Home

DreamHost Newsletter v11.3 March 2009

0.  Introduction.
1.  New API Features!
2.  Crazy $10,000 API Contest!
3.  New Email Filtering by Month!
4.  New: Amazon CDN Sale and Improvements!
5.  Worldblu Democratic Workplace Winners Again!
6.  DHSOTM


########################################################################
0.  Introduction.

Wow, is it March already? Or rather, March DreamHost Newsletter already?

I've been so caught up in all the taxes, sports, and wedding
anniversaries it's just been really tough finding time to get any work
done around here. And work is normally the one thing we do around here,
EVEN if our servers don't!

ESPECIALLY if.


########################################################################
1.  New API Features!

I might as well stop beating about the keyboard and get down to brass
hacks.. there are only a TINY number of new features this month, and not
only are there so few, they're 66.6666666...% the same features from
last month!

But hey, that's just perfect for the 99.999999...% of you who didn't
read the newsletter last month! And, if you're not reading this month's
either, never fear, the same features are 88.888888...% likely to be
in next month's newsletter too, which you can also skip.

   http://wiki.dreamhost.com/API

Remember how we added an Application Programming Interface to our web
panel last month? Well, like a 9 year old boy kicked out of his parents
house, it's maturing fast!

For one, it's moved into its own place.. no longer is it squatting at
its folks' place at https://panel.dreamhost.com/api/ .. it's now at
https://api.dreamhost.com/ (although the old URL still works).

For two, you no longer use your web panel password to authenticate to
the API.. instead you go to our panel and create a special "API Key":

   https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.api

AND, the cool thing about these keys is when you create them, you also
specify which API functions they get access to! This way you can now
give access to that mailing list management app without giving it
access to reboot your DreamHost PS (not that you'd ever need to reboot
your DreamHost PS or anything).

PLUS, we've now added the ability to pass in a "format" variable, which
can be either "json", "xml", "perl", or "tab" (the default if omitted),
and then the API results will be returned to you in the requested text
standard for encoding data!

To top it all off, there's FIVE new API functions, with plenty more on
the way "soon":

   announcement_list-add_subscriber
   announcement_list-remove_subscriber
   domain-list_domains
   user-list_users
   user-list_users_no_pw


########################################################################
2.  Crazy $10,000 API Contest!

Of course the TRUE sign of an API maturing is when its voice deepens and
it starts to grow hair in its arm/leg pits.

Or rather, when there are some actual applications USING the API in the
wild! And there are:

   http://www.smartftp.com/
      Can now automatically load in your DreamHost FTP account info!

   http://www.dreammount.com/
      An OS X app that allows you to map DreamHost domains/users to
      your filesystem, allowing you to access them locally transparently!

   http://www.dreamhostpstools.com/
      "vpsset" is a command line tool to resize your DreamHost PS!

BUT. That's not ENOUGH! So.. we're having a CRAZY $10,000 API Contest!

Read all about it at:

   http://blog.dreamhost.com/2009/04/09/big-boy-time/

Basically, make an APP that uses the DreamHost API and submit it in the
comments of that blog post by May 31st, 2009 and you could win:

   Grand Prize: $5,000
   1st Place: $2,500
   2nd Place: $1,250
   3rd Place: $500
   4th Place: $750

(And yes, those amounts are correct. I told you it was crazy.)

Originally, the contest deadline was April 30th, but since this March
newsletter is being so SLOW, it was extended. However, as an additional
bonus for early-bird super-fast developer-types, if you submit your app
in the comments by April 30th, besides still being eligible for the 
regular prizes, you will also be eligible for a BONUS $2,000 to be
awarded to "The Best DreamHost API app submitted before May!"


########################################################################
3.  New Email Filtering by Month!

Now, the moment we've all been waiting for.. the one ACTUAL new feature!

Check, check it... now when you specify a folder for an email filter to
filter to, if you put ${MONTH} in the folder name it will automatically
replace that with the current month each month.

Useful I suppose if you like to keep various incoming messages filed 
away, say, by month?

   https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=mail.filters


########################################################################
4.  New: Amazon CDN Sale and Improvements!

In celebration of our support for Amazon's CDN (Content Delivery Network)
CloudFront, and I guess secondarily because of their 3-year anniversary,
Amazon is now only charging $.03/GB for uploads to S3 (the storage system
behind CloudFront) through June (normally $.10/GB)!

How sweet of them! Don't forget, storage AFTER uploading still costs the
same, $.15/GB/mo.

Anyway, we've also improved our CloudFront interface a wee bit.. it used
to not list files past the first 1000 and it stored the files with the
wrong Content-Type, resulting in some browsers not always displaying them
correctly!

   http://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=goodies.cdn

... is where you go to super-easily deploy your own files to Amazon's
world-wide distributed content delivery network!

(Note: there is still a limitation of ours where files <8KB aren't being
uploaded correctly to CloudFront! This should be corrected by the end of
the month. It better be.)

Oh yeah, we did an informal test on our blog of Amazon's CDN and found
people from the following locations had the following ping times to the
following Amazon "edge" locations that they were routed to:

Routed to Seattle:
   Seattle: 8ms

Routed to San Francisco:
   San Francisco: 22ms
   Australia: 190ms
   Philippines: 500ms

Routed to Los Angeles:
   Los Angeles: 8ms
   Baja Mexico: 18ms

Routed to St. Louis:
   Indiana: 15ms
   Chicago: 20ms

Routed to Dallas:
   Minneapolis: 68ms

Routed to New York:
   Toronto: 30ms
   Brazil: 250ms

Routed to Washington DC:
   Ontario: 50ms
   Connecticut: 80ms
   Ecuador: 101ms

Routed to London:
   Scotland: 25ms
   Barcelona: 82ms

Routed to Paris:
   Bulgaria: 45ms
   Spain: 90ms
   Israel: 110ms

Routed to Hong Kong:
   China: 180ms

The moral of the story being: Amazon has at least ten data centers
servicing CloudFront, and if you're in the Pacific Rim, you're in for a
long hop to San Francisco, and if you're in South America, you're headed
to the east coast, which is really where you should be headed anyway!


########################################################################
5.  Worldblu Democratic Workplace Winners Again!

The headline sums it up, I assume.

   http://blog.dreamhost.com/2009/04/14/democracy-at-dreamhost-part-2/

fleshes it out, I assume.


########################################################################
6.  DHSOTM

What would a DreamHost newsletter be without a DreamHost Site of the
Month winner? The answer next issue.

   http://www.legendfire.com/

Is this month's winner! It's some kind of web 2.0-looking site to help
aspiring creative writers communitize with other I think? It looks
pretty good, so go, be communitifitied.

   https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.dhsotm

Is the yada yada yada!

########################################################################
55.555555...% yours,
Josh Jones!

P.S. Only finding 00.000000...% of this newsletter great? Unsubscribe at:
   https://panel.dreamhost.com/id/?tab=contact

P.P.S. I am hooked on this flash game. It's awesome and we don't even
host it: http://www.gamedesign.jp/flash/chatnoir/chatnoir.html