I got kicked off my server...
I have a totally useless but very reliable web hosting service for my regular blog Silicon Valley Watcher. Unfortunately they don't yet acknowledge the Always-On world that we live in, or will eventually live in.
I wouldn't be running out of bandwidth if it wasn't for the 20-odd spiderbots that leech out a third of my bandwidth...A few days ago TotalChoiceHosting a.k.a TotallyUselessHosting (but reliable) pinged me 24 times that I was about to exceed my bandwidth limit for the month. Now, this is good news in that more traffic means more readers however, if you are a TotallyUselessHosting customer, it is also bad news. Because there is no easy one-click, or even a five-click way to buy more gigabytes of bandwidth ($2.50 per GB).
I emailed their link on their support page for buying more bandwidth and said 'give me an extra $10 to see me through to the end of the month and put it on my account.' A simple instruction they were incapable of understanding.
Incredible--and they talk about artificial intelligence--here is some obvious intelligence: give me more gigs and bill me-I am a customer! But no--they cut me off and once you are cut off they will not let you back on until the next month's bandwidth allocation kicks in! Unbelievable.
Why cannot they bill me for the extra Gigs?! I'd gladly tick a box that says expand my pipe when I'm getting traffic. Yet there was a time in the summer when I was Slashdotted that TotallyUseless went in and hobbled my server (77) that I was sharing, because I was getting too much traffic!!!! Can you believe that? I still can't.
Anyway, I wouldn't be running out of bandwidth if it wasn't for the 20-odd spiderbots that leech out a third of my bandwidth and slow down the server for everyone. And those spiderbots kick-back less than 5 percent of my traffic. I should charge them.
This is why I firmly believe in the value of content. Those links that Google harvests by machine, had better point to something, otherwise they are pointless.
The "something" is content and that's why content will be king. But Steve Gillmor keeps telling me not to give away clues to the future. He may be right--but I still want my date-stamp :-)
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I'm locked out of Silicon Valley Watcher until April 1 so you'll see me here until they let me back into my web site.