Didn’t know if everyone knew this yet or not but Google has a pretty cool Blog Search running in Beta right now. This is pretty handy if you are wanting to search for Blog Entries by other users. This search is pretty cool in my opinion because with the rise of Web2.0 and user generated content these days sometimes blogs can get hidden in the mix on regular Google Searches. If you haven’t already be sure to check out this Link to Google Blog Search
Google Blog Search (Beta)
November 9, 2007 By 1 Comment
Web2.0 – What is Twitter?
November 9, 2007 By 1 Comment
My partners and I were driving to Memphis the other day for a client meeting, while driving we were discussing various components of web2.0 that we liked / disliked. While on this topic we started talking about various projects that are out there and happened upon Twitter.
I first heard of Twitter while we were in Chicago this year for HostingCon. It was being talked up a bit out there but everyone I overheard discussing it were like, “what’s twitter?”. I signed up for an account while I was out there and tried to figure it out on my mobile phone. Honestly at the time I just didn’t get it. A few months down the road I decided to revisit Twitter because being in the industry that I am in it’s always in my clients best interests for me to stay up on emerging technologies so that I can relay back to them what’s relevant in todays marketplace. A few web2.0 applications out there I do deem relevant and I will blog about those later on but in this post I want to concentrate on Twitter…
What is Twitter you might ask? Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service, instant messaging, email, or an application such as Twitterrific. Twitter was founded in March 2006 by San Francisco start-up company Obvious Corp.
Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone is the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application. For SMS, currently three gateway numbers are available: short codes for the USA and Canada and a UK number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email.
Due to Twitter’s success, a large number of sites imitating its concept have sprung up around the world, offering country-specific services (e.g. frazr) or combining the micro-blogging facilities with other ideas, such as filesharing (e.g. Pownce). In May, 2007, one source counted as many as 111 such “Twitter-lookalikes” internationally.
What can Twitter do for a business looking to initiate dialog with customers? Nothing as far as I can tell or imagine. What practical applications are there for Twitter for any of my clients? I honestly can’t think of a single client out there that might benefit from a product like this with the exception of a few celebrity clients we work with. Let’s say for example, if Mark Martin, NASCAR driver, were to open up a Twitter account and use SMS to somehow post notes as to what it is he is doing periodically during the day, there might be a few hundred thousand fans out there that would subscribe to his Twitter postings just because he is their favorite driver. Outside of an application like this I just can’t think of how Twitter could benefit any of us in the real world. Do you really care what I am doing right this very minute or what I plan on doing this evening? If you are, for some odd reason curious, then here is a Link to Twitter / powersitedesign which will allow you to follow my posts. Don’t be too dissapointed though, I promise I won’t be “Twitting” too much…
Managing Email Uptime…
November 9, 2007 By 1 Comment
There is a lot of talk today in the industry about guaranteed uptime in regards to email. A lot of companies offer 99.9% uptime, etc., but fall short of explaining how this is guaranteed. I think that in a lot of cases by offering this 99.9% uptime guarantee they (other service providers) are more or less mimicking their competition. I have spent a little bit of time researching this and thought that it would be worthwhile to explain and educate our clients and potential future clients as to how we go about managing uptime for our email service.
In today’s business climate, businesses rely heavily on email for things like customer transactions, vendor relationships, and internal communications. The Pleth Networks Plethware Premium Email Solution features an industry-leading 99.99% uptime guarantee. This guarantee is a reflection of both our understanding of email’s central importance to many businesses and a reflection of the high availability email system engineered by our experts.
Pleth Networks has selected an approach to high availability popularized by Google, which is a large numbers of computer servers built on commodity hardware. The basic theory is that server failures are common, and will happen from time to time. We arrange servers in pairs or clusters, then build failure detection into the network and software.
In the past, we have tried the more traditional, high availability design approach: high-end servers with high-end disk subsystems. The mean time between failure (MTBF) was only somewhat better than commodity hardware, although the high-end server hardware was many times more expensive. For the same cost, key services are now spread across large numbers of servers in single-purpose clusters. Our experience has shown this greatly reduces the risk that any service might become unavailable to our customers in turn giving our clients a higher likelihood of uptime in their email services and less likelihood of downtime. This approach has proven to be most effective, to learn more about Plethware Premium Email Solutions, click here.
Matt Mullenweg of WordPress
November 8, 2007 By Leave a Comment
I just got finished watching a cool interview with Matt Mullenweg on Webpronews.com. He was at the 2007 Blogworld Conference in Las Vegas. In the interview he talks about how he got the idea to start WordPress which I thought was pretty cool, he developed the whole (“) thing first that is built into wordpress, which is pretty cool to say the least. I have always admired his open-sourced philosophy when it comes to building community driven apps.
In the interview he also talks about BBPress which is their Forum solution built on the same premise that WordPress is built on. It’s pretty cool if you haven’t checked it out. There are some more cool interviews from Blogworld Expo in Vegas that I will be posting on here as I have a chance to go through all of them.
Organic SEO vs. PPC?
November 6, 2007 By Leave a Comment
Here is a good Link to Organic SEO vs. PPC? | I ran across on WebProNews. The story is well written and talks to a couple of “experts” in the field of SEO and PPC about their opinion as to which is better. Be sure to watch the video embedded in the story for their perspectives. In my opinion, all traffic is good! It’s nice to have Organic position because it’s basically free, but it’s also good to capitalize on PPC because it has been proven to increase traffic.
C I Host Responds to Robbery Reports
November 6, 2007 By 1 Comment
I blogged on this topic yesterday because I thought that it was probably one of the most bizarre things I had heard in a long time, if ever before, in the hosting industry. I was first alerted when I saw some angry posts on the message boards out there from CI Host Customers. Thank goodness we don’t have to worry about a situation like this with our datacenter!!! Thank Goodness! This is nonsense! I am not for sure who is really to blame, and thank goodness it’s not my job to figure that out but my goodness, this is outside of my realm of understanding…
Here is an excerpt from an article on the WHIR where they (CI Host) responds to all that has been going on:
“Bottom line is, no-one likes to hear what we have to say,” says Eckles. “We can offer services or discounts, but people want money. They want compensation. But we don’t have money to give them. We’re just as victimized as our customers. They came to us because we offered them cheap colocation services. They think because we’re a corporation we have lots of money, but we make our money through volume. If we had the money, we would give it to them.”
Source: Web Host Industry News | C I Host Responds to Robbery Reports
Aptana IDE for Eclipse
November 6, 2007 By Leave a Comment
I was checking out Dr. Dobb’s today and found out that Aptana has released version 1.0 of Aptana Studio. Aptana is a cross-platform, Eclipse-based IDE for AJAX and HTML development. Aptana is available for Mac OS, Windows, and Linux. Aptana offers a free Community Edition and a Professional version with an introductory price of $99.
If your development tool of choice is Eclipse, you might want to check out this Link to Aptana
Windows Live Gallery
November 6, 2007 By Leave a Comment
I was telling my friend Rick Thomas, of MLS Software, about Windows Live Writer yesterday and while we were talking I stumbled on a Gallery of Plugins that were available for WLW that I wasn’t aware of and thought that it might be worthy to post a Link to Windows Live Gallery for those of you who also use WLW to maintain your websites and blogs. I started using WLW after Chris Leeds, of Content Seed, told me about it. We were both using Microsoft Spaces as our blogging platform and WLW really plugged into that software very nicely. I have since moved onto using WordPress as my blogging platform but have adapted WLW to maintain my wordpress blog as well. In fact, WLW is capable of maintaining any number of blogs that are out there. Definitely worth having a look at.
iStockphoto.com
November 5, 2007 By Leave a Comment
I get questions from time to time from other developers and graphic designers about where we go to get stock photography while working on client projects. In most cases we like for our clients to provide us high-resolution images of their products to use on their projects but when the client doesn’t have a product to sell and is a service provider of sorts I like to use iStockphoto.com to get images. They have a wide variety of stock photos to select from that are organized in a way that I can quickly locate images relevant to the project that I am working on.
In addition to stock photography they also have a wide variety of vector illustrations and flash source files that serve as great starters for logo design or shockwave animations. iStockphoto usually always has a wide variety of graphics for whatever project we are working on and the prices for these images is always inline with what our clients want to spend on artwork.
C I Host Data Center Robbed!
November 5, 2007 By Leave a Comment
In a letter to customers, C I Host said at least two masked intruders entered the facility after cutting into reinforced walls with a power saw. The company says a night manager was repeatedly tazered and that the intruders took at least 20 data servers.
I have been in the web-hosting business for quite a while and this is without a doubt one of the most bizzare stories I have ever heard! I don’t think that I have ever heard of a Datacenter the size of CI Host being robbed by armed assailants with taser guns! I would absolutely love to see a copy of this police report! Here is an excerpt from the article, you have got to read this story: Web Host Industry News | C I Host Data Center Robbed
