It is always a good thing when you can share some positive news about web hosts joining web hosts for a good cause.  Hosting for Haiti is all about the biggest and brightest web hosting companies in the world coming together to support the victims of the earthquakes that happened in Haiti last month.

Here is a little ‘bit more about the project from the web site:

Although normally fiercely competitive, as members of the hosting community we know that the power we wield as a group is much more than we can wield individually. And so we’ve come together to help assist those affected by this disaster. With the generosity of all our combined customers, we hope to make a difference. And you can too. One dollar helps. One hundred dollars helps one hundred times more.

Any donations given through the web site go directly to the American Red Cross, and their web site and servers, so you know the donations you give are not going through a third party before they go to those who need it most.

If you are interested in donating, or learning more about this fantastic cause, be sure to check out HostingforHaiti.com.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 196!
Running Time: 12 minutes | File Size: 5.38 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode:

• Over 3,000 Free CSS Web Design Templates!
• Will the Swine Flu Take Out the Internet?
• Is Web Hosting a Falling Trend on the Web?
• 5 SEO Tips You Can Do, Right Now!

Here is this week’s web hosting news headline:
ICANN Breaks Free from US Control – Internet regulation body ICANN and the US Department of Commerce announced last week that they have signed a new agreement that ensures that ICANN will now be “independent and not controlled by any one entity”.

Trivia Question – Where are the ICANN headquarters?

We are back yet again, with another great web hosting podcast for you all to enjoy.  Remember, you can subscribe to the RSS feed to get daily updates on the topics we discussed on today’s podcast, or keep checking back at webhostingshow.com.  Hope you enjoy the show this week, and if you do – drop in a comment and let us know!

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 190!
Running Time: 13 minutes | File Size: 5.80 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode:

• What is Cloud Hosting?
• Balloon Animals Take Over
• Choosing a Web Site Host
• 3 Uncommon Seats for Your PC Desk
• Web Hosting Bomb Shelters!
• Should Web Hosts Twitter?

Here are this week’s web hosting news headlines:

Server Farm: Your Place or Mine? – In an era of growing insecurity, having your computer equipment tucked into a hole 85 feet underground has a certain appeal.  That’s the selling point of Underground Secure Data Center Operations (USDCO), a server farm located in an abandoned gypsum mine near Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Trivia Question – Which one of these is NOT a web hosting conference? (to find out the answer, be sure to download and listen to this week’s podcast!)

Sweet server genie, I promise not to let this much time pass again before I get a new show out to you.  I hope you download it, enjoy it, and pass it around to your friends.  Feel free to leave your thoughts, reviews and feedback in the comments or drop me an e-mail at mitch@mitchkeeler.com.

To give you a little more information about the key players here, the Pirate Bay, a torrent sharing web site, provides what you could call the “path” to be able to download copyrighted materials.  The IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) is the music industry’s lobby group who is doing some of their heavy handed grunt work when it comes to shutting down web sites like the Pirate Bay.

The new tactic here is that the IFPI are skipping over the web site owners and are now going directly to the web hosts who host the torrent web sites in question.  They want to get the web hosts on a charge of assisting copyright infringement, which is a decision that has yet to be appealed.

There is one web host who has yet to given into the demands of the IFPI.  The Swedish provider Portlane has filed a complaint in the Swedish Market Court.  Now true, sharing copyrighted materials might be wrong, I will leave that judgment call up to you.

What is to be admired here is a small guy standing up against the establishment, showing the IFPI and the world that we should be a society who serves the people’s best interest and not the best interest of the one with the biggest wallet.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 185!
Running Time: 13 minutes | File Size: 5.94 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode:

• What is the nofollow Link All About?
• Find Out Who is Copying Your Content
• Compare Linux Dedicated Servers and Deals
• Best Way to Find Web Hosting Coupons
• First All Virtual Web Hosting Conference is Coming

Here are this week’s web hosting news headlines:

• Credit Cards Compromised in WHT Hack – Dedicating this week’s news segment to more coverage on the webhostingtalk.com hack, the recent announcement that credit cards were compromised and what you need to do to protect yourself.

Trivia Question – The first version of the Apache web server was created by whom? (to find out the answer, be sure to download and listen to this week’s podcast!)

Hope you enjoy this week’s broadcast.  Thank you all for tuning in!

Instead of doing a weekly show, like we have now for the past four years, the main podcast will change to a production time of ever other week.  So this will roughly average two shows per month, instead of four.

Now why make the change?  The first and most important reason is so that I can be sure I am giving myself enough time to get a quality show together.  Slapping things together last minute, and trying to hurry up and get it done is no fun.  The idea is by giving myself a two week window of production, instead of just one, I can spread out the workload on myself a little more.

Who knows, this might even launch or inspire some more unique content between the podcast episodes.  I am always open to suggestions!

This site and podcast is very much still a fun side project for me.  The only money I make off of it, is when you click the ads on the web site.  Of course, four years ago I was unemployed and only had two web sites to work on.  These days I am all over place with projects, work, and more.

So if things change a little in the weeks to come, don’t be scared – it is just an evolutionary track to make sure that even after four years we can keep this podcast and web site an entertaining and informative web site for everyone (web hosts and webmasters alike) to enjoy.

I’ll be sure to cover that too on this week’s edition of the Web Hosting Show.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 177!
Running Time: 13 minutes | File Size: 5.94 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode:

• How to Score 5GB of Free File Hosting!
• How can Obama Inspire the Web Hosts Out There?
• Three FAQs about SSL
• Making Money with Google AdSense

Here are this week’s web hosting news headlines:

• GoDaddy Attack Sends Thousands Offline
• Get Your Free 8GB USB Flash Memory Stick at Hosting-Nation.net

Please be sure to send any feedback, questions or comments about this week’s podcast to me directly at mitch@mitchkeeler.com or leave a comment! Would love to hear from you all!

Overall, I like the new look and feel of the layout.  It surely beats the old design, that looks like it was pulled right out of 1995.  However there are a few things that nag me.  Here are both the good and the bad about the new look for one of the more popular web hosting web sites out there.

The Positives

• Lots more attention paid to the WHIR TV project and RSS.  Two things I am happy to see them highlighting.
• No more black and white!  The colors they picked are a nice update to the old look without seeming like the entire thing is boring.
• The membership feature is cool and a welcomed addition.

The Negatives

• It is a little ad crazy.  Now I realize people have to make money as much as the next guy (that is why I have ads on my own web sites) however it seems a little like they were just tossed everywhere without much organization.
• Some of the pages (jumping from section to section) change layouts so quickly, it is a little easy to get lost.  Maybe the inclusion of a breadcrumb trail at the top could help this.  Something like: (Front Page > Features > The Story Headline)

Overall, I would have to say they have done a fine job at the new paint job.  How do you feel about it?  Do you miss the old layout at all?  When was the last time you visited?  You can check it all out at theWHIR.com.

The problem started, when the web host IAS.net was evicted, leaving a number of businesses and non-profit organizations without hosting.  What a Christmas present, your web hosting goes out right for the holidays.  It turns out the web host had problems with late payment of rent, which lead to the owner of the building to cut them off.

A number of other web hosts chipped in and took over some of the the IAS.net clients for free – so it is nice to see some people in the web hosting industry are in the holiday spirit.

The next day, IAS.net fought back by saying they were not making payment to the landowner on purpose, due to poor upkeep of the building.  Reportedly the building had ongoing maintenance and black mold issues, which the property owners neglected to address.

So on one side you have the landlord who didn’t get paid, and on the other side you have the web host who was looking out for his workers.  Personally I can see the positives and negatives for both sides of the argument – however I think there should have been a more adult way to handle the entire situation.  It all comes off a ‘bit childish to me.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 175!
Running Time: 10 minutes | File Size: 3.84 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode:

• What Happens When Web Hosts Don’t Pay Rent?
• See How Fast Your Page is REALLY Loading!
• Roll Your Own Video Tutorials for Free!

Here are this week’s web hosting news headlines:

• Netcraft’s Releases List of Most Reliable Hosts for the Month
• Newtek Web Hosting Unveiled a New Web Site Design

As the resident Santa Claus of the web host industry, I am here to give you your happy ho ho hosting gift. A free podcast, for you to enjoy. Beats a lump of coal, doesn’t it?

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 174!
Running Time: 12 minutes | File Size: 5.45 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode:

• What is Domain Sniping?
• GoDaddy Shoots Super Bowl Commercial, and Fails to Raise the Bar
• The List of The Greatest Web Hosts That Never Made It
• 10 Alternatives to Free Rapidshare Hosting

Here are this week’s web hosting news headlines:

• Aventure Host Launches Web Hosting Affiliate Program
• Hivelocity Offers Customers Unlimited Bandwidth and Double the RAM

Yes, as of late – I have been on a movie-title themed podcast naming trend haven’t I? Well, I can’t promise Jack Nicholson, but I can promise you that listening to this podcast weekly will make the wacky and wild world of web hosting make a little more sense to you.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 173!
Running Time: 16 minutes | File Size: 7.17 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode:

• Marketing Tips from Your Ugly Friend and a Cheese Sandwich
• Your Shared Hosting Shopping List
• Top 5 Holiday Deals from the Web Hosting World

Here are this week’s web hosting news headlines:

• Daily.co.uk Giving Away Reseller Hosting
• Lycos Europe Goes Down Under (and not to Australia)
• Will Your Web Site Survive the Holiday Season?

Time to warm up the thanksgiving leftovers one more time, have a seat and enjoy a little talk, information, news and more on and about the wild and wacky world of web hosting. Hope everybody had a nice Thanksgiving break, and your ready for another award winning** web hosting podcast.

* – ok, maybe not the greatest ever, but who wants to listen to second best?
** – actual award winning content may vary!

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 172!
Running Time: 14 minutes | File Size: 6.18 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode:

• My Favorite (and the BEST) FTP Client
• The Seven Dirty Web Hosting Words (and Phrases)
• Get Access to Photoshop Online for Free!

Here are this week’s web hosting news headlines:

• GoDaddy Does Makeovers for Lucky Web Sites
• 1&1 Internet Moves into a Nuclear Facility
• Hosting.com Get More Free Money to Blow Away

Come on, now how could you read a show description like that and not want to listen? Download and tune in to this very special edition of the Web Hosting Show. If you do, I promise to… well, do it again next week?

This is what Steve Cumings, the director of Infrastructure for HP had to say in an interview with eWeek.com:

“Customers are looking to expand their data center footprint with additional capacity much faster than adding a traditional brick and mortar data center.  It can take 12 to 24 months to build out one of these traditional data centers and in the case of the POD, we can have one ready to ship in just about six weeks.”

So what about the stats?

A complete 8-foot-by-40-foot POD container can hold up to 3,520 servers or 12,000 hard disk drives in total, providing 12TB of data storage. The POD also has a unique cooling system too.  It includes hot and cold aisles for optimized heating and cooling, allowing hot air from one side to be distributed through the ceiling heat exchange, cooled and redistributed as cold air to the other side.  So the POD itself is like one big personal computer in its own right.

HP hopes will compete against similar high-density, mobile container offerings from IBM, Sun Microsystems and others.   With this juggernaut, I think they stand a pretty good chance.

That isn’t all though, but this intro is running a little long.  Only other thing I am telling you right now is the Web Hosting Show is on the air.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 161!
Running Time: 9 minutes | File Size: 4.07 MB

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

• Deeper Look at the Hosting Industry Organization
• Media Temple does Cloud Spam Filtering
• .Pro Domain Registrations Running Wild
• Why You Need to Launch a “Today’s Special” Deal
• Verio Hands out Hosting to the Needy

Been doing a lot of socializing talk the past few weeks on the podcast, and today we’ll talk a little more about the LinkedIn group everybody is talking about.  We got that, plus a ton of hosting headlines and, well let me stop pitching the show and let’s start doing the show.

There is a lot of buzz about them both, and a lot of the internal kinks are still being worked out.  Both seem to have a lot to offer to the table when it comes to organizing the web hosting world and the people inside of it.  From my point of view it seems both have very separate main goals.

The Association of Internet and Hosting Service Providers seems to be more focused on bringing people together to achieve certain goals, like you would see more so with an organized  trade association.

The Hosting Industry Organization on the other hand seems to be more focused on the social side of things.  They want to be a place to make connections, hire workers, sell businesses and that side of the hosting business.

Which one are you more excited about? I have passed out an open invitation to both organizations to come do an interview right here on the podcast.  I would like to ask them both the same series of questions so we can all decide which one might be the better choice in the long haul.

cPanel Staff Working Longer Hours

The control panel gurus at cPanel announced that as of Monday, July 21st customer service hours will be extended from 7am to 7pm EST.  So if you are a customer looking to get your questions about cPanel answered, they will be available to help.

China Has More Web Users than US

19.1 percent of China has web access.  How much is that?  Oh roughly 253-million people.

HostingCon Gets Going

The biggest news story of the week would be that HostingCon is taking place July 28th through the 30th at the Navy Pier in Chicago.  I have skipped out on the festivities yet again, but looks like a great show all around.  HostingCon is the yearly meet up for all the biggest players in the hosting industry.  This year Parallels and Microsoft seem to be keynoting the conference and I am sure we will hear more about it from those who were “on the inside” soon.

Do you have any hosting news to share?

Drop me an e-mail at mitch@mitchkeeler.com and I’ll be more than happy to share it with the rest of the web hosting industry right here, next week on this very podcast.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 159!
Running Time: 10 minutes | File Size: 4.61 MB

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

• Joyent’s Tool for Online Collaboration!
• China has more Web Users than US?
• HostingCon Gets Going!
• What is Domain Name Speculation?
• For Web Hosts: the Best Live Chat Providers?

Back again for episode 159, and I think I might be getting the hang of this… almost. From HostingCon to some great live chat suggestions, there is yet again a little for everybody to love and learn from here on today’s show.

Have you taken the Web Hosting Show’s fan survey yet? If not, listen to the show and then get it done. Your feedback given there could dramatically change the production of this podcast! Be heard and give me you thoughts!

Now let me quickly give you my positives and negatives on this.

On the bad side of things, we see one more diamond of the web hosting world being gobbled up by the web hosting equivalent to the Juggernaut, iNet Interactive.

On the positive side of things, I have a lot of trust in Troy Augustine, he is a good guy and I think he will continue to do what is best for the business in a whole.  iNet also has the capital to move the conference forward to make it even bigger and better than before.

George Roberts, the guy who was behind all the other HostingCons to date has really turned this conference from just a gathering to THE event of any web hosters calendar year.  He deserves the pat on the back and congratulations the most out of this deal.  Right now it is planned for George and Interjucture COO Frank Spaulding, to both remain involved in HostingCon as members of its advisory board.

For more coverage of HostingCon 2008 be sure to check out their web site and you can check out my previous interview with Troy “Juggernaut” Augustine back on podcast 111.

GoDaddy has also released this response to the claims that there was some wacky stuff going on during the first day of .me domain name registrations:

We knew the .ME Open Registration response would be tremendous, but it went beyond even what we had expected. As a result, we experienced some system issues in our communication with the registry.

As soon as we became aware of the issue we began taking steps to correct it. It is now resolved.  For our customers, if we did not successfully register the domain name requested they will receive a full refund.

Now that the first week’s hype is over, it might be a little easier to search around and see what .me domain names you can register from GoDaddy.  Only problem your left with is, are all the good names taken already?

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 157!
Running Time: 10 minutes | File Size: 4.97 MB

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

• Why Not Setup a Data Center Out of Your Basement?
• The King of Spam to be Sentenced to Hard Time!
• What is Domain Name Front Running?
• What Country Tops the World in Spam?
• ICANN Blames What Domain Register for Recent Hack?

Short on words this week, but since we do have an awful lot of SPAM talk this week:

Have you taken the Web Hosting Show’s fan survey yet? If not, listen to the show and then get it done. Your feedback given there could dramatically change the production of this podcast! Be heard and give me you thoughts!

From coast to coast, and all around the web hosting world. I can’t promise you you’ll be a millionaire if you listen to this week’s show. I can’t even make you better looking. What I can do for you is to make everything from server farms to domain name registrations make a little more sense and I can do so with what some may say is a funny accent.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 156!
Running Time: 18 minutes | File Size: 7.85 MB

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

• ICANN Wants to Give You .Anything?
• Where to go to Get 30GB of Disk Space Free?
• Free Billing Software for Web Hosting Resellers?
• Best Tool to Update Your Blogs?

Podcast Exclusive – Part 4 of Our “How to Purchase a Web Hosting Business” Series with Web Strategist Errett Cord. Download the podcast to check it out!

I’m back again, and sad to say ICANN is still turning down my application to be the official spokesperson for the organization. Maybe it is because I have no boobs? If I did, I know at least I’d get work from Bob Parsons. Time to start answering some questions, and to make some sense out of all this web hosting lingo.

From industry news, to domain stories.  From big business to the little guy.  Gawkwire is already providing news from all corners of the hosting world and doing well at it.  Here is how Robert Lang, Gawkwire managing editor describes this new hosting resource:

“We designed Gawkwire to build on the strengths of other hosting news portals and magazines. Unlike many sites, our content is updated continuously, not once a day or even once a week. We take it a step further, by creating a dialogue with our readers that enhances the overall experience of our site.  And we don’t stop with just news articles. Gawkwire’s rich content covers a wide spectrum, with everything from video blog posts to executive interviews.”

I am very excited to see the launch of something new out there in the hosting news bubble.  Too long has the field grown more than a little stagnite, and the hopes for Gawkwire is to add a little ‘bit more spice, interest and information to the world of Internet and hosting news.

That includes approximately 14,000 Domain Direct, NetIdentity ItsYourDomain.com customer accounts.

That is a ton of cash changing hands.  One has to wonder why Tucows wanted to get out of the shared web hosting game and what will they do now with this extra surplus of cash on their hands?  Colin Campbell, the CEO of Hostopia release the usual quote out to the public saying they had high hopes and more…

“Our plan is to provide customers with numerous upgrades and additional value-added services to earn their loyalty and continued business. Traditional web hosting is fast evolving to the SaaS (software as a service) model and Hostopia is perfectly positioned to offer these services to these customers.”

This is a big buyout for sure, and big congratulations deserve to be sent towards Hostopia for getting the deal.  If you were Tucows, what would you do now being the actual “cash cow”.

Why upgrade? Looks like they are mainly wanting to provide VPS hosting clients the same feature rich functionality of cPanel and WHM while helping to reduce memory usage by up to 60 percent for VPS accounts. Another nice perk about this newest version of cPanel is it will lower the costs hopefully for cPanel powered VPS hosting as right now most VPS customers have to pay the dedicated hosting license fees to use it. Also due to the earlier mentioned cut in memory usage, web hosts should be able to reach a higher account density per machine. So how can you lay your hands on it right now?

The word is that cPanel will offer this newly upgraded VPS version for free for its customers, probably while they test it out.

Well a lot more hosting podcast goodness right here on this week’s edition of the Web Hosting Show.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 148!
Running Time: 16 minutes | File Size: 7.10 MB

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

• DemoWolf Introduces Subscription for Flash Tutorials!
• Learn to Gather the Right Info Before Contacting Hosting Support!
• cPanel Releases a Virtual Private Server Edition?
• Find a Web Host that is Perfect for Your Blog!
• Hosting Spotlight Shines on Dan “W3Counter” Grossman!

I really do appreciate you listening to episode 148, and this week we have tons a various content on board and ready to go so that you too can learn to become a better web hosting guru. From experts to novices, everybody is welcome because I think all can get something out of today’s broadcast.

Finding new homes for these cats have put a strain on the local government. The new data center was suppose to start construction back in 2007, but those cats, those wild homeless felines have another idea. Here are some facts about the data center that could have been according to the article:

The new high-tech data center, which was supposed to begin construction in 2007, will be the county’s first energy-saving “green” facility – with a vegetated roof and built partially underground – and is to be constructed in the derelict buildings just south of the Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center in Downey.

According to reports by Data Center Knowledge, the county is planning to build a 46,000 square foot data center that will be used to process employee payrolls, welfare payments, court documents and other county department records. Planners are also designing the facility to meet the criteria for a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification.

Now I tried to do my best to get a quote from the cats in question, and they at first had no comment but then told me all the talking they had to do would be done so through their lawyers, because they are cats and “normal” people usually can not make heads or tails out of what they are saying. They also wanted me to tell the public they really don’t like the LOL cats all over the Web.

The Hosting Industry Organization

This new virtual posse of the hosting industry promises to be a socialized group of hosting professionals. Based off a list from LinkedIn – there are many that have already joined (including yours truely) and I am looking forward to seeing what becomes of this just budding project later on down the road.

New Blog! Web Hosting Topics Rocks!

Here is yet another good hosting blog worth subscribing to. Brought to you by the same folks as the DAW Web Hosting Blog and HostingBookmarks.com it promises fresh content for the web hosting addicted. Yes, that would be both you and me!

Blog.Verisign.com? (I didn’t know either)

Did you know that VeriSign had their own collection of blogs from insiders in the company? The company is based around providing secure SSL certificates so, I mean, how exciting can the blog be? Well I was delightfully surprised by a few so the list here is well worth checking out.

Have you found any hidden treasures in or on the web hosting blogs out there? If so drop me an e-mail or leave a comments and let me know about it.

Taking the week off from production this week due to some personal issues and needing a ‘bit of a break, but while we take this one week hiatus I thought I could get beg you (the best listening audience ever!) to go Digg the Web Hosting Show over at Digg.com. You can find us over at their podcast section or you can find the Digg button on the bottom of WebHostingShow.com.

Also while your there, feel free to digg a few past episodes too. Once you have done so, be sure to drop me an e-mail at mitch@mitchkeeler.com (with your digg username) and I’ll enter your name into a special giveaway I’ll be setting up for next week’s show where I’ll give one lucky person $5. That is like an entire month’s worth of hosting if you know where to look. Vote early and vote often!