David Zucker’s new film, An American Carol, is a comedy about a bumbling, anti-American documentary film maker named Michael Malone. In this unapologetically pro-American film, Malone leads a protest movement to ban the Fourth of July, but is visited by ghosts of great Americans (and the Angel of Freaking Death) who try to save him before it’s too late.

The Trailers

There are several hilarious trailers available at the American Carolers website. The “Pinheads” trailer is embedded below.

Great Cast

The movie stars Kevin Farley as the fat, obnoxious Malone in a near-perfect portrayal of Michael Moore. The rest of the cast is also superb. The ghosts are played by Chriss Anglin as John F. Kennedy, Kelsey Grammer as General George S. Patton, Jon Voight as George Washington, and Trace Adkins as the Angel of “Freaking” Death.

The cast also includes James Woods as Malone’s agent, Leslie Nielsen as the narrator and himself, Dennis Hopper as a judge, Geoffrey Arend as Mohammed, Gary Coleman as a slave, Robert Davi as Aziz, Simon Rex as himself, Paris Hilton as herself, Bill O’Reilly as himself, and Trace Adkins shows up as himself too.

Movie With A Good Message

The United States of America is not perfect, but it’s still the best country in the world, and it is under attack not just by liberals, but by terrorists who have been at it since at least 1993, when the World Trade Center was first attacked. In An American Carol, Malone and the audience are taken back for a look at the smoking ruins at Ground Zero as a reminder of what we’re fighting.

At one point, the movie has Bill O’Reilly interviewing Malone and Rosie O’Connell. As O’Reilly shows clips of an insane “documentary” on 9/11 produced by O’Connell, a still unrepentant Malone begins to grow uncomfortable being lumped in and interviewed with the truly unhinged O’Connell.

Pro-American movies are an endangered species, but An American Carol restores some hope that things could get better. This is a movie that I didn’t leave feeling ripped off, or that I had just paid ten bucks for some liberal brain-washing drivel.

There’s an interesting review at NewsMax:

To hear David Zucker tell it, making a Republican-friendly Hollywood film is like plotting a coup: You plan it in secret meetings, quietly recruit conservative actors, and launch before anybody realizes what’s happening.

“You sort of feel like you have to hide it,” says Zucker, director of the new film, “An American Carol,” which opened in theaters Friday. “When you meet, you give each other a secret look — ‘Are you a Republican too?’

Probably Not For Little Kids

An American Carol is rated PG-13 for “rude and irreverent content, and for language and brief drug material.” I’d say PG-13 is about right for the movie. Keep in mind that David Zucker is the man behind hilarious but irreverent and vulgar comedies like Airplane!, the Naked Gun movies, the Scary Movie series, Top Secret!, and My Boss’s Daughter. Funny, but not for little kids.

In fact, the people who most need to see this movie are those in their late teens and college years, as they are the most at risk of anti-American indoctrination.

Bottom Line: An American Carol is a great movie, so go see it.

Besides, it’s got zombies in it.

For simple, distraction-free text editing, I had at first settled on Darkroom for Windows. It was pretty good but seemed somewhat unfinished. Then I found Q10 and decided it was the way to go.

Then a reader, Arch1k, suggested that WriteMonkey was the best editor in this genre. I’d never heard of it, but after finally downloading and trying it, it’s clear that my prior choices were inferior; WriteMonkey is much better. By a long shot.

WriteMonkey has some unique features.

Besides well-executed text editing, WriteMonkey includes features that set it apart from others such as Q10 and Darkroom.

Progress Bar – a thin line on the screen edge grows downwards as you type, indicating how far along you are towards a document length goal. The default is 3000 characters but can be set to any number of characters (with or without spaces included) or words. In the image above you can see the progress bar—it’s the thin line in the upper left. Click to view the larger image.

Jumps – pressing alt-J will bring up a list of locations within the document to which you can quickly jump. The list includes bookmarks, headlines, and paragraphs.

Repository – pressing alt-R will toggle between the edit display and a text repository, where you can keep snippits of text, URLs, etc. Essentially a scrap of electronic paper.

WriteMonkey executes typical features well.

Well-executed from front to back, WriteMonkey has yet to get in my way or make me grumble about some bothersome aspect.

It supports most of the normal things you would expect from a full-screen text editor: customizable fonts and colors, typing sounds, text statistics, spell checking, find and replace, and so on.

Notably, find and replace supports wildcards and regular expressions. Also, it seems to handle multi-monitor setups well.

Another nice feature is its support for zooming; control-scrollwheel zooms the text size and editing width, shift-scrollwheel zooms the text size, and alt-scrollwheel zooms the editing width.

WriteMonkey is the best full-screen text editor. So far.

So, for now, WriteMonkey is the best option I have found for distraction-free, full-screen text editing. It has more features than either Q10 or Darkroom (or others for that matter) and gets the job done better than either.

Check it out.

Modern computers are chock full of features and widgets and icons and gizmos, but when you’re trying to focus, it is all just noise. There is something to be said for an old green or amber monitor, showing nothing but your immediate task.

Update: Distraction-free text editing has a new contender. Check out my review of WriteMonkey.

Dark Room for Windows

Over a year ago I was impressed with Dark Room, a simple, full-screen text editor for Windows. It is a full-screen text editor with no distractions. However, though it serves its purpose and is nice in some respects, using it is a chore. The biggest problem is that it feels slow. Wait, the biggest problem has to be that it lacks find-and-replace functionality. Seriously, though Dark Room works, it feels like it’s an unfinished project.

Dark Room Editing

Dark Room Preferences

Distraction-Free Text Editors

So Dark Room is a decent choice for Windows users looking for a simple, full-screen text editor, but it has some problems.

So, are there any other options? Yes, there are.

jDarkRoom

jDarkRoom is a Java-based alternative. Since it’s Java-based, it will run on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Its feature set is limited. Also, at least on my Windows XP system, there was a serious problem with distracting graphical artifacts, which kind of defeats the purpose of distraction-free writing.

jDarkRoom Editing

jDarkRoom Preferences

jDarkRoom Help

WestEdit

WestEdit is a Windows application. It works, but to me it feels too lacking in features to use or recommend.

WestEdit Editing

WestEdit Preferences

WestEdit Help

Q10

Q10, a Windows application, has built-in spell checking, font selection, find-replace, a note feature, configurable document statistics, a writing alarm, adjustable typing sounds, auto-correct and “quick text” word expansion, and several other nice features. Very nice.

Q10 Editing

Q10 Preferences

Q10 Help

Writeroom

Writeroom, from Hog Bay Software, is the original distraction-free editor for the Mac. It costs about $25, though you can dig around and find an older version for free. (Oh, well, I did the digging for you. See the Writeroom Releases page for old versions.)

Since I don’t have a Mac handy, here is a wee screen shot from the Writeroom website. As you can see, it features a hip, shiny look. So it is a superb choice for shiny Apple customers.

Writer

Writer is web-based, and for what it is, not too bad. However, there are a few problems with this concept. First, web-based storage: I know it’s hip but letting someone else store my documents seems foolish. Second, it is not full-screen, so you’re left with the browser and anything around it to distract you. (However, you can get around a lot of this with a full-full-screen mode on your browser. A Firefox Addon called Fuller Screen works well, removing all browser chrome and making the website truly full-screen.) Writer does, on the other hand, have some handy features; send to email or a content management system (here again, you give them your userid and password—yikes!), download as text or PDF, and print. Interesting, but not compelling for any but the most trivial writing.

Writer Editing

DarkCopy

DarkCopy is another web-based text editor with a full-screen mode and the ability to save as a text file. There’s not much more to this editor, so it might suffice for the odd job, but unless you can’t use anything else, I don’t see a compelling reason to use this one. The full-screen mode doesn’t work so well for me, but nothing about DarkCopy makes me want to figure out what the problem is. Not bad, but no big deal.

DarkCopy Editing

Which distraction-free text editor is the best choice?

For Windows users, Q10 is the way to go. It’s fast and feels solid. The other choices work but are outshined by Q10.

For Mac users with cash left over after buying their overpriced systems, Writeroom is the standard-bearer; for those left indigent by Apple, the free JDarkRoom should work okay.

Linux users can use JDarkRoom or one of the web-based alternatives like Writer or DarkCopy.

Promising to fill a gap left by sites like eBible and BibleGateway, a new Bible reading and study site is online, called the YouVersion. It is being created by lifechurch.tv.

Like eBible, the YouVersion offers up a modern feel with highlighting and tagging. Unlike eBible, the YouVersion opens things up a bit by allowing users to attach multi-media content to passages.

The YouVersion blog does a decent job of highlighting new features as they appear.

The Good Stuff

• More Bible is a good thing, however you slice it.
• Attaching links, images, and video—in addition to text notes— to passages is a nice step forward.
• The layout is nice enough and uncluttered.
• Though not available yet, a Groups feature will allow groups (what else?) to study Scripture together.
• Also not available yet, a Favorites feature will allow you to mark Passages to appear in a list of your favorites.
• It nice that they opened the website when the Reader was ready and did not wait for everything to be available, but… (see below).
• Uploading images and videos is restricted to online sharing sites. Good because it probably will filter out a lot of unwelcome nastiness.

The Not-So-Good Stuff

• The Bible Reader always starts with Genesis 1. Likewise, no matter what you’re reading, refreshing the reading page always starts you back at Genesis 1. The last passage you were viewing should be remembered.
• Once you’ve added content, the Reader still shows a “Discover the relevancy… Currently, there is no passage selected” message. Once you select a passage, Community content for that verse is displayed. I would expect that my content is displayed first. Clicking on My Content shows a list of content, with no indication of which is relevant to the current verse. Very unhelpful.
• The Dashboard shows a bunch of stuff but nothing relevant to your own reading and content. The dashboard should first and foremost show what’s relevant to the user, starting with the user’s own work. The Community is secondary, and once groups are available, tertiary.
• There are still some layout bugs. For example, if your browser window isn’t huge, content links wrap back on themselves, creating a strange jumble. There seems to be a blank column at the end of each entry.
• The missing features leave big holes in the YouVersion concept.
• Uploading images and videos is restricted to online sharing sites. Bad because it forces you to use yet another website.
• There needs to be at least an option to render Jesus’ words in red.
• A sans-serif font is not so great for extended reading. An option to switch to a serif font like Georgia would ease reading. See below for a comparison of this.
• Apparently, there is no public API into YouVersion for developers to build on YouVersion. ESV and eBible both have APIs.

Georgia On My Mind

Reading for a while in the YouVersion reading pane is visually tiresome for me, so I opened Firebug and changed the Scripture font from Arial to Georgia. Much better!

Though font preferences differ among readers, but there is some evidence that serif fonts provide superior readability than do their sans-serif cousins for longer passages of text. I mostly agree and feel that YouVersion (and eBible, for that matter) should include an option to change the text font to a modern serif font like Georgia. (Of course, titles and headings can and should remain in sans-serif.)

Below are two clipped screenshots of John 15 in YouVersion. The first is set in Arial, followed by the same text rendered in Georgia.

Sans-serif (Arial) – click for full image

Serif (Georgia) – click for full image

Your mileage may vary of course. Just asking that we have a choice.

Features and Screenshots

YouVersion Dashboard and Profile

The Dashboard displays some welcome messages, a daily reading, recent Community contributions, new users, an entry from their blog, a search box, and some links to various areas of the site (most are “coming soon”). Does not show anything directly relevant to the user. The profile feels perfunctory, but also shows who you’re “following,” who’s “following” you, your contributions, and what you’ve tagged and starred.

YouVersion Bible Reader and Community Content

Though always returning you to Genesis 1, the Bible Reader has a nice enough layout. Clicking on a verse displays community content rather than your own content.

YouVersion My Content and Adding An Image

Clicking “My Content” shows a list of content you’ve added with no indication of which is relevant to this verse. Adding content is pretty simple. Fill in the form and point it to a Flickr, Picasa, or Photobucket image. Pretty much the same for

YouVersion, Shared Content, and Community Bible Study

Making the Bible available to more people and providing them with more tools with which to study it is a great thing. Once it’s completed, I can see some Bible study groups making great use of YouVersion and its community and group features.

The obvious purpose of YouVersion is to apply the latest web technologies to an online Bible study application. Much of the “latest web technologies,” though, is nothing more than hype and fashion. Ajax and Javascript are nice incremental points on the long timeline of technology, but let’s get some perspective. The first post in their blog seems to equate Web 2.0 fashion sense with the invention of the printing press and, presumably, lifechurch.tv with Gutenberg.

Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1450. Four years later, he printed the first copy of the Bible using this new moveable type system. This accomplishment began what is known as “The Age of the Printed Book.” Over the following centuries, this technological advancement revolutionized the surrounding culture by making it possible for the Bible to be accessible to nearly everyone.

Currently, we are in the beginning of another revolution that is defined by the ability for almost anyone to publish content and quickly distribute it worldwide using the Internet. This revolution is at the center of what is called “Web 2.0.”

A revolution on par with the printing press? That’s a bit much.

Unfortunately, though lifechurch.tv may be well-intended, I get a sense that something deeper is missing in YouVersion. Maybe that will change as the project nears completion.

Shared Content and Community

The ability to link Scripture to other content and share notes is interesting and will benefit to some Bible study groups and individuals. Tagging and starring passages provide helpful organizational tools that some will find useful. These features can make YouVersion a great asset to study and reading, particularly if the interface is improved to highlight the user’s own work first and by default.

In Summary

LifeChurch has done a decent job with YouVersion, and aside from nagging problems, it is a promising work-in-progress that may be a valuable tool in the future.

However, something is missing. Whether they work the kinks out or not, YouVersion seems to have started with Web 2.0 talking points and worked backwards to work them around the Bible. Tagging? Got it. Starring? Check. Community? Yep. Shared content? Oh, yeah. Flickr, Picasa, Youtube, MySpace? Got it. This Ajax thing? You betcha. DHTML and highlighting? Yes sir. The focus seems to be all that rather than on the Bible itself.

WordPress 2.5 Arrives

After months of testing and teasing, WordPress 2.5 is finally available. It has changed dramatically.

Oh, What the Heck

Throwing caution to the wind, I blindly upgraded this site to 2.5. So far, no problems have cropped up. In fact, at the moment everything seems fine (of course, let me know if you discover otherwise).

A Simple WordPress Upgrade?

After the tedious upgrade to WordPress 2.3, I fully expected something to crash and burn, particularly since 2.5 is such a significant change. Thankfully, it was boring and quick. Clicked “Upgrade WordPress,” then “Continue,” and it was done.

So What’s New in WP 2.5?

The changes are covered exhaustively by the WordPress team and countless others, but these are the things that I noticed after playing around with it for a few minutes.

• The redesigned admin interface is different and much improved.
• The Media Gallery is a snazzy way to add images, music, videos, etc. That is, if you like doing it that way. I tend to shy away from these automated code-creator gizmos in favor of hand-coding things.
• The Dashboard looks great with its new design. The important stuff is arranged in a more intelligent, top down fashion.
• Smoother WYSIWYG editing is included, as far as I can tell. Normally I don’t use this much but it’s nice to see it improving.
• Full-screen editing is just a feature of the editor, but deserves an item of its own. It’s a nice touch, though I wish it was available in the plain HTML editor. Dark Room style editing, sans brick-a-brack, is great.
• Permalink display is handy. At the top of the post the permalink that will be created is displayed, and an inline editing feature is included. One bug, however, is that once you edit the permalink, you are stuck with a manually-edited permalink. I.e. if you subsequently think of a better post title, you will have to manually edit the permalink to reflect the new title.
• Tag entry is still a pain. There should be a list of existing tags from which to choose (by clicking on them, preferably).
• Category entry has taken a step backwards, in my opinion. To enter a new category, you have to click “+Add New Category,” enter the category name, then click another Add button (or hit Enter). Kind of picky but it’s one more fussy thing getting in the way.
• A Gallery of sorts is supported. Upload images, include a [ gallery ] tag, and your images will be linked… or something like that. I am feeling underwhelmed, but maybe that’s just me.

WordPress 2.5 Screenshots

If you’re curious, here are some screenshots of the new WP 2.5 Admin interface.

Overall Impressions of WordPress 2.5

Well, compared to version 2.3, this looks quite a bit better. Best thing since sliced bread? No, not so much. But, amusing diversion for a couple hours? Sure.

Earlier this year I upgraded to a refurbished Samsung Blackjack (from a Sony-Erricson W800i). After trading it in for another (refurbished) Blackjack that would take a charge, I was fairly happy with the phone. It had a full QWERTY keyboard, nice screen, and handled text messaging, web browsing, and email pretty well.

Over the last six months it has become a very frustrating phone. Calls are dropped, “no service” situations where there is clearly a cell signal, and apparently random shutdowns of the phone.

The dropped calls are apparently due to a faulty antenna that is the subject of a product advisory. If your Blackjack was built between November 2006 and February 2007 (mine was), you can get it fixed.

Terrible speaker phone

The speaker phone feature is great until there is any ambient noise, such as while driving. The Blackjack “helpfully” increases the volume automatically, and unfortunately beyond the meager ability of the built-in speaker. So what should be a hands-free situation becomes a chore of manually compensating for the fluctuating volume, ambient noise, and a weak speaker.

Granted, it is entirely possible that this refurbished Blackjack is suffering from a damaged speaker. But in this case, the changing volume makes a bad problem worse.

Blackjack annoying design

It does not help that there are physical design issues with the Blackjack — for me, at least.

First, the phone feels nothing like a phone; it is wide and flat. Maybe that works for some people, but to me it feels weird.

Second, the number keys are positioned on the QWERTY keyboard so that a column of keys is between each number column. On top of that, if you need to dial a number with letters in it or have to enter letters into an automated answering system, you are out of luck unless you remember which letters correspond to which numbers on a normal phone keypad. The first part of this appears to be fixed with the Blackjack II, but as far as I can tell you will still be guessing which number matches which letter.

Finally, the cable connection design is poor. The covers are flimsy and prone to falling out. The USB cable shares the charging connection, so if you are connected via USB you are limited to a USB trickle charge. Yes this is common with cell phones. Yes I know these companies love their proprietary connectors. It is still, however, very annoying. I have too many special cables and chargers and whatnot already.

Nitpicky problems abound.

Did I say finally? Actually, there are a lot of little problems with this phone. The camera is crappy and annoying to use. Common menu choices are nested too deep for normal use. Accidental button presses are too easy. SpecTec promises aside, there is still no wi-fi option available for the Blackjack. Yes, Blackjack users are still stuck with Windows Mobile 5 Standard. No WM6 upgrade, though it has been available for nearly half a year.

The Blackjack Is Still Pretty Nifty

All that said, I still want to like the Blackjack. For the fifty bucks I paid it is not terrible when it works. The Sony W600i felt more polished and more like a phone, but it had its problems too. None come to mind right now, but I am sure there must have been problems (besides the Vitamin Water I spilled on it).

Blackjack II?

The Blackjack II is available now and seems to correct some of the problems. Better antenna, number keys now in a more sensible layout (but no letter-dialing equivalents), Window Mobile 6, GPS, slightly better camera, improved battery life, stereo Bluetooth, a jog wheel, and other minor tweaks.

On the downside, the camera is only slightly improved and there is still no wi-fi. And it is a bit bigger and heavier.

I am torn. It seems to fix a lot of the problems, but part of me just wants a normal cell phone that acts and feels like a normal cell phone.

After reading Shawn Anthony’s glowing endorsement and then a slew of excited reviews at Amazon.com, I decided to simply pick up The Shack locally and read it post haste. To my dismay, local stores from Family Christian to Borders had not heard of it and certainly did not stock it. So I ordered it from Amazon and waited.

By the time The Shack arrived I had tempered my eagerness a bit; no little novel is as good as all that. Also, you know how it is when your expectations have been built up too high. The reality is always less than your grand expectations.

The Reality of The Shack

Oddly enough, The Shack is better than those grand expectations. What’s odder still is that I was disappointed in a few respects, and The Shack is still better than my early, grand expectations.

One book that has always amazed me is The Great Divorce, by C. S. Lewis. It presents things in a way that I had never considered, but find fascinating. The Shack has all the wonder of The Great Divorce and two or three times the joy.

It will be tough to think about God in the same way after reading this book.

The Plot

The Shack is a story of a man who meets God. For me to explain more would run the risk of ruining the joy of reading it for yourself, but it is probably safe to quote the back of the book.

Mackenzie Allen Philips’ youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend.

Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack’s world forever.

Read The Shack

The Shack is a must-have, must-read book.

The Shack is written in an engaging, creative style that will move you to tears, cause you to laugh out loud, and make you feel renewed (but a little sad) when you finish it.

There are a several points while reading The Shack where my brow furrowed and the book was looking maybe a bit “out-there,” but it redeemed itself handily in all but a couple spots. And again, it is still a phenomenal book, tiny little warts and all.

Visit The Shack website.

After using a Sony-Ericsson W600i for about a year, I spilled some Vitamin Water on it and the buttons got a bit sticky, providing me a great excuse to upgrade my phone.

Some online comparisons later, I decided on a Samsung Blackjack and ordered it refurbished from Cingular. Actually, I ordered it through work and on the web, so coupled with it being refurbished, it was in the ballpark of $25.

(Update: What do I think after having the Blackjack for six months?)

Blackjack Battery Troubles

Though it arrived the next day and activation was a snap, charging was… not so much. The online reviews I had read were mostly glowing, it was nearly unanimous that the Blackjack battery life was pathetic, so I was prepared for some battery problems. However, I could not even charge a battery if it was in the phone.

The helpful neighborhood Cingular (AT&T, whatever) store quickly diagnosed my new-old cell phone as suffering from a case of “not working,” and arranged for yet another refurbished Blackjack to be sent out. (They couldn’t do an in-store swap of a new phone for a refurbished phone. Dang it.)

Anyhow, everything else seems to work, and the included battery charging gizmo charges just fine. Since it came with two batteries, I can manage until my new new-old phone arrives.

Samsung Blackjack Features

If you don’t know, the Blackjack is a Windows Mobile smartphone with a backlit QWERTY keyboard, interweb, email, and all that hooey. It does IR, quad-band GSM/EDGE, G3, MP3, XM, and R2D2. It’s got a 1.3 megapixel camera that doubles as a VGA camcorder. It can handle up to six active Bluetooth 2.0 connections, and does Java to boot.

The Blackjack has a small internal memory capacity. However, it will accept a micro SD card in a handy slot located on the right side. I picked up a 2 GB Sandisk Micro SD card, available at Amazon for about $20. For what it’s worth, a micro SD card is very-very incredibly micro. It’s the size of a fingernail. A small fingernail.

Amazon’s Atomic Scale

Though a bit larger than your typical cellphone, it’s thin and light. Weight-wise, I thought it was 3.5 ounces, but according to Amazon, as you can see in the image to the right, the Blackjack weighs 3.49982363315697 ounces. So, what do you know, it’s even lighter than I thought.

Overall

All in all, the Samsung Blackjack is a pretty cool phone. A smidge larger than I wanted but it’s got a full keyboard and is smaller and lighter than a PDA or Blackberry.

This and most of my other sites are hosted by Dreamhost on a great shared-hosting plan. They have excellent prices, good support, and plans that include most features you could want. The main Dreamhost blog betrays their great sense of humor and keeps us regularly entertained.

Crap Happens

However, there were Dreamhost DNS problems a few days ago that were driving some people bonkers — myself included. The initial report and the followup post generated 127 then 468 comments, respectively. A few months ago they had a power problem that caused issues for a few days as well.

The DNS problems currently seem to be resolved. Their last status update on it provides the explanation.

The problems regarding dns and our load balancer have been resolved. It was a combination of problems that caused the outage. The main problem was that the default udp settings on the load balancer did not have any timeout values set (BAD!!!). This was causing any udp connections that didn’t complete to fill up connection tables on the load balancer causing its CPU to spike and stop serving new requests. We sincerely apologize for this outage and are working on new dreaplans that would prevent a similar outage in the future.

Thanks to Dreamhost for sticking with this issue until it was diagnosed and fixed.

Dreamhoststatus.com provides a mechanism for them to report issues and absorb the caustic comments of those affected (some of whom are really competitors fishing for new customers). I appreciate their candor and know they’re focusing on doing what they can to fix the problems.

Since they just passed the 500,000 site mark, I have to give them kudos for managing things so well, and just wish there was something they could do to better avoid these occasional outages. Can they invest in more redundant systems? Dunno, but it would make a lot of people sleep easier.

Is Dreamhost The Best Host?

In the past, I have used other hosts. They have cost more, offered less, and had more problems than Dreamhost.

Nevertheless, I occasionally look at other hosts with other plans. Sometimes they have impressive prices; but maybe they only support .com, .net, and .org domains. Sometimes they have great features and prices; but maybe they limit the number of domains you can have. Sometimes I get restless; but Dreamhost makes tweaks things a bit or their blog makes me laugh or they solve a problem quickly, and I stay put.

In the future, my mind may change about Dreamhost or some other company may offer something better, but for now I use and recommend them whole-heartedly.

Anything Better?

But you tell me. What’s your favorite host? Why? Or if you have had problems with Dreamhost, what were they? Educate me. I haven’t used every feature or crawled into every nook and cranny of the service, so there might be a glaring problem that I haven’t encountered.

Update: Coupon Code

If you use the coupon code F7DJS8, you can get 10 Bucks Off when you sign up as a new customer.

Who Is John Chow?

Chow built TheTechZone, a major resource for hardware news and reviews, in 1999 and it’s still going strong.

He also built TTZ Media Network, which provides a shopping and price comparison engine for technology-focused web publishers (with over 250,000 page views per month). It’s his main source of income.

Make Money Online

At his site, John Chow dot Com, he turns out a flurry of articles on how to make money online, but he also throws in content on food, travel, and cars. His website is full of ideas of how you can monetize your website, increase traffic, and build an online business. For example, he has offered to link back to your website if you review his website. John Chow dot Com is currently PR6 with Google, so the linkage can be valuable.

Chow gets paid review requests (currently at $400 a pop) through ReviewMe! and does a good job of focusing on how each website or service makes money online.

Each month since the fall of 2006, when he turned his personal site into a profitable experiment in professional blogging, he has broken his income down at the site by source and provides commentary on the process and his thinking. Some of these sources are Text-Link-Ads, Kontera, ReviewMe!, AdSense, and affiliate sales.

More Than Money Grubbing

Though John Chow dot Com is about turning online ventures into cash, Chow adds slightly goofy humor, fun, and a positive outlook to his writing. Look no further than his About John Chow page for a sample of his style.

John Chow, a damn fine person, friend of the community, Ultimate Fighting Championship contestant, member of the Save the Whales Foundation, the man who controls the black market on baby seal pelts and member of the “probably yo’ daddy” foundation..

More importantly, John Chow is generous with his readers. Obviously there’s the linkbait jugernaut he’s piloting that has put him at the top of Google’s results for “make money online” and that provides a PR6 link to the reviewer’s site, but there are other examples. For instance, he set up a special deal with Kontera to allow small-time publishers into their advertising program that normally has very high traffic requirements. Of course he makes money off those deals, but it is a win-win for him and his readers. Also, he frequently gives away stuff he gets for free, like video cards, Zunes, or whatever (in exchange for links to him, of course).

John Chow dot Com is a must-read for anyone interested in monetizing a blog or other website, or just generally interested in how SEO techniques work.