Hugo’s blog

Not only the service they offer is great, but they also have a sense of humor about their business.

Related:

• DreamHost promo code guide

DreamHost is trying to change the rules of selling online music and movies by introducing a new service: Files Forever. Once somebody has bought a file through this system, he or she can download it again in case the file was lost or deleted, loan it to a friend (though the way loaning works is not clear to me at this point).

This is IMO a good step forward for music and videos. The reason I still buy CDs is because I want to know that whatever happens (more or less), I’ll have access to the songs I bought. I consider them as my ultimate backup: I would not want to have spent €15 for an album and lose it completely (and this makes a lot of sense when you multiply this figure by a few hundreds), so I think that DreamHost’s idea is great.

However, I don’t see them competing with the iTunes Music Store until they have a good interface. It’s a good idea on the paper, but they will need to attract people. Maybe that will be an interesting way to sell songs for small artists who cannot get listed on iTunes (there’s not a lot of local artists there).

It does not solve all the issues of buying music online though. For example, MP3 is the king of electronic formats for music right now, but this may change. So buying a song in MP3 format is nice, but in 20 year’s time, you may want something else. I’m looking forward to the day I can buy not a file nor a physical copy of a song, but the right to listen to it on my own device (portable player, hifi system) and I will be able to get it on the electronic support I want. This is more or less what Yahoo! is getting at with Yahoo! Music Unlimited: people give Yahoo! money, and Yahoo! takes care of bringing the music to people.

As a side note, I saw in comments on the DreamHost weblog a site to buy music online: AllOfMP3. They can definitely compete with iTunes as their interface is not bad and their prices are unbeatable ($2.13 for Continuum by John Mayer!), but the legality of this service is obviously dubious.

I’m looking forward to the first real use of Files Forever.

I am still extremely happy to have chosen DreamHost.

Today’s delight: you realize (only too late) that you had not setup a backup mechanism. Well, DreamHost knew you were a flake, and they took care of everything: there’s a hidden .snapshot directory in everybody’s home which will save you.

The wiki has the documentation about backups.

If you’re hesitating again, stop. Rush to the DreamHost Web site (DH77OFF gives you $77 off).

I just finished moving my site to DreamHost. The process was less of a pain that I expected (hoping that this post gets through). What I can say is that I am really impressed by DreamHost:

• Unlimited number of shell accounts
• Unlimited number of domains hosted
• Unlimited number of email addresses
• Huge storage allowance (the cheapest plan gives you 20GB)
• Huge bandwidth allowance (the cheapest plan gives you 1TB/month)
• All allowances increase weekly
• POP, IMAP, Webmail
• Junk mail filtering
• MySQL, PHP, WebDAV, you-name-it support
• One-click install for pretty much all of the above
• Using Debian GNU/Linux!

On top of all that, they have a referral program which allows you to get even cheaper bills. And, on top of all that, they also have coupons that allow you to hardly pay anything for the first year: DH77OFF gives you $77 off.

I’m extremely happy with it so far!