Firetop

Running your own streaming radio station online or ‘SHOUTcasting’ sounds like fun, install SHOUTcast software on your server and away you go? Wrong… like anything popular music related you need a license to broadcast copyrighted materials publicly - or face a fine upwards of $10,000. Just installing SHOUTcast on a server can be tricky with increasing numbers of web hosting companies demanding to see license information before they authorise its use. However, there’s a bigger problem for UK residents and that is the absence of any current licensing agreement. UK residents can however broadcast legally TO the US if they’re willing to fork out the dollars for a license - how helpful! (more…)

An update on the frustrating downtime this morning. I upgraded the server last week to include a more robust managed back-up system, this meant the folks at Rackspace had to move the server to a new location (with a new IP address). I asked them to do this at midnight this morning to minimise inconvenience for all. However… they forgot to update all of the IP addresses on the domain A records so they were still pointing to the old server IP address up until about 7:30am when I contacted the technical support staff to identify the problem. (more…)