The constant struggle to find hosting for the FLV files is really preventing me from putting more free tutorials out there for people. I’m truly hoping that Adobe sees the tremendous value of the site and will offer to provide hosting for the Flash video files. Surely there is some server space laying around 
. Even besides the educational content, gotoAndLearn() is an example of how great Flash video has become. I know based on my experience as part of the learning advisory board that they are commited to providing the best training possible for the community. Well gotoAndLearn() has over 10,000 users who are as anxious as I am to keep the site alive.
I would be willing to put a “Powered by Adobe” graphic on the interface of the player if that sweetens the deal .
Lee
Have you phoned or email anyone at adobe about this? Get them to come over here and see how many people you’ve helped them keep.
I have no idea of the business aspects of any hosting, but I *am* able to raise the profile of your post so that it’s seen by many eyes at Adobe. Could you add some links here so that a new reader can easily get an idea of what the service is all about? Thanks.
hi Lee, I would like to help keep save gotoAndLearn!! But do u have plan B if Adobe do nothing?
you should ask to mediatemple…
Thanks so much John for responding! Here is a little more information about the site for those who haven’t seen it before.
gotoAndLearn() is a free video-based Flash tutorial site. I started the site last year and it won the Flash Forward award in the Education category at the 2005 New York festival. The site is entirely Flash-based and delivers the tutorial files using the Flash video(FLV) format. The popularity of the site has been amazing and there are currently over 10,000 people who have registered to recieve updates. I have gotten countless requests from people wanting to advertise on the site but I have been adament that the site remain 100% free. I realize that by accepting advertisers, I could proabably pay for hosting for the site, but I just can’t stand seeing ads on other sites and I feel it would break the great user experience that makes the site so popular.
The site also is accompanied by a forum that currently has over 3,000 active users. The gotoAndLearn() community is without question the friendliest and most helpful group of Flash users on earth. We all believe in the idea of giving back to the community. It’s also important to note that I don’t make a single red cent on the site and I never want to. The site currently has over 50 tutorials totaling over 14 hours of free video instruction.
The tutorials have been up and down over the last year due to the popularity of the site. They were once hosted at Stanford University, my former employer. Then one day the site got listed on the homepage of Digg.com which promptly sent the traffic though the roof. Sean Foushee then offered to host the files on some server space he had. Now again, the increasing popularity has forced the site down again.
You can see download all of the tutorial files at http://www.gotoandlearn.com for the time being, but even this hosting is only temporary. The tutorial interface iteself can be seen at http://www.gotoandlearn.com/indexTEMP.html.
Any help in hosting these files in a reliable location would be a tremendous gift to myself and the community.
Thanks,
Lee
COME ON ADOBE PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hi Lee,
My name is Greg Starr. I am currently an actionscript developer for YaHoo! working on their Beta.Maps project. Outside of that I have my own domain and would be happy to donate as much space as I can to help “the cause”. I’ll have to double check my quota, but whatever I have to spare, is yours. Contact me if your interested.
Best of Luck, and thanks for your efforts. I speak for many in saying you have a great resource, it’d be a shame to see it go down.
G. Starr
Hi Lee
How much traffic (downloaded MB) does gotoAndLearn() consume per month?
Torrent. Problem solved.
Hey Lee, this is Lee…
We’ve just started working (scratching the surface) on content for Flash tutorials for our students in art+design and digital animation. We looked at modeling some of the features within specific tutorials like what you have had available here… I would be interested in talking with you about working on hosting this content/contributing. You’ve done some fantastic work and I would be hate to see a resource like this drop off into the ether of google’s cached webpages. I’m sure we could work something out with the powers that be at our end.
Regards, Lee.
Your flash tutorial is one of the best free resources out there. Let us know what we can do to petition Adobe, or any other hosting service for that matter.
Thanks so much for all of your resources!
Hi Lee..
Your site is really unique on the web.. thanks for that.
Maybe you wanna consider this: On the old tutorial interface, as soon you enter the site it starts downloading the video. But if you would change it so you have to click first on play, you would save some KB.. or even MB. It might doesn’t make a big difference but sometimes people don’t wanna see the recent movie and just look around..
Thanks guys for all the support! To answer some of your questions…
1) Yes I changed the player so that they don’t auto-play anymore. Once the site comes back you’ll see the change
2) Not sure about the bandwidth numbers since I haven’t been hosting them myself. Let me check with Sean and get some numbers.
3) Lee, shoot me an email at lee@leebrimelow.com.
4) Greg, thanks so much for the offer. I would hate for anyone to use their personal webspace since it will get eaten up in a matter of days
You could go with Dream Host and get a few of the Level 1 accounts. Then when someone clicks to watch a movie it checks a database and sees which server has been used the least and goes to that server. The level 1 plan gives you 1 TB of transfer.
I’m talking with other staffers about this, but realized a few things after sleeping on ita good night’s sleep:
(1) I’ll probably first be directed to the actual Adobe Philanthropy page:
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/philanthropy/
(2) I’m not sure which business group within Adobe would be the most likely touch to fund third-party hosting.
I suspect that the objection to advertising may kill many pitches, but I will spread the word.
jd
Hi, Lee -
I may be able to help. Can you please send me an email with a description of the sort of bandwidth you’ll need, storage requirements, etc?
mdowney –at– adobe –dot– com
I’ll see what I can do.
Thanks,
MD
Mike Downey | Sr. Product Manager, Flash | Adobe Systems
Hello Lee, I run http://www.ultrashock.com and would be interested in helping you out. Please send me your contact info and I will be in touch.
Regards, Patrick Miko
Better to get the site full of advertises than not having it anymore.
(torrent can be a good idea , anyway) .
I’m really impressed that people from Adobe have responded so quickly. Very encouraging, and if they do help out, it speaks volumes about how much they care about their consumers. Respect to you guys!
Yes it speaks volumes about how much they care about their consumers and community!
And I am very glad to hear, that gotoAndLearn has the chance to stay a live because Lee and his video tutorials has helped me to enhance my skills a lot!
Best regards,
Johannes
have you checked out the Coral distribution network?
http://coralcdn.org/
Lee, I know we’ve discussed this at great lengths in the Forum, but would a paypal donate link be that bad? If anything, it would offer a temporary solution. I’d be happy to give what I can, after all you’ve helped countless people learn what they need to get some great-paying jobs (myself included) I guess I feel I owe you one. I also have some other pretty good ideas, shoot me an email if you’d like to discuss.
SuperDave
It will be silly from adobe to decline, 10,000 users of gotoAndlearn.com it mean almost 10,000 clients of adobe products, so why they will refuse, moreover if the logo of their conpany is displayed on the site…
gotoAndlearn.com is the best useful site have ever seen
Maybe we can make a petition, then send it to adobe. why not
there’s a lot a website to do it
http://www.petitiononline.com/petition.html
Look, I don’t think petitions are that effective when compared to simple displomacy. By that I mean that a large firm is far more likely to deal with an individual for something like this that risk appearing to succumb to pressure. Seriously, petitioning just puts people on the back foot, and hey can’t risk setting a predicament of bowing to that kind of pressure. If, on the other hand, Lee simply negotiaties with them, and we give Lee our support, then they know that they are dealing with friends, and won’t be forced to feel beseiged.
They’ve already shown considerable interest in helping, so I don’t think a petition is necessary, in fact it’s taking a step backwards. Adobe knows how much this site has helped people use their product.
Another ultimate solution will be bit torrent, everyone can have a standalone flv player…
Also, why not use cross domain to host each tutorial on different server, no easy to managed, I agree..10,000 users, so if everybody can host one tutorial, so will have all the space in the world,
anyway I’m sure Lee will find a solution…
My petitions idea was definitely a bad solution maybe those ones too…
This site must go on!
I would personally like to thank Mr. Mike Downey for being on the ball. You rock, so good luck in increasing the expense budget of one of the groups over there. I think that the customer service and marketing might not want to have to support the system so maybe no logo, huh…leave it just as it is…
what do u do if u know that when u plug the USB in and it shows the the little square box of where they should get the photo, but when i press that, it doesn’t show pictures, it only shows music and songs, I want to change that to pictures but i don’t know how to, please help me