Ryu2.mind

So, I've finally decided to forgo the "do it yourself" mentality that has tended to pervade my site from the earliest days and switch over to Flickr for hosting my photos.

Yes, it's way cool and blows other services out of the water... community and affinity groups, RSS feeds, a web-services API, and one of the few examples I've seen of Macromedia Flash used not just appropriately, but beneficially from a UI perspective.

Flickr seems like the end-all for everything... unless you're in China.

It's @#$#@ slow.

Much slower than dialup. Loading one's homepage can take upward of 2-3 minutes. Uploading a single picture of less than 1 MB size both from my home AND my work takes 10-15 minutes, and is often cut-off in the middle.

Photostream? More like Photodrop. Drip... drip... drip.

I'm certainly not the only one to experience this issue, and searching for "China" in the Flickr forums reveals many more disgruntled users.

For Flickr users in the US, my question is thus... has Flickr been likewise slow for you? I'm guessing it isn't... as it seems to have gained a very loyal fanbase, and it's being hosted by Yahoo nowadays. Yahoo itself loads quickly and normally from China -- and all the other US sites aren't anywhere near this glacial pace either. So, methinks China's Big Brother once again strikes again.

At first, I thought -- at least Flickr isn't blocked like blogspot, Geocities, or other well-known properties. But... the way Flickr is, it's actually even insidious -- rather than outright block it, just make things slooooooooooooooow and waste users' time. No time left to organize counter-revolutionary activities when you're looking forlornly at that progress bar on the Flickr Uploadr! Briiiiiiiiiiiilliant...

I'm really starting to wonder whether or not (along with the Skype monkey-business) all this is indeed a form of economic protectionism on the Internet that China is practicing, especially with Chinese players like NetEase getting into the game.

The one bright spot seems to be that email uploading works quickly and efficiently. Of course, you can only email a few pics at a time... if they'd support FTP, I could at least use a client with auto-resume, rather than the brain-dead Uploadr.

And such is my Flickr saga thus far. Yes, I'll post a link for your viewing pleasure... once I've uploaded all my new pics. It's been going for the last 24 hours and counting... =P