Two scary tech stories

[matgb]

The first is just utterly off the wall weird. The Secret Origins of Clippy tells us how MS patented all those bloody talking paperclips. Most scary:

Read the whole patent, and you’ll see that Microsoft put immense effort into the technical logistics of implementing Clippy. He wasn’t the spawn of a moment of temporary insanity; he was the result of a vast amount of cold, calculating effort.

I know that there were some that really liked the damn thing (when I was in the office for my first post-graduation job, one of the senior accountants proudly showed me how to change the appearance from the paperclip to a different cartoon), but for the most part? No, just no.

Second story is a lot more scary. What happens when your webhost pulls the plug? I'm fortunate that LiveJournal has an easy backup/archiving system that is interoperable, I know that I can transfer all my contents for the last 4^1/2 years to a Wordpress or similar install, as long as I have a recent backup. What happens if LJ goes down, permanently, when my most recent is old? Got a Wordpress install? How often do you backup? Using the .com? Got a backup?

If you're using something like Blogger, you're probably fairly secure, Google is, after all, massive. But it's reliant on advertising revenues. Such revenues go down during economic difficulties. What happens if they can't afford to keep their free service going? Do you have a backup?

AOL remain one of the biggest online brands. They just shut down Hometown and did very little to let existing users know, and from what I've seen there was no easy export tool.

How secure is your website? How much of the effort you've put into it do you want to keep? Back up people.

Comments

[mooism.livejournal.com]

Scariest: your web host might lose all your data by accident. At least AOL gave people some notice.

Microsoft put lots of effort into coming up with an algorithm so that Clippy would only pop up when appropriate. At the last moment they ripped it out and replaced it with something more obnoxious because a manager thought the shiny Clippy feature he was responsible for wasn't visible enough in the product.

[matgb]

Oh yeah, I meant to link to the Journalspace thing in the post. At least LJ has backups and similar, even if they're not yet colocating.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

What's the procedure for backing up your LJ? Last time I looked the best was dumping the whole thing to a PDF. Easy transition to Wordpress sounds a good idea (even though my own Wordpress install died sometime last year for reasons I still don't understand).

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

Seconded. Step by step instructions for the less savvy among us, pls? Pretty pls nicely?

[matgb]

Later, or maybe tomorrow. I should've dug out a link for this post, but, y'know, I forget that not everyone knows everything I do.

Which given it's sort of how I make a living, is a bit daft, if everyone knew, they wouldn't pay me...

[matgb]

There are a bunch of how-tos out there, I'll dig out all the links later and write a post.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

The recent news about LJs problems make this even more timely...

[misscoollinda.livejournal.com]

Every time clippy appeared on my screen, I told him to fuck off.

[matgb]

It took me ages to figure out how to turn it off permanently. Then a few months later my PC got replaced and I had to figure it out again...

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

Real men don't make backups!

(Second time I've had cause to say that this week...)

Re: LJ entering the void. I'm reminded of what Aldous Huxley said to Anita Loos when she phoned to console him after his house burnt down, along with most of his papers. "I feel very clean."

[lokean.livejournal.com]

Interestingly enough, the original software which was developed for the office assistant was scrapped because it was too efficient. In its first incarnation the office assistant software was *creepily precognitive*. As a result, it very rarely made its presence known, instead just streamlining your Office experience without popping up to irritate you. However, the people responsible for making the Office suite a product, rather than a set of applications, complained that the Office assistant was important to the brand and should be more active in its helpfulness. The original code was scrapped and a new version rushed out that attempted to prompt and interact with you at every possible juncture. This gave birth to the popular desire to destroy Clippy utterly and burn his tiny metal skeleton to oxidised smoke.

It was suggested to me at one point that some of the Microsoft programmers that have been around since the original Office Assistant code was developed are actually still using it, since it is actually helpful in that incarnation. It was a monitoring system that catalogued your computer use and looked for patterns in your behaviour, then began to respond to your actions with help on the most likely future objective. As long as you spent the initial time necessary to adapt it to your preferences it pretty much ceased to be noticeable.

In other words, yet another good product sacrificed on the altar of style before reaching the public.

[innerbrat]

Analysis, please?

| Someone affected.

[matgb]

Post pending, have just saved about 20 links and closed tags as I need to reboot, but the main ones that look reliable are:
http://community.livejournal.com/no_lj_ads/83519.html
http://azurelunatic.livejournal.com/6225487.html

Numbers are inflated, ValleyWag and 'facts' are normally only loosely associated, but about half the LJ US staff are gone, including my two best contacts.

Assuming I get time this evening (SB'll make me the time I suspect) I'll do a 'how to backup' and 'how to export to a clone and to a WP install' as well as some thoughts about what's happening.

Essentially, my hopes that SUP knew what they were doing and were taking the site in the right direction are now completely dashed, they did, but were completely overextended.

LJ won't die, it can't, too big and with too many users. But LJ as we know it? That's in trouble.

Going to be in contact with Dreamwidth people later, they want an interoperable distributed model from what I can see, which means we can combine efforts and make a UK install.

[innerbrat]

You rock.

I will back up my stuff this evening. I had got to some of the 'real' numbers shortly after commenting,and drawn soem of the same conclusions, but I look forward to your post and will link to it.