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slippy · Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 6:21 pm Post subject: Herobase News updates

Hey all, I've made a couple of posts over at Herobase News.

I'd love it if a few of y'all went over and had a look at the Google Base experiment, which I'm now going to be using as a part of the herobase. In fact, why don't you pop over there, read the news posts, have a look at the GBase pages and then come back here?

Back already? How was it?

It won't be used for the main interface, but I'm sure you'll agree it's a handy way of searching and accessing the data - straight from Google searches!

Now, here's the thing which could be good, or it could be bad. Now I've created a couple of categories, you all can sign up with Google Base and add your own entries under those categories. Hopefully, if I stick with this idea, people will be sensible about it. Of course "bad" items can always be reported to the Google team for investigation and subsequent removal if it comes to it.

Anyway, let me know what you think...you can leave a reply here in this topic (I think?), or you can Private Message me here on the boards, or you can email me from the link at the bottom of the herobase news page, or you can sign up with the herobase discussion forum and chat there about it.

Keep watching this space, it's gonna start to get interesting soon, I promise!

Jormengrund · Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 1:12 pm Post subject:

Only one real question Slippy. Isn't Google the website where a ton of folks lost all of their work? Not to sound too negative on the subject, but why stay with a site that isn't going to be able to guarantee that all of the work put into your database is going to stay secure?

I know, I'm beating a dead horse, but heck, once bitten, twice shy you know..

slippy · Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 3:12 pm Post subject:

Ah, my friendly Nemesis.

Google losing people's work? I hadn't heard of that.

Admittedly, a lot of the google services I'm using are in very early beta stages, so they can be problematic, and there have been a few server outages recently (while they've been introducing new services), but never for more than a day, and everything of mine has always been restored.

I keep local backups of everything on my google services anyway, so nothing can be lost permanently.

My main reason for using the services provided by Google is that they are free and flexible, have technically unlimited bandwidth and allow for collaborative editing. To set up a domain with the same kind of bandwidth and functionality would cost me more than I can afford, and would require a lot more knowledge than I currently have, and to be honest, would still be prone to outages unless I pay for the very best in hosting.

I've administered my own domains for various projects in the past, and it's nothing but trouble. There's nothing worse than running out of bandwidth allocation as soon as the site gains a little popularity!

Trust me on this, with the new services and API's Google are releasing, it's not going to be long before they're challenging Microsoft in the home office stakes - they've already got them beat in the reliablility side of things.