In searching for a hosting solution, we were surprised by the lack of trustworthy information online to help people decide between them.  We set up a quick survey and are posting the results here.  There were 27 usable responses (the rest were missing too much information to use).   So the results are far from statistically significant, but hopefully they’re useful to others in the same situation.  It’s available as a Google Spreadsheet here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pmbNeL2NbqdCUSddkHmCAbw.

Here’s some snapshots — the document itself is a bit overwhelming to look at.

The following hosting services received “excellent” ratings for uptime, speed, and customer service:

• Alticon (2 ratings)
• Bob
• Contegix
• Edgeweb Hosting
• ExchangeGuru (2 ratings)
• Grassroots Enterprise
• SoftLayer
• Verizon Business FIOS

The following hosting services received a mix of “excellent” and “good” ratings for uptime, speed, and customer service:

• ActiveHost
• Amazon (EC2+S3)
• Aplus
• VPSlink
• Web Hosting Solutions

I just stumbled on this article Marc Ambinder wrote in The Atlantic Monthly last month about how Barack Obama may “transform governance just as he has transformed campaigning.”  This little nugget stood out and I thought it was worth sharing:

Communication and transparency are virtues only up to a point; as students of bureaucracies know, both eventually become an enemy to efficiency. Moreover, if [a] presidency invited more input than it could reasonably weigh and respond to, it would quickly squander the networking capital that the campaign has built.

MixedInk’s was built precisely to address these challenges.  We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.  Thanks, Marc!

Thirty family members and friends of the MixedInk team recently came together to test our software. It was very exciting to finally see MixedInk in action at this scale after much hard work and internal testing. Watching an interesting discussion take shape and participating in the eventual synergy that emerged over the five-day period was an extremely rewarding experience.

Together the participants addressed the following question: Is the US government ever justified in using torture? Why or why not?

(We chose this topic because we know people feel strongly about it. Having a topic that encourages vigorous discussion makes testing our software and concept easier).

Participants wrote, edited, and recombined responses to the topic throughout the test. With a total of 44 responses and 296 ratings in the end, the group had a vibrant brainstorming session and a fascinating exchange. Through a process of mixing and rating each other’s responses using MixedInk technology, the test participants collaboratively sculpted a collective opinion on the selected topic.

For those who are curious, we’ve pasted the text of the collective response below.

This is a major moment for MixedInk – this test provided definitive proof of our concept. We learned a ton from the test and are now tweaking old features and adding new ones based on the test and on the feedback we received. At this point, we plan to continue testing it with different and bigger groups – let us know if you’d like to help shape MixedInk by getting involved in future tests at testing@mixedink.com. We’d love to get your input!

No to Torture

In the wake of 9/11, we have begun to speak a new language. “Patriotism” means blind devotion to any government policy; to “support the troops” means to never question an interminable war; and “torture” means making the world safe for democracy. (heh, heh, heh). We are living in a world of contradictions and are facilitating it with a language of opposites. It is easier to accept an unwarranted war, corruption, and torture when they are cloaked in words like democracy, strength, and safety. But eventually we will run out of platitudes and be left with nothing but the bare truth of our actions.

Torture has fallen prey to the cover of new speak. By saying we’re protecting our way of life from terrorism, we have become terrorists ourselves and what once was abhorrent to Americans has become acceptable. The question in real speak, though, is what security do we truly gain from the use of torture? Of the multitude of tools in our security arsenal, torture is one that has been shown to fail — people will say anything to get themselves out of the situation. This is particularly true in the case of terrorism, where people are often motivated by martyrdom, and just a bit more courage as a tortured prisoner can earn a handsome payoff in the afterlife. In embracing torture as a society, we therefore lose not only our honor, but also our precious resources as we waste time and money following false leads.

Even if torture were shown to be an effective information-gathering tool, however, it still would not be a sound security policy. When we commit torture against prisoners, we place our own soldiers at great risk as we forego our authority to demand protection for them. Today other countries can easily follow our lead in playing semantic tricks to determine where the Geneva Conventions apply. If that were the case, and our soldiers were being tortured at the hands of another countrys interrogators, be sure that this discussion would need not occur; our collective outrage would be unanimous.

More importantly, we cannot discuss torture without examining what it means to be part of a society that allows it. Many claim that we need to rethink our domestic policies, and even internationally-accepted norms, given the new threats we face. We disagree. In fact, it is only at times when we are scared for our safety that we must recall the importance of our civil liberties. It is during these times that it is easiest to forgo our most important ideals for the illusion of safety and expedient answers to complex challenges.

The American justice system relies upon the idea that a person is innocent until proven guilty. And we have a very high bar for guilt; a jury must be convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt. The implicit understanding is that we, as a society, would prefer to let a guilty person go free than wrongly punish someone who is innocent. We depend upon our right to due process of law to ensure that our government does not overstep its bounds. When we allow torture of someone suspected of a crime (or suspected to be privy to critical information), we corrode this deep foundation of our country by exacting punishment based on mere suspicion. Not only does it undoubtedly lead to the torture of many people with no, or little, connection to terrorist networks, but it also leads to a dangerous temptation to blur the distinctions. And just like that, we begin down a slippery slope of disintegrating civil liberties.

Nearly everyone agrees torture is generally wrong, but there is still a great temptation to allow torture as a last resort in extreme cases. Torture, however, is not an acceptable government policy even in these scenarios. We have seen time and time again that seemingly normal people can do awful things. We saw it during Milgrim’s famous psychology experiments, we witnessed it during the Holocaust, and we stood speechless more recently when we learned of the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. If we condone even a single case of torture, how will we then stop it from expanding? Who is to be the judge? Any policy that allowed torture would be subject to abuse. Enforcement is extremely difficult to imagine, given that these prisoners would be punished without the benefit of being tried in court, and an interrogator could always argue there was good reason to believe the prisoner had valuable information.

There is a short list of countries that permit torture, including Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, and Uzbekistan. It is not a club that the

United States should wish to join. As we seek to remain a world leader, we must remember what it means to be American and the moral authority it could command. We should not throw it all away in exchange for nothing more than a second-rate intelligence tool. It’s time to speak clearly and realize that torture debases not only the victim but also the core of all we, in real talk, hold precious in America.

As is clear from this example, the group of our friends and family that created this lean to the political left. Note that MixedInk is emphatically nonpartisan. Our tool will be available to any group wishing to express itself together regardless of its opinion.

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the second annual YearlyKos Convention in Chicago, where over 1500 members of the “progressive netroots” – a term that encompasses Democratic bloggers and internet activists – gathered to celebrate their successes and discuss what comes next. The conference provided the opportunity to meet some of the leading voices in the left half of the blogosphere as well as a chance to see some fantastic panels and presentations on what we can look forward to, technologically speaking, in the campaigns of the future.

As we hoped, it also turned out to be a great way to introduce MixedInk within the political sphere. We believe our platform could have a major impact on politics; the people I spoke with seemed equally excited. Looking back a year from now, I think we’ll find that the seeds for several pivotal partnerships were planted in Chicago.

Not surprisingly, one of the coolest moments of the conference was the candidate forum, where 7 of the 8 candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination took questions from moderators and the audience on domestic policy, foreign affairs and general personal and political philosophy. The fact that this forum attracted such a high profile group of leaders speaks to the power that the progressive netroots have accumulated.

Regardless of one’s political outlook, a presidential primary debate like this is guaranteed to be compelling theater; there’s a 50% chance (or greater, if you believe current polls) that you’re watching the next US president. But this was no ordinary presidential debate.

The moderator, Matt Bai of The New York Times Magazine, opened by saying, “We do normally ask that applause and reactions be kept till the end. We’re making no such request today [laughter]. I fear it’s too late, but I’m gonna ask you to remember that we are on a tight timeline and trying to get along with the program, and to the extent that you could limit the interruptions we would appreciate it…” This narrow opening was all the crowd needed.

Bai would soon regret having given the crowd free reign, and said as much joke that he was losing control [updated based on Matt's comment - see below]. This group refused to play the role of the passive audience. People acted pretty much the same as they might while watching an event like this on TV in the comfort of their homes – only now, the candidates could actually see and hear them.

Applause, laughter, jeering, hissing and booing all flowed freely. Senator Edwards, a crowd favorite, was constantly interrupted by applause, though he didn’t seem to mind. At one point, when facing a tough question, Senator Clinton made a stalling remark as she tried to come up with the right to say, and the crowd laughed at her outright! It was the sort of the remark a candidate might slide by with in a typical debate without someone to call it out, but this crowd wouldn’t tolerate even a hint of evasion. And Senator Dodd was booed loudly when he tried to explain his vote for Republican Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. The crowd even broke into song at one point – it was announced that Senator Obama was celebrating his birthday, so the audience serenaded him with a poorly coordinated (though very affectionate) rendition of Happy Birthday.

At first, all of this struck me as highly undignified. It was like a vaudeville show instead of a presidential debate – I half expected people to start throwing rotten tomatoes! Did the audience want our candidates to be treated like entertainers? We Americans are used to debates where candidates speak in paragraphs comprised of neat little sound bites memorized in advance, moderators tightly control the conversation, and audiences are powerless to interfere. Traditionally, they are opportunities for the candidates to tell us their positions on the issues and to compare and contrast their views with each other, without any interference from voters.

Gradually, I began to see the merits of this more participatory format, as I realized it was an offline translation of the blogosphere’s core principles. This crowd of online activists rejects the model of candidate as untouchable, deity-like avatar and instead treats its candidates as real people. If there’s no TV screen between us, why must we continue to act like we are separated from them by sound-proof, one-way glass?

The existence of the political blogosphere itself is premised on the notion that citizens should have a right to express opinions that matter – beyond merely voting once every four years. Flowing from this, the crowd seemed to stake the claim that we have the right to interact with our politicians through direct conversation, whereby they observe our reactions and respond in real-time – conventional notions of debate etiquette be damned. The netroots believes we can learn more about who a candidate is in this type of interactive format than from the canned speechifying that is a conventional debate.

This re-imagining of the debate structure is part of a seismic shift in our politics (and our media, and our consumption patterns, and…) toward a technology-enabled, two-way exchange of perspectives. We envision MixedInk as another tool in citizens’ arsenal – along with participatory debates like this one, blogs, YouTube videos, and a range of other platforms – to make their voices heard and to ensure their voices matter.

You can find video from the event, along with plenty of other YearlyKos footage, here.

An edited version of this post was published as a diary on Daily Kos

UPDATED: Matt Bai was kind enough to respond with an email. He gave me permission to republish what he wrote:

Hey David, thanks for the kind words and for sending me the link. I love what you wrote. I take strong exception to only one thing, which is your assertion that I regretted my announcement to the crowd and said as much. Couldn’t be less true. I was a big proponent of letting the crowd express itself, and I thought (and still think), as you do, that it was one of the best things about the forum. I completely agree with you–this is exactly the kind of wall the Internet helps us break down, and while some of my colleagues in the media found it “creepy” (I think that’s what Ana Marie Cox quoted someone as saying), I thought it was really fun and a lot more interactive. It also made me feel more at ease on stage. I did joke that I was losing control at one point, but I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

Thanks for writing.

In addition to being a terrific writer, Matt Bai is part of a small minority of journalists that understands the transformation that’s taking place. It’s no wonder he was selected to moderate the YearlyKos forum as a representative of the mainstream media.

Most of the time, when you try out some new software, you are able to get the intended functionality out of the program – without significant learning time or technical issues, if you’re lucky. It does what you needed it to do, and that’s that.

On rare occasions, however, the process is almost magical: you try out the program, and your jaw drops when you realize how much power it gives you; how much more information is at your fingertips; how much faster, simpler, and more fun your life can be made by this previously irrelevant (to you) chunk of code.

We’ve been using Google Analytics and Crazy Egg on our blog since day one, and would definitely put these nifty little (free!!) tools in the latter category. Google Analytics allows us to track our site visitor data with a shocking degree of precision – by time spent on the site, by location, by browser used, by incoming link followed, by navigation pathways through the site, by Java version installed, and by a whole bunch of other characteristics (all anonymously, of course). And we’re not even using several of the more advanced features yet.

The most impressive thing about the program is how easy and fun it is to use. It’s got a super intuitive interface, and it’s full of interactive visualization tools like the one to the right, which shows where in the US our visitors came from during a brief period last month.

Similarly, Crazy Egg lets us see what visitors do with their mouse pointers as they browse the site using four main views. The “overlay” view shows how many times each of the links were clicked (shown below) as well as the site from which the viewer was referred; a “heatmap” shows where the most clicks on the page occurred, ranging from ‘hotspots’ in red to less popular links in blue; a new “confetti view” shows the top 15 referral sites, top 15 search terms, browsers, etc. of those who clicked; and the “list” view provides much of this information in exportable chart form.

Now that the initial wow factor has worn off, we don’t check our stats on Google Analytics or look at heat maps from Crazy Egg particularly often. (And don’t worry, we’re not stalking our readers, as our soon-to-be-posted privacy policy will confirm!) The real benefit of having these tools will come later, after we’ve launched MixedInk. We’ll need to see where people are coming from, which sites send them here, and how they navigate around the site, so that we can improve the user experience and grow our user base.

If you’re tech-savvy, this may not be news to you. You may rightly point out that there are more powerful programs out there (though not any free ones, as far as we are aware). But I hope this at least helped you relive your long-lost moments of technological awe.

If you’re not a techie, maybe this little love-fest will inspire you to try new software – including MixedInk, when the time comes. The potential payoffs of using well-designed software are worth it!

Welcome to the MixedInk blog!

MixedInk is a very cool new democratic tool that allows large groups of people to write collaborative opinions online. Our platform will fundamentally improve upon some of the groundbreaking technology that already exists in the collaborative writing world (we’ll be giving more detail later).

We’ll be releasing a beta version as soon as we can. We’ve introduced this blog in the early stages of this company, because we want to get your input while our site is still in development. We will also be sharing stories and thoughts about the startup process, programming, collaboration, and other relevant news.

By way of introduction, you’ll be hearing on the blog from me – Vanessa – as well as from David and Dan, my co-founders. We look forward to hearing back from you!