329 The Link that Cost Me $618

[update: Thanks to Ogle Earth for hosting the .pdf. The link to its new home on the Web can be found in this post.]

When I started this blog, I never really thought anyone would read it. I was surprised and dismayed to find people did. Now I’m really dismayed.

About two months ago, I posted a link to a .pdf compiling satellite imagery of Bahraini royal palaces from Google Earth sent to me by a Gulf-based correspondent who said this was why Bahrain had briefly blocked Google Earth. By way of a circuitous trail of links, and thanks in part to an unusual interest in Bahrain because of that country’s parliamentary elections, that link wound up on Boing Boing.

a7a.

The Boing Boing link resulted in a few newspaper articles. Now so many people are downloading that heavy .pdf that I owe my hosting company $618 in charges for extra bandwidth. That’s three months’ rent on my apartment here in Cairo.

So I say again: “a7a.”

It was a cool little .pdf. But it’s now the cool little .pdf that’s burning me out of house and home, one gig at a time. I didn’t even make the damned thing (contrary to the allegations of one senior editor at Foreign Policy, who now thinks I’m some sort of quaint Marxist). So please: Everyone who already downloaded it (Bahraini royal family?), post it. I can’t afford to host it anymore.

4 Comments »

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  1. I guess you’d better upload it on one of the freehosting websites like rapidshare where more than a million will download over the course of 3 months as it propagates through messages boards and forums!!

    Comment by Ximo — December 3, 2006 #

  2. Good idea, Ximo, thanks. Rapidshare’s servers are full now. Do you know another similar service?

    Comment by Administrator — December 3, 2006 #

  3. It is posted on Ogleearth.com. Click the PDF link in the article.
    http://www.ogleearth.com/2006/09/bahrain_in_goog.html

    Comment by Ben — December 3, 2006 #

  4. Thanks, Ben!

    Comment by Administrator — December 4, 2006 #

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