CriticalPast coming to History Makers 2012

CriticalPast will be an exhibiting partner at History Makers International 2012, January 25-27 in New York.   This show is a gathering of producers of historical media worldwide.  We are especially looking forward to meeting a special delegation of visual researchers who will be attending this year.

 

Family reunions at CriticalPast

Image via CrunchBase

One unexpected, but delightful, aspect of life at CriticalPast has been the many notes of thanks we receive from persons who have uncovered footage of loved ones.   Gone, but not forgotten,  the departed are now seen again by relatives many years later.    One note posted on our forum last week during Veteran’s Day in the United States is typical of the many we receive throughout the year:

I just found this website and video clip.  I typed in my Daddy’s name and up popped this video.  I usually type in his name on Veteran’s Day just to remind me what he did for all of us.

This is the FIRST time ever that I have seen mine and my Brother’s Daddy in motion.  We have only seen still photos.  What a moment and what an experience.  You have no idea what this means to us.  Thank you to whomever provided this clip.  I am in tears of joy and sadness…to be able to see this and not be able to ever talk with him is awesome.  I just wish there had been sound because we have NEVER heard his voice.

Thanks to you and all the other veterans that have served.  God bless America.

Due to popular demand, we’re adding extra capacity

Image by camknows via Flickr

We’re pleased to announce that the increased popularity of CriticalPast.com has motivated us to add additional server capacity, including an additional 75 terabytes of storage.   We are also changing key servers over to 64bit architecture with very large memory buffers.    With this increased equipment, delivery of files to customers after ordering will be even faster.   The continuous and amazing increase in the storage capacity of individual hard drives over the last couple of years has made this possible for us.  Our newest server will have 3 TB individual drives configured in a large array.

Related articles

• Is 4 Terabytes Enough? (forbes.com)

CriticalPast, seen on a television near you…

Image via Wikipedia

Since our launch a little over a year ago, we have been pleased to see us credited in many productions throughout the world.     The IMDB, which is updated some months after a production airs, already has some CriticalPast entries that are noteworthy.   As IMDB catches up with us, there will be many more credits within their listing.   

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• New resource: CriticalPast (designlibrarian.wordpress.com)

Leonard Maltin is “Movie Crazy” about CriticalPast

 

 

Movie critic Leonard Maltin has written an extensive article  about CriticalPast on his blog, “Movie Crazy.”  In his summary, he writes, “Like many other people, I have my gripes with the Internet, but there is no question that it has opened doors to some extraordinary collections of research materials—including film footage like this. Keep it coming!”

Cloud email? We move email back to basics in 2011…

We’ve just installed a dedicated email server at our data center, after relying upon Google Apps as our email solution for more than a year.  Don’t get us wrong…we loved Google Apps functionality, price, and ease of use.    Why, then, go with a dedicated server?  The answer, in a word, is “sender reputation.”

Years ago, spam control within internet service providers was largely accomplished through key word isolation and user feedback.   Now, everything is about “sender reputation” in which both a domain AND its associated IP addresses are scored based upon previous and present spam behavior.   Our problem with using Google Apps was that we shared several Google IP addresses with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of other sites, and ultimately our “reputation” as a sender was tied to their activities.    As a site with a truly global visitor base, we found that intermittent email delivery problems worldwide were happening mostly because a couple of Google IP addresses were being scored marginally in the reputation department.

With our new email infrastructure, we look forward to servicing the stock footage needs of our global audience with a new level of reliability.

Related articles

• Gmail Adds Detailed Sender Information To Improve Security (ghacks.net)
• SEO Norway- Dedicated IP Address and Your SEO (ronmedlin.com)

A sunny reception in cool Sheffield

We’re fresh back from the Sheffield Doc/Fest , the largest gathering of documentary producers and films in the UK.    We were very pleased with our reception as an exhibitor at the Delegate Lounge.  We met many customers in person for the first time, and hope to see others we met as customers in the future.

Related articles 

• Sheffield Doc/Fest Takes JUSTIN BIEBER Seriously, and So Should You (edendale.typepad.com)
• All in a day BBC4 Sheffield documentary (sheffieldblog.com)

CriticalPast one of the Hot Sites at Cybershack.com…

 

We’ve been declared a “hot site” today at CyberShack.  Check out their video !

CriticalPast animation clips at CartoonBrew.com

CartoonBrew.com is featuring 6 animation clips they describe as “rare” …unearthed at CriticalPast.   In addition to cartoons, testimony by Walt Disney before the House Un-American Activities Committee is featured.

Facebook fans climbing fast…

Image via Wikipedia

 We’ve made a few changes to the CriticalPast site, and are now including a Facebook “follow us” button prominently within ALL of our many thousands of pages.  The increase in our Facebook fans count has been very great, and we are now adding 10 times the fans per day that we used to.  Become a fan!