<![CDATA[Archivd - Blog]]>Wed, 21 Jul 2010 20:10:22 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[New Archivd Affiliate Program!]]>Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:12:00 -0800http://blog.archivd.com/1/post/2009/06/new-archivd-affiliate-program.htmlPicture
I'm really happy to announce our Affiliate Program. You have been asking us for a way to make money while promoting Archivd, and now you can.

It's pretty simple: sign up at https://www.archivd.com/affiliate/signup and place our links and banners on your sites, social media, and emails. You get 50% of the first month's revenue for each paying user you refer and 5% per month thereafter, as long as they stay with us.

We absolutely do not tolerate spam or search advertising on the keyword "archivd". Other than that the only limit is your imagination. If you have any questions, just send an email to affiliates@archivd.com
]]><![CDATA[Alerts and Comments ]]>Fri, 08 May 2009 11:55:38 -0800http://blog.archivd.com/1/post/2009/05/alerts-and-comments.htmlEven more new features today: Alerts and the Comments feed. You can now Alert your colleagues to pages you add to Archivd. They will appear in the Alerts tab. Also you can track comments chronologically in the Comments tab.

Enjoy!

]]><![CDATA[Search your research]]>Fri, 08 May 2009 11:38:44 -0800http://blog.archivd.com/1/post/2009/05/search-your-research.htmlWe've added powerful new search features to Archivd. You can now search on arbitrary fields (even comments and fields you've created) in a list or across all your projects. To search by title, just type title:blah or title:"some phrase". You can stack as many filters as you want, like this: url:craigslist title:office address:valencia.

We've also improved support for your browser's back and forward buttons. They now behave much like GMail's bookmarkable messages.

Enjoy!

]]><![CDATA[Archivd in English, French and Spanish]]>Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:22:35 -0800http://blog.archivd.com/1/post/2009/04/archivd-in-english-french-and-spanish.html

A lot of our users are in Europe (hi!) and their #1 feature request has been internationalization. Starting today Archivd and Archivd support are in English, French and Spanish. Over the next few days we'll finish up the help and support pages. If you see something strange please let us know. To change your language, click on "My Account" and select your language on the left. Enjoy!


Beaucoup d'utilisateurs sont en Europe et leur principale demande était de pouvoir utiliser Archivd en français et en espagnol. A partir d'aujourd'hui, notre application sont disponible en français et en espagnol. Nous aurons terminé la traduction complète d'ici quelques jours. Si vous trouvez des erreurs, dites le nous. Pour changer de langue, cliquez sur "mon compte" et sélectionnez la langue a droite. Merci!

]]><![CDATA[The Cloud's Hidden Lock-in: Latency]]>Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:01:07 -0800http://blog.archivd.com/1/post/2009/04/the-clouds-hidden-lock-in-latency.htmlThere is a lot of froth being whipped up over cloud computing and everyone is digging out their old Platform War playbooks. This time, they say to themselves, we'll do it right. But this platform shift is a bit different from the last one, and the lock-in that bites you might not be the one you expect.

Companies are right to worry about vendors locking them in with incompatible software. All of the same old tricks are there waiting to be pulled. (My favorite is Amazon charging less to put data in than to take it out.) We as customers don't want the vendors to compete on tricks and FUD but rather features, quality and price. We want open standards for data and APIs from Cloud to Cloud.

But we'll still be locked in because of network latency.

Imagine that you have some virtual servers and data in Cloud A. But Cloud B has a neat new service that can do something cool with your data, like detecting fraudulent activity. You start testing it by sending data from Cloud A to Cloud B's API... which is horribly slow, error-prone and expensive.

A packet of data sent between Clouds has to pass through two sets of firewalls and the regular internet. The network distance between Clouds is much greater than within, where everything runs on souped-up private networks usually inside the same building. And of course you pay twice for the packet. This makes a lot of kinds of mix-and-match between A and B expensive and impractical.

Latency is the perfect kind of lock-in because no one can be blamed for creating it and every vendor gains by ignoring it. Your data is here and the other Cloud is over there. In between is a messy, slow road with toll booths on either side. That's just the way it is. Better to keep your data inside the bubble where ping times are zero and transfer is free.

In the meantime the vendors get to have a chest-beating party over standards and openness. But really they can't lose. If they pull off API lock-in they win. If not they still have latency lock-in and can cut deals when clients want to move to (move to, not interoperate with) different Clouds. So far big IT sites are only dipping their toes. Their first apprehensions are always about the data but the answers are always about open standards and how insecure doing it yourself is.

It all comes down to your data and the cost of moving it around. In a way it's like banks. They take care of the headache of storing and transferring money. No modern business has to keep a cash vault in the basement to make payroll. But in return the banks take a cut of every transaction. Behind all the cloud talk is the wet dream of tech vendors: taking a cut of every computation. There will always be holdouts but I don't think anyone can stop it. Right now we should be thinking really hard about how to strike this deal.

What's a CTO to do?

How about we demand "Cloud Peering"? It's an analogy to network peering: two companies that own lots of internet cables agree to build a special high-speed connection between them, route each other's data, and write off the cost. Kind of like how the Post Office will deliver a letter with a UK stamp and vice-versa. Peering (and for that matter, mail) is much more complex than that but the point is that complexity is hidden.

It will never be perfect -- you can't wish away congestion and the speed of light. We will have to learn to build systems that are more asynchonous and resilient.  But you as a cloud user can demand simple, efficient data interchange at a fixed price and the vendors can make it happen.

A lot of smaller startups are fully in the cloud but their Spidey senses are tingling. They should try to stay nimble and encourage vendors to agree on compatible software. Mosso has the right idea by supporting an Amazon-compatible API and adding features around it. At Archivd we're looking at running AWS and Mosso in parallel.

Larger CTOs can help by asking now about latency lock-in and cloud peering. Without pressure on the vendors it'll never happen. Whether they know it or not, right now CTOs have the upper hand. Once they hand over the data, their leverage is gone.

]]><![CDATA[This is why it's called "Archivd"]]>Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:17:41 -0800http://blog.archivd.com/1/post/2009/04/this-is-why-its-called-archivd.htmlWe've improved the archiving and image thumbnails today. When you save a page to Archivd we will cache not only the text of original page, but all of the images and styles as well:

 CNN.com Home 07 April, 2009

It's not perfect yet -- we sometimes don't get all of the ads or complex objects like video. More good stuff is coming.

Enjoy!

]]><![CDATA[Hello.]]>Sun, 05 Apr 2009 02:00:10 -0800http://blog.archivd.com/1/post/2009/04/first-post.htmlWe've launched! I'd like to thank all of our beta users and friends.

For those of you just joining, Archivd is a ridiculously useful research tool for small teams. You feed it bookmarks and it extracts the important parts, saves the originals, and organizes them for you. For example, we saved a few pages about offices for rent and Archivd did the rest:

http://demo.archivd.com/project/detail/bA5toin3Lese



]]>