5 things I wish IFTTT.com would support

Having been less than complimentary about blog posts starting with "X things...." I now produce a blog post with exactly that title.

If you haven't heard or used IFTTT yet, you need to learn about it.  It's not an understatement to say that this service, or others like it, could become the backbone of machine-machine (software to software) automation.  For a home automation geek like myself, it opens lots of opportunities.  I'm already starting to use it for processing emails and alerting from my IP garage door project.

However, there are a few things I would love to see IFTTT include on their roadmap....

1. AND functionality.  For example, I want to combine 2 triggers, so that if both of them are true at the same time, then the action is taken. Example: If you receive an SMS from The Boss AND it's after 6pm THEN reply with "I'll deal with this in the morning"
2. Add an HTTP POST channel.  This would allow IFTTT to send an HTTP POST request to a web site/script of your choice based on a trigger.  The script (written in PHP for example) could perform, well, anything!  There is a work-around however.  For me, a great use of this would be to auto-generate a credit voucher for CheekySMS when I receive a specific SMS that tells me someone paid for credit.
3. Introduce a Nest channel :) - I know Nest (Thermostats and Smoke Alarms) are already building an API, so wouldn't it be great if we could get things to happen based on temperature or potential dangerous events in our homes.  WeMo and Philips Hue are already supported so full home automation with IFTTT doesn't look too far away.  X10 aside, a standard home automation protocol has long alluded us, but with a service like this, it becomes less of a problem.  Device manufactures such as Nest, and Philips can focus on delivering great hardware (and APIs) and let services like IFTTT provide the middleware to translate between them all.
4. Introduce a SIP voice channel - Alerting by SMS or email on your smartphone is all very well, but call me old fashioned, what really gets my attention is when the phone rings!  Just an automated, text to speech service would do!
5. Introduce a text search capability - By this I mean, provide a specific web page URL to IFTTT and trigger on a content change or a specific item of text within that web page.  Great for alerting based on a price change on your favourite online store, or maybe getting an alert when tickets to a popular concert get released.

If you're using IFTTT already, share your stories, or let me know how you could make use of these ideas.

Google Nexus 4 available, Play Store - not so much

08:12 or thereabouts, Google pressed play on the sale of the Nexus 4 in the UK.  From the online noise in the preceding days it was quite obvious there was going to be a rush.  Anyone waiting for the polite "Notify Me" email to tell them the shop was open, has probably missed all the boats leaving today.

The Play Store didn't handle the rush too well to start with, it took me multiple attempts to get the device in my basket and check-out, and even now I have an order number, I'm not totally convinced the order has gone through!

I saw this a lot

Being the self-confessed geek that I am, I was also monitoring the Play Store to get a heads-up on when it opened for business (using PRTG HTTP Advanced Sensor if you're interested).  This graph shows how the server response times were steady all night, right up until the device went on sale!

The scale is in milliseconds response time to download the Nexus 4 16GB product page.

Wish me luck in trying to find out if I have a new phone in the pipeline, or if I have to join the back of the queue...

UPDATE: You'll be pleased to hear, I've received an email confirming my order :)

Ebuyer goes titsup for Next-style bargain hunters

Downforeveryoneorjustme.com showed Ebuyer as down this morning

Virtual queues were forming around the block from as early as Saturday, when Ebuyer decided it was a good idea to offer many of their products for just £1, and the virtual stampede has caused it's first victim - The whole Ebuyer.com website!  Not the best marketing ploy ever devised for the start of the Christmas shopping season.  Because not only is it stopping the angry crowd from getting their God given bargains, but most normal punters are heading off to Dabs and Maplin as we speak!  Ebuyer have successfully created their own DDOS attack!

Just 20 minutes after the page went live, Ebuyer have posted this message on their Facebook page:
"Hi all, thanks for your patience. We've been overwhelmed by the huge response and are working on getting the page back up and running as soon as possible."

We asked Ebuyer for a comment but they were too busy turning it off and on again to get back to us.

EDIT: At 12 noon today, 1.5 hours after the first punters were shown the bargain goods, the site is still down! Oops!  Their Facebook page is full of friendly comments.

The Best Web Hosting

Update June 2020:  I am no longer a customer of Hostgator and neither do I recommend them.  I prefer the smaller hosting companies, and I'll be updating my blog with my new recommendations soon.

I currently run several websites for various ventures and had been looking around for a reliable web hosting service for some time; and if I've learnt something, it's that the best web hosting companies are not always the small players or the very big players.  In fact you can disregard what platform they use to host on, where they are based (it doesn't matter any more if they are European or US based) and how much free space you get.  If you want to find the best web hosting package, the most important single factor to consider in my opinion is the quality of support, and I'll explain why.

Many hosting companies offer the world for $1 a month, or £1.99 for the first 2 months, but if the staff don't have their heart in the company, then the service will ultimately be poor.  Many comments online tell you that if you pay next to nothing, then you should expect the same.  They also say that Unlimited offers of bandwidth and space are a bad idea because it means the platform hardware is likely to be oversubscribed.  However, all this means is that the support staff will get more complaints of slow service and the staff are likely to care more about what they are having for dinner than about your hosting experience.

 It may be that you never intend to use the hosting company support desks, and most of us hope that we won't have to, but if the hosting company has motivated and capable support staff, it says a lot about the quality of the service itself.  No one likes to be moaned at day in, day out, so a high turn over of staff = more service.  Take the top 3 "best web hosting" companies that pop up all the time.  Hostgator, GoDaddy and in the UK, Fasthosts.  Now look at what they offer.  The all offer the same sort of packages, and all of them could be considered "cheap" hosting.  But look at the comments on support services, and you'll see that Hostgator are consistently praised for their support.  In my book, that's good enough to recommend them.  Aligned with the fact that they have some good offers on Black Friday deals, I don't think you can go far wrong.  I am affiliated with them, but only because I love the product and want others to benefit from my research and experience.

Zen Internet Offers 832Mbps ADSL Upload Option for £45 a month

It seems Zen Internet are really pushing the boundaries of ADSL broadband by offering an amazing 832Mbps upload speed on the business broadband service!  We contacted Zen for a comment and were told that "this is just the headline speed, we don't expect many people to actually achieve this", especially as it is faster than most  everyone elses download speed.  I'm sure the ASA would have a field day, or maybe it's just a typo ;-)

The advantages of Dropbox

I've had a dropbox account for a few months now, and it's probably the most used web service / piece of software on my laptop.  If you're not familiar with Dropbox then let me explain.  It's a small piece of software that you load on your PC and it creates a folder, just like any other, that will sync everything you put into it, with a secure service on the Internet.  If you have more than 1 PC and you load Dropbox onto them all, then those files will be in sync across all your computers.  Although maybe not its primary use, it's a really easy way to copy files between computers at home or home and work.  It also acts as a secure way to backup any important files, and to share files between other people who may or may not have a Dropbox account.  I use it every day to copy files between computers and to share individual files that are too big to email.

To start with, you get 2GB of storage for free, but you can earn more by referring friends.  Each one you refer gives you and them, and extra 250MB.  If you want to sign-up, use this link to get yourself (and me!) and extra 250MB right from the start.

For the geeks like me out there, there are also apps for Android and iPhone devices that makes copying files off your phone to your PC (photos and music for example) really easy.

Update: Because I run a server at home, I'm now running Dropbox as a service on that server.  It means that my files in Dropbox will sync to my server, even if I'm not logged in.  Neat.  I got help from this post.

London Untergrund

If like me you find amusement in silly, childish names, then you might appreciate this light hearted German translation of the London tube map.  It contains such delights as Elefant Und Schloss, Liverpool Strasse and 2.4Km Ende!

http://www.steveprentice.net/tube/TfLSillyMaps/german_map.jpg

Actually, the whole site contains various adaptions of the London Tube map, some of them interesting, worth a look.