GoDaddy

At the point where I felt my home setup was “obsolete”, I then took the plunge onto GoDaddy dedicated servers, 2 of them at the time. One was for websites and ran Windows 2003 Server with IIS. The other was a mail server and each had DNS running on them so I didn’t have to depend on/pay for a third-party DNS provider.

GoDaddy dedicated servers ended up being the biggest mistake I ever made.  They ran well for a while, but then a worm of some kind crawled around their internal network and came in through some backend they use to manage the servers.  I had everything well locked down, all Windows sharing turned off, including unneeded admin shares (C$, etc.) and had the firewall pretty tight. It took around 3 days to recover fully from the crash and even though the machines were virtually “destroyed”, I was fortunately able to FTP out all my customer data.

Crystaltech

I moved most of my ASP & .NET sites over to a Windows 2008 Server here. Including email (SmarterMail), which I love, but with the limited space on a Windows VPS, it is quickly filling up with email (people rarely delete things when using IMAP). I still use Crystaltech and they’ve been very stable, but their cost is quite a bit higher than other virtual solutions.

Slicehost

After the GoDaddy crash, all my PHP sites moved to virtual servers running Ubuntu with a standard LAMP stack. Apache got old real quick. It required constant tuning.  I explored many web servers to find one with better performance, at one time, I had three setup for ALL my virtualhosts where all I had to do was stop all the web daemons, change the config of the one I wanted to use to 80 and just start that one, bring up all my sites on a different daemon.  I finally settled on Cherokee and have NEVER looked back.

Slicehost, in my opinion, had HUGE potential at one time (pre-Rackspace buyout).  The support was phenomenal, everyone in the company was open and reachable. I many times talked to the founder via chat and email.  But all of that went down the drain with Rackspace and all Slicehost’s offerings and prices went stagnant.

I recently cancelled Slicehost completely after getting a hard to access domain, whose DNS was hosted with Slicehost, to change their nameservers to Linode’s.

Others

I’ve used a number of other minor providers from time to time that I won’t get too much into here.  None of them seemed to be as “turnkey” as places like Linode and Slicehost when it came to the admin backend experience.  They were either too complicated or did not even have some of the basics required for “full service” hosting.

Linode

Linode, so far (knock on wood), has been the best company I’ve ever done business with.  Rock solid, great support at all hours, fast host servers, lots of datacenter locations, excellent control panel, iPhone app, etc.  I can’t say enough to express my happiness with the service.

I currently host a number of VPS servers with them and have brought over a few clients onto their own server(s).  We host everything from test servers to full production and even PBXs.  All runs perfectly.

I will be a sad day in VPS hosting if Linode ever gets bought out by some mega hosting company like Rackspace.

To end this up, decentralization has been the best thing I have done and it is multi-faceted.  I separated websites onto multiple, less expensive virtual servers, which prevent ALL my sites from going down when something happens to one of them.  I’ve moved most of my clients to Google Apps for Domains, both business and standard, for email.

My uptime has dramatically improved, my customers are happier and that’s what matters.

I feel that with the “death” of the XServe Server and the uncertain future of Mac OS X Server OS, Apple should delve into offering hosted services to pull in entities who are now scattered among numerous other services such as Google Apps for Domains, commercial hosting, and numerous other third party hosted or self hosted apps, which require a lot of maintenance, multiple accounts, billing, etc.  Many of my IT associates who have switched to Apple laptops and desktops have commented to me that they hate still having to use non-apple apps to complete their daily business.

For example, the MobileMe interface already is an attractive and functional interface for email, contacts, calendar, iDisk, Photos and location services.  How much harder would it be to allow a company to signup and fully attach their own domain to the MobileMe framework.  Perhaps even create a separate enhanced version of MobileMe in their [Apple's] newest “cloud” datacenter in North Carolina and, over time, have an ‘a la carte’ offering of additional new services that users need/request.  Maybe even allow developers to write custom Apps that can be cleanly integrated into the web interface and a matching app for the iOS device(s).

Keep the price reasonable, no more than $1-2/mo per user, which would be very attractive for small businesses, special pricing for larger corporations and perhaps discounts when Apple devices are purchased and attached to an account.  Perhaps 1 year for free when any iOS device is purchased to draw users in.

The advantages of this would be numerous, it would give small businesses and organizations a unified and complete “Apple Branded Experience” on their Mac PCs, iPhones, iPads, etc.  Almost everyone I know has a Mac device of some kind and many would prefer to use their own domain.  Apple does offer the capability of attaching a domain to your MobileMe webspace, but that does not extend to customization of the other services.

Also, with minor modifications to the existing MobileMe framework, it would bring a whole new potential residual revenue stream that millions of users could utilize.  It may also spur additional companies and users to buy Apple hardware knowing that all these services are so well intergrated. Adding similar features as Google Apps for Domains and improving upon them would make it a very attractive alternative.

Now don’t get me wrong, I do use and am VERY happy with Google Apps for Domains, but it would be nice to have some competition from another major player to keep things interesting.  Google does accomplish a lot of what I’ve stated in this email, but it’s not as “pretty”, well integrated and cost effective for those with many needs.

Perhaps Apple could even purchase a VoIP company and add that to their portfolio of services.  With an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and an old Mac Mini, it would be nice to get deep integration of all my communications needs while not being forced onto the @me.com domain.

I guess only time will tell how far Apple is willing to ascend into the cloud.

Website link to our QRCreate.com code generator

Look around you when you read magazines, order pizza from Papa Johns and surf the web. Chances are, you’ll spot a QR Code.

QR Code use has taken off with the advent of smartphones, especially those running Android. Most Android phones come with a barcode reader capable of decoding QR Codes as well as standard consumer UPC codes and others.

QR Codes are much more versatile than normal barcodes and can contain much more information. There are many ways to utilize them for personal or business use.

1. Labelling
   For example, you can label boxes while moving and more easily put much more information like: Contains PC accessories, cables, power plugs, software X, software Y, software Z, etc… Sometimes the unpacking process is slow and by having QRCodes on all your boxes, you can simply scan them to find the contents.
2. Business Cards
   There are many sites out there that’ll help you create codes for use on cards, some have direct integration with product creation and purchasing sites like Zazzle.
3. Real Estate
   Real estate agents can generate codes they can put on signs that will allow more savvy home seekers as they look around neighborhoods for homes. Most people who use QR Codes are pretty much guaranteed to scan them to see what they say. Those who aren’t as knowledgeable about them may become curious and can be directed to a website printed under the code to give further explanation. You can easily put a lot of information about the house such as the MLS number, square footage, # of bedrooms and baths, agent name, contact information and more.
   
4. Inventory Management
   Specialized apps can be utilized to allow businesses to manage inventory and assets.
5. Product Discounts
   Put a code on your flyers, emails, billboards and other advertising mediums to offer discounts and draw new customer in. Again, people who know about QR Codes are very likely to scan them and tell others about them.

There are many other uses, these are just a few. People are doing lots of things with them… T-Shirts, hats, sweaters, bumper stickers, scavenger hunts and much more. Please leave a message in the comments with unique uses you have seen.

We, of course, prefer to use our own QR Creator site (http://QRcreate.com). It contains a few form input styles for different uses and makes it fast and simple to generate downloadable and embeddable QR Code images.

We can help you integrate QR Codes into your business. Let us know how we can help you embrace this relatively new technology.

On the desktop, I tend to use VirtualBox from Sun. It seems to perform the best for both Windows and Linux, but does not contain (on Windows) many “enterprise” level features found in XEN and VMWare Server.

I initially used VMWare Server to setup numerous VMs for software and platform integration testing and other fancy stuff like that.  I still use VMWare Player for a couple VMs I have left from the past, but VirtualBox is my favorite for desktop testing.

When it came to XenServer, I did not have much experience with it since I *thought* it was more of a IT Backendish type of Virtualization software and more arcane (CLI Only). Perhaps it was at one time.  Now I’m no stranger to the command line interface, but still like a nice interface to be able to “see” all the settings right in front of me.

But regardless of my misconception, I decided to download XenServer and install it on one of my spare test boxes. XenServer is full virtualization host “OS” that you install and all the guest machines are run inside it.

I won’t go through all the minute details, but XenServer was a breeze to install, only asking basic questions and the IP to assign to the server. It’s best to put it on a decent machine with lots of hard drive space, plenty of RAM and processor power. Having virtualization extensions on the CPU is a BIG plus and allows you to run Windows VMs.

On older machines, like my old Pentium D Dell server, that do not have virtualization extensions, are not able to run Windows virtual machines.  The Linux (Ubuntu in my case) VMs worked just fine without them.

For Windows VMs, I used a newer Quad Core Phenom box and put 4 Windows Server 2003′s (by cloning them) on it by using the VMWare to XEN conversion program.  It was a little buggy getting the image converted, but the Citrix XEN forums helped quite a bit.

Overall, I’ve been extremely happy with the performance of XenServer and when it comes to testing, I don’t think I’ll go back to desktop type virtualization solutions like VirtualBox (big learning curve for advanced CLI functionality) and VMWare Server (which has a crappy, buggy web interface, the last time I used it).  They also require you to already have an existing full blown host OS, at least under Windows.

To manage the servers, there is a desktop application called XenCenter you can use to connect remotely to one or more XenServers.  It allows you to manage all aspects of your XenServer(s) even allowing you to easily upload, install, snapshot, clone and even do live migrations of VMs between XenServers.

One of my favorite features was the ability to create “templates” of a machine so you can easily spin up a new one from the template.  It’s always there and you can have many different variations of a server for example, like a clean server install, one with IIS & ASP.NET configured and yet another with a full custom configuration.  Just use the template, create a new VM from it, be sure to change the default IP so it doesn’t conflict with an existing machine and you’re good to go.

There are some sites out there you can google that have XEN ready images you can upload through the XenCenter software into the server and boot.

XenServer is an OS+Virtualization solution all-in-one and helps you get the most out of your machines.

Enter Google Apps for Domains.

Surprisingly, lots of people, outside of administrators and IT nerds, don’t realize Google Apps for Domains even exists. These are 2 main levels of service with Google Apps, Standard and Premier. Standard provides 50 email boxes, each with ~7.5gb of space EACH and this is slowly, but constantly, increasing. Included are utilities such as Google Docs, Calendar, Groups, Sites, Contacts and more that are all integrated into one interface with a single signin.

For file storage, Google Docs now supports the uploading of more than just documents, spreadsheets, etc. You can now upload any kind of file and have up to 1gb of space in additional to the email space.

There are more settings and features than 90% of people will even use. It is absolutely perfect for small/medium organizations.

Best of all, Google Apps Standard is FREE.

For larger entities that need enterprise level features and organizational integration, Google Apps for Business fills those needs. There are many additional options within the control panel that allow integration into existing auth servers and corporate IT resources. Instead of 7.5gb of email space per box, it is increased over threefold to 25gb. That is a massive amount of space for email. I get a lot of mail, including large attachments, and have been keeping all my mail for the last 5-6 years in my standard account. It’s only 50% full.

Per user, Google Apps Premier only runs around ~$5/month. Most “enterprise” level email systems such as AppRiver and other Exchange providers cost anywhere from $9 to $15/month or more if you need a blackberry or other smartphone connected.

There are too many features to list here, visit the Google Apps for Business page to find specifics.

Clayton Design has setup many standard and premier accounts over the past year and the endusers seem to love it. Their own email can now be used across all of Google’s services instead of having to have a separate gmail address.

Contact us with any questions or if you would like us to help you set it up. Even if you already have email boxes somewhere else, we can perform an virtually seamless, full migration over to the new service.

We’re sure you’ll like it, we did and have never looked back.

I’m sort of the same way with other devices, for phones and PDAs, I’ve used Palm (legacy and WebOS), Windows Mobile, Apple iOS (v. Original-4.x), Symbian, etc. But I had never taken the plunge into the newer Android OS.  Perhaps I figured it wasn’t as stable or mature as iOS and some of the others that have been around for a while.

This past week, my wife lost her phone, so she met me at the Verizon store on her way home.  I was there about 20 minutes earlier, so I was admiring the new Droid X, HTCs and the Samsung Fascinate.  When she arrived, I suggested that we try the Fascinate since there was a “buy one get one free” special, we’d get rid of the MiFi 2200 since they have the WiFi Hotspot feature for only $20/mo more, and we’d come out a bit ahead.  We were both Upgrade Eligible, so I did everything I could to sell her on it.

Now my wife is NOT really a techy person and since she already used her iPod touch as a PDA, I didn’t think she’d go for it, but she did.  I was amazed.   Now I’m the happy owner of a new Android phone.

My first impressions are good, it’s fast, has plenty of features and customization, a decent selection of apps, great hardware while still maintaining really good battery life and form factor.

Virtually everything I needed and had on my iPhone 3G plus more are now installed on my Fascinate and I only paid for one app (WebSharing).  The camera (5mp) is excellent, the video (up to 720 HD) is also very crisp with GREAT audio quality for a phone.  The screen is very bright and does a good job auto-adjusting based on the ambient light level.

The only minor con is that there is only a Bing search widget available.  There is no factory option to change it to Google Search.  This is just wrong in so many ways.  Other than that.  The Samsung skinning of the Android interface is a bit annoying, but since I’m a first time user, it’s not too bad, but I did like the interface better on the non-Touchwiz Droid phones.

My favorite feature so far is the Swype text input.  You just draw the word on the popup screen keyboard and it intelligently pulls out the words, even if they’re names or website addresses and so on.  It is very accurate and intuitive.  The Swype website has a bunch of nice tutorials for more advanced input options.

Now that I’ve had it for a few days, I am sort of disappointed I waited so long.  Perhaps it was a good thing to let some of the early bugs get worked out.

Linode has turned out to be the best VPS provider I’ve ever used and it as of yesterday (6/16/10), they upgraded all VPS’ memory by ~42%.  All I have to say is Wow.  Since I’ve been with them, they have upgraded HDD space, which is also nice, but not something I really needed.  RAM is a different story, that is very important for VPS customers.  That much more memory means a LOT and really makes the entry level 512 servers (for only $19.95) much more useful without breaking the bank.

I currently have 5 512MB Linodes (upgraded from 360) and one 768 (upgraded from 512).  I should now be able to do much more with these servers now and offer more scalability to my customers who are paying for their own servers.

Linode, in my opinion, destroys the competition and always seems to be ahead of the gang of “peer” VPS providers like Slicehost, Rackspace Cloud Servers, VPS.net and others.  They may not have the “prettiest” or most user friendly control panel, but they offer a level of flexibility unrivaled by others.

Looks like the new iPhone has officially been announced.

As usual, it looks like and the new features are excellent, features we wanted are still missing and logical things that Apple could do like make MobileMe free (to spur wider use) still haven’t happened, although it is rumored.

Even though I did go ahead and get an iPad.  I WILL not get the iPhone 4 until they offer more carrier options.  There’s no way in hell I will go back to AT&T, so hopefully the fall release of a CDMA version for Verizon and/or Sprint, along with other smaller local carriers, will happen.  That is the only way myself and tens of millions of others will get the new iPhone.

Two other things that would be nice:

1. Upgrade the iPod touch to the same form factor and feature set minus the cellular radio, or even include 3G data like the iPad for those who don’t want to switch or already have a good cellular plan.
2. Make the whole experience more “open”… I’ll leave it at that.  Being tied to iTunes just to get the Apple Experience sucks.  I use a Mac, but not primarily, I use Linux a lot, Windows is almost out of my home-office IT Ecosystem.  Put it all on the device with ties to “the cloud”.

Otherwise, I hope Apple keeps up the innovative edge in design and function.  I look at a lot of devices and there is nothing that appeals to me more than their design, even though sometimes it doesn’t seem as feature laden as some other devices.

Simplicity+Function = Winner

I setup a 512mb Windows 2003 Server to test. So far it seems to be quite excellent and fast. On speedtest.net, I got 67mb down, 27mb up. Not bad. It looks like the Windows 2003 Servers are running under XEN and the 2008 are most likely under Microsoft’s Hyper-V.  The new machine I setup did have SP2 on it, but was unpatched otherwise.  First thing I did was update everything.  The Windows Firewall is completely closed off by default at least.

I’m definitely going to keep testing it on Rackspace, but it would be nice to have one control panel and have them available via Slicehost.com as well. Even it if is an extension to the Slicehost control panel accessing Rackspace Cloud’s API. Better integration of the Slicehost offerings with the Rackspace Cloud services would help both entities since they should be one big happy family now.

I almost wish they would merge completely and integrate all the features from both sides of the house.  I’m sure that’ll happen in time as the old loyal power users move off to Linode (I moved 4 VPS to Linode) and it’ll have the least impact, churn-wise, if done smoothly.

My setup, if anyone is interested, is the following:

• 1x256mb Slicehost VPS running Cherokee/MySQL hosting ~25 sites.
• 3x360mb Linodes + 1x540mb Linode.  3 Servers are dedicated to individual customers, the other is for more sites I maintain.  Mostly running Cherokee/MySQL or Apache/MySQL.
• 1x1024mb CrystalTech VPS  running Windows 2008 for hosting email and websites for a number of customers
• 1x2048mb SingleHop Server running Windows 2003 for a few sites that wouldn’t work correctly under 2008 for a number of reasons.  This is an Intel ATOM based Server w/ 320gb HDD.  Not bad for $99.
• 2xMedia Temple Grid accounts for customer sites that need higher scalability.

If the Rackspace Windows VPS works out well, I’ll probably move the stuff off SingleHop since the Rackspace pricing is much better for me and SingleHop’s server is overkill memory and HDD wise for a few relatively basic websites and apps.

But I will say SingleHop’s services have been EXCELLENT in the year or so I’ve been using them.  No complaints at all, 0% downtime that I, or my monitoring software, have observed.  Good customer service and GREAT prices for dedicated servers.  I just don’t need dedicated servers at the moment.  If I did, SingleHop would be the place I’d go for both Linux and Windows dedicated.

CrystalTech has also been extremely reliable and fast, but the pricing is way too high, in my opinion.  $149 (including backups) for a 1024mb VPS w/ 60gb HDD when I can get a dedicated for not much more at SingleHop.

I’ll post more on Rackspace Cloud as I start using it more.

Here’s why:

AT&T as the only carrier
AT&T SUCKS!  Need I say more?  Those Verizon commercials about AT&T are all 100% correct.  AT&T’s 3G coverage is sad, Verizon’s is amazing.  Until AT&T is gone, the only version I’ll ever get is the WiFi only and use my MiFi 2200 on Verizon for data on the move.

No front-facing camera
ALL of Apple’s computers and monitors come with webcams these days, even the iPhone has a camera in the back.  Why did they not do this? AT&T probably had some say in it, because they SUCK so badly, and wouldn’t be able to handle video conference over 3G.

No Multitasking
They touted this device as something “better” than a netbook, yet it cannot even multitask like a netbook.  ANY netbook is better than this device for this one simple feature.  This feature is “crucial” for a multi-function device like this for it to have any kind of usability outside of basic apps.

The iPhone’ish Operating System
I would’ve preferred something more of a hybrid between the iPhone OS and Mac OS X, I know that would’ve probably required more power and therefore shortened the battery life, but add only 1-2mm thickness and a lot more battery could fit in if shaped correctly.  Having a “fuller” OS probably would’ve solved the multitasking issue and would allow people to run more apps therefore making it that much more of a “usable” device.  Even with this robustness, it would most likely NOT cut into the Laptop market since it doesn’t have a mouse and sometimes you just need a mouse.

No Removable Memory Options
Apple should have simply created 2 versions, a WiFi Only and a WiFi+3G, have some onboard memory, maybe 16 or 32GB, then allow us to expand with it SD cards.  SD Cards are getting bigger all the time and would allow much greater flexibility for expansion.   Of course that would cut into Apple’s profit margins when they want everyone to buy the 128GB version coming out next year.

More Codecs
As much of a “media company” as Apple is, they still need to support the needs of the public as a whole.  Everyone, or at least most, has DiVX AVI or MKV movies that they’ve downloaded or gotten from friends.  It would be really nice if these videos could be natively viewed on this device.

Overall, complaints aside, it is still a nice device.  For the price, it’s still, in my opinion, a much better value than the Amazon Kindle line.  The Kindle is too “plain jane” and black and white while the iPad is the Kindle’s hot younger sister that still has some growing up to do.

I will watch the iPad over the next year or so and if they do make some of these improvements, especially the carrier, multitasking and front-facing camera, I’ll buy 2-3 for me, the kids, and around the house.