So far, it is good. I'm still soliciting opinions from my closest friends about this possibility of moving out of Blogger and into i.ph. Housemate eon helped in providing some insights. We've discussed essentially three concerns: first, whether the strengths of the parent networks Google and Dot.ph will be an issue of the blog services' reliabilities; second, whether bandwidth strength remarkably recognizable and enjoyable (right now) with i.ph remain, should the Internet eventually recover from the outage at this side of the world; and third, whether sustainability prospects of i.ph as a free service be an issue (with a presumption that Google's Blogger is in a relatively more financially robust position). The last concern, of course, is reminiscent of the late nineties market crashes here and there as well as the Net bubble. Do you still remember when Yahoo's free email service was limited to 2MB? How about the demise of Edsamail?
Initially, I thought the customizability of the blogspace code will be an issue. When I thought this through, I realized that I didn't really need "too much" customization, i.e., be able to tweak the code as I see fit from time to time. I.ph's customizing features, though vastly much more limited than Blogger, is enough for me being just a "regular blogging joe." To be able to change banner images and color palletes would suffice as customization for me; I consider myself a writer-slash-blogger first, a "web programmer" may not even be distant second. I will let the pleasure of tweaking markups and style sheets to eon, who is by the way, a software engineer.
As for the first concern, I realized that in the past - recent past, if I may add - I still experienced considerable lag with Blogger at its best performance (that would mean during wee hours of early morning), particularly, on its dashboard functions. It could remain that way, considering the thousands of users who would be online doing the same things as I do in different time zones all over the world. With a much more local service as i.ph, I'd pretty much could ascertain (and hope) that at least within this year I won't be immediately encountering a drastic slow down of services. Being in a community of bloggers mostly within the same timezone also helps. I'm trying to make an optimistic forecast here, which may or may not be reflective of i.ph's marketing drive.
I agreed with eon that the second concern should be the least of my worries. As he said, and as I've claimed before, I'm not envisioning my space to be something like Pink is the New Blog (which we mutually "lurve" to bits). Either not ever or at least in the immediate future. The main issue here will be the possible choking of download bandwidth due to demand of millions of Internet users; in the case of PITNB, that would be Hollywood-frenzied, gossip-hungry millions of Internet users. As it is, I've always said to my friends that I'm not really concerned if I have just one (excluding myself) or 200 "loyal fans" out there on the Internet. Liwaliw is - principally - not that kind of blog.
Lastly, on the issue of until when i.ph could remain free, eon thought there could be a possibility that the revenue model that i.ph would be considering would be similar to what most web services are already doing: offering a premium package as pay-service while having a limited package remain free. That sounds acceptable, save for a slight discomfort over what quality would pass for a limited service. I think Blogger already has a premium package, which includes having to host one's blog on your own server/s… it could be that i.ph already offers this (note to self: check for related info). I'm just worried that, as I've experienced with Yahoo! before, the free services have scaled progressively down (still, during that Net bubble nineties). A defense was offered, I think, something like cushioning the impact; we should remember cushions (like pillows) are used to suffocate victims. I also hope a free package won't be as paltry as what Salon.com did: they used to offer access to a wonderful archive of past articles to all members, very insightful, entertaining, well written articles. They got snobbish: if you're just a free subscriber, you don't have access to these archives anymore. The best of the current features are cut, cliffhanger type, with an offer to pay subscription if you want to read the rest. Bleh. Woe for the third world Internet users.
What the hell is wrong with the Internet? Then again, I already know the answer to that. I guess the question should be, what's taking that effing cable repairs south of Taiwan so long? I guess it's serendipitously good for the locally hosted services, this thing that happened to the Internet. Globelines surely has been benefiting from that. As my Internet provider, I've just recently rediscovered the indispensability their webmail for many of my e-mailing needs, Gmail and Yahoo! Mail are just too reminiscent of the dial-up nineties.
Now I'm checking out, and considering very seriously, about migrating my blog space to i.ph. I'm guessing I'm not the only one. With too many javascript components Blogger has put in their dashboard - and log-in page - it's practically impossible to log on at all, especially these recent weeks of suffering severely limited bandwidth. I'm still thinking this through though. I have no major problems with Blogger really. Whatever problems I had in the past, which was mainly the slowing down of the dashboard functions (allegedly because too many bloggers are signed in at certain times), I usually shrug off after a brief moment of badmouthing.
On the other hand, i.ph's interface is not too bad; it's comparatively very convenient. A bit limited in terms of options for templates though. But overall, not too bad at all. I'd say they're quite innovative also, especially with the profile page… but I do wonder if it has its performance limitations. I've my suspicions on the too glossy pizazz of the photo album. I've also yet to check out the blog-posting via e-mail function. The formatting issues I have with that function with Blogger also gets my goat. I know how to read and write HTML code, which is how I usually solve those formatting problems. But I'm goddamned lazy when it comes to marking up.
There's nothing really substantial about this post, quite frankly. Just a text filler really, less embarrassing than using false text a.k.a. Lorem ipsum (and admonishing that initial blog text that's by all accounts shameless promotion).
