The green buzz is being exploited all over the web and abroad lately. What does it mean to be green exactly?

ok thats not what I meant, but kermit would be proud nonetheless. It means having little or no impact on your environment in short. Consider the materials needed for all the computing and server parts to the ridiculous sums of energy needed to run server farms 24/7. To be quite honest datacenters and server farms are one of the worst things to hit the environment in the modern decade.

Take a look at your homes electric bill and consider how cool it needs to be so your tv doesnt burn out if left on all day and night for years straight. The tv itself is chewing up energy and the a/c is working overtime to cool that system, fans and other systems are working nonstop to remove the heat. Now imagine your one pc in your home office has to remain online all day and night. Now imagine you have one thousand offices in your home, besides declaring bankrupcty since you cant afford the power, how is that remotely close to being friendly to mother nature.

We can and do look at ways to reduce our impact but our electric bill alone tells us when it comes to being green, datacenters have a long way to go. Some ways we try to reduce our impact are recycling hot water from coolers to use as heating for offices, using raised flooring and channels to remove heat and apply cooling better, reducing old ineffecient servers by using more virtualization and newer more efficient processors. The main drive for this happens to be profit margins though, not just being green.

Don’t let corporate spin masters make you think giant datacenters are helping mother nature. The fact is its good for business and thats why its being done. Consider that one cabinet of 25 servers in the sub $200 market, drawing 30amps of power 24/7 is now replacable by one monster vps node. Granted our monster vps nodes pack a lot of power under the hood and easily consume the power of 3 of those servers alone. 25 to 3 is a pretty significant power and cost savings.

So buy more vps hosting , mother nature will thank you for it. Ok probably not but we will, and it really does make a difference compared to the old standard of dedicated servers. Quite frankly the need for dedicated servers under $200 mo is dimenishing quickly thanks to virtualization technologies like Virtuozzo, openvz, xen, Vscontrol.

Why? Well, despite the fact that I work at the greatest web hosting company in the world, it’s because I am now an iPhone user.

I’ve held off for years jumping on the cell phone gadget bandwagon. The closest I’ve ever been to having anything that was “latest and greatest” in the cell phone world is picking up a new Motorola Razr two years after the first Razr came out (or getting my iPod as a gift several years after MP3 players became all the rave). Even then, I didn’t have a text message plan. I saw no need to text people when I could just call them.

That all changed last month when our oldest went and moved two states away after graduation. My husband made the case that it would be easier to communicate with her if we had some sort of texting plan. OK Fine. We started out with a little $5.00 – 200-texts-a-month plan. EXCEPT: I soon discovered they would use that up in the first week! I quickly changed it to an unlimited plan. Once the family got word we had the much coveted Unlimited Texting ability, miraculously one of my kids sent and received 150 texts the FIRST DAY we had the plan. I didn’t even know that was possible.

It took me a bit longer to catch on to the texting bug. I found it difficult to tap out texts to my kids or husband on my little Razr. Then I got my hands on my friend’s iPhone. He bought one last year when they first came out and I’ve always been intrigued by it. I found out texting on it is a breeze. The more I messed around with my friend’s iPhone, the more I wanted one.

On July 11, 2008, the day of the iPhone G3 launch, I became an iPhone user. And I’m loving every minute of it. I’ve become almost as bad as my children finding reasons to text family members and friends, and if I could talk my boss into getting some sort of text plan, I’d probably find reasons to text him too! (*cough hint hint *cough)

My favorite features so far:

• The built-in GPS. This is going to prove exceptionally useful for my forever navigationally challenged husband.
• The iPod. I no longer have to carry around my iPod and my phone. I now have both in one little gadget.
• It’s super easy to text with the qwerty keyboard.
• The ease of downloading and installing apps from the App store.. For example, Twitter; I love my twitter and now I can get updates super easy on my phone. I even downloaded an application that allows me to control iTunes on my computer from my phone.
• Internet and eMail access on the go from anywhere I have a signal, which so far has been everywhere.

Do you have an iPhone? If not, why? If so, what are your favorite features?

Offering businesses virtual private servers as a comparable option to dedicated hosting looks to drive down cost and reduce power consumption of hosting datacenters

HOUSTON, TX. July 16, 2008 – WowVPS! web hosting, providers of virtual private server (VPS) hosting services and a subsidiary of Landis Holdings Inc., today announced a new promotion of 25% off all “Xen” hosting plans starting from only $10.45 per month. Besides reducing ongoing operating costs for companies during tough economic times, shifting usage from dedicated servers to virtual private servers can reduce overall required power consumption.

“Socially responsible web hosting involves making choices that meet a company’s hosting needs while minimizing the impact on the environment,” says Greg Landis, president of WowVPS!. “While the focus has been mainly on new technologies to reduce power consumption, sometimes the simplest answer is selecting the right hosting plan. Our VPS hosting plans offers businesses an attractive option of improved flexibility of dedicated hosting at prices much lower than full dedicated packages.”

WowVPS! utilizes the latest version of VSControl virtualization software from Devpond, another subsidiary of Landis Holdings. VSControl software was developed in-house and eliminates the software cost which often leads to increased VPS hosting prices. WowVPS! offers plans with higher specs than any other VPS provider while maintaining 100% uptime.

WowVPS! starts with the “Xen Awakening” entry level plan, regularly priced at $13.95 per month but on special for only $10.45 per month, and includes:

• 12 GB disk space
• 200 GB bandwidth
• 192 MB or RAM
• Unlimited domains
• Free 3 VPS IP addresses

All WowVPS! “Xen” hosting plans include:

• Full VPS root access
• RAID 10 disk storage
• Guaranteed RAM
• Premium bandwidth
• Multi-core, multi-processor CPUs
• VSControl software
• No oversold resources
• Choice of Linux OS
• No contract obligation; cancel any time
• Online server and service restarts

The new WowVPS! web site includes a community forum, a blog, user-friendly control panel and the NixCore client management software.

To learn more about the 25% off special, visit www.wowvps.com/xenvpshosting.php.

About WowVPS!

WowVPS!, based in Houston Texas, provides high-quality Internet hosting solutions to small and medium-sized businesses, government agencies, prominent individuals and non-profit organizations worldwide. WowVPS’s core portfolio comprises information technology and business hosting services, as well as programming services.

Remember my post about Phishing Awareness? Recently Gmail announced they are teaming up with eBay and Paypal to help protect Gmail users from phishing scams.

Now any email that claims to come from “paypal.com” or “ebay.com” (and their international versions) is authenticated by Gmail and—here comes the important part—rejected if it fails to verify as actually coming from PayPal or eBay. That’s right: you won’t even see the phishing message in your spam folder. Gmail just won’t accept it at all.

As a Gmail user, as well as a PayPal and eBay user, this is good news.

10 Reasons JaguarPC does it better!

1. Free Daily Backups!
2. Free Level 2 Managed Services!
3. Free Migrations from your Current Provider!
4. Free 50% Ram upgrade for life on every plan
5. Free 50% Disk Space upgrade for life on every plan
6. Free 50% Bandwidth upgrade for life on every plan
7. Free Plesk 10 Domain Control Panel
8. Free Clientexec with every VPS Order
9. 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
10. Sleep at night knowing you’re safe and sound with over 10 years of experience

What is a JaguarPC VPS?

Dual Quad Core CPU’s with at least 16 Gigs of blazing fast ddr2 ECC Registered Ram…. That’s right we use the good stuff boys and girls. Then with a raid 10 array on top of those 8 hard drives for the best I/O Rates in the business.
More Info

You pick the Operating Flavor, but we recommend CentOS It tastes the best!
CentOS | Debian | Suse | Fedora Core

You Pick the Control Panel but cPanel’s the Best and Plesk’s Free*
cPanel / WHM
Direct Admin
Interworx
Plesk

**Note of course you get full root access, it wouldn’t be a vps if you didn’t!

Coupon Code: “SummerSizzler08”

Discovery Package
128MB RAM Guaranteed + 50% FREE = 192MB
10GB Disk Space + 75% FREE = 18GB
150 GB Bandwidth + 100% FREE = 300GB
$19.97/month - 15% Discount = $16.97/month
Setup Fee $15.00- 100% Discount = $0.00
ORDER NOW

Freedom Package
256MB RAM Guaranteed + 50% FREE = 384MB
15 GB Disk Space + 75% FREE = 28GB
300 GB Bandwidth + 100% FREE = 600GB
$39.97/month - 15% Discount = $33.97/month
Setup Fee $15.00- 100% Discount = $0.00
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Apollo Package
384MB RAM Guaranteed + 50% FREE = 576 MB
25 GB Disk Space + 75% FREE = 44GB
500 GB Bandwidth + 100% FREE = 1000GB
$59.97/month - 15% Discount = $50.97/month
Setup Fee $15.00- 100% Discount = $0.00
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Enterprise Package
512MB RAM Guaranteed + 50% FREE = 768 MB
45 GB Disk Space + 75% FREE = 79GB
700 GB Bandwidth + 100% FREE = 1400GB
$79.97/month - 15% Discount = $67.97/month
Setup Fee $15.00- 100% Discount = $0.00
ORDER NOW

Coupon Code: “SummerSizzler08”

FAQ:
How do I Order? How do I get all these extras?
Place your order for the plan and the control panel you want. Do not worry about adding the extra ram, disk, b/w, etc. Our setup engineers will include those when your order is processed as long as you use that coupon code. That coupon code will also discount the Plesk 10 domain license to free and take 15% off your package.

Do you allow adult content?
YES, we allow legal adult content

Do you allow IRC or Proxy sites?
No, sorry we do not.

How long does it take to setup my VPS?
It can vary from a few minutes to few hours. If you wish to find out about your order status we welcome you to call us at any time. If you are not setup within a few hours just shoot me an email, be happy to investigate the order gremlins and see what they are doing.

What is a lifetime discount?
The discount stays with your account as long as you keep it. The discount can even be passed on to higher vps plans if you decide to upgrade later. Unfortunately this discounts does not apply to downgrades

TEST FILE: http://www.jaguarpc.com/test.bin
More Info: http://www.jaguarpc.com/vps-hosting/

If you have anymore questions contact sales@jaguarpc.com, drop by our community forums, or call toll free 800-558-5869

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

• Note:
  ~ While supplies last. When these new nodes are sold out this sale ends!
  ~ FREE Extras such as RAM, Disk space, and Bandwidth are added to your VPS after setup
  ~ Lifetime discounts are reflected in the price while ordering when you use the coupon code
  ~ You keep your lifetime discount for as along as you keep the account on the same or higher vps plan
  ~ Note Free Plesk is a 10 Domain Plesk License upgraded domain versions available at extra cost.

You may or may not have heard of the term, “Phishing” (pronounced like “fishing”). Phishing is the act of sending an email pretending to be from an online store or service such as eBay, PayPal, Amazon, major banks, etc.

The format of the email will look very similar to a standard email you would get from such a service. It might even contain the company’s logo. Here’s an example phishing email I received a while back:

PayPal is committed to maintaining a safe environment for its community of customers. To protect the security of your account, PayPal employs some of the most advanced security systems in the world and our anti-fraud teams regularly screen the PayPal system for unusual activity.

We are contacting you to remind you that on 28 September 2006 our Account Review Team identified some unusual activity in your account. In accordance with PayPal’s User Agreement and to ensure that your account has not been compromised, access to your account was limited. Your account access will remain limited until this issue has been resolved.

To secure your account and quickly restore full access, we may require some additional information from you for the following reason:

We have been notified that a card associated with your account has been reported as lost or stolen, or that there were additional problems with your card.

This process is mandatory, and if not completed within the nearest time your account or credit card may be subject for temporary suspension.

To securely confirm your PayPal information please click on the link bellow:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_login-run

We encourage you to log in and perform the steps necessary to restore your account access as soon as possible. Allowing your account access to remain limited for an extended period of time may result in further limitations on the use of your account and possible account closure.

For more information about how to protect your account please visit PayPal Security Center. We apologize for any incovenience this may cause, and we apriciate your assistance in helping us to maintain the integrity of the entire PayPal system.

Thank you for using PayPal!
The PayPal Team

It looks pretty real doesn’t it? Someone who’s not ever experienced receiving an email like this or isn’t very familiar with how PayPal works may fall for it. The email seems harmless and the link even appears to go PayPal.

First and foremost: PayPal, eBay, Amazon, and most likely your bank will not send you such an email if your account was truly compromised. So this is your first clue that the above and similar emails are a phishing attempt.

The link looks real doesn’t it? Take a closer look. Does the link actually go to PayPal?

No, it doesn’t. The link actually goes to http://www.blahblah2.paypal345.blarg.org.com.net/ which is something I just made up. In a real phishing attempt the link may contain the word PayPal (or ebay or your bank, etc) in the URL as this one does, but it’s not really PayPal. Don’t be fooled!

What you’ll be taken to is a site that will look like PayPal, may even look exactly like the PayPal home page, and there will be a form for you to enter your information. Usually it will ask for your account ID, password, credit card number and possibly your social security number. Once you hit submit after filling out the form, that information is collecting by identify thefts who will then use your information to make fraudulent purchases. They will very likely also purchase a web hosting account that will be used for their scam. (They also hack into unsuspecting innocent people’s websites and upload scripts and mailers to send out these notifications and collect data from people who fall for their phishing emails.)

Another clue is these emails usually contain poor grammar and misspelled words. In my example above, take a look at the last paragraph. Most major companies know how to spell, “incovenience” (inconvenience) and “apriciate” (appreciate) and if they don’t they are usually smart enough to run emails they send to their customers through a spell-checker.

When it doubt, never never never click a link you receive in email that states you need to update your PayPal account. Always go to paypal.com, ebay.com or your bank, etc. by typing the address in your browser if you need to update account information. You can always call them as well and see if your account actually does have any issues.

If you receive an email supposedly from PayPal, your bank, etc, telling you there was suspicious activity, or that you need to update your account, if there was an unverified transaction, or anything at all that directs you to click a link to correct the situation, do NOT click the link and input any information. Always always go to the the sites manually. Report the emails you receive to the abuse address for the website/service you are trying to visit. For PayPal it’s spoof@paypal.com. For eBay it’s spoof@ebay.com

A question we often get asked is, “What is the difference between your VPS plans and your SDX (Semi-Dedicated) plans?”

Semi-Dedicated
Our SDX plan is basically one shared hosting account on a powerful server. What’s different compared to our standard shared hosting plan is that there far fewer accounts on our SDX servers. So you have more resources available to you. For example, if you have a fairly busy forum not suitable for regular shared hosting, you would want to purchase our Semi-Dedicated hosting plan.

SDX is not intended to be used to resell hosting since it is still a basic shared account. It’s intended for those who still want a shared hosting environment that packs a bit more punch. Our SDX plans are also good for a video share website.

VPS
A VPS (Virtual Private Server) is sort of like having a dedicated server in terms of customization abilities but without the extra cost (because it’s still a shared hosting environment). Our VPS plan offers full root or administrator access and you have full control over the settings and software on the server. Think of a VPS plan as having a partition on a large server.

You would have a choice of which OS (operating system) you wish to have installed. The choices are:

• CentOS (most popular)
• Debian
• Fedora Core
• Suse
• Windows<

You can also choose which version of MySQL, PHP, mail, etc. you want installed. (You cannot do this with Semi-Dedicated.) In addition, you get the choice on which control panel you’d like to use to administer your VPS. The choices are:

• cPanel
• Direct Admin
• Interworx
• Plesk

SDX plans come with cPanel only.

A VPS account can be used to resell hosting if you desire. In a nutshell, VPS plans allow you to completely customize the Virtual Private Server to suit your hosting needs.

This is also discussed in the JaguarPC Forums in this thread: VPS vs Semi dedicated

Both are powerful hosting solutions and JaguarPC provides both options at very reasonable prices. Check out these current specials:

• SDX Specials
• JaguarPC Free Control Panel’s Super Ram Bonus’s (VPS)

We’ve had a few customers asking how ‘Green’ JaguarPC Web Hosting is or if we have plans on ‘going green‘.

It’s tough to answer exactly how green JaguarPC is but I can tell you this:

JaguarPC promotes recycling. Personally I will never throw away paper, aluminum, cardboard, plastic, etc. We use our recycling service faithfully.

Our data center does the following to help:

• Use dry coolers to heat generator rooms and reverse flow hot water from the Data Center to heat staff areas. This means a gas/electric heating system is unnecessary.
• Pumps and cooling units have devices that use only as much power needed to cool the water based on how hot the water is. This lowers electricity usage as much as 40%.
• A well supplies the cooling towers which eliminates the use of chlorine. (Chlorine produces dioxins.) This also eliminates the use of electricity to pump the water to the data center from the treatment facility which will save a huge amount of energy and chemicals being consumed.
• Generators use 5% biodiesel
• Planted enough trees so it’s near carbon neutral.

Every little bit helps and we will continue to research and implement environmentally-friendly alternatives wherever possible.

Get ‘em while they’re hot!

VPS Special: JaguarPC’s 2nd Month Free 50% More Space/Ram 15% Off for Life + Plan Bonus’s

Coupon Code: “BigBoxes08”

Every JaguarPC Managed VPS Hosting plan includes:
+ Quad core Nodes with at LEAST 12gb registered ECC ram
+ Large RAID10 drive arrays – great I/O disk performance
+ Full root/adminstrator access
+ JagPC Fully Managed Support + 24×7
+ 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
+ FREE Daily backups via large R1Soft ECDP NAS appliances
+ FREE Moving assitance and data transfer for moves
+ Choice of OS: CentOS, Debian, Fedora Core, Suse.
+SPECIAL Extra 50% FREE: Diskspace for life on every plan
+SPECIAL Extra 50% FREE: Ram for life on every plan
+SPECIAL 15% OFF for Lifeon every plan
+SPECIAL FREE Plesk10 domain control panel on every plan

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Reseller Special: Resellers – 25% Off Disk / Bandwidth Upgrades Free Clientexec / Fantastico / RVSkin

Coupon Code: “SuperSlam08”

Every JaguarPC cPanel Reseller Hosting plan includes:
+ Host Unlimited Accounts
+ Quad core Nodes packed with registered ECC ram
+ Large RAID10 drive arrays – great I/O disk performance
+ 24×7 Support
+ 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
+ FREE IP’s (3)
+ FREE WHM/Cpanel with Fantastico
+ FREE Daily backups via large R1Soft ECDP NAS appliances
+ FREE Moving assitance and data transfer for moves
+ FREE Enom.com domain registrar account, sell domains under your own brand
+SPECIAL 25% OFF for Life on every plan
+SPECIAL FREE Rvskin see rvskin.com for details
+SPECIAL FREE ClientExec client billing and management software

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Shared Special: Shared/ SDX ENDLESS DISK SPACE!! $5.07 per month!

Coupon Code: endless2008sdx

Every plan includes:
+ Large Premium bandwidth limits
+ Fully RAID redundant disk space
+ Extremely powerful Multi-Core Multiprocesser Servers
+ Abundant high quality ram
+ 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
+ Daily backups utilizing large NAS Raid appliances powered by R1Soft Enterprise CDP software – Complimentary moving assitance and data transfer for moves

This special adds:
+ 15% Lifetime discount
+ FREE Cpanel with Fantastico

ORDER NOW: https://secure.jaguarpc.com/order/

I just thought I’d share this little tidbit of fun I just had with my cable internet provider. Here’s a bit of the back story:

Last night my husband logged into his laptop and it came up with a big yellow/blue screen saying he had spyware. There was no link, just big giant letters saying he was infected with spyware. There was no way out of it. He tried everything and finally gave up, formatted it, and re-installed Windows. Our kids were the last to use that computer so it’s safe to assume they are the culprits.

Today I had trouble using my cable provider’s SMTP services. This isn’t uncommon. They sometimes limit the number of connections so I didn’t think twice. An hour later it was still an issue. Then I noticed I had received an email from them stating they had to take action because our IP was used to send spam. Hm.. Laptop had a virus last night and today we’re told our IP was used to send spam. Coincidence? I think not.

Here’s the conversation I then had with my cable provider via phone:

cable guy: we can fix this, you just need to change your port. Open up Outlook and…
me: I don’t use Outlook, I use Thunderbird.
cable guy: oh well I am not familiar with Thunderbird, Hm, let me find my notes.
me: I am familiar with it, Just tell me the port please.
cable guy: 587.
me: OK port changed to 587, anything else?
cable guy: Yeah you need to authenticate with the server. If you let me find my notes on Thunderbird I’ll tell you how to do that.
me: I just need to check incoming mail first and that will authenticate.
cable guy: Um, no I don’t think that works. Hold on while I find my notes on Thunderbird.
me: I’m quite familiar with Thunderbird so don’t worry there. But I’ll just check incoming (I check incoming.)
me: Yep, that worked. I can send email again. Thanks.
cable guy: Wait, you can do that? Just check incoming first to authenticate?
me: ...

(Sidenote: If I had known that all I needed to do was switch ports I wouldn’t have needed to even call them.)

I was really surprised the cable guy didn’t know that checking incoming email will authenticate you with the server so you can then send email. It should be his job to know this. It’s not quite as obvious to the end user (and in fact our own customers here at JaguarPC may not know this), so he should have been telling ME that. Not me telling him.

But there you have it folks. If you check incoming email before sending, you will be authenticated!