PC Mechanic, New Article

Posted: 05 Apr 2011 03:00 AM PDT

When I was in grammar school there was a book drive every year, and one of the hot sellers of the day was The Guinness Book of World Records. We like to know records because statistical information is interesting. And of course there’s bragging rights for being "that guy" or "that girl" who did something first/best/etc.

To the best of my knowledge, the current record holder for the longest YouTube video was posted by YouTube user ahmon123 with the video ORIGAMI BOX DESTROY. The video has a total running time of 478 hours, 48 minutes and 5 seconds. That’s 19.95 days or 2.85 weeks. The video is nothing special to see as it’s nothing but random colors, but it is the longest running YouTube video.

You’ll notice the video was posted just over 3 years ago on Feb. 10, 2008. Nobody has been able to post a longer video since, but believe me, many have tried.

What keeps people from posting longer video to bust the record? Browser limitations and YouTube itself.

If you encoded a video at the bare minimum 320×240, used super-high compression and a very low frame rate, it is totally possible to have a 500-hour video that is under 2GB in size. Think "old cell phone video quality". Yes, it will look terrible, but the point is it can be done. A problem encountered however is sending that amount of data through the browser. Any browser. They simply weren’t designed to push through data of that size for a single file, and for most people the upload speed is throttled by the ISP directly.

With FTP, sure, multi-GB files aren’t a problem when sending even on the slowest connection because that protocol was designed for files first. HTTP on the other hand is a text protocol first, so when trying to push a file over 1GB in size, server timeouts are common and transfer crash recovery is more or less nonexistent.

Now of course there’s always going to be that guy who says "I’ve been sending files over X size for a long time through a browser and have had no problems", blah blah blah frickin’ blah. Well, good for him, because if you try it, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get a server timeout. If HTTP was such a great protocol for sending large stuff, video sites like blip.tv wouldn’t need to offer an FTP method for transferring super-large video files.

Then there is the issue of YouTube itself. While that site plus others will easily accept many-hour video, unofficially you start to encounter problems when sending something that’s over 100 hours (4.17 days) long.

Now you may be thinking, "Why in the world would anyone want to post a video online that long?" In this instance it’s all about bragging rights. It doesn’t matter what the video content is, but rather who has the absolute longest YouTube video ever. Whoever can "destroy the origami box" so to speak by posting a video over 478.8 hours long will be the new champ.

Tips for those that have a YouTube account that allows long-form video and think they can make the new record:

It’s most likely true you won’t be able to post your 500-hour video from your home ISP connection, but if you have access to a co-located server with a really fast and stable data pipe, that would be the way to go about it. Send your video file from home to the co-located server via FTP, then use a remote graphical session (VNC most likely) to push the file over to YouTube direct from the server. The faster you can get the file pushed to YouTube, the higher the chance the file will successfully transfer, process and post.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

What’s The Longest YouTube Video Ever?

Wireless Carrier Web Sites Just Plain Suck

Posted: 04 Apr 2011 07:00 AM PDT

Recently I was shopping around wireless carriers to see what they offered, and I was treated to by-design awful web site navigation that I’m surprised anyone has the patience to deal with.

For most wireless carriers, the question of "HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?" takes way too many steps just to get the answer.

I’ll first start off with the easiest of the lot: MetroPCS. Load the home page, one click to the plans page and ta-da, everything is there with the exception of how much a phone costs (easily found by clicking the big "PHONES") on top. One site load, one click, done deal, you have plan pricing info. That’s the way it should be.

This is what MetroPCS’ price chart looks like:

Simple, easy, very legible. That’s the best there is for easy site navigation to answer the "HOW MUCH?" question. Every other wireless carrier site, at least for US service, fails miserably. How miserably? I’ll tell you.

Verizon Wireless

Go to verizon.com, and immediately you’re asked where you want to go:

This is good because most people want to go to Wireless and couldn’t care less about the other choices.

Tip: Did you know? The fast way to get to the Verizon Wireless web site is www.vzw.com?

Okay, so I’m on vzw.com, I see "Plans". Okay, good. Click that. Now I’m asked for location information:

I understand why the site needs this info, however bear in mind MetroPCS detects this automatically based on your IP if in the US.

At this point I have to choose Individual Plans:

Note: "Seize the signal" is an awful advertising tagline. My first thought when I read that is the exact opposite effect, as in "You want me to break the signal?" Yeah, I know it’s supposed to be reminiscent of carpe diem, but it just doesn’t work.

Now I’m finally at the point where I see actual plan prices:

To get to this point took more than double the effort needed to get the same information on MetroPCS’ site.

AT&T

These guys have a better site initially because it’s just www.att.com and the link to cell phone plans is directly on the main site, however..

..the link for the plans is so small it’s almost unreadable:

Bear in mind my browser is set to standard font size. The fact this text is so small is just ridiculous. Sure, we skip a click by having it right on the ATT.com main site, but this is negated by the fact you almost can’t read it no matter how good your eyes are.

On the next page, AT&T makes up for this by having larger more legible text with prices listed extra-large style:

I appreciate that the lowest price is listed first and doesn’t require location information, BUT..

..if you click Shop Individual Plans:

We’re now back to the itty bitty text with a teeny tiny form where you have to punch in location information, and then you get a chart:

The chart continues to have small text, but it’s legible for the most part.

AT&T’s site bounces back and forth from text that’s readable to almost-unreadable and it’s annoying.

Sprint

You’re treated to this on first load of sprint.com:

Huh? I don’t give a crap about your "updated site". I want to go directly to wireless and get a price list. Sigh.. fine.. whatever. Click on "I don’t have Sprint service (yet)."

To get to wireless plans, you have to magically know it’s under Shop:

..or scroll all the way to the bottom and click the teeny tiny almost-unreadable Wireless Plans link:

And can someone please tell me why most wireless carriers have ridiculously small text for really important menu items?

At this point you’re forced to punch in a ZIP code to see any prices:

After punching in your ZIP code, you’re then treated to scrolling hell that includes very annoying canary yellow boxes with even more hard-to-read small text:

Now if you thought you could tick "Individual" and get a smaller, more manageable list with less scrolling, oh how wrong you were. Scrollscrollscrollscrollscroll.. and.. um.. "Dell Inspiron 11z Mobile Broadband Plan?" What is that doing here under "Individual"? Shouldn’t that only be listed under "Mobile Broadband"? Yeah, I think it should.. thanks for the useless scrolling, Sprint.

How do you deal with bad wireless carrier web sites?

Punch up the zoom setting in your web browser, because you’ll most likely have to because of the ridiculously small text throughout.

Plan on doing a lot of clicking, ending up in the wrong area, then doing even more clicking. I suggest making a sandwich before going to a wireless carrier web site to ease the pain slightly.

For any part of the site where you see "Feedback":

…click it and complain. A lot.

Or don’t bother at all and just go to the physical wireless retail store of your choice. Chances are you’ll have much better luck compared to dealing with the web mess that’s considered navigation for most wireless carrier web sites.

On a final note, I don’t even use MetroPCS as my carrier, but I haven’t seen any carrier’s web site that’s as good as theirs. One site load, one click, you know how much the plans cost.

Why can’t other wireless carrier web sites be this way?

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Wireless Carrier Web Sites Just Plain Suck