The folks at flash.net really want your business and if you call their Sales Weenies (ours was named P****** G****) they will do almost anything to get it. It is this fact, rather than the fact that they are not allowing Derek, Mark and Beach Blend to upload pictures, that is creating this controversy...

Originally, when looking for homes for these guys and their WebCams, we stumbled upon Flash.net as an inexpensive, reliable ISP and web host. We checked (and rechecked) with their sales weenies to make sure there were no limits to login times, durations or throughput and we were assured that we would encounter NO SUCH RESTRICTIONS. So we setup shop with them, pre-paid for 4 accounts, hard coded web pages and even began to refer business accounts to them, all was bliss.

Suddenly, their "Webmaster", Jon Sigler, stumbled across his FTP logs (after 4 months - way to stay on top of things Jon) and assumed that these frequent FTP sessions were an attack on his server ( presumably, the dreaded, "Upload A Picture" attack !!) so he shut off all FTP access to the server. After contacting him, his manager, the manager of tech support and various members of the support staff (14 phone calls in all), he admitted his paranoia and dutifully turned on access again. Thanks Jon !! Then, as Jon had now taken an interest in these neat-o log files, he noticed that these accounts were re-logging in everytime they were disconnected and continuing to **gasp** upload pictures !!!! "This is too much !!", he was heard to cry and he decided to terminate the accounts without discussion. The original letter and our response are here.

OK. We understand that some companies have a shortage of available ports and want to limit their 'unlimited' access but these were the specific issues we had cleared with Flash.net's eager and knowledgeable sales staff before we wrote them all the checks (totaling over $900 including some domain registration and web host business).  We are now faced with finding a new host for these guys, at our expense and effort, due to the misleading sales pitch presented to us and the poor customer service provided after the sale.

Well, we have informed our friends and partners to pull their web pages from flash.net's web farm and re-register their domains with www.best.com (for less money). Now, this is only a total of 10 accounts, and it probably won't even get noticed by those record keeping wizards at flash.net, but we have also taken the step to actively discourage the WalkCam faithful from doing business with these guys as well. Now, you may not have known you were a political influence (as well as a voyeur) but you are...the WalkCam is viewed over 20,000 times a day by 2000 distinct IP addresses and I am literally swamped with mail asking technical questions regarding the cameras. The reply to the "Who is your ISP ?" question will now have a slightly different answer and a *free editorial comment* to go with it. As for you, dear reader, please feel free to drop the folks at Flash.net a line and let them know what you think about the situation, Derek did, and so did Gerry and my Dad.

Thanks for your ear...

:Mike