Web hosting radio, the way it was ment to be listened to! That is what The Web Hosting Show is all about folks! I have to say that today’s episode of The Web Hosting Show is the best one to roll around in a while. I have made a few format changes for one. I mainly wanted to change the introduction, so I could better tease what things we would be talking about on each show.

Go Listen to The Web Hosting Show – Episode 5!

The most important think though are my two guests for Monday’s edition of The Web Hosting Show. I had a chance to speak with both George A. Roberts IV from HostingCon 2005 and Jonathan Wold of The Startup Blog. So if you haven’t listened to one of my shows yet, this is the one you need to start with. I just can’t say enough good things about the production of the whole thing.

An entire conference dedicated to the world of Web hosting, that is what HostingCon 2005 is all about. With keynote speakers such as Sandip Gupta President and CEO of Ensim Corporation and Robert Marsh President and CEO of EV1Servers.net how could it not be interesting? This is an event that will surely change the face of the Web hosting world. I recently had the chance to sit down and talk with George A. Roberts IV about what was being planned and what we could all be looking forward to.

An entire conference dedicated to the world of Web hosting, that is what HostingCon 2005 is all about. With keynote speakers such as Sandip Gupta President and CEO of Ensim Corporation and Robert Marsh President and CEO of EV1Servers.net how could it not be interesting? This is an event that will surely change the face of the Web hosting world. I recently had the chance to sit down and talk with George A. Roberts IV about what was being planned and what we could all be looking forward to.

Mitch: How did you get yourself into the wild and wacky world of Web hosting?

George: I started in 1995 doing web development and consulting for small businesses in the Chicago area. We decided to add hosting as a value-added service for our design clients. I merged my company with another Internet company in Green Bay, Wisconsin in 1997. We became a full service technology company, providing hosting, design, internet access, computer systems, and consulting. We sold the business in 2000 and I went to work as a software developer for a Fortune 500 company. But the hosting industry had gotten to me, and I jumped back in, starting Interjuncture in February 2002.

Mitch: How did the idea of having a Web hosting conference come about?

George: Keith Duncan, the publisher of Ping! Zine Web Hosting Magazine and I were discussing the lack of an industry conference back in April of 2004. I decided I was going to put together “a little grass-roots conference.” As you can see, the concept has grown quite a bit since then.

Mitch: Why should your average Web host or Web hosting service provider attend HostingCon 2005?

George: We’re going to have some of the best and brightest in the industry there. Attendees will learn many things, from sales/marketing, business, technology, and security, that will help them grow their business. Some of the best vendors in industry will also be in our exhibit hall, which will give hosts an opportunity to speak face to face with those vendors.

Mitch: What is going to make HostingCon 2005 different from other big yearly conferences out there?

George: This is the only major conference to our knowledge that is focused purely on the hosting industry. Others may touch on it or talk about facets of it, but HostingCon 2005 is all about hosting. That means that attendees will be able to take just about everything they learn and apply it to their business, instead of having to pick out bits and pieces that apply.

Mitch: Other than those directly in the Web hosting business, who else would you like to see attend the conference and why should they?

George: I think those that are providing adjacent services, such as web design and internet access, could benefit from attending. Those types of services can, and often are, bundled with web hosting services, and I think that those attendees would benefit from the indepth focus of HostingCon.

Mitch: While putting together HostingCon 2005, what has been your biggest surprise?

George: We’ve been pleasantly surprised by the wonderful support we’ve been given by the industry as a whole. From vendors to speakers to attendees, everyone has been supportive and very excited about HostingCon.

Mitch: Your list of exhibitors really seemed to fill up fast. Do you think next year you might even try to make room for more?

George: We’re looking at our plans for next year and it’s likely we’ll be somewhat bigger than this year. We haven’t made all those decisions yet, but I’d say that’s a pretty good bet.

Mitch: You have a respected group of keynote speakers for the event, how easy was it to talk them into attending?

George: I think all of our speakers have recognized that HostingCon will be good for the industry, and were happy to be involved. We didn’t really have to do any convincing, honestly. Everyone was very happy to be involved.

Mitch: I see you have selected Chicago to be the home for this year’s event. Do you think they will stay from year to year, or will you be opening it up to other places to host?

George: We’re have not made a decision at this point, but I’m pretty sure next year at least will be in Chicago. We’re based in Chicago, so having it here allows us to be very hands-on in the planning process. In addition, as a once a year event, Chicago is ideally situated close to the center of the country. This makes it easy to travel to from just about anywhere in the United States. O’Hare International Airport is also one of the easiest places to get to from outside the United States.

Mitch: Are there any last thought or comments you’d like to get across?

George: I just want to let all the professionals in the hosting industry know that we’re going to have a great event and we’d love for you to be a part of it. In addition to the great opportunities at the conference itself, we’ll also have some pretty fun “after hours” events going on. So come to HostingCon 2005 and learn from our educational sessions and keynotes, network with your peers and vendors, and help grow your business. Oh, and have some fun while you’re at it. If you register before April 1, 2005 you’ll receive a $50 discount of the registration fees.

It also might be worth mentioning that George will be on The Web Hosting Show today, giving a few more details about why Web hosting companies and Web hosting clients should be getting excited about this epic event. I want to thank George for taking time out to let me speak with him as well. The folks at the HostingCon Web site have also started up a blog about the event as well. So have you registered yet for HostingCon 2005? What are you waiting for?

I have decided on which MP3 player I am going to order, heck I’ve already ordered it. It is the Dell Pocket DJ. It seems to be just right to fit my need. Really I don’t need anything that is going to give me 20 or so extra features I will never use or need. I just need something that will play a few songs, a few podcasts and that is it. Hopefully that is what this little bad boy will do.

This will be my first purchase ever from Dell, so I am really looking forward to how good the customer service and support will be. I’ve always heard good things about them, so here is my chance to try them out first hand. Usually I would go with HP, but it seems they have decided to go with pushing folks to buy an iPod. Not that I have anything against the iPod, I’m just cheap. So expect a full review of the Dell Pocket DJ here as soon as I get it in my hands.

Anybody have a good recommendation for an mp3 player? The more I get into the whole podcasting world, the most stuff I find that I’d like to listen to. However, I’m not really enjoying having to be within 10 feet of my computer to listen. I can only clean around here so often! Don’t need anything too big, a 60GB mp3 player seems like a real waste. Well, seeing that my computer’s hard drive is only 80GB I believe. I mainly just want something I could have to do work around the house or outside (I promise I won’t take it to the shower). So if you have any suggestions for me, let me know.

Some time ago I brought up the fact that I hadn’t seen too many blog out there about the Web hosting world. Now that some time has passed, and I have done some searching from one point of the Internet to the other and how found a few worth reading. So these days, I guess I can’t say I am the only game in town, but I am happy I’m not. It is about time Web hosting writers or content providers came to the top of the blogging pile! If there are any others that you know of that I didn’t cover, let me know.

The Host Blog

This is one I just ran into recently because I noticed Jarrod had posted some thoughts on an episode of The Web Hosting Show. There is lots of good posts here, and I haven’t had time to read them all, but I will.

The Startup Blog

This blog is one that covers Jonathan’s battles through getting his Web hosting company off of the ground. I have probably shamelessly plugged Jonathan more than any other person I know Online. It’s not that I don’t have anything else to get excited about though. It is because his content is so solid, true and fun to read. He is truly one of the most charismatic folks I’ve met in the Web hosting world.

The Hosting Chronicle

The Hosting Chronicle is one of those blogs I was introduced to through somebody else. After talking with Jonathan from The Startup Blog, I started talking with Johnder and noticed he had lots of good thoughts on how to best tackle the business side of the Web hosting world. A lot of the content is pushed towards the Web hosting community but honestly I think it could be taken as advice for any business.

Now I am sure these are not the only Web hosting based blogs or the lasts, but these are the ones that have gotten my attention so far. So check them out, add them to your RSS readers and let them know what you think. If there are any other Web hosting writers out there who have a blog or their own place for their voice to be heard, let me know and I’ll be sure to highlight you as well.

I have had a couple of questions thrown my way about the post production of my newest book, Lockergnome’s Guide to Web Hosting. I thought it might be of some help to future writers out there if I explained a few things and let a couple of my secrets out.

Yes, the kind folks at Lockergnome picked up the distribution of the book. Ever since day one though I had wanted to go through Lockergnome. Why? Well heck, they are good folks. At the time it was also the most cost efficient way of getting things done as well.

I’ve had a few people ask me, “Why not do a real page by page book?”. Well, that would have cost more money than I have currently right now to spend. Also, I have become a bigger fan of the whole e-book world here lately. I used to think they were a waste of time as well. Then I started reading some of those available on the Lockergnome Tutorials Web site, and I got to say, I’m hooked. So for those of you out there who think you couldn’t really get into an e-book the same way you get into a regular book, give it a shot! I bet you will be able to prove yourself wrong, just like I did.

Matt pointed out to me the other day an article he found about how some books make it into the Amazon.com rotation. Right now I am happy where I am at, but if I ever do another e-book I might have to give this method of distribution a chance.

Now as for the reasons why I wrote the book? Well, I knew I probably wouldn’t become a millionaire off of it, but receiving an income from it was a factor. This is what I make my bread and butter from, writing. For those of you out there who don’t like to buy things, you might keep in mind that your ad clicks and purchases from me are what keeps this Web site and my other projects going. Not trying to guilt anybody into anything though.

The other reason why I wanted to write the book was just for the fact of saying that I am now a published author. Now matter how good or bad the book does, nobody can take that away from me. It feels good to see it out there and to see others enjoying reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

So what are you waiting for? Go check it out and see what all the buzz is about!

Now before I get too deep into this, I just want to point out that I actually do like Fox News. Yeah, I said it. I’m not one of these folks who likes to sit around and bash folks on television for this, that or the other. Usually stuff I find on the News Hounds Web site is rather goofy things to get all worked up about. This however did get my attention:

As reported by Melanie yesterday, Creators Syndicate, the company that syndicates O’Reilly’s newspaper columns, sent our webmaster, Jim Gilliam and us a letter threatening legal action over Marie Therese’s inadvertent reproduction of one of O’Reilly’s columns. As her post now acknowledges, Marie Therese immediately removed the column and provided a link instead. But in a move reminiscent of O’Reilly, himself, the company quickly launched a new attack: “Creators Syndicate demands that you immediately cease and desist from your unauthorized use of the link to Bill O’Reilly’s column on his website.”

You can not keep people from linking to other people. It is just an impossible thing to do. Good or bad, people are going to give links and other folks are going to click them. Better yet, can we all just stop suing everybody to fix our problems?

Here are just a few links I have ran across and found interesting enough to recommend to all the Mitchamaniacs out there. More or less because I couldn’t find anything else to do with them. Enjoy!

Do you want to learn Flash for free? No not the super hero, the artsy stuff you see on the Web all over the place. Even though I feel like places should stay away from adding flash into their Web sites or having a totally flash Web site, this is pretty interesting. Might have to try it out. Last time I tried to do any flash work I pretty much got confused and quit. Blame it on my short attention span.

I really do not want my portable video game system to have a keyboard. Why? It takes some of that ability to be portable away. However, it looks like the Sony PSP has got it’s first keyboard attachment.

Always looking for ways to speed up your computer? Then go check out TweakHound’s Super XP Tweaking Guide! I have yet to read the whole thing, but from what I have read there is lots of good information there.

Google now does weather reports! Do I really need it? No. I just hope Google doesn’t forget that it is a search engine too.

Have you picked up your edition of Lockergnome’s Guide to Web Hosting? Why haven’t you!? If you’ve been in the Web hosting world for ten years or ten minutes, this is a book that everybody can find useful and informative.

If you have any links you’d like for me to check out, be sure to send them my way and I’ll be sure to give you credit for ‘em.

I like for things to be quick and simple. Recently I have ran into the problem of wanting to search for an older article I did on Mitchelaneous, but I didn’t want to have to go through each by hand. So, what is a guy to do? I wrote a simple search plugin for Firefox, so I can let the browser do all the heavy lifting on it’s own. Now I can just select “Mitchelaneous” from the drop down search menu and get to work.

How did I do it? Well, first things first for this to work your blog needs to be run by Blogware. For example, my blogging service is set up through Lockergnome Blogs, but the back end is run by Blogware.

Now that I have that out of the way, let us go to work. First thing you need to do is create the search plugin files that you will need. I’ve done that much for you already. All you need to do is download the blank.gif and blank.src to your desktop. Still with me? Good.

Next, you will need to use a standard text editor (Notepad works fine) and open up the “blank.src” file. At the top, you should see this:

# Blank BlogWare Blog Search

# Updated by mitch@mitchkeeler.com on March 7 2004

You can ignore it, or change it to “My Web Site Search”. This is pretty much just me leaving a note to myself of what it is and when did I create it.

Now where it says “name”, this is the name that will show up in the drop down menu in Firefox. Try not to make it too long, just your Web site name will do. If you have a long Web site name, then you might just put, “LG.com” or something to that effect.

For the “blog description” just put your Web site name plus the word “search”. You could even just leave that alone for now. Not that important of a thing to edit to make this all work.

Then put in your Web site address where it says, “action” replace “http://www.yourblogaddresshere.com” to your blog’s address. For example, in my Mitchelaneous search plugin, I put in “http://mitch.lockergnome.net”.

Click save, and you are done with the hard part! Now to make a little icon to go along with your new search plugin.

As you can see, earlier I told you to download, “blank.gif”. Go ahead and open that up and take a look. Yeah, it is just your basic “B”. If you want to get fancy though, you can replace that with any other 16×16 image. The file should be a “.gif” or “.png” file as well. After you are done with that, there are only a couple of more steps to go.

Now, look at the two files you have been playing with. Are they still named, “blank.src” and “blank.gif”? If so, go ahead and rename them. Just remember that you have to give them the same exact name. You can’t name one “tom.src” and the other “harry.gif”. For example, with my Mitchelaneous search plugin, I named my files, “mitch.src” and “mitch.gif”.

Now for the easiest part! Take your files off of your desktop and paste them inside your “searchplugins” directory. This should be located here:

C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins

Then, close all your Firefox windows you might have open, and reopen one. Test it out! Now you too can have your own Firefox search plugin for your Web site or blog. There are a few more things you could add to the “.src” file as well, but I won’t go into that here. If you are interested though, open up a few of the “.src” files that you already have inside your “searchplugins” folder.

Also, feel free to download both of the search plugins for Firefox that I created for my Web sites. Just dump them into your “searchplugins” folder.

Mitchelaneous – mitch.src – mitch.gif

The Web Hosting Show – whs.src – whs.gif

Either I am starting to feel better, or that cold medication I’ve been taking has gotten me a little overly hyper. Either way, you win! I’ve been writing like a mad man all morning. Here are a few of my latest Lockergnome articles for your enjoyment.

Nintendo’s Revolution with Third Parties

More Physics in Video Games

Mortal Kombat Games Online

Amazon Starts Taking Orders for PSP

The Rock in New Doom Movie

Content is Key to Web Site Success

Network Solutions on the Rise?

Get the Most Out of Your Tags

You Need No Sounds in Web Site Design

Stay Away From Hyphenated Domains!

Elements of Web Hosting

Also for those of you keeping score at home, episode four of the Web Hosting Show was posted yesterday afternoon. So if you haven’t listened to the latest show yet, get after it. After you listen to the show, then go vote for it on Podcast Alley. Also, if you are looking for some more reading, how about picking up my new e-book, Lockergnome’s Guide to Web Hosting?

Then while you’re at it, make sure you listen to Changing Media tonight! After there being no show last week, I can’t wait to see what the guys have cooked up for today.