Maintenance
06.05.2012
The website will go completely offline on Monday May 7th for maintenance.

We don't know how long the site will be down but will try to keep downtime at an absolute minimum.

UPDATE: The maintenance was a move to a new data center that is now complete.

FTP restored
19.02.2012
FTP upload has been restored. This means we are almost back to normal the only thing not working being the contact form.

You can still contact us via email at fileadmin@NOSPAMxa-speakers.org.

Update:The contact form has been fixed

Server problems
08.01.2012
We have been having problems with our hosting provider which have resulted in the site being offline intermittently in the last 60 days and completely offline since December 17th.

We would like to emphasize that the problems we have been having do not mean the future of the site is in jeopardy; they are only technical in nature.

Until the issues have been completely ironed out new uploads will not be possible but the downloads will continue to work.

We are sorry for the problems and the lack of communication on the issues and will make a new announcement once everything is back up and running.

New email server
07/11/2011
Our email problems should be past us now. We have set up a new email server to handle all our communications. 

Ongoing email problems
15/03/2011
We are having ongoing email problems with our webpage because of the moving to new hardware. If you haven't received a reply please send an email to fileadmin [at] xa-speakers.org. We are sorry for the inconvenience and will remove this notice when the problem has been fixed.

New hardware
29/01/2011
The project has just ordered new server hardware to host the page, partly in preparation for version 2.0. 235,000 ISK of your donations went towards the purchase of this hardware; an IBM 3850 server with 7GB of RAM, 900GB (600GB usable) of storage and a RAID card. Thanks to all who have helped made this happen.

Downloads
23/07/2010
We've [finally] changed the "Download" button so that it now downloads files instead of opening them in the browser. This small change has been a long time coming but we hope our users will appreciate the change.

Mail problems
14/06/2009
We have fixed the email problems with the contact form. Mail works as before, though all mail that has been sent through the form since the beginning of April has been lost. Please resend if you've emailed us through the contact form during that time.

Mail problems
11/06/2009
We're having trouble with the mails. We haven't received any email through the contact form for quite some time. Other mail has been working fine. We will let you know once the issue has been fixed

Countdown to V2.0
17/10/2008
Like regular visitors of the site have noticed we're working on version 2.0 of the site. While the PHP script we have used for the past six years has served us nicely we want to add new features to the site.

xa-speakers.org started as way to distribute talks electronically. The bulk of the work in the beginning consisted of:

• finding the occasional talk
• converting it to MP3 and labeling it
• uploading it via FTP to a folder on the webserver
• creating a record in a database which contains information about the talk and a link to the file for users to download it.

• finding the occasional talk
• converting it to MP3 and labeling it
• uploading it via FTP to a temporary folder on the webserver
• sending an email to the team containing a link to the talk which they would vote on by either "approved", "pass" or "rejected"
• tallying the votes periodically and either move the talk to a published directory on the webserver when approved or an unpublished one when rejected
• creating a record in a database which contains information about the talk and a link to the file for users to download it.

• file is uploaded via FTP
• upload needs to be checked to see if there is any information missing (location or date of the recording, f.x.)
• if information is missing an email is sent to the uploader who may or may not reply
• the file needs to be converted it to MP3 and labeled with the information from the uploader
• file is uploaded to a temporary folder on the webserver
• an email is sent to the team containing a link to the talk which they would vote on
• votes are tallied and comments from the team are checked. A talk might f.x. need editing (an introduction cut out, f.x.)
• a record is created in the database which containing the same information the file contains

• The ability to edit tag information without having to download and re-upload the file.
• The ability to upgrade the underlying framework, f.x. applying security patches, without breaking the site.
• Integrated auditing process.

• Greater flexibility in the categorization of recordings.
• Notification of the status of his upload.
• An events module, also published as www.xa-events.org, containing a searchable list of conferences posted by users of the site.
• Intelligent management of multiple-bitrate files. No more having to figure out what bitrate you want.
• Integrated upload process. No more FTP and we won't be forced to delete nearly as many uploads.
• Ability to purchase a CD of the talk directly from the taper.