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Following the release of the Internet Channel on the Nintendo Wii I have updated MyDiskServer to work better with the Wii. Now you can access all your files on your PC from the Nintendo Wii in the living room.

A Flash mp3 player is now embedded into MyDiskServer so that you can listen to your music collection on your Wii. Viewing photos has also been enhanced.

The main upgrade in this release was to the private networking code. This update means that MyDiskServer will work fully with devices on your local network even if netbios name service is not implemented. This was an issue with Macs and some Linux distributions including the Nintendo Wii.

There is also a Dutch translation thanks to Melroy van den Berg.

To ensure you have the latest version click here.

WetWii.com has evolved into a music and photo file sharing portal for the Nintendo Wii. Simply upload a JPEG or MP3 from you desktop PC and you can than view or listen to the file using the Internet Channel on your Nintendo Wii. Simple and effective.

Over the christmas period I have been developing a new website featuring classic 80s and 90s cartoon intros. I developed the website to brush up on my SQL database skills and also to share the collection of cartoon intros that circulated Kent University's student network a while back. I hope to add a simple comments section to each cartoon page in the near future. Take a look.

www.cartoonintros.com

The software I put together a while back to fix stuck pixels and screen burn-in on LCD and plasma screens has been getting a lot of attention recently. I decided it deserves its own domain name. The updated JScreenFix can now be found at http://www.jscreenfix.com.

After numerous requests for a DVD version to run on standalone TV systems I have put together a downloadable DVD image too. Additional videos are also available for other devices.

According to various web sites online, JScreenFix is the best method of fixing stuck pixels on LCD screens.

I recently signed up for free broadband with Talk Talk. After complaining multiple times, being lied to, waiting for months and reading about other peoples problems online I asked them to cancel the 18 month contract. Turns out that it costs £70 to cancel! It's two months on now and broadband has not even been connected. I've calculated that Talk Talk's FREE broadband is going to total £382 in hidden costs for the 18 months duration of the contract. I'm pretty disgusted they can label this as free, and I know I'm not the only one pissed off with Talk Talk so I've set up a forum for others to share their experiences.

Please add your experience regarding Talk Talk Broadband here:

I like having a good moan, particularly when I'm justfied in doing so.

I've had quite a lot of feed back regarding the page I put up about my frustration with 123-reg.co.uk. I had several people suggest making it into a forum for other people to share their experience too. So I did:

Firstly I would like to appologise for the recent lack of updates.

I've been very busy moving house, finishing off PhD thesis, looking for jobs, being interviewed by google etc...

Anyway, enough with the excuses, I'm here to ping everyone with the news that an updated version of MyDiskServer is online. It's minor bug fixes really. I've fixed an issue with files not being properly closed if a download was disconnected before completion and also fixed the java.lang.LinkageError which occured when multiple copies of the same plugin were shared.

Simply visit MyDisk.co.uk and click launch and your version will be updated to 2.11 automatically.

Another Java Application to add to my collection. This time its something different. - A game.

The idea is simple: poke pictures to release letters, use the letters to make words.
The words are then sent to google image search to make more images. Lots of search results and long search phrases get you more points.

I've been sitting on this a while waiting for google to respond to my email to confirm the name and inclusion of their image search technology, but I have now given up waiting. I have registered www.googleoids.com and put an alpha test version online. I plan to put more work into this soon.

In the mean time have a play and contribute on the googleoids forum.

Today I released a new version of JADS to incorporate a number of improvements including template rotation and aspect fix.

Both Keynes College and the Electronics Department at the University of Kent are now running the new version.

If you have not heard of JADS or would like to experiment with what the new version can do, head over to: Jads.co.uk

A number of websites claim that a complete port scan to fully test a firewall can not be performed across the Internet because it would take many hours, possibly days to complete.

JFirewallTest is a two stage approach that can test all 65,536 ports in under 10 minutes.

The first stage is to create a list of ports that are waiting for connections locally. JFirewallTest performs this action by making dummy connections to all ports on your local machine. To speed up operation JFirewallTest is multi-threaded and is therefore not slowed down by pending responses. The list of open ports is sent to this web site for the second stage.

The second stage is to test each open port to see if it is accessible from the Internet. This is performed by a cgi script on this server and the results are displayed live to the user.

The cgi script needs a bit more work, I'm hoping to link it to a port database and list common trojans in the next few days.

More information here:
http://firewalltest.hostyourself.net/

Today I completed JFileRecovery, another useful application that helps extract files from damaged hard drives, CDs, DVDs and Flash media. Unlike other file recovery tools JFileRecovery works by assuming that reading data from damaged parts takes much longer. These parts are skipped and the user is given the option of retrying to copy the damaged regions more intensely later. Because the copy is block based, copying can continue around cyclic redundancy check (CRC) errors. This means you can even drill a hole through a cd with an AVI movie on and JFileRecovery can still get the AVI off (albeit with a few bad frames).

Anyway, check it out. I have set up a new sub-domain and website here:
http://filerecovery.hostyourself.net

I have been using Google Analytics to gather some interesting statistics about visitors to the Host Yourself Network. One of my main interests is how many people come back to the site after visiting. The graph below shows exactly that. It seems an awful lot of people (I've labled them random surfers) visit once and never come back. This is to be expected on any website. I then have a fair number of what I call infrequent users who have used MyDiskServer and the Host Yourself Network a few times. Most importantly though, I have a large number of users who have visited the site between 10 and 200 times - my regular users. It is my aim to increase this group.

Most plasma screens over a couple of months old have some evidence of screen burn. This is typically part of a channel logo, if used for TV viewing, or window controls, if used for a computer monitor.

Screen burn can be removed by rapidly turning on and off each colour element on the screen for an extended period. JScreenFix does exactly this.

JScreenFix can also be used to re-energise stuck pixels on an LCD screen. - EDIT: Very effectively as it turns out!

More information about JScreenFix can be found below:
http://screenfix.hostyourself.net/

Now we have a German translation thanks to VooDoo. The German language option can be found in MyDiskServer 2.10 and the MyDisk.co.uk website now features a customised German page: MyDisk.co.uk in German

MyDisk.co.uk has been modified to use PHP. This was to enable me to avoid duplication of the main page for each language. Now the language is handled by index.php. The language can be customised by setting a lang field. Eg MyDisk.co.uk/?lang=de

MyDiskServer has won a number of awards including the following:

vista-files.org - Grade 5
daolnwod.net - 5 Stars
mac-files.com - Grade 5
freesharewarecenter.com - 5 Stars
soooooft.com - 5 Stars
hotlib.com - 5 Stars
butterflydownload.com - 5 Stars
programsbase.com - 5 Stars
blueprograms.com - 5/5 Award
softpicks.net - 4 Stars
download2you.com - 4 Stars
safe-install.com - "Safe to install"



Why don't I display these on the main pages I hear you ask? Well...

1. I think their logos are pretty crap and would make the main pages look cluttered.
2. In my experience these logos come, go and change unpredictably.
3. I am not convinced these sites actually reviewed MyDiskSever, because...
4. The only reason sites issue the logos is to get a free link back to their site.

A tip for software site's: Don't just give an award, write a meaningful review.

Finally google have calculated an initial pagerank for MyDisk.co.uk and HostYourself.net.

Initial pagerank for MyDisk.co.uk and HostYourself.net:

PR 4

This is an excellent starting pagerank, especially for HostYourself.net since it only went live on 18th of May 2006 - that's less than 2 months ago!

The following images will update as pagerank increases or decreases:

MyDisk.co.uk: HostYourself.net:

Thank you everyone who have provided links to the Host Yourself Network.

Regular readers will know about all the problems I had with the web hosting company 123-reg where MyDisk.co.uk was origonally hosted. Well finally, after several more months, I have had a response. The previous email I sent to 123-reg asked for a refund. I am not even using their services anymore afterall! Here is their response...

There is no SLA for hosting.

"4.3 PIPEX warrants that it will provide the Services with reasonable care and skill and in accordance with any SLA."

An, or 'any' SLA is not agreed to by us or the end user when ordering hosting. We will make every effort to resolve issues however there is no guranteed % uptime, i.e. an SLA.

Regards, Christian, 123-reg Support, PIPEX

I have sent one more email. I don't really know why, they have wasted far too much of my time already. However the email goes like this...
[Read More]

With a lot of hard work, MyDisk is starting to be listed top in google and msn for search terms such as "share disk online".

It would be nice to get better ranking for searches like "share files online" but there is so much competition that it could take years! I'm still waiting for google to calculate page ranks for mydisk.co.uk and hostyourself.net I'm hoping for at least a 4 because I've spent a lot of time getting inbound links.

If anyone tells you its easy to get listed highly in google, they obviously only tried for specific searches such as company names etc. SEO is certainly more challenging for commonly searched terms and the only way I've found of getting good results is by carefully placing and repeating words on the page. I don't like the wording on MyDisk.co.uk but this is the result of carefully targeted keywords.

Having said all this, I still feel that there are too many SEO companies on the web. I get SO much spam from them. They all claim to "submit your website to tens of thousands of search engines" etc. How many search engines do you use? Exactly, pointless.

I've seen an increasing number of web sites of the "get more hits" variety too. These claim to instantly give you thousands of "hits" or "unique visits". I looked into these and found this is exactly what they do. Good eh? NO! They use a large pool of IP addresses and automatically request your web page. No one views your page, they are just requested to increase your hit counter. What a total waste of Internet bandwidth!?

Anyway, rant over. If you want to help me, link to MyDisk.co.uk.

After experimenting with Ajax and seeing exactly what it can do, I have upgraded MyDisk.co.uk to utilise Ajax to refresh the active hosts list and automatically test and forward users on to their destinations.

This is a much more powerful solution compared to the previous technique of refreshing the whole page and relying on nph-connect.cgi on hostyourself.net to forward the user on to their destination. I have developed simple cross browser Javascript function, rewriteID(targetID, strURL), for modifying between a div id tag with the response of a http request.

This evening I implemented a new visualisation tool for displaying the usage of MyDiskServer.

I wanted to display how much each instance of MyDiskServer had been used, how recently it was launched and whether a donation had been made. Not content with displaying raw stats on each identity connect page I looked into displaying the information visually.

After a couple of hours I came up with this: The MyDisk.co.uk Host Cloud

The size of the listed identity is directly linked to the usage. Large text indicates heavy usage of MyDiskServer. The darkness of the identity shows how recently MyDiskServer was used. Dark text indicates MyDiskServer has been used recently. Green text indicates MyDiskServer is currently active. Bold text with asterisk's indicate a donation has been made.