Wednesday, April 25, 2012
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Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Startup guest post - Netfirms: Hosting: The Start Up's Hand Up
Hosting: The Start Up's Hand Up
Why Hosting Works
The field of technology is updated so rapidly that it can be hard to keep up with the latest editions, newest gadgets, and best protection. Couple that with beginning your first technology start-up and the task can go from difficult, to overwhelming, as quickly as it takes the latest story of Lindsay Lohan to circulate. Despite the daunting loom that this may seem to impart, there is help in the form of a hosting company.
What is the worst case scenario you could be faced with? Server down-time. Down-time communicates negatively with your clients as it causes frustration and instils doubt in your ability to provide prompt, quality service. Other issues you are potentially facing are viruses, bugs, system crashes, etc. As a small business, you may not have the time or man-power to deal with these complications thoroughly. That is where a hosting company comes to your rescue.
A Good Host
There are a various assortment of hosting companies available, some of them are the big names everyone has heard of, some are less known names. Google, Microsoft, HP, and Amazon are ones people have heard of due to their pivotal technological places. In the following paragraphs Rackspace and Equinix will be discussed. Before that though, let's look at what you should expect from a hosting company:
Is the company financially stable?
Are they expanding their resources?
What kind of tech-support do they offer?
Do they provide the services they promise?
Who else uses them?
Now to explore the some of companies mentioned.
Equinix
Equinix has been around since 1998, providing service for over three-thousand customers in eleven different countries over five-hundred different networks. They provide service for customers of AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint. Equinix has a twenty-four hour, seven day a week support system available to its customers that provides help with installation, troubleshooting, and other issues. Pricing is flexible and competitive, set-up to be customized based on what the client is seeking. Some of the drawbacks to Equinix for US users are the monitoring services and valuable asset protection in the event of IT downtime are available only for customers in Asia and Europe.
Rackspace
Rackspace has also been in business since 1998. They provide service for over eighty-thousand customers. Their overseas expansion is on a smaller-scale, with two centers in the UK and one in Hong Kong. Rackspace boasts a high-security capability, including key-card and twenty-four hour monitoring features. A different aspect to Rackspace is there billing protocol, which is based on individual customer usage of bandwidth. Rackspace only bills clients for the bandwidth they have used (versus the popular 95% billing), based on outbound bandwidth; that means not being charged for regular maintenance. Cloud hosting is a specialty for Rackspace. This is where websites are hosted on various servers that are connected; in short, that means you pay less.
There are multiple options available for tech start up companies looking to use hosting. The benefits are well weighed in your favour.
Bio
Netfirms, Inc. is the premier provider of web hosting, domain name search and registration, e-commerce web site hosting, e-mail hosting, e-marketing services and technology solutions. Our customers include families, small home offices, established businesses, and large corporations who need reliable domain name registration and web hosting services.
Why Hosting Works
The field of technology is updated so rapidly that it can be hard to keep up with the latest editions, newest gadgets, and best protection. Couple that with beginning your first technology start-up and the task can go from difficult, to overwhelming, as quickly as it takes the latest story of Lindsay Lohan to circulate. Despite the daunting loom that this may seem to impart, there is help in the form of a hosting company.
What is the worst case scenario you could be faced with? Server down-time. Down-time communicates negatively with your clients as it causes frustration and instils doubt in your ability to provide prompt, quality service. Other issues you are potentially facing are viruses, bugs, system crashes, etc. As a small business, you may not have the time or man-power to deal with these complications thoroughly. That is where a hosting company comes to your rescue.
A Good Host
There are a various assortment of hosting companies available, some of them are the big names everyone has heard of, some are less known names. Google, Microsoft, HP, and Amazon are ones people have heard of due to their pivotal technological places. In the following paragraphs Rackspace and Equinix will be discussed. Before that though, let's look at what you should expect from a hosting company:
Is the company financially stable?
Are they expanding their resources?
What kind of tech-support do they offer?
Do they provide the services they promise?
Who else uses them?
Now to explore the some of companies mentioned.
Equinix
Equinix has been around since 1998, providing service for over three-thousand customers in eleven different countries over five-hundred different networks. They provide service for customers of AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint. Equinix has a twenty-four hour, seven day a week support system available to its customers that provides help with installation, troubleshooting, and other issues. Pricing is flexible and competitive, set-up to be customized based on what the client is seeking. Some of the drawbacks to Equinix for US users are the monitoring services and valuable asset protection in the event of IT downtime are available only for customers in Asia and Europe.
Rackspace
Rackspace has also been in business since 1998. They provide service for over eighty-thousand customers. Their overseas expansion is on a smaller-scale, with two centers in the UK and one in Hong Kong. Rackspace boasts a high-security capability, including key-card and twenty-four hour monitoring features. A different aspect to Rackspace is there billing protocol, which is based on individual customer usage of bandwidth. Rackspace only bills clients for the bandwidth they have used (versus the popular 95% billing), based on outbound bandwidth; that means not being charged for regular maintenance. Cloud hosting is a specialty for Rackspace. This is where websites are hosted on various servers that are connected; in short, that means you pay less.
There are multiple options available for tech start up companies looking to use hosting. The benefits are well weighed in your favour.
Bio
Netfirms, Inc. is the premier provider of web hosting, domain name search and registration, e-commerce web site hosting, e-mail hosting, e-marketing services and technology solutions. Our customers include families, small home offices, established businesses, and large corporations who need reliable domain name registration and web hosting services.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Saturday, April 03, 2010
Saturday, December 05, 2009
Laptops versus Netbooks. What I think of the two.
If consumers can't decide between a netbook and a low-priced laptop this holiday season, manufacturers certainly aren't helping matters.
When I see the season's top netbook, the 12-inch Acer Aspire Timeline, has dimensions, memory (3 gigabytes) and pricing (around $600) that's similar to a 14-inch Toshiba Satellite dual-core laptop, it's little wonder that buyers are having an increasingly difficult time telling the two apart. In fact, according to a NPD Group report issued earlier this year, almost 60% of consumers who bought a netbook instead of a notebook thought they would have the same capabilities. Roughly the same percentage was satisfied with its netbooks, compared to 70% of those who planned on buying a netbook all along.
The notion of the netbook was that it was small, cheap and light, but because of profit margins, they started to creep into the 12-inch category without beefing up the internal components I say
I agree Netbooks were once featherweight, Linux-equipped toys with puny Atom processors and sub-$300 price tags. Even as bigger manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard and Samsung Electronics entered the market and Microsoft's Windows operating systems became prevalent, netbooks still remained small, affordable and long on battery life.
Samsung's N120, for example, has Windows XP, but it's only 10 inches wide, costs as little as $320 and maintains a charge for six hours. Toshiba's Satellite U505 is small and only has 1 gigabyte of memory, but its $400 price tag nets consumers Windows 7 and 9.5 hours of battery time. Though the battery on Acer's Timeline holds a charge for 10 hours, and its Pentium processor offers 3 gigabytes of memory, its size and $550 price tag delete its benefits.
"You want a small netbook that's a little underpowered, which is the tradeoff for price and size and weight," Fox says. "If you're getting up around $500, there's little value in getting an oversized netbook if you're losing the advantages of a netbook. It's the worst of both worlds."
When I see the season's top netbook, the 12-inch Acer Aspire Timeline, has dimensions, memory (3 gigabytes) and pricing (around $600) that's similar to a 14-inch Toshiba Satellite dual-core laptop, it's little wonder that buyers are having an increasingly difficult time telling the two apart. In fact, according to a NPD Group report issued earlier this year, almost 60% of consumers who bought a netbook instead of a notebook thought they would have the same capabilities. Roughly the same percentage was satisfied with its netbooks, compared to 70% of those who planned on buying a netbook all along.
The notion of the netbook was that it was small, cheap and light, but because of profit margins, they started to creep into the 12-inch category without beefing up the internal components I say
I agree Netbooks were once featherweight, Linux-equipped toys with puny Atom processors and sub-$300 price tags. Even as bigger manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard and Samsung Electronics entered the market and Microsoft's Windows operating systems became prevalent, netbooks still remained small, affordable and long on battery life.
Samsung's N120, for example, has Windows XP, but it's only 10 inches wide, costs as little as $320 and maintains a charge for six hours. Toshiba's Satellite U505 is small and only has 1 gigabyte of memory, but its $400 price tag nets consumers Windows 7 and 9.5 hours of battery time. Though the battery on Acer's Timeline holds a charge for 10 hours, and its Pentium processor offers 3 gigabytes of memory, its size and $550 price tag delete its benefits.
"You want a small netbook that's a little underpowered, which is the tradeoff for price and size and weight," Fox says. "If you're getting up around $500, there's little value in getting an oversized netbook if you're losing the advantages of a netbook. It's the worst of both worlds."
Pasta myths--debunked
I'm blown away that people don't know this. It doesn't get any better than a bowl of pasta, right? But too often cooks ruin a great dish by following one (or more) of these myths. Avoid them, and you'll be licking your plate clean in no time.
Myth: Breaking long pasta into shorter pieces makes it easier to eat.
If spaghetti were better short, it would have been made that way! Plus, broken strands are hard to eat since they’re not long enough to twirl onto a fork.
More: 12 pasta shapes and their best sauce matches »
Myth: Add olive oil to the cooking water to keep the pasta from sticking.
Pasta shouldn’t stick when properly cooked. If it’s cooked with olive oil, it will actually coat the noodles and prevent sauce from sticking.
More: 3 golden rules for cooking pasta »
Myth: Throw the pasta against the wall—if it sticks, it’s done.
The only way to know if it’s done is to taste it! It should be al dente, or firm to the bite. The more pasta cooks, the gummier it gets, so if it sticks to the wall it’s probably overdone.
More: 4 tricks to time it just right, from Marcella Hazan »
Myth: Rinse pasta after cooking and draining.
This will make the pasta cold and rinse away the starch that helps bind the sauce to it.
More: 15 easy sauce-shape pairings and recipes »
Myth: It’s all about the sauce.
Italians will tell you it’s pasta with sauce—not sauce with pasta! Too much sauce buries the flavor of the pasta and overwhelms it.
More: 5 every day pasta sauce recipes »
Myth: Breaking long pasta into shorter pieces makes it easier to eat.
If spaghetti were better short, it would have been made that way! Plus, broken strands are hard to eat since they’re not long enough to twirl onto a fork.
More: 12 pasta shapes and their best sauce matches »
Myth: Add olive oil to the cooking water to keep the pasta from sticking.
Pasta shouldn’t stick when properly cooked. If it’s cooked with olive oil, it will actually coat the noodles and prevent sauce from sticking.
More: 3 golden rules for cooking pasta »
Myth: Throw the pasta against the wall—if it sticks, it’s done.
The only way to know if it’s done is to taste it! It should be al dente, or firm to the bite. The more pasta cooks, the gummier it gets, so if it sticks to the wall it’s probably overdone.
More: 4 tricks to time it just right, from Marcella Hazan »
Myth: Rinse pasta after cooking and draining.
This will make the pasta cold and rinse away the starch that helps bind the sauce to it.
More: 15 easy sauce-shape pairings and recipes »
Myth: It’s all about the sauce.
Italians will tell you it’s pasta with sauce—not sauce with pasta! Too much sauce buries the flavor of the pasta and overwhelms it.
More: 5 every day pasta sauce recipes »
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