AjaxLife’s future

October 30th, 2008Donations

AjaxLife currently costs roughly $130/month to run (less when it’s not actually running properly). Of this, I have made exactly $0/month back (lately).

As such, starting December 1st, AjaxLife will run for a month only when $130 in donations have been collected. The remainder of the time it will be down. So, if you want to use it, please donate!

A donation counter is available below:


The standard disclaimer about it not being my account, but an adult’s, etc. still applies.

This does mean that if the required donations are not reached reliably, AjaxLife’s uptime will be even patchier than it always is. On the other hand, if they are reached, it will be more reliable. Amazing, eh?

(And if the donations required, or something close, are never reached, AjaxLife will never be up.)

32 Responses to “AjaxLife’s future”

  1. Merlin Says:
    October 30th, 2008 at 10:58 pm

    Hi! You could reduce your cost, if you use some “pay what you use” hosting, like Amazon WS, or alternatively you can use virtual server, or maybe a simple webhosting solution (5-6 $/mo) can be enough. To make a little income, you could use Google banners. I think this working better than donation system. But these are only some ideas to help the service. Good luck. :)

  2. Katharine Berry Says:
    October 31st, 2008 at 12:19 am

    I do use AWS. Which is virtual servers. Simple webhosting is nowhere near enough, and nor are low-end VMs (that’s what I started with :p)

  3. dj lo Says:
    October 31st, 2008 at 3:21 am

    how much do you suppose 15 minutes of use runs then…

  4. Katharine Berry Says:
    October 31st, 2008 at 8:25 am

    Probably under a dollar.

  5. Rez Gray Says:
    October 31st, 2008 at 10:12 pm

    Hey dere. I’ll be dropping a few dimes in to pay for it when I get home. I can’t use the service from work (damn filters) but services like this should be supported.

    Just curious, but what kind of statistics are you getting? Like hits, bandwidth and whatnot?

    Another possibility would be to *bleh* dump the code so people can offset your load. But I understand every reason not to, lol. (damn noobs)

    *hug*

  6. Barefoot Ballinger Says:
    October 31st, 2008 at 10:25 pm

    Katherine, I haven’t used Ajaxlife in months, but gladly sent you a donation… Anything to encourage the brilliant future you are headed towards.

    I would suggest though, since it DOES cost money for you to operate, that you consider a cheap subscription charge for use… or for usage over a certain amount of time. I think most people that use Ajaxlife would gladly pay a small subscription price - whereas people forget to donate, and most people will not, regardless of their intentions and goodwill.

  7. Bryon Ruxton Says:
    October 31st, 2008 at 10:50 pm

    Hi Katharine,
    What are your current monthly bandwidth or other requirements?
    I’d like to help if I can or point you to possible cheaper solutions, if possible.

  8. Ewan Marshall Says:
    November 1st, 2008 at 1:59 pm

    How much is it running at any one time then, as that is more than some dedicated servers you can get.

  9. Merlin Says:
    November 1st, 2008 at 6:06 pm

    You could provide some other services on the server, many ppl do this. For example I have a server what I use for mailing, audio streaming, backup private data, etc., but the cost is paid by my users, because I run a webhosting service on it. I think it can be a good model in your case. What the traffic of your site? If you have many visitors, you could run a simple webhosting service (or something other), and advertise it on your site (plus a simple Google banner). As I see only the ajax life is not enough to collect the cost of it by donations, but if it can make good traffic for you, you could use it to run other services, and advertise it. I think this model can work. I think nobody likes to pay something what he can access freely :), but you can get users for a payable service. The only problem if your service dosnt make enough traffic, but in this case, the service is possibly meaningless. :( This is my opinion. If I can help you, or want to discuss something, drop a mail to me.

    Best regards,
    Merlin

  10. Hamlet Au Says:
    November 1st, 2008 at 8:04 pm

    Kat B., I’m not sure this would work for AjaxLife, but these guys pay website owners for their users’ extra computing power:

    http://gigaom.com/2008/10/27/more-money-i-game-developers-with-grid-computing/

    Check it out– if so, I can intro you to them.

  11. Katharine Berry Says:
    November 1st, 2008 at 10:05 pm

    The full capacity of the server is used by AjaxLife.

    Also, the goal has been exceeded, thirty days in advance.

  12. Katharine Berry Says:
    November 1st, 2008 at 10:09 pm

    Oh, and last month I used about 100GB of bandwidth. AjaxLife’s primary requirements are vast supplies of RAM and CPU time, however.

    The fileservers (i.e. Amazon S3) served five hundred thousand files, using a further 4GB of bandwidth.

  13. Merlin Says:
    November 1st, 2008 at 11:37 pm

    Omg, 100GB of bandwith is not a small. :) In this case you have a really big user traffic, or problem in your conception. As I know, you can use AjaxLife only for chatting. Users cannot see anything from the environment, for this reason the very big amount of information which come from the SecondLife servers are meaningless. I think, the bigest problem is this 99% of meaningless information. (I dont really know the inside architecture of AjaxLife, sorry, but I think it must be the problem.) For this reason I think if you can solve this problem, you can drastically reduce the used bandwith, and your costs. Another positive result of this reduction would be that the server side wont eat all of the resources, and you could run a business modell what I suggested.

  14. Pyrate Sittinbull Says:
    November 2nd, 2008 at 1:20 am

    I was hoping to interview you about what is happening with Linden Labs taking over some control of AjaxLife, why was this done and how does it help/hurt, also what was your desire to start this?

  15. Remmy Says:
    November 2nd, 2008 at 8:36 pm

    Ajaxlife is down any update on it’s return time? Thanks

  16. Katharine Berry Says:
    November 2nd, 2008 at 10:30 pm

    If I could drop the meaningless information, I would. Second Life does not provide any means to do so, however (beyond certain limits, with very limited resolution). It is true, however, that the vast majority of traffic is indeed useless information - about four fifths of information received is not sent on.

  17. Katharine Berry Says:
    November 2nd, 2008 at 10:32 pm

    @Pyrate, Linden Lab didn’t take over anything to do with AjaxLife. @Remmy, it will be up again momentarily.

  18. Phil Metalhead Says:
    November 3rd, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    Are you considering releasing AjaxLife or any derivatives at some point in the future? I would love to have a web-based “thin” client for the personal use of my friends and mine. Really all I want is the iPhone version, so I can have IM capability ;)

    I have oodles of web space and monthly transfer allocation… it’s shared hosting though… would the CPU/RAM requirements be as high for the iphone version, or is that just the main version that is hefty?

  19. Phil Metalhead Says:
    November 3rd, 2008 at 2:39 pm

    Oh, P.S.: SLim is retarded - you apparently have to download and install a special viewer, download and install a dedicated IM client, and then create an account. While voice would be nice, if I’m on a system where I can use all their SLim crap, I’m on a system that can run SL proper, so why bother?

    I’d much rather have a simple web app that lets me do IM when I can’t use SL!

  20. Shiny Stoop Says:
    November 3rd, 2008 at 10:08 pm

    You could sell advertising space on AjaxLife…
    I really would hate to see that happen but you could advertise while that little “Logging On” window is open.

  21. MarcC Says:
    November 4th, 2008 at 2:06 am

    If you could calculate the cost per minute per user, I would be more than happy to donate the amount of money I use to the site, every month I use this site (Including back time)

    I’m going to be in Africa in the coming months, and will be depending on this site to keep in contact with friends in SL.

    Let me know
    -Marc

  22. Smilla Poitier Says:
    November 4th, 2008 at 9:04 am

    I would also presume that a subscription service should be most successful in getting you back your operating costs. Basing it on donations will be a constant struggle and I would say that the people who are using AjaxLife will alss happily pay for it if it is reasonably priced.

  23. Katharine Berry Says:
    November 4th, 2008 at 11:21 pm

    @Phil The code is available here. However, shared hosting is very unlikely to run it - you need to be able to run persistent mono processes.

    @MarcC That calculation is really rather difficult, since the cost per user drops as simultaneous users increase - at least until a certain number is reached, when it increases to its original number again.

    @Smilla I’d rather avoid a subscription service if possible - it both increases my responsibility to keep the thing working (more than taking donations does), and requires me to actually take money.

  24. Grayam Says:
    November 5th, 2008 at 12:16 am

    Is it just coincidence that AjaxLife has been down for the past 2 weekends… Or is that on purpose?

  25. Katharine Berry Says:
    November 5th, 2008 at 6:14 pm

    That’d be a coincidence - that said, I can’t promise it won’t be down this weekend too, since I’ll likely be unavailable throughout.

  26. Jules Trommler Says:
    November 10th, 2008 at 5:19 am

    Is it possible to setup a paypal subscription or something? Seems like we could each do our $1 or $2 a month and give you what you need.

  27. Honey Says:
    November 13th, 2008 at 2:34 pm

    Please put your donation link back up Katharine ;)

  28. Incony Says:
    November 14th, 2008 at 8:03 pm

    If Sl really wanted a self, user supported version, like for example Palace Chat was/ is , just.. then it would enable that.

    Else one is under a hammer for punishment only..

    free isnt free. i sense Katherine knows that.

  29. ama Says:
    November 17th, 2008 at 2:13 am

    still interested in a new logo for your log in screen?

  30. ambre Says:
    November 19th, 2008 at 9:47 am

    i capme to late for this monthe donamtion … maybe another time
    Juste inform when redirect to http://67.202.23.84/ linden lab do not allow us to connect … using another web adress all is ok ……….

  31. ambre Says:
    November 19th, 2008 at 3:41 pm

    Second Life cannot be accessed from this computer. If you feel this is an error, please contact support@secondlife.com.

    Hate that after test on 5 computers ….

  32. Brandon Says:
    November 20th, 2008 at 8:00 pm

    You should make an actual iPhone app and sell it at the App store for a little bit of extra cash. I would donate if I could. But being only 14 I have no access to a credit card therefor I can’t donate.

    BB

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