The Cookie Issue

You may have heard the term cookies before. Cookies are a little bit of information that is stored on your computer. A cookie may identify who you are and who’s travel diary you are accessing at that present time.
Basic rule of thumb, if a travel diary requires a login then it requires cookies.
Almost every travel diary host employ cookies to operate correctly. This means for you or others to access your travel diary the Internet browser you are working with has to allow cookies. This is not a problem if you are working from home but what about visiting an Internet café? Unless the Internet browser at the café has cookies enabled, you won’t be able to update your travel diary. Internet café owners are weary about allowing cookies and therefore often disable them.
By default, most Internet browsers don’t allow cookies, this means your family and friends may have trouble accessing your site unless they are aware of how to enable the browser to allow cookies.
eTravelDiary does not use cookies, we had far too much trouble updating our own travel diaries from Internet cafés and our family and friends were always having trouble logging in to see our travel diaries. They are too much trouble, we don’t like them and therefore every travel diary hosted by eTravelDiary is cookieless. You and your viewers will have no trouble accessing your travel diary from anywhere.


Internet Café Uploading

Many Internet cafés utilize broadband technologies, this means they have a fast Internet connection. Cable and DSL are the most commonly used connections. DSL comes in many flavors with varying upload and download speeds. It is a common conception that users will download more than they upload and therefore most DSL connections have a quick download speed with a slow upload speed. What does this mean for you as a traveler? Some travel diary hosts aren’t built with this in mind and you may not be able to upload your pictures because the script has ‘timed out’. This can be very frustrating.
With your eTravelDiary hosting account you won’t have this problem. We use the latest technologies and our image upload systems will never ‘time out’. You could create a diary entry and upload multiple 9 megapixel images on the slowest of slow dial up connections, and your diary entry will always upload correctly and flawlessly.

Photo’s taken from your digital camera can be huge and sometimes not feasible to view on the Internet. Think of that unfortunate family member or friend on a slow dial up connection sitting idly by waiting for your 1.0+ megabyte image to fully reveal it self. It is for this reason eTravelDiary and other travel diary hosts restrict the size of the image to be uploaded. Other travel diary hosts simply won’t accept an image straight from your digital camera because it is too large, they’ll require that you manually resize the image before uploading. This would require you to open an image editor such as Microsoft Paint to resize the image. This process is an effort and not always practical as Internet cafés may limit your access to image editors and other applications. And not to mention the cost associated with the time to resize your own images.
With eTravelDiary you can upload any size image you like, upload the image straight from the camera’s memory card, we’ll accept it. Our sophisticated scripts will then automatically resize the image for all to enjoy comfortably on the Internet.


Privacy and Security.

Like you we don’t feel comfortable posting pictures of ourselves on the Internet for anyone and everyone to see. eTravelDiary has multiple levels of privacy and freedom.
-You can simply restrict the entire travel diary for yourself, don’t allow any viewers or guests access
and/or.
-Only allow your viewers i.e family and friends interactive access
and/or
-Be brazen and completely open up your travel diary website for all to admire.

We also understand that some diary entries are far too personal for anyone but yourself to see and although you are brazen enough to have your travel diary website completely open you can still restrict some very personal diary entries for your eyes only.
Other travel diary hosts can’t offer these levels of privacy or freedom.


Intellectual Property

Unlike other travel diary hosts, eTravelDiary will never in no way claim any ownership over the photos and images you post to your eTravelDiary website.

Computer illiterate family and friends

We understand that your family and friends may not be as computer literate as yourself. You can explain the process of signing up to your travel diary until your blue in the face and they still won’t get it. Bearing this in mind, our upgraded accounts allow you to have your own travel diary website address in the form of www.YourName.eTravelDiary.com . Simply refer your family and friends to this easy to remember address for effortless access to your travel diary.


Conclusion

As you can see, we have all had experience traveling, using many Internet cafés with various online travel diary hosts. We came together and spoke of our failed travel diary hosting experiences and decided to invest our time and monies to develop eTravelDiary so every time we drop in an Internet café to update our online travel journals, we are 100% successful.

Our commitment is ongoing.

A recent addition to our service was to incorporate MMS (Mobile Messaging Service) features to your travel diary. We understand that some Internet cafés charge an arm and a leg for their service and what about if there is none to be found, with MMS and eTravelDiary you can still keep all your friends and family up to date by using your mobile phone to add to your diaries. Simply register your mobile phone details on signup with eTravelDiary then whilst abroad, compose your diary entry with your mobile phone, you can take a snap shot if your phone has a camera then send the message to mms@eTravelDiary.com and we will do the rest. It is a great way to keep in touch.

We are continually striving to further develop eTravelDiary so that sharing your travel experiences with family and friends is as effortless and as enjoyable as possible.