Gawkwire: Web Hosting and Internet News Resource

The worst Microsoft promo videos ever!

2009-09-27T18:22:00-04:00

(cnet) You've created the Facebook event, filled your freezer with prawn elbows and no-frills champagne, and gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that Sandra in HR didn't find out. It's time for a party! A Windows 7 party!

The Internet has been abuzz with mirth over Microsoft's latest marketing wheeze. Windows 7 is launching on October 22, and Microsoft is inviting you to throw a knees-up to celebrate, with a series of videos handing out tips to make your bash go with a bang.

Microsoft eschews such conventional party-planning tips as seating guests boy/girl/boy/girl, choosing a fun fancy dress theme, and hiding your valuables in the garage. Instead, a Windows 7 party will feature such treats as an overview of the new operating system's exciting features.

In the words of one of Microsoft's shameless Gap-clone shills, "In a lot of ways, you're just throwing a party with Windows 7 as an honored guest." Party on. But it's not the first time that a Microsoft video has drawn hoots of derision from anyone with half a brain: we at Crave UK have collected 16 of our favorite visual howlers from the boys and girls at Redmond. ...Go to videos

http://www.gawkwire.com/video_tv/the_worst_microsoft_promo_videos_ever.html

MaximumASP Develops New Windows Shared Hosting Platform

2009-09-28T06:18:00-04:00

Louisville, KY (The Hosting News) Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and a provider of Windows-based hosting and managed IT services, MaximumASP, will soon release a new shared windows hosting platform.

According to the company, MaxESP will be the first highly available completely PCI compliant (web + data) Microsoft ASP.NET shared web hosting platform. The MaxESP core focus is to cater to all aspects of the application life cycle. Customers can quickly upgrade the standard plan and make their application load balanced and more robust with 1 mouse click. Introductory accounts will be available in October free of charge for 30 days and just $49 a month after the trial period.

Besides the usual features of a hosting solution like email, SQL databases, SAN-supported storage, free backups, etc., the MaxESP elastic shared platform adds an SSL VPN service free of charge, PCI compliance at a shared price point, and on-demand application-aware load balancing and simultaneous application instances without forcing customers to rewrite their code.

As a leading Windows-based hosting provider, MaximumASP keeps up with the latest developments in Microsoft technologies while continually seeking customer feedback.

Matt Griffin, product manager at MaxESP explained, ''Windows Server 2008 R2, Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.5, and Application Request Routing, which is an IIS extension, offers tremendous benefits to both our company and our customers in our new shared hosting platform.''

MaxESP is a highly scalable, cost-effective hosting solution that makes it easier for customers to manage their applications. In a shared-hosting architecture, multiple customers use the same physical server. These environments have traditionally been difficult to manage as they grow to include thousands of customers and applications, the MaxESP solution makes it easier for MaximumASP to support a rapidly expanding customer base.

With both its current offerings and MaxESP, MaximumASP simplified the administration of shared hosting for its IT staff. Dominic Foster, CTO of MaximumASP added, ''With Application Request Routing on top of Windows Server 2008 R2, we've created a rock-solid platform that's scalable to any level and takes care of all the headaches normally associated with shared hosting.''

John Zanni, general manager of the Worldwide Software plus Services Industry in the Microsoft Communications Sector at Microsoft Corp. offered, ''With Application Request Routing from Microsoft, hosting providers can offer elastic scalability, optimized resource utilization and reduced management costs to their customers in a simple process. MaximumASP, as our Hosting Solutions Partner of the Year, continues to innovate and demonstrate in-depth knowledge of Microsoft technologies with its MaxESP platform.''

Additionally, MaximumASP takes advantage of the ability of ARR to manage multiple server farms and to manage and monitor all configuration settings through easy-to-use tools including IIS Remote Management.

Mr. Griffin added, ''ARR sits on top of a common, or shared, configuration system provided by IIS, which makes it very easy for us to develop custom modules or apply custom provisioning that plugs into the rest of our IT pipeline. We can use this to support billing, track customers, scale up or down, or add capacity for on-demand products that we want to roll out.''

MaximumASP can quickly provision highly available and scalable server farms and expand customers' self-service options. Multiple layers of load balancing, enterprise SAN storage and redundant server farms will support high-performance requirements. The result will be better service for hosting customers and savings of up to U.S. $166,000 a year for MaximumASP in labor and hardware costs.

Mr. Foster continued, ''We are very excited about MaxESP as well as the IIS 7.5 architecture and anxious for more customer feedback on how it simplifies management of hosted sites and Web applications. MaximumASP continues to lead the hosting industry by giving our customers a competitive edge and enabling them to be first-to-market with new solutions.''

Created in IIS 7.5 and Windows Server 2008 R2 MaxESP has many exciting new features:

Easily create and control your applications in IIS 7.5 using IIS Remote Management
Highly available shared hosting with application aware load balancing
Need more power? No problem. Add instances of your application to seamlessly scale capacity
Decrease the number of nodes when not operating at peak times - or allocate to other website(s)
Customizable scalability right at your fingertips
MaximumASP, based in Louisville, Kentucky, was founded in 2000 as an outsourcing firm for Windows-based hosting services. MaximumASP was named by Microsoft as its 2009 Hosting Solutions Partner of the Year. The company currently hosts more than 50,000 domains for customers in over 120 countries. With a strong focus on hosting solutions that combine advanced monitoring and management tools, MaximumASP has become a top choice for Microsoft developers seeking a robust hosting platform for mission-critical web applications.

To learn more, please visit: www.maximumasp.com.

http://www.gawkwire.com/web_hosting/maximumasp_develops_new_windows_shared_hosting_platform.html

Web Hosting Provider, UK2, Earns Recognition, for Consecutive Three Months

2009-09-16T06:10:00-04:00

London, UK (The Hosting News) Web hosting firm, UK2, has been voted 2nd place in the Top 25 most popular web hosting companies on Web Host Directory UK.

The award which is based on the number of votes a company receives and the amount of times their profile has been viewed each month was won by UK2 in June, July and now August 2009.
Martin Baker, Managing Director at UK2 remarked, ''At UK2 we are constantly thinking of ways to add value to our customers. This is why we regularly launch innovative products, unbeatable offers and invest in UK based support for our customers. It is very rewarding to see that customers are responding positively to our efforts, and I am very pleased that we have been voted one of the most popular web hosting companies for three months in a row.''

Web Host Directory established in 1997 is a brand of Serchen Interactive and a market leader in the hosting industry providing free resources and information for customers researching web hosts online.

UK2 is one of the biggest and most innovative web hosting companies in the UK with a comprehensive range of domain name registration, web hosting, e-commerce, reseller, dedicated server and cloud hosting solutions. UK2 specializes in making it easy, cheap, and quick for any consumer, small or large business to have the online presence they need.

UK2 is also a part of the UK-2 Group, a large web hosting organization made up of over 10 web hosting companies such as VI.net, VPS.net, Midphase.com and more. The group operates its services out of several state of the art, multi million pound data centers and is committed to providing reliable, secure and great value products and services underpinned with excellent support.

To learn more, please visit: www.uk2.net.

http://www.gawkwire.com/web_hosting/web_hosting_provider_uk2_earns_recognition_for_consecutive_three.html

Netfirms Offers Domain Registration via Twitter

2009-09-13T22:31:00-04:00

Netfirms, one of the world's largest web hosting companies, announced today that it is making domain name registration faster and more immediate by leveraging the popular social networking site, Twitter. Customers can now tweet a domain registration request to the Netfirms Twitter account. If the domain name is available, Netfirms will automatically register it and tweet a confirmation back to the customer. Not a Netfirms customer yet? Want to use Netfirms Twitter Registration? Here are the 3 steps to follow from Netfirms. 1. Sign up for a Free Netfirms account at the Netfirms Home Page and add a Billing Profile once you log in. Purchase a domain at our low price of $7.99 or sign up with an existing domain you already own. (Existing clients can skip this step) 2. Add your Twitter account information inside your Netfirms Control Panel. 3. Log in to your Twitter account and send a direct message to @Netfirms with the following: reg mynewdomain.com (replace mynewdomain.com with the domain you wish to register). We'll send you a direct message confirming the registration of the domain. Repeat whenever a domain idea comes to you with Twitter. Domain registration via Twitter is currently available for .com, .net and .org domain extensions, and there is no additional charge for this service. As an added bonus to our web hosting and domain customers we have enabled Free domain privacy by default on all domains to make it easier to register domains on the go. "Our busy customers constantly need new ways to save time and increase their productivity," says Thomas Savundra, CEO of Netfirms. "Now, they can register personal and business domain names immediately with one quick tweet - even when they're on the move." Netfirms offers great value for domains on the Internet at $7.99 and includes Free domain name privacy, toll free 24/7 customer service and fast, secure and reliable domain registration service. In addition, the company's bestselling Netfirms Advantage Hosting plan allows for hosting unlimited websites, making it very easy to host multiple domains and websites. "With today's hectic lifestyles, this is a significant benefit", agrees Dan Kershaw, the General Manager of Netfirms. "Our new service enables you to be creative and register domain names as soon as you think of them - anywhere, anytime! There is no chance of forgetting the name you wanted to register or of someone else registering it first. I am registering domains from my Blackberry and Twitter, and my associates do so with their iPhones." To kick-start our new service and in conjunction with our tenth anniversary, Netfirms is giving away the new 8GB iPod Touch every week for four weeks. On the fourth and final week we will also be awarding one lucky entrant with a brand new Apple Macbook. We give you two great ways to reserve your chance at winning one of these gadgets. Entering the contest is easy - either 'retweet' our contest details to your friends on Twitter, or register your next domain name with Netfirms via your Twitter account. It's that simple. For more information on the Netfirms Twitter Domain Name Registration and giveaway promotion, please visit the Netfirms Twitter Domain Registration Contest Page at http://www.netfirms.com/twitter-domain-contest . Netfirms, Inc., founded in 1998, provides hosting solutions and Grid Hosting technology to successful small and medium-sized businesses, start-ups, entrepreneurs and individuals worldwide. Netfirms hosts over 1,200,000 websites and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. http://www.gawkwire.com/domains/2523.html

HostWorks Launches Revamped Site, Stimulus Contest

2009-09-08T06:17:00-04:00

DENVER, CO (The Hosting News) HostWorks Inc, a Denver Internet web hosting and design company, launched their own redesigned web site www.HostWorks.com today. To celebrate, HostWorks announces their 2009 Internet Stimulus Contest.

The contest winner receives a web site overhaul including:
- QuickStart SEO service to jump start search engine visibility
- one year of free web hosting
- eight (8) hours of consulting time
- site installation of HostWorks’ proprietary SiteWorks Content Management System. SiteWorks enables site managers to independently manage web site content including updating, adding or deleting pages, text and photographs, developing e-newsletters and more any time, from any browser, with Internet access.

All entries must be submitted online through http://www.hostworks.com/index.cfm/ID/116/Stimulus-Contest/. No contest entries will be accepted through US Mail or by telephone. Deadline to enter is 5:00 PM on Thursday, October 1, 2009.

HostWorks, Inc is a privately held managed web hosting, web development and software applications company based in Denver, Colorado.

http://www.gawkwire.com/promotions/hostworks_launches_revamped_site_stimulus_contest.html

Website Hosting Contest Winner, Named by 34SP.com

2009-09-04T09:16:00-04:00

Manchester, UK (The Hosting News) Creativity is never lacking with respect to website hosting contests, and one recent example of this is the Pub Mashup Competition sponsored by Manchester website hosting firm, 34SP.com.

The company, which is known for superior customer service, launched the contest with simple entry criteria: create a mashup that has anything at all to do with pubs. Any entry could win, just so long as the mashup involved a pub in some way. The term 'mashup' is used in web development to denote a web application that combines data or functionality from two or more sources into a single integrated application. A mashup implies easy, fast integration, frequently done by access to open APIs and data sources to produce results that were not the original reason for producing the raw source data.

The winner of the 34SP.com Pub Mashup Competition was Mr. Phil Ronan for his program named ''PubStop''. This mashup will find the location of Britain's best pubs close to a motor route of your choosing - and even divert you for a quick pint. Mr. Ronan's winning entry will also re-route your driving directions and include a stop at the pub with a click of the ''Recalculate route with a stopover at this pub'' button. The pubs included in the stopovers were selected by the guardian.co.uk as Britain's 200 best pubs. The winner received cash and the use of a virtual server for a year as described here: http://www.34sp.com/vps-hosting.

Mr. Ronan's entry was selected from a large field of entries including runner's up Keane Ingram and Ollie O'Brien. Their programs were respectively: The Sam Smith's Challenge (''A map showing all of the Sam Smith's pubs in London, all of which we visited as part of a challenge to ourselves'') and a Map of UK Scenicness...and Pubs (New UK scenicness data released by MySociety, with OpenStreetMap's road network and its known pubs).

According to information released by the company, 34SP.com created the Pub Mashup Competition to appeal to a technical audience. This core technology demographic composes much of the company's client base. The contest provided clever programmers with a way to mix business with pleasure. Business: as in their business is programming applications and pleasure: as in the well known national pastime in the UK, going to pubs.

Winning entries for the website hosting competition were selected by a panel made up of 34SP.com employees who enjoy going to pubs. Entries were judged on the following criteria: originality, functionality, robustness, betterment of the greater pub community, and being fun and engaging to use. The winner emerged, but not without some difficulties.

Stuart Melling, co-founder of 34SP.com described the difficult selection process for the winners, ''Deciding on the actual winner, wasn't an easy decision to make, mainly due to the fact that we'd been in the pub all day, and our vision was a bit blurry. The next day though we tried again. It was still hard though given all the entries we received. In the end we feel that the best pub mashups won.''

34SP.com offers professional website hosting services for cost conscious web developers and designers. The 34SP.com team of technical experts offers award winning support and service coupled with a money back guarantee to ensure client satisfaction. Website hosting services offered include: dedicated servers and .co.uk domains. The company is headquartered in central Manchester, England.

To learn more, please visit: www.34SP.com.

http://www.gawkwire.com/web_hosting/website_hosting_contest_winner_named_by_34sp_com.html

Hosting.com Debuts On-Demand Cloud Computing Solution

2009-09-04T09:15:00-04:00

San Francisco, CA (The Hosting News) Managed hosting, cloud hosting and colocation solutions provider, Hosting.com, has debuted its new VMware (NYSE: VMW) vCloud Express solution, offering instant provisioning, consumption-based pricing (pay by the hour) and unlimited, dynamic compute resources.

Hosting.com will be among the first to offer this new class of VMware Virtualized service that that can be purchased, consumed and adjusted in a pay-as-you-go model. Hosting.com vCloud Express will be available as a beta service beginning September 1, 2009.

Craig McLellan, CTO of Hosting.com noted, ''vCloud Express delivers control directly to customers. They can setup new accounts, adjust virtual machine resources, turn additional machines on or off and deploy and execute virtual machine commands with no human interaction - if so desired. We will continue to innovate to deliver on the promises of capacity and infrastructure on-demand, utility-based pricing, and cloud interconnectivity.''

This solution introduces true cross-platform functionality to the marketplace that is compatible with technology the industry embraces and utilizes. vCloud Express is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution that will run on Hosting.com's Cloud Enterprise infrastructure and is the latest announcement on Hosting.com's portfolio of cloud hosting solutions. Consumers currently utilizing VMware internally will have compatibility between their internal infrastructure and external infrastructure resources used for application development and testing, capacity on demand, and general outsourced infrastructure needs.

Dan Chu, VP of Emerging Markets, VMware added, ''Hosting.com continues to provide cloud solutions and market insights that help define and evolve this quickly growing industry. Their commitment to providing exemplary service and rapid product development made them a natural fit as a vCloud Express service provider.''

Hosting.com will offer vCloud Express through its Cloud Enterprise solution. Cloud Enterprise leverages the latest in virtualization platform technology with VMware vSphere 4, and is highly available on both the computing and disk infrastructures. Hosting.com has made significant investments in enterprise-class technologies such as EMC, Dell, Juniper, F5, and Intel to deliver a robust, standards-based cloud infrastructure to clients demanding unparalleled performance and security.

Jason Waxman, General Manager, High Density Computing Division, Intel remarked, ''Hosting.com has made a promise to deliver Enterprise-Class cloud hosting services to their customers. The Intel Xeon 5500 processor family delivers outstanding benefits to enterprises in performance, energy efficiency and virtualization. Investments in products like Intel's Xeon 5500 processor family help Hosting.com to deliver this promise to their clients via cloud services.''

Hosting.com has a portfolio of Cloud Hosting solutions including Cloud Enterprise, Cloud Dedicated and Cloud VPS - and now vCloud Express - that reduce costs, improve efficiency and provide extreme flexibility to businesses of all sizes. The vCloud Express launch is one of many product announcements Hosting.com will make over the next several months to provide more flexibility and control to hosting customers.

Hosting.com's vCloud Express pricing starts at $.042 per hour and is available immediately.

Hosting.com's portfolio of Cloud Hosting products are being featured at VMworld 2009, expected to draw more than 12,000 attendees. Hosting.com activities at VMworld include: CTO, Craig McLellan's Super Session discussion on cloud hosting with VMware's Dan Chu, VP of Emerging Markets; ideaLaunch.com, a Hosting.com Cloud Enterprise client, will present on a Client Panel; and Hosting.com will demo its cloud solutions multiple times on the tradeshow floor in the Hosting.com and Intel exhibits, as well as in the VMware vCloud Pavilion.

Hosting.com provides enterprise colocation, cloud computing, dedicated hosting, managed hosting, disaster recovery, and business continuance services to a global customer base demanding a high level of security, reliability, and responsiveness. Hosting.com monitors, manages, and enhances the web-based platforms of Web 2.0 companies, software as a service (SaaS) providers, content distribution networks (CDN), and medium to large enterprises whose Web presence is crucial and high availability mandatory.

Hosting.com currently operates SAS 70 Type II certified datacenters in Irvine, CA; Louisville, KY; Newark, DE; San Francisco, CA; and Denver, CO.

To learn more, please visit: www.hosting.com/vcloudexpress.

http://www.gawkwire.com/web_hosting/hosting_com_debuts_on-demand_cloud_computing_solution.html