Archive for May, 2006

Online Storage Providers Are Cool But Overpriced

Monday, May 15th, 2006

I don’t understand what’s up with the plans offered by the online storage gang. Here’s a sample of their pricing:

box.net: 15GB storage, 50GB/mo transfer, 9.99/mo
omnidrive: “approximately $70 per year for 10GB (or more)”
xdrive: 5GB, unlimited transfer?, $8.29/mo
strongspace: 4GB, unlimited transfer, $8/mo

For comparison purposes, here’s the storage you can get with a web hosting package from 3 popular hosting providers:

dreamhost: 20GB storage, 1TB/mo transfer, $7.99/mo
godaddy: 50GB storage, 500GB/mo transfer, $6.99/mo
1and1: 100GB storage, 1000GB/mo transfer, $9.99/mo

Finally, amazon.com’s S3 storage service is .15/GB/mo for storage and .20/GB/mo for bandwidth, so you could get:

amazon S3: 25GB storage, 25GB/mo transfer, $8.75/mo

I understand that the online storage providers are giving customers easier and more convenient ways to get at this storage than they get with a web host. But I think at this point it’s mostly tech savvy people who can understand even these simplified interfaces. My feeling is that since many of their potential users are also savvy enough to understand how to use [s]ftp/rsync/scp/webdav to access the storage that web hosts or amazon provides, they really need to compete more aggressively on GB per dollar to get more business.

Posted in tech | 2 Comments »

Tilting At Windmills

Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006

Last weekend on our trip to Kirkwood, Amy and I drove on I580 over the Altamont Pass. It’s been a few years since I last drove through there, and it seemed like there are far more windmills than before. I did a little searching and although I didn’t find anything specifically pointing to growth at the Altamont Pass site, overall wind production did rise from around 3500 GWh in 2000 to about 4400 GWh in 2005. (see here and here).


(more pics)

Also, there used to be some really crazy looking ones that I have now learned are called Darrieus wind turbines. I was looking for them as we drove through the pass but didn’t see any, and Amy thought I was nuts when I tried to convince her that I had seen windmills that looked vaguely like a piece from a DNA strand. Of course when we got home I had to go and do some research. :)

Darrieus Windmill

There is a lot of interesting information about wind power and the Altamont Pass wind farms here, here, and here. Apparently wind farms are a controversial source of green power, with the two main problems being their propensity to kill birds, and offend some people’s sense of aesthetics. In any event, California is one of the largest producers of wind power in the US, and according to this page cited above, about 1.5% of our total 2005 energy production came from wind turbines.

Posted in tech, windmills | No Comments »

There’s still snow left up at Lake Tahoe

Monday, May 1st, 2006

Or at least, there was this past weekend when Amy and I went up to use some vouchers for Kirkwood we had bought earlier in the season. It’s amazing how much snow falls in the mountains near Lake Tahoe, particularly this year since we had above average rainfall/snowfall.

I snapped this picture with my cell phone near the highest point of highway 88 on our way there. It’s cool how the snowplows leave striations of the various snowfalls throughout the season (most noticable to the left of the white truck).

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