Gawkwire: Web Hosting and Internet News Resource

SMB’s IT Purchasing Habits and the Studies that Figure Them Out

2009-10-29T19:04:00-04:00

(WebHost Blog) Here is an assumption you can take to the bank, the percentage of SMBs that buy new IT equipment, both hardware and software, will be far less than their enterprise level equivalents. This is business class 101 and the assumption pretty much holds water 99% of the time. This assumption is so bullet proof in fact that most hardware and software vendors assume it as they prep products for the market.

So when I see whole studies that proof this point again and again, regardless of the current economy, I sort of wonder if those companies who do such studies are having a slow week or perhaps getting ready for a new video game or movie release.

Actually that is overly harsh, those sort of studies are needed if only to reinforce that up is in fact up, down is in fact down, and that SMBs don’t spend a great deal of money updating on the latest and greatest gear (preferring to spend their money on frivolous things like salaries).

What bothers me about such studies is when people report it as if its an incredible find. I just got through reading a number of blogs on the CDW IT Monitor study. CDW of course is a fairly large wholesale computer seller. The report concluded, surprise surprise, that SMBs are planning to spend less than other company types (such as enterprise or government agencies).

Another thing some people do not consider when it comes to equipment purchasing is tax breaks. The average enterprise level company will spend quite a bit on equipment in order to incur large tax breaks to offset their earnings. SMBs are in a delicate situation in that they need to balance salaries, company expansion, and miscellaneous overhead costs to the need to buy new equipment. Often times new equipment takes a back seat. So CDW IT Monitor, SMBs not buying new equipment, but will maintain their current infrastructure. Big whoop.

About David Dunlap
Over the past ten years David has been a prolific author of hundreds of blogs, commentaries and reviews found here on WebHostBlog.com, as well as WebHostMagazine.com and other sites around the Internet. David manages the daily operations at both WebHostBlog and Web Host Magazine & Buyer's Guide, and as the head editor, David uses his unique analytical skills to ensure that both sites maintain their integrity and tough, but fair minded, reputations. Prior to his active career analyzing the Web Host industry, David specialized in networking and communications for the U.S. government. David's expertise in traditional and search engine marketing has helped boost companies both inside and outside of the Web Host industry.

http://www.gawkwire.com/technology/smb_s_it_purchasing_habits_and_the_studies_that_figure_them_out.html

Net Neutrality – Removes Consumer Empowerment

2009-10-26T18:43:00-04:00

(Web Host Blog) Many readers of this blog know that I am against net neutrality. Many also know that I am pro-consumer and when there is an argument between consumers and corporations I will side with the consumer. So how can I be a consumer advocate and be anti net neutrality? Seems mind-boggling doesn’t? It may, but not if you look at the consequences in proportion to the supposed gains.

There is No Shelter Here

First off, there has never been a problem with the internet not being neutral. When I say this the first two statements that come to mind is Comcast slowing down p2p transfers and the second being the Canadian company Telus and its problem with the Telecommunications Workers Union (TWU). Now everyone thinks that net neutrality will solve the Comcast throttling issue… it won’t. One of the clauses the FCC has been championing is to ensure consumers can connect to their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network. Unfortunately for the consumer, p2p services can, and in many cases, greatly harm the integrity of a network especially in rural zones. If it can be proven to ruin the network then it can be throttled. The Telus issue is another matter. During a labor strike of the TWU a site posted pictures of those employees who crossed the picket line and inflammatory comments were made to include a variety of death threats. Telus banned the site to protect the employees that it had threatened with beatings and death. After a bit of arguing and a little grand standing, the owners of the site and Telus came to an agreement, the pictures were removed and Telus unblocked the site.

The problem with net neutrality is that it assumes that the Internet is in trouble and that there is not enough regulation in place to protect consumers, which is false. As many have stated, net neutrality is a solution without a problem. And to solve those problems we already have a number of solutions: class action lawsuits, boycotting, competitive markets, etc.

The Consequences

The consequences of net neutrality are very much real and are a danger to many consumers. Removing tiered Internet access removes a major portion of income for an ISP. That income is normally spent on infrastructure, but if net neutrality is put in place the infrastructure will decrease. Essentially the ultra fast broadband packages subsidize the lowest tiers as well as allow for network expansion. With out it, those who do not have the higher end infrastructure, such as rural communities, will remain with the lower network pipelines.

As a for instance, I live out in the middle of nowhere, very small rural community, but I needed extreme broadband so I could work at home on the weekends. I paid a huge setup fee to get a good sized line as well as a large monthly fee for about a year. However, once residents of the town found out they now have access to the faster speeds they began to pay for it and after two years the overall monthly price went down, in fact I am paying now about 60% of what I was paying two years ago. With net neutrality, sure I wouldn’t have been hosed for a year (plus a wicked setup fee), but the ISP would not have made high speed Internet an option here and today we’d all be on the lowest speed that can be called “broadband.”

Net neutrality calls for all networks to be equal so they won’t fragment the Internet to several network microcosms. Which is all well and good, but if it is truly enforced than no network can advance through better research until all ISP networks advance. Therefore if company A invested $10 million to increase the efficiency of the network it could not implement it until companies B, C, all the way to ZZZ could produce it on their own networks. The net neutralities bills do not offer valid definitions of what makes networks different and because of this it will plateau innovation simply because one company doesn’t want to shell out the research dollars if it needs to ensure that all its competition have the technology before it can be implemented.

The very last problem I have with net neutrality, and by far the most important for me, is it removes consumer empowerment and places it with the government. One thing I have noticed is that people nowadays believe that the corporations control the economy when it is in fact the consumer who has control.

A very intelligent man understood this principle and in 1955 he used this capitalistic consumer principle to ensure public scrutiny on a major social injustice. The man was the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and he used boycotting to push social change. Companies must conform to what consumers want. If a company sells broadband at $200 a month and no one buys it they will either remove that service or they will reduce the price until it is purchased. If a company prevents access to the a site or service, they will continue to do so until the consumer decides not to buy their services. The surest way to have the fair pricing on goods is for consumers to understand their rights and to enforce these rights on the company. This principle is like a surgeon’s scalpel allowing consumers in a given location to fine tune the offerings of the local companies. When governments step in they cannot fine tune services since it would not be fair on a national level. They cannot say, well ISPs in Nevada can offer their rural customers higher tier broadband for less than the rest of the companies in the nation because they have the infrastructure for it. Instead federal governments have to use blanket statements in a one sized fits all fashion and hope that they don’t screw a large portion of the population. Now some might say well some places have ISP monopolies and this is true. Although in my population 800 town I have three ISP providers I will not assume that their is competition enough in every area for consumers to be choosey and that is where government should step in. We have rules on the books against monopolies and it is that area which government should be spending their time on.

http://www.gawkwire.com/technology/net_neutrality_removes_consumer_empowerment.html

Marketing Jargon: Thinking Outside the Box

2009-10-21T06:18:00-04:00

(WebHost Blog) Every time I use a CD or DVD-ROM I always think of 7th Guest. It was the first CDROM I ever remember using and the game itself was unique (at the time). The storyline was quite involved, the puzzles where devilishly hard, and horror was a much overlooked genre when it came to PC games back then. Every time when I load a disk into my drive I remember the hysterical laughter or the cutscene where the guests are at the dinner table laughing and then they change to skeletons. And now a bit of history.

When the CD-ROM came out no one really cared. Word processors, spreadsheets and other such productivity software did not need the huge capacity that CDs provided and so the drive seemed like it would be a novelty at best. On the software end of things, however things were getting out of hand. PC video games were becoming huge and gamers around the world had to constantly swap out floppies or had to spend some three or four hours installing a game that was contained on some 15-20 disks. It was irksome, one of the biggest jokes at the time centered around the King’s Quest series, they figured by the time it reached 10 it would be called King’s Quest 10 In Search of Bigger Hard Drives! The stage was set for a means for CD-ROMs to become a standard. Instead of appealing to corporate they would appeal to gamers.

This is pretty standard stuff nowadays, heck the processor and video card markets seem to revolve around game launches, but back then, this was cutting edge. Back then, no one cared about the gamer market. 7th Guest was the first game to be written only for a CD and not for disks. It became bundled with a number of drives targeted at the consumer CD-ROM user (which was non-existent at the time).

This partnership proved to be fortuitous in that the CD-ROM exploded in sales as did the 7th Guest. In fact, the 7th Guest is still one of the few games to sell in excess of 2 million copies. As far as the CD-ROM industry well we all know how successful CD-ROMs were.

Some will tell you that thinking outside the box means to tattoo company logos on peoples’ heads, but I say different. Thinking outside the box means to do something that no one else has done in a way that makes sense for your business.

7th Guest is a great example of thinking outside of the box. It did something no one else ever did before, but it also made sense. It wasn’t a gimmick, it was a tangible and meaningful partnership that provided results. When you are looking for your killer marketing idea, remember it doesn’t have to be a gimmick it can be just as simple as finding the right service or product to partner with.

http://www.gawkwire.com/business/marketing_jargon_thinking_outside_the_box.html

Niche Markets: Not Just About Products and Features

2009-10-13T18:37:00-04:00

(Web Host Blog) When I talk about niche marketing and building a niche I often refer to the products or the feature lists. For instance, local ecommerce hosting would approach the niche by maintaining working relationships with area vendors, media, and the like and that becomes an added feature; by hosting from us and we will give you discounts for advertising with the local papers and TV stations, etc. But niche marketing can also be based on audience.

In this form of niche creation, it’s not your product that is the niche, but how you display it and how you support it. As an example look at Laughing Squid.

Laughing Squid is a Web Host in the normal sense, they offer hosting space, but they offer it in support of the local art community. Their niche service is the promotion of art and culture and the web hosting aspect is but one way they achieve this. It is a very focused market, Laughing Squid probably won’t become a Fortune 500 company, but they have achieved a level of success and not only that but the niche is something that they enjoy.

Therefore, when thinking of niche markets, also think on target audiences. In fact, I would dare to say think of a niche target audience first then find the services that will help them out.

You might say, well I already look at my audience for my niche market so technically I have already done this. You might have but there are a few differences in approach. Niches developed on services start with features then seek an audience. For instance, blog hosting; a web host says they host only blogs then they look at the demographic (normally the marketing department does this when determining who they should place ads with, etc). An audience centric niche starts with the audience, I want to host only the steampunk community, now what features do I offer for that end?

The steps involved are not too much different though it requires far more community participation and a passion for that niche.

Going back to the steampunk example, let’s develop a steampunk hosting service as a practical application. Our web hosting service will be called Steam Powered Hosting. To coincide with future marketing, we will have a “Are You Steam Powered?” badge for web sites who host through us that is an affiliate partnership, i.e. community sites who place it on their site will get a commission for any finalized sales they send our way. The web site will have a professional artist (from the community!) make the themes for it and there will be contests for steampunk theme creations (for wordpress, joomla, or just simple desktop themes).

When targeting an audience its always community, community, community. Next step is to look through all the main steampunk web sites and see what they all need. After looking through I identified that its pretty basic hosting, blogs, small (but detailed) shopping carts, decent hosting packages. The big thing I noticed is the lack of any form of SEO or marketing, in general the bulk of steampunk sites have low traffic. So I we will use basic hosting, but have artists who will work on custom artwork for our customers, and help our customers with branding, SEO, and other forms of marketing. Next thing I would do is get ALL of my employees into the community and discussing steampunk NOT hosting. They would write fan-fiction, develop tutorials on building steam engines, blimps, how to create models and landscapes, talk about the best sites they have seen, etc. When working with a niche community everyone in your company should be passionate about it.

Once established I would offer free hosting to the big players such as Brass Goggles. Only stipulation would be that they have the badge at the bottom (and I would make sure the badge was so cool looking that people wouldn’t want to say no).

With that taken care of, offer community support for your customers. Not just introductions, but if they have a question on how to properly modify a a 1936 Rolls Royce Phantom to be more steampunkish (first complement them on their excellent car choice) then either help them brainstorm or point them in the direction of an expert who can help. Heck the expert might be another customer of yours. Offering a support forum which would handle hosting, but would also include tutorials on a variety of topics. You employees have been writing for other forums and doing community outreach, why not republish or link what they already wrote onto your own forum?

All of this done, you are well on your way to developing a stable, profitable, and enjoyable hosting experience, for your customers and yourself.

This example can be applied in just about any niche too, so if you are looking at changing your niche or you are just starting and want to build a niche, don’t just look at a feature niche market, look at the audience niches as well.

http://www.gawkwire.com/business/niche_markets_not_just_about_products_and_features.html

Abort-Retry-Fail

2009-10-08T00:00:00-04:00

(WebHost Blog) I have a mental list of the 30 passwords I use on a daily basis. These passwords are never less than 8 characters and they include all manner of things from caps, to numbers, odd characters, and if I am allowed really crazed ASCII characters (which I am only rarely allowed). Not to toot my own horn or anything but I am pretty paranoid when it comes to passwords, if I wrote a password down on a strip of paper you can bet your bottom dollar that I will eat said paper (or toss it into my paper shredder, but that just doesn’t have the same sort of… hmm… we’ll call it RAAAAARRRGGGHGHGH!!!1!!1one!)

I have a number of yahoo and Gmail accounts (used when giving emails to sites that I know will spam the heck out of me later), so when I heard about the Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail email phishing scheme, I went online changed all my passwords and told anyone who would listen to do the same. But this is not the good bit.

You may ask what is the good bit? The good bit is, the phishers posted the passwords and a few enterprising security researchers uncovered one of the saddest list of passwords ever conceived by human or beast!

For instance only 6% of Hotmail passwords contained a mix of letters, numbers, and characters. More than 60% were either all lowercase or all numbers. And now for the fun part, the top 10 most used passwords!

10. estrella (which I thought quite odd)

9. 1234567

8. 12345678

7. alejandro

6. tequiero

5. alberto

4. 111111

3. alejandra

2. 123456789

1. 123456

Now in all fairness, I imagine a lot of people are like myself when it comes to these sort of “throw-away” email accounts. I am not really concerned about the information contained in there since a great deal of it is spam and most of it really doesn’t matter. However, I realize that some of the email contains passwords for forum accounts and the like and that is why I keep the passwords fairly strong (and why I changed the passwords, since I don’t want to find out that a forum account or two of mine was hijacked).

So with that in mind, I am hoping that the passwords are a little stronger on something like corporate accounts. Instead of 6% having a mix of characters, numbers, and letters, I will wager its probably closer to 15%, which is still abysmal, but nearly 3 times better than Hotmail passwords.

Making stronger email passwords is not so hard a thing. They can even be somewhat personal and still be strong. Take a fact you know about yourself that no one else does (I am sure we all have those sorts of things) and capitalize one or two of the letters. Next replace a letter or two with characters that looks similar and viola! you have yourself a strong password that can be more easily memorized. If you have major problems remembering, get yourself an encrypted key drive, put your passwords in a text file, change the file type of the file (like make it restaurant.jpg instead of password.txt), put it in an encrypted archive, put that in an encrypted archive, put that on the key. Add that key drive to your key chain. There you go… just never misplace your keys.

http://www.gawkwire.com/technology/abort-retry-fail.html

Not A Computer, Search Engine or a Sandwich

2009-10-06T19:29:00-04:00

(TechCrunch) Google has spent a significant amount of time over the past couple of years building a very impressive web browser, Chrome. By most accounts, it’s the fastest around, and isn’t system resource heavy, and those who use it seem to love it. But there’s a tiny little problem: Being the best product doesn’t matter when general users have no idea what the product even is. And I’m not talking about just the specific product, I’m talking about the product category. And I’m not talking about some crazy new tech, I’m talking about a web browser.

We’ve actually known since Google’s hilarious video this summer that plenty of normal people have absolutely no idea what a web browser really is, even though most use one on a daily basis. But today, Google has put together what can only be described as an extremely dumbed-down one minute video (below) and rudimentary website to attempt to explain to everyone once again exactly what a web browser is. And make no mistake, the undertone is clear: You should be using Chrome. ...Go to source

http://www.gawkwire.com/technology/chrome_not_a_computer_search_engine_or_a_ham_sandwich.html

Partnerka: Get Paid for Infecting Macs

2009-10-01T06:26:00-04:00

(WebHost Blog) Reading the blogs from Sophos, I came upon a gem, Earn 43 cents every time you infect a Mac. What is even more spectacular about this is the fact that I just read (maybe a week or two ago) a news article that asks do Mac users really need to have anti-virus software?

When I first read it I was flabbergasted (the article not the blog). That sort of question is like asking, your car - does it really need seat belts? For the most part when you drive you will not be in a life and death situation. Seatbelts are used in case an accident occurs not because accidents happen 20-30 times out of your day. Anti-virus software for a Mac is a prevention tool not something to be considered after all the information has been formatted and your the system as become a spambot zombie.

Now when I see this 43 cents per infected Mac, well now here is the ammo I need if the last argument wasn’t good enough (we do have people who drive without seatbelts, text while speeding down the highway and read newspapers while in traffic, so you never know). The Russian spamming and malware mob (partnerka) is after your Mac!

To elaborate further, Sophos’ Paul Ducklin, posted a blog linking to Dmitry Samosseiko’s (security researcher and analyst extraordinaire from Sophos Canada) paper on partnerka. Its a good read, the link to the blog and a link to the paper. In the paper, Dmitry discusses the lucrative industry of Mac malware scams with many would-be malware spreaders making roughly $5k in some 11 days of effort.

Before the Internet, when we moved files via floppies, null modem connections, and the like, even then it was good policy to have anti-virus software on your system. I can’t tell you how many computers I saw fail on March 6th, cause people didn’t do a simple virus scan for the Michelangelo virus.

It doesn’t matter the OS, the type of system (desktop, laptop, blade server), or even if its connected to the Internet, a computer should have security programs on it at the very least. You should have anti-virus, anti-malware, and some sort of firewall.

http://www.gawkwire.com/technology/partnerka_get_paid_for_infecting_macs.html