On February 5th, 2010 Facebook announced a new site design. Since then the feedback has been overwhelmingly negative. The biggest complaint is the loss of the ability to filter updates and posts from your favorite Facebook applications.

Facebook states:

We’re making it easier for you to find and interact with applications and discover new ones, with the new Applications and Games dashboards, accessible via the “Applications” and “Games” links on the home page. The dashboards will surface the applications you’ve interacted with most recently as well as your most recent application activity and your friends’ activity.

Then later in the post they clarify:

We’re also working on a more granular set of controls for specific applications, so that you can turn off activity for certain applications while leaving it on for others. We’ll have more information to share on this soon.

It’s not clear if the latter means they are working on more controls for filtering or for privacy.

I, for one, used the application filters daily and missed them as soon as they were gone. However, I did find a work around. It’s not the best solution but it works for now.

UPDATE: As of March 20th, the instructions below DO still work but you have to scroll down past several new posts in your feed before your filter starts displaying your application posts correctly.

If you obtain the application ID for the application you want to set a filter for (actually it will be a bookmark in your browser) you can still see posts only related to the application you’re interested in.

For example, to view only FarmVille posts, you can do so by clicking on this link: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?filter=app_102452128776

You can then bookmark this in your browser.

The format for the bookmark is: “http://www.facebook.com/home.php?filter=app_APPICATION-ID-NUMBER”

To obtain the application ID number, I found it by searching for the application in Facebook. Once it appears in the search results, click on the application and it should have a long URL containing the application ID in the address bar of your browser.

For FarmVille the URL was: http://www.facebook.com/search/?q=farmville&init=quick#!/apps/application.php?id=102452128776&ref=search&sid=572162762.2672672765..1 and the application ID is listed after “application.php?id=” and before the “&”. So the ID is: 102452128776

Hopefully Facebook comes up with a fix for this soon, but for now, enjoy this work around. You’re also welcome to visit us on Facebook!

You’ve probably heard quite a bit about “social networking” lately. But what is it? Through sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, you can network with others who are in your field, as well as business contacts, customers, and potential customers.

When the Internet became popular, people checked to see if a business had a website. If they didn’t, that customer may very well have gone to a competitor who did have a website. These days, customers—current and potential—are looking to see if a business has a Facebook page, or a Twitter page (we do!). It’s free and easy to set up an account with these sites, and once you do, you’ll have the ability to connect with people in a whole new way.

Through Twitter, you can easily give quick updates about company news, sales, and promotions. You can even give a link to a new blog post, or promotion, which in turn could mean increased sales. With Facebook, you can draw in customers and potential clients in a non-invasive, laid-back environment. Sure, you have a product to sell, but through Facebook and Twitter accounts, you can give that extra level of service without the “in your face” tactics that many businesses use.

The opportunities are endless with Twitter and Facebook. You can keep your customers up-to-date through Twitter (or Facebook, for that matter), which will increase customer confidence, as they will be able to see that you’re quickly resolving the problem, and that you care enough about your customers to provide updates.

While it’s understandable that some may be hesitant to embrace social networking, it’s clearly taking the Internet by storm, and those businesses who don’t embrace it may find themselves left in the dust, as customers flock to customers who keep up with the times.

Don’t let your business be left in the dust. Let your business flourish, and gain even more customers by not only creating accounts with social networking sites, but actually taking full advantage of it by interacting with customers, and constantly keeping your content fresh and updated. Update your Twitter page daily, even if it’s only just once. Respond quickly to direct messages, and comments. Respond quickly, too, on Facebook, MySpace, and any other social networking sites you may join. By doing this, you’ll impress your customers, and enjoy one added bonus: word of mouth, which is part of the wonders of networking.

Please tell us a little about yourself.

Im 32, a father of 3, and when I’m not shackled to a desk I enjoy spending time with the family, fishing, and playing guitar. Anyone that knows me will tell you I’m very big on core values in every person we hire, and every project we take on. Core values such as honesty, integrity, and respect are often set aside in the modern world and particularly behind the veil of anonymity of the internet. I believe this is precisely the area where people should adhere to those values the most. If you do, a reference is as easy as saying “google me”.

Can you summarize your educational experience for us?

I graduated high school in 94 and joined the Airforce in 95 where I spent 7yrs learning and growing as a person. I took some college while in the USAF but eventually the demand and excitement of JaguarPC led me to exit the USAF and go at hosting full time.

What do you consider as your accomplishments up to this point?

That I’ve managed to keep a healthy marriage, raise 3 kids, and all while running a very demanding business for 10yrs. Hitting milestones such as 100, 500, 1000 servers has been exciting as well.

Any failures you’d like to tell us about?

Nobody grows as a company or person without some failure. More importantly though is the lessons you take away from the experience. One big failing in the past was letting my excitement get the better of us by not planning properly for our growth. There is no growth worth hurting a reputation built up by a decade of hard work. Now we work our hardest on preserving that ideal.

What is your primary occupation?

Whatever my staff, clients, and partners need from me. I wear the CEO title but the truth is that even with 75 people working for me I still enjoy getting involved in the daily activities where it all got started. Our company is all about reflecting that person touch.

How do you manage your time? Will you describe what you do on a daily and/or weekly basis?

Between my wife and my iPhone I’m able to stay on top of things pretty well most of the time. My week involves a lot of email between my staff, management meetings, networking with other professionals, going over reports from the various areas of our companies, and of course some daily interactions with clients on forums, instant messengers, and the phone.

Do you oversell?

We don’t, except for our shared hosting plans. None of our reseller, VPS, or hybrid plans have any features that are oversold. The shared technology we use and our vast experience lets us manage the shared environments so well that we simply never run into the tiny things some watch all the time like disk space. Simply put, we just can’t run out of disk space. Even as we speak all our clients could increase their usage immediately by 500% and it wouldn’t cause alarm. Like cell phone minutes and bandwidth, the prices of storage are so minute these days its hard to justify placing a limit and letting a 2tb system only collect dust while 80% of the space sits wasted. Overselling as a means of marketing actually is the best way we can tell clients “use more, if you don’t nobody will” . And our system is setup so you have to have 80% of an initial quota actually used before you request more, but you can request more as many times as you want and its automatically added.

Tell us about your control panel, is it based on cPanel and what makes it special?

In our shared environment we use cPanel exclusively, but for VPS, hybrid, and dedicated servers we offer and support a wide range of control panels and software. We have developed a proprietary platform that ties into our servers, billing, software, ips, staff, and pretty much our entire operation. I wouldn’t want to imagine running a company this size and complex without it.

As part of your managed services you propose monitoring, does that include proactive responses?

Yes. And we have some really exciting improvements coming to our operation in the next 30days that will improve that response greatly by adding new methods of alerts and new tools for clients and our staff to respond to those alerts.

You propose VPS solutions on JaguarPC and yet you operate wowvps.com too, why?

Wowvps.com was started off for two reasons; we didn’t want to mix our managed Virtuozzo offering in jaguarpc.com with the unmanaged xen VPS offering. And we wanted a fresh place to kickoff our VSControl software that took years to develop and perfect. We will begin offering the software to the public this year. Finally there is a xen based vps hosting control panel that hosts can rely on.

You have offices in multiple cities and you have also remote technicians all over the world, how do you manage them?

With our software, and my great management team. If I had to manage a staff this size on my own it would consume my day. I empower the managers of the various departments to give them a chance to really make a difference in peoples lives and in the companies growth.

Do you own your data centers?

Not yet. We run colo cages, racks, and other specialized agreements with facilities in Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, the UK, and Singapore. We are expanding to other cities as well as currently planning our own facility.

You have a very active community, how did your business benefit from it?

It hasn’t stopped benefiting from it yet . Our clients are equally as awesome as our staff. Often clients are eager to learn things for themselves or just might be curious about something. When they take those issues to our community not only does it reduce our own support load, it builds a sense of community, adds content, and perpetuates itself.

What can we expect from JaguarPC in the future?

We love taking the lead and pushing boundaries of what defines a product. We were right out front pushing vps long before most even knew what it was. In fact I had to request from the owners of WHT to get vps categories and forums added many years ago. We plan to do more of the same and push the envelope of whats possible. This year is no exception, we have some great deals coming very soon made possible by a few unique partnerships we just finalized.

What does the future hold for Greg Landis?

Only God knows for certain but I’ll keep doing what I do best. Because its working for me. I do plan to continue pursuing our larger plans, building data centers, and diversifying Landis holdings in many other non-hosting related opportunities as well. So far I’ve been very fortunate and enjoy spreading it around. Ask me again in another 10yrs

One of the biggest gripes I had about my iPhone was that I couldn’t sync my Google Calendar with the calendar function included with my iPhone. I ended up using the Google Calendar on the web, and setting up text message reminders. This only worked when I was setting appointments / important dates when I was near a computer. While on-the-go, I had no easy way to add a new event or appointment. Google created a barely functional iPhone-friendly calendar page you could view via Safari, but it was pretty much a “view only” page. Google claimed you could add dates, but when doing so, I had some interesting results. You could not delete or modify any events.

All that changed yesterday when Google announced Google Sync (beta) for the iPhone and Windows Mobile phones along with a contacts-only version for many other devices. Now you can sync your contacts AND your calendar and it works both ways. I was all over it yesterday and promptly followed the detailed instructions to set this up and I am impressed with the results so far. Since it’s beta, there will be a few glitches such as auto-complete not working quite as well, but so far I’m not seeing any deal-breakers and am quite happy to finally be able to have my calendars synced!

A word of warning: Be SURE to back up your contacts before setting up Google Sync. Google provides this warning as well:

When setting up Google Sync on your iPhone or iPod touch device for Contacts, the iPhone will delete all Contacts. Please safely backup all your iPhone Contacts to Google before setting up Sync.

Google has made several changes and/or added new features to their already existing features. For example, you can now Spice up your inbox with colors and themes. This change I embraced as I am always on the lookout for a new, colorful, appealing, and/or easier-to-navigate theme for the products I use.

Then Google changed the Google Reader interface. This change annoyed me quite a bit at first as they actually made some things harder to find, such as how to “show all” or “show updated” items. It took me a week to figure out that I needed to click the tiny little down arrow to the right of “Subscriptions” to get to those menu options. When they announced the change all they said about that particular change was:

• The “Show all – updated” controls are now in the Subscriptions options menu.

I kept looking for the word “Options” and didn’t realize it was a tiny down facing arrow. Once I figured that out and got used to all the changes I like it well enough. But I think the prior interface was actually easier to navigate. Maybe it’s just me?

Yesterday Google announced “A new Google Sitemap Generator for your website“. I haven’t played much with this yet and I liked the old one well enough for my personal web site. Have you had a chance to mess with it and see if the changes are for the better?

Google even changed their favicon. While the new one is more colorful, it’s going to have to grow on me a bit for me to like this change.

Today Google announced even more changes such as Changes to engineering and Changes to recruiting.

Google is changing all over the place. None of them too dramatic in the grand scheme of things, and most are improvements in my opinion. What has been your experience?

Not so much. At least not for this avid iPhone fan.

The Google G1 phone using Android software went on sale in October. The first eye-catcher was the price: ~ $179.00. The second was my favorite feature of the iPhone: the touch screen. There’s also a a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The way it handles maps is pretty awesome as well.

But where’s the iPod? There’s no program like iTunes to sync your music, photos, or videos to the G1 phone. Adding these items to the Google GI phone is accomplished by dragging them to the phone itself manually after connecting its USB cable to your computer.

I also heard that you can only sync your calendar, contacts, and email with Gmail. Nothing else. That can’t be true?

So far I’m planning to stick with my iPhone.

Do you have one of these new phones? Like it? Hate it? IS it an iPhone killer?

JaguarPC is now using Twitter. You can see JaguarPC on twitter here: http://twitter.com/jaguarpc

If you don’t know what Twitter is, you aren’t using the internet enough. From the Twitter Support page:

What is it?

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

How do I use it?

Tell us what you’re doing in 140 characters or less! Send your thoughts, observations, and goings-on in your day. Whether you’re “eating an apple” or “looking forward to the weekend” or “Heading out of town” it’s twitter-worthy.

Do I need anything special to use Twitter?
In order to use Twitter you will need one of these things: an internet connection or a mobile phone.

How can I send updates to Twitter?
Send updates to friends and family about what you’re doing in the way that works best for you. Update in myriad ways:

• from your phone


• from your logged-in home page


• from m.twitter.com.


• from any of the third party applications on Twitter Fan Wiki, made by the talented folks who’ve utilized our API.

There’s more on the support page but you get the idea. I’ve personally been using twitter for several months and it’s quite addicting.

Do you Twitter?

Tougher economic times compel businesses to look for ways to cut costs while still maintaining the essential infrastructure and services they need to operate and grow their business. An excellent way to do this is outsourcing IT requirements to a third party hosting provider.

Hosting providers provide a safe home for information technology needs with their redundant connectivity, hardened infrastructure and bulletproof security. All this is supported by a team of dedicated IT professionals whose sole objective is to keep IT infrastructure safe and running smoothly 24×7x365.

A business of any size can derive a number of benefits from outsourcing IT infrastructure to a hosting provider. First and foremost, there are significant cost savings. Hosting in-house, for example, requires significant man-hours and qualified personnel, which does not come cheaply. Using the services of a hosting provider, on the other hand, reduces that significant piece of overhead to a single monthly fee.

On top of the cost savings, outsourcing IT infrastructure to a hosting company frees up internal resources. Instead of having IT staffers configuring servers or trying to handle tricky email issues, it makes much more business sense to have them working on high priority tasks related to the organization’s core operations – ranging from anything such as desktop support to application development. Working with a hosting company gives IT staffers the time and energy to do their jobs better. And in smaller organizations where IT expertise is scare, outsourced hosting puts mission-critical needs in the hands of knowledgeable professionals – exactly where they belong.

Outsourcing to a Web hosting provider also gives businesses peace of mind. Rather than having to worry about security threats, downtime or technical glitches, businesses can be certain that their infrastructure is in the hands of someone that understands exactly how to handle the intricacies of information technology in an online environment. This peace of mind is sometimes overlooked, but can be an integral component of a well-run enterprise.

Hosting companies also provide a very desirable degree of specialization that delivers performance levels local IT or design agencies can’t match. Hosting providers reside in world-class data center facilities and are devoted to a single purpose: the housing, security and protection of valuable content. Everything they do, from the software development to the construction of facilities is designed to provide an environment that is up and running around the clock. Local IT shops are built on a different area of specialization. They design, install and customize. Hosting and managing infrastructure is not their core competency and expecting them to be able to do this at a high level of precision is an unrealistic expectation. The logic is pretty straightforward: you would not ask a bicycle repairman to fix your car.

Finally, outsourcing to a hosting provider is akin to having an advisory service which does not charge exorbitant consulting fees. Businesses can consult their hosting provider on any matter relating to technology and get a knowledgeable answer. What are the pros and cons of hosting on Linux? Should I be outsourcing my email to a hosting provider? Should I be upgrading my dedicated server’s memory and hard drive? Is a virtual private server a better option for my growing business? These questions and many others fall under the expertise of a hosting provider and businesses can expect an informative answer. And conveniently, it is very likely that the hosting company offers the product or service that can address the needs expressed by the customer.

Hosting providers rent space on a server or an entire physical server to support IT infrastructure ranging from email and web sites to advanced applications and databases. The server renting business, however, also translates well into related expertise such as data backup and storage.

Backup and storage services do not just provide a home for valuable data and content, but they also guarantee protection against its loss or corruption. With the help of replication software and redundant physical infrastructure, hosting companies are able to keep duplicate copies of data that is retrievable in real-time even when a disaster strikes.

In a world where growing amounts of both personal and business data are being stored in an online environment, the demand for this type of service will only grow in the future. This creates a strong opportunity for the hosting business, which is ideally suited to serving this need.

Outsourcing IT infrastructure to a third party hosting provider is not only cost-effective, but ensures reliable and best in class performance. Web hosting companies are able to handle a wide range of IT requirements and businesses should consider working with them to improve their business processes or leverage the online world to create bottom-line value.

It was all the buzz. GMail experienced a hiccup and was down for a couple hours last week. I missed the whole thing. However; when I started checking my newsreader and twitter, email, etc. everywhere I turned people had been crying, “GMail is down! We’re DOOMED!”

I was quite surprised at the public outrage. I use GMail for my personal email. I’ve been using it for years without issue. I think in all those years I’ve experienced (personally) about 10 minutes of downtime. I had no idea it was down last week during the actual outage as I was working and didn’t try to check my email during those few hours. Even if I did, I would have felt at most slightly annoyed and would have came back to it later.

What’s surprising is how many stated they felt disconnected, unproductive, and were moving to another free email service, such as Yahoo. In this day and age of technology, there are countless ways to communicate, and while email is very convenient especially with those abroad, it certainly isn’t the only form of communication. Systems go down. Services fail. It’s just a fact of life in this world of computers, routers, networks, and email. One should always have a backup plan.

To Google’s credit, they explained, “We feel your pain, and we’re sorry” Which is all they can really do.

Today we find in our voicemail queue that someone overnight left a rather unique message. We were rickrolled.

Wikipedia definition of “Rickrolling”

Rickrolling is an Internet meme involving the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up“. The meme is a bait and switch: a person provides a Web link they claim is relevant to the topic at hand, but the link actually takes the user to the Astley video. The URL can be masked or obfuscated in some manner so that the user cannot determine the true source of the link without clicking (and thus satisfying their curiosity). When a person clicks on the link given and is led to the web page he/she is said to have been “Rickrolled”.

So… anyone gonna confess?