A recent comment from Erik made my day! It seems that he has found a unique way to use the Lost Drive application that recently appeared in Popular Science. Erik writes:
This little program saved my wife and I a lot of of grief and emotional trauma while on vacation. Read on.
I am a PopSci reader and linked to DCoT via the mag. My family, which includes two VERY energetic boys, five and three, went to Disneyland for a little get-a-way. Before we went I told my wife about the ‘I’m Lost’ program that one can install on a jump drive.
We decided to buy three 32Mb drives, which are a dime a dozen nowadays, one for each boy and one for us with the same program and ’secret phrase’ on it. We also included our cellphone numbers. Two lanyards with dangling USB drives that had a ‘I’m Lost’ label adhered to them and tucked into their shirts later, we had two boys that if got lost would be found and be reunited with us quickly.
We told the boys to cry for mom or dad if they wander off or got lost and then give the USB drive to the person that found them.
Our three year old did just what we thought he would do - Disappeared. Within 13 minutes of being ‘lost’ though, my cellphone rang. My three year old whom we thought didn’t understand what we told him about the funny thing around his neck actually did what we told him. The account from our boys ‘finder’ was humorous and panned out like this: My little redheaded boy was SCREAMING for his mom. The ‘finder’ came to help him, the boy showed the ‘finder’ the labelled USB drive, the ‘finder’ then brought him to security, security plugged the USB drive in to his computer, saw the message and called me on my cellphone. When we went to retrieve our boy the security guard asked for our USB drive with the secret phrase on it. The USB drives performed just as set up to. It had my cellphone number, my boys’ first name (first name only!) to calm him down and his favorite treat.
To say the least, D-land security was very impressed and the ‘finder’ equally impressed and my redhead boy was wearing M&M’s on his lips and chin.
There it is. Not only can you retrieve lost USB drives with this you can also find lost kids. Thank you!
First of all, I’m really glad to hear that everyone is safe and sound. The biggest fear that I have is that something will happen to my kids. That must have been the longest 13 minutes of your life!
Second, that is a really cool way of using the application. I had never thought of it in that way but it is definitely something that I would consider setting up for my kids.
Third, this really makes my day. There are times when we all wonder whether or not we are making a difference in the world. Well, I sure don’t feel that way today! Thank you for sharing your story and I wish all the best for you and your family!
If you are someone who is looking for fame and fortune, blogging or developing free and open source software (FOSS) are probably not appropriate career paths for you. In a lot of ways these can be very thankless jobs!
But, what if you are on the other end of the relationship? If you receive a benefit from the efforts of a blogger or a FOSS developer, what can you do to show your appreciation? It is, after all, in your best interest for these people to be happy and enjoy working on their blog or FOSS project because this will encourage them to continue doing it. And, you will continue to benefit from their efforts in the future.
I have compiled a list of ways that you can thank these hard working individuals so that they will continue to produce their excellent products.
Literally Say “Thanks!”
It sounds almost too simple but sometimes that is all it takes! You could:
I always love it when I get a thank you e-mail from a reader. The nice things about this are that the are easy to do, costs little or nothing and are always appreciated!
Write About Them
Everyone loves to see their name in print. We all have access to some type of media where we can mention these outstanding people and give them some well deserved recognition. Some places where you can write about them include:
Some of you may even be writers for newspapers and magazines. Write articles about them specifically or mention them in passing in one of your articles.
I always get a thrill when someone has written about Daily Cup of Tech.
Link to Them
If you are on the Internet (which I am assuming you are because you are reading this), then you have the ability to link to their website. Linking to the person’s website is very important to them because it is through these links that their blog or software gains popularity. When you are taking the time to write about them (see previous entry) in a digital media format, make sure you put a link to their website so everyone can also reap the benefits.
It has been really cool to see how the links to Daily Cup of Tech have grown since it was started back in September, 2006.
Support Financially
Everyone has bills to pay, even people who work for free! For example, some of the regular expenses that Daily Cup of Tech incurs include:
If you are in the market for a product that an advertiser is selling, use the link on the blog or FOSS developer’s website. This can provide some extra residual income.
Also, let the advertiser know that you visited their website or purchased their product because of a link on the blog or website. This will encourage the advertiser to continue advertising with that website.
Talk About Them
Just like you can write about these people, you can also talk about them. Become an unofficial salesperson for the blog or product.
Some ways you can help spread the word about these projects include:
Uses them as illustrations when making presentations
If the project generates software, keep a copy of it with you to give away
You may even want to go as far as I have a create a business card with a list of all your 10 favorite blogs and FOSS projects on it!
Get Involved
One of the major things that blogs and FOSS projects have in common is too much work and not enough time. There is always something that needs to be done. Many projects and blogs are more than happy to accept volunteers who are willing to help out.
Answer questions and provide tech support in forums
I am really excited with some of the upcoming articles that the new DCoT contributors are putting out! Their involvement is going to really make a difference at DCoT.
Keep Coming Back
There are few things more important to a webmaster than traffic. One of those few things is repeat traffic. If you really want to help make a blogger or FOSS developer happy, come back to his/her website again and again and again and…
These are just some ideas that I have put together. I’m sure that there are several other ways that people can show how appreciative they are to these hard working people. If you have some more ideas, please feel free to add them to the comments.
So, having dealt with the repercussions of the Digg (Slashdot) Effect, I thought I would share some of the lessons that I have learned over the past few days. These have been hard lessons to learn. And, in hindsight, some of these lessons should have been obvious. I just hope that someone will be able to learn from my mistakes so that you can be prepared for it when it happens to you.
Lesson 1: You Web Host Will Help You…
I would have been completely sunk had my web host not been willing to communicate and work with me so that I could get back to business as usual ASAP. They were very professional and helpful.
As soon as you realize that your hits are jumping or you believe that the Digg Effect is coming, notify your web host immediately. They can sometimes redirect extra resources to the issue and help keep things running smoothly. And keep them posted as to the status of the situation.
Lesson 2: …But Your Web Host Is In This To Ultimately Make Money
My web host was very quick to offer me a dedicated hosting solution at 48x what I was paying! Because I was consuming an unusually large amount of bandwidth, they throttled by bandwidth back (even though I had only used 1% of my 2512 GB allotment and even now I have only used 4%).
What surprised me was that even on my most bandwidth intensive day (Thursday), I used 68,326.44 MB of bandwidth. Even if I had continued at this usage rate (that I was told was too high) for the entire month of January, my usage would have only hit 2069 GB. That is only 83% of my allotted amount. Obviously, my web host has little to no intension of letting me use all of my allotted bandwidth each month.
I also had some poorly written plugins incorporated with my WordPress software. These were consuming up to 80% of the CPU load on the server and other clients were complaining. My web host eventually disabled my website and told me to not re-enable it until I have the CPU cycles under control. It was obvious that they were willing to sacrifice the one (me) for the many (the other 200 customers on the box).
To be honest, I really can’t blame them for doing that. I would probably have done the same thing. What would have been nice, though, was if they had noticed this high CPU utilization before the Digg Effect hit me and then I could have resolved the issue before it was a problem.
The big thing that you can do here is to make sure that your plugins are playing nicely. The easiest way to do this would be to periodically monitor how much of the CPU your website is using. Use the top command on *nix to get a nice running summary of what is taking up CPU cycles.
One plugin that I do recommend is the WP-Cache plugin. I learned about this from a previous Digg Effect and found that it greatly reduces the strain on the mySQL server. It writes temporary static files that reduce the number of calls to the mySQL server. Really helps to keep things running quickly.
Lesson 3: Share the Load
One of the biggest problems that I ran into was everyone wanting the PC Repair System all at the same time. This put a tremendous amount of strain on my server and bandwidth. Of course, I rarely ran into problems when just the regulars were showing up. But, when everyone and his dog wanted access, that is when things got scary.
3a: Mirror the Culprit
One of the solutions that really helped (thank Rob) was to mirror the primary file to several other locations (thanks everyone for the mirrors). I then made these files available via the download link.
One cool idea that I stumbled upon with this solution was URL Rotator by LJScripts. My concern was that if I were to list all of the mirror locations, people would naturally just select the first mirror. Also, if someone had put a deep link to the file http://www.dailycupoftech.com/Downloads/PCRepairSystem.zip (which I know was happening pretty early in the whole affair), then there would be no benefit.
This was where URL Rotator came in. All I needed to do was create a directory called http://www.dailycupoftech.com/Downloads/PCRepairSystem.zip and dump the contents of the URL Rotator archive. Then, I could add my URLs via the web interface. Whenever someone clicked on a link to http://www.dailycupoftech.com/Downloads/PCRepairSystem.zip, including ones from outside DCoT, they would then get a random mirror. No more problem!
3b: Mirror the Website
The other thing that was putting heavy load on my website was just hits to the website. As you may or may not know, WordPress is a PHP based system made up of dynamic pages. Each time someone comes to the website, the page is created on the fly. This takes processing power which adds load to the server. This, in turn, slows down my website (and any other website that is on that server).
What I am considering doing is mirroring DCoT to several servers throughout the world. Most of these would get little to no traffic on a regular basis since they are just duplicates of DCoT. In fact, I would probably just create a small PHP script that would redirect each mirrored page to the original website during normal loads. This way, people could still participate in comments which would not be available on the mirrored sites.
But, when I cane under moments of significant load, I would set up a system where I could make a simple change and DCoT would start redirecting people to the mirrored locations. These mirrored locations would share the load with DCoT and everyone would be happy.
Now, the fun part will be figuring out how to do this. At this point, I am looking at using HTTrack or wget. I schedule this to run a few times a day against DCoT and then modify the code so that it can deal with switching from normal to heavy load situations. I think this could be a pretty big project but I have a feeling that it could be worth it in the end. If anyone out there has any ideas about this, please leave them in the comments.
Lesson 4: I Have Friends Out There Willing To Help
This is kind of a rehashing of my earlier post so I won’t get into too much detail. I simply want to point out the if you create a good blog that people find to be useful, they will fight beside you to ensure that it stays up. From e-mails of encouragement to helpful suggestions and advice to right out open offers to provide whatever they can, I was amazed and humbled by the outpouring of support I received. It is to all of you that this blog is dedicated!
I’m sure that I will come up with more insights as the adrenaline wears off and my life starts to get back to normal but for the time being, that’s about it. I look forward to your comments and suggestions.
Amids the controversy, I was contacted via the comments by Alan Wallace, Senior VP for Corporate Communications for CyberDefender. He was quite concerned with some of the comments about CyberDefender. I offered him an opportunity for an e-mail interview which he promptly accepted. Here is the end result of that interview:
DCoT:
Please tell us about CyberDefender Corporation, its history, vision, and mission statement.
Alan Wallace:
CyberDefender Corporation is focuses on developing the industry’s most advanced early detection technology providing early threat detection while also providing earlier defense against Internet attacks. This is done via a secure high-speed distributed network where fast moving threats are updated in approximately an hour, as opposed to 12 hours or more for other security developers.
Company Founded
Expert software marketer, Gary Guseinov, chief executive officer, and Igor Barash, chief information officer, co-founded the company known today as CyberDefender Corporation in 2003. In early 2005, the team acquired its own proprietary broad spectrum computer threat management technology.
Early CyberDefender Success
While designed as an end-to-end technology for all types of threats, CyberDefender (then known as Cyber-Defender) was focused on infectious attacks, or viruses. It became a popular free antivirus Internet download, building a large network of users.
DCoT:
Tell us about your flagship product, CyberDefender.
Alan Wallace:
CyberDefender launched its revolutionary free security monitoring system and Internet security tools suite in November 2006. This revolutionary, patented early-detection technology defends against emerging spyware, adware, spam and other virus attacks before they damage computer systems helping prevent identity theft, and it complements other security software, providing an additional layer of security on the desktop with the proven ability to catch attacks earlier. The product displays non-intrusive advertising, which can be removed for a small fee by upgrading to CyberDefender’s Early Detection Center™.
DCoT:
How does CyberDefender set itself apart from it’s competition?
Alan Wallace:
Speed is our real asset. We detect faster with threats making their way to our early Detection Center faster and we update faster with fixes and protection making their way to your system faster than our competition.
DCoT:
If I were to install only CyberDefender on my computer and give my computer a live connection to the Internet, what else would I have to do to my system to ensure that it was safe?
Alan Wallace:
Install a Firewall – XP uses a very strong one already included with Windows.
DCoT:
There are some concerns by people that CyberDefender may contain some of the bad behavior its predecessors, Spyblocs and eBlocs, did; namely, aggressive & deceptive advertising and illegal force installs. (See http://www.spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-spyware.htm#cybdef_note) How will you allay these concerns?
Alan Wallace:
Spyware Warrior has de-listed us and this is a new team with great track records in the industry. We have assembled this team to develop world class solutions.
DCoT:
On your website’s advertising policy page, you list a long line of requirements for advertisers. This may appear to some as a way of distancing yourself from old, more aggressive advertising practices while you could be still participating in these practices. How do you respond to such thinking?
Alan Wallace:
I have emailed the publication to learn of their testing methods so that we can see why they have gotten these results, plus we have sent this review to our internal team. As always we will address any issues if they exist. We are working to build a world class solution – so if someone has found a problem we want to know about it right away and fix it when necessary.
DCoT:
What plans does CyberDefender have in the works for the future?
Alan Wallace:
We are currently focused on making this the best product it can be.
DCoT:
I understand that there is a CyberDefender beta group. How can readers become a part of this group?
DCoT:
If the readers of this interview take away only one thing, what should that be?
Alan Wallace:
CyberDefender provides an extra layer of protection, we are the only suite that can be installed with another suite and we are free (ad supported in the product). Before CyberDefender you could never safely install more than one suite on a machine – without really messing up your machine. We have assembled a great team to build great solutions – security solutions have a history of needing too many system resources, not updating regularly or even problems with uninstalling. These issues have all been attributed to companies that are much larger than we are. We know how important and extra layer of protection is – large companies spend a great deal to accomplish this – we can give you that extra layer and protect you better for free.
Now, readers, it is your turn. Has Mr. Wallace’s comments changed your thinking? Would you consider installing CyberDefender? Tell us what you think in the comments.
I would also like to say a special thanks to Alan Wallace for being willing to do the interview.
As some of you may be aware, I am doing DCoT as an experiment to see if I can actually support myself and my family blogging full time. I am asking you, the loyal DCoT family the following question:
How can I support myself blogging without advertising on my blog or in my feeds?
I have been getting some feedback lately about the increase in advertising on my blog and also in the feeds that I put out. This is the primary source of revenue for me from the blog. I also get paid per “advertising” blog from one company and you may see one of those from time to time.
In general, people do not like advertisements if they can avoid them. And I’m like everyone else. I fast forward over the commercials if I tape a TV show. I complain about the ads before a movie at the theater (”If I wanted to watch commercials, I would have stayed home and watched TV!”). I avoid magazines that are more ads than contents.
But how else can I generate money from my blog if I don’t use ads? I’ve tried donations but nobody donated. Nobody is willing to pay me to blog about what I want to blog about. So what else should I try?
Would people be willing to pay for “premium content”?
Should I sell solutions where people can enter a question and a PayPal donation to have me respond to the question?
Should I create custom AutoIt programs for a fee?
I am turning to you, the DCoT readers, to help me with this question. Please post any insight, suggestions, etc. as to how this can be accomplished. I look forward to your replies.
A recent comment from Erik made my day! It seems that he has found a unique way to use the Lost Drive application that recently appeared in Popular Science. Erik writes:
If you are someone who is looking for fame and fortune, blogging or developing free and open source software (
So, having dealt with the repercussions of the 
