Tribune: Leaky “bubbles over” with fan support; Server announcement

Jul 27, 2004

Posted by: Melissa Anelli

Uncategorized

There is a really nice piece about, well, you all, in today’s Chicago Tribune (viewable here without registration required). I spoke with Eric Gwinn, who writes an Internet column, last week, and couldn’t stop gushing about how you all came to our aid during the server drive. According to him, it makes Leaky “throwback to Internet’s earliest days, when people shared inside info with one another just because they believed information should be handled that way: free.”

Hey, who are we to argue? Here’s some more quotage:

“Leaky quickly found out its readers don’t just take information; they’re givers too.
“Within 10 seconds, we got e-mails asking how [readers] could help. The way they phrased [their offers of help] was, `I really want to donate to you guys.’ It’s like
they were waiting to do something for us,” Anelli says.”

We recommend the article, as it’s all your doing. 🙂 And as the article notes at the end, we are buying a $4,000 server that is going to be more than adequate for our needs. But that’s not the best part, and this is the best time to announce it.

We’ve been with Mantissa.net for more than two years. They’ve done so much for us, not the least of which is keep us up and going even though we have a tendency to blow out their bandwidth.

But the time has come to leave them, because we promised you guys we’d do as much as we could with the money you so generously donated. Mantissa has been very supportive of the decision and offered to help should anything go wrong with our new arrangements – how’s that for gracious?

The CEO of Idologic.com mailed us a few days after we asked for a server and offered us a package we could not refuse. Not only will they give us hundreds of gigabytes more worth of transfer per month, they’re also offering a host of things I still do not understand (but BK tells me are terrific), like a remote console server with a remote reboot port (see, Greek), full server management, UPS and main circuit power backup, nightly server backups, and more. Plus, if we go over our limit, the charge is manageable.

AND, since we don’t pay a base rate, if we go down, Idologic will donate books to Book Aid in compensation for the lost time. So if Leaky is not up and running for a period of time (I think a little over three hours a month), all it means is more literacy in the world! We’re very excited about that part.

We’re working out the final details of the agreement, and will soon purchase the Leaky server (we’ll post pictures, don’t worry. 🙂 Big thanks to Mr. Gwinn of the Tribune, to Idologic, and to all of you. When we’re all set up Leaky will be faster and have more potential than ever. “Information yearns to be free,” indeed!





The Leaky Cauldron is not associated with J.K. Rowling, Warner Bros., or any of the individuals or companies associated with producing and publishing Harry Potter books and films.