intuitive with content clearly divided between Premuim and Free videos. The user exists somewhere in between these two worlds which at first i found both disappointing and comforting. i wanted there to be more back-end stuff to explore but it’s more straightforward than that. After about 15 minutes i was done looking around and (feeling caught up on everything) all that was left to do was either upload my content, or watch either a free or premium video. i could check my Guba affiliate stats, but they were probably still at zero. i was definitely not overwhelmed like with the other 2 services and i guess that’s what the folks at Guba were aiming for. The upload process was the fastest and smoothest of the 3 services from my experience. They have an upload limit of 100Mb but i found the video quality (after whatever magic compressions they all apply) to be the best of the bunch. So i’d say that, overall, i had a good user experience with this one.

Still, every service seems to have its quirks. For Guba, they do this thing where they ask you to fill in a title and description for your video clip (before you upload it) but the description doesn’t seem to show up anywhere – and believe me, i looked everywhere for it. So why ask for it in the first place? Really frustrating when they do that. Still, i like the way your video files are organized and there are a lot of little things like how it keeps track of your favorite searches and categories. A subtle feature that really stood out for me was the frame-by-frame preview you get when you hover your mouse over any given video clip. You don’t have to actually watch the video to get a quick idea if you’ve seen it before, if it’s shot well or seems low quality, etc. There are a lot of account settings (not as many as YouTube) – like your credit card details and purchase history – which might (at first) seem out of place, but then i remembered that you can buy and rent movies from Guba too. They have movie rentals from as low as $0.99 and you can buy movies starting at $4.99 – not too shabby – and so obviously they’re going to need your credit card info if you wanted to take advantage of that.

Incidentally, you can check out my favorite of the 12 MVMC submissions (the winner for the Telefauna song) right here as i’ve embeded the video directly into this page.

If you want to watch some more of the music videos that contestants submitted (including 1 of the other 2 winning videos) you can go here, and here. Also, if you like the service Guba offers, go ahead and signup for a free account and help me get those affiliate stats rolling.

That brings me to my last point. Guba is like a cool online video store with some added social networking components and i like it. A lot of big players are going to be headed into this market really soon (it has already begun), and i think Guba’s got a head start on them all. I have no idea if they’ll be able to keep this lead, but if they continue with their aggressive affiliate marketing and more and more people signup and add content.. well, only time will tell and i guess the people will decide. But if you were looking for a sort of “MySpace with Video” type thing you might be a little disappointed here. First off, you can’t really configure you profile page on Guba, or maybe i should say you don’t actually have a public profile, not even a small area of text to describe a little bit about yourself. You can upload a photo but that’s about it. There are no groups. You can however add favorites, post comments and vote on other people’s videos. you can also do some other cool stuff like email a video to a friend or download special versions for viewing on your iPod or PSP.

These are just some of the details i decided to focus on. There is so much more i want to say about these 3 services i could have probably written a separate article for each one. i really need to post more often. this post is probably too long. hope it helps you get an idea of what you can expect when you signup for one of them. if anyone has tried any of these services, i’d like to know what your experiences were. And if anyone does decide to try them out after reading this post, by all means, come back and share your thought in the comments section too.

I came across Jumpcut a few days ago and although i am not a video artist myself, i keep thinking of great ways that people could use this service. Jumpcut is a site that will let you edit and share video clips, even create full movies – all from your web browser without ever having to install any extra software. First off, let me say that i really liked the simple, clean design – the color scheme – just a great overall first impression. Then, on closer inspection, i realized that most of the main features, the video editing tools, absolutely required Flash 8. So, basically, they just cut-off most Linux users, who are still waiting for the newest version of Flash player for popular browsers like Firefox. Nevertheless, this is not really Jumpcut’s fault, and the uniqueness of this service warrants a second look.

So, i dusted off and fired up good old (and i mean old) Internet Explorer 6, and headed back to Jumpcut.com – to log in (again) – this time with my trusty Flash 8 enabled browser. Once inside, everything seemed very straight forward. I recommend reading the FAQ and the Quick Guide at the bottom of the page if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed at first.

The Jumpcut Editor – this is the central tool by which all other Jumpcut jazz is built around. It has a familiar interface (similar to most video editing suites). There is a timeline, some effects for transitions, a library of clips to work with, and various other neat stuff.

The main features (aside from The Jumpcut Editor) are:

1. Upload – video clips, photos and music

You can do this in several ways:

• clicking on the “Upload” tab on the main page
• importing your images directly from Flickr
• uploading from inside the editor
• uploading via email

From the FAQ page, the maximum upload size is 50Mb, but you can always upload multiple clips and edit them together to form a clip that is much larger.

2. Explore – find other people’s public content and Grab / Remix it / Publish.

• Grabbing lets you use other people’s video and images in your own movies.
• Remixing someone else’s movie (or your own), and do what you want with it.
• Publish your content for all to see.

You can also keep content private, if you’d like.

3. Share – this feature is what will likely make this service really stand out.
You can share anything you can find on Jumpcut.

• Email a Link: lets you send a message with a link to a friend.
• Post to a Website: just copy / paste the embed code into any website that accepts html
• Automated Posting Links: lets you post directly to many popular websites, including Blogger, MySpace, TypePad, WordPress, Digg and del.icio.us.

There’s a lot of other cool things going on over at Jumpcut. There are Groups, Events, even Contests (ie: Audition to be a movie star in Fox Atomic’s new version of the classic comedy, Revenge of the Nerds. Read More..) – and this site is still very young. Can’t wait to see what they comes out of this new community.

These days, my view of desktop-based software has changed quite dramatically. I seem to have gone from: “complaining about how long it would take bloated applications to load”, to something along the lines of me going out of my way to: “avoid using them at every opportunity”.

Working as much as possible with web-based software has been my goal for the last 2 years now, and i can tell you that doing so has saved me many a headache. Gone are the days of wiping out my Windowz machine because of some virus i picked up, then having to remember every software configuration, find serial numbers i hopefully kept, go through software activation processes, updates, blah blah blah. You get the picture, right? The last time my PC got slow and crappy, i simply formatted the harddrive, reinstalled the OS, fired up a new version of Firefox and logged into all of my favorite web-based services. Gmail for email. Flickr for photos. Del.icio.us for bookmarks.. the list goes on. But everything is how i left it (not to mention they are always available from any computer with an internet connection).

I used to use a great web-based antivirus service offered by TrendMicro called Housecall. Unfortunately, they went and messed with what i thought was a perfectly good thing. Housecall used to be a fast, simple way for people who don’t want to keep desktop-based antivirus software installed on their computers to scan their local machines, it even offered to remove any viruses that it may have found. This was the best service of its kind that i had seen and i recommended it to dozens of people. But a couple of month ago they made the whole thing Java, nothing worked right for me, it was slow, complicated, basically the complete opposite of what i once like about and so i stopped both using and recommending it.

I looked for other, comparable services. Norton has a service, i think they call it “Security Center” but they don’t offer to go that extra mile and delete the infected files that were found making the process of actually cleaning out your machine unnecessarily tedious and extremely manual. Not to mention, too difficult and therefore out of reach for the average PC user.

On the other hand, i could see a service like McAfee’s SiteAdvisor as being quite useful to the everyday web surfer. What they do in a nutshell (i’m not going to get into it all here) is “Patrol the Web” for you, testing for viruses, phishing scams, annoying pop-ups and more. So essentially, all the user has to do is enter a URL of a questionable site they are considering visiting (before actually going there with their web browser) and they can get a nice, clean report about any potential hazards they may encounter along the way. The site in question gets a “safety rating” of either a green checkmark, grey questionmark (no data), or a big, fat, red “X”. The entire process is balanced out with a large number of voluntary user reviews, comments, and summaries.

Aside from entering each URL (one at a time) into the form on their front page to get a report, the user can also download a convenient Firefox extension that automatically shows you SiteAdvisor results by just browsing the given site. But i have to say that this second method, while being way more practical (you just go to the site), seems to defeat the point of getting a report in the first place. I mean, isn’t it too late to find out whether a site is sketchy once you’re already there? Granted the extension does add safety ratings to your google search results, which is pretty cool. Still, this just seems to me to be more of a research tool than a browser accessory.

While i can see many uses for this service, what i actually found most interesting about SiteAdvisor was how “other” services have begun to leverage / integrate SiteAdvisor reports and safety ratings into their own web-based services. A perfect example of this (i already mentioned the google integration) would be a service called StumbleUpon. They offer a type of advertising service for content publishers that promises to send targeted visitors to your site. I was thinking of testing out their ad services for a site i am working on, and wanted to learn more before actually giving it a try. On the StumbleUpon FAQ page there’s a section that reads: “make certain that the content you are submitting isn’t flagged by McAfee SiteAdvisor” or your content may not be shown at all. I thought, hey, this would probably be a good time to make sure none of my sites are flagged. Big, fat, red X’s are bad, and fortunately for me, all of my sites were either green checkmarks or grey questionmarks (for newer or smaller sites). So, all of a sudden, McAfee’s SiteAdvisor mattered to me. Hmm, very interesting. But all in all, i think SiteAdvisor is a great services and i will continue to use it whenever i am in doubt.

All i wanted to do was take 2 feeds, mix them into one, and offer it to my visitors. To do this i sifted through tons of bookmarks related to rss that i had made over the last year, until i came up with 3 web based services that did just that. These are: RSS Mix, Feedshake, and FeedBurner. There are many other services out there, but most of the other ones i went to lost me on the first page and so i won’t be telling you how easy they were to use, etc. However, if anyone knows of a service that improves upon those discussed here, by all means, post a comment about it.

i’m going to start with RSS Mix, because it was the first service i actually tried after visiting about 5 other sites with similar features. The main reason is decided to use this one and not the others is because: it doesn’t require any signup, and so the is No Username, Password or Email (NUPE) dilemma. Always a smart choice if you want people to try your service but you may not be as established as some of the larger competitors in you market. This way the user gets to try the service immediately, and if they like it, they can sign up later to get some more of the added features. NUPE web services get the least resistance. i will almost always try them out the first time i land on their site.

RSS Mix was real easy to use, just copy/paste 2 or more feed URLs into the textarea and hit ” Create! “. You are then taken to a new page where your new mixed feed URL is waiting. I can’t see how this could have been any simpler and i have to say, this was exactly what i had in mind when i set out to find a suitable service. But wait, after having pasted the new mixed feed into a reader (netvibes in this case) , i noticed a few unexpected details. The first thing i noticed was that my feed no longer held it’s original title. That is, my new mixed feed now has the title: ” RSSMix.com Mix ID 117xxx “. Quite a mouthful.. and while i guess this would be fine for personal use, i’m not sure too many site owners would want their site’s feed title replaced by a free RSS service’s branding. I don’t think they have a member’s version of the service, so i’m not sure if you can actually remove this branding from your feeds before handing them out to your visitors.

So we move on to the second choice..
FeedShake was the next service i tried. At first, it looked very promising. i got to the homepage and saw what seemed to be a familiar interface. Enter your feed URLs (separated by a space) into the textbox, fill in the feed’s title, link, and description (all optional), and click ” Create my feed “. That’s it, or so i thought.

As it turns out, i was not done. i was instead just beginning. the next step in this process was the dreaded signup page. So only after you’ve spent your time pasting feeds, giving it a title, link, and description, do you find out that you need to be a members to actually use this service. One click away, but you still can’t burn your feed. i’m not sure if this was an intentional technique or not, or whether it worked on me but i definitely was not going to lose this feed mix that i worked so hard at preparing. So i caved and signed up for an account. Everything went smoothly and i was pleased to find that the feed i had created earlier (the reason i signed up in the first place) was still sitting there waiting for me. At this point, it was time to see how this new feed mix looked on my netvibes page. i loaded the feed onto my page and was thrilled to see that (as i had initially suspected) the title remained intact (unlike RSSMix) and said whatever i wanted it to say (no 3rd party branding). What’s more, the link points to wherever i wanted it to point and the description was also customizable (although these apparently don’t get used on netvibes and is not specific to any given feed URL). It will even load up your little icon file next to the title if you have one defined for your site.

And last but definitely not least there is the ever popular FeedBurner. Many times i’ve come to their homepage, read all the things that can be done with this service, felt intimidated or overwhelmed and left it for another time. Always feeling like i need to put away a large amount of time to deal with this whole new world of possibilities. With FeedBurner comes not just feeds, but podcasting, videocasting, an Ad Network, stats, pings, email subscriptions, FeedFlare, and more. there’s even an API to play around with but now i’m definitely getting ahead of myself. it’s a lot to take on when all you thought you wanted to do was mix two feeds into one. i always spend way too long reading through the entire FeedBurner site before i decide i’ve already wasted too much time and move on. maybe it’s because their services sound so interesting to me. this time i decided to sign up and take a look inside once and for all.

After wrestling with the dreaded NUPE dilemma for about another half hour, i finally convinced myself that it wouldn’t be so bad. Just give them the info and if their service is just too much, you don’t ever have to use it again. no big deal, right? Once i enter my info and hit ” Next “, i was taken to My Feeds page and told: “You have no feeds set up in FeedBurner. Go ahead, burn yours now! It’ll be a hoot.”

Everything looked cool and slick but i quickly began to feel like something was missing. It wanted me to enter my feed, a single feed. i looked frantically across the entire back-end to find a link that would lead me to the feed mixing section, but my search was in vain. there was no mixing feeds. what’s worse, is that you can’t even really look around until you enter in your first feed URL and hit ” Burn “. The closest thing i could find was a feature called ” Link Splicer “, which (all be it very cool in and of itself), was only capable of mixing in specific feeds like del.icio.us and Furl. i’m not sure if i missed anything, but this was definitely not what i had expected. On the upside, everything looks so cool and interesting in my FeedBurner account, that i can’t wait to use it for my feeds once i do get them all properly mixed.

but in general my vote goes to:

1. FeedShake (for actually meeting my expectations regarding this specific task – mix 2 feeds)
2. RSS Mix (for ease of use, not that feedshake is hard, but avoids a NUPE dilemma)
3. FeedBurner (disqualified, not really in the same class and probably shouldn’t even be in this comparison)

So i’m on a new mission: find a web hosting provider that meets my current requirements, test a couple out and slowly move over some of my current domains to said provider. i figured that i’d document my research and post it for any who might be in a similar situation. i’ll begin with a brief list of my requirements, followed by a summary of the hosting services being considered and compared. Lastly, i am going to try and sort out various features and determine which service would likely be the best match for my needs.

Key web hosting features (required):

1. multiple domain add-ons (at least 15)
2. unlimited mysql databases (or minimum 50)
3. 1 Gb disk space or more
4. no restrictions on email addresses, forwarding, autoresponders, mailing lists, etc.
5. cpanel, with file manager, disk usage viewer, directory protection, etc.
6. some type of backup (full site backups as well as individual mysql db backups)
7. general domain management (including unlimited subdomains)
8. lots of stats (site-wide stats, subdomain stats, overall bandwidth usage, etc.)
9. other features: phpmyAdmin, ftp access, ssh shell

Many of the features mentioned above come standard with a mid-range web hosting plan priced at approximately $15.00US per month. Other features such as multiple domain add-ons will likely be harder to find in a plan of this price range. i’ll probably have to make some compromises here and there. The objective is to match as many of these features with one of the following provider’s hosting plans.

Here are the web hosting providers being considered for this comparison:

• IX Web Hosting
• StartLogic
• Globat Web Hosting
• Clear-Data Internet Services
• Yahoo Small Business Web Hosting
• Site5.com
• PagesGarden
• HostGator [ update: added Dec.10/05 ]
• A Small Orange [ update: added Dec.10/05 ]

Final Notes -

Some obvious things to look out for when deciding on a web hosting provider:

• don’t go with a provider who’s own company website appears to be slow. chances are, if their site runs slow, yours will too.
• don’t go with a provider who’s own company website is sometimes unavailable. if you go to their homepage twice in two days and one of the times you get: “The page cannot be displayed”, check that you typed the URL correctly in the address bar. if you did, then it might be time to move on. that’s 50% uptime, since your users are likely not interested in calculating averages over time.
• don’t go with a provider that doesn’t display the prices for their hosting plans until well into the signup process. ask yourself, why would they be trying to hide something that every other company is trying to put directly in your face?

The Recap:

• RSS? Why. ( evolution of the Net and why RSS is so popular )
• RSS? How. ( how to start using web-based RSS services )
• 1 Week Comparison. ( a look at 6 popular web-based RSS readers )

The Breakdown:

SearchFox -

• Pros: really fast now – with possibly the fastest OPML import i’ve seen. (ironically, you get a message saying it might take 5-10 minutes for all the feeds to show up, 50 or so in my case, but it took about 3 seconds), if adding a feed fails you get a useful link to validate the feed (also there’s a quick link to the actual website to check if it’s online), machine learning technology is really starting to warm up (stories are given a score based on your interests which saves me lots of time)
• Cons: no way to sort by date (sometimes you just want to see the most recent articles for a quick second) [see comments], accident prone one-click delete (individual sites and entire folder of feeds with no warning), “email” this post requires a configured email client like OutlookExpress (sort of works against the idea of being web based)

Rojo -

• Pros: rename feeds (you’re not stuck with default name for any feed you want to add), easily find info on the feeds you’re subscribed to (by clicking the “i” icon), advanced sort capabilities (sort by: feed tags, how frequently read, unread story count, and name), “email this” post (a feature i actually started using regularly)
• Cons: i can’t see what date each post was made (only vague 2 hours ago, 5 hours ago, etc.)[see comments], tagging stories and feeds can get tiresome (time consuming)

Bloglines -

• Pros: tabs help keep things organized (not by much), icons associated with feeds (left sidebar) help when trying to quickly find a site, “email this” post (same as Rojo), organize your favorite clipping into folders (on the fly), preview this feed (just before you add it)
• Cons: favorite clippings are displayed in the sidebar (instead of the main window), clicking on top-level directory in “My feeds” makes all new feeds appear as read (that sucks), “mark all as read” link is kind of useless (see previous con), export OPML feature is unintuitive (file opens in browser instead of downloading the file automatically – user must click “file”>”save as”) and is hard to find because it’s all the way at the bottom of the left sidebar.

Newsgator Online -

• Pros: favorite clippings are displayed in the main window (instead of the sidebar), convenient “email this” post feature (same as Rojo)
• Cons: can’t seem to find any info on each of the feeds i subscribe to (# of subscribers, Feed URL), no way to rename anything (folders or feeds), no way to mark “all posts” as read (only mark “this page” or “this post” as read), no icons associated with feeds (icon save time when trying to find stuff fast), had some css problems with collapsible feed descriptions using Firefox.

The Shakedown: (and why they lost out)

• Bloglines – while it is probably the easiest RSS reader service to get started on, things quickly get disorganized to the point of no return. The result was that i eventually just exported all my feeds as OPML and imported them into SearchFox and Rojo.
• Newsgator Online – is most likely my 3rd favorite service of those mentioned above. And although there aren’t any major problems to speak of, something about the main user-interface just turned me off. For some reason the whole layout just makes me feel like i have less control over everything. Also, the company as a whole seems a lot more corporate; it makes me wonder how dedicated they are to the free “online” version of their software.

Conclusions:

With 2 RSS readers remaining, SearchFox and Rojo stick out as my favorites (so far). Looks like it might take a little longer to decided on just 1 service but i’m not really in any rush to choose. In the meantime, i’ll continue to use both of them regularly and probably post some more of my observations. i might even come up with some sort of wishlist or “things i’d like to see” in new versions of SearchFox and Rojo so stay tuned.

[ This is a follow up to a previous article entitled:"1 week comparison: SearchFox, Feedster, Pluck, Bloglines, Rojo, and NewsGator", which is itself a follow up to an earlier post entitled: "So you think you can RSS? How", which is itself a follow up to an even earlier post entitled: "So you think you can RSS? Why". ]

i can’t believe an entire week has gone by..
i wanted to take a couple of hours each day to test out these 6 feed readers, but i gotta say that i still can’t decide which one i feel most comfortable with. looks like i may have seriously underestimated how easy it was going to be to make this choice. in the meantime, let me just say, that i have become a full blown feed junkie, thank you very much (not sure who to point the finger at on this one – but it’s got to be somebody’s fault right?).

anyway, here’s how i’ve been doing it and what i’ve found:

i started by logging in to each service, in 6 different Firefox tabs, all in a single browser. next i began to mess around, but trying to give each feed reader an equal amount of my attention. first i used the directories to browse for new feeds, and the search box to find sites with content i was interested in. then i took a look at the account features provided by each service. could i change my preferences.. did i even have any preferences? there were many things to explore. i did notice that Pluck and NewsGator kept logging me out if i hadn’t used them for more than 10 minutes or so. while this might be a very secure and efficient thing to do, the result was that i ended up spending a lot more time using all the other feed readers – who wants to have to keep logging in over and over again every ten minutes?

once i got bored of that, i tried to import an OPML file, which is essentially just a list of many different feeds all conveniently packed into one file. very useful for quickly moving around all your feeds (ie: import / export). suddenly i had a ton of feeds in my reader (80-120), and things got all cluttered. things were a mess, so i figured this might be a good time to test out how well each feed reader was able to manage large numbers of feeds. i deleted and renamed feeds and folders, reordering them in a way that was most useful to me. options like: display only unread articles, mark as read, and sort by date, are all particularly useful in these respects.

here are some more brief observations i have made over the course of the week:

SearchFox –
Pros: expand/collapse summaries within feeds (Results), easy to navigate/browse feeds (DirBro), sort by day/week/month/favs/all (Results), ability to mark article as unread (Manage), machine learning technology (SpecO)
Cons: slow to add feeds (Manage) [this seems much faster now], no OPML import [see comments] or export (Manage) [this feature was added: 10/21/05], no account preferences (AccSet) – but they’re still just in beta.

My Feedster -
Pros: add feeds really fast (Manage), import/export opml files and urls(Manage)
Cons: feed results page is difficult to view (Results), no way to sort page results (Results)

Pluck Online -
Pros: fast loading pages (Results), import opml files but not urls (Manage), open stories in new window (Results), add bookmarks as well as feeds (SpecO), view Shadow pages (SpecO)
Cons: can’t tell which articles are new or have been read (Manage), no export opml (Manage), weird reloading browser window if you try to do anything (DirBro)

Bloglines -
Pros: sort results differently for each folder/category (Results), expand/collapse feeds (Results), import opml files but not urls (Manage), export opml (Manage), keep articles as new even after they’ve been read (Manage)
Cons: no folder is created when importing new feeds (Manage), saving favorites is a 2-step process (ClipFav)

Rojo -
Pros: import/export opml (Manage), expand/collapse summaries within feeds (Results), many ways to sort (Results), easy one-click save/flag entries (ClipFav)
Cons: no easy way to rename categories (Manage)

NewsGator Online -
Pros: easily mark stories as read (Manage), choice to view only unread items (Results), the only service where you log in on a secure (https) server (SpecO), import/export opml files and urls (Manage)
Cons: can’t keep articles as new once they’ve been read (Manage)

Some of these feed readers have special features that would require more extensive testing in order for me to really say which i liked better. extras like tagging feeds (Rojo), favorites (Pluck), communities (Rojo,Pluck,Bloglines), machine learning (SearchFox), could easily sway my decision. the only service i am sure i would never stick with is Feedster. aside from being fast, i often had problems viewing feeds, organizing anything, uploading my logo/image, and sometimes it just wouldn’t work at all. if i had to pick my favorite 3 out of these 6 readers, i would have to say Rojo, Bloglines, and NewsGator. SearchFox could be up there as well, because of it’s ease of use. but since it is still in beta, and because i am forever intrigued with the idea of machine learning technology, i will keep SearchFox around for another 2 weeks. in that time, hopefully i can narrow these 3 services (actually 4) down to my #1 favorite. wish me luck.

[ This is a follow up to a previous article entitled: "So you think you can RSS? How", which is itself a follow up to an even earlier post entitled: "So you think you can RSS? Why", and looks at the evolution of the internet, why RSS and other feed formats are so popular today, how to use them, and why you might like one service over another. ]