NilObject

Services for the toolbelt

Jon — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 05:25:33 +0000

I feel like I’ve found a few services over the past few years that helped me grow my business to where it is today in one way or another. It’s sometimes the little things that matter. Here’s a pick of the few ones that I really love and always recommend.

NodePing – Monitoring

First and foremost, you need to know when any hosted services are down, and hopefully before your customers notice. I used many solutions, then stumbled across NodePing. This service is fantastic. For a flat, extremely affordable monthly rate, you get unlimited monitors for a plethora of services, multiple monitoring regions, and fantastic support.

I’ve only had a few odds-and-ends requests, and I’ve always received personalized responses. Case-in-point, a few months ago I was wanting to monitor a very locked down box, but didn’t want to expose the normal ports, and I also wanted the box to be black to pings. I emailed, asking about adding an RDP monitor. They said they were looking at a solution for that, and would notify me when they added it.

A few hours later, I got an email — they added a generic “port” connection, so that you could test if a specified port was accepting a connection. I hooked it up, and it was wonderful.

Hands-down, I highly recommend NodePing for anyone looking to perform external monitoring of hosted services.

Linode – VPS hosting

I’ve tried many VPS providers, and while there are undoubtedly others that are better in certain ways, Linode has a wonderful blend of consistent performance, spectacular support, nice data center locations, and good pricing

There’s not too much to say for this. While I do use dedicated hardware for a lot of my businesses setup, I have a nice arsenal of VPSes for redundancy and miscellaneous purposes.

DNSMadeEasy – Reliable DNS

For a relatively low price, you can have very reliable DNS and a lot of great features from DNSMadeEasy. I have a personal account and a company account, and it makes managing DNS super easy and gives you incredible control and confidence. Upon setting up a domain, you’re assigned 6 geographically distributed nameservers so that your DNS is always resolved quickly.

Even if you don’t think you need DNS hosting, it’s so cheap for the benefits and it makes it easier to switch registrars.

Zencoder – API-based Video Encoding

Zencoder is an absolutely wonderful service that takes care of video encoding for you at an extremely fair price. If you need to do on-demand video encoding, this is a great solution compared to the pain of getting the various codecs and tools compiled and working reliably on whatever flavor of OS you’re running.

Founders Card – More than worth it

Jon — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 00:47:24 +0000

Upon moving out here, I was investigating co-working spaces and many of them offer special perks. The one I signed up for at the time had a discount on something called Founders Card.

Hey, I’m a founder. What is this thing? Well, I started digging, and a couple weeks ago I decided to take the plunge. I’m happy I did.

I had been investigating some of the benefits, and I realized I could quickly save more than the cost of the discounted membership. Sure enough, I will in less than one more month. This card/club is a semi-exclusive portal to getting discounts at many places you may already do business as well as giving you access to many perks you may end up using.

For me, I’m saving on:

Co-working
ZipCar
Food delivery
Online Shopping/Shipping

Those alone will have saved me money before the end of the Summer, but there are a lot of other great offers.

The best part is the look of the card. I don’t have mine yet, but this article on CNN has a picture.

So, if you’re an innovator/founder/entrepreneur/etc, I would encourage you to check them out. If you do, you can use my referral code FCJONATHAN771, and if you email me, I’ll hook you up with a VIP invite.

I originally was hush-hush on what at the time felt like a silly choice to join this. However, now that I’ve seen first hand what it really has to offer, I decided I wouldn’t mind sharing.

A fresh beginning and update

Jon — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 04:49:29 +0000

Regardless of if I’ve lost all of my subscribers or not, I’ve decided it’s time to start writing again. The past couple years have been very tough, rewarding, and educating. I will probably go back and revisit some of those topics over time, but I’d like to give a little update about myself and what I’m up to.

I’m Co-founder and CTO at Core-Apps, which I’ve technically been for the past three years, but for some reason neglected to ever mention it.
I’m currently working out of a coworking space while exploring a new city.
I now own a suit, although I still spend most days in shorts, sandals, and a t-shirt.
I’m currently on a Galaxy Nexus, although I did have a brief stint of using a WP7 phone that I mostly enjoyed.
I spend almost 100% of my development time on my company, which has me split between Objective-C, Java, Ruby, C++, and more on a daily basis. I’m enjoying my Ruby work the most currently.
Even more-so than two years ago, I am continuously learning more about stars, star-stuff, and the universe.
I’ve become an avid fan of Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, and Mad Men, amongst others
I’ve switched from TextMate to BBEdit to my current love — Sublime Text

My goal is to aim for one post a week to start with. I have a short list of topics that I’ve recently encountered that I feel I have a unique perspective on or a few development problems that I feel like I found a unique solution that works well.

So, hello world, again!