Not being a very heavy traffic type of site DeeEmm.com has always been quite happy residing on a shared server along side the other similar sites that I run. My two heavy traffic sites reside on a dedicated server but there has never been a need for such extravagances here. That is, until just recently.

Go Yabba Yabba!

I have a habit of bouncing between hosting plans so that i can get a better deal and have moved between several hosts before settling on GoDaddy. They offered the cheapest unlimited hosting and as I had domains and online storage registered there it seemed like a no-brainer. Before I moved I gave them a call to make sure that they supported Joomla and a few specific hosting requirements that I needed. The support guy was very helpful and reassured me that there were no account restrictions and the hosting could be configured as I required. Cool.

So nearly a year goes by, with no major dramas. The support has been excellent when I have needed it and the sites are running much better then they did on my previous host (who had a habit of continually reconfiguring the servers in the name of 'security' which usually ended up breaking my site).

Out of the blue just before Christmas I get an email from 'network violations' telling me that my account is in contravention of their hosting policy and will be taken down unless I immediately fix it. On digging a little further it transpires that as a couple of the sites I had hosted there have over 1024 files within a directory it was seen as being in contravention with their terms and conditions. They advised me to immediately change the site so that it did not have greater then 1024 files or folders in a single directory and then send them an email stating that I had removed the offending items, was in agreement to their rule of 1024 and would not do it again.

WTF!?!

I smell a rat!

I was majorly pissed off as one of the issues I asked about before committing was hosting limitations on their 'unlimited' plans. Well after doing some digging I found out that there is no such clause in their T&C, hence the request to cut and paste a specific statement into an email. Obviously I refused.

After some debate and moving up the food chain a few levels I ended up in a stalemate conversation with one of their managers who was not going to budge on their newly created 1024 rule and whilst I managed to get the deadline extended a little they were adamant that I had to address the file issue.

There was no compromise on their behalf and I was fed a bullshite story about how my sites were affecting other domains on the shared hosting (quite amazing considering that neither site was actually live, the DNS records were still pointing at my previous registrar meaning that there was zero traffic to their servers).

With lies and a complete lack of cooperation on behalf of GoDaddy I decided to vote with my feet and take my (considerable) business elsewhere. Their loss! I did however manage to get a parting shot by getting them to refund me for the three hosting plans that they miss-sold me. The ironic thing was that in the course of the discussions I had with them I asked if they would upgrade me to a VPS plan for free - which they declined. Not sure why as it was a fraction of the price of the three plans. Idiots.

My Gain

Their loss has literally turned into my gain as I discovered Digital Ocean who offer basic VPS hosting from as little as $5 / month. I have now migrated all of my hosted sites over to a single VPS instance which is working absolutely flawlessly. The best thing is that should I need I can easily and instantly upgrade to a higher spec VPS with the click of a button.

I'm going to carry on testing things out for a while and will probably move my two large sites across as it is much better value than I am currently getting.

/DM

Something new is happening. 

The past few weeks I have been rejigging all of my sites, services and applications so that they all now fall under the banner of my company Indau. The reason for this is that there was no direct correlation between each of the products. This autonomy also failed to leverage a very important commodity - diversity.

By associating all of my different products with my company, it demonstrates the diversity in the work that I do, and therefore work that the company is able to provide. It helps sell my services. 

The reshuffle is partially due to expansion in a new direction, it also helps me to delineate paying projects from hobby projects. Not that hobby projects are without value, indeed the opposite is true.  Whilst undertaking the reshuffle I also decided to revive  my long suffering content management system. DMCMS. The reason for this is partially because I want to play with the fantastic tools on offer by the guys at Atlassian, but also because it deserves to live on.

After a quick review of the code with a fresh mind, the roadblock that prevented the version 1 release is readily apparent, the multi language support was weighing the code down and preventing progress. The first job is therefore to remove the bloat associated with the multi-language support and provide a functioning version 1 release.

To give DMCMS a new lease of life, and an identity of it's own I have registered DeeEmm.org so that it can reside in it's own space, with no distractions from the crap that goes on here at DeeEmm.com

It might take a few days to get things up and running but considering that there has been no movement on DMCMS in about 2 years I'm sure that should not be a problem.

/DM

I've been a proponent of Evernote for quite some time now, I use it on my Mac, my iPhone and iPad as well as using the online version when accessing from my clients windows machines. Being able to instantly share data between all of my machines has been an excellent boon to my productivity, and being able to find information fast means that I am never caught short in meetings or whilst out in the field. Well at least that's how it used to be before the latest Evernote 5 update.

The new version of Evernote has been vastly prettyfied, so much so in fact, that instead of being the leading GTD app (GTD = getting things done), it has now entered to realms of bloatware. The new update is visually very different, and a considerable amount of time would have appear to have been spent on creating new fancy graphics and swipe actions. Unfortunately this is at the expense of usability. 

Heres my lowdown on why you should NOT update...

iPhone version. Epic fail!

Notebook list is so cluttered with pretty graphics that there is hardly any room left for the notebook title, surely the point of the notebook screen is to view a list of notebooks not bedazzle me with faux embossed cardboard. If like me you use title prefixes to keep similar notebooks listed together to make them easier to find, you might just find that all you can see is a list of notebooks that have the same name.

The note preview now ignores carraige returns in the note making the snippet look untidy and hard to read.

Sliding tabs are hard to use and also coincide with iOS swipe down alert summary. I constantly swipe down my alerts screen instead of swiping the current view down to return back to the main screen.

Main screen and app in general is now bloated with unnecessary graphics that do nothing to improve functionality, the tabs are hard to use with my fingers and take up valuable space where they could have placed shortcuts to more useful features.

I have no idea why I need to have the premium features tab ‘above the fold’ as the most important thing in my view. I couldn’t care a less about it. I know I am a premium member as I pay the $’s for the privilege. A small insignificant ‘settings’ icon is all that it needed. I used this screen approximately zero times in the old app, why is it now so important?

Ipad app. Epic fail #2

Same useless slide up / down tabs as iPhone app. Same issue with iOS alerts screen.

Still no list view for notebooks or notes. I have previously griped about this, as have many others unfortunately to no avail. Tying to find what you need by browsing though an endless list of similar looking squares is not the most productive way of displaying information. Again, so much display estate is unneccesarily wasted with faux cardboard.

Same issue as iphone app with note previews ignoring returns, making notes hard to read.

The stupid animated window for displaying notes now means that I can see less of my note. Why? Who could possibly have thought that reducing the size would be a good idea?

Generally the screen layout is a waste of space, so much more could have been done with this app. Fortunately the web version displays everything in a manner which makes much more sense, three columns - notebook list + note list + note preview. Unfortunately the stupid drag drop rearranging of notebooks on the web version means that if I try to use it on the ipad I cannot scroll the list of notebooks, all I end up doing is making a mess of my notebook list. Havent these guys heard of drag handles???!!!

No list view was my gripe about the previous version; I abhor icons in a productive environment. Now I find with the latest version that everything is icon driven, Evernote have completely embraced the useless icon view. Arrrrggh. The worst thing is that there is not even any way to disable it. 

Still no way to create a notebook in a notebook, and the 'send to' button on the edit notebook screen just results in a 404 error that locks the app up. Good testing there guys.

Icons and thumbnails

Icons are a pet hate of mine. I have never viewed windows or OSX or Linux or any other flavour of OS in icon view. It's perfect for images, but not for files. Icons are slow to use, they are not intuitive. Consider this; if you sort a list alphabetically or by date you can easily and quickly find what you are looking for by scrolling up or down. However, no matter how you sort a page of icons it is not easy to find non image like information quickly. Unlike lists, icons do not read in up / down order, they read left to right; down a row; left to right; down a row and so on ... It’s is not intuitive. It’s very hard to find info quickly! Perfect for images or galleries, useless for everything else!

I can understand evernote wanting to ‘pretty up’ the app, but not at the expense of functionality. It’s almost as if they have forgotten the app is mostly used as a GTD app, a genre where productivity is key and speed and ease of use are what makes for a productive app. This latest update is a big step backwards in my opinion. I feel that it is ill conceived, poorly tested and so far different in basic functionality from that last version that it might as well be a different product.

It is like the update has been written by someone with no idea of what Evernote is, that they cannot possible be an Evernote user. They have also not done any beta testing, not stopped to ask what the power users want, or need, not read the requests for items like list views. The update seems to be compłetely driven by aesthetics; functionality has apparently  taken a back seat. They have effectively ruined a capable and professional app by turning it into a kindergarten toy. 

When I think about the designer who penned this update I get a mental picture of someone with bad hand eye coordination using a mouse to chase a pointer around the screen like a child chases peas around a plate. Like when you get asked to help someone with a computer issue at work and then get subjected to having waste an inordinate amount of time watch them use the mouse to do things you can do instantly with simple keyboard shortcuts*. Someone who NEEDS icons and thumbnails to be able to navigate. 

Embracing icon type views has effectively dumbed down the app, it has taken a productive workflow improving piece of software and reduced its usability so that it can be driven by the lowest common demographic: those of us who waste 30% of their days chasing mouse pointers around screens and typing with one (or possibly two) fingers.

(*Unfortunately It seems that nowadays computer literacy is no longer a prerequisite for being given a job in front of a computer.)

Well here's some news for you Evernote. Icons and thumbnails have their place, but it is not here. Icons work REALLY well on the ipad home screens, so much so that my one year old has no trouble at all using the ipad. Icons and thumbnails work REALLY well in image galleries, in fact nothing else works quite as well in gallery apps, but they do NOT work for note taking apps. Think of all of the real world and virtual world ways of organising text type data and they alł have one thing in common, a list or index, or arrangement in order of data or by title. Libraries, address books, encyclopaedias, email applicàtions, in fact any kind of filing system, they all organise information in list type arrangements. 

Why try to reinvent the wheel?

Do not try to fix that which is not broken!

I hate to say it but I am now looking other apps. I use Evernote for my day to day business and this latest update has made a massive hit on my productivity, one that I cannot afford. If I am going to have to learn to reuse an app, I might as well learn to use one that works for me, unfortunately with Evernote in its current form it longer fits the bill, And due to my recently deceàsed laptop I havent even had a chance to take a really good look at the OSX version yet, but my quick peek did not like what it saw: more icons :(  

Evernote need to make some big changes and make them quickly or I am sure that many other users will soon be doing as I am and jumping ship, as this new version is almost unusable.

/DM

The past week has been pretty painful as I have been without my trusty macbook. Unfortunately it died in what I can only call  freak accident.

Last week whilst I was flying to visit a clients site the plane hit some turbulence. Now when I say some turbulence, you could probably translate that as the worst turbulence I have ever experienced. Not wanting to sound too blasé about such things; I fly quite a lot and being originally based in London I've experienced quite a bit of extreme weather whilst flying. Anyhow, before departing i did what I always do; put my mac into sleep mode, loaded it up in my trusty pull along samsonite laptop case and headed off to the airport. After going through check-in, stopping off for the obligatory coffee at the qantas lounge and boarding the plane I settled in to reading my book. (This week it is 'Existence' by David Brin).

Takeoff was pretty bumpy and the ride did not improve as we rose above cloud level, then about 15 minutes into the flight we hit some turbulence. I can only liken the turbulence to what it must feel like to be trapped inside an industrial washing machine, stuck inside of a cement mixer that is bouncing on the worlds biggest bungee. In fact, I'm not really sure if that is an adequate analogy, but I'm sure you get the gist.

Whilst such a ride is no issue for a skateboarding petrol head (I did at one point think of throwing my hands in the air and giving a 'whoop' or two), I've got to admit that the sound of the engines straining and the wings creaking was making the engineer side of my brain ask questions.

Eventually, after what seemed like half an hour or so the turbulence subsided and we landed safely. Unfortunately when I went to get my laptop bag from the overhead locker I found that it was open and that most of the contents had spilled out. I thought little of it until I got into work and discovered that my macbook would not boot back up.

Fortunately I use an online cloud storage solution to sync work between my macbook, iPad, the mac at my office and the mac at home so I had a relatively recent backup of my work which was just as well as no matter what I did I could not get the macbook to boot up. Eventually I did manage to get the system to boot and recovered the additional data but both the hard drive and hard drive controller are now cactus.

I would guess that putting the macbook into sleep mode rather than shutting it down completely may have been a contributing factor, and it is also possible that the hard drive may not have survived regardless, but it still remained a complete PITA that needed resolution.

After some consideration I decided that it was a good excuse to buy a new laptop. The macbook was a mid 2009 model and nearing the end of its useful life, it was already on it's second keyboard and third hard drive. As I travel a lot and have the use of a 27" iMac at work I decided to go small and have ordered an 11" macbook air with i7 2Ghz / 8Gig RAM and 512Gig SSD. Now I just have to wait for it to arrive, it's the longest 5-8 days of my life.

So I guess the moral of this story is remember to completely shut down your laptop before you fly.