The Century Disc

by Carl Glassford

The Archival Century Disc Introduces Carl Glassford’s Digital Time Capsule.

Case Color

Black White Clear (sort of)

Case Color

Black White Clear (sort of)

by Carl Glassford

“Thanks for the Memories.” I understand that I may not be around to hear those words from those who will long outlive me, but I know someone, someday, will be thanking me for just that reason.

Thanks to Mitsubishi (MKM) for making the Archival Century Discs. These are one of a kind 24-karat gold and real silver layered cds and dvds which are a rare commodity and will allow me to store my lifetime memories for at least the next 50 – 100 years.

Very few people in the entire world even know these discs exist (hel~lo), let alone why they need them. The truth is, ordinary discs we buy in the store are made as cheaply as possible in order to compete in the price wars and keep their costs down.

For more on why cheap discs are so cheap, here’s another article I wrote, entitled Ordinary Discs Don’t Make the Grade or other articles I’ve posted on the Century Disc Blog and website.

Remnants of photos, videos, emails, and even cards and letters from past loved ones are important to me. I have boxes (I’m sure we all do) of these memories, photos, home movies, and even letters from loved ones of long ago. Why do I keep all of this “silly” stuff? I guess I’m just sentimental or maybe I appreciate where I’ve been and am looking forward to where I am going by remembering where I came from.

When I look at the only copy of a photograph our entire family ever had of my Japanese grandfather, I realize that I know very little about that side of my family. He was gone before I was born so I never got to meet him. All I know is what I heard, and that he was all for my father whisking my mother off to a more promising land to start a family. So, here I am (with 5 other siblings).

As I get older, I realize that not everyone is going to be in my life forever, let alone my being around forever. So, I have taken it upon myself to organize and catalog events throughout my life that I will make copies of and pass them along to loved ones once I am gone, maybe sooner.

It takes a lot of time but I do it in spurts. Hopefully it’ll get done before my time. Then someone in my family will be able to look at my past and see who I was as opposed to a figment of their imagination.

Since my father’s death in 2000, I have developed a totally different view of him as a person than that of when he was alive. We were an estranged pair for many years. Fortunately (for me), I was able to make amends and had a few short years to get to know him as my dad, as a man, and as a friend, before he died.

According to our U.S.Government, namely the Library of Congress and the National Archives, ordinary discs they tested, may not even last a decade. In fact, they believe (based on their tests and studies) that average cds and dvds will be lucky to be around more than 2 – 14 years.

They also state that people who use cds and dvds for recording their data and digital photos “should check these discs at least every two years” to make sure they are still usable. That’s nice, but there’s no meter on media that indicates that it is about to fail on you. It either works or it doesn’t and if you don’t have these discs, or don’t have additional copies somewhere, you’re out of luck. Everything that you thought was on that disc, is not.

I have no doubt this is one of the many reasons people no longer backup their data (digital photos, home movies, manuscripts, etc.) onto discs like they used to. We have come to realize that cds and dvds are not as reliable as we once thought they were.

People rely on their hard drives to store just about everything (especially now that external hard drives are even more affordable). Figuring they won’t be that 1 in 5 people who’s hard drive fails. Or, maybe they just don’t think about it? I am willing to bet that even the above average person (like me) believes that, if they burn something (digital photos, important documents, manuscripts, etc.) to a cd or dvd, that it will be there forever. I never gave it any thought, I honestly thought cds and dvds would last forever, or at least all of my lifetime and then some.

That was until I learned the difference. I’m trying to save you anguish and hours of having to studying this stuff. If you’d like to save your family’s legacy or even your own personal history in a digital format for just a few pennies a year for the next 100 or so years, then the Archival Century Disc is the disc for you. Honestly, it’s a no-brainer.

These discs, without a doubt, without fail, and with a 100% lifetime money-back guarantee (which no other disc manufacturer in the world gives you), are the discs you have been looking for and until now, probably didn’t even know they existed. Now you know.

Read my article Why the Century Disc Became So Important To Me then you’ll know why I jumped at the chance to tell the world about these amazing products.

Then hopefully one day, you and/or your family will say
“Thanks for the Memories, Carl.”

We recently joined an Affiliate Network mainly to push the Awesome Century Disc. We decided to go with the PepperJAM Network due to their ease-of-use Web 2.0 interface, their attraction to top-level affiliate marketers and a whole lot of other reasons.

When we first started, it took us a few weeks to get past the ‘Learning Curve’ and not only learn how their interface works, but to learn that there are a whole lot of things we still need to learn. At least we are willing to learn.

Which only means that we still have a lot to do, a lot of changes and additions, and this is like anything else in life. Depending on what you put into it, will determine what you can expect to get out of it.

The first major holdup we ran into was getting their sales tracking code to interface with our ShopSite Shopping Cart.

We were having problems with the Pixel Integration. First we tried to implement the code ourselves in the back office of ShopSite. It wasn’t tracking correctly. Then, we called our ISP. The ISP put us in direct contact with one of the founders of ShopSite who referred us to Michael. It’s not that they did not want to handle this in-house, because the people at ShopSite are great to work with. But, this just happened to be one of those perplexing problems that ShopSite had not run into before and it would probably have taken them longer to get back to us then the solution they gave us.

For some reason, our integration with PJN was a little different than other integrations they had encountered. So, Gary, a really nice guy, sent us to Michael Masin, who got us up and running in about 20 – 30 minutes.

Michael wrote us a script that didn’t alter the PJN pixel code but incorporated it smoothly. A simple solution but, not simple to someone who has not worked online in over seven years now (and really didn’t have time to figure this one out).

If you have a ShopSite problem or would like a new template created for your ShopSite shopping cart interface, contact Michael Masin through his development website @ www.ssdev.us.

Not only will Michael treat you right, his honesty, integrity, and work ethics in the way he does business is well worth the price. Which by the way, his prices are probably the most reasonable I’ve seen in months and highly recommend Michael Masin to anyone.

I just met him last month during this situation so I am not touting his services because he is an old pal or anything of that nature. He is a ‘find’ in this industry and we look forward to working with him for our new templates (he writes the code, your artist has to do the design work) for our RMGProducts.com Shopsite shopping cart.

I asked Michael if he would mind sending us a little background info? This is what he sent me. I hope this will help someone find him if they need his specialty services. We are glad we found him. Thanks Michael!

I’m a ShopSite Certified Developer. I build and maintain ShopSite stores, custom templates, Order and Shipping APIs, and programs for processing XML, importing/exporting data, etc. I work with end-users, end-user’s designers and other ShopSite providers on any size projects from a whole store to a small template change.

We just setup a page on youtube with our new videos of the Century Disc. You can check them out at www.youtube.com/centurydisc . We are in the process of setting up the new Century Disc website and hope it will be complete next week. At least the first edition. From there we can always tweak it and work toward improvements.

In the meantime, check out the videos on youtube and visit our current site at rmgproducts.com