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Oct 23
Linux/Mac, Music, TV, Tech, Web 15 Comments
- Microsoft does Photocasting! I’m sure they’ll claim it’s an innovation, too. But ask yourself this — does that website look more Apple or more Web 2.0?
- My odd question for the day: Are there places that offer free FTP sites? I have a program that helps automate eBay sales, but you need an FTP site to upload images to for eBay display. My website uses sFTP protocol to upload images, which the program doesn’t support. (Stupid.) I need to be using either straight-up FTP or a .Mac account. I don’t feel like spending $99 to sell $5 DVDs on eBay. It’ll take way too long to make that money back to justify the cost. So I’m looking to see if there are free FTP sites somewhere on the web. Sounds weird, I know, but this is Web 2.0. Isn’t there something for everyone now?
- It would also be nice if .Mac had a la carte purchasing, as TUAW suggests.
- These are heady times for Weird Al Yankovic, as his latest album is a certifiable hit. Why, it’s so important to the world that I’m even going to review it here eventually. (Sadly, it’s currently stuck in my car’s CD player. Literally. I can’t force it out.) In the meantime, check out the two writeups on the career of the great musician at Slate and The Boston Globe. I like the term “Troubadork.”
- Ken Jennings is critical of 1 vs. 100, for all good reasons. I only made it halfway through Friday’s second episode. There’s very little suspense. The show needs more of something, but I’m not sure what.
- Update: Speaking of eBay and DVDs: I owe two of you e-mails on DVDs you saw for sale here. I’ll get back to you on those tonight, I promise.
Oct 23, 2006 @ 10:21:57
I own and enjoy the new WA album, but Slate is reading way, way, way…to much into it.
Oct 23, 2006 @ 10:54:59
Depending on the sizes of the files you could always host the files yourself. If the images are small, and I imagine they would be, then the upload speed of optimum online should be plenty for small picture uploads. Easiest and cheapest way I know for ftp hosting
Oct 23, 2006 @ 11:04:20
Rick — I don’t leave my computer on 24 hours a day, though. All those images would be lost the second I shut the computer down for the night. Although I do have a cheap spare underpowered Dell that might be useful for that, but I just don’t have the time and space to devote to it. It’s not a bad idea, though.
Derhaken — Al is sublimely genius, in a way that even the most intellectual thinkers can appreciate. Or, you know, he’s just plain goofy fun. One or the other.
Oct 23, 2006 @ 13:30:26
Hey Augie,
My tech knowledge is limited, but when I needed a host to send some large files over the internet, I used this for free:
http://www.yousendit.com/
This may be helpful, or maybe not. ;)
Hope you’re doing well!
Oct 23, 2006 @ 13:33:56
Thanks, George, but I think that site just lets you send files. I need something that will act as a public repository for files that can be hotlinked through other web sites to show up in their pages. I don’t think YouSendIt works quite that way.
I suppose I could sign up for a GeoCities account and just hotlink to that, if they have an FTP server you can send files over to. I don’t know. It’s probably against their terms of service, too.
Oct 23, 2006 @ 14:19:20
You should be able to host the image files on something like Flickr, Imageshack, or Photobucket and point to those links in the ebay auction. I know Photobucket even has ebay listed on their homepage as somewhere that you can link to.
Oct 23, 2006 @ 23:40:24
Geocities stopped remote hotlinking a long while back. At least with regular graphic extensions. I remember some talk about renaming your graphics to .txt files and still using the regular img src codes and the image would appear properly, but I don’t know if that works that way anymore.
Flickr is a good way to do though.
You don’t have any webspace for you domain?
Oct 24, 2006 @ 08:04:43
Jason – I do have the space, and plenty of it. The problem is, my domain host only allows for sFTP transfers, for security reasons. Perfectly understandable. Sadly, the program I want to use will only do FTP transfers, not sFTP. And I don’t think Flickr would work, either. They’ve been cracking down on people posting things other than photographs. And there’s one other problem with that, too, which I’ll address next:
Ryan – The problem with any of the web-based solutions is that the program doesn’t support them. It’ll transfer things to a Mac or to a website via FTP (basically) and that’s it. I’m not sure, but I think I also need an FTP site to upload all the supporting graphics for the themes I choose for my eBay listings. So it’ll be more than just pictures.
Oct 24, 2006 @ 08:44:58
Haven’t found anything free, but http://www.itsyourftp.com/ appears to be $10.60 a year. That’s probably as close to free as you’ll find for something like this.
Oct 24, 2006 @ 09:31:52
Ooh, very nice. I’m definitely going to look into that one, Phil. Thanks bunches!
Oct 24, 2006 @ 09:35:02
Something just dawned on me – I might be thinking about this whole thing backwards. It’s not that I need an FTP site. I need a web site that I can FTP files up to. I need to be able to provide HTTP:// links to graphics I have uploaded. Hmmm…. And I’m a computer professional! UGH
Oct 24, 2006 @ 10:48:28
Could be worse. You could’ve been wondering how to do this via gopher:// links… :)
Oct 24, 2006 @ 11:38:06
I just took a look at the online manual for GarageSale, and my opinion is that yes, it requires an FTP site to automate everything (or WebDAV, which I’ve never used). I’m guessing that if you didn’t want GS to do everything, then you could upload links yourself to your web site and manually link to them in the eBay listing, but an FTP account allows GS to handle it for you.
I’m also a computer professional, so either we’re both right, or we’re both stupid. I’m going to say we’re both right. :)
Oct 24, 2006 @ 13:01:49
Phil — I wanted to just upload the files manually, but I couldn’t find it spelled out anywhere as to how to do that.
But at least I wasn’t looking anything up in ARCHIE. ;-)
The good news is that you can access your files through an HTTP:// call with the cheap ItsYourFTP website. The website is kind of vague about whether it’s an extra charge, though, or just an option you need to validate. I’m getting conflicting messages on the website about that. Grrr.
But you /can/ upload files to it through a standalone FTP client.
I think you’ve found my solution. You are today’s V&S Good Samaritan, Phil! Thanks again!
Oct 24, 2006 @ 13:12:46
I signed up for my account. Here’s the tricky bit of business: The HTTP access is, indeed, an extra cost. By my math, it’s over $50 a year extra.
On the other hand, you can buy HTTP access by the day. So I can buy a week’s worth of access at a time while I have a set of eBay auctions up. It’ll run about an extra $1.50 or so for ten days, or about $1.20 for 8 days..
It’s still a heck of a lot cheaper than spending $99 a year on the .MAC account, right? Just a lot of nickel and diming. Their profits on it will be eaten up almost entirely in PayPal fees.