Based on the Pinboard blog post The Five Stages of Hosting, and the follow on hosting discussions on Hacker News, I thought I’d put down a few simple things I want from a hosting service provider:

• Reliable and Consistent – I want high application availability, and consistent performance. If a disk (or an entire server) fails but it’s redundant, I don’t care as long as you fix it fast, but if the network is so slow that users can’t load the website, then it’s problem even if the servers are running fine
• A platform as a service layer based on CloudFoundry, where I can work on applications rapidly, with minimal up-front expense and little or no infrastructure work, using databases and services that “just work”
• Infrastructure as a service layer so I can manage the operating system stack if my application requires it, and run Linux or Windows when I want it
• Very reliable network attached storage for things that need it, like backups
• Less reliable block storage for things that don’t need to live forever, like operating system and cache files
• Backups, that can easily be restored to another environment when required, to perform testing of those backups and any application changes
• Geographically close to the majority of my customers – it’s the easiest way to improve overall network performance
• Cost effective. I explicitly don’t want you to be the cheapest, that would mean you were cutting a corner somewhere that it matters, but I do value my money

I don’t think there’s anyone providing this kind of hosting service yet, and probably won’t any time soon, whether it’s labelled as “Cloud”, “VPS”, or “Web Hosting”, but the day I find one, I’ll be signing up.

Photo of a Google Server Rack by Liz Henry.

I absolutely love my Kindle, it’s second only to my phone as my most used and appreciated device, but after reading 2 paperback books over Christmas, I’ve realised just how much I miss them.

The Kindle has made me read more books, and it’s made me buy better books. There’s no longer the “threat” of an unread book sat on my shelf if I buy one and don’t enjoy it, but I worry that by using my Kindle, I am helping kill off the thing I like so much.

Will I end up in 20 years the equivalent of today’s Vinyl music enthusiast, raving at anyone who’ll listen about the “warmth” and “depth” of the words on paper? Will all but a few publications be digital only, with only specialist productions being published in collectors edition paper books to be kept and treasured on shelves of book fans?

I don’t know what the future holds for books, but for now I think I will try to strike a balance. I will keep buying traditional books where I can, so that when the end does come, I have something to look back at on my shelves.

Photo by Paul Watson

I’ve just tried out the new Google Search plus your world, which is now the standard Google they will show everyone, to be faced with this useless search results page with a massive full colour advert for Truprint, a photo printing service I’ve never used.

This is searching for the Google suggested term of “photos“. I don’t know about anyone else, but here’s what I get:

I don’t know about anyone else, but I started using Google to get better results, quicker. Today, you use Google to get adverts related to your search term, and if it’s a heavily advertised term, that’s about it.

So here’s the deal Google:
You keep making Google Search awful, and I’ll just use Bing instead.