Day: August 7, 2008

Ask Slashdot on Website Backup Options

A few days ago Ask Slashdot featured a question on how to handle local backup of files on remote web servers. I’ve been trying to figure out a good answer to that question the past few days.

My problem is this — I’ve been using Cpanel to do a daily full backup of my server. That was fine when the .tar files were 600mb-1gb. But lately I’ve been dumping more and more of my life on to my web server and the daily .tar file has ballooned to 12gb and growing.

I’ve got 16mb download speed on my cable Internet, so that file still takes awhile, but if I set it up to download when I got to bed, it’s finished long before I wake up. Still, I’m sure at some point Charter is going to ring me up and wonder why I’m downloading hundreds of gigabytes per month. Plus, I can see the day when that download is 50gb (FIOS, where are you?)

So what to do? It looks like the consensus in the Slashdot thread is to use rsync. I guess I’ll talk to my webhost about getting that up and running (there is an rsync install on the server, but I can’t make head nor tails of the rsync documentation on the web).

Anyone else have to do local backups of very large remote file sets?

Turn WordPress Into a Private Twitter Clone with the Prologue Theme

I really like the idea behind Twitter, but everytime I go to use Twitter it is down for one reason or another. I’d also like a little more control over my data and since I’m not interested in broadcasting my Twits to the world, there’s the Prologue Theme for WordPress.

As you can see, Prologue turns WordPress into a Twitter clone. I have a separate WordPress install on my server that is password protected where I update my status, etc. WordPress has a post-by-email option, so typically I just send an e-mail from my Blackberry the secret e-mail address I set up, and then those updates get propagated to my Twitter clone.

It works surprisingly well. The biggest pain is the eye rolling from my wife when she notices I’m updating my status again.

Action Figure Authority

I’ve been seeing more and more ads for Action Figure Authority, a business that rates toys and action figures and assigns them scores based on their condition (though apparently it has been around since 2000). There is a similar service for comic books that has been wildly successful, but I’m a bit surprised that it’s working for toys as well.

The idea is that you have an independent entity establishing an indicator for what the condition of the toy is to reduce the subjectivity that sellers may introducing in rating a toy in fine, good, very good, etc. condition. With toys, of course, not only is the toy itself being graded but also the packaging since so many toy collectors want their toys in mint in box condition (though AFA does rate loose figures as well).

Personally, I’m the sort of person who spends $100 on a mint in box Super Powers figure so I can rip open the packaging and display the figure, but others are really into the packaging.

Anyway, I was curious just how effective using a service like AFA was. It turns out that Australian business professor Michael Kind authored a paper on the effect of product grading on eBay pricing that looked specifically at AFA grading’s affects on auction prices,

This paper reports on a case study of a U.S. organisation called Action Figure Authority (AFA) that grade and case action figures, playsets and other collectable toys. The study conveys that grading items through AFA significantly increases items auction value when traded on eBay and the confidence of potential buyers. In fact depending on the grading of the items, some have been auctioned off for as much as ten times their expected secondary market value. This study finds product grading is an alternative mechanism to creating trust and inducing higher auction prices.