YouTube Sucks (Vimeo ROCKS)

Why I hate YouTube:

I’ve been a member of Photobucket for years and while they keep bloating the place I do enjoy it, and they’ve not bloated it to the point where my little old dialup connection can’t handle it (though it’s now getting close). The uploads there still remain quick, and for video the processing times I’ve been pretty happy with. The trouble I have there is that I can’t limit who can see what on a case by case basis. That has caused me to find a host for video.

I started with YouTube because it’s the Video King…but I found out that not all kings are benevolent. And in finding this out I’m simply AMAZED that others even try staying there.

I uploaded the same video to Photobucket & YouTube and these were the results:

Upload time:
PB = 38 Minutes
YT = 1 Hour 13 Minutes

Processing times:
PB = 1 minute
YT = 36 Minutes

So, what took me less then 45 minutes on onsite, took nearly two hours on the other. Problems? Yeah, I think, I emailed YouTube and I got a FAQ YOU reply pointing out that their policy states it can take up to 24 hours to upload video (TWENTY FOUR HOURS?!?!?!?) Not even on dialup!

I sucked it up and tried to stick it out. Similar results time & time again, through various times of the day & days of the week, I was getting the same bloated results for upload and processing. Their default uploaded won’t even work (it actually takes longer), thankfully, they have a backup.

Yesterday I uploaded a ONE MEG video and it took me about 35 minutes to upload. I was pretty amazed at the time on this one, and thought to myself “YAY, maybe I’ll stay” as the processing only took a minute this time…well, at least it looked like a minute. The status of my video was LIVE but when I clicked on it I was given a “still processing” error. This error continued for over TWO hours. Two hours to process a one meg clip?

Yeah, I didn’t think so either…

I asked the fine folks at Digital Point for some alternatives and here is the current list:

http://www.cliplot.com
http://www.metacafe.com
http://www.break.com
pornotube.com (but I’m not sure I should link it)
http://www.vimeo.com/
http://www.dailymotion.com/
http://www.bored.com

My current WINNER is http://www.vimeo.com/ as I was happy with the upload and processing times….though I do plan on a few others.

Now, I have to do a bit more research, and possibly get a plugin made for the Corpus, as we’ve been thinking about video integration.
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Occult & Pagan Artists Wanted

I should have known better then to trust in my fellow man…I wanted to give something to the community in the way of a few cool avatar sets, but blunders followed by the “copyright police” ruined my initial plans for anything constructive. I’ve resorted to making a few cropped images of my own shoddy art and a few of my better nature pictures. These are rather nice in and of themselves, though I’m not sure how great they are for avatars for an occult community. At any rate, it’s a nice start, and I’ve put a call out to all pagan artists on the site asking them to donate their own works of art, photography, and the like to this oh-so-wonderful cause.

You can check out my plea for artists here: [ATTENTION] Calling Original Artists!

And if you care to take a gander, you can check out my initial batch of icons to get the ball rolling: Occult Photography (Nature). In the two days that the thread has been up, I’ve added to my photo page (which Forest Breath contributed too), as well as works of art from other members. You can check out the Member Contributions here: Occult Avatars (art).

I’m hoping that the contributions grow, and I have a few other artists that I plan on contacting with the hope they will open up their works to my wonderfully 1337 cropping skills. Regardless though, I’ve given something back to the community this week, and I can at least be proud of that…

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Focusing on Community.

OccultCorpus is more then just a repository for occult information, it's a growing community of like minded pagans, magickians, and occultists, both practicing and armchair. With that in mind I feel it's important that we embrace the community while also trying to push the content aspects.

One of the things I've done recently has been to add in a member map with voluntary participation. It's the Google Map which has been converted for integration by StonyArc (vbgooglemap Member Edition 20o6). I've mostly blocked it from guests because, well, if you want to be a part of the community you can just log in ;) If you are interested in checking it out, then you can find the member map HERE.

In my opinion this is a decent change on my part based on my over focusing on the SERPs and PR over the last few month.

Where are you at?

Spam

I had a few words with the people of LayeredTechnologies....and it's confirmed, while every server in the multiverse has anti-spam wording in their TOS I'm pretty sure there is not a single one that actually does anything about it.

It should be blatantly clear without the logs, unless of course the dozen sites of google are conspiring against you...

try http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&rls=GGGL%2CGGGL%3A2006-43%2CGGGL%3Aen&q=reverse.layeredtech.com+spam&btnG=Search

it's a search for reverse.layeredtech.com spam on google... there are 9,750 instances.

This should be enough to raise all sorts of flags on your end. Failing that try looking for your resolved address and "hacked" "bad bots" or any other combo domain banning offenses...you may be surprised just how many sites have your domain banned. That said, I just looked & your domain is already listed on most of the ban lists I have, I think I'll just be following suit...

I guess failed attempts at making threads would be nothing to take action over, but the wording from their techs left me wondering if they are the ones behind the spam rather then their clients...I've added their domain to my servers ban lists.
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