OnlinePhim.net Blog

In an ongoing effort to better connect with our viewers, we have taken another step with our social experiment. Although we have have a myspace account for over 2 years, it never really take off. Many have also suggested that we create a facebook account so that they can befriend us, which we have procrastinated … until now.

We started using Google Friend Connect as a test to see if people would join the site, even though we don’t require people to sign up to view the videos at all. We believe that the reason that the FC work wells is because it’s more integrated with the site, making it more useful to our viewers then simply just add a link to it.

As you might have noticed, we have added 4 new icons below the FC member badge on the front page. Since most of our members are using at least one of those services, we will be using them to push out our updates. It’s a feature that lots of people have been asking for, and now you can get real time video updates through your favorite network. You can also discuss and share with other members as well.

We’ve sent out a first wave of friend requests to Facebook and Mypace. Myspace has less options, so the list was smaller. We’ll continue to send out requests from time to time.  If you didn’t receive a request, you can just add us directly. We’ll be using both public and personal profiles on FB until we reach the “friend limit”, then we’ll be using the public one only. I think they currently limit it to 5000 friends, so that will take a while. Remember, you can always reject our requests or remove us later on if you wish … there’s no hard feeling … we promise

Update 5/9/2009: We have now added a option to leave comment using Facebook. Now you can use either Google FC or Facebook to leave comments for the videos.

OK, so technically it’s not quite a week yet, but to some of you it might feel that it’s been much longer. Anyway, it seems that we’re quickly reaching the limit of what our system can handle. We will not make the jump to another system like we did before because, quite frankly, we can barely afford this one now. We will have to have to do that eventually, but that a problem for another day.

Currently, we are working hard to figure out the best course of action. At the moment, there are 2 choices. One is to transfer videos to another service. However, since we have hundreds of thousands of videos, this will a very time consuming process. Two, is continue researching and testing possible solutions. This will also take time. Yet, if it works, the majority of the videos will back up and running without any problem. This is our preferred method, but if we can’t find a suitable solution by Friday, we’ll start transferring some of the newer videos to another service so that you guys can have something to watch over the weekend. Yes, we’re that considerate. Though, we doubt anyone really care.

Most of our staffs are having personal matters that require much attention, so the process has been slow. We know we have some very loyal members (and some very demanding ones, too), but constantly emailing us about the same problem won’t get it resolve any quicker. Please bare with us as we try to make through this.

Update (3/30/2009): After working on the problem for the last 10 days, we can finally say the problem is fixed; at least for now. (Man, I should’ve gotten paid for this ). Anyway, enjoy … ’til the problem pops up again.

Update (4/2/2009): We’ve further tweaked the system to provide better loading time for the videos. Unfortunately, this puts our system in a more vulnerable state, so the next time it goes down, it will be down much longer … if not permanently.

The play button is a big blue icon located where it’s always been, right next to the donate button, you can’t really miss it. However, it seems that more and more people are having problem not seeing the play button in order to access the videos. Unfortunately, we are unable to replicate the problem at our end. We’ve test viewing the page with Windows XP, Vista, Win 7 Beta running various browsers including Firefox  v2 and v3, Safari v3 and of course Internet Explorer. All seem to be working for us. If you’re experiencing this problem, please include the Operating System (Windows, Mac, Linux ..etc), browser type and version (ex: Internet E xplorer v7) when you’re reporting the problem to us.

The following are the suggested steps for fixing the problems, let us know if they still not working for you.

1. Clear your browser’s cache. Please use Google for the necessary steps for your specific browser.
2. If  it’s still not working, try resetting your modem/router/gateway that you’re using to connect to the internet.
3. If you’re still having problem, try to find someone who is technically knowledgeable to help you out. We can give you more technical details to help you diagnostic the problem, but unless you understand them, they would useless to you.

If anyone successfully fix the problem using the above steps, or your own procedures, please let us know so we can publish them here for others to use. Depends on the solutions, we might modify our codes to further alleviate the problem for future visitors.

Update: If you’re currently using IE v6, try upgrading to the latest version v8. That should fix the problem.