@lindsay.at

Damn Joyent for continually being able to come up with products I want to buy. It's clear that they tap into a psychological type, and I fit that profile. I've written about the freedom offered by Joyent's pricing model for the "lifetime" plans, and all I can say is they've done it again: their virtual private server offering, the OpenSolaris-based "Accelerator," has a limited-customer offer for "lifetime" hosting.

Never mind that Joyent have repeatedly denied that they would (or even could) offer lifetime hosting on this utility-computing-style product. They did it. And halved the price for existing customers like me.

Never mind that while I had been intrigued and tempted by the Accelerators, I set the idea of signing up aside for two reasons: I have numerous containers at my disposal with my OpenSolaris servers at work, anyway, and the extra month's setup fee for an Accelerator didn't make it worth it for me. I bought it.

Absolutely brilliant of them: provide a product that I wouldn't pay $150 to try, but pay $500 more to "buy outright." I'm freed up from the pressure of having to take advantage of it right away. What surprises me most right now is that there is no news of the offer ending, yet. I would have sworn that there would be 200 takers within hours.

There's a bit of cognitive dissonance seeing Jason Hoffman blogging on wordpress.com. Dr. "we admin servers so you don't have to", king of the DIY-ers, is going with a hosted solution. (Okay, sure, TextDrive is responsible for a fair portion of WP.com's infrastructure, but...)

Is that the natural way of things, now? People moving from hosted applications to hosted domains on servers and back to the hosted application space? Will I get sick of the control? Of fighting spam? Of responsibility for security? Hmm.

Yeah, early days. (Is it even really him? Dunno at this point.) But it's an interesting space to watch...

As I've been documenting, TextDrive offers solid products for excellent value, and nurture a customer loyalty that most companies would kill for. For a while, over this past weekend, it seemed like the bargains I had been blogging about would disappear. It was sad, but somewhat understandable, as the sheer value of what they proposed to give away seemed extraordinary. I asked about the side-doors into Joyent Core that I had blogged about and acted upon. It seems like there was more to the situation than the CEO appreciated at first.

He came back with an offer that set everyone back on their heels. Those TextDrive VCs (lifetime plan members) who have upgraded their plans at some point would be rewarded fantastically. Those who haven't already upgraded would get a chance to do so at a reduced price. There are lots of details, and dependencies on how you began with TextDrive/Joyent, but I tried to capture all I knew in the below flowchart:
The interesting thing about all this is that it inverts the pricing relationship with previous upgrades. VCs had to buy in twice to get the Mixed Grill, and (typically) paid more than those who came to the Mixed Grill directly. It made sense at the time.

Now, though, the lifetime plan structure is all about rewarding those who bought in early and often. Those VCs who upgraded to Mixed Grill will be moved up to the business-class product, and those who paid once and later will stay on a plan that (though upgraded) most resembles their current plan.

This reflects a loyalty to Joyent's customers that I honestly have not encountered elsewhere.

So, when Joyent announced its referral programme, I signed up, because I've been experimenting with this monetisation thing on my blogs, and thought there was nothing to lose. As soon as I was approved for the programme, I went back and added links to an entry from the recent past. I checked on my account tonight, on a lark, and noticed I actually got a clickthrough commission.

The Google ads have been there from the start, and seem to have garnered some clicks as well. I get a (tiny) thrill when I check on that account and notice my running total go up. But, well, the numbers tell a story:

Google AdSense earnings to date: $0.58
Joyent Affiliate earnings to date: $209.85

Anyway, this is not meant to boast or gloat or drive more revenue. Perhaps it's even unwise to reveal such personal details. I just thought that it might be an interesting data point from a guy who gets page-views per day in the dozens (yes, if you're reading this, you are special). And I fully expect that the Joyent commission will be a one-off thing.

Still, it makes me reconsider the value of splashing ads all over my blogs. And if you sell high-value and/or high-volume products through the web, it seems like you could do far worse than enabling an affiliate programme through shareasale.com.

(Oh, and if you're the magical person who clicked through and bought that 3 Martini Lunch, step forward: I owe you (at least) a beer...)

[Note: The events and deals described in the post are currently in flux. I advise not acting upon the information contained within, for the moment.]

As a quick followup to yesterday's post, I just wanted to point out that Jason once again carries the day with a pitch-perfect post further clarifying what's happening with the shared plans:

On the "Connector" level (aka Joyent Core), there are three plans: shared 1, shared 2 and shared 3.

Everyone will be put in as one of those, and only those plans.

Did the mixed grill people put more into the pot? Yes, they did.
Will just throwing all lifetime accounts into shared 2 so we can move on and get everything rolled out probably justifiably make people who spent a little more upset (for a little bit)? Yes.
Will we fix that real soon with some special stuff for mixed grillers? Yes.
Will there be stuff to make sure the original VC200 knows how much they're appreciated? Yes.

Remember what we've all done here (and we means you), we've built a good solid company (that's at 18 full-time employees! and has customers) in 2 years (and it's really only been a year since there's actually been "staff") and we've done it ourselves (and again, we means you). And we want as much of the stuff from this last year to be rolled out and movin' by the end of the year, because there's some even cooler stuff to move us all onto.

Which ought to be enough to make everybody happy, and end the anxious speculation. It also pretty much keeps my record as a prognosticator on this blog at about 0%. Of course, I'm right in bigger ways, as it's now time to move from bugging TextDrive about what the plan is to bugging TextDrive about when they're going to implement it. It's also a smart move to simplify the service levels, because I'm sure it was causing no end of headaches keeping track of who got what when, and where they upgraded to.

Once again, the excitement and enthusiasm of the whole Joyent crew for what they do is palpable, and it's no small thing: it leads to the substantial and loyal following they have.

[Note: The events and deals described in the post are currently in flux. I advise not acting upon the information contained within, for the moment.]

It looks like it's happening again, in another venue.

One of my first posts here was on why apple-watchers/users have an overgrown sense of entitlement. TextDrive has much of that excited buzz about it, albeit on a smaller scale. The forums, featuring the founders' regular commentary, attract a rabidly loyal following. Over time, people like Jason Hoffman have tuned back their announcements of what's to come from explicit promises to somewhat cryptic allusion.

Earlier promises of what would come to customers (in the forums dominated by the hosting-for-life customers) often ran into implementation delays, and so there have been multiple instances of managing expectations with the delays. These have always been handled by Joyent/TextDrive with graciousness, generosity, and aplomb, but the journey to customer satisfaction has not always been pretty, mostly thanks to the enviable customer buzz and loyalty cultivated by TextDrive. Even announcements on when news will be made available have been greeted by customers with the solemnity of a contract.

So, while there have been no explicit announcements laid out on what the precise future of shared hosting is at TextDrive, there have been enough hints to set people abuzz with excitement and speculation. One current meme/worry now (most likely prompted by my "harmless" observation on the forums) is that the people who paid an extra $199 to upgrade their TextDrive lifetime accounts to go onto the MixedGrill plan will have nothing to distinguish themselves from the VCers who did not upgrade. Someguy embodies this fear in this Joyent forum thread:

It looks like the VC accounts at TxD have been bumped to 10GB quota which matches with the mid-level TxD shared hosting plan. Once the Joyent Core gets rolled out it would appear that the VCers will end up with the 25GB/25 user mid-tier Joyent and SS accounts.

Will the MGs also be in the mid-tier but get access to the soon-coming additional apps, or something else?

In other words, if I'm "special," and pay TextDrive earlier/more, shouldn't I always get the special goodies? While a part of me marvels at TxD's loyalty to customers who no longer provide active income, and live off the increasing returns while the hosting company repeatedly pumps millions into its network, storage, application, and processing infrastructure, another part thinks, "yeah, we paid more, shouldn't we get more?"

Here comes the irresponsible speculation, deliberately kept off the forums: I think MixedGrill customers will stay special, and receive Strongspace and Joyent Connector apps at the "Plus" level of service (25 GiB, 25 Users). I think VCs will join those users at the "Shared 2" level of TextDrive hosting, but will not receive the full "Plus" plans of the others. The Joyent Core upgrade will introduce Strongspace and Joyent Connector to the VCs at a lower level. "Startup" (or 5 users, 5GiB storage) seems too low, but if you double it to 10/10, it sounds just right, and still far enough from the MixedGrill users to show a respectable differentiation.

Here's my prediction, though: no matter what is announced, someone is going to think it's unfair, and complain loudly on the forums. Most people will see this as being craven entitlement, and will shout the person down. Life will be a little more exciting for some people for a while, then settle down afterwards. :-) (I reckon that's a safer prediction than past ones on the blog...)

So, in response to a recommendation to try OmniWeb in the TxD forums, I was asked,

Why is OmniWeb better than Safari?

I responded that it's the little usability tweaks that keep it ahead of the game. I like the benefit of being on a slightly more modern build of the web kit. I've become used to -- and fond of -- the thumbnail tabs, and the Cmd-up/down arrow way of navigating between them. I've come to appreciate the different location-bar completion (matching on full text of the URL, not just the beginnings of the URL strings), allowing me to reach the new posts on TextDrive's forums with http://forum.textdrive.com/search.php?action=show_new simply by typing "w_n" as the shortcut.

But the killer is that the browser remembers workspaces. I don't have to clear out tabs for a restart or quit. I don't need to panic if the browser goes down because of a nasty incompatible page.

The drawback with this way of working is that it encourages working with lots and lots of tabs. I stress my PowerBook's memory a lot more nowadays as a result, and there's a point at which, under low memory, OmniWeb just gets inexplicably slow. However, a quit and relaunch will fix that situation, with no work lost.

(Also, I bought a license ages ago, way before Safari. The educational OmniWeb 5.0 upgrade price was something silly like 6 USD, which I did just on principle, even though at the time (and until a couple months ago) I was a regular Safari user. There's currently (November 2006) a sale on, where a full license is available for $10. I would definitely recommend it to anyone serious about browsing at that price.)

[Note: The events and deals described in the post are currently in flux. I advise not acting upon the information contained within, for the moment.]

So, with respect to my recent post on getting a pseudo-Three Martini Lunch, I did it anyway.

That is, after talking with a workman (making estimates on work on the house) about the ridiculous charges from local web designers, I mentioned "something I already considered but decided against" to Rosemary. She's also been brought up with a nose for a bargain, and, as expressed in Pounds Sterling, getting onto TxD's premium service ladder-rung "for life" was appealing to her as well. It didn't hurt that she had some joint-rainy-day money squirreled away, either.

So now we have a Mixed Grill and a Premium one-time-payment hosted Joyent plan, and even more eagerly awaiting the introduction of the Joyent Core.

[Note: The events and deals described in the post are currently in flux. I advise not acting upon the information contained within, for the moment.]

Over on the Joyent forums, Jason Hoffman answered a query saying that there is a backdoor discount to the equivalent of TextDrive's Three Martini Lunch (3ML) special. If you pay for Joyent's Lifetime Premier plan for the application suite, you'll get upgraded to whatever the equivalent of the Three Martini Lunch will be.

It all hinges on a bit of faith, but what the 3ML will turn into will closely resemble:

• Joyent's Premier plan with 100 users/100GB of storage,
• Strongspace's Premier plan, again with 100 users/100GiB of storage, and
• TextDrive's Business hosting plan, with 20GiB storage, 60GiB/month of bandwidth, and loads of websites and databases.

...all for the life of the company (which seems very vigorous indeed, of late). So, for the price of ten months of any of these plans, you get the whole whack "permanently."

I thought long and hard about this deal, if I want to jump in on it (the door seems to be closing this week), and I decided not to. Money is a little thin this month, and really, I have to work hard to get the full benefit of my Mixed Grill plan, anyway. The heavy-duty business hosting was the most tempting: I would love to be able to move successful sites onto a bigger server, but I don't have anything that big in the pipeline. The Strongspace is also tempting: I already come close to my storage quota there, and 100GiB of secure, off-site storage sounds like a great deal. The Joyent portion would be tough to take advantage of, as it stands today.

Cast as an investment into the future, it's sorely tempting. Measured against buying the equivalent amount of hardware (which, let's be honest, probably will have the same useful lifetime), it's looking a little pale. I've held off on buying an iPod with video so far, this should be easier to resist. Cast as a bargain, it's amazing at $400 less than the normal "special" price.

Perhaps it's a bit cheeky to diss a CMS on a blog that doesn't use it, but I use WordPress, even if it's not on this site. My "big time" blog is moving house, from a dedicated server that I more-or-less maintain (in my wife's office), to a shared server on TextDrive. Performance certainly has taken a big hit, but I can pretty much guarantee that it can scale to higher traffic better and that it won't be taken out nearly as often or as long by random downtime.

I spent huge swathes of the weekend trying to get the site's theme working in a way that I liked. The K2 theme boasts of being a flexible theming framework, allowing you to do what you like in CSS, and "baking in" support for several popular plugins, lowering the need to tinker with the core theme files even further. The promise didn't quite match reality. K2 is an attractive, clean theme, and I like the fun, AJAXy things you can do with it, but it still has a set structure and strong ideas about how elements are displayed. Unfortunately, I was trying to match a known structure and layout, and had strong ideas about what the design should look like, myself. WordPress was good in allowing complete flexibility, but in the process I completely changed the internals of the infamous WP-loop, meaning I have to do a lot of work if ever I want to upgrade the K2 theme.

(This makes me wonder about plugging XSLT into the WordPress theme hierarchy. You can radically rewrite elements using that. So I'd imagine a master Xhtml document being created by the loop, and optionally doing a run through an XSLT stylesheet before being shipped off to the reader. Obviously, I'm a bit swayed by this site's architecture, and it's simply moving the problem to another place, and not entirely avoiding maintainability problems (and creating further performance issues as well). But, computer science is nothing if not the art of moving problems around... Anyway, that's an aside to explore later.)

What really let me down, however, was the complexity of the master CSS file for the K2 theme. The default theme has a lot of attractive, complex, subtle things going on, and the CSS is a mess to deal with. First off, if the makers of K2 want to encourage CSS-only styles, they would do well to strip out the unnecessaries in the base CSS, and move the attractive blue Kubrick-2-like theme into a default style of its own. There were far too many settings to override, deeply buried within the CSS inheritance hierarchy (I had to impose my choice of font family at least four times, manually, for example).

Quite contrary to K2's implied promises, I ended up with a cluttered, fairly arbitrary stylesheet that was a series of hacks. I know at least part of the blame falls on my empirical, hack-y CSS coding method. Part of it also falls on the state of CSS, and the tools we have to deal with it — I think there must be a better way. (Does anyone advocate grouping by properties instead of elements? All the elements of the same color could be named once, and then all font styling is done that way, etc. I see flashes of this in exemplary styles, but it isn't consistent. [I see google brings up one page, originally from 1996...])

So, since I must count you as one of my dedicated fans (especially if you've read this far), I can point you to the site as a preview, because I'm sure it's not going to be overrun by a Slashdot effect from here: mediadescri.be. I like the URL a lot. I've been sitting on it for the better part of a year.