Alright I have decided to start publishing some of the random Web sites I find interesting during the day. Instead of posting them here though, I am going to be using del.icio.us to do my dirty work. If you are subscribing to my Feed Burner feed, then you should have gotten your first sample of things this morning. For those of you subscribing to my old RSS feed, then you’ll need to add this link to your RSS readers:

http://del.icio.us/rss/mitchkeeler

So there is one more perk for signing up for my RSS feed! If you want to view my new link dump blog on it’s own, here is the URL:

http://del.icio.us/mitchkeeler

Hopefully this will work as just another way you can get my opinion on a few stories out there in the world today. Also, it should be a little easier to edit and add to on days like this, when I don’t have too much time to post. Let me know what you think!

Weird is the first thought that came to my mind when I first heard about wind powered Web hosting. After giving it some thought though, I think it is a great idea for those out there who want to be “green entrepreneurs”. Web hosting that is eco-friendly, who would have guessed it would have ever been possible?

SustainableMarketing.com, a sustainable business network focused on marketing, launches a web hosting service that is -powered by the wind- The service goes beyond traditional web hosting by offering its customers services connecting them to other green entrepreneurs.

If you’re starting a new green business, finding customers and partners can be difficult. A company called SustainableMarketing.com is offering to help solve this problem, and is also including wind-powered web hosting as part of its services.

After trying many business models, and having a few small business crises themselves, the SustainableMarketing.com website has grown into a community of around 150 green entrepreneurs. Unlike other small web hosting companies, customers have access to the collection of sustainability focused marketing articles and tools on the website, and if they choose, each other. -Internet marketing and websites make sense for green business because it’s the most cost-effective marketing available, and it uses far less physical resources,- explained Ivan Storck, SustainableMarketing.com founder.

After the dot-com bust, Storck now applies his IT and Marketing skills to his passion for the environment, and believes -the best way to affect positive change is to encourage ecopreneurs, the small green businesses offering products that are better for people’s health, their budgets, and the earth, too.- For anyone who meets him in person, it’s also obvious that he loves talking about other green companies and is a ceaseless networker, both offline and online.

Some of the websites SustainableMarketing is hosting now include an health and wellness consultants (LivingYourLight.net, EagleYoga.com), consulting professionals ( LaraAbrams.com, VisionaryCommunications.com), healthy living stores (CafeMate.org and HealthArts.tv) sustainability consultants (DeclarationOfLeadership.com, Solutionaries.com), and IT consultants (Ethotec.com) There are some website owners that choose not to participate in the green community, but want a responsibly powered web host. Others have made connections through the site that lead to new business.

For more information, check out:

The Hosting News – “Green” Web Hosting Launched for World Environment Day

Sustainable Marketing

Yes I know I said I was taking a break this week from doing the Web Hosting Show and yes I know a week has not been up yet. What can I say though? I got the itch to put out a brand new editon of the show. I guess I can’t even drag myself away from it even when I try. What does that mean? That means more work for me, and more Web hosting fun for all of you.

I am Mitch Keeler and welcome to episode 16 of the Web Hosting Show, the voice of the Web hosting world. On today’s show we are going to cover layout theft, price drops in Web hosting, a new way to get your legal papers for your Web hosting business, and so much more. Before we go any further though, I have to mention that this show is sponsored by the fine folks over at Web Hosting Chat. Web Hosting Chat is your number one place on the Web to discuss the world of Web hosting. All the links, stories and everything else mentioned on this episode of the Web Hosting Show can be found on the show notes. Where are the show notes? You can find them along with past interview and episodes at www.webhostingshow.com.

+ Download the Web Hosting Show!

Now as everybody knows I have taken some time off to get the back end production of this show a little more organized. A few things have been changed for various reasons, and I’ll go a little deeper into that a little later in the show as well. The important thing is that you are here, you are listening and hopefully you will walk away from this knowing a little more about the Web hosting world.

That is what we do here, and I think we do it pretty damn well. I’m not in this for the money, the fame, or the fortune. I am in this to help as many folks out there as I can with the wild and wacky world of Web hosting. No aspect of technology is perfect, and Web hosting is no exception. It is confusing for both Web hosts and Web hosting clients. Hopefully with all of us discussing and thinking about these topics though things will get easier for all of us in the long run. I want this show to be something that Web hosts can listen to and then turn around and tell their Web hosting clients to check it out as well. I am here to help everybody from the new guy down the street all the way down to the Web hosting expert that just wants to get his voice known.

So how about we get this party started?

[Read the rest of the show notes and listen to the show!]

Here are just a few things I’ve ran across that either I didn’t have enough time to write about or I didn’t have enough to say on the topic. All still interesting Web pages and stories though! Let me know if you’d like me to do more link dumps in the future, and I’ll try to find a better way of getting it thrown in here with the blog and/or RSS feed.

• Google Sitemaps
• UPS Package Tracking With RSS
• Shmoogle – Random Google Results
• CSS Creator
• Free and Legal Music Downloads

As an e-book writer myself, I can appreciate the hard work that goes into it. Here are a few deals from apress that can’t be overlooked. Not just because they are quality e-books. They are free quality e-books.

I always like to find good deals out there, and it doesn’t get any better than this. Check out some of the titles they are giving away for free:

A Programmer’s Introduction to PHP 4.0

No matter what language you are familiar with, this book will benefit you. Beginning with a rapid introduction to PHP’s syntax and basic functionality, you will swiftly understand PHP. The book then steers you toward advanced issues, like PHP’s role in database manipulation, sessions, and user interactivity.

Writing Perl Modules for CPAN

Writing Perl Modules for CPAN offers Perl developers a comprehensive guide to using and contributing to the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN). Starting with a general overview of CPAN’s history, network topology, and navigational mechanisms, the book quickly brings you up to speed regarding how to search out and install available modules. However, in the true open source spirit, author and experienced Perl developer Sam Tregar teaches you how to not only use, but also contribute to CPAN via an in-depth discussion of module creation, submission, and maintenance.

Programming VB .NET: A Guide For Experienced Programmers

In Programming VB .NET: A Guide for Experienced Programmers, authors Gary Cornell and Jonathan Morrison carefully explain the exciting new features of Visual Basic .NET. Since VB .NET is, for all practical purposes, a whole new language even for the most experienced Visual Basic programmers, developers need to think differently about many familiar topics. Cornell and Morrison are there to help you with careful discussions of each topic.

COM and .NET Interoperability

COM and .NET Interoperability provides a complete overview of the process of building .NET applications that interact (interoperate) with existing COM code. Before digging into that critical topic, author Andrew Troelsen offers a concise overview of the COM architecture and provides examples using various COM frameworks (C++, ATL, and VB 6.0) as well as the core .NET managed languages (C# and VB .NET).

Dissecting a C# Application: Inside SharpDevelop

Learn advanced .NET programming techniques by getting an insider’s look at a complete application! The developers who created SharpDevelop give you the inside track on application development with a guided tour of the source code for SharpDevelop. They show you the most important code features and explain how you can use these techniques in your own projects.

Get more information and links to download the title’s from apress.com. If you know of any more legal free e-books out there, please feel free to pass me over the links!

If you drop the prices in any business or industry and it leads to more competition and a better overall market for the business or industry in question right? With the prices of bandwidth and disk space dropping every day, the Web hosting world is the most recent business to be able to take advantage of this type of success.

The folks at Host Search have written a great article on the recent trends of hosting price drops and how they have effected the entire Web hosting industry.

The past month has seen a torrent of web hosting providers come out with low cost and free web hosting plans for small businesses. Starting with Yahoo offering an $11.95 per month hosting plan for small and medium businesses the industry has seen a sudden and cumulative drop in price.

With research company IDC reporting that small businesses are spending more on hosting with an estimated 80% of firms to be online in the next three years the competition for customers is heating up as the industry also starts to consolidate.

Netcraft reported earlier this month that between Go Daddy, Dotster and eNom the three web hosts have gained 496,891 active sites in the first five months of this year. Go Daddy is now the 3rd largest host in the world with 678,261 active sites which is amazing considering they only started hosting in July of 2003.

Pressure from these big players and computer hardware’s steady march of progress, to the beat of Moore’s Law, are both driving hosting prices down.

What hosts are offering with their free and low cost hosting packages is also growing.

“Free hosting customers are no longer satisfied with simplistic features such as basic guestbooks, hit counters, file managers and surveys,” explains Doug Lewis of Vantage Internet, who helped launch the new features and design of the Websiteallies.com site. “Users now want the same full feature scripts that the paid hosting customer expects, such as Blogs, Web Site portals, shopping carts, professional photo galleries, customer support ticketing systems and much more.”

[Read the Rest of the Article!]

Sure there are dozens of top Web hosting companies out there. There are a lot of folks who deserve that title. As long as your company is willing to put forth with great customer service, excellent servers and top-notch support, I don’t know why you shouldn’t be the number one Web hosting company out there today. Then again, I tend to be a little nicer than most.

TopHosts.com recently went through the challenge of naming the number one Web hosting company Online today. Who was the winner? Hostway walked away with the title, the crown and the guy singing, “there they are.. Mr. Greatest Web Hosting Company” in that Miss America type way. Okay, so maybe there wasn’t a crown and a guy signing, but you get the picture.

Hostway Corporation, a leading provider of web hosting and managed services, has been chosen by TopHosts as the number- one Web hosting provider for their top 25 Web hosts rankings. This highly influential Web hosting industry observer selected Hostway as the top provider based on the company’s exceptional dedication to service and technology and its continued commitment to its customers.

Each month, review panels sort through thousands of applications from hosting companies and conduct rigorous product testing for each host being considered for the award. There are numerous factors considered during the product testing, such as the company’s competitive advantages, technological offerings, pricing, value-added services, usability, uptime guarantee, customer and technical support and average response time. The findings from such tests are combined with user feedback from the hundreds of thousands of Webmasters that visit http://www.TopHosts.com and serve as the basis for granting the awards.

“Hostway has been presented with numerous industry awards in the past year, however this recognition from TopHosts is especially significant because the awards are partially based on feedback from the Web hosting community,” said John Lee, VP of marketing for Hostway. “Hostway’s customers are our highest priority and acknowledgments like these reaffirm our success in providing superior service and consistently meeting our customers’ needs.”

Hostway has been consistently recognized as a leading Web hosting provider by online hosting resources. TopHosts has ranked Hostway as the number-one hosting provider from 2000-2005. Hostway has also been rated the number one E-commerce Hosting Provider by Web Host Directory for the last three years.

Here are a few more related links on the subject:

Yahoo News’s Coverage

PR Newswire Coverage

I know I have thought about it over and over again. Who would Donald Trump pick as his Web host?

Well now I have an answer, it seems that he has picked Hosting.com as the new Web host for one of his new projects. I wonder if he just Googled Web hosting to find his choice? I doubt it. They probably just went with the first Web hosting-like domain name they could come up with.

Hosting.com was selected to provide managed hosting services for Donald Trump’s latest venture, Trump University, a new business education company focused on providing lifelong learning programs for business professionals, as well as a broad range of consumers, from small business owners and entrepreneurs to investors and other professionals looking to advance their careers and to create wealth. Trump University hosts its websites in Hosting.com’s Louisville data center. Hosting.com owns and operates a fully redundant, Cisco-certified data center, with 24×7 monitoring, security and support.

Hosting.com will provide dedicated Macromedia ColdFusion hosting for all online operations and will provide hardware, connectivity and 24/7 support to Trump University’s web based assets. Company officials anticipate that Trump University will quickly become one of Trump International’s largest online properties. Trump University is located online at www.trumpuniversity.com.

David Highbloom, Trump University’s Chief Operating Officer, stated, “We wanted to find a hosting provider that was reliable, dependable and could expand with us as we expand our internet offerings. We found what we needed in working with Hosting.com and have been very pleased with its ability to provide around the clock agile support for both the infrastructure and application layers in our solution.”

Because the Trump University site is expected to receive mass media coverage during its initial debut, Jonathan Erwin, V.P. Marketing & Sales for Hosting.com, stated “we have been working very closely with the team at Trump University over the past few weeks to ensure a seamless launch of the new website. This kind of complex, high touch solution is what we are best at and we are proud to support Trump University.”

Hosting.com is headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky and operates both a Louisville data center and Boston data center. Currently, the company hosts more than 40,000 web based applications and individual web sites in the two locations.

[Read the Rest at PRWeb!]

There is a new set of podcasting tools on the market! PodProducer is software that will help you create, record and produce your podcast. I have just downloaded the beta version, and have to say I am pretty impressed so far.

Here are some stats on the program via Podcasting News:

Developer Alfredo Romo has introduced PodProducer, a new freeware podcasting application.

Romo is electronics systems engineer in Guadalajara, Mexico. He has been making software for radio stations for the past 15 years.

“The idea behind PodProducer is to make it a little easier for everyone that wants to produce it’s own podcast,” notes Romo.

The application is now in beta and is available as a free download.

Features:

* 3 Main playing decks, each with individual in and out cue, level and position controls.

* Customizable number of instant play buttons, to play jingles, markers, effects, etc.

* Configurable MP3 file parameters.

* Voice Operated Recorder, with configurable recording threshold.

* Configurable Automatic Gain Controller

* Configurable Dynamics Compressor

* Integrated Mixer

Romo says that he plans to keep PodProducer freeware.

I might try putting together an episode of the Web Hosting Show with this so I can really test it out. Since it is a tool for podcasters made by a podcaster, I have high hopes with it’s future.

Does anybody really think that giving porn it’s own domain name is going to keep it categorized to it’s own corner of the Internet? In my humble Web hosting opinion I’ll go out on a limb and say this will just give a new domain name sales surge while folks pick up all the “good” .xxx domain names. Once they are all taken, things should get back to normal quick.

So the domain name registers just picked up one more quick way to make a buck. Wonder if anybody will try to buy MitchKeeler.xxx? Trust me, nobody wants to see that Web site.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers said it would begin negotiations with ICM Registry, run by the British businessman Stuart Lawley, to iron out technical issues and prices for the new Web addresses.

Pornographic sites, a $12 billion industry, could begin buying .xxx addresses as early as this autumn, depending on ICM’s plans, Kieran Baker, the Icann spokesman, said. The new pornography suffix was among 10 under consideration by the regulatory group, which also recently approved addresses ending in “jobs” and “travel.”

ICM contends that the .xxx Web addresses, which it plans to sell for $60 a year, will keep the material away from children, if pornographic sites adopt the suffix so that filtering software can more effectively block access. The $60 price is roughly 10 times as much as other kinds of companies pay for .com names.

[Read the Rest of the Article!]

Here are a few more related links on the topic in question:

News.com – Porn-friendly ‘.xxx’ domains approved

PC Pro – ICANN turns its attention to .xxx adult domains

Techtree.com – www.porn.xxx