Ideas

I don’t know why, but I have a huge crush on databases. For some reason I just love the way the can store, organize and serve data if used well. I’m getting quite good at Access, and I’m exploring MySQL for the upcoming Hack Your Day Directory. I just managed to create a database with phpMyAdmin and retrieve some data using php code, oh what joy!

It’s quite awesome that I can actually do this, this is the type of thing that goes unnoticed by the common net user, while the technology behind it is really cool. If they would see the code they would think I’m some sort of coder genius, while in the end it really is quite simple and logical.

Anyway, I’m off to do the Hack Your Day Directory and when I’m done with that I’ll have all the technical knowledge to create my own to do list application (I hope).

I haven’t been on a train for a while now, but the other day I had to use it to get home. I had my laptop and the latest edition of Newsweek, so I was all set for a comfy journey. I’m as originally writing this from the train actually, and it was pretty nice for a while, although I managed to miss the first train due to a toilet related emergency.

I thought it worth a mention that there was an oldish man clipping his nails on the train. Isn’t that a bit gross? He looked kind of like Sol from Oceans 11, and for some reason decided that that exact moment was the best for clipping his nails. He then swept the clippings off his clothes on to the ground, how thoughtful of him.

For all old people who might potentially be on one train with me in the future: Please don’t clip your nails on the train, it’s disguisting. Also, near the end of the journey, a clipping landed about 10 inches from me. Yumm.

I may be a bit cruel in this series, but I stumbled onto one of the funniest web hosts I’ve ever seen. And when I say stumbled, I actually mean Stumble Upon. Who would favorite this site? The owner I guess. Anyway, let’s get right to it, why MentorNet is a bad web presence.

Site design

All it takes is one look. MentorNet company was founded in 1998 supposedly, and from the looks, that’s when the website was designed. Menus on the top and left? It could be excused if they wouldn’t have that awful highlight on the left, and the drop-downs on top. Colors are way to contrasted for my taste and as a rule, never-ever use purple for font colors. Ever. Also, there isn’t too much info on the landing page, I don’t see why I would choose this web host.

Corporate image

I am a small time blogger, generating somewhere around 2500 views a day, and I try to keep my blog up to date all the time. I guess MentorNet has to be on its toes all the time, it is a web host anyway. Take a look at the footer. Either the company has been liquidated, or is trapped in some time capsule in 2007. Poor chaps.

Also, take a look at the logo on the top right. Pretty 1970’s “Wow, typing on a computer”. Look at the quasi-transparency on the edges, just a different shade of gray, although that stylish line on top does add to the elite quality. The owners probably saw this shortcoming and came up with a new logo, now to be found on the left, a bit down. In fear of loosing their customer base, they decided to keep both logos though, how thoughtful. Are they trying to symbolize an AOL takeover by the way?

Services

Web hosting for $8 a month? Doesn’t sound too bad, let’s investigate. I couldn’t actually find this deal, I think this price refers to domain registration, but we all know that’s exactly the same right? Anyways, the cheapest hosting pack is $12 (or less of course) and contains awesome options. Hold on to your hats folks, because you are getting 10MB of web space! WOW! You heard me, not 10kb, not 5Mb, but 10MB! That’s enough for more that 3 Mp3 songs and  a Wordpress blog with about 50 posts.

Let’s skip the dozen of offers and go to the top offer for those ritzy folks who need more than 10MB of space (the nerve…). With the platinum package you get an enormous 500Mb of space. That’s truly as infinite as space, you could practically even store three quarters of a whole movie!

Comparison

Ok, speaking out of the irony box, this website is a joke. I have a hosting account at bluehost with about 6-7 URL’s now, hosted for $100 a month. This gets me 300GB of space and infinite bandwidth. I also have 2500 mail accounts (100 on MentorNet) and instead of 6 website tools Bluehost offers about 20, like automatic Wordpress installation, PhpMyadmin, and so much more. How can a site like MentorNet, it’s truly amazing, and you haven’t even seen half of it, take a look for yourself.

I really need to get a bit more into programming because I’ve always wanted to create a page for just myself, containing exactly what I need. Netvibes and Pageflakes is nice, but I can’t make it exactly how I want it.

I want to make a page which shows a lot of stats, in simple list form is fine, like my Google Adsense, Feedburner stats, Alexa ranking, Page Rank, stuff from Google Analytics and so on. It would also be nice to integrate blog comment monitoring, Gmail inbox monitoring, and a load of other stuff too. If I do this for myself I can use CSS to style the page in any which way I want.

I think this project will be put on hold for a while, I need to get into understanding API-s and all the rest, but it will happen eventually I hope.