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contents I was very close to giving up by calling the Ping! Zine editors and apologizing for overrating my writing skills. I wanted to admit there is no way I can write anything that might explain “Cloud Hosting”. The reason was that after reading hundreds of articles, reviews, blog posts, reference guides, and other texts about “Cloud Computing”, I got even more confused than I was before. But instead of quitting, I just told myself “Hey, others know even less than you do about Cloud Hosting. So go out and tell your story and how you understand Cloud Computing.” So here it is, my first cloud computing article.
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I Have Way Too Many Passwords to Manage!
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Planning Your Online Business? Look for a Partner
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HostGator’s Rapid Rise to the Top
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How to Make Your Content Regal
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HostingCon 2009 Preview
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Twitter Blasts onto the Hosting Scene
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Helpful Web Design Recommendations
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Press Releases: Standard of Optimized?
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Ping! Zine Service Directory
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Sleep Mode, the Bane of My Existence
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cPanel Conference 2009 Official Announcement
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Examining Twitterers’ Attitudes, Perceptions, Motivations
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HostMySite to Acquire Hosting.com
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DemoDemo.com Adds Parallels Plesk Panel 9 Tutorials
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Plano Facility Provides Colo:Features ‘Green’ Design
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iWeb Moves Up in the 2009 PROFIT 100 Ranking
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IBM to Invest $100 Million in Mobile Communication Research
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Dot TK Registers 15 Millionth Domain Name
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Parallels Host First Parallels APAC Summit 2009
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sponsors 002 Gawkwire.com 005 cPanel
007 Bocacom
009 Bobcares 010 1&1
013 Weberz.com 015 Jaguar PC
017 CPC Technologies 017 Assistanz
019 Black Lotus
020 Rackmounts Etc 025 Fuscan LBC 027 Parallels
031 Young Copy
031 WebHost Magazine 034 Voxwire
036 Sprynex
039 eBridge Marketing 041 HostingCon 2009 045 Host 4 Yourself
046 Lionfire Solutions 055 Turnkey Internet 056 Host Gator
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pING! ZINE Publisher Keith Duncan Managing Editor/Designer Derek Morris Executive Editor Robert Lang Senior Editor Dave Young Editorial Staff Features Editor Joe Whyte Technical Editor John Burmeister Commentary Editor David Dunlap Marketing Editor Trey Gardner Customer Service Editor Douglas Hanna Headlines Editor Derek Vaughan
Contributing Writers Dimitar Avramov Tiara Rea Robert Wright Frank Feingold Mark Drake Contact Information Duncan Publishing Group, LLC Post Office Box 516 Denham Springs, LA 70726 Phone (225) 791-3963 Website www.pingzine.com General Info info@pingzine.com Sales sales@pingzine.com Editor editor@pingzine.com Design design@pingzine.com
Ping! Zine Web Hosting Magazine Š May - June 2009, Published and Copyrighted 2009 by Duncan Publishing Group, LLC, P.O. Box 516, Denham Springs, LA 70726. All rights reserved. Permission to reproduce part or all of this issue must be secured in writing from the publisher. For more information email: info@ pingzine.com. Complementary subscriptions are at the discretion of the publisher and may be cancelled or modified at any time. Unsolicited submissions are welcome. We assume no liability for lost or damage of submissions. We assume no liability for the content of this issue or the afro hair-style and all points and ideas are strictly that of the writers involved and not that of the publisher, publishing company, Scruffy the Janitor, printing company or editors. This issue is brought to you by the PETWH (People for the Ethical Treatment of Web Host). Adopt a Web Host for just pennies a day and turn his frown upside down!
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cPanel Conference 2009 Official Announcement cPanel announced its fourth annual conference & networking event in Houston, TX. Owing to the popularity and increased demand for this event, a new venue and date have been selected. The event dates are October 5th through the 7th at the beautiful Houston Hilton Americas in downtown Houston. The three-day event will include the traditional networking events and a number of new topics, including advanced system administration, Enkompass® Training (Windows® Control Panel), and Sales Training. Previous feedback has resulted in new sessions and the ability to provide quality training for technical and sales engineers who engage with hosting automation on a daily basis. The cPanel Conference kicks off with the traditional reception and networking event on the evening of Monday, October 5th. The technical sessions get underway on the 6th and will be followed in the evening with a sumptuous dinner at the Hilton, followed by a second networking event. Registration, Call for Speakers, and Exhibitor Applications are now available via http://conference.cpanel.net. It is anticipated that this event will reach capacity, and the cPanel event organizers are recommending early registration and encouraging vendors who wish to exhibit to apply early. “In planning this year’s event, we really took into consideration past feedback, the type of attendees, and product changes since last year to develop what I consider one of the best learningbased events of the year,” said Eric Gregory of cPanel. “It is very exciting for the entire staff to personally connect and provide important knowledge that helps make using our product more enjoyable.” Back by popular demand, live, on-site technical assistance will be available. Also joining the “live” technical support team will be cPanel’s own design and interface experts to discuss and provide tips on the customization of cPanel for your organization. The evolution of the cPanel Conference provides multiple outlets for organizations to learn in-depth product knowledge, network with industry leaders, and connect with cPanel staff. If you’re going to attend one hosting-related event this year, this should be the one. Early bird registration is now open until 8/20/2009. | Gawkwire.com | Gawkwire.com
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Examining Twitterers’ Attitudes, Perceptions, Motivations Here are a few highlights of a survey of 425 Twitter users, who spend an average of 2 ¾ hours per day on Twitter--and two-thirds of whom consider themselves early adopters of technology. Motivations: Why Do People Use Twitter? People likely use Twitter for all sorts of reasons, and we were interested in knowing what those reasons are. We divided the possibilities into categories such as economic, learning, connection, etc. and asked questions accordingly. The following are the response averages to those questions (on a 1-5 scale, with 1=strongly disagree and 5=strongly agree): “I find it exciting to learn new things from people”: 4.65 “I value getting information in a timely manner”: 4.58 “I like to be connected to lots of people”: 3.91 “I want to generate new business”: 3.70 “I find it gratifying to have people follow me”: 3.64 Whereas Twitter may be used as just another lead-gen tool (new business), or purely for ego reasons (gratifying to have people following them) or social interaction, the findings suggest that what truly motivates Twitter users is learning new things and getting information in a timely manner. Following and Being Followed The survey asked to what extent respondents agreed with two statements: “you should follow people who follow you”; and “people you follow should follow you back.” The mean of responses for both questions was the same: 2.74(same 1-5 scale). In the case of both questions, only about 16-17% of Twitter users have strong feelings--one way or the other (“strongly agree” or “strongly disagree”)--about the etiquette of following.
The remainder are roughly equally divided among “neither agree or disagree,” “mildly agree,” and “mildly disagree.” What Does It Mean to Have Large Numbers of Followers? One of the most-publicized aspects of Twitter is the number of followers a person has. Some people are near-obsessed with those numbers. So what does the survey sample reveal? Do they believe the follower number conveys something important? Or is it really just about notoriety and celebrity? Most likely the latter, according to the survey. Respondents were asked to note their level of agreement with following two statements: 1. “People who have a large number of followers are more respected than those who don’t” (response mean: 2.80 on same 1-5 scale). Nearly 40% of the survey sample agreed with the statement--most of them “mildly agree” (34%). The remaining 60% are roughly equally divided among “neither agree nor disagree,” “mildly disagree,” and “strongly disagree.”) 2. “People who have a large number of followers are smarter than those who don’t” (response mean 1.67 on same 1-5 scale). Respondents’ opinions were much more defined in this case, with nearly 82% expressing disagreement (57% “strongly”) with the notion that those with larger numbers of followers are “smarter.” In short, Twitter users do see respect associated with higher follower numbers, but little association with intelligence.
Bruised Egos if Tweets Unanswered? With the rapid pace of Twittering and the motivation to engage in the ongoing conversation, we thought perhaps people would have a strong emotional response to not being heard. That might occur, for example, when someone offers a comment or observation and nobody responds. It’s like being at a large party (the analogy often used for a Twitter conversation) and essentially ending up talking to yourself. Do people feel bad when that happens? Apparently not. The survey asked how strongly the Twitter users agreed with the statement “I feel bad when I tweet something and nobody responds”: The average response (2.41) implies people aren’t too troubled by a lack of response. Less than 2% said they strongly agree with the statement, whereas those who strongly disagreed constituted a plurality (nearly 32%). The remaining two-thirds were roughly equally divided among “mildly disagree,” “neither agree nor disagree,” and “mildly agree.” About The Study: In early and mid-April, MarketingProfs surveyed 425 Twitter users by posting a few tweets and asking for participation. The sample consisted of a broad cross-section of users, mainly interested in marketing and social media. Two-thirds of them consider themselves early adopters of technology. For more MarketingProfs research, visit http://www.marketingprofs.com/marketing/research | Gawkwire.com
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DemoDemo.com Adds Parallels Plesk Panel 9 Tutorials DemoDemo.com ( http://www.demodemo.com ), the market leader in Flash web hosting tutorials, is pleased to announce the addition of Parallels Plesk Panel 9 tutorial series to general inventory.
HostMySite to Acquire Hosting.com HostMySite and Hosting.com have both expanded quickly over the past decade by sharing a singular focus on premium-level customer service. The combination provides customers with 43,000 square feet of datacenter space from coast-to-coast across four data centers. It creates a solid foundation for an expanded menu of high-availability and business continuity/ disaster recovery (BCDR) solutions that mid-sized enterprise customers have been searching for. Furthermore, this acquisition creates a nationwide customer support team backed by SAS70 and PCI certifications. “We have listened closely to our customers and they have told us that they desire both managed colocation and managed dedicated solutions for their applications,” commented Art Zeile, CEO at HostMySite. “With this acquisition, we have made a firm commitment to delivering a full spectrum of managed hosting services across a national platform.” Joel Daly, COO further commented, “Customers will continue to experience the same extraordinary level of customer support that has made us a trusted partner to thousands of customers over the last 11 years. We pride ourselves in having the best team in the industry and look forward to delivering the same high-quality service through our expanded roster.” Former Hosting.com CEO Darren King noted, “We spent years hiring the best talent in the industry to engineer robust hosting solutions, drive our consultative sales approach, and provide unparalleled SLAs and technical support – HostMySite provides an opportunity to expand upon and deliver these to a significantly larger number of clients.” Wachovia Capital Partners provided an additional equity investment to support the acquisition and Golub Capital provided a $22 million senior credit facility. HostMySite was advised by Alston and Bird LLP, Ernst and Young LLP, W. David Snead, Moreton and Company and Atlas Engineering. Hosting.com was advised by Signal Hill Capital Group and Stites & Harbison PLLC. | Gawkwire.com 014 | Ping! Zine magazine
Parallels released a new v9 interface after purchasing Plesk from SWSoft. Arguably the most popular hosting control panel script in the web hosting industry, Parallels have added a new look and additional features to this new interface. DemoDemo covers all the main functions and tasks in this robust 43 tutorial series. This includes tutorials for End User, Mail User and Reseller. Recently DemoDemo also added 27 tutorials covering the new WHMCS v4. This covers tutorials for Admin and End User tasks. | Gawkwire.com
Plano Facility Provides Colo: Features ‘Green’ Design The Planet, the global leader in IT hosting, announced hosted a ribbon-cutting event at its newly constructed data center in the north Dallas suburb of Plano, Texas. The event, June 16, included remarks from The Planet Chairman & CEO Douglas J. Erwin and Plano City Manager Thomas H. Muehlenbeck. Tours of the 106,000-square-foot, environmentally friendly facility was offered. The new data center – the company’s eighth – uses the latest modular cooling technology from Turbine Air Systems (TAS), with high-efficiency, water-cooled chillers that eliminate the possibility of an interior water leak. Colocation, private racks, and Northstar Managed Hosting™ services will be offered in the new facility, which brings The Planet’s total data center raisedfloor footprint to 224,000 square feet. Space is also available for a Business Continuity Center, which provides office space for customers requiring a disaster recovery base of operations during an outage. “We’ve received substantial interest in our new highly efficient facilities from customers looking to expand their IT infrastructure capabilities,” said The Planet Vice President of Facilities Jeff Lowenberg. “This new space enables us to accommodate the rapid colocation market growth we’ve seen in the Dallas area, and we invite customers, prospects and partners to celebrate another significant step forward in The Planet’s expansion.” | Gawkwire.com
BITS &BYTES
iWeb moves up in the 2009 PROFIT 100 ranking with 1128% growth From 2003 to 2008, the company’s revenues have gone from $ 1,384 million to $ 15,616 million as of October 1st 2008. Last year, iWeb’s 5-year growth totaled 627%, enough for the IT infrastructure and Internet hosting company to make its entry into the 100th position on the annual ranking. Eric Chouinard, CEO and co-founder of iWeb; “In 2003, shortly before iWeb went public and bought its first data center, we knew everything would become digital. It’s amazing to see how quickly this transition is actually happening!.” He then adds that “This is a very proud achievement for iWeb. More than anything else, it is the result of teamwork and persistence.” “Since 2003, we have grown from 15 employees to over 170 today! The fact that many of those original 15 are still involved with iWeb today says a lot about our environment” comments Martin Leclair, co-President, products and Technology and iWeb co-founder. “The biggest challenge has been to continue innovating while managing our growth” he adds. iWeb, who has reported revenue growth exceeding 90% for the first two quarters of 2009, is also becoming an important exporter of IT services, generating over 60% of its revenues from abroad. The PROFIT 100 is the annual ranking which rates the top 100 Canadian companies based on the percentage of their revenue growth over a 5-year span. Produced by the business magazine PROFIT, 2009 marks the 21st edition of the ranking. The complete list will be published in the June edition, as well as on the website: http://www.profit100.com | Gawkwire.com
IBM to Invest $100 Million in Mobile Communication Research IBM is investing to create technology in its labs that bring simple, easy-to-use services to the millions of people who have bypassed using the personal computer as their primary method of accessing the Internet, and instead use their mobile devices for managing large forces of enterprise field workers, conducting financial transactions, entertainment, shopping, and more. Through this effort, IBM is aiming to drive new intelligence into the underpinnings of the mobile web to create new efficiencies in business operations and people’s daily lives. The three focus areas for IBM’s research investment are: mobile enterprise enablement, emerging market mobility and enterprise end-user mobile experiences. Analytics, security, privacy and user interface, and navigation will be concentrated on across the Research effort. “Mobile devices are gradually becoming ubiquitous and helping us transcend many boundaries -- geographical, economic, and social, among others,” says Dr. Guruduth Banavar, global leader of the mobile communications focus for IBM Research and director of IBM Research - India. “With high penetration, simple user interface, and significant cost advantage for end users, mobile telephony holds the future of communication and exchange of information for the enterprise.” Mobile Enterprise Enablement Low cost, high bandwidth, wireless access, and PC-like information processing power are accelerating the promise of the mobile phone as a compelling platform for accessing information services. Mobile phones now outnumber traditional telephones, and the opportunities for growth in mobility are enormous. According to IBM’s Institute for Business Value, the number of mobile users will grow by 191 percent from 2006 to 2011 to reach approximately one billion users. A glimpse of the possibilities of mobility can be found in a recent pilot performed as part of IBM’s first-of-a-kind (FOAK) program, which used a technology named “BlueStar” to develop automated mobile devices and application management services for insurance claims processing. IBM’s FOAK program pairs IBM’s scientists with clients to explore how emerging technologies can solve real world business problems. The pilot enabled an insurance enterprise to significantly reduce the amount of time required to process claims by leveraging mobile technology to locate and dispatch the most appropriate and available claims adjusters for each case. The right agents were identified through a combination of GPS location technology, presence awareness capabilities and an analysis of all candidate agents’ calendar availability. Once agents were selected, the state of their mobile phone’s configuration and security status was acquired by BlueStar, and updated, if necessary. BlueStar then assisted with preparing and formatting necessary claims case information for the specific mobile device configuration, and securely transmitted all data to the device. This policy-driven approach to configuring information for on-the-go staff simplified the maintenance of mobile service products. Rather than having information dispersed on hundreds -- or even thousands -- of handheld devices, information briefly provisioned by a central server can be better monitored, upgraded and secured. The BlueStar pilot demonstrated how to deploy and manage mobile devices and applications to a large force of enterprise field workers. The approach enabled not only smarter device management, but a smarter way for the mobile field force to work. Emerging Market Mobility For the 83 percent of the world that does not have easy access to the Web via PCs,
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IBM is helping mobile phone users become more productive. In these locations, there is a dearth of skills, such as technological and language literacy; a lack of infrastructure, such as reliable electrical power; as well as limited availability of smartphones. IBM Research has established a pilot program in southern India that allows people, including farmers, repairmen, small business owners, and consumers, to post, retrieve or exchange timely information via voice on cellphones. Content -- such as weather and ocean conditions, grain prices, advertisements, bus schedules, news, class schedules, product catalogues, health information and available services appointments -- is created and updated by entrepreneurs and municipalities. Inputting and accessing information, as well as processing transactions, such as reservations or payments, is as easy as speaking into a mobile device. In nine months of operation so far, the pilot has won rave reviews from users. Enterprise to End-User Mobile Experience “Mobility and the associated analytics will change virtually every enterprise business process,” said Paul Bloom, chief technologist, IBM Telecom Research. “It will change the relationship between enterprises and their customers, their employees and their partners, enabling them to do business in more intelligent, efficient ways.” One example of how mobility will change the relationship between enterprises and the end user can be found in a project at IBM Research -- Haifa with Taiwan Mobile, the second largest telecommunication company in Taiwan. Here, IBM is analyzing customer information to get manageable business intelligence based on evolving user preferences, users context and transaction history. This FOAK solution can be used by telecommunications companies and retailers alike to allow them to customize mobile portals and recommend the right products to the right customers at the most opportune time that will optimize the probability customers will complete the transaction. The technology also enables product managers to analyze the habits and segments of existing and potential customer populations, and to then tailor effective online mobile marketing campaigns to those audiences. Enterprise mobility will increasingly allow people to more closely monitor the energy consumption of their workplace and home; receive more personalized offers and discounts from stores; research more thoroughly and pay more conveniently for purchases; and stay in closer touch with social and professional networks. Portable, personal and precise information carried by the mobile Web will enable emergency responders to be more effective, and allow healthcare providers make more informed, effective and safer medical decisions. IBM Research comprises approximately 3,000 scientists in eight major laboratories around the globe. IBM also has more than 20,000 software developers in 75 development labs in 18 countries. IBM has earned the most U.S. patents for 16 consecutive years, and five of its researchers have been the recipients of the Nobel Prize. | Gawkwire.com
BITS &BYTES
Dot TK Registers 15 Millionth Domain Name Dot TK, the registry for .TK domain names, today announced that they have registered their 15 millionth domain name. In the last couple of weeks, Dot TK has seen a growth of new registrations of more than 40%. Dot TK’s free service is used to rename long web addresses into a simple and short .TK domain name. A short web address is faster and easier to communicate than a long one. Dot TK domains are extremely useful in Internet conversations, such as forum threads, IM chats and on social networks. Dot TK is also a life-saver in a communication channel where you are limited to a specific number of characters
per session, like Twitter. The new infrastructure has been facilitated at LeaseWeb, a company that owns and operates one of the largest IP networks in the world. LeaseWeb has more than 500 Gbps bandwidth capacity, enough to service the millions of Dot TK users. To prevent some users from registering thousands of domains, all domains that are registered should be visited at least 25 times in every 90-day period. Paid domains do not have this minimum requirement. Also, paid domain name registrants get the full license rights of
the domain, similar to other top level domain registries. Leaseweb belongs to one of the largest hosting providers in Europe. Next to many Dutch customers, Leaseweb has attracted a lot of international companies that require excellent bandwidth capacity and uptime. Customers include Starbucks, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Alcatel-Lucent. Dot TK is a joint venture of the Government of Tokelau, its communication company Teletok and BV Dot TK, a privately held company. The registry office is located in London, United Kingdom. | Gawkwire.com
Parallels Brings Cloud Computing to Asia-Pacific Region with First Parallels APAC Summit 2009 Virtualization and automation leader Parallels, is putting cloud computing at the top of the agenda in Asia by introducing its industry-uniting cloud services networking event in the region. The Parallels APAC Summit 2009 marks the expansion of Parallels’ successful annual event into Asia, where Springboard Research predicts that “in 2009 every leading hardware, software and services vendor will have a clear cloud computing strategy. Moreover, as budgets shift from cap-ex to op-ex, more IT organizations will strongly consider cloud computing as an alternative software and service delivery model.” Parallels is highly active in this market, with around 1000 customers and 200 strategic partners signed in the region. Parallels APAC Summit 2009 will take place in Singapore on September 25th, 2009 and registration is now open. Following the format of the annual US event, the Summit will feature in-depth business and product sessions with wellknown Parallels speakers and industry leaders offering insights into the industry 018 | Ping! Zine magazine
and upcoming market trends, Parallels’ upcoming initiatives strategies for building a company that grows revenue, even in this challenging economic climate.
and users from across the sector’s value chain together for networking and frank discussion about strategy, trends and future directions.”
Additionally, the one-day event is aimed at giving attendees ample opportunity to visit the exhibition hall and network with potential business partners, colleagues and the Parallels team in order to forge profitable customer and partner networks. Attendees of the event will represent all interests in the APAC cloud computing market, including cloud services providers, ISVs, developers, hardware vendors and other industry players.
“The success of Parallels Summit 2009 in February demonstrated both the sizeable opportunity represented by cloud computing and Parallels’ position as a key strategic partner for players in this space,” said Serguei Beloussov, CEO of Parallels. “We are pleased to expand this success into the Asia-Pacific market, which represents a significant prospect for Parallels and its partners in the cloud services space, both globally and within the region itself. Our event aims to highlight the potential revenue streams for cloud services providers in the region, and we hope to help them partner to survive and thrive in what is already a very competitive landscape.”
“Interest in cloud computing and hosting is growing rapidly amongst SMBs as the range of available services and trust in the model increases. This represents a great opportunity for cloud service providers that are able to execute and respond to market forces,” said Antonio Piraino, Senior Analyst at Tier1 Research. “The Parallels Summit is an established industry event that brings service providers, vendors, developers
To register for the event, or for more info please visit www.parallels.com/apac/summit/ | gawkwire.com
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The first one to publicly utter the term “Cloud Computing” was Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt. That was almost three years ago, back in 2006. The first article about “Cloud Computing” in Wikipedia was published on March 3, 2007. Since then, more than 500 versions of the same article have been submitted. A long line of references have also been added to Wikipedia’s “Cloud Computing” page. It took me 216 hours to read them all, and 1 hour to forget almost everything I had read. But let me start by offering two different definitions of “Cloud Computing.” The good definition - “Cloud Computing is a new, networking model of developing and using computer technologies. It is a paradigm in computer science in which tasks are assigned to a combination of connections, software and services accessed over a network.” The bad definition - “Google, IBM, Salesforce, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo and other corporations found another way to get even richer.” The above mentioned corporations were the first to utilize a major change in computing technologies. They began producing computer systems and platforms that are recognizable by high availability, scalability, load balancing, and the use of a large quantity of computer resources connected through a network. Why We Need Computer Clouds I met 24 year old Peter at an IT community event in Bulgaria. He and his partner founded a small dotcom startup company called Clixpy. Clixpy provides a web usability service that tracks everything visitors on any website do such as mouse movements, clicks, scrolling, form inputs and more. We discussed various aspects of online business and when we got to web hosting, I asked him what
made him choose his web hosting provider. He said that he chose a specific web hosting provider only because the company offered scalable VPS Hosting and promised him that he can increase the account resources by a single click in his control panel. When I asked him why he needs a scalable service for a startup project, he answered, “Well, Just imagine that a blog such as TechCrunch, for example, decides to post a review of us. We must be ready to handle the load and ensure that we will be online!” As you may guess, Peter’s company is one of the reputable grid hosting providers. His company doesn’t say it provides Cloud Hosting on its website, but promotes its services and products as “Grid Hosting,” with high availability and scalability among its features. We obviously need to use more and more computer resources and it is getting harder to put them in a self-contained hardware system. There are several predecessors to the computer Clouds, such as Clusters or Grid systems. All of them represent significant efforts to consolidate hardware and software resources in order to power applications that require tens of thousands, and sometimes even millions of computing processes to be handled within a very short period of time. Consumers increasingly demand the hosting of large files and web-heavy applications. This forces web hosts and providers of Internet based services to implement significant innovations in the IT infrastructures and the platforms behind them. These innovations may include building more sophisticated networks, setting up new data center architectures based on load-balanced systems, and utilizing various virtualization methods (platform virtualization, resource virtualization, application virtualization, etc.).
Cloud Computing is a new, networking model of developing and using computer technologies. It is a paradigm in computer science in which tasks are assigned to a combination of connections, software and services accessed over a network.
I was very close to giving up by calling the Ping! Zine editors and apologizing for overrating my writing skills. I wanted to admit there is no way I can write anything that might explain "Cloud Hosting". The reason was that after reading hundreds of articles, reviews, blog posts, reference guides, and other texts about "Cloud Computing", I got even more confused than I was before. But instead of quitting, I just told myself "Hey, others know even less than you do about Cloud Hosting. So go out and tell your story and how you understand Cloud Computing." So here it is, my first cloud computing article.
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Like any other type of computing, the Cloud concept creates competition of IT services and products in different markets. Those who succeed in producing comprehensive platforms and delivering them as online services, will become global IT leaders in the new era of Cloud computing. 024 | Ping! Zine magazine
Let’s not forget to say a few words about virtualization because Cloud computing is unimaginable without it. For those who are not familiar with the term, “Virtualization” is a technology which refers to abstraction of computer resources. It is a very broad term, but when using it most people refer to “Platform Virtualization” techniques. These techniques include “Full Virtualization” (a complete simulation of the underlying hardware), “Hardware-assisted Virtualization” (simulation of a complete hardware environment using hardware capabilities such as host processors), “Partial Virtualization” (partial simulation of the physical computer), “Paravirtualization” (a software interface to virtual machines, similar to that of the underlying hardware), “OS Virtualization” (method where the kernel of an OS creates multiple isolated instances, instead of just one). The virtualization technologies mentioned above make possible the transformation of computer clusters, the grid computing infrastructures we use, into “Computer Clouds.” Some important keywords which are associated with the terms “Cloud” or “Computer Cloud”, include: “efficiency,” “lower costs,” “redundancy,” “modularity,” “low latency,” “Quality of Service (QoS),” “virtualization,” ‘’Software as a Service (SaaS),” “Platform as a Service(PaaS),” and “Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS).” Any computer platform or service that corresponds with most of above keywords can be defined as a “Cloud” type. The technologies bridging the gap between computer Clusters we have known for years and new Cloud computing architectures, can be summarized with one phrase, “Platform Virtualization.” It is a technology concept which allows an operating system (OS) to be separated from the underlying platform resources. The New Rivalry. Who Will Win? Like any other type of computing, the Cloud concept creates competition of IT services and products in different markets. Those who succeed in producing comprehensive platforms and delivering them as online services (PaaS), will become global IT leaders in the new era of Cloud computing. Google, Amazon, Salesforce, Yahoo and Microsoft are now ahead of others in developing and delivering Cloud computing generation platforms. In the world of computer Clouds these companies, followed by a few other major corporations, are conquering the consumer markets by offering various IT services and products over the Internet. However, they will face tough competition from
traditional telecoms, owners of the computer networks, and ISPs. Anyone who wants to provide Cloud computing based IT services must have unlimited access to a very stable, redundant network, which has to be reliable enough so endusers will be able to access remote hardware and software resources. The boom of Cloud based services depends on the development of the IT networks. And their owners will definitely try to grab as big a share of the emerging Cloud market as they can. Cloud as Infrastructure & as Platform The first ones to benefit from the above described major transformation in computer technologies are Infrastructure providers. Companies which produce computer infrastructure, computer systems and components, like Intel, AMD, Cisco, IBM, HP, and Apple, might team up with telecoms and networking providers to deliver computer infrastructures as a service (IaaS). To better compete as major Clouds, the above mentioned companies, telecoms and networking providers need to either invest millions in developing their own infrastructures and platforms, or partner with software producers in order to deliver Cloud based services. This is good news for software companies because it creates a huge market for Cloud computing platforms. Teaming up to compete with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon and other dot-com giants, competitors will need to adopt different kinds of platform virtualization environments. That’s the reason why many producers of hardware and infrastructure services are now spending a lot in building new generation computer platforms. Here is the chance for companies that deliver platform virtualization, such as VMware, Oracle, Parallels, and Citrix, to take control of the Clouds. They deliver Cloud computing platforms (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS) on top of underlying hardware architectures. They are the ones who really make it possible for businesses and end users to move to the Clouds. I’m not sure how to categorize some of the above major corporations – place them among IaaS producers, to put them under the “SaaS label,” or to classify them as computing platform (PaaS) providers. Companies like IBM, HP, and Apple, for example, will continue to be IT entities that could deliver “everything as a service.” I’m sure that in real life all the above mentioned IT giants have to partner with other smaller IT companies to survive, especially in times when the world economy is shrinking. I think that the partnership is natural in the Cloud generation
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The Linux operating system (OS) looks to be winning the “OS war” with Microsoft’s Windows in the Cloud battlefield. At least until Microsoft comes up with a Cloud computing version of its Windows OS. 026 | Ping! Zine magazine
of computing. It is a rule, not an exception. The new Cloud partnerships might give birth to new mighty technology brands, or force the closure of companies that have been around for decades. Cloudware Today, anyone knows the meaning of “hardware” and “software.” Tomorrow, people will have to make themselves familiar with a new computer term - “Cloudware.” Cloudware refers to computing by building, delivering and using web applications and services through the Internet. A Cloudware provider is anyone who can create and deliver a computer platform as a service (PaaS). PaaS providers will be the pearls in the Clouds. I predict that Cloudware providers will become the backbones of the technology industry within the next two decades. I have a reason to make this prediction: Cloudware providers will provide all of the facilities required to support the complete cycle of building and delivering web applications and services, entirely available from the Internet, with no software downloads or installation for businesses and end-users. Cloud Hosting “Cloud Hosting” can be defined as a web hosting service delivered from a system of servers. The term is not precisely defined, yet. However, it can be very simply explained as a combination of computer clusters and a specific software platform running on top of it. Any hosting service can be considered as “Cloud Hosting,” when delivered from a fully redundant cluster server system, in which the resources are dynamically scalable and often virtualized. Of course any “Cloud Hosting” service also has to utilize a computer platform allowing all the services to be delivered and billed on a “pay per use” model. Linux or Windows Clouds Without being a software expert, I can see a few companies who are creating standards in Cloud computing. When it comes to Linux based Clouds, the first name that comes to mind is Red Hat. The Amazon web service is built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Red Hat provides the standards that developers of Linux based Clouds need to build and host applications such as compute capacity, bandwidth, and storage. The Open Source operating system platform – RHEL to be included, of course. In a white paper titled “Linux: The Operating System of the Cloud,” Amanda McPherson, Vice President of Marketing and Developer Programs Linux Foundation, says: “The dominance of
Linux within the current crop of Cloud computing vendors is eye opening. Virtually every Cloud player of any significance features Linux in either primary or supporting capacities, and this adoption is increasing. Google’s recently launched App Engine and Amazon’s competitive EC2 product both leverage the Linux kernel, as do Cloud offerings from vendors such as 10gen, 3Tera, Media Temple, Mosso, and Zimory”. McPherson’s got a point. The Linux operating system (OS) looks to be winning the “OS war” with Microsoft’s Windows in the Cloud battlefield. At least until Microsoft comes up with a Cloud computing version of its Windows OS. Having a Windows Cloud in its pocket will allow the Silicon Valley company to take its dominance in the software market to the Cloud level. All the same, I cannot give you an answer to one very important question: “Will the Cloud style of computing fit in with Microsoft’s OS, its applications and the company’s strategy in general?” In many interviews, I have seen Microsoft’s officials state that they started thinking of how to prepare their company for any kind of Internet based model of computer use in the late 90s. Microsoft has already launched Azure. They are marketing it as an “Operating system for the Cloud”. Some analysts say that Azure simplifies and automates the Cloud concept that Amazon started. Azure provides a “compute fabric” upon which developers can run their applications based on Microsoft Visual Studio development environment and the Microsoft .NET Framework. The main advantage of the Azure is that it reaches 100% of computer users thanks to Microsoft’s position in the PC market. It is also supposed to be familiar to all independent software vendors. But Azure also has some disadvantages. Azure was late entering the market and it’s still immature. But even bigger disadvantages are its restriction to .NET, and of course, being in conflict with the general concept of Cloud computing. As an Internet based model of computing it is supposed to be a computing style built on Open Source based platforms and applications. The big question that remains to be answered is whether Microsoft will rewrite the computer history within the Clouds. P!
Writer’s Bio: Dimitar has 10 years experience in web hosting industry. He is a founder of web hosting provider Host Color. Since 2006 he is working as blogger and freelance journalist. In 2008 he founded a new company to develop Linux Cloud hosting platform, called Fuscan. Dimitar also has MA of Political Science.
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Learn how you can become a Parallels Partner by visiting www.parallels.com/partners. Ping! Zine magazine | 027
bY frank feingold
I have way too man y passwords to manage
a
bout a month ago I finally came to the realization that I have way too many passwords to manage. I have passwords for work (control panels, servers, mysql, social sites), passwords for home (web mail, shopping sites), passwords for this and passwords for that. What I didn’t have was a good way to manage all these passwords. Some sort of password management software seemed to be in order. My requirements were pretty simple: It had to run on a windows PC (Mac/Linux/PDA would be a bonus). It had to generate strong passwords. It had to auto-fill login forms. Free is best, but I’d settle for inexpensive. After a bit of searching I came across KeePass (www.keepass.info). KeePass is pretty straight forward. It creates an encrypted database with AES and you can access all the id’s/passwords in that database by simply supplying a single (hopefully strong) password. The way that I have things setup, KeyPass starts when my machine boots and I enter the password to unlock the KeyPass database. After that, all the magic begins. Getting things going with KeyPass can be simple. It uses a basic tree structure of groups and sub-groups. You don’t have to setup any groups (there is a general group by default) but it’s probably a good idea to set some up to help keep things organized. Organization is nice but I’d really like to use the passwords stored in Keepass. KeePass has a wonderful auto-fill in facility. By default you would use Ctl+Alt+A to Auto-fill. If you don’t like that sequence you can change it by selecting Settings, Advanced tab and then “Auto-type” (it’s near the bottom). You can also customize what KeePass will auto-type. By default it’s “{USERNAME}{TAB}{PASSWORD}{ENTER}” but you can customize that also. A really nice feature is that you can customize the auto-type on a per entry basis. Simply add the appropriate text to any entries “Notes” field and it will use that instead of the default (for example Amazon needs two tabs
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between the username and password so that it ends up being “{USERNAME}{TAB}{TAB}{PASSWORD}{ENTER}“). KeyPass isn’t perfect at guessing which site your on (and therefore which password to use). There are a couple of ways to fix this. Because I primarily use FireFox, the fix was to install a FireFox plugin (Hostname in title Bar to be exact). If your not a FireFox user then check out the KeyPass Plugins page. There are many options there that extend KeyPass past it’s out-of-box setup. If for some reason you can’t use the auto-type feature your not totally out of luck (it just requires a couple of extra keystrokes). You’ll just have to open the entry you need in KeyPass. By default KeePass masks the passwords with asterisk’s but you can simply click the button to the right of the password (the icon is 3 blue dots) and the password will display in clear text. KeePass also had a couple of “bonus” features (at least for me). First, you can run KeePass directly from a USB key. This is a perfect solution for me as I tend to work on several different machines and I don’t want to deal with synchronizing the database. The USB version runs directly from the USB key and leaves no footprint on the PC you were using. Secondly there is a BlackBerry version. I have not had a chance to test the Blackberry version but that’s next on my (very long) to-do list. P! Writer’s Bio: Frank Feingold is the President of Doreo Hosting. Frank’s responsibility at Doreo includes new product development and customer satisfaction. Frank has been involved in the web hosting industry since 2001. Prior to his web hosting career Frank had 20+ years of mainframe and mid-range experince working in corporate america.
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bY tiara rea
Planning Your Online Business? Don’t Look for a Host; Look for a Partner
In the world of Business and Ecommerce Web Hosting, there are partners and then there are the other 200 million websites that pop up in Google when you do a basic search for “web hosting”. Your business means more to you than high bandwidth offers or empty uptime guarantees, so you should find the kind of hosting company that does more than just host your website – they should be the backbone of your business. What does a reliable Business Web Host deliver? Besides the usual terms you need to know for any web hosting plan you’re looking into (longevity, uptime, and technical support), for Ecommerce Hosting, you
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need to look specifically for the following: * Dedicated IPs. A Dedicated IP Address is an address that is not shared with any other site on the server and corresponds directly with your domain name. IP addresses actually predate domain names—domains were invented because our brain has a harder time remembering "123.48.76.098" than YourSite.com. In a shared hosting environment, an IP is very important to your ecommerce security. It’s also one of the first things you’ll need to purchase for your online business and something not every web host can provide – without charging an arm and a leg, anyway!
But without a Dedicated IP, you won’t be able to secure your site with an SSL Certificate, and without that, no client is going to put their credit card in your hands. Just make sure your web host doesn't overcharge you; you shouldn't need to pay more than $5/month for an IP. * SSL Certificate. A “Secure Sockets Layer” Certificate sounds like something out of a bad 50’s Sci-Fi flick but is actually the difference between a trusted ecommerce website and an online business that never makes it off the ground. An SSL Certificate is used to identify the merchant who owns it, as well as to encrypt credit cards and payment data being processed on your website. Regarding cost, you'll want to ensure again that you do not overpay for this service. A normal SSL Certificate can range upwards of $100, depending on the security features it offers. * Multiple Ecommerce Features. The basic needs of your business most often include shopping carts, merchant accounts, and great statistics tracking. If ecommerce carts like OsCommerce, ZenCart, or CubeCart come standard with your hosting plan, you’ve already got a great base for your online business. You will also need a gateway merchant account for payment processing, and having tracking software can help you determine where your customers are coming from and what they are buying. Which shopping cart should I use? Three years ago, this would have been an easier question to answer. But these days, there are literally hundreds of choices for reliable online shopping cart software products. The ones I mentioned earlier—OsCommerce, ZenCart, and CubeCart—are some of the standard carts you can find automatically with most hosts. But if you choose one of the many other available carts, your web hosting provider will likely be able to provide fantastic support for them. Just double check the shopping cart's website to ensure it will work on the type of server you are hosted on. So if you're on a Linux server, you probably won't want an ASP.NETbased cart. In the end, it’s up to each individual user to choose the shopping cart system that works best for your business. What else do I need for my Business Website? The main things you want to consider are uptime and reliability, because if your website is not online, you are not in business. The rest of the things that will make your website work depend on what you are selling or providing. The best resource I can offer is to call potential web hosts and talk to them on the phone. Ask serious questions and get serious feedback. Every host is different—finding the one that is the best partner for your business will ultimately be up to you! P!
Writer’s Bio: Tiara Rea works for Lunarpages Web Hosting, where she is the Affiliate Program Manager and writes for the Lunarpages Newsletter and Blog. A whiz with affiliate marketing and copywriting, Tiara is also obsessed with Harry Potter, good poetry, and Japanese manga.
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bY douglas hanna
From Dorm Room to Market Domination
HostGator’s rapid rise to the top Founded in 2002, the 200-employee shared, reseller and dedicated web hosting company has continued to grow at an astounding rate. HostGator’s remarkable 5300% growth between 2004 and 2007 earned the company the twentyfirst place on Inc. Magazine’s exclusive list of the fastest growing private companies in the United States.
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PING! ZINE PROFILES
Yet, how HostGator has excelled in the highly competitive web hosting industry and grown to be so successful is still a mystery to many in the industry. “In the beginning, it was just me being able to talk to everybody personally that made a difference,” said Brent Oxley, HostGator’s founder and CEO. Oxley, 26, started HostGator in his dorm room at Florida Atlantic University with about $1,000 that he had earned from projects as a webmaster. After just a year in college, Oxley found himself leaving class (to answer phone calls from customers) more often than he was actually going to class and decided to drop out.
“Dropping out was risky and a lot of my friends and family disagreed with the decision. I wanted to pursue my dream and work on HostGator full time and I had to drop out to do that.”
As Oxley continued working on HostGator, the company continued to grow. “The personal touch got us so far with the first 100 customers, but after that, word of mouth took over, and HostGator continued to grow.” HostGator’s initial growth brought on the company’s earliest growing pains. “There was a time when customers
couldn’t reach anyone on the phone and I was waking up in the middle of the night to take phone calls.” As time went on, HostGator was able to use some of its growth to its advantage and was able to secure true 24/7 support coverage. Server reliability improved and the company was able to start offering things like free billing systems and domain name reseller accounts for the company’s reseller hosting customers. Even with 24/7 support secured and sales rolling in, HostGator continued to encounter growing pains. The company’s management team is made up of mostly self-taught employees who have been promoted up to their current positions. None of them have much experience managing dynamic teams at rapid growth companies and there wasn’t an Ivy Leaguer or an MBA among them. “No one here has had their position handed to them to them on a silver platter,” said Oxley. “A lot of these Ivy League CEOs get paid tens of millions of dollars and don’t know what their customers need or what problems there are. They live in a bubble.” According to Oxley, the self-made management team has resulted in less corporate politics and more accountability. Working at HostGator isn’t like working in corporate America. The dress code is non-existent, there are essentially no meetings, and processes and procedures are developed ad-hoc more often than they are planned well in advance. Oxley is involved in almost every aspect of the company’s management and keeps a close tab on what customers are saying.
“There isn’t a day that goes by when I’m not emailing a customer. Customers see my name on our site or around the Internet and they ask for me,” said Oxley. “And I actually respond and help them out, which is surprising to many customers.”
The relaxed corporate environment, and Oxley’s vigilant eye over customer preferences and the company’s overall progress, has contributed significantly to HostGator’s rapid growth and rise to success. With growth comes the need for hiring additional people to watch servers, answer the phones, take live chats, and respond to emails. Maintaining adequate staffing to keep up with the company’s growth has always been a problem for HostGator and remains a challenge today. The company had an especially tough struggle in its first office in Boca Raton, Florida. “People went to Boca to retire, not to work,” said Oxley. To gain access to a larger labor market, the company moved its headquarters to Houston and started an aggressive
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PING! ZINE PROFILES
recruiting campaign that involved working with recruiters, setting up billboards, attending conventions, and running magazine ads. “The most effective method we’ve encountered is calling up our customers and asking if the want to work for us. They know our products and our procedures and tend to be passionate about the company,” said Oxley. “We have a list of all our customers who live in Houston and every now and then, we’ll call some of them up and ask if they’d be interested in coming in for an interview,” said Lance Custen, HostGator’s Chief Operating Officer. Despite all of these efforts, HostGator continues to encounter problems with finding enough people who possess the proper experience sets to be effective at the company. “There are a lot of system administrators out there, but very few actually have experience with shared hosting.” Like any company, HostGator has made a number of hiring mistakes over the years. “It has been a bumpy road finding the employees we need,” said Oxley. “Overall, though, we’re making progress and hiring the right people.” In addition to staffing challenges, HostGator kept hitting the glass ceiling limitations of the software and products it chose to use for many of its backend systems. “One of our biggest problems is that we outgrow everything we use very quickly and it breaks and it ends up turning into a hack job,” said Oxley. HostGator currently uses its own ticket and live chat systems and is in the process of finishing its custom-made billing system. “Automation is critical to our business and we have a hard time
getting the type of automation and level of customization we need from out-of-thebox software.” HostGator is not concerned about change and developments in the hosting industry. Even though the company stays competitive and continues to add to its existing offerings with features like free toll free numbers and SSL certificates for certain customers, the company’s core business has remained largely unchanged. “There have always been buzzwords like cloud hosting or clustered hosting, but a lot of these technologies are still in their infant stages and I’ve set to see any of them have a real impact of where hosting is going to go in the near future,” Oxley said of some of the newer technologies in the hosting industry.
“I don’t see the industry changing that much,” he added. “There will be more consolidation and the bigger hosts will continue getting bigger and more and more hosting companies will start competing for their piece of the pie.” Oxley believes that companies like Google and Amazon are going to have trouble competing with traditional web
hosts because they view hosting as a technical industry rather than a service industry. “We spend about $30,000 a month with Google and I have to email back and forth ten times to get any sort of useful answer from their support team. I hope they get bigger and improve their service,” joked Oxley half-seriously. “The large companies fail at that aspect of the business.” HostGator’s cynicism towards the hosting industry’s buzzwords has left the company with a few gaps in its offerings. The company doesn’t offer any type of virtualization services, even though Oxley says VPS is on HostGator’s radar. HostGator has also taken a long time to launch its Windows shared hosting plans, but Oxley says he is waiting for additional staffing before launching the Windows shared hosting offerings out of their current beta stage. “One day, we might try out cloud hosting offering,” Oxley said. In the mean time, though, HostGator is enjoying something that many companies aren’t seeing much of these days – success. Any young entrepreneur who can grow his dorm room side business into a multi-million dollar market leader has a lot of reasons to be happy and Oxley is no exception. The company is setting sales and revenue records on what seems to be a daily basis and is growing as fast as it can hire qualified employees. When a company’s biggest problem is hiring fast enough to keep up with tremendous growth, you know things are going well. P!
Writer’s Bio: Douglas Hanna is the Customer Service Editor at Ping! Zine. In the last issue of Ping! Zine, he wrote about The Planet’s foray into managed hosting.
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bY david dunlap
How to Make Your
Content Regal I think we have all heard the rallying cry, “Content is King!”. Of course this leads to the question of whether content for content sake is still king? The answer of course is no, it has to be good content. Question is what is good content and more to the point, how do you begin on making it?
It is fairly vague is it not; “content sells,” “focus on making quality content,” “content is king,” “update your content often,” etc. these are all well and good concepts, but how do you go about writing quality content or finding the subject matter for quality content? Even myself, with some 13 years of journalistic experience in total, will have problems finding good topics.
What to Write About
When it comes to writing quality content the first step is choosing what to write about. There are a few methods to choose what to write on. The two methods I use the most are (1) I write on things that I want to know more information about. An example of this was the blog I wrote on data center tiers. Actually I wrote this more for myself since I was sick and tired of reading about a web host’s tier 3 data center, blah, blah, blah. In the end, the article garnered a lot of hits because there are probably a lot of people out there who feel the same way I do. This article is also about putting down some information that is hard to find. Most places tell you, you need content, but they don’t tell you how to go about getting it. The second route is to write something that interests you. Some articles I’ve written have been born from conversations I’ve had at a bar. Their topics interested me and so I wrote about them. I have a blog coming up about reinventing the wheel for fun and profit. To get this topic I thought about conventional wisdom and what happens when we turn it on its ear. I focused on “don’t reinvent the wheel” because I have seen that we all do it. I saw a few examples that have reinvented the wheel and from there I moved on the next step.
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Now I am going to do something that most of these fairly generic articles on content don’t do, I’m going to give examples. It’s somewhat like watching a magician giving up trade secrets since most of these articles are written for general audience, wide acceptance, and to drum up business for the author (you need good content and you can’t possibly do it, so hire me). There are a few rules to follow before we begin, the subject of the content must coincide with the Web site, business, server, etc. If I am selling furniture, the last thing I need is an article on replacing a radiator in a 1988 Ford LTD. The difference between good and poor content is that poor content doesn’t really belong or is uninteresting. In these cases, sometimes one sentence is far better than a paragraph. Example 1: A Dedicated Hosting company offers their customers monthly custom security audits for a nominal fee. This is the perfect opportunity for good content. In fact, this company can produce an ongoing series. Possible articles includes: How to Secure Apache How to Secure IIS Best Practices in Producing Secure Web Applications Security Audit: Common Areas for Auditing Security Audit: Penetration Testing Security Audit: I Have Done the Audit, Now What From one basic concept we have produced six articles. Each of these articles will be on topic, have the potential to be interesting and useful, and can help to sell the added service. Example 2: A Web design company offers their clients custom and template solutions. Custom solutions include adding content, flexible designs and color schemes, and the ability to add any sort of module type option. The template solutions can be purchased in a basic, extended customizable, or exclusive license. Possible articles include: The Psychological Value of Color Schemes Eyetrack Heatmaps and What it Means for Your Website What to Look for in a Content Writing Outsourcing Team How to Customize ____ Template (one of these for each template provided) How to Get the Most Out of a Website Template Again, a basic concept and several good article ideas. When thinking of a topic, it should be interesting, informative, and tie back into your business.
How to Write it
Stay on topic. Staying on topic is very important and unfortunately for myself and everyone involved, I rarely do. But if I did, my articles would be shorter and easier to read and probably a bit more popular. But I digress. You want to be on topic and you want to research your topic. Nothing worse than having something to write about, but not having anything to say. Don’t start writing your article/blog/pamphlet/ whatever on the day its due. Instead do some research, write some notes, and write a few paragraphs a week or so in advance. This gives you some time to read it over, remove sentences that don’t work or are uninteresting or are even off topic. In life, what we put into something is reflected in what comes out. If we put in quality ingredients and we prepare it the way it is suppose to be prepared, we get a quality product. With content, if you are lazy with your preparation or your research you will get a subpar product. Research is an important step. You could research a subject and find only two
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pieces of material and leave it at that or you could find those two pieces and use them to find more sources. A better solution than using just those two resources would be finding an expert and interviewing them. An even better solution would be to interview them and try the information yourself and see what things you like and what things you can improve on. By doing things yourself you receive a familiarity with the subject that opens up further areas of study and gives you a greater depth of understanding, which will show in the final product.
Testing Quality
If you have an idea for content that you think will bring in a lot of good traffic and will live up to all of those odd monikers for content success discussed earlier, then you should probably have people you know read it before it gets published. Let the readers know you want objectivity and to not pull any punches and you also have to be able to take a great deal of abuse on something you have worked long and hard on. Absolute candor and objectivity is a must when determining article quality. Revision and building on the ideas your editors discussed will further hone your content.
Putting it All Together
So I first thought about conventional wisdom. I thought about various quotes like work smarter not harder, a penny saved is a penny earned, the early bird gets the worm, etc. Although the last one of those is a good topic I might write on (who needs to get up early when you can have Google get your worm for you), but I ended up zeroing in on don’t reinvent the wheel. I brainstormed what the phrase means and the different ways innovation has come out of not following this age old axiom. Then I picked one of those ways to talk about. After that I wrote about it and how the wheel was in fact reinvented over and over again, with each successful build even better than the previous one. So I wrote it up and shelved it. I went back to it last week and read it over to see if it flows off the tongue. This week I am picking out some pictures for it. I gave it to a few friends of mine, both in work and outside and I await what they think about it. After that takes place I will go through and revise it, then I will send it back to my friends to look over again.P!
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HostingCon 2009, the largest gathering of hosted services professionals will take place this year in Washington D.C. from August 10th-12th.
This year’s show, celebrating its Fifth Anniversary, brings together practitioners and visionaries from companies like Microsoft, Google, Parallels, Rackspace, Soft Layer, Peer 1, UK2, cPanel, Verisign, SpamExperts, Salesforce.com - hundreds of executives, marketers, and technology professionals from hosted service providers across 32 countries! HostingCon 2009 provides an exceptional opportunity for you to experience multiple keynotes and educational tracks covering technology, operations, marketing, business development, and emerging trends focused on helping hosted services professionals significantly grow and manage their businesses. Some of this year’s keynotes and general sessions include: • Gain a vision for cloud computing as defined by industry giants including Google, Microsoft, Salesforce.com and Rackspace. • Discover how virtualization will enable hosting providers to be successful in the new era of SaaS services presented by Zane Adam from Microsoft.
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• Gain competitive strength through an in-depth market analysis delivered by Sergei Beloussov, CEO of Parallels. • Uncover U.S. and EU data protection policies from top government delegates. • Discover how to survive the financial crisis directly from hosting industry CFOs. • Learn “Models and Approaches to Cloud Services” from leading-edge companies like Soft Layer and Mezeo. • Determine whether to “Build, Buy or Colocate” from a leading telecom analyst, Iain Grant of Seaboard Group. • Get the latest strategies and insights from one of the brightest minds in search engine optimization and linking building – Rand Fishkin from SEOMoz. Beyond technology, HostingCon 2009 will deliver proven and practical strategies from many of the brightest leaders from inside and outside the hosting industry on topics including search engine optimization (local, mobile and international), social media
marketing, lead generation, and new product launches. Plus learn the latest data security challenges, uncover PCI compliance issues, and experience complete immersion in the biggest issues and opportunities facing the hosted services industry today! Attend HostingCon 2009 and you’ll experience three power-packed days of leading-edge strategies, and insight to the technology that will drive the future of hosting. Plus – you’ll have the oncea-year chance to rub shoulders with the practitioners and visionaries, the movers and shakers, through top-notch networking and after-hours parties! Stay connected to HostingCon.com for program and exhibit hall specifics over the next few months. You can also stay up-to-date on HostingCon 2009 by following us on Twitter. For a complete list of exhibition and sponsorship opportunities, please call Ms. Kleiner directly at 513-322-5607. P!
Ping! Zine magazine | 045
bY derek vaughan
Tweet Tweet
Twitter Blasts onto the Hosting Scene Work on the project that would become Twitter began on March 31, 2006 when the man who is credited with conceiving the idea, Jack Dorsey, wrote the original code version. Since that day - which was not long ago - the Twitter service has become arguably the hottest and fastest growing brand on the Internet. For those who are not yet completely familiar with Twitter, it is defined by Wikipedia as: ‘’a free social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow anybody to access them. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. The service is free to use over the Internet.’’ 042 | Ping! Zine magazine
While the idea of catching brief snippets of your friends activities might sound like light entertainment, Twitter has quickly established itself as a powerful business tool and brand builder capable of establishing one on one discussions with current and potential customers. I first became aware of the true potential of Twitter earlier this year. In February there was a massive snowstorm which blanketed the UK from top to bottom with snow levels that topped over a foot in many places. Although weather reports guessed at snow amounts across the country, it was impossible to use satellite images of the snowfall in real time. That’s because the cloud cover prevented the satellites from seeing the ground. One prescient developer named Ben Marsh came up with a unique and helpful idea: get the general UK Twitter population to report on the snowfall at their location in the UK,
then create a mashup of that Twitter-reported data by plotting the results on a Google map. The result was a real-time graphical map of the snowfall amounts as reported by people who are actually there on the ground. UK Techcrunch and the BBC picked up the story, which quickly created a bandwidth challenge for Ben Marsh’s hosting provider - UK hosting company 34SP.com. Despite the massive additional traffic to the site and the bandwidth requirements to keep it live, 34SP.com stepped up to the challenge. Daniel Foster, founder and Technical Director at 34SP.com explained, ‘’Our bandwidth is supplied by Level 3, AboveNet, and Cogent. This is a fully BGP routed, multi-homed network. Failure of any two of the three providers won’t affect connectivity. Additionally, the 34SP.com network operates far below total capacity, so any unexpected increases in usage will not cause any network disruptions. This is a key consideration when someone like Ben Marsh gets significant media attention in a short period.’’ Now half a year later, Twitter has experienced meteoric growth - ironically, some of the fastest growth has been in the UK. The BBC noted a Hitwise report that measured Twitter growth in the UK at over 1000 percent year over year. That’s a 10 fold growth factor. Two of the clear factors driving the popularity of the Twitter service are its function as a news breaking outlet, and also as a direct communication path for fans to access celebrities. Notably, Twitter was the first service to post a photo of the downed US Airways flight 1549 which crash landed in the Hudson Bay in New York in January 2009. The photo became an instant sensation with the news media and promptly caused outages on the Twitter server. Another boost to Twitter’s popularity came a few weeks ago as Oprah Winfrey joined the service - and concurrently Aston Kutcher and CNN jockeyed to be the first Twitter account to garner 1,000,000 followers (Aston Kutcher won).
044
was retweeted and it was in front of more than 25,000 Twitter users within 7minutes. Other than a TV and Radio, I don’t know of another media outlet that can produce those kinds of results that fast.’’ ‘’We use Twitter to monitor our customer service levels,’’ says Daniel Foster of 34SP.com. ‘’Simply by searching the Twitter ecosystem for our company name and its variants we can observe the attitudes and experiences of our clients without being intrusive. Here at 34SP.com we have found that sending out numerous micro messages doesn’t really fit our business environment, so we don’t Tweet out - but seeing what everyone else is Twittering helps us meet our clients high service expectations.’’ Lou Honick is the former CEO of HostMySite.com prior to the company’s acquisition by Wachovia Capital Partners. Mr. Honick took some time out to give his thoughts on Twitter, ‘’I think Twitter is an interesting way to share what you have going on. Like blogs and other social media tools, I think it is hard to stay up to date and keep Twitter updated. Some people are better than others.’’ Mr. Honick also opined on the success of Twitter, ‘’It is easy to use. The concept is simple and it doesn’t take much to setup a feed and post. The fact that it is geared towards mobile devices really contributes to its success.’’ P!
So now that Twitter has caught fire and reached critical mass, how is it being used by web hosting and Internet services professionals? An early adopter of Twitter was the hosting trade show, HostingCon. The company uses its Twitter feed to keep HostingCon exhibitors and attendees up to date on the latest news related to the show.
Below are the Twitter feeds of the people and companies that participated in this article.
Here are the thoughts of a few other hosting and Internet services professionals on Twitter.
HostingCon Twitter feed: http://www.twitter.com/ hostingcon.
Brett Tabke has worked in the computer industry for almost three decades. Mr. Tabke is the CEO and founder of WebmasterWorld Inc. and Chairman of the webmaster exhibition and conference, PubCon. He was also the founder of PHD Software Systems, a specialty software manufacture that produced a line of software for Commodore computers in the 80’s and 90’s. Mr. Tabke has also coined several common SEO phrases such as ‘’Link Farm’’, ‘’SEO Themes’’, and the ubiquitous ‘’SERP’’ (Search Engine Results Page). Brett Tabke uses Twitter extensively and lends his insight on the service as a business and social networking tool, ‘’The most compelling reason to use Twitter is Reach. I posted a tweet yesterday that
Brett Tabke Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/btabke.
| Ping! Zine magazine
34SP.com Twitter feed: http://www.twitter.com/34sp.
Lou Honick Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/louhonick. PingZine’s new Twitter feed: http://www.twitter.com/pingzine. Writer’s Bio: Derek Vaughan is an Internet industry veteran, marketing consultant and writer. Mr. Vaughan has architected the marketing growth of several prominent web hosting success stories leading to acquisition including Affinity Internet, Inc., Aplus.Net and HostMySite.com. Prior to his entry into the web hosting industry, Mr. Vaughan was responsible for online marketing at The Walt Disney Company where he marketed ecommerce for the ESPN.com and NASCAR.com brands. Mr. Vaughan received his M.B.A. from Vanderbilt University and currently serves on the HostingCon Advisory Board.
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www.lionfiresolutions.com 1-800-521-5174 | sales@lionfiresolutions.com 052 | Ping! Zine magazine
bY MaRK DRAKE
Helpful Web Design Recommendations Let’s recall that a website is the marketing tool for an online business. It goes without saying good websites must be attractive and be able to attract and grab the attention of a large number of visitors.
In fact, the truth is that good web designing is an art that requires knowledge of programming and how your visitor will interact with the website. So, it is very important for you to make the website user-friendly. What is even more valuable, you should create it in such a way that search engines can consider you to be original and unique and find you organically. After all, your aim is to compete against the first 10 competitors for your keyword and search engine optimization is how to do this. Let’s come to the main part of the issue. You should keep in mind that the most vital critical important rule you need to follow for a website is the KISS formula – Keep It Simple Silly. Do not lose your visitor with a whole lot of fancy stuff if you want them to find your product or message. First and foremost you need to ask yourself a question: What do I want my website to do for you? You need to answer this question since you need to design your website according to this question. If your case is that all you want is a simple squeeze page then design a simple squeeze page. If your case is that you want to convey some kind of information then keep it simple and convey that information, as fancy graphics and other distractions
are not conveying what you want to present to your visitor. The second point that should be taken into consideration is planning the web design. For this purpose you must take a piece of paper and plan what you want on the web page and bear in mind that this point can not be omitted as it is very important for your website success. It will be much easier for you if you are doing your own research on other websites on the material you want to convey to your visitor. You can be sure that it will give you awareness for how to design your site. Thirdly, you should plan your theme and layout for each page. Actually you can look at your competitors and see whether you find their theme attractive. You can include interesting ideas from those sites that you know will attract your visitor and later design those ideas into your website. The fourth point to take into consideration is that navigation around your site needs requires a site map. Keep in mind that it is rather important that your visitor can easily navigate around your site. It should be also added that there is a need to implement normal links for moving around and placement of those links together like an index for your website. You should understand that it is im-
portant that your visitor does not get frustrated while navigating around your site because they will simply leave your site or click away. The fifth valuable factor that should be pointed out is that download time is important. The truth is it gets frustrating to the majority of visitors if they have to wait for a page to download. That’s why overuse of graphics and images should be considered as they increase the download time. It will be helpful for you to know that, ideally, a complete page should not exceed 30KB since this ensures that most visitors will see your whole page in about 5 to 6 seconds at the most. The last but not least thing to mention here is that you should not allow your visitor the opportunity to click away on a link on your web site that leaves your domain as it has been proven that you generally have lost that visitor and a potential customer. In conclusion it should be mentioned that you need to remember that it is about presenting the information in an elegant, decorative, user friendly and timely manner. So, follow the tips that were mentioned above when dealing with the web design in the future. P! More Tips? www.edynamo.com Ping! Zine magazine | 047
press releases
bY Dave Young
Standard or optimized? Business owners are smart. But one of the most common questions I get asked is “What’s the difference between a standard press release and an optimized press release?” I think that’s a great question. Having written and distributed dozens of standard and optimized press releases, I can answer that question with details on why you should always go with an optimized press release. Ping! Zine magazine | 049
Defining each type of press release A standard press release is typically 400-500 words with one link back to your website (usually a link with your company name to the homepage of your website). Distribution for a standard press release is minimal, often appearing on industry related websites. An optimized press release is typically 500-600 words with one key phrase per 100 words, all linked to high quality web pages on your website specifically targeted to boost your search engine rankings. Distribution for an optimized press release utilizes distribution points that are specifically designed to get those key phrases and links on thousands of media related websites including industry publications, blogs, and other media related sites.
Who uses optimized press releases? Anyone who wants to rank high in the search engines, drive more qualified traffic, and generate buzz better and faster than their competition. Whether you want to market a hosting company, software product, technology, or any other type of service, optimized press releases will help you reach your goals – quickly.
Cost vs. return on investment A standard press release costs significantly less than an optimized press release (sometimes hundreds less), but the return on investment (ROI) is significantly higher for an optimized press release. Optimized press releases take more time to plan, write, and analyze for maximum results. The distribution points, time it takes to run an analysis on the right key phrases to use, and the time it takes to distribute the press release, is all worth it in the long run. Return on investment is more than just quick traffic or an announcement, it’s part of building a search engine marketing (SEM) campaign that continues to generate high quality traffic from qualified visitors and turning that traffic into qualified sales.
Longevity vs. quick traffic Both types of press releases provide a spike in traffic. But in the long run, an optimized press release will generate more traffic on a consistent basis. An optimized press release will generate traffic based on the key phrases used, distribution points, and
outside sources that pick up your press release. Over time, your optimized press releases start to build a steady increase in highly qualified traffic to your website. And when bloggers and industry related websites start to pick up your optimized press releases, you get a continuous flow of traffic – all using keywords and key phrases optimized specifically for your business.
Yeah, they both help your brand Repeating your company’s name or brand is crucial to a successful marketing campaign. The more you put your brand in front of people, the more your brand resonates in their minds. Both types of press releases will help your brand, but optimized press releases reach more people than standard press releases because of the high rankings you can achieve from search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. With optimized press releases, you can include more links per release and each link is specifically targeted to help your website rank higher in Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and other leading search engines.
Rank high in the SERPs Optimized press releases help you rank high, usually on the first page of search engine ranking pages (SERPs). If done correctly, you can rank high for any key phrase you choose. First place, top five, top ten, or whatever page you choose when you have a professional SEO expert write and distribute your optimized press releases. Your optimized press release expert will know exactly how to get your most valuable keywords and key phrases ranked high in top search engines. And they should be able to show you case studies and examples from existing clients who have achieved top rankings.
Make it part of your marketing mix Don’t just use optimized press release marketing as your only marketing tool. Combine optimized press releases with all your marketing initiatives including search engine optimization, magazine advertising, banner ads, case studies, white papers, newsletters, and digital brochures. Yes, banner ads still work. Remember, the more someone sees your company name or brand, the more it resonates in their minds. Add a case study, a monthly email newsletter, a white paper or two, and a series of optimized press releases and you have yourself a winning marketing campaign.
Whether you want to market a hosting company, software product, technology, or any other type of service, optimized press releases will help you reach your goals quickly. 050 | Ping! Zine magazine
Hiring a professional to handle all your optimized press release marketing will be one of the best investments youll ever make with your business. Go ahead. Try optimized press release marketing today. Tracking results The best way to track results is to watch your key phrases in the SERPs and monitor those key phrases in an analytics program like Google Analytics. I have seen client rankings jump from nonexistent to the number one position in Google. If you’re familiar with SEO, you are probably saying to yourself, “Yeah, but what’s the competition for the key phrases you used?” Good question. It doesn’t really matter how much competition the key phrase has. Some people say the more competition a key phrase has the more difficult it is to rank higher in the search engines. That’s a big myth. A professional search engine optimization expert, who writes and distributes optimized press releases, can get your key phrases ranked high in Google, very high. Of course, if the key phrases are extremely competitive, you may need to distribute more optimized press releases or improve your existing website’s content. So it’s not a matter of if it can work, it’s how long it takes and what you’re willing to do to make it work. A professional optimized press release marketing expert will track all of your results and report them to you in a format that’s easy to read and clearly shows how well your campaign is doing.
Reporting the results You get a full report on how well your key phrases are moving up in the SERPs, how well your optimized press releases perform compared to other press releases, and how many sites, blogs, and media outlets picked up your press releases. Some people say you can’t track results, but an optimized press release writing and distribution expert can tell you exactly how your optimized press release marketing campaign is doing today, tomorrow, and well into the future. How many optimized press releases does it take to see results? You can see immediate results with your first optimized press release in terms of traffic. Depending on the popularity of your website and brand, you can expect to see a 25-100% increase in traffic. In order to achieve a higher increase in traffic, your optimized press release campaign must be written, developed, and distributed properly. You should distribute at least three optimized press releases to help boost rankings. I personally
recommend distributing one a month. But don’t stop at three. Keep distributing at least once a month for as long as you have newsworthy information.
The process First, information is gathered on the topic of your press release. Then a complete analysis of your existing website content, onpage optimization, key phrases, and SERPs is done. Once the data has been gathered, your press release is written, sent to you for approval, and then distributed on optimized networks. A professional optimized press release writer will distribute your press releases on media websites designed specifically for enhancing SEO results. Additionally, your optimized press release writing expert can pinpoint targeted audiences and distribute your press releases to thousands of interested buyers, vendors, partners, and in today’s Internet world, bloggers and even a handful of tweets on the up and coming Twitter network. Even if you’ve had success with standard press releases, try utilizing the power of optimized press releases from someone who has the experience, dedication, and proof of results. Give it a try for three months and watch your revenues increase. You can always go back to standard press releases, but once you try optimized press releases for at least three months, you will want to continue with an ongoing optimized press release marketing campaign. The more optimized press releases you distribute, the higher your SEO rankings, the more traffic you receive, and the more revenue you can generate. It’s a powerful marketing tool.
Remember, hire a professional Not everybody can write and distribute optimized press releases. Make sure you hire someone who has the credentials, expertise, and industry knowledge to help you reach your business goals. Hiring a professional to handle all your optimized press release marketing will be one of the best investments you’ll ever make with your business. Go ahead. Try optimized press release marketing today. P!
Writer’s Bio: Dave Young is a professional writer, marketing consultant, SEO guru, and founder of Young Copy, a leading promotional and technical writing services firm. Visit www.youngcopy.com to learn how you can boost your company’s revenues. Ping! Zine magazine | 051
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Table of Contents bY david dunlap
Sleep Mode, the
Bane of My Existence If I could boil down my long list of grievances towards various software and hardware companies it would probably be the sleep key on my keyboard and what it does to my desktop.
I have a highly specialized keyboard and mouse, i.e. a piece of crap that does everything I don’t want it to do. It’s wireless, and comes with a long list of features that I rarely use... volume controls, Skype buttons, zoom in/out (I REALLY hate those), picture button (what the heck is that for), LCD functions, and it makes Julian fry. But none is more nefarious than the Sleep button. When my keyboard’s batteries run low I must flip the keyboard and add the fresh little bunny cylinders. Upon said flippage, the sleep button hits the desk with forceful earnest and lo and behold it actually goes off, on low batteries. I could’nt get the buttons to work before, but apparently sleep mode works fine when there is barely any juice left in the computer.
054 | Ping! Zine magazine
So there I was, Windows moving into sleep mode on me. I hate sleep mode, why would I ever use it? Hibernate is just fine. So here I am keyboard low on batteries computer in sleep mode, everything dies down. I click on sleep mode again throwing the system into a sleep loop. The computer doesn’t know if I want to make it sleep or if I need it to be bright eyed and bushytailed. Before too long multiple pop-up windows diverge on my screen. All asking if I want to cancel sleep mode and all are unclickable. No way to get out of it, the computer locks up. PANIC STRICKEN I hit reset. Throwing my whole computer into havoc. Upon boot up my user profile has been deleted. Favorites, desktop shortcuts, outlook rules (some 100 rules), email accounts, etc. all lost. Wonderful. Even with the reshuffling of registry keys I still have about a half day’s worth of work to rebuild everything. Thanks to my number one pet peeve: Sleep Mode Keys and XP. P!