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!

Need your hosting news, links and reading with a ‘bit of a twist? Now I have covered other social hosting sites before - but I think the one that gets it right thus far is HostingBookmarks.com. The main pitch and reason for HostingBookmarks.com to exist is to “share hosting experiences” or at least that is what the graphic on the front page would have you believe.

There is much more than your average social voting link site here however. They have categories for just about every hosting topic under the sun. General hosting news, hosting experiences, e-mail, domains, tutorials, events… the list could go on and on.

Here is a little more information about them by them:

Hosting Bookmarks (HB) is a place where anyone involved in web hosting is invited to shared knowledge and experience. We welcome professionals to bookmark good content and consumers to share their experience with various products, services and companies. Our objective is to organize various web hosting related topics and knowledge into a database, and to build a valuable reference network based on social communication.

They also invite anybody and everybody who is interested to sign up and give it a shot. I’d love to see this web site take off in popularity so I am inviting you all to bookmark it and use it often. The great thing about a social hosting tool like this is the more people we can bring into the fold the better it will become.

Where is hosting latest hot spot to hang out? Well if fate and luck have anything to do with it - HostingBookmarks.com might be the place to keep your eyes on. If that doesn’t entice you to listen - what if I said this was Sean Connery’s favorite podcast on and about the web hosting world? Of course I don’t know if that is true or not but rumors have to get started somewhere, right?!

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 133!
Running Time: 14 minutes | File Size: 6.61 MB

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

• HostingBookmarks.com = Quality Hosting Resource!
• Tips to Spy on Your Server and Web Hosting Company!
• Mitch’s Golden Shopping Rules for Web Hosting!
• 10 Terabyes of Disk Space/Bandwidth for $1!
• Round 2 for the Best of the Blogging Scripts!
• Vote for Mitch as Ping! Zine’s Funniest Writer of 2007!

Did I ever mention that Sean Connery was my favorite James Bond? Then again - Sean Connery could do a voice over for a mupet and I’d probably like him in that too. There’s no doubt though if Sean Connery was a Web hosting company - there would be no others on the block.

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 116!

If your like me and sign up for just about every social network out there, you probably have a free membership at LinkedIn. I have described LinkedIn to friends and family as a sort of “MySpace for grownups” because it has a much more professional tone - but has all the social tools that you would ever need.

One good thing I have found about it is it makes it super simple to introduce yourself to other web hosting professionals out there. Here is my profile on LinkedIn to help you get started with the kissing hands and shaking babies.. no wait, that should be the other way around.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/mitchkeeler

Once you get yourself a LinkedIn Account all you need to do is search for a person you want to meet inside the industry, a company you’d like to speak with or heck, typing in “web hosting” does the job too. After you have taken that leap - all you need to do is having one of your other LinkedIn Friends introduce you to the person you want to meet or send an invite to your person of interest directly to connect with you.

Would the same advice work with other social networks out there? Sure! I have noticed though that there are more hosting professionals on LinkedIn it seems than anywhere else out there.

I have had a few people ask me to look into some Web hosts out there and let them know what I think about them. Like with any industry, some are good and some are bad.

The thing you have to keep in mind with web hosting is that you have to break a few eggs before you make your proverbial omelet and your going to deal with a few bad web hosts before you find a good one.

I figured the first company I would tackle would be Globat. They recently made some news by being included on the list of the worst web hosting companies out there today done by Web Hosting Unleashed.

They do have a big customer base - so maybe the numbers could be wrong. So I decided to go out and find a few more reviews of Globat on some more web hosting review web sites.

The Web Hosting Reviews of Globat.com

• At WebHostingUnleashed.com they currently have a score of 4 positive reviews and 49 negative reviews.
• At WebHostingChoice.com they have a review of 4.74 from a collection of 54 reviews.
• At WebHostingJury.com they have an average score of 2.5 or so out of 5 across the board.

How did I come up with these sources? I picked them at random from doing a search for “Globat Reviews”. I also was looking for places that had customer reviews and not just come cookie cutter paid for review that the web host probably set up themselves.

Now when I contacted the Globat CEO about the Web Hosting Unleashed review he did respond back, but he never “officially” let me know if I could share his thoughts on it with all of you. He’s got an open invitation to come on this podcast any time in the future though to talk to his current, future and past clients one on one right here.

The numbers speak for themselves though. From my research I’d have to give this web host a thumbs down. If you have any past or current history, good or bad with Globat I’d love to hear it. Feel free to leave a comment or hit me up with an E-mail at mitch@mitchkeeler.com.

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 110!

This is one of those ideas that you just knew was bound to get released by somebody, it was all just a matter of time. Want to browse through hosting deals, and see which ones are voted to the top for being the best of the best? A new web site hopes that you will make them your web hosting deal finding home. Hostigg.com takes a familiar idea and puts a web hosting twist on it.

Yet Another Digg Clone?

It is run using the “digg clone” content management system, Pligg so I won’t focus too much on how neat the back end of the web site is. So if you don’t focus on the mechanics, then where do you focus on? The content is what will make this web site a winner or a loser.

Good Points?

One the good side I like the fact that it exists for one. I think we need more “new” ideas in the web hosting industry. It also looks like it is getting some users in as well because there are people voting on hosting deals as we speak.

Bad Points?

On the bad side of things, I think they need more real content and description to the deals - not just “limited offer, get now”. Maybe each time a web host is mentioned, link back to the number or links back that they have so you can see other offers they might have.

Final Thoughts?

All in all, Hostigg.com is worth giving a shout out to and a shot. It will be real interesting to see how they progress over the first year or so. Will it be a success or just another shot in the dark? Only time will tell.

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 110!

Alex over at Sliqua Enterprise Hosting created all the Web Hosting Show fans a special group over at Facebook. If you have an account on Facebook or you have just been looking for a good excuse to create one, here ya go.

Go ahead, join up and say hi to some of the other Web Hosting Show fans and friends. I’ll be interested to see how many people interact here. You can add me as a friend too. We are all buddies, right? RIGHT?!

+ Web Hosting Show Facebook Group!