Ping! Zine Web Hosting Magazine 34

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contents

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BUSINESS BUILDING USING TWITTER

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It might not come as a surprise that many of the world’s top CEOs still are not onboard with the whole social networking thing. What is most interesting though is the percentage of CEOs who don’t care. Two CEOs from Fortune Magazine’s Top 100 Companies have Twitter accounts. Does this mean that Twitter has no future in successful companies? You make the call.

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Hostingcon 2009 Scavenger Hunt

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The Problems With Using Hardware To Compensate For Slow Software

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Constant Evolution: HostingCon, Be there!

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3 Uncommon Seats For Your PC Desk

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business of green

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Part 2: Helpful Web Design Recommendations

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Product Review: Prevent DDos Attacks with Black lotus

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Ping! Zine Service Directory

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Crime and Punishment

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7.4

BITS & BYTES

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BRITNEY SPEARS IS DEAD?

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Denver’s NEW DATACENTER

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Wikimedia Foundation Receives Grant to Grow Wikimedia Commons Parallels Announces First EMEA Partner Roadshow

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i/o Data Centers Opens its Phoenix ONE Data Center Andy Burton Appointed CEO of FastHosts

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.ME Domains Enjoy Record Growth in 2009

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SafeNet NAMES New CEO YAHOO! UNVEILS SEARCH PAD

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Twitter’s lack of security The Planet names Senior Sales exec.

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Steve Jobs Undergoes Transplant

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Internet Databases Celebrates Ten-Year Anniversary

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7.4

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PING! ZINE Publisher Keith Duncan Managing Editor/Designer Derek Morris Executive Editor Robert Lang Senior Editor Dave Young Marketing Director Lacey Parnell

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 Evan Kamlet Michelle LaBrosse Erica Edmond Mitch Keeler Mark Drake Pingdom.com

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 July-August 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 and all points and ideas are strictly that of the writers involved and not that of the publisher, publishing company, printing company, Al Sharpton or editors.

If you are at HostingCon and read this masthead, point it out to a Ping! Zine representative for a free and cheesy prize.

This issue is dedicated to Billy Mays, the man who sold us on crap we really didn’t need nor have any use for. In other words, the greatest salesman of all time.

Will someone tell Timmy what debauchery means?

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bits & bytes

BRITNEY SPEARS IS DEAD? NOT EXACTLY KIDS!

Britney Spears hack highlights risk of weak Web 2.0-based service passwords “Mildly alarming as reports of Britney’s premature demise were, they also came in the wake of incorrect Web reports from New Zealand of the actor Jeff Goldblum also having passed away,” said Rob Rachwald, Imperva’s Director of Marketing.

“What the complex online events leading up to the incorrect reports of celebrity deaths spreading around the Web show us, however, is the sheer power of the Internet in terms of potential reputational damage,” he added.

According to Rachwald, since Twitter’s picture service currently only has a four-digit numeric password system, a brute force attack would be able to hack into the account in a matter of hours.

And, he says, as new Web 2.0 services evolve on the Net, the effort and focus of the application owners is going to be devoted to the fast availability of new features and commercial models.

As a result, he explained, the new services’ IT security protection is likely to get left behind and will almost certainly not be integrated into the application.

For this reason, he went on to say, as well as being careful when it comes to setting secure passwords on these next-generation services, companies need to implement Web application firewalls alongside the services so as to afford better overall protection.

“The key issue here is that companies need to install additional security technology at the same time as when they deploy these new Web 2.0-based services in their organization,” he said.

“This is because Web application firewalls and other protective Internet security systems are becoming more and more important, as they can compensate for internal security control issues,” he added.

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DENVER’S NEW DATACENTER New Datacenter Will Provide Multiple Layers of Connectivity, Redundancy, and Security for Clients in Late August – Corporate Office Space Also Part of Project.

Hosting.com, the first name in managed hosting and colocation solutions, announced that it is expanding by opening a 30,000 square foot datacenter and 13,000 square foot corporate complex in the Denver metro area in late August. Company owners Art Zeile and Joel Daly have operated three successful high-tech firms, all headquartered in Denver, including InFlow, Inc., sold to Sungard in 2005.

The demand for secure, reliable colocation space in Denver continues to outpace availability. Art Zeile, Hosting.com CEO, commented, “We are excited to serve a very large need in Denver with this new datacenter.

Colocation space with our high level of service and support is absent from downtown.” He continued, “We will grow aggressively over the next 24 months through a national platform of managed and secure services; we are excited that Denver is at the center of our growth.”

Hosting.com will occupy a historic Ford Model T factory retrofitted to their specifications for the expansion.

The location takes advantage of a strong network topology, multiple power grids, and close proximity to fully redundant fiber feeds from Tier 1 providers. The datacenter will incorporate Hosting.com Smart Design Standards and provide up to 10 Gb/sec of redundant connectivity for bandwidth routing optimization as well as 200 watts/sq ft of power and cooling. It will be the only datacenter of its kind in downtown Denver.

In addition to hosting and colocation services, the new facility will support Hosting.com’s new cloud hosting platforms, Cloud Enterprise and Cloud Private. Hosting. com currently operates SAS 70 Type II certified datacenters in Irvine, CA; Louisville, KY; Newark, DE; and San Francisco, CA. Hosting.com’s cloud and virtualization solutions coupled with a geographically dispersed datacenter network allows their clients to take full advantage of their services for redundancy, fault tolerance, and disaster recovery solutions for their Web enabled businesses and technology infrastructure.

Joel Daly, Hosting.com COO, noted, “By operating five datacenters from coast to coast, we provide our clients with unparalleled solution and service options.

Our business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) enhancements will provide clients with cost-effective means to achieve and test true disaster recovery and fault tolerance.”

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Ping! Zine magazine | 013

bits & bytes

“WIKI” GRANTED Wikimedia Foundation Receives Grant to Grow Wikimedia Commons The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization which operates Wikipedia, has received a $300,000 Ford Foundation grant to make it easier for people around the world to participate in Wikimedia Commons, the Internet’s largest repository of high quality, freely reusable educational illustrations, photographs, maps, sound, and video files.

Available in 85 languages, Wikimedia Commons is a global community dedicated to sharing media. The Wikimedia Commons also acts as the central multimedia library for Wikipedia. The Ford Foundation grant will support interface and work-flow improvements to make it much easier to contribute freely reusable content.

“The global community that is building Wikimedia Commons is setting the standard for the way that video and images are uploaded and shared through the Web,” said Jenny Toomey, a program officer for the Ford Foundation. “The whole process is simplified, promotes collaboration, and is driven by consensus among the community. Ultimately, this approach and others like it can help ensure that the Internet remains a rich and open space for learning, expression, and participation.”

Since Wikimedia Commons was founded in 2004, a strong community of international volunteers has formed to support its growth and development.

Wikimedia Commons currently hosts more than 4.5 million freely reusable educational media files.

Its files are used in thousands of educational and informational initiatives around the world, including in mass media and books.

The grant will fund a project team to study challenges faced by new participants in Wikimedia Commons, as well as to identify best practices from other media sharing websites. Following a research phase, the team will design and implement a simple upload work-flow, enabling users to easily upload files, select licenses, and provide descriptions.

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PARALLELS HITS THE ROAD

Parallels Announces First EMEA Partner Roadshow Virtualization and automation leader Parallels, presents a series of premier European hosting events dedicated to Parallels’ partners and other hosters and cloud services providers looking for virtualization and automation technology. The Parallels Partner Roadshow provides the partner community with a unique forum to learn how to leverage cloud computing as a software and service delivery model. The forum also lets partners and prospectivepartners connect with hundreds of decision-makers and Parallels executives, to share real world experience and to obtain the guidance necessary to succeed in this challenging economy.

The 2009 Parallels Partner Roadshow will be take place in: Stockholm, September 1; Amsterdam, September 3; Warsaw, September 7; Cologne, September 10; Paris, September 14; Madrid, September 17 and London, September 21. To register for any of the events, or for more information, please visit www.parallels.com/ emea2009. The partner events will offer a broad array of content designed to help attendees evaluate everything from virtualization to applications to automation– everything a business needs to refine/ start laying-out its plans for cloud computing.

Parallels has over 200 partners in Western Europe – representing 90% of the top EMEA hosters who rely on Parallels technology to drive success, especially with white label reseller programs.

White Label Reselling lets hosters delegate service plans to their customers to resell and offer a wider array of applications. White label resale offers an indirect sales channel and lets resellers maintain their unique brand independence, as well as retaining client loyalty.

“VeriSign looks forward to participating in the Parallels Partner Roadshow,” said Michael Lin, Vice President and General Manager of SSL at VeriSign. “Together, VeriSign SSL Certificates, user authentication products, and domain name services offer Parallels’ partners and Web hosts around the globe a trusted online environment to conduct business.”

“Our goal is to provide Parallels’ partners a continual growth path to help expand business,” said Jack Zubarev, President, Service Provider Division, Parallels. “The Parallels Partner Roadshow will educate partners and demonstrate how they can utilize Parallels virtualization and automation products to power their hosting and managed services offerings.”

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bits & bytes

NOW OPEN

i/o Data Centers Opens its Phoenix ONE Data Center i/o Data Centers held a grand opening ceremony for its 538,000 square-foot Phoenix ONE Data Center facility. The Phoenix data center, located in a recently-refurbished building, is the company’s second Arizona-based data center and is the largest commercially-available data center in the United States. i/o Data Centers has grown tremendously over the past year. In addition to bringing the Phoenix ONE facility online the company has added a number of operations, sales and marketing positions to further the company’s expansion plans. “The team we have brought on board this year will help us take the company to the nextlevel,” said George Slessman, i/o Data Centers’ CEO. “We are pleased with the progress we have made over the past few years and look forward to continuing our success.”

The Phoenix data center, although recently completed, is already home to a number of large corporate customers. “Because of the success we had with our Scottsdale ONE facility, we were able to pre-sell some space at this new facility,” said Wanger. “There is a lot of interest in Phoenix ONE and we are excited with the prospects we have had so far.”

Andy Burton Appointed CEO of FastHosts Fasthosts Internet Ltd. announced Andy Burton has been appointed as new CEO of Fasthosts Internet Ltd., as well as of the company’s subsidiary in USA. In his new position, he takes charge of Fasthosts’ direct sale, reseller web hosting, dedicated and managed server operations. His appointment will further support the company’s development and international expansion strategy.

Andy Burton said, “I join Fasthosts at an exciting time in its

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development, and look forward to playing a part in building its services further and sharing its excellent propositions with new markets”.

Burton further added, “There is a significant and increasing demand for IT services and operations to be hosted and Fasthosts represents a significant opportunity for its customers by enabling them to control costs, reduce risk and improve service levels in a trusted partnership”.

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dOMAIN .ME .ME Domains Enjoy Record Growth in 2009 To celebrate one year of the official live launch of the popular .me domains, Brands-and-Jingles has issued a white paper on how “me”-branded names are used in marketing. In its effort the advertising agency wants to congratulate the .me registry team, registrars, the developers and Internet users with another important milestone of jingling online marketing and wish the one year old .me domain baby many happy returns.

The document summarizes the first year of .me domain names as well as provides an exhaustive overview of “me” advertising with numerous examples.

“In less than a year .ME domains became more popular than .asia, .jobs, .coop, .aero, .int, .mil, .museum, .name, .pro, .tel, .travel, and other 200 country code top-level domains,” notes the document. .ME enjoyed record auction sales: Date.Me was sold for $70,000. Another very attractive domain name Insure.Me scored an impressive $68,000. Some other big sales include: Love.Me - $32,500; Ask.Me, Hug. Me, Kiss.Me, and Teach.Me - $20,000 each; Match.

Me, Rank.Me and Buy.Me - $17,500 each; Verify.Me - $16.000; LasVegas.Me, ChatWith.me and Korea.me - all above $15,000; Solve.Me - $13,116; Picture.Me $10,240; and Recruit.Me - $10,155.

The word “me” can be found on every fourth web page.

It is used by thousands of companies for their brands and marketing campaigns to steer the consumers into buying their products. Apple’s “Mobile Me”, Microsoft’s “It’s all about me”, the famous British “Model.Me” beauty brand, “23andMe” the genetics testing company co-founded by Anne Wojcicki, the wife of Sergey Brin (Google co-founder) - the list is practically endless.

Not only are .me web sites novel and easy to remember, they also attract many online customers: Notify.Me - helps its users manage real-time updates, YouAnd.Me - a top free dating site with nearly 70,000 members and the fastest growth in 2009, PicFor.Me new popular photo sharing site, DressUp.Me - games for girls, etc.

SafeNet NAMES New CEO SafeNet, Inc. announced that Mr. Mark A. Floyd has joined SafeNet as Chief Executive Officer (CEO)

YAHOO! UNVEILS SEARCH PAD

Mr. Floyd joined the executive management team at SafeNet July 1st, assuming a position that had been vacant since October of 2006.

“Mark brings more than 30 years of executive leadership to our company, with experience that complements our management team and company goals superbly. His successes range from founding his own company to running multi-billion dollar technology organizations to public offerings,” said Chris Fedde, President and COO, SafeNet. “This is a true case of adding strength to strength, with Mark’s expertise and understanding of growing business building on SafeNet’s position in the information security market. This is the combination that will meet our strategic goals for SafeNet’s future.”

Mark Floyd commented, “What really attracted me to SafeNet was the unique combination of scale and intellectual property advantage along with an extremely talented management team and employee base. The company is truly a leader in a dynamic sector, selling the most important products to the most security conscious commercial and government customers in the world. With that platform, I think we can do incredible things to drive and grow this business and I feel very fortunate to be part of the team to lead this effort.”

“More than a year ago, the Board embarked on a highly selective executive search hopeful to find a great complement to SafeNet’s strong executive management team,” said David Fishman, Partner, Vector Capital. “With nearly $500 million in revenue, SafeNet is the third largest provider of information security in the world with leadership positions across all segments of its business, including rights management and enterprise data protection. We believe Mark’s proven achievements in leading companies of this size will be valuable as we continue to take advantage of the robust growth opportunities afforded by this dynamic market. We also believe it sends a strong message of commitment to all of our employees, customers and partners.”

Yahoo! Inc. announced Search Pad beta, a Yahoo!

Search feature that lets people capture, organize, save and share information they find while researching online.

Search Pad provides a new search experience that is especially valuable for people conducting extensive research in categories such as academic, health, jobs, travel, or shopping.

Today, people conducting online research often use cumbersome methods for capturing the information they find in search results, pasting snippets into separate documents, taking handwritten paper notes, bookmarks, and/or sending themselves emails with links.

Search Pad simplifies this task by automatically recognizing when people are conducting research, and allowing them to easily capture information and websites found in their search results. Once activated, Search Pad automatically saves recent items, including links in one integrated notepad that stays with them as they search. People can edit their notes and then print, save, email, or share their Search Pad documents with family, friends, colleagues or anyone else, eliminating the need for others to do the same research.

Available only on Yahoo! Search, Search Pad has a host of features that make search and research as meaningful and manageable as possible: 1) Automatic Research Detection: Understands research intent to initiate note-taking; 2) Simple Collecting: Tightly integrated into the search experience; once research begins, it automatically collects visited websites and thumbnails; 3) Organize: Easily manages research into a coherent document for quick reference with capabilities that include free form note entry, drag & drop, auto-attribution of the URL for pasted notes, and save/delete of notes and documents; 4) Share: Provides simple and useful ways to share work with friends and colleagues via print, email, publish, and a number of social networks.

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bits & bytes

The Planet names Senior Sales exec.

Twitter’s lack of security “News that Twitter has been hacked yet again comes as no surprise, given the fact that many IT staff and managers are being pushed into adopting cloud computing services on a fast-track basis,” says Origin Storage, the storage systems integration specialist.

“Our observations suggest that a number of companies and their staff are being forced down the cloud computing route and are having to adapt their IT security systems on the fly.” said Andy Cordial, Origin Storage’s managing director.

“We have had concerns about this rate of change in the business sector for some time and, with all the data breaches occurring on the cloud front, it’s obvious that the chickens are now coming home to roost.” he added.

The Planet announced the appointment of Thomas S. Blair as Vice President, Global Sales Thomas S. Blair, a 25-year sales veteran, reports to Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Douglas J. Erwin. He will be responsible for the company’s entire span of sales activities, including revenue generation, customer relationship management and retention, business development and sales engineering, as well as channel and alliance partnerships.

“Tom Blair brings to our company a stellar sales background, coupled with both an acute understanding of solutions selling, and extensive direct and channel experience,” said Erwin. “He’s spent his entire career with some of the best brands in the industry, developing the strategies that make his teams successful. As our business has grown, we’ve seen a change in how customers purchase products from us, and Tom’s expertise provides us with the next-generation bench strength to help us grow our business.”

And if a secure password best practice is applied on top of corporate encryption policies, the resultant multiple layers of defence can help prevent human error causing a faux pas like the latest Twitter hack.

Blair joins the company following a 10-year career with Terremark Worldwide, Inc. and Data Return Corporation, which was acquired by Terremark just over two years ago. With Terremark, he most recently served as Senior Vice President for Channel Sales and Strategic Alliances, where he executed agreements with master agents, system integrators, consultancies, value-added resellers, solution providers and independent software vendors.

Blair was vice president for Channel Sales and Alliances with Data Return, where he led a team that significantly increased revenue and enabled the company to increase market share for its managed hosting business. As vice president for worldwide sales, Managed Services, he was responsible for the company’s sales strategy and methodology, which included the development and addition of a field-based sales organization.

“Applying effective security is all about planning and then applying that planning, backed up by a set of solid security policies with encryption at its heart,” he said.

He holds a B.S. in Business Administration and Marketing from the University of South Carolina’s Moore School of Business.

According to Cordial, this latest Twitter hack appears to be the result of the password of a company co-founder being guessable on the GoogleApps service which then allowed the hacker access to his personal information including details of his wife’s computer.

It is, he explained, a common problem in IT departments, but one that can be solved by applying a sizeable slice of common sense and adding a selection of encryption technologies plus policies to the mix.

Adding encryption to a company’s data storage - whether in the cloud or not - he said, will ensure that data at rest, as well as on the move, is protected from prying eyes.

“If Twitter had had this strategy operating at all levels of its hierarchy, rather than apparently going for user growth at any cost, it wouldn’t be in the embarrassing situation it is now,” he added.

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bits & bytes

Steve Jobs Undergoes Transplant Recently, Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in Memphis confirmed that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had receieved a liver transplant a few months ago and that he is “recovering well and has an excellent prognosis.”

Jobs is now back to work at Apple after a six-month medical leave. “Jobs received a liver transplant because he was the patient with the highest MELD score (model for end-stage liver disease) of his blood type and, therefore, the sickest patient on the waiting list at the time a donor organ became available,” according to a statement by Dr. James D. Eason, the program director of the Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in Memphis.

Jobs has recently been under a ton of speculation regarding his health. While Apple had always insisted that Jobs’ health was a private matter, in early January they released a statement that reveled Jobs was suffering from a hormone imbalance.

Jobs had also previously underwent a successful surgery to treat a rare from of pancreatic cancer in August 2004. This forced Jobs to take a medical leave from Apple until September of that year.

It has been questioned over the past year, whether his cancer has returned.

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STILL GOING STRONG Internet Databases Celebrates Ten-Year Anniversary At a time when the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that roughly six in ten businesses do not even make it to the four-year mark, Barry Welch, President, CEO, and founder of Internet Databases said, “We are both proud and grateful to celebrate this milestone.”

Internet Databases began as a custom web applications development company in 1999 while Barry’s wife, Allison, was pregnant with their second child. “She got tired of hearing me talk about starting a business. She supported me 100% and felt I would regret it in the future if I didn’t give starting my own company a good try.”

That year, Hooker Furniture became an Internet Databases client, setting the stage for what would become the focus of Welch’s work - developing web-based applications for the home furnishings industry.

In 2007, he made the switch from solely developing custom applications to releasing his first software product: FurnishWEB, an online data management system for the home furnishings industry. In 2008, he added his 20th client, Huntington Furniture.

When asked if there were surprises along the way, Barry Welch said, “I’ve been surprised by the amount of confidence and faith put into us by organizations much larger than ours. I’ve been surprised by how differently similar companies in the same industries operate. I’ve been surprised that people are interested in our story.”

Any company that stays in business 10 years is a story.

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bY david dunlap

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BUSINESS BUILDING USING TWITTER

It might not come as a surprise that many of the world’s top CEOs still are not onboard with the whole social networking thing. What is most interesting though is the percentage of CEOs who don’t care. Two CEOs from Fortune magazine’s top 100 companies have Twitter accounts. Does this mean that Twitter has no future in successful companies? You make the call.

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According to Hitwise research, Twitter sends traffic to social networks. In fact, it can almost be considered a social networking search engine. Search engines send less than 10% downstream clicks to social network sites, while Twitter drives around 20% of its visitors to social networks. So what does this mean? If you have a blog, wiki, Flickr, Facebook account for work you should have a Twitter account as well. It therefore follows that with the development of your Twitter network, you can develop your social networking platforms.

Building and Developing Your Twitter Network

Twitter networks go though stages and when comparing these stages it is not unlike cultivating a garden. When growing flowers, you don't dump tons of fertilizer and water on them.

You slowly nurture them over the course of weeks, if not months. Making a successful Twitter network requires time, but it does not require a large amount of work.

Ben Says: When it comes to choosing a name for your twitter account, remember smaller is better. Your name is your calling card and should be synonymous with your company brand, but needs to be short to ensure proper re-tweeting (the resending of a message someone else sent, basically it’s like forwarding an email).

The first stage of your network is getting your initial 50 to 100 followers. Your account should include your picture or your company logo (if this is a company account). Your Twitter profile page should be linked to your most important site (personal blog or company site; index page, basically whatever is on your business cards). When it comes to choosing a name for your twitter account, remember smaller is better. Your name is your calling card and should be synonymous with your company brand, but needs to be short to ensure proper re-tweeting (the resending of a message someone else sent, basically it's like forwarding an email).

Promote your Twitter account by adding the profile to your forum, blog, and email signatures. This right here is the gift that keeps on giving. If you are already a prolific writer or social networker you don't have any extra work to do in this aspect. When you do add tweets make them useful and timely, but do not over do it. Having no tweets and then slamming the channel with 30 tweets in a row is overkill.

Now that you have your followers, it's time to keep them. Take an active role in those who follow you and those who reply to your tweets. Follow those who follow you, if they link to places then go ahead and read them. This is all about common courtesy and since they are trying to hold on to their followers as well, you will probably find something useful. If you especially like the link, link to it with your blog. This is networking after all.

On a special note, using cool scripts to update Twitter is nice, but those who follow you on Twitter probably follow you on other social sites and having something spam multiple sites can be a put off. Essentially it tells your network they aren't worth your time to address. If you want consolidation, then by all means use something like Ping.fm, but post separate messages on your different sites, even if you are posting about the same thing, make different messages. The extra steps will be rewarded.

Now the final stage is basically maintenance of your Twitter network and using it in constructive ways. I want to stress that Twitter is two way street. If you want value out of Twitter you need to put value in it. Up until now, we have been interested in gaining Twitter followers and keeping them. As you go, you have been discussing things that you are doing with your company, while providing useful information about yourself, your company, and things you find interesting. Now is where we kick it into high gear, not just for your site, but for your followers.

Basics for Twitter Networking

If you have a company Twitter account, make sure to have a few employee accounts as well.

These can show the human, and most likely a far more interesting side of the company. It's important to have a few. If your only Twitterer gets sick, goes on vacation, gets fired, quits, etc then there will be others who can pick up the slack. It also spreads the work around.

Some people pick up Twitter and can't stop while others see it as a chore. By spreading responsibility around the office, less people will view it as a chore.

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TOC The fun Twitters do not answer what, how, or why. They simple talk about what has their attention at the moment. Things such as you just read an awesome blog, or your desk is way too cluttered, or you managed to jury rig two computer fans and a fan control and built your own house fan with it. These things can be far more interesting and timely then saying something like I am working. Talk to your network; treat it like you have friends over for a get-together.

How to Use Your Twitter Network

Your Twitter network should be mutually beneficial. At its most basic, Twitter can be used to direct traffic to various links and in this manner send traffic to your social networking sites.

This is the obvious usage and if you are using Twitter then you should be taking advantage of this facet. However, there are many more uses to Twitter and all of them can be quite useful for your business.

Ben Says: “Another great thing about Twitter is that you can use it to look for yourself and see if people are talking about you. By searching for yourself or your company you can see who is unhappy with what and conversely what people like about your company.”

Twitter can be used to bounce ideas and brainstorm. This is especially good when you are using a private Twitter network (say for your company or maybe for a professional network).

The ability to bounce off ideas around the world from something as convenient as your mobile is a very powerful thing. Along with brainstorming there are many project platforms such as Hudson that have Twitter plug-ins. So you can be alerted when a new build or version of your project is completed and then talk about it with your network.

You can use Twitter to perform research. Marketing, product, technology, and company research can all be performed using Twitter in either a private or public network format. You can also use it for Q&A’s of which there are many examples that have worked wonders.

Most blog software allows tweets to go straight to the comment section. Blogs are already a hot topic for linking from tweets; with a little moderating you build a symbiosis between linking a blog in tweet allowing you network to discuss the blog in tweets.

Twitter can also provide the ultimate in transparency in customer and company feedback. Say you had a server and you had 50 clients on it. You give them all a twitter account to hookup to.

For the sake of being generic, we will call it Server110. Now all the clients on that server are on the Server110 channel. If the server has a problem, the technician can tweet an update here saying the server has a hard drive problem. Since many phones have plugins for Twitter, the technician can give a status report to everyone on the server. Other people can do an @ Server110 and say tweet about a support problem. In this manner, a constant line of communication between the technician and the clients is opened.

Twitter is used to make introductions for talking to new people. Some employers have used these opportunities to find prospective employees. On the other side of the fence, many employees have used Twitter to build up networking for job opportunities. By using Twitter searches, people can look directly for job openings. Or, like normal networking, by becoming a trusted user in a network (someone who is helpful, cheery, even funny) you can open the door for such opportunities.

Another great thing about Twitter is that you can use it to look for yourself and see if people are talking about you. By searching for yourself or your company you can see who is unhappy with what and conversely what people like about your company. So setting up alerts with Twitter can greatly aid your marketing staff. Remember, Twitter may be an open forum for bad publicity but it is documented and can be studied.

Lastly, Twitter can be used for live news coverage such as for events, conferences, or just crazy things as they unfold.

I hope by now, if you weren't of the opinion already, you are all beginning to see the power of Twitter and why this is not something that a successful business should blow off. Instead, I challenge you all to develop your Twitter networks and find new ways for one of the fastest and most convenient ways to communicate in the world today. And while you’re at it, drop me a line at my Twitter account, David_WHM. P!

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Writer's Bio: David Dunlap has been both a Web host industry analyst and commentator for the past nine years. Prior to his active writing career, David was a network and communications technician for four years for the U.S. government. He currently is the Editor-in-Chief for WebHostMagazine.com

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Profit. With the Parallels Service Provider Partner Program.

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Learn how you can become a Parallels Partner by visiting www.parallels.com/partners.

bY pingdom.com

The Problems With Using Hardware To Compensate For Slow Software Are you a programmer? Want to do something for the environment and even make the world a better place?

Then start optimizing your code!

It seems like today the solution to most software performance issues is to throw more hardware at the problem instead of making the software run faster on existing hardware. Doing more with less is a forgotten mantra, and Wirth’s Law continues to ring true: “Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster.”

Jeff Atwood has an interesting article in his Coding Horror blog (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/ archives/001198.html) regarding the value of code optimization versus just buying more hardware. His argument is that since hardware is cheap compared to programmer salaries, the first step to make software run faster should always be to buy more hardware. We recommend you read the whole thing (it’s an interesting read).

He rounds off the article with this recommended approach: 1. Throw cheap, faster hardware at the performance problem.

2. If the application now meets your performance goals, stop.

3. Benchmark your code to identify specifically where the performance problems are.

4. Analyze and optimize the areas that you identified in the previous step.

5. If the application now meets your performance goals, stop.

6. Go to step 1.

This makes perfect sense if you actually go through all the steps and really do optimize after the initial shortterm fix of buying more hardware.

HOWEVER, it is all too common that companies don’t take code optimization seriously enough and never go beyond step 3 above. The solution will more or less always be to throw more hardware at the problem.

In addition to this, a lot of programmers simply assume that it’s ok to demand more powerful hardware for their software to run well and don’t put much effort into doing more with the same resources.

These two things combined give us an environment where increasing amounts of increasingly powerful hardware is being used as a crutch to compensate for the poor performance of our software. [continued] 036 || Ping!

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With the Parallels Automation suite, you can completely automate your business and empower your customers, from a single software platform. Parallels increases your revenue per user by enabling the widest set of automated services including hosted Microsoft Exchange with many add-on services, shared hosting, Microsoft SharePoint, virtual private servers, SaaS and more.

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www.parallels.com/pas

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Four BIG problems

Here is why today’s tendency to simply throw more hardware at software performance problems is unhealthy and shortsighted: 1 You do not leverage anywhere close to the full potential of your hardware.

2 You end up with more hardware, which consumes more electricity, which will cost more in the long run (especially if you run a large-scale operation).

3 Using more electricity is not just a cost issue, it’s bad for the environment.

4 More hardware means more components, which in turn is bad for the environment.

Saving costs is often used as an argument for not putting in the time to make code run faster, but there are plenty of costs on top of the purchase price to take into consideration when you add more hardware; increased power consumption, sysadmin resources and future scaling issues should also be taken into account.

The implications of more efficient code

What if we could double overall code efficiency? (Don’t say it isn’t possible). That would mean a huge reduction in the amount of hardware that companies would need to run their operations, especially on the server side (since office workers would still need a computer each).

Imagine your web servers being able to handle twice the requests they are today. Imagine modern top-of-the-line software running fine on modest, even old, hardware. It’s a nice thought, isn’t it?

Hardware manufacturers might not be all too happy with that development, though… But here is why we shouldn’t care about that: In 2005, servers consumed as much power in the United States as televisions (http://royal.pingdom.com/2007/03/08/ servers-consuming-as-much-power-as-color-tvs/) , and that was four years ago! We don’t know what the full carbon footprint of the world’s servers (and other hardware, it’s all running software!) actually is today, but it is bound to be significant and growing.

Why needing less powerful hardware is a Good Thing

There is another very important benefit that would come from a more efficient code base: The faster our code is overall, less powerful hardware is needed to run common applications, which in turn would make it possible to create more affordable computers. This would be a huge benefit to third-world and developing countries, not to mention less fortunate people in the industrial nations.

To give you some examples, just look at the impressive performance gains between first-generation games for game consoles and those released a couple of years into the life-cycle of that same console, or the things coders were able to make C64 and Amiga computers do back in the day. These are examples where software performance was improved by leaps and bounds without resorting to hardware upgrades.

The Coding Horror article we mentioned above has a quote from Patrick Smacchia (from CodeBetter.com http://codebetter.com/ blogs/patricksmacchia/archive/2008/12/01/lessons-learned-froma-real-world-focus-on-performance.aspx ), where he observes how Amiga programmers were able to increase software performance by an incredible 50 times in the time frame of just a few years by continuously challenging themselves on the same hardware.

Do more with less

If doing more with less was a more valued mindset in software development, we would all reap substantial long-term benefits.

We would need less (and less powerful) hardware, we would save money, we would save power, and in doing so, we would help save the environment. P!

Think about that.

Please get that old-school mentality back

Huge gains in performance can be made from effective, competent optimizations of algorithms and code. Even when you think your code is fast, it can usually be made to perform several times faster with the right approach.

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Article Source: http://royal.pingdom.com/2009/07/15/the-problemwith-using-hardware-to-compensate-for-slow-software/

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Register at Fuscan.com to learn more about world’s most affordable linux Cloud PaaS or schedule an appointment with us to test Fuscan product family - LBC, VDC and EHA at HostingCon 2009 in Washington DC between August 10 - 12 Ping! Zine magazine | 039

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bY evan kamlet

Today’s small web hosts may be doomed to fail unless they continue to innovate. Industry experts foresee the web hosting industry moving away from small hosting providers and favoring the large data centers in the future. The giants with unlimited resources will someday squash the mom-and-pop providers unless they get used to continuous innovation.

This theory may provide an answer to the question: Why should a small web host attend HostingCon?

Small web hosts often become the target of sales pitches by larger companies hoping to win their business, rather than targeting their own market segment. The “small host” should not expect to make many, if any, direct sales when attending or exhibiting at HostingCon. However, they should consider the benefits of a front seat at HostingCon alongside the heavy hitters. The ability to mingle, listen, brainstorm, interact, and study the ideas and innovations of the industry leaders cannot be reproduced anywhere else. The valuable information web hosts can pick up at HostingCon may become that all-important defense needed to dodge the industry onslaught that culls the rest of the herd. With this mindset, a small webhost may find it worth more than gold to attend HostingCon.

Constan t Evo

l u t i o n hosting con. be ther

e!

Every day, start-up web hosts and even established companies like mine that have been in business for the better part of a decade, chug forward without knowing what lies around the next corner. If you are really dedicated to making your small hosting business succeed, just as I am, you probably lose sleep at night. Nightmares routinely conjure up images of obsolete hardware, falling profit margins, plummeting bandwidth prices, surging power prices, and even nightmares on if your business model will be able to survive all of the variables in such a highly competitive industry.

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6

Inevitable Obsolescence

The evolution of mankind has its foundation in the ability to learn and conquer the environment.

Unless you think that mankind will one day give up its quest for progressive knowledge and technology, the entire web hosting industry as we know it is inevitably going to become obsolete. For example, there is no doubt that bandwidth will become cheaper and more accessible. Someday, bandwidth may even be free. How can you continue charging more for light that blinks that much faster in a fiber? Copper cable once limited bandwidth due to attenuation and losses but it is quickly becoming a distant memory. 10Gbps, 100Gbps, 1000Gbps speeds are becoming easier and easier to obtain and limitless bandwidth may be on the horizon. The idea of bandwidth in general may become obsolete when everything travels at light speed. How will it affect your hosting business when every home has a connection measured in terabytes?

Today some children are publishing their first websites at the age of 10. They are growing up with technology. The knowledge and expertise that now separates your company from the competition may someday be commonplace. A future network engineer may be nothing more than a present day Roto-Rooter technician.

Companies like Google push for open airwaves, free wireless, and the dream of unlimited Internet access. When every city, state, cell phone, traffic light, microwave, and toaster oven has limitless connectivity to the net, how will that affect your hosting business? How can you provide a hosting service when every kid on the block may one day host websites capable of handling nearly unlimited traffic from their iPhones? Maybe the focus will shift towards wireless value-added-services or application hosting.

The hosting industry as we know it is going to die a drawn-out and painful death. The big fish like Google, Microsoft, large telco companies, and a handful of other giants with the resources to quickly adapt and innovate will readily eat the smaller, resource-starved hosting providers. They are the behemoths that are fueling the evolution of technology as we know it. To them, small hosting providers are nothing but speed bumps on the superhighway. When will they run you off the road? That is the big question. [continued]

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The hosting industry as we know it is going to die a drawn-out and painful death.

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come to HostingCon with your mind facing the future and not focused on immediate gratification.

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Writer’s Bio: Evan Kamlet was employed by a local upstate New York ISP and web-design firm in 1999 and 2000 and went on to own and operate Host4Yourself Internet Services (H4Y Technologies LLC and formerly Host for Yourself LLC) since it was founded in 2001. He has more than a decade of experience in all aspects of the hosting industry including marketing, business operation, engineering, and information technology.

HostingCon and Delaying the Inevitable

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Sure, you can read about Google’s ideas in Ping! Zine. You can research Microsoft’s latest technology and beta test their future products. But where, other than at HostingCon, can you bounce around one room and get up close and personal with representatives from Google, Microsoft, ARIN, Parallels, cPanel, and other industry experts that feed the ever-changing world of web hosting? The knowledge that will fuel the inevitable evolution of technology and hosting is all contained at the exhibit halls and networking events. For a couple hundred clams worth of tickets, your whole company can talk shop with the CEO of Parallels or mingle with the top techs of cPanel.

If you are attending this year, don’t be bashful! Stick your nose into other people’s business. Use the information you learn to get a jump start on what might be the next up-and-coming industry moneymaker. Attend the keynote speeches and luncheons. Don’t just attend, but listen, and take notice of any topics that come up more often this year than at last year’s show. Look for the trends and patterns that the big boys seem to focus on. Try to decide which direction you should go at the next fork in the road. The knowledge you pick up might just keep your small hosting company in business that much longer! If you don’t get a head start today, and if you think the snazzy reseller hosting packages you offer today will continue to bring in the money throughout the next several years and decades, you may as well throw in the towel now.

There are two possible reasons to attend or exhibit at HostingCon depending on your situation. You either provide services to web hosts and wish to present your sales pitches and pick up leads, or you are a hosting provider looking to gain useful knowledge and maybe spread your name around town a bit. Web hosts are not going to be signing up busloads of new clients at HostingCon. Instead, you are going to be the target of just about every other salesperson attending. Keep this in mind and take HostingCon for what it is. On top of the wonderful time you will have socializing, partying, and hanging out with the regulars that attend HostingCon every year and on top of the good food and drinks and free trinkets, there is a much greater value to HostingCon. For a small web host, the value may not be in the business you might win at the event. Instead, the value is in the fact that you may learn what the future may bring in this crazy industry, all in one place. The time spent at HostinCon may arm your business with extra defenses, innovative ideas, and an attack strategy to counter the steamroller of progress set forth by the very giants who may someday wipe out the mom-and-pop hosting providers.

Small hosts have one-time, unrestricted access to all this information - only at HostingCon.

The web hosting industry of tomorrow will never be the same as it is today. It is caught in the strong current of change on a giant ocean of evolving technology. The industry as we know it today will collapse and mutate into something else in the future. Before that happens, come to HostingCon with your mind facing the future and not being focused on immediate gratification. Given a journey with the only destination being eventual obsolescence, we can only try to enjoy the success we may experience along the way. No one knows for sure what lies ahead, but with vision and innovation, you can stay on that scenic route while watching your competitors fall by the wayside. Attending HostingCon will definitely help make your journey more enjoyable. P!

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TOC bY mitch keeler

3 Uncommon Seats For Your PC Desk When you are working in front of your computer for most of the day, where you sit becomes a big part of your life. Web hosting people suffer a lot from this, because no matter if you are a remote tech working from home, or a system administrator in front of a server, you need to stay comfortable. Now, most people might have the normal rolling office chair – however, others are getting a little more creative about where and how they sit.

For the Unique Sitting Situation The art of using an exercise ball was introduced to me by watching Leo Laporte’s TWIT broadcasts and podcasts. It seems like it might be a good way to stay active while still sitting down. I have even seen some that come with a built in chair base so you can mix the benefits of the ball with the functionality of your normal office chair.

For Your Laid Back Web Hosting Techs

For the EXTREME System Administrator For the extreme system admin, I have one more goodie. The Tank Chair looks like your office chair with tank wheels, Found at TankChair.com, it is a custom off-road wheelchair that can go anywhere outdoors. Not sure how well it would do at your computer desk – but if anybody wants to give it a shot – send me some pictures of you in action.

I have a Sumo Sac, which I picked up from SumoLounge.com that could easily be used to do a little remote web hosting work from the comfort of your own home. The only problem about trying to use it in front of a computer desk, is it might be a little hard to get up and away from the computer.

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bY Cheetah Power

business of

green

Being Green is not just Kermit’s theme song anymore. It’s every one’s. Green tips are top of mind, everywhere we turn.

So, when we think of project management, how can we apply some “green thinking” to our projects?

Here are our top five ways to bring some green ingenuity to your every day project management.

1

Green Materials Maven. Are you using materials that have been recycled and are you recycling the materials that you’re currently using? Regardless of what industry that you work in, just a little research can make a big difference, in your project’s carbon footprint.

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Packing Green. Packing materials for products can produce a lot of waste. Can you use recycled materials for packing like old newspapers? There are also biodegradable packing peanuts and environmentally friendly soft foam.

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Packing Green. There are hundreds of ways to make your office greener here are just a few to get you started:

Use coffee mugs instead of paper or Styrofoam

If you are a small or home-based office, you can produce your own energy. Visit www.cheetahpower.com for more information.

If you can’t produce your own energy, look for a supplier that is producing green energy in your area.

Put automatic timers or sensor lights in your bathroom, conference rooms or spaces that are not occupied the majority of the day.

Use as much natural light as possible in the design of your office space.

Use energy saving light bulbs.

Switch off computers, photocopiers and other equipment when not being used.

Buy office equipment with the best energy ratings.

Use green materials when building out a new office, like bamboo instead of wood flooring Use refillable vs. disposable pens Buy green products for your office – everything from toilet paper to recycled paper for printing

4

Make a Commitment To Green. When you make green more than a passing fancy, you show your team, and your customers that you mean business. You’re not just being trendy; you’re making changes that impact the world around you.

Promote a “reuse” mentality and lead by example Promote “think before you print.”

Use environmental or natural cleaning products.

Support and buy the products of other vendors and suppliers who are eco-friendly.

Support virtual office employees or support car-pooling and ride sharing if in a suburban area.

If you’re in a rural area, can you create a wildlife trust around your company’s property?

5

PR With Heart & Soul. Let’s face it, there’s a lot of bad news out there. Your customers do want to hear about the good things that you’re doing. So, if you have a green initiative or a project with a green heart and soul, talk about it. Get the buzz going. Green PR is only bad, when it’s insincere.

Michelle LaBrosse, MSME, PMP, Founder Cheetah Learning and Cheetah Power Michelle LaBrosse is an engineer and an entrepreneur with expertise in both aerospace and mechanical engineering. She started her career as an Air Force officer in the field of aircraft structures and vibrations; a challenge that resonates today with some of the technical challenges encountered with wind power.

Erica Edmond, CAPM, Cheetah Green Team A marketing intern for Cheetah Learning and Cheetah Power, Erica is Cheetah’s go-to resource for all things green. She researches and writes the Cheetah Power newsletter and is also a research assistant for a communication professor at the University of Portland.

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Visit us in booth 116

Attend our session:

Cloud Storage Technology Trends: Making Money in 2009 Wednesday, August 12

Profit from cloud storage. the door is now oPen to you.

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Looking to leverage cloud services to differentiate your business from competitors, attract and retain customers?

ParaScale is the inexpensive solution that provides your customers simple data access, but more importantly, provides complete back-end data management.

Getting files to the datacenter is only the beginning of the challenge. Managing those files over a multi-year life cycle across different locations and hardware refreshes is expensive without the proper solution. In just a few hours, your technical staff can deploy a cloud storage service offering within your existing environment, without costly outside professional services. If this sounds like a blue-sky promise–try it out yourself. Visit our Web-site for a free download.

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www.ParaScale.com Š 2009 ParaScale, Inc. All rights reserved.

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+1 408-217-6738

bY MARK DRAKE

2

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 able to 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 is that 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. [continued]

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Let’s come to the main part of the issue. You should keep in mind that the most 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.

1> First and foremost you need to ask yourself a question:

“What do I want my website to do for me?” You need to answer this question since you need to design your website according to this question. If all you want is a simple squeeze page then design a simple squeeze page.

If 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.

2> 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 mind 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.

3> 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.

4> 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 important that your visitor does not get frustrated while navigating around your site because if this is the case; they will simply leave your site or click away.

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5> The fifth factor that should be pointed out is that

download time is important. 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.

6> 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. Â 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! Â For more tips on website design go to www.edynamo.com

the most important rule you need to follow for a website is the KISS formula

bY DAVE YOUNG

PRODUCT REVIEW

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Have a server or a website? Are they protected from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks? If you have a server or a website and they are important to your organization, you need to do everything you can to protect them from major DDoS attacks. You may have heard the acronym DDoS over the last several years, but do you know how to protect your website and server from major failure and downtime? Meet Black Lotus.

“Every site and server is inherently vulnerable to DDoS,” says Jeffrey Lyon, president of Black Lotus. “Employing your own countermeasures or using a DDoS protection provider only enhances your chance of survival.” [continued]

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“

“As a startup in 1999 we were much like any other hosting business but we quickly found our niche in distributed denial of service protection (DDoS)” says Lyon. “By 2003 we were the dominating force in protection service as many of our customers and the former customers of CIT/ FOONET (which had a DDoS protection service) were asking us to change our focus.”

“

“Our customers enjoy our services as we monitor the overall health of their site or server while allowing them to focus on their business,” says Lyon. “Each of our customer resources has a one minute uptime monitor through HyperSpin and we collect outage notifications and proactively attempt to solve the outage, whether or not DDoS related, to ensure the customer is notified promptly.”

Lyon explains that Black Lotus is selling experience and peace of mind. “We’re not aware of any competitors that offer this level of individual attention at anywhere close to a decent price.”

With another hosting provider?

Black Lotus offers a proxy service specifically designed to protect your server even if you are hosting with another provider. DDoS protected proxy service can be setup quickly to screen and mitigate malicious traffic before handing it off to a customer’s server. “Our product differs from the competition as it is significantly lower in cost and completely screens the request before handoff ensuring that there is absolutely no accidental leakage of attack traffic,” says Lyon.

The company also offers a lightweight version of the proxy product for customers who want to screen requests for malicious behavior such as SQL/XML attacks. Recently Black Lotus discovered another benefit of their proxy service. “Now we have the ability to immediately stop affiliate spam by shutting down spam offenders within the proxy itself,” says Lyon. “We used this just last month to stop an affiliate ‘Joe Job’ attack against a very prominent casino customer that could have caused them to be shutdown elsewhere.”

Get a server, get DDoS protection

Black Lotus offers managed website hosting and both managed and unmanaged dedicated servers. “Generally, when a customer contacts us we recommend a server package with full management as this will allow us to evaluate and mitigate threats at both the network and server level,” says Lyon. “Server packages also offer the

058 | Ping! Zine magazine

most bang for your buck when it comes to sheer power and protection.”

What is DDoS?

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) is when a person or a group of people carry out specific attacks on a server, making it unavailable. DDoS attacks are generally caused by hackers who scan home and office computers for vulnerabilities, root those systems, and install attack drones. Drones are then controlled by the hacker, often using internet relay chat (IRC) as a command line, who then launches attacks for personal entertainment, extortion, or leases the botnet out to others who wish to do the same.

Some hackers will also launch attacks against their business competitors. Hackers also use viruses that have a payload designed to DDoS a particular target, generally aimed at large corporations.

First and leading, there’s a reason

Early this year Black Lotus launched their new slogan “First and Leading” to accurately describe their position in the industry and the quality they want to achieve with the Black Lotus brand. “We have unparalleled experience in the industry given that we have a six year jump start on our competitors,” says Lyon. “We are one of the very few companies offering a premium bandwidth blend in conjunction with DDoS protection.”

Lyon says today’s normal practice is to find the cheapest providers with the best deal on ingress bandwidth such as Cogent or AboveNet – completely opposite of what Black Lotus offers its customers. “We’ll use the higher end bandwidth even if the cost is prohibitive in order to ensure the quality of our network,” he says. “Our new Enterprise network is based almost entirely on PEER 1 transit and private peering relationships.”

Get more with a seal

Black Lotus offers a DDoS Protection verification seal program identifying that a website is protected from DDoS attacks. “DDoS Protected logos are not a new concept, almost every provider offers one but we stepped it up a notch and started using PHP code that queries a customer database to verify whether or not the domain where it’s being hosted is in fact protected by our service,” says Lyon. “The seal program is incredibly important in the DDoS protection business since a lot of claims made by providers range from somewhat frivolous to outright scams.”

DDoS protection starting at $35 a month

Many companies try to take advantage of customers who need DDoS protection services. Competitor prices can range from $5,000 - $11,000. More customers are discovering more affordable, leading services such as Black Lotus. “We actually operate two brands. The Black Lotus brand has 1 Gbps protection packages starting at $229.00,” adds Lyon. “We also have our BLCC Gold brand (http://www.blccgold.com) which has protected web hosting packages as low as $35 per month for customers who only require entry level service and are

TOC not wishing to invest in the full Black Lotus Elite or Mitigation Critical Service.”

DDoS protection for everyone More companies and website owners are beginning to see the advantages and needs for DDoS protection services. “Initially, DDoS protection was only something that those involved with IRC or some type of dubious activity might need,” says Lyon. “Around 2000 – 2003, we began seeing legitimate businesses seeking protection. This includes web site template providers, casinos, payment systems, and other such businesses that may find themselves the target of extortion.”

According to Lyon, casinos have become a major part of the company’s client roster as the potential for monetary loss when a casino is attacked can be devastating – significant dollars could be lost as a result of not having DDoS protection. Black Lotus has also experienced significant growth in Eastern Europe, South America, Africa, and Asian markets by offering alternatives to credit cards or PayPal – all require strict verification to close a sale. Instead, Black Lotus offers payment systems like Liberty Reserve or Russian payment processor

WebMoney, which close sales in these markets more effectively.

Getting started with DDoS protection services

Getting started is incredibly easy. When a customer sends an inquiry to sales@blacklotus.net, Black Lotus DDoS technicians respond promptly to ensure customers get the answers and information they need to keep their websites and servers protected.

For emergencies, Black Lotus has set up a chat feature on their website at http://www.blacklotus. net. “Customers with an emergency can let our chat operator know that they have a DDoS emergency,” says Lyon. “The chat operator will immediately put you in touch with an on-call network engineer to ensure an expedited setup.”

Black Lotus is featured in Ping! Zine web hosting magazine and Gawkwire. The DDoS protection company will have a booth set up at HostingCon 2009 in Washington, DC. Black Lotus specialists will be playing Call of Duty on the Xbox 360, challenging contenders to a game or two. Get all the answers you need to protect your website and server from DDoS attacks by stopping by the Black Lotus booth. 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.

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TOC

bY DAVID DUNLAP

So I am going off the page today. Instead of discussing something within the industry I want to take a look at the latest RIAA court case. It was a retrial of Jammie Thomas-Rasset who shared 24 songs on Kazaa. In the original trial, the fine was only $222,000. In a surprise move, the fine levied at Jammie was a full $1.92 million ($80k a song). Talk about the punishment not fitting the crime.

You don't even get fined that much for going in the store and stealing the CDs, then copying those CDs and selling them on the street corner. A single song’s street value is $1.29 at iTunes (this as good a measure as any I figure). So for there to be $80k damages sustained by the RIAA, each song would have to be distributed 62,015 times… each. What is more likely (though still high) would be 1,000 times each and that would come to $30,960 for the lot. Add court fees and an extra sum on top of that (emotional accountant distress, repayment for time spent agonizing over the problem, the fact that a fine is always a lot more than the actual damages, etc), and you still don’t hit nearly $2 mil.

For some odd reason though, the whole thing reminds me of a 1950s infomercial we use to watch in high school. I can just see it now.....

Crime and Punishment Starring Harry Butts as

Announcer

Announcer: Timmy, you are not thinking of putting your music online for others to steal are you?

Announcer: And did you know that even if you stole 20 CDs a day, it would take you 17 and a half years.

Timmy: Gosh Mister you scared the bejeezus out of me!

Timmy: Golly, I'm only 10 years old now, 17 and a half years is a long time!!

Announcer: Did you know in a recent trial one evil, lowdown, dirty, scumbag was fined $1.92 million for placing 24 songs online?

Announcer: That's ok, you are young and have a whole lifetime of criminal debauchery ahead of you.

So you can either spend the rest of your life stealing music, or just take the ten minutes it will take to put a handful of songs online!

Timmy: Wow, that's more money than even Old Man Crow has Mister!

Starring Dickie Rubright as

Timmy

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Announcer: That's right Timmy! You know, you would have to steal 128,000 CDs to get the same sort of fine you would face with giving 24 songs to your friends online.

Timmy: Jeepers Mister!

Timmy: Mister?

Announcer: Yes, Timmy?

Timmy: What does debauchery mean?

Announcer: Shut up.

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