Not all tools have to be useful, that can just be fun to play with too.  DataCenterMap.com is one of those geeky hosting tools you may just want to play with on a Sunday afternoon when you have some free time.  As you can see, it is a big Google mash-up map with a ton of datacenter located on it.

All you have to do to see more is zoom in.  You’d be amazed by the number of data centers out there.  Once you find one you want to know more about, just click on it’s spot on the map and you can pull up the actual location as well as the profile on it and their official web site link.

Here is a little more about the project from the developers:

Data Center Map, is a free web service for companies around the world in need of housing / co-location space, whether it is just for hosting of one server, a rack cabinet, a cage or a dedicated room. I created Data Center Map because I, as co-owner of a hosting company, felt that there was a need for such a service in this constantly growing market.

If the map isn’t doing it for you - you can also use this list to navigate datacenters by country:

http://www.datacentermap.com/datacenters.html

At the present data and time they have indexed 980 co-location data centers from 50 different countries.  To play with this tool yourself, go to DataCenterMap.com.

So you want to gain a little more information about your FeedBurner powered feed?  There are several free tools from around the Web that will allow you to do just that.  Here are three out there that Google hasn’t provided to FeedBurner users yet.

Blog Perfume’s Feed Analysis

With the toolset that Blog Perfume is providing, you can see some details statistics on just about any FeedBurner feed.  You can see the number of subscribers per month, the hits, subscribers and views from a day to day basis, the number of subscribers depending on the day of the week, and more.

Yoast’s Feed Circulation Graphs

Yoast takes a simpler approach and just gives you a graph based on the number of subscribers that you have.  Type in your feed name (what follows after the feeds.feedburner.com/) the time frame and the width of the graph.

Example: Web Hosting Show’s Subscription Number Graph for 6 Months

Feed Compare

This one might be my favorite of them all.  Feed Compare takes your subscription numbers and compares them with anybody else who uses FeedBurner to power their RSS feeds.  You can give it up to four feeds to compare too.  You can view stats for up to 1 month to 24 months, so there should be no concern about getting the big picture when it comes to this alternative FeedBurner stats tools.  For example, you can see the Web Hosting Show’s RSS feed and The WHIR’s RSS feed are pretty close in comparison.

Example: Web Hosting Show’s RSS Feed vs The WHIR’s RSS Feed

For many of these tools, you must have awareness API turned on for your feed in question.  If your trying to look at data from somebody else’s feed, and you get an error - this is probably the reason why.

For those of you who have your own POP3 e-mail account that came with your web hosting for your web site - would you like to import that mail into Gmail?  Using Gmail’s Mail Fetcher, you can download messages from up to five other email accounts, centralizing all your e-mail in Gmail.

First thing you must do is login to the Gmail web site, and then Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page, and open the Accounts tab.

Now on the Account web page, scroll down to the Get mail from other accounts section, click Add another mail account. Now Gmail will walk you though a wizard (like with any other e-mail client) to gather information about your e-mail account.

Now personally, I would make sure you check not to keep your messages on the server.  This way all your messages are sent to Gmail and stored there, and you don’t have to worry about cleaning out your server side mail from time to time.

Once you have finished with the wizard, hit click Add Account.  Now you can use your e-mail from your web hosting account with Gmail.  If you are a fan of Gmail, this will keep you from having to jump from client to client to get your e-mail all checked.

URLmetrix.com brings in a quick and useful way to check your web site’s Online popularity via a slew of resources.  Wondering what your Google PageRank is?  How about your Google or Yahoo backlinks?  Check them all out on this one single web site.  Definitely a resource to bookmark.

Here are all the services they cover:  Your web page title, Google PageRank, Alexa rank, Compete rank, Quantcast rank, Technorati rank, Google Indexed, Yahoo Indexed, Google Backlinks, Yahoo Backlinks and Delicious Links.

For each thing it scores it will also give you a link to go get more information.

In my opinion, the worst thing that could ever happen for the web hosting industry as a whole would be if Google bought GoDaddy. Now before you write me off as being some crazy anti-corporation loon let me explain the web hosting industry’s doomsday scenario.

The Merger Begins

Lets say in this alternate reality, Bob Parsons (the man in charge over at GoDaddy) gets an offer he can’t refuse from the Google team. He decides to sell to Google for (well, insert large dollar amount here) and Google is now the world’s biggest search provider and the world’s biggest domain name register all in one smart business move.

A few months down the road, Google announces it will get into the web hosting game. They have the money, servers and resources to start doing serious web hosting at any given moment now. Some might say they already are with their page creator service - but I don’t really count that as it has yet to even really get any decent buzz. If they needed a base for it, they could always use GoDaddy’s hosting business as a starter. Yes, ladies and gentlemen we now have Google Daddy.

Google Daddy Takes Over Web Hosting

With their two tier plan, you can get unlimited disk space, bandwidth and resources for free. Then they charge you five dollars for a domain name and your web site is up and running. Where is the catch? Well Google’s main business is not search - it is advertising. To pay for the hosting, you will agree to put Google AdSense ads on your web site and split the profits with Google 50/50. They get half of your ad revenue (on top of what they take from AdSense profits already) and you get reliable free hosting.

The End is Upon Us

Over the next few months, web hosts would start to drop like flies. Nobody out there can compete with Google Daddy and in one year or so down the road (after that acquire the Planet, Rackspace and a few other dedicated server hosts) they control seventy-five percent of the hosting market. What Google was just a little over a year back for just search they are now for search, domain registration and web hosting.

That would be the ultimate doomsday scenario that would bring the web hosting world to its knees. Google Daddy controls the three things that pretty much defines the Web as we know it and there is not a major force that can stand in their way.

I hear you need a favor. You need a little something to listen to, to help pass the time at the data center you work at. Well, I’ll do you this little favor and provide episode 142 of the Web Hosting Show free of charge. I won’t even ask for a favor in return.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 142!
Running Time: 12 minutes | File Size: 5.35 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode of the Web Hosting Show.

• Best of the WordPress Magazine Themes!
• Web Hosting Show is Nearly 3 Years Old?
• Google + GoDaddy = Web Hosting Armageddon!
• Server Status Monitoring with Firefox? (link)
• What is so Great About PHP 5 over PHP 4?

I am the Dick Van Dyke to your crazy web hosting musical. You won’t catch me hanging out with Mary Poppins or trying to convince people I’m a music man. I only have room for one passion and woman in my life and that lovely lady’s name is web hosting.

ICANN has sat up and taken notice when it comes to the shady practices of “domain tasting”. I hate to be one to call myself a profit, but back on podcast 138 I am pretty sure I said:

Where is ICANN with this type of practice? I say if they were all over RegisterFly for what they were doing then Network Solutions really should not be treated any differently.

ICANN Comes in to Save the Day!

I am happy to see ICANN has decided to stand up and do something about this money grubbing nonsense. Under current ICANN rules, anyone who registers a new domain name has a five-day grace period to back out and receive a total refund. The problem is people use this period to test how well the domain name does in the real world and also slap ads all over it to make a buck.

So what is the solution? ICANN is talking about charging the ICANN registration fee right from the start instead of waiting. That way companies and individuals would get less of a “freebie”. The cost would be picked up by the domain name register and hopefully this would end the practice of people testing to see how profitable a domain name is for free.

What About Front Runners?

This will also hurt companies like Network Solutions that have started “front running” domains (a fancy name for the same dirty tactics). This is where a domain name register will register your domain name searches and offer to resell them to you for a higher price.

The whole thing kinda reminds me of the mafia and being called in to “do a favor” for the godfather himself. Google is also getting a chance to get some positive press out of all of this. They said that they will no longer allow AdSense revenue to be collected on domains that are less than four days old. Now that will cost Google some big bucks but nice to see that they are doing the right thing. What they are losing in finances they are gaining in public trust in praise.