Instagram has released an updated version of its privacy policy and terms of service  (ToS) with a major policy shift on how photographs uploaded by users may be used by Instagram and its parent company Facebook. Instagram ToS now stipulates that effective January 16, it has the perpetual right to sell users' photographs without payment or notification. Unless Instagram users delete their accounts before the January deadline, they cannot opt out.

Under the new policy, the user will retain ownership of the image but grant Facebook/Instagram the right to license all public Instagram photos to companies or any other organization, including for advertising purposes, without compensation to the owner.

The announcement was made in a deceptively benign blog post that stated:  

• Nothing has changed about your photos’ ownership or who can see them. 
• Our updated privacy policy helps Instagram function more easily as part of Facebook by being able to share info between the two groups. This means we can do things like fight spam more effectively, detect system and reliability problems more quickly, and build better features for everyone by understanding how Instagram is used. 
• Our updated terms of service help protect you, and prevent spam and abuse as we grow.  

Editors note.. Seriously, they must have hired the same guy that writes the government bills that endeavour to limit freedom on the internet... it reeks of "Trust us.. we only want what's best for all of us)

A section of the new terms of service, titled “Rights” notes that Instagram will be able to use your photographs and identity in advertisements. Even someone who doesn’t use Instagram could end up in an advertisement if they have their photograph snapped and shared on the service by a friend.

Minors are not exempted. Instagram says people must be at least 13 years old to sign up for the service and the new terms note that if a teenager signs up, they are agreeing that a parent or guardian is aware that their image, username and photos can also be used in ads.

Another unusual addition to Instagram's new policy appears to immunize it from liability, such as class action lawsuits, if it makes supposedly private photos public. The language stresses, twice in the same paragraph, that "we will not be liable for any use or disclosure of content" and "Instagram will not be liable for any use or disclosure of any content you provide.

Instagram makes a plaintive case for why it needs the cash saying that some or all of the service may be supported by advertising revenue. By allowing them to sell your content, it will help them deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions ... maybe even your pictures in an ad! 

Want to opt out? Delete your account.

If Instagram users continue to upload photos after January 16, 2013, and subsequently delete their account after the deadline, they may have granted Facebook an irrevocable right to sell those images in perpetuity.

The only way to opt out of the new Instagram terms is to not use the service. If you log into Instagram in any way, including through the Web site, mobile applications or any other services offered by Instagram, you agree to have your content used in ads.

Instagram’s new terms of service says: 

“by accessing or using the Instagram website, the Instagram service, or any applications (including mobile applications) made available by Instagram (together, the “Service”), however accessed, you agree to be bound by these terms of use.”  

Photobucket.com... or maybe not!

2 gigs free.. pay to play for more space. From the Photobucket ToS: 

When you make your Content public, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to copy, distribute, stream, post publicly display (e.g. post it elsewhere), reproduce and create derivative works from it (meaning things based on it), anywhere, whether in print or any kind of electronic version that exists now or is later developed, for any purpose, including a commercial purpose.

By making your content public, you are also giving other Members on Photobucket the right to copy, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and create derivative works from it via the Site, third party websites or applications (for example, via services allowing Members to order prints of Content or t-shirts and similar items containing Content, and via social media websites), provided such use is not for a commercial purpose

But you do retain all rights to any content you submit, upload or display on or while using Photobucket... which means that you do own all the Content and are responsible for its settings... it means you get sued by the copyright cops!

How about TinyPic..  you will still own the pictures that they are sharing! Free ads splashed across a site is one thing... companies usng your data by virtue of implied agreement to some inoculate terms in the ToS deserves all the disdain the internet can muster!

Some Alternatives...  

Flickr  

Yahoo's service for Flickr is similar, stating the company can use the images "solely for the purpose for which such content was submitted or made available." 

ImageShack 

5 gigs of storage free but plans upgrade exponentially with a minimal monthly cost.

The content that you distribute through the ImageShack Network is owned by you, and you give ImageShack permission to display and distribute said content exclusively on the ImageShack Network.

You may revoke this permission at any time by requesting your content to be removed. Such requests will be processed within a maximum period of 24 hours (but usually as short as one hour). You may request deletion and/or mark your content private through our sites' user interfaces, or by contacting ImageShack directly. After your request is processed, ImageShack will cease distribution of your content within a maximum period of 24 hours (but usually as short as one hour) and will absolve itself of any ownership of said content, implied or otherwise.

ImageShack will not sell or distribute your content to third parties or affiliates without your permission. Third parties may exercise the following options regarding your content.

Google Picasa or Google+ 

Google's policy also is far narrower and does not permit the company to sell photographs uploaded through Picasa or Google+. The Google ToS states "The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our services." 

Shutterfly

Free online photo storage: Shutterfly makes it fun and easy to be thoughtful and creative with your memories.

Sure, they deliver "award-winning prints" from your digital camera right to your door. But delivering prints is just one thing they do. From start to finish, they make it easy to enhance, share and store your digital photos... Imagine that, a business model where the only photos they sell are the ones you buy! 

SmugMug

SmugMug feature rich plans start at $5/month but they offer something that many free photo storage sites don't:

• No ads or promotions surrounding your photos.
• Unlimited photo uploads and traffic.
• Ability to retrieve your photos anytime.
• No requirement for your visitors to register.
• No threat of losing your photos if you don't buy prints.
• No reducing resolution of your photos like at free sites.
• No "free for a few photos, expensive for more" plans like Picasaweb's.
• Ability to view big, clear photos.
• Gorgeous themes to personalize your galleries.
• Full-screen slideshows.
• Real, knowledgeable & friendly humans to answer your emails quickly.
• More safety for your photos. Pay sites rarely close; many free sites—even from Yahoo, HP, Canon and Microsoft—have closed.

Building the smart photo library in the cloud. With Snapjoy, all of your photos are always organized, safe, and together in one place. Now with one click imports for Instagram, Picasa Web and Flickr!  Snapjoy is now part of Dropbox. 

European web hosting company Claranet aggressive year of acquisitions is continuing as the UK based managed service provider snaped up Paris based web host Typhon for £3.4 million (approx 5 million clams). This marks Claranet's third acquisition in 6 months as it seeks to broadens its service portfolio, increases its presence in France, boosts its total staff count to over 700 and its customers to more than 4,700 clients in six European markets.

The enlarged group will have over GBP 142 million in annual revenues. Claranet bought Portuguese host CGEST in July and Star Technology Services in November. Typhon is known for its commitment to the open-source community.

Wants to be top dog in Europe

In a statement Charles Nasser, CEO and founder of the Claranet Group stated:

This announcement confirms our ambition to become the clear leader for managed services across Europe, while the acquisition of Typhon also positions Claranet as the leading provider for web hosting and applications in France.

Plans to tackle internet trolling could have a "chilling effect" on online freedom of expression, a committee of MPs and peers has said.

English libel laws have long been criticised for inhibiting freedom of speech, and have become even more controversial in recent years. Because of so-called 'libel tourism', where foreign cases are heard in London, widely known as a 'town named sue', the effects of the law now reaches around the world. In response, laws have been passed making UK court judgements non-binding in the US, and American companies have threatened to cease offering their publications in the UK.

The coalition groups Index on Censorship and English PEN recently published a joint report on English libel law reform and launched the libelreform.org website to help promote their online petition campaign to change unjust British libel law. Laws they claim do not reflect the interests of a modern democratic society.

The group is warning that libel law reforms might cause website operators to delete statements that have not broken the law. There should be a higher threshold put in place before material has to be removed chairman Hywel Francis said.

Proposals in the Defamation Bill aim to protect website operators from claims against them when defamatory statements are published by their users, while making it easier to identify the people accused of making such statements. The government has accused the committee of over-complicating matters.

Announcing the reform plans in June, then Justice Secretary Ken Clarke said the measures would mean an end to "scurrilous rumour and allegation" being posted online without fear of adequate punishment.

'Serious harm'

Under the bill, a statement is regarded as defamatory if it "has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to the reputation" of a person or a company, but any claim for damages will fail if it can be shown, for example, that the defamatory statement is "substantially true".

To be entitled to this protection, the websites must either facilitate contact between the complainant and the author or remove the offending material when they cannot establish contact. However, complainants would not have to declare whether any such defence applied in their case.

The Index on Censorship and English PEN report concluded: 

there is a real risk that website operators will be forced to arbitrate on whether something is defamatory or lawful, and will too readily make decisions on commercial grounds to remove allegedly defamatory material rather than engage with the process." 

The bill therefore "risks removing material from the internet, which, although it may be defamatory, may be lawful if a relevant defence applies

Checklist

The committee also called on the government to abandon its "inflexible" approach to another part of the bill, which aims to strengthen legal protections for defamatory statements "on a matter of public interest" that are published "responsibly".

The bill is due to begin detailed scrutiny in the House of Lords on 17 December. A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said the government would "give careful consideration" to the committee's recommendations.

The libelreform.org website web hosting is provided by 1&1

Sign the Libel Reform Campaign Petition! (link will open new page)

Windows Live Mesh was first released in beta back in late 2008 and was used to keep files in sync and to remotely access a PC.  Today, Microsoft has announced that it will officially kill the service on February 13, 2013.

While Live Mesh once had “a few million” users, according to Microsoft, there are now fewer than 25,000 active users on the service. 

With the significant investments in bringing the DNA of Mesh together with SkyDrive, there are now over 200 million people that have used SkyDrive, and more and more are making the move every day. So while Windows Live Mesh was at one point used by a few million people, most have made the move and there are now less than 25,000 active users of Windows Live Mesh. 

Microsoft is informing those users on how to keep their files in sync and alternative options for some of the features they’re still using.” 

Of course Microsoft recommends that the remaining Live Mesh users move to SkyDrive, but some are questioning the wisdom of terminating the service when SkyDrive doesn’t match the functionality of Live Mesh.

One user who claim to use both services paraphrased the thoughts of others : 

I still can't leave Mesh because of some features that are missing in SkyDrive and are really important to me: 

1) Sync *ANY* Folder (also outside the SkyDrive root folder): I can sync my Picture folder, my document folder, my Desktop, without any workaround (like configuring Libraries or MLINKs). 

2) Sync folders on my pc shared by others. Right now I can't do this in SkyDrive (I can only see shared items on the web and in the SkyDrive app for WP). 

3) Remote desktop to PCs under NAT. 

Unfortunately the Windows Remote Assistance is not reliable as Mesh Remote Desktop. 

I can't use Windows RDP to connect to non-pro edition, and I have difficulties to find the endpoint of PCs under NAT. So, no, it doesn't offer the same functionality that Mesh does. 

The user also states that LogMe in Pro is a pay to play edition.

The company says that right now they do not have the perfect solution for this within Microsoft, but they're working on it.

Oh brother. Just great.. they're working on it! 

The organizers of Click Frenzy, the Australian equivalent of a Cyber Monday, had warned participating retailers to be prepared for greater than expected traffic and that a last-minute surge in pre-registrations - of 20,000 to 30,000 a day for the past week - meant they were now expecting well over a million shoppers to take part in the 24-hour event.  The organizer of Australia's biggest national online shopping event should have heeded their own advice. More on this in a moment!

Christmas Frenzy 

Retailer David Jones, an obvious omission from the list of major retailers participating also announced it was staging its own rival one-day sale “Christmas Frenzy”, then suffered what appear to be a series of e-commerce glitches that resulted in many shoppers being locked out of particular promotions on the David Jones' website.

A David Jones spokeswoman confirmed there was a “technical glitch” on the website although she denied that the problem was related to increased traffic flows, and said all parts of the site were now working.

“Even if the site is busy, it’s designed in a way that will manage peak times,” she said. “In many ways, this will be the first real test for our website."

However, hours later, the site had to be pulled offline completely, forcing David Jones to apologize using social media channels. David Jones reported on its Facebook page just after 2pm that "We are currently performing some urgent fixes to our online store to resolve the performance issues we're experiencing during our Christmas Frenzy event,"

Twitterverse responded on the outage and a tweet by @Gillian summarizes the sentiments expressed by many stating:   NOT a glitch - DJ tech incompetence. Please spare the cover up. Competent coys DON'T HAVE 'GLITCHES'. Bloody amateurs!

Click Frenzy 

The Click Frenzy site did not fare much better, becoming inaccessible minutes into the promotion. Initially operators slammed critics when customers took to Facebook and began venting over the unavailability of the site.

"Click Frenzy is far from embarrassed!" it stated  in a Facebook post,

The offending comments are now deleted, a fact which hasn't gone unnoticed by users.

Forced to acknowledge there were some more serious issues when the site remained inaccessible more than an hour-and-a-half after launch, the Click Frenzy organizers issued a statement saying:

"Firstly, I would like to issue an apology to anyone who has been inconvenienced and frustrated by the technical issues relating to the inaugural Click Frenzy 24 hour online sale," organiser Grant Arnott posted.

"The technical directors, developers and infrastructure specialists involved in this inaugural event are working to get to the root of what occurred with the wave of traffic at 7pm. II am not in a position to describe exactly what has occurred yet as the teams involved are working on the solution first to resolve any problems. "We will provide answers as soon as they are available. We will continue to issue updates."

By 9.55pm, the site was serving a placeholder message asking users to register to be alerted when it returned to full service. "This is virtual crowd control in action, we're waiting to clear the stampede and hope to be back with you soon," it read. "Enter your email and we'll send you an update as soon as we are back to normal transmission."

Click Frenzy's web host, UltraServe, said in Twitter posts it was experiencing "huge volumes of traffic as expected" and that it was "prioritising users".

@JonHyne responded in a tweet asking "what does prioritising users mean?" editor's note: Seriously, what does that mean!

In another exchange, @ultraserve tweeted "We cracked 2 Gbps of non-image content which is quite significant,"

@cbommm responded “to whom”

UltraServe said that other customers had not been affected by the flood of traffic caused by hosting Click Frenzy.

Teags ‏@teags
@ultraserve  seriously? No one else effected. Try loading your own site.

John Mcafee, creator of the anti-virus software that bears his name, is a fugitive in hiding. The Belize police say Mcafee is being sought as “a person of interest” in the murder of Gregory Faull. John Mcafee claims he is innocent and the victim of a vindictive Prime Minister. Others believe his lifestyle choices of alleged heavy drug abuse, sexual experimentation, deadly extreme sports along with a heavy dose of media manipulation are now coming back to haunt him.

Since the story broke John Mcafee has been attempting to share his version of events through media contacts he has nurtured in the past. Most would concur that the media coverage to this point has not been very sympathetic to his cause. Painted as a drug crazed hippie, albeit a more affluent version, Mcafee has come across as someone indulging in all the decadence and dallies that money can buy. Belize prime minister Dean Barrow has called McAfee extremely paranoid, even bonkers. Many reading Gizmodo and Wired Magazine possibly derived similar conclusions.

Not unlike the early days when a virtually unknown Mcafee was faced with the emergence of computer viruses, he resolved the problem by writing software that could detect the malicious program and then remove it automatically. Mcafee is once again seeking to resolve what bothers him by reflecting on the recent detour his life has taken writing his own blog. With lots of time on his hands and very little else to do, the idea may provide him the best opportunity to more clearly articulate his story.

The Hinterland, the official blog of John Mcafee

Mcafee first post on The Hinterland takes a swipe at the world press. Describing media as autonomous and self-serving, and doing what it does best – sensationalizing, Mcafee laments of his character assassination, and how the recent events of his life have been “sensationalized to the max”

Mcafee then take on Jeff Wise and his recent posts to Gizmodo:

Jeff has made a life work out of smearing my character. Beginning with Fast Company some two odd years ago and continuing non-stop through the present, he has gone beyond the call of journalistic duty to bring my dark side to the attention of the world. You might think that moral duty or a search for the truth has been driving him.

Mcafee then goes on sparing no details to inflict some sensational character assassination of his own on Wise.

Then John turned his attention to Josh Davis of Wired Magazine. Mcafee says he was approached with the idea of doing an in-depth story. While he felt it was a good idea at the time, he does suggest that of thousands of photos taken, the one with him half naked, wearing sunglasses and caressing a shotgun, made the headline because it sells. (editor’s note.. if the NRA only had a calendar they could sell more with this picture)

Not finished with the press Mcafee shares a little more in his second post – specifically Joel Johnson who claims he absconded Mcafee “private diary” from a “private website” and published it on Gizmodo.

His rationale was “moral imperative”. I emailed Joel and asked whether moral imperative shouldn't dictate that he send the money he received from Gizmodo to me. After all, it was my effort, my photos, my time, my words. Shouldn't I get the money? He did not respond.

The Hinterland reinforces rather than alleviate Mcafee eccentric character. While this may be true, it is providing Mcafee a channel to voice issues surrounding the Belize government and the ongoing police investigation. He is also raising awareness to the difficulties being faced by individuals through guilt by association.  Mcafee announced on NBC Television that he is offering a $25,000 reward for the capture of the person or persons responsible for Mr. Faul’s murder.

Regardless of the outcome, movie deals, books, and offers for his female groupies to reveal more are a given. For those who can’t get enough of the free spirit Mcafee, he claims that if captured the blog will continue. “I have pre-written enough material to keep this blog alive for at least a year” he says.

So which web hosting company does a murder suspect on the lam with almost a cult following of fans and critics use?

John Mcafee is a Happy DreamHost Customer

Domain: whoismcafee.com
ICANN Registrar:  NEW DREAM NETWORK, LLC
Created: 2012-11-16

Domain servers in listed order:

ns1.dreamhost.com
ns2.dreamhost.com
ns3.dreamhost.com

The Enterprise Corporate Webhosting website touts as fact that the company founded in 1998 and managed by internet entrepreneur Andre Chartrand, has over seven thousand clients, and employs over two hundred employees in the Greater Vancouver area. Enterprise claims it is one of the largest IT companies in Canada. Well at least this is what Enterprise Corporate Webhosting claims on the homepage of their website.

The usual test for a statement of fact is verifiability. Often its not the individual pieces, rather the accumulative effect that produces the picture.

Pieces such as a web hosting company alluding to years in business yet its website in all its glorious entirety consists only of the aforementioned single homepage. A web hosting company website completely devoid of any package offerings, or indications of a pricing structure could possibly be another.

The domain enterprisecorporatewebhosting.com was first registered on June 16, 2012 using ICANN register MONIKER ONLINE SERVICES.  Unlike most companies that feel forced to register every conceivable variation of their domain to protect their brand, Andre Chartrand only chooses to register the dot com TLD. (Somehow I doubt the domain squatters are rubbing their hands in glee over the prospects of scooping this one up).

Andre Chartrand: andre.chartrand01@gmail.com
Apt 305, 106-4368 MAin Street
Whistler BC  V0N1B4 CA
Record created on: 2012-06-16
Domain Expires on: 2013-06-16

It is generally accepted good practice in web hosting circles to segment the company sites from clients to ensure network connectivity in the event of downtime.  Andre Chartrand obviously understood this principle to mean quite literally, believing a little distance is good and a lot more is better.

Enterprise Corporate Webhosting Inc website is hosted by Funio is the Shared Hosting division of iWeb Technologies, in Montreal. Then again, Funio goal is their  motto: Web hosting made easy.

Speaking of corporate, another inconsistency arises when searching the Industry Canada database of Canadian Corporations. 

Corporations Canada
Search Results

Searched for Corporate Name: Enterprise Corporate Webhosting Inc
0 results were found, 0 returned.

Bling

For some, no website is complete sans Bling. Andre appears to have heaped only minimal praise while bestowing the imperative badges of honor. Despite his conservative approach, the BBB took exception to the use of their bling as window dressing and issued a warning, that was later updated:

As of July 31, 2012: the company is using the Better Business Bureau name and seal on its website without authorization. Enterprise Corporate Webhosting Inc. is not a BBB Accredited Business. Consumers should be aware that this business is not in any way affiliated with the Better Business Bureau. 

As of August 24, 2012: the company has removed the logo from its website, upon request from the Better Business Bureau. 

Lookout for those pretender schemes

In October the BBB did issue a warning to BC-based businesses about an invoice scheme that was using misleading advertising tactics.

Enterprise Corporate Webhosting Inc., based in Whistler, British Columbia, has an F rating with the BBB due to its misleading sales practices. Since July 2012, the BBB has received over 1,035 inquiries about the company and many letters of experience from businesses who received invoices from the company. 

In all cases the companies invoiced had no previous dealing with Enterprise Corporate Webhosting Inc., and felt that the invoice was not justified because no services were actually rendered. The invoice often references webhosting, database installation, or remote accessing services. 

According to local news report, the RCMP General Investigation Section was working on information obtained from the Whistler investigation, and established surveillance on a Nanaimo business the suspect was believed to attend that day. At 3:30 p.m. the suspect attended the business and was arrested. He attempted to fight and flee, but was successfully apprehended by police.

Whistler RCMP Staff Sgt. Steve LeClair says:

that since September the detachment has been investigating an ongoing scam involving a fraudulent invoicing for web hosting services. Enterprise Corporate Web Hosting issued 1,000 invoices for work not performed for amounts between $130 and $155. The potential for the fraud, he added, is over $100,000 as a result. 

A 24-year-old Gabriola Island man with family connections in Whistler is facing multiple charges in relation to running fraud operation out of the resort town. The suspect has not be named and should be assumed innocent until proven otherwise. 

Automattic, the company behind the widely used content management system and blogging platform WordPress, has announced that it will accept payment for some of its services using the open source currency Bitcoin. Although Wordpress itself is free, Automattic offers the paid version of the service sans the adverts or with the freedom to implement custom designs. Because of limits imposed by traditional payment networks, these paid services were not accessible by everyone

Amdy Skelton says in a blog post: 

PayPal alone blocks access from over 60 countries, and many credit card companies have similar restrictions. Some are blocked for political reasons, some because of higher fraud rates, and some for other financial reasons. Whatever the reason, we don’t think an individual blogger from Haiti, Ethiopia, or Kenya should have diminished access to the blogosphere because of payment issues they can’t control. Our goal is to enable people, not block them. 

Bitcoin is the experimental new digital currency that enables instant payments to anyone, anywhere in the world. By using peer-to-peer technology, Bitcoin operates with no central authority: managing transactions and issuing money are carried out collectively by the network. Merchants who accept Bitcoin payments can do business with anyone.

Some technical glitches have precluded the availability of some products using Bitcoin. This includes domain names, and themes not purchased in bundles. Automattic says the decision was made to go now with what they have because this launch is about enabling people. Bitcoin should be accepted for all purchases within two or three months.

Automattic will also accept Bitcoin payments without waiting for confirmations, the annoying method Bitcoin uses to verify transactions. Many services insist on multiple confirmations before allowing a transaction. As Skelton notes in his post 

We could wait for the first confirmation (typically 5-10 minutes) but we prefer to make the customer experience as smooth as possible. Making you wait for confirmations would virtually eliminate our risk but we’re confident that with digital products like ours the risk is already acceptably low. 

Acceptably low because as is the case with most web hosting companies, Automattic can suspend upgrades with relative ease if the payment fails!

Automattic will also work around another of Bitcoin feature, namely its dislike of issuing refunds. "If a refund is granted on a purchase made with BTC we will work with BitPay to issue a refund in BTC"  Skelton wrote. 

A owner of a Hong Kong web hosting company Pacswitch should have paid closer attention to his own terms of service when he launched a cyber-attack on the island's stock exchange in a publicity stunt designed to promote his company's anti-DDoS services.

Tse Man-lai hit Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing's HKExnews Web site with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack last August, leaving investors unable to access price sensitive company announcements.  Although Tse accessed the site only long enough to record photographs and video footage of his attacks, with the first lasting for 390 seconds and the next one for 70 seconds,  fear instilled during prior attacks caused trading to be suspended for eight companies - including HSBC and Cathay Pacific Airways.

According to the South China Morning Post, Tse carried out the attack to promote his firm, Pacswitch Globe Telecom and a DDoS prevention method he claims to have invented.

Despite conclusively proving that the HKExnews website remains vulnerable to attacks, Judge Kim Longley convicted Tse of two counts of obtaining access to a computer with criminal or dishonest intent and jailed him for nine months.

Over the years Coca‑Cola has launched many successful marketing campaigns, focusing on the quality of their product (remember that 1969 tagline It’s the Real Thing.. me neither!), while others have referred to the products taste (think 1929’s ‘The Pause that Refreshes’). But many of Coke’s slogans and branding reinforce the image the company wants to project of its role in entertaining, and bringing people together during social occasions. ('Things go better with Coke' and another, 'I’d like to buy the world a Coke') Coke's marketing genius and impressive global reach has now entered the foray of social media.

The blog Coca-Cola Unbottled, was launched in late September as a means to reach out and share their ideas to whole new audiences says Coke’s Director of Digital Communications & Social Media Ashley Brown, in the site’s first blog post

Even in this social age, our communications still felt very one way. We couldn’t easily have a conversation about water conservation, empowering women, or take you behind-the-scenes at the Olympics. So we created this blog.  It’s a home for dialogue about the ideas, initiatives, events, and the social good that Coke contributes to help shape life on our planet.

It’s also the latest (but not the last) step in our commitment to tell meaningful stories that will not only inform and engage you, but also keep you coming back for more.

We’re not the first company to build a blog, but we hope Coca-Cola Unbottled will bring a unique perspective and a fresh point of view that sparks thoughtful conversations and dialogue

'Not the last step' may have been referencing Coca Cola’s latest initiative.  .. the launching of a new photo-sharing service / social network called Happy Places. At the moment Happy Places consists of the domain name happyplaces.com, a yet to be launched website, and a free iOS app, which went live on the App Store yesterday.

Users will be encouraged to create Happy Places profiles, where they can share happy photos with their friends, as well as view pictures from other users, make comments and follow hashtags... and get informed when pictures are uploaded with similar tags.

Editor's note: Notifying users of pics with similar tags is one feature that may need some fine tuning before launch.. a constant spamming of the user base!

Word of another photo-sharing site is not likely to impress the Instagram, Flickr, or numerous others with similar offerings, as the service may further erode market share in the increasingly crowded photo sharing playfield.  With a company like Coke, it’s easy to understand why. Beside the obvious deep pockets, their experience has been garnered by more than a century of doing marketing on a global scale.  Need more proof..

As part of the Bond Integrated Marketing campaign that was developed by Coca-Cola’s North West Europe and Nordics business unit to support Coke’s association with the newest Bond movie “SkyFall”, an online video was launched to drive engagement and conversation.

The video was shot at the Central Station of Antwerp in Belgium and invited real consumers to unlock the 007 in themselves and overcome their personal 007 mission to win exclusive tickets for the movie “SkyFall”. The viral effect of the video was amazing, making the content highly successful for the brand while breaking Company records in terms of online views and engagement. 

Unlock the 007 in You  viral video. Will open in new tab.

While not always getting it right (think New Coke #ouche #Pepsi) they have been successful as evidenced by their longevity.

 Blogging Coca-Cola: Lessons From the First Month

While many have declared blogging a casualty of the technological evolution, Unbottled is a good example of how the common blog may not only be alive and well, but also maturing.

Ashley Brown shared in a post some insights learned about blogging in their first month. Many may work for others considering creating a blog for their company .

1.    The blog is more global than we thought

We anticipated that our audience would build very slowly. Our readers hail from 159 countries and have viewed nearly 40,000 pages of content. Only 46% of these readers are from the U.S. – a percentage steadily declining.

2.   There’s more content to share than we thought

We greatly underestimated demand within Coke to share stories.  A month in, we’re posting an average of one story per day and on many days we post two.  And with the growth of the blog outside of the United States, we hope to roll out our first non-English content in the coming weeks.

3.   Building a content pipeline is harder than we thought

While we’ve been pleased with the volume of content we have to share, getting it “production ready” takes time. A lot of it.

4.   Social syndication is more important than we thought

Everyone knows that social syndication – sharing on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and others – is important.  We’ve had an aggressive syndication plan in place since our first post.  But we are surprised by how much traffic the social web drives.

Coke’s latest initiative appears to be surpassing the goals they have set for themselves with nary a cloud in sight... except maybe using the domain happyplaces.com.

Happyplaces.com whois registation was updated in July, and shows Coke as the registered owner. The domain dns are set to Coca Cola nameservers, and point to a non visible website on a Savvis server(s)

Happyplaces.netwas first registed using Melbourne IT in 2004.  Happyplaces.net is presently using Yahoo Merchant Services to host the website Lizzie's Olympic Adventures!

Happyplaces.org also has an active website (a really cool one) that caters to the kiddies, or maybe just the kid in us!  The domain was registered in 2005 using GoDaddy and continues to be hosted with GoDaddy

There are numerous domain extension still available that could have nefarious domain squatters plotting possible variations of the photo-sharing theme envisioned for Coke’s happy place. Possibly Coke, a company cloaked in secrecy around their formula since its earliest days, may be  purposely leaking a domain name to heighten the anticipation for their next step in social media.

Then again, a successful social media campaign is about creating buzz. If some variant of the domain ie: happyplaces dot deviant were to appear, it would certainly achieve that!

StartupPlays was created to increase the success rates of startups, and as part of their efforts, every few months they put together a list and title it the ‘Top 35 Startups that TechCrunch Missed’. As stated on their site, building something new and innovative is an exciting process, but launching it for the world to see and getting those first users is a rush like no other!

The people at StartupPlays are right. Running a startup is hard. Articulating an idea, sharing the vision, getting access to the movers and shakers in the startup field, building the product, hiring talented people, getting access to capital, supporting customers – the list goes on and on. It’s an epic struggle.

When and if the pieces of the puzzle finally fall into place and the startup begins to get noticed, all the energy and effort start to be rewarded as your idea gets traction and your website gains traffic. Yet even with the most thought out and well executed plan, it can be sabotaged by picking the wrong web host! 

HostJury has grabbed some of the Top 35 Startups that TechCrunch missed and made our own list.... along with the web hosts they use!

1. Moqups

Prototyping is supposed to be fast and painless. So we built a simple to use app that sits in the browser, loads instantaneously, has a distraction-free user interface and produces crisp wireframes that we can immediately share with our peers. Moqups is built on open standards, striving to provide the best experience within the browser, without compromise... and it's free!

The Moqups.com domain was registered using GoDaddy and is hosted on a dedicated server at LINODE.COM

2. Iconify

Responsive: Your portfolio will work on any device. Connected: Future clients can call, email, and more, with one click.Never miss a lead.Viral: Get exposure by being easily shared on social networks. Iconic: Anyone can download your portfolio as a mobile app.. Regardless of the hype, this is cool!

Domain is registered using GoDaddy services. Iconify.co is hosted by Media Temple.

3. Fiestah

Fiestah helps you plan your event by taking the hassle out of finding, contacting, and managing multiple vendors. Simply post your event needs and soon you’ll have caterers, DJs, photographers, and other vendors bidding to work with you. It’s event planning, in a third of the time!

Fiestah.com is registered using domain registrar TuCows. Fiestah.com is hosted on Amazon Web Services. AWS

4. Mevvy

Unlock the doors to the best apps, web tools and software. There are lots of great solutions out there to get things done ... finding them is the tricky part. Mevvy help you skip the search and give you the tool that works best so that you can focus on the actual task.

The domain Mevvy.com, is registered through, and hosted on Gandi.net servers.

5. HealthAware

HealthAware connects patients with the best practitioners and guarantees excellent service. It is the easiest way to find health practitioners near you, view their availabilities and instantly book appointments online.

Healthaware.ca was registered using Go Daddy Domains Canada and is hosted on servers at Rackspace.  

6. Mover.io

Mover was created to streamline the process of transferring your data to the cloud. You can use Mover to change cloud-storage providers, back up your website or files, all while reducing user anxiety about how and where their data is being transferred. Once you are signed up, it takes just a few clicks to start your transfers.

The Whois record for Mover.io  returns as incomplete?? The Mover.io website is hosted on Amazon Web Services. AWS.

7. Artery

Sell anything you can put in your Dropbox.. Art, music, photography, templates, software, books — whatever you create. Artery is designed to be your canvas to sell downloads, no matter what they are

Domain whois record is incomplete for Artery.io ??? The site is hosted by Linode. 

8. Taurus

Taurus is a service to help developers create product tours for their web applications in 15 minutes using a point and click interface. Product tours are important for SaaS applications, often resulting in a 20-100% improvement in sales. Taurus has been made to install quickly, and be heavily customizable.

The Whois record for taurus.io  record is incomplete, but the web host for taurus.io is Amazon Web Services. AWS.

9. Typeform

Typeform is a better way to ask questions online.

Typeform introduces the next generation of online forms: Engaging, beautiful, flexible & fast. Build your forms with Typeform.

Domain was registered using 1 & 1 and the site's web hosting uses Linode.

10. Home Classmate

Many elderly people who can't get out easily, get lonely or depressed. Home Classmate is creating classes for seniors that are easy to access, and allow them to interact with other people using a phone or computer.

Domain registration service were provided by Namecheap. Homeclassmate.com is hosted by Websmart Ltd which is using LeaseWeb servers.

11. Merge

Merge was built by a collection of people, doing what they love. We believe in building simple products for intelligent people. We found a problem. Your hard work is spread across emails, websites, and apps all happening on multiple devices. We manufactured a solution.

Domain is registered using GoDaddy.com.  Mergehq.com web hosting is on  Amazon Web Services. AWS. 

12. Kera

Kera is the powerful, new way to onboard users with interactive tutorials that overlay on live websites.

The whois record is showing as incomplete but kera.io is hosted on Amazon Web Services. AWS. 

13. Heatma.ps

Heatmaps is a mobile quality analytics. It is the first-ever usability tool for iPhone and iPad applications that uses heat maps, gesture recognition and AB testing to help developers improve the quality of their apps and increase their revenue. Over 100 apps are already using the service in beta, including those in travel, gaming, m-commerce, productivity, entertainment, and education.

The domain, heatma.ps was registrar through SADAF Tecnology Development. The website for Heatmaps is hosted on Home.pl servers.

14. Cappture

Cappture is an app based around capturing your day to day life through our calendar oriented platform. We're focused on the concept of time and how we can take photography back through the past decades while sharing with today's technology.

Domain was registered using Name.com. Capptureapp.com web host is  Media Temple 

More to come shortly! 

Despite ongoing court proceedings, Kim Dotcom and his team are gearing up to launch a new Megaupload, which will simply be called “Mega”. A popular fixture on Twitter, Kim Dotcom has used the social medium to taunt governments, educate the public, and bring attention on his new projects which are set launch early next year. Kim Dotcom has now revealed that the new Mega service will operate on the Gabon-based domain name ME.GA. The spin-off is set to launch on January 20, exactly one year after Megaupload was shut down.

Mega is expected to use encryption methods which will mean only users will know what they are uploading. Mega's holding page states:

In the past, securely storing and transferring confidential information required the installation of dedicated software. The new Mega encrypts and decrypts your data transparently in your browser, on the fly. You hold the keys to what you store in the cloud, not us.

In addition to avoiding domain names that are under control of the U.S., Dotcom also notes that the new Mega won’t partner with American hosting providers.

“Unfortunately we can’t work with hosting companies based in the United States. Safe harbour for service providers via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has been undermined by the Department of Justice with its novel criminal prosecution of Megaupload.”

Dotcom also advises other cloud hosting providers to stay away from the U.S. and refrain from operating domains that are controlled by American companies.

“It is not safe for cloud storage sites or any business allowing user generated content to be hosted on servers in the United States or on domains like .com / .net. The US government is frequently seizing domains without offering service providers a hearing or due process.”

Ironically Me.ga redirects to Kim.com, which is registered using American company Network Solutions but the website's servers themselves are located with web host Root.sa in Luxembourg.

For many defunct web hosts all that remains is a quiet and less than dignified burial in the HostJury deadpool. Some web hosts notify their clients of impending changes in a responsible manner and made arrangement for the orderly transfer of clients to another web hosting company. Some just slip quietly away. Then there are the web hosting companies whose demise just makes the world a little bit brighter...

So without further adieu, the most recent additions to the HostJury deadpool...

New Business Hosting 

From the New Business company description: 

New Business Hosting set out to identify the problems with the existing systems and where clients can fall through the cracks. New Business Hosting started building their new Web Hosting model until they felt they had identified the majority of issues and implemented solutions to correct them. In May of 2010, New Business Hosting was launched... 

Obviously they missed one criteria for a successful business model.. clients need to be able to contact you! 

ReadySetConnect

ReadySetConnect has also used the AlteraHosting.com domain.  The web site is no longer available and a forum post says it all: 

Have been hosted by ReadySetConnect/AlteraHosting since 1998 and had pretty good service early on although it has degraded over time. Recently our website went "Account Suspended". We received no notice, in fact hadn't heard from them for over a year. Have left emergency/critical support tickets for both the billing and technical support three weeks ago but haven't received a response. The phone is an answering machine and they have not replied. The BBB currently gives them a rating of F.

SEO Hosting Services

Seo Hosting Services described their hosting plans as including different features which may included a free dedicated IPs, shared and private SSL certificates, unlimited disk space and bandwidth, $100 in Google AdWords credits, website statistics, addons, your own 800 number, instant blogs and forums, and outstanding customer service and technical support. 45 day money back guarantee! Pay month-to-month, no long term contracts.

Unlimited disk space and bandwidth.. you don't say! Regardless, one would think a company with SEO in its name would be easier to find on the web!

RackVibe

RackVibe was also known as JustEdge Networks ...   On Sept 4, Zalutao asked the million dollar question: “Does anyone know what’s with rackvibe? My server is down, their site is unresponsive?”

Ask no more!

SpecHosting

SpecHosting described themselves as having "Radical Personalized Support"

Our CEO is always willing to personally assist you, as well as our entire SpecHosting Team. We believe in providing the absolute best personalized support possible! Our friendly and knowledgeable support team is here to serve you, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!

In an Interview given earlier, Tanner Bradley shared some insight into Spechosting:

Q: What do you think it takes to be successful as a web host?

A: A connection with the customers. It truly takes cutting edge hardware, great support, and a personality that is easily likeable.

Q: What motivates you?

A: My customers. The main goal of SpecHosting is PROGRESS. We want to offer you more utilities for your day to day business.

@SpecHosting last tweeted on Sept 21

For now Spec is down but Tanner Bradley is young (not the kiddie host kind of young, but young).. Its a good domain name for a web hosting entity and there does appear to be a focus on the client's needs. I’m not so sure that SpecHosting won’t resurrect itself in some form or another. 

Layerblue

Bing could not find layerblue.com

Additional suggestions:
Search on Google

Conceived in 2001, and started in 2002, with a domain registered in 2003.

Layerblue described itself as company that was established with only the customer in mind.  After  working for some other (editor note: they really meant to say .. evil) prominent hosting companies, the Layerblue team has found that the customers needs were being overlooked on too many occasions.

Profits were put before servicing the customer which is a practice that looks great on paper for the accountants, but doesn't help for customer retention. It is Layerblue's belief that the customer really should come first...

I not sure about anybody else but when I read that its hard not to have a Jon Stewart speechless moment .. Making sure you turn a profit is key to customer retention!

While most of the Layerblue TLDs are still registered, only the Layerblue.net has an active website. The website, a holding page for 1 & 1 INTERNET states:

THIS DOMAIN NAME HAS JUST BEEN REGISTERED FOR ONE OF OUR CUSTOMERS!

It appears that  there may be a lack of consensus around the definition of the word just... just last week - just last month - just last year... maybe. A domain registered in 2002 is not just anything!

domain: layerblue.net
created: 27-Dec-2002
owner: Private Registration

Layerblue.com and layerblue.net appears to have different owners.

MyWebsHost 

The company description included this sentence along with another couple of typos:  

MyWebsHost provide you with Unmtered bandwidth.

Possibly that 's' in the domain was just a spelling error also.

Whether by design or by accident, the MyWebsHost.com domain redirects to a domain holding page. I am sure that another web hosting company, My Web Host  is happy to see them gone!

Supremcloud

Another typo perhaps?

Virtual Private Server provider KnownHost.com has announced that it is acquiring Uberhost effective October 24, 2012.

“We're really excited about the acquisition of Uberhost, mainly due to both its reputation in high-quality hosting and its strong emphasis in technical support,” said Justin Sauers, Director at KnownHost.com. “KnownHost has always been focused on the same qualities, so this is a natural match that has made this acquisition easy for both parties to act on.”

Rick Taylor, owner and president of Uberhost, agreed. “I am very excited that KnownHost will be acquiring our company. KnownHost has a legendary track-record of expert support delivered rapidly and on a 24/7 basis, so I'm confident that our customers will be very well taken care of by their friendly staff."

Customers of both companies will experience no immediate changes. “We will maintain the brand name Uberhost,” said Sauers. “Our goal is to make existing customers feel comfortable and we’ll make this transition as seamless as possible.” Uberhost sells shared hosting, VPS hosting, and Dedicated Servers.

In what some are claiming to be a precedent-setting ruling, a Dutch court has found a web host that is no longer in business guilty of facilitating copyright infringement by one of its customer sites and therefore, liable for damages.

The case was brought by the Dutch Protection Rights Entertainment Industry Netherlands or BREIN against XS Networks, which hosted file sharing site SumoTorrent. BREIN had asked XS Networks to shut down SumoTorrent but the hosting firm refused, saying it would only do so under court order.

XS Networks ceased operations in February this year. SumoTorrent was no longer hosted by XS Networks, and had moved onto servers in the Ukraine. 

Dutch law, like the laws elsewhere, do state that if "evidently illegal sites" are uncooperative to take-down requests, hosting providers have to act and take them offline...

(editorial note.. precedent-setting? .. that might be stretching it just a little don't you think.. it sounds like the Dutch have the same law as everywhere else... it's almost like all the laws were drafted by the same group)

The court in The Hague is yet to set any damages payable to BREIN on top of 2000 euro ($2500) in legal costs ordered to be paid by the defunct XS Networks.

XS Networks now has that court order requiring them to hand over all the information it has on the operators of SumoTorrent, or face a penalty of 10,000 euro ($12,500) a day, to a maximum of 500,000 euro ($625,000).

Earlier the web hosting firm and SumoTorrent did provide some personal details to BREIN voluntarily, but these records turned out to be false.

Tim Kuik, the head of Brein, told the BBC:

"What is new now is that the court has ruled that a hosting provider that doesn't act promptly becomes liable for damages." Mr Kuik says that the case could serve as an example to other countries in the European Union and elsewhere.

"The most important issue was to get this principle established, to show that there are consequences for hosting providers.

"It is important throughout the EU, because even though this case is about law in the Netherlands, this law has direct implementation of the EU directive on these issues."

Before it closed in February, XS Networks put out a statement on its website, protesting its innocence.

As you may know, the Dutch anti-piracy organisation Brein has sued us for alleged copyright intrusions of one of our clients

We regret that they have chosen to make a spectacle of our last month in business.

"In our opinion there is nothing illegal about the websites that were hosted with XS Networks and are thankful for the warm messages from other web host and appreciation of our clients.

Nikil Viswanathan spent 45 minutes to create a website that automatically checked himself into flights on Southwest Airlines so his mother wouldn't have to remind him anymore. But the project has now reaped a cease-and-desist demand from Southwest's attorneys.

CheckInToMyFlight was originally intended for his own use, but thousands of people found it (including me), after it appeared on Hacker news and other various online travel blogs. Today Viswanathan will take the site down so he doesn’t face a lawsuit from Southwest.

Southwest Airlines has "open seating" rather than pre-assigned seats. Travelers receive a boarding pass upon check in that places them in "A," "B," or "C" groups. Customers line up at the gate and are boarded by their group letter and number, at which point they choose their own seats. The process leaves procrastinators with the least desirable seats. Everyone wants the A-list designations, which afford the earliest boarding and best seating.

CheckInToMyFlight.com would check you in automatically 24hrs prior to boarding and get a person a really good 'A' boarding pass when most of the time people would get a 'B' number.

The only problem? Southwest doesn't allow automatic check-ins as part of its terms of agreement. Automatic check-in sites compete directly with the airline's EarlyBird program. The check-in websites bypass Southwest.com, depriving the airline of opportunities to target adverts and sell other products to their website visitors. 

“The whole website started as a practical solution to his ongoing problem of forgetfulness. My mom has checked me in throughout my whole life and she told me, 'You're about to graduate. It's time for you to do things on your own in the real world " Nikil Viswanathan says.

Nikil Viswanathan registered the domain using NameCheap and launched the site using the services of web host Linode. Regardless of the takedown, a domain name like CheckInToMyFlight.com will likely have some residual value that will more than cover his time invested in the project! 

CheckInToMyFlight.com was free to use, and amassed nearly 10,000 visits in less than a month as well as a job offer from Expedia.com... The infamy and exposure the project garnered for the recent Stanford grad... Priceless.

A guest post by David Henderson, author, Emmy Award winning former CBS Network correspondent and strategic consultant 

We all depend on websites. The Internet, and the ability to express opinion or share news and information online has democratized freedom of expression, and, yes, propaganda, as never before. But there is a “grey” area, as well. The world of web hosting is today’s wild west.

There is little to no regulation or oversight, and no effective regulative organization. It is a world of outlandish boasts of "unlimited" this or that with few of the claims actually true. There is no such thing as “unlimited” in the web hosting environment, only lies. Anyone can enter the business and prosper by their sheer ability to promise the most for the least. Customers have little ways, other than HostJury.com, to differentiate the good guys from the bad. HostJury.com ranks hosting companies based on customer experiences, and it is the most trusted resource around.

Any efforts at industry standards of ethical behavior have been trampled in the rush for money. In this global environment, a company that might not like regulation in the U.S., for example, would simply shift off-shore. There is no regulation in the U.S., by the way.

Business wise, some of the more successful web hosting companies, such as Hostgator, have been acquired by private equity firms for one reason - reap profits while cutting support services upon which customers depend. That happened at Hostgator virtually overnight.

There are three broad types of web hosting services:

Shared IP - a sometimes crowded environment on each server where many customers all vie for the server's CPU and RAM (memory). Some companies, like Godaddy, are said load as many as 5,000 customers accounts on one server, dramatically slowing service. If you get lucky, an ethical company can make money with 300 accounts on a server, a reasonable number.  Shared IP keeps prices low, such as $8 a month. The trade-off is that you are at the mercy of other customers who might abuse the service, including porn sites.

Virtual Private Servers or VPS - It is a more ideal environment with just a handful of customers on a server, each with their own box or limits of service  The downside is higher cost, starting at $50+ a month.  The real downside is the VPS companies have yet to realize that they need to sell customer service. Anyone can operate servers but the big differentiator is helpful customer service.

I tried Servint, a local VPS company I had never heard of. There is a reason, I discovered, I had never heard of them - they sell only hosting, not customer service that would help clients to better use their services. Hence, few people would ever have a reason to share with anyone else that they use Servint. No word of mouth promotion of Servint.

The behavior of many VPS providers is a  business operating in a particular field and not comprehending why. I have the impression that many VPS providers are completely clueless about the importance and value of providing knowledge to improve the customer experience will work to create competitive differentiation, customer loyalty, and leadership.

When I sought advice from Servint on better ways to manage WordPress sites, I was told - with an air of disdain - that they do not support any third party software. Clueless. What they don’t realize is that WordPress has become one of the world’s most popular online platforms, used by Lockheed-Martin, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal, among hundreds of other companies. By thinking solely from the perspective of operating hosting servers, such companies are merely navel-gazing.

I had 18 sites on Servint. They could tell me daily that I was overloading the service but they could not provide tips on how to alleviate the issues because, remember, their mindset is only selling hosting. Dealing with them was not productive and wasted far too much time. Furthermore, even though they agreed that hosting with them was problematic from the beginning, they offered no refund even though I had bought a year's worth of hosting from them.

I cannot speak about Dedicated Servers. It is pricey realm far beyond my needs, pocketbook, and understanding.

Quite by accident, I discovered a small hosting company in Indiana, MDDHosting.com, run by a young man, Michael Denney, and a small but savvy team. When I emailed my needs to him, his perspective made a lot of sense. His idea was to use a lower-priced reseller account to parse or spread-out the websites among shared IP server resources. In my 13 years of having websites, no one had ever before expressed such a level of knowledge, expertise, or problem-solving. He won my customer loyalty, and my business.

Let me just wrap up this overly long posting by saying that, in my opinion, far too many website hosting companies are, unfortunately, an unscrupulous band of liars, cheats and thieves. An unsavory sort that I would say falls somewhere between used car salesman, charlatan, loan shark, and common street thief. Today's wild west. There are a few exceptions, of course. And, as the industry matures, more owners of hosting companies will come to respect that ethical business conduct will lead to prosperity and customer loyalty. The challenge for customers today is to differentiate the good for the many bad.

A friend in Europe recently observed that it scares him how much we need and depend web hosting, a business environment that exemplifies so much marketing fakery and lies. Accurately stated, in my opinion.

David Henderson, author, Emmy Award winning former CBS Network correspondent and strategic consultant and now guest blogger on HostJury. 

Want to write a guest post for HostJury? Have your say. Send us an email: feedback@hostjury.com 

Edublogs is a blogging service that allows students and teachers to sign up for free, and then upgrade if they want extra storage, or features. The business model has allowed Edublogs to become the oldest, and second largest WordPress Multisite setup on the web, hosting the blogs for 1,451,943 teacher and student. Well they did until their web host ServerBeach decided to turn off their servers without notice less than 12 hours after issuing a DMCA takedown email.

The story all started back in 2007 when one of the teachers shared a copy of Beck’s Hopelessness Scale with his class. It’s a 20 question list that totals approximately 279 words. Published in 1974, it deals with clinical risk students - suicide and self harm material.  Pearson, a textbook publisher holds the copyright and sells the rights to use the material for $120.

Edublogs received the DMCA email from ServerBeach, and decided regardless of whether or not they liked it, Pearson were probably correct and as the material hadn’t been used in the last 5 years, set the content so it was no longer publicly available.  Edublogs informed ServerBeach of their decision and the action that was taken.

Despite the material no longer being “public facing”, Serverbeach detected that the file was still in the cache (nevermind that it was now inaccessible to anyone), and decided to shut Edublogs down without a word of warning... not just the offending material but the whole site... all 1,451,943 blogs!

As noted by James Farmer on WPMU DEV (they run Edublogs) 

So, technically, this can happen to any customer of ServerBeach who happen to host other people’s content. ie WordPress.com, without notice.

Here’s all that has to happen: 

• Someone uploads something copyright infringing to, say, a wordpress.com blog
• Someone sends a DMCA complaint to ServerBeach
• Someone at ServerBeach judges that to be valid and immediately shuts down the entire service 

And then ServerBeach inform you, or maybe they’ll give you 12 hours notice.

Did I mention that Edublogs pays ServerBeach $75,000 per year for their web hosting services .. well it certainly isn't for the service! 

The US Postal service has jumped into the fray and filed an application with the Postal Regulatory Commission for a new program called Metro Post which intends to partner with E-commerce retailers to deliver packages on the same day the orders are placed. The initial trial of the service is scheduled to begin on a limited basis in November.

The application provides some details including daily cut-off times between 2:00pm and 3:00pm for making purchases of items delivered via the Metro Post service. Package pick-up will be scheduled to take place at participating locations after 3:00pm, by Postal Service-uniformed delivery personnel.  The Metro Post packages may be exchanged between agents, and dynamic routing tools will be used, in order to ensure efficient delivery

The plan isn't without an occasional speedbump!  Same-day delivery will occur between approximately 4:00pm and  8:00 pm, as determined by the Postal Service, but no details of the logistics have been finalized.. The filing does not include USPS’s pricing plans for Metro Post as the public version of the document was redacted. The US Postal service also appears to have trademarked the Metro Post name despite the domains being owned by various entities since 2001.

Domain Name: METROPOST.COM
Registration Service Provided By: SIBERNAME.COM
Registrant:    Estar Media Group Inc.
Creation Date: 05-Mar-2001
Expiration Date: 05-Mar-2022

MetroPost.net: (registered and active website)
MetroPost.org: (registered and active website)
MetroPost.info:(registered and active website)
MetroPost.biz: (registered and active website)
MetroPost.us: (registered and active website)

The Fray 

Deep pockets retailer Wal-Mart is not giving up market share easily and is also mulling the possibilities and pushing the concept of a same-day shipping option for this coming holiday season in 10 markets. Wal-Mart has said it plans to charge $10 for delivery.

Shutl,  a service out of the UK that bills itself as the world’s fastest and most convenient e-commerce delivery service has also announced that it has secured additional funding to drive its North American launch in early 2013.

Shutl’s point-to-point delivery model enables delivery of online purchases, either within minutes of purchase or a 1-hour window of the shoppers choice.  The service is already offered across the UK by a handful of major retailers. With the new funds, Shutl will launch across North America in a couple of phases starting in New York and San Francisco then rolling out the  service across 10 additional cities, including: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, Washington, Montreal, and Toronto.

Andreas Haug, Partner at e.ventures says “We are convinced that innovative logistics concepts that enable a faster, more comfortable and more reliable delivery will act as significant growth engines for ecommerce. In addition, offline retail will benefit from these solutions, which allows local retailers to acquire and retain customers online.

Earlier in the year, funds were infused into Shutl from the UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund,  Hummingbird Ventures and others. 

Amazon.com has downplayed reports of same-day shipping claiming that there doesn’t really appear to be a way to do same-day delivery on a broad-scale economically. Amazon has experimented with limited same-day delivery in the past and began offering the Amazon Lockers service last year. The locker model could possibly make one day delivery more feasible as it allows customers to pick up orders at designated locations, but it would seem that Amazon primary goal of the lockers is to streamline delivery for Amazon rather than convenience for customers.

For naysayers, one doesn’t have to look no further than Fred Smith, founder of FedEx. While attending Yale University in the mid-1960s, Smith wrote an economics term paper on the need for reliable overnight delivery in a computerized information age.

His professor was less than impressed and responded: "The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible."

"You absolutely, positively have to innovate-if only to survive."... Fred Smith

The busy holiday shopping season is only a month away and the National Retail Federation forecasts 12 percent growth in online sales over last year!

The Western Australian government may want to explore new web hosting options as their new Community Protection Website, communityprotection.wa.gov.au, continues to endure technical issues. The website was slated to reveal the state's most dangerous sexual offenders.

It is the first such website of its kind in Australia and is divided into three tiers.

- Tier one is for sex offenders who have gone underground and do not comply with their reporting obligations. Information will include a photograph, date of birth, physical description, name and known aliases.

- Tier two is for repeat or highly dangerous sex offenders and people can make a request to be given the photograph of an offender living in their postcode and adjoining postcodes.

- Tier three will allow guardians to make a request regarding a specific person who has regular unsupervised contact with their child.

The Western Australian sex offender management team was boosted from 48 to 72 staff to help manage the Community Protection Website which will maintain a list of less than 60 individuals initially, although there are another 120 individuals who may possibly be added as they are released into the community. (I hope those figures are inaccurate!)

Obviously there are no competent IT professionals included in that 72 staff members!

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As always, HostJury recommend that while price may be a consideration when choosing a web host, it should only be one of the many factored into your research. Page load speeds, additional features, good communication, and a fast knowledgeable support team will always top saving a few cents per day... or in this case, a few bucks! As always, HostJury makes no recommendation or endorsement of any listed providers. You are encouraged to practice due diligence.. and at some point leave a review of the services provided.

Web hosts wishing to participate in HostJury's deals and steals are invited to contact us by email: feedback@hostjury.com    

HostJury has written before on the inclination of certain web hosts to annex and monetize client’s website pages. GoDaddy is one that is infamous for covering any available white space with enticements that upsell their offerings including jazzing up your control panel with adverts. HostGator, Doteasy, BlueHost, and iPage are just a few of the others that have shown a similar propensity to take advantage of under utilized pages.

News that “certain” web hosts hijack their customers domain landing page, or customize web server error messages with slews of paid adverts is old hat. They’ve been doing it forever and a day. Web hosts can justify the practice with rhetoric that includes circular reasoning like “404 error pages are not really on your  site -- the server generated error message clearly states that the page you are looking for can’t be found so how could it be on your web site?”

If all reason fails, these host can always claim that the client agreed to allow the web host to manipulate and utilize various pages at their discretion...  Remember when you checked that box that you have read, and agreed to the Terms of Service...

From the IX Web Hosting ToS

IX Web Hosting reserves the right to supply content-enriched pages, including but not limited to search engines, advertisements, directory links, etc., for non-existent user pages that are served by IX Web Hosting to requesting sources. These pages include error pages (i.e. 404 Not Found), new account placeholder pages, unused domains and suspended user sites.

Yep that box!

Is there a better use for those error pages?

Missing Children Europe (MCE) in cooperation with Child Focus recently launched the NotFound project. The initiative hopes to turn 404 error pages into billboards for missing children messages. With close to a billion websites now on the web it’s easy to recognize  realizes how much space these error messages occupy.

Errors becoming opportunities

The 404 page is one of the most recognizable and most consulted pages on the web. It is also an inexhaustible source of frustration for those who just happen to land on one. Missing Children Europe (MCE), and Child Focus have decided to make this hitherto useless space meaningful through the NotFound project.

Francis Herbert, Secretary-General of MCE : "The idea of ‌‌integrating missing person messages into 404 pages immediately seemed very interesting to us. We are always looking for new communication channels to distribute missing children messages and increase the chances to bring them home. "

Laurent Dochy, Digital Conceptor at Famous and creator of the NotFound project: "The 404-page is a cornerstone of the internet culture. An increasing number of websites designs have customized error pages that limit frustrations for the user. With the NotFound-project we are however taking this one step further by giving these pages a reason to exist. The next step came easily:  Page not found, neither is this child”.

Call for solidarity

The aim of this project is to encourage as many people and businesses as possible to join this initiative. Maryse Roland, spokeswoman for Child Focus: " This project will allow us to once again concentrate the attention on children whom we haven't heard of for many years. These children risk falling into oblivion. The choice of the shown missing persons message on the 404 page will be at random: it could be a recent disappearance, or on the contrary, a child that has been missing for a long time. We already have a few major partners and invite every business or person with a website to join our project. No financial investment is required, just good will."

How does it work?

Technically, it is sufficient to download a file from the NotFound project and to integrate it into a website. The missing child message will then automatically invade the 404 page space of this website. After installation, which will only take a few minutes, everything happens automatically.

Visit the www.notfound.org website to download the module. You will also find a complete overview of the project and its technical specifications.

Did I mention that you can avoid these issue entirely by just making sure that your site doesn't have any error pages!

It’s not often that HostJury ventures into the political sphere (just kidding.. we do it every chance we get), but with the election less than a month away and the latest polls casting the two front runners in a virtual dead heat, HostJury decided that knowledge is power.  As with our web hosting reviews, HostJury doesn't want to give you our opinionated view of who should be president... but there was a consensus that undecided voters, teetering on the edge in either direction, could derive some beneficial purpose from a review of each camp’s use of technology in seeking this most coveted and distinguished office... from a neutral perspective of course!

The Candidates on Twitter 

@BarackObama has made 6676 Tweets - has 671,934 Following - 20,742,023 Followers

@MittRomney has made 1,229 tweets - has 273 Following - 1,342,621 Followers

Ouch.. onward to smart phones!

Barack Obama & Mitt Romney both have APPs for iPhone and Android.

A poll published on Polititico found 49 percent of iPhone and Android owners plan to support President Barack compared with just 31 percent for Mitt.

Romney, however does overtake Obama 57 percent to 34 percent among retired iPhone and Android users.

Why were BlackBerry users not included in the survey? In further grim news for Research in Motion...  

Seriously, when first elected it was stated that that Barack could keep his beloved BlackBerry with him in the White House for personal use!

There is no word on Mitt’s preference in a phone. 

barackobama.com

First registered in 2001 by Chris Rabb using Network Solutions as a registrar, the registered owner changed to Obama for Illinois in 2004.

BarackObama.com has transitioned through a number web hosting companies over the years including DreamHost, Carpathiahost, and GoDaddy. In August of this year, the domain was switched onto  Amazon Web Services (AWS)nameservers. 

BarackObama.com is presently renewed using GoDaddy, and is not up for renewal again until 28-Dec-15.

mittromney.com 

First registered in 2002 by Edream Design out of Utah using GoDaddy, the domain's registered owner was changed to the Romney Committee (from Massachusetts) in late 2005. Although the domain continued to be renewed using GoDaddy, in 2011 the registered owner was privatized and the whois now shows Domains By Proxy. For all the domain squatters out there, this domain is set to expire on 08-Feb-13.

It’s purely speculative but...

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, LLC

Domain Name: PRESIDENTMITTROMNEY.COM
Created on: 14-Oct-08
Expires on: 14-Oct-13
Last Updated on: 15-Aug-11

Registrant:
Domains By Proxy, LLC

Mittromney.com web hosting is presently on Akamai Technologies.  Mittromney.com has been hosted on both RackSpace and GoDaddy servers in the past.

The Websites

HostJury ran a comparison report of the front runners websites using GTmetrix and Mitt could clearly have an edge...

(click image to view report in new window)

Then again, depending on a reader’s objectivity, some may conclude the foregoing site load speeds are evidence that Obama has more substance. Perhaps so. Many others would contend that the quantum of evidence to this point has remained quite balanced.

The accessibility factor

HostJury's final analysis produced a strikingly unforeseen riposte particularly when considered in the context of statements alluding to the exclusion of 47% of the American population that have been attributed to Mitt.

BarackObama.com:

First, using  the free web accessibility evaluation tool Wave provided by WebAIM, we detected six accessibility errors.

ACchecker is another tool that checks pages for conformance with accessibility standards and ensure the content can be accessed by everyone...

Source URL: http://www.barackobama.com/
Source Title: Barack Obama
Accessibility Review (Guidelines: WCAG 2.0 (Level AA))
Report on known problems (43 found)
Report on potential problems (582 found)

Mittromney.com:

WAVE did detect three accessibility errors.

Using ACchecker:
Source URL: http://www.mittromney.com/
Accessibility Review (Guidelines: WCAG 2.0 (Level AA))
Report on known problems (0 found):
Congratulations! No known problems.

There you have it. Regardless of your choice... Get out and vote!

The information provided by HostJury has been given so that you the user, has the  ability to recommend and review your choice for president based on the candidate's proper use of technology. The foregoing information should not be considered the ONLY source of information that you base your choice on!

Even for larger corporate types the requirements around email archiving and retention policies are muddled and unclear. For many smaller business owners the idea may never even have crossed their minds! The results of a small study released by  Mimecast suggest that many businesses may be leaving themselves exposed to potential litigation or compliance issues.

The research, which surveyed IT managers on their organizations’ email policies and archiving practices, found that just 20 percent of businesses (23 percent globally) retain archived email for three years or more, with one in four businesses (25 percent US; 26 percent globally) admitting that they do not have a clear policy on retaining email at all.

Key findings:

• Email retention policies are often ad hoc or based on guesswork
• Just one in four IT departments (30 percent; 26 percent globally) have an email retention policy designed to comply with industry regulations
  • 41 percent of businesses surveyed (43 percent globally) say their archiving policies are based on ‘internal best practice’ with no consideration given to industry or country specific regulations
  • Six percent of US and global businesses admit to deciding their email retention policy around a ‘random future date’ with ‘no basis’

• eDiscovery for email is a major area of concern – Many businesses are not confident that they would be able to identify all emails relating to a specific customer in a timely manner:
  • On average, it would take a US business 15 working days to identify all emails relating to a potential litigation
  • Eighteen percent of US businesses do not think they would be able to comply with email eDiscovery request within a month

• Concern around email compliance – IT departments are concerned that they are leaving their businesses exposed:
  • Just one in four (24 percent; 27 percent globally) IT teams are ‘completely confident’ that their email policies comply with all relevant regulations
  • 48 percent (46 percent globally) are ‘mostly confident’ with 34 percent (23 percent globally) ‘minimally confident’ or ‘not at all confident’

According to Wikipedia, Electronic discovery (or e-discovery, eDiscovery) refers to discovery in civil litigation which deals with the exchange of information inelectronic format (often referred to as electronically stored information or ESI). A wide array of people are involved in eDiscovery (for example, forensic investigators, lawyers, and IT managers), leading to problems with confusing terminology. Usually (but not always) a digital forensics analysis is performed to recover evidence....

Usually, but not always. Some external validity to the study perhaps!

HostJury deals and steals continues to attract some pretty good buzz.. as well as some awesome deals I might add!

While the CFO is on Vacation,  3essentials Hosting is giving away the shop!

For a limited time they have a limited number of surplus dedicated servers that they want to move, and at these monthly prices they are not likely to last long. Servers are customer managed and only while supplies last. Once they are gone, they are gone so act fast!

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• Core i3-2130
• 4GB of RAM
• 500GB Hard Drive
• 3000GB Monthly Transfer
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Web
• Administrative RDP Access
• Windows Firewall Included

click image to open in new window 

• Core i3-2130
• 4GB of RAM
• 500GB Hard Drive
• 3000GB Monthly Transfer
• Linux CentOS 6
• root ssh Access
• ipTables Firewall Included

As always, HostJury recommend that while price may be a consideration when choosing a web host, it should only be one of the many factored into your research. Page load speeds, additional features, good communication, and a fast knowledgeable support team will always top saving a few cents per day... or in this case, a few bucks! As always, HostJury makes no recommendation or endorsement of any listed providers. You are encouraged to practice due diligence.. and at some point leave a review of the services provided.