PlanetHoster, a Paris and Montreal based web hosting provider for Dedicated Servers, Shared Hosting and Reseller Hosting services, has announced the deployment of Noction Intelligent Routing Platform (IRP) in what they call a” response to a rapidly growing client base and an ever-expanding need for further scalability”.

To handle route optimization through its multiple IP connections, PlanetHoster has deployed Noction IRP -- a route analysis and optimization system used to ensure efficient packet delivery from PlanetHoster's networks. IRP accomplishes that by choosing the route with optimal loss and latency metrics. The system enables PlanetHoster to proactively reroute congestion and outages, evaluate overall performance and dynamically modify network paths in order to attain maximum network performance. The process is now completely automated excluding the need for constant manual intervention as was previously needed. (editor’s note.. the relatively old adage comes to mind...  to err is human...to really screw it up you need a computer)

PlanetHoster CTO Saber Bariz commenting on the change says:

We noticed great performance and latency improvements in our multi-homed network. Thanks to IRP our BGP optimization processes are now fully automated, allowing our staff to spend less time on manual maintenance, while focusing more on strategic management and growth of our network infrastructure.

PlanetHoster is not the first to deploy this technology. Late last year, dedicated servers provider GorillaServers, and cloud hoster Enzu out of L.A. also deployed Noction IRP.

Melbourne IT has sold off its digital marketing division to US company Corporation Services Company for $152.5 million. Not a shoddy number considering Melbourne IT entire market capitalization prior to the sale was “just” $160 million.

The sale of the division which registers and sells internet domain names as well as services to protect brand image online was announced to the market after close of trading on Tuesday. Melbourne IT had requested a trading halt earlier in the day. The sale was considered a surprise by analysts, along with the value as it was expected that Melbourne IT would sell off other, less profitable units as part of their ongoing strategic review.

Melbourne IT CEO Theo Hnarakis says that: 

While the DBS division had not been specifically earmarked for sale, the opportunity to sell to CSC couldn't be ignored. What this does is return Melbourne IT to a hosting business for enterprise and small and medium sized businesses. We’re confident now that we don’t have the distraction of international operations, we can put all our energy into growing the SMB and enterprise hosting market. 

Melbourne IT’s DBS division was born in 2008 following the merger of the company’s Corporate Brand Services division with VeriSign's former DBMS business, which Melbourne IT bought for $50 million. The digital marketing division recorded flat revenues of $55.2 million in 2012.

CentriLogic has announced a deal to acquire Canadian managed hosting and IT services provider Capris Hosting (aka The Capris Group).

Capris Hosting, founded in 1996, will be combined with CentriLogic’s existing data center solutions to create a new business unit focused on delivering Application and Platform management services to new and current customers.  CentriLogic will also add additional data center and disaster recovery space to its existing infrastructure footprint in the Greater Toronto Area. The strategic acquisition of Capris Hosting places CentriLogic in a unique market position, providing innovative cross-border Hybrid Hosting, Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery, and DevOps solutions to local and international organizations with enterprise-class workloads.

Robert Offley, CentriLogic’s President and CEO commented: 

The Capris Group’s team has 17 years of experience delivering comprehensive services to its entire client base, including several of Canada’s major financial institutions that have stringent uptime and service delivery requirements. We will leverage The Capris Group’s existing expertise to better fulfill our customer’s complex hosting and application management requirements, ultimately creating synergies throughout our core service offerings to facilitate the growth of our business locally and internationally. 

CentriLogic will integrate into its current offerings The Capris Group’s entire portfolio of services, including Application & Platform Management, Managed Hosting, Development, and Co-Location. Other assets acquired by CentriLogic include The Capris Group’s staff, its existing office and data center facilities, and all current customer contracts.

“CentriLogic has quickly established itself as a flexible and reliable provider of international data center solutions, with a very strong presence in the Greater Toronto Area and an excellent track record of delivering outstanding services to organizations with enterprise-class requirements,” said Boris Novosel, President of The Capris Group. “We have been actively seeking opportunities to take our company to the next level, and after a thorough evaluation of numerous candidates we determined that CentriLogic was the ideal partner to help us achieve this goal.”

CentriLogic will maintain Capris Hosting 15,000 square foot data center and Disaster Recovery area in Mississauga, Ontario. This facility will be used to service Capris Hosting existing customer base while also accommodating new and existing CentriLogic customers.

Not all clients of web hosting companies are afraid of death.. some just don't want to be there when it happens... The lucky ones (aka..former clients) may write a review concurring with Mark Twain when he said “I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." For those misfourtunate to still be clients, they possibly wish they had just paid closer attention to the web hosting reviews and are praying for backups that are not corrupted!  Welcome to the HostJury deadpool

Layered Networks

If you've been looking for Australian based Layered Networks, founded in 2007, the domain now currently redirect to a search page allowing you to search faster. Layered Networks have closed the doors but they did send out an email before their demise. 

Dear John Doe 

We regret to inform you that, due to financial constraints, Layered Networks is unable to continue providing hosting services. In order to prevent downtime of website services, customers should transfer their web hosting and domain name registration accounts to a new provider as soon as possible.

Special codes are required to transfer domain names. They can be known as domain keys, passwords, or auth/epp codes. Please visit our client portal, click on My Domains, click the details icon next to the domain, then the Get EPP Code button down the bottom under Management Tools. If a Registrar Lock is enabled on your domain, please uncheck this option and Save Changes before transferring.

We appreciate your past business and wish you well with your new provider. 

Shortly after another email was sent to clients with additional information stating: 

We have previously sent out an email in regards to the discontinuance of services. Website and remote email access should continue to operate as normal during the next few weeks, allowing you some time to make alternate arrangements. 

In order to make the transfer of web hosting easier, we are generating a backup of your cPanel account in your home directory. Updates will be posted soon. 

Layered Networks. 

The description of Layered Networks may lends some clues to their corporate philosophy.

Layered Networks aim is to provide quality hosting services to web developers and webmasters. With highly skilled staff that have over 10 years experience in system administration, Layered Networks is a provider you can count on.

While any web host closing up shop is never easy, there are lessons that could be learned by others on how to handle a difficult situation tactfully. Layered Networks handled their unfortunate reckoning with grace, and class, in a manner meant to bring the least disruption to the clients they served.

Well done. On to the next one which may be one in need of the lesson!

ChuneX

ChuneX  company profile stated the the web host was founded in January of 2012. While it may be accurate that the company idea was hatched in January, the domian ChuneX.com was only registered in July of 2012.

The majority of search returns using the keywords “ChuneX web hosting” renders links for either ChuneX Affiliate Program "neX" which could net up to $50.00 per referral or to coupon codes for 50% off discount links.

Continuing with the company description  “From the very beginning, ChuneX had one goal in mind: To provide the best hosting service possible. ChuneX strive to provide the best service and do everything we can to ensure our many clients with a QUALITY web hosting solution that will meet the rising technology demands of today's business society.“

Lofty ambitions but goals that many in the web hosting industry, who have garnered their reputations through hard work, may take exception to considering the methods utilized by ChuneX.

Before the ink was hardly even dry on the domain registration,  ChuneX was touting itself in one marketing forums stating in the about us description:  

We are an established web hosting company that offers Web Hosting as well as VPS Hosting. We have recently set up shared minecraft hosting in order to bring a quality service that users will never forget to the Minecraft Market. Our philosophy is different from the rest. We won't even attempt to compete with those who are offering servers at $5 per GB of RAM, as we feel that you truly do get what you pay for. Our prices are definitely affordable, and with the quality you receive, you won't be disappointed. 

In this same marketing forum JChun suggested growth may be outpacing resources when he wrote:

“We have added a plugin setup package (one time $15) and a plugin advanced management package ($10/monthly). Grab them today before they're all gone! (we can't accept unlimited orders of these due to staffing and difficulties in finding proper staff)”

This established web hosting company now returns a blank white page with privacy enabled on the domain.

Holdfire Network

A review of Holdfire Networks that appeared prior to their demise, posted by Marie, may have suggested things were not heading in a good direction for Holdfire. The review stated in part: 

a good host right up until mid 2011, when the original owner stopped updating any of the social network accounts for the company, and in the following months, uptime continually decreased until at one point in February 2012, my site was reverted to its state in either 2008 or 2009. At which point I knew that due to a lack of available support and multiple online forum postings indicating that others were having the same issues, the company had gone under. 

Marie added that while the domain was functional, it was redirecting to a company called Flaredhost.

WebHostReviews.com sent an email address posted on the redirected page and got a response quite quickly.

As well as confirming that Flaredhost closed shop in 2012, the respondent stated regarding the Holdfire landing page 

it's quite simple. Maintenance mode was disabled and not re-enabled. Email notifications are [obviously] sent out so if there were orders coming in (which there aren't) then I would have caught this sooner. Thanks for the heads up and have a lovely day. 

Holdfire it appears, is now gone! 

dynacloud

The screenshot says it all. Yes I was expecting dynaCloud and I get a placeholder from.. Fit2Page

Moving on..

Vizaweb 

Vizaweb was prominently featured in a post written on HostJury back in 2007. Being a web hosting company featured on HostJury is not to be construed as a bad thing... unless of course the title of the post is “Horrible web hosting providers reviewed”

Since 2002 Vizaweb (at least from what we can gander based on the score) has been sucking like a Hoover. Sadly, this is the web hosting industry & not home appliances. If it were though, these folks would be in the lead! 

While the Vizaweb domain did continue to resolve until very recently, a search of the company on the web could lead to speculation that very few clients remained with the sinking ship.

Chose your web hosting provider wisely.. and read the reviews! 

Slough is one of the top three most productive towns in the UK outside of London and  home to some well  known business including Amazon, Honda, Research in Motion, O2 and Mars. In 2008 Savvis opened their L01 data center and demand was high from day one. Within 18 months the first floor sold out and Savvis expanded the data center in 2010.

In what has become Europe's biggest trading business park Savvis is expanding yet again , opening their second Slough data center, Savvis LO5.  The addition doubles capacity across the two Slough data centers and raised floor space by a third. Savvis says it wants to give businesses in the European market access to the best experience possible.

Jeff Von Deylen, president of Savvis says: 

The success of our existing data center in Slough confirms that businesses view this area as a strategic geographic location, Our hosting portfolio in Slough allows businesses in the financial services, consumer brands and other verticals to benefit from Savvis' carrier diversity, inter-connectivity and cloud services. 

LO5 is Savvis' fifth data center in the London area and sixth in Europe, serving growing demand for the company's full suite of cloud, collocation and managed-hosting services, including the recently announced Savvis Symphony Cloud Storage.

Savvis operates more than 50 data centers worldwide, with more than 2 million square feet of gross raised floor space throughout North America, Europe and Asia.

Last May, Matt the owner of WHMCS, the all-in-one client management, billing & support solution platform used by many web hosting companies, made an announcement that their servers were compromised. In a post, Matt explained a ‘hacker’ impersonating him, contacted HostGator (the web host used by WHMCS). The person, by providing the correct answers to HostGator’s verification questions was able to gain access to the WHMCS client account with the host. Ultimately this person then changed the email and requested a mailing of the access details. In the aftermath that followed, a marriage of convenience was announced. WHMCS was integrated into cPanel. The control panel used by many web hosting companies and millions of their clients worldwide. (editor’s note: The WHMCS incident was not a hacker. As pointed out by Matt in his post it was social engineering. I am being sarcastic!)

Karma...

Web hosting management company cPanel has announced one of the company's technical support servers was compromised potentially putting some of their customer data at risk...

On February 22, cPanel sent out an email to clients potential affected stating: 

Sent: Friday, February 22, 2013 12:48 AM

Subject: Important Security Alert (Action Required) 

You are receiving this email because you have opened a ticket with our support staff in the last 6 months. cPanel, Inc. has discovered that one of the servers we utilize in the technical support department has been compromised. While we do not know if your machine is affected, you should change your root level password if you are not already using ssh keys. If you are using an unprivileged account with "sudo" or "su" for root logins, we recommend you change the account password. Even if you are using ssh keys we still recommend rotating keys on a regular basis. 

As we do not know the exact nature of this compromise we are asking for customers to take immediate action on their own servers. cPanel's security team is continuing to investigate the nature of this security issue. 

--cPanel Security Team 

Another announcement made yesterday shed more light on the investigation and the steps taken to ensure better security in the future.  One has to love the terminology used:

- the risk of this type of sophisticated attack in the future.
- was compromised by a malicious third-party by compromising a single workstation used by one of our Technical Analysts.
- How the server was accessed and compromised is not clear

Despite the language this was not likely a “hacker” or even a case of social engineering. More likely someone sitting at the desk rooting around.. read the latest

cPanel Announces Additional Internal Security Enhancements

This is a follow up on the status of the security compromise that cPanel, Inc. experienced on Thursday, February 21, 2013.

As mentioned in our email sent to cPanel Server Administrators who’ve opened a ticket with us in the past 6 months, on February 21 we discovered that one of the proxy servers we utilize in the technical support department had been compromised. The cPanel Security Team’s investigation into this matter is ongoing.

We’d like to relay additional details about the intrusion that we have gathered with you, and we want to explain what preventative measures we’re putting in place that will introduce additional layers of security to our new and existing systems, already in place. How the server was accessed and compromised is not clear, but we know a few key facts that we’re sharing.

Here’s what we know:

* The proxy machine compromised in this incident was, at the time, utilized to access customer servers by some of our Technical Analysts. It's intent was to provide a layer of security between local & remote workstations and customer servers.

* This proxy machine was compromised by a malicious third-party by compromising a single workstation used by one of our Technical Analysts.

* Only a small group of our Technical Analysts uses this particular machine for logins.

* There is no evidence that any sensitive customer data was exposed and there is no evidence that the actual database was compromised.

Here’s what we’re doing about it:

Documentation is now provided at: https://go.cpanel.net/checkyourserver which we encourage system administrators to use to determine the status of their machine.

We have restructured the process used to access customer servers to significantly reduce the risk of this type of sophisticated attack in the future. We have also been working on implementing multiple changes to our internal support systems and procedures as outlined for your information below.

* Our system will now generate and provide you with a unique SSH key for each new support ticket submitted.

* We are providing tools to authorize and de-authorize SSH keys and instructions on how to use them whenever you submit a ticket.

* Our system will generate a single-use username and password credentials for accessing WebHost Manager that are only valid while our staff is logged into your server.

* Additional enhancements are also planned behind the scene that should be transparent to our customers.

With these new layers of security in place, it is now possible for our Technical Analysts to service your support requests without you providing your server’s password for nearly all requests involving machines running our cPanel & WHM product going forward. However, we will still offer the ability to provide your password for server migrations, or in the event you cannot use SSH keys.

cPanel’s Internal Development Team has been working on an automated solution with the end goal of eliminating the need for our Technical Analysts to view any passwords you provide during the ticket submission process. We are testing this solution right now, and hope to have it fully implemented in the next few days.

cPanel, Inc. understands your concerns expressed over the last few days, and we very much appreciate the cooperation and patience you have provided us during this time as we work through all of this.

VPS.NET has announced that they have partnership with W3 EDGE and will include their WordPress performance framework, WP Total Cache, inside its WordPress cloud application installation.

Hosted on their well-known cloud platform, VPS.NET has taken the reins for their WordPress hosting customers by integrating their WordPress hosting stack with WP Total Cache to make it one of the fastest and most reliable out-of-the-box solutions on the market today. Put simply, WordPress performance takes on a whole new meaning.

Rus Foster, the cloud product manager for VPS.NET states: 

Partnering with the expertise of W3 EDGE, and including WP Total Cache in our WordPress application stack will make WordPress performance typically known only to large enterprises a reality to everyone. WP Total Cache effectively reduces the amount of resources required for WordPress and increases performance substantially. Adding it to our optimized WordPress installation is a natural progression toward a faster and more reliable website experience.

Since 2003 W3 EDGE has consulted startups and well known brands including Yahoo!, Sony, Smashing Magazine, Mashable and many others. While their projects usually include WordPress configuration and optimization, one of their largest contributions to the Wordpress community has been the web performance optimization framework plugin W3 Total Cache.

W3 Total Cache is considered one of the fastest and most complete WordPress performance optimization framework. It improves website performance by more than ten times through caching every aspect of the sites with which it is installed.

Frederick Townes, the founder and CEO of W3 EDGE adds:

W3 EDGE has a singular goal to increase the competitive advantage of those with whom we work. Partnering with VPS.NET delivers a mutually beneficial opportunity for the entire WordPress community to innovate and accelerate the platform. I don’t know a developer or business who couldn’t use more time to do what they do best; VPS.NET’s optimized WordPress installation makes getting more time a reality.

ABOUT VPS.NET

VPS.NET operates one of the largest cloud hosting systems in the world. It offers affordable cloud hosting to everyday users, while giving enterprise users the flexibility they need to adequately scale, and handle their growing IT demands. VPS.NET is a division of the UK2 Group, which provides domain registration and Web hosting services to thousands of customers globally through its family of hosting brands - UK2.net, Midphase.com, WestHost.com, 100TB.com, ANHosting.com, Resell.biz, and VI.net. VPS.NET is committed to providing secure and reliable products and services underpinned with excellent support.

Clients of VPS.NET can review their experinces here.

Signetique Has Announced  JumpQ Priority Support for Dedicated and Cloud Hosting Customers

In a press release, Singapore web host Signetique has announced a new priority technical support service that is available free of charge to its dedicated and cloud hosting customers. Kenneth Tan, COO Signetique states “The service is believed to be a first in the Singapore web hosting scene”

Continuing, Tan states:  

JumpQ” is a red carpet technical support service where Signetique's premium hosting customers can expect to be served quickly and issues resolved up to 50 percent faster. 

JumpQ reflects Signetique's commitment to its growing and diversified global customer base. With JumpQ, Signetique's customers can choose to call in on a dedicated phone number, raise a support ticket on a dedicated queue or simply use its online web chat service 24/7. 

Through our frequent engagements with customers, we have noted that while the issues faced by our dedicated and cloud server customers are minimal, they expect a lot more from us and want to be served in the snap of a finger, so to speak, and rightly so too. After months of planning, we are pleased to launch JumpQ, the industry-leading hosting support service. We have created an exclusive team of engineers focused on the needs of our dedicated and cloud hosting customers. As the name suggests, with JumpQ, our customers can expect to be served quickly and have any issues addressed and resolved within a much shorter time frame. 

Recent industry studies have shown that hosting customers' needs have changed. Today's servers may be part of a virtualized or cloud environment, resulting in a greater level of complexity. Customers may also require a more streamlined support when issues arise,” said Raymond Tan, CEO Signetique. “JumpQ addresses that need as our engineers are qualified not only to resolve the server problems encountered, they are able to do so with greater insights as they are trained to offer personalized service to our customers.  

So just how does JumpQ work

A customer contacts Signetique via a dedicated JumpQ phone line, raise a JumpQ support ticket or simply write via the web chat client. Signetique's exclusive Priority Support Team will offer a suggestion and respond to the customer within 30 minutes. If the issues encountered by the customer is of a more severe nature, Signetique pledges to resolve the problem within 4 hours.

For web hosting clients everywhere, any announcement of improved services or faster resolution to issues that arise is always good news. Good news or not, the announcement raises some valid observations.

JumpQ is expected to resolve issues up to 50 percent faster.  The “Exclusive Priority Support Team” will respond to the customer within 30 minutes. Sorry but responding to a customer in 30 minutes is not exactly ground breaking. Numerous web hosting companies have built their reputations on minutes, not half hour increments.

The bigger question raised in the press release is the implications for client of Signetique not utilizing their dedicated servers or cloud hosting services. Allowing clients to jump the cue, runs a risk of coming at the expense of other clients submitting support tickets. A degradation of support responsiveness and/or longer wait times for customers utilizing VPS or shared hosting environments are distinct possibilities.

As can be seen, (well it would be if there was a decent screenshot), the monthly costs with Signetique shared hosting plans are comparable, (if not higher), than many prices offered by other web hosting companies. Price are only one small factor to be considered though. Regardless of the industry, companies implement improvements to customer service either to:

- Quell criticism
- Remain competitive
- Retain customers
- Increase their market share.

The press release does suggests Signetique may be doing all four.. at least for their dedicated server and cloud hosting clients. Kudos on that. Only time will tell who pays the price for the improved service.

About Signetique

Signetique is one of the largest Singapore-based web hosting providers. It provides shared, virtual and dedicated hosting services and maintains facilities in Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand, Taiwan, China and Japan. Customers requiring a one-stop Asia Pacific hosting solution can do so through their Singapore sales office. It pioneered the sub $100 dedicated hosting solution in Singapore and continues to provide cost-effective hosting solutions to its customers. Apart from providing standard dedicated server solutions, Signetique also allows complete customization of its servers that encompasses redundancy, high availability, disaster recovery and enterprise email hosting solutions. Signetique's customer profile ranges from small local businesses to multi-nationals and has been in the business for over 15 years.

Clients of Signetique can review their experinces here.

Many a web host has placated themselves that the majority of web hosting review written fall into a couple of categories. The following statements are randomly copied from forums populated by owners of web hosting companies:

- positive reviews posted by the hosts themselves, under the guise of random users
- flames by disgruntled users (abusers) who have been terminated/canceled by the host. Very seldom is there any unique content actually added in honesty by real end users, positive or negative.
- disgruntled client are more likely to leave bad reviews than a satisfied client

or how about

- I don't trust these reviews sites at all. Full of nonsense. These "reviews" sites get more fake reviews than real ones. By fake I include negative reviews from customers who were suspended/terminated for abuse/violation of TOS.

While it may be certain that a vast majority of web hosting review sites are indeed “fake affiliate driven” enterprises, less true is the notion that reviews are only written by disgruntled terminated users...

Reviews of two firms

I managed to escape the semi frozen tundra of the northern wasteland for a week of sunny warm vitamin D rejuvenation therapy. An awesome trip that included a night out watching the best hockey game ever.. Florida Everblades and the Evansville Icemen. Seriously, an awesome, entertaining, and memorable game! Notice that I’m neither disgruntled, nor was I unceremoniously ejected from the venue! Then again my review is not about ice hockey.

Traveling north on I-95, a quick pit stop was required for an earlier coffee and a top up on fuel. I was just north of where Danica Patrick was preparing to be the first woman ever to start her Go-Daddy car from the NASCAR pole position. I eased out of traffic and onto Okeechobee Rd in Fort Pierce, Florida.

While those race enthusiasts types may be inclined to utilize a particular brand and octane of gasoline, ensuring maximum power and efficiency, my one step up from a minivan is less demanding. It only asks for a brand name fuel.. which brand exactly is motivated by proximity.

I seen the sign for BP, priced at $3.85 for regular gas. Outrageous enough but competitively priced. Pulling in, I hooked up the intravenous drip. Enjoying the warmth, I noticed a stretch limo fueling and felt a twinge of pity. Then I seen the sign. $4.09 per gallon. I looked at the pump. Sure enough it says $4.09 a gallon.

I looked at gas stations within my range of sight and they were priced substantially less.  Did I or did I not see a sign? Was there something to that statement “the internet is making us dumber”. The drip stopped at $40, and I investigated.

Ahh.. While the picture does not do the optical allusion justice, tucked behind that regular sized BP sign is the smallest Mobil gas station sign ever made... with prices 25 cents higher per gallon. Awesome marketing ploy Mobil. You scammed me for approximately $2.50 extra.. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice. Well you won’t cause We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together. Ever. I will never purchase anything again at a Mobil gas station.. Any Mobil gas station, ever!

Disgruntled client...  maybe, but I’m not done!

Rogers is the Canadian cable/wireless phone and Internet Service Provider (ISP) people love to hate on. Seriously, a quick search for “Rogers sucks” will provide Twitter feeds, Ihaterogers.ca , rogerssucks.com, Rogers sucks FB pages, its own listing in the Urban Dictionary, countless you tube videos and rants. Rogers is hated! Why do people use it.. we’re waiting on Google!

I've used Rogers for years because it worked. Not the cheapest but it worked. Then in the first part of January we got the email saying we have used 75% of our monthly allocation.. then another a day later saying we reached 100%. We use on average a couple of gigs a day. We have for years. In excess of 20 gigs in a day... never happened! Faced with 7 days before our monthly bandwidth usage reset and ridiculous overage fees, I called Rogers to cancel our service. After the typically long waiting cue, the Rogers retention person explained that our outdated modem needed to be upgraded to a newer model to take advantage of our full plan allowance. They even upgraded the plan to match the competitor I had lined up as a replacement. Placated, I picked up the new modem and resumed work.

Less than a week later I get another email reaching 75% of our usage allocation. Get serious.

Two more hours on the phone with Rogers Retention Agents brought a resolve. (I am being so nice now whereas I am sure I may have broke some laws that evening). As Rogers Terms of Service (ToS) requires a cancellation period, she would upgrade our allowance for the month but we had to return the modem prior to the 21st of February. After providing us the amount of the final bill, the call was concluded and a new service was ordered the following day.

Amicably resolved right...

The new service was installed but as I was paying for Rogers, I continued to use it. My co-horts utilized the new service. Prior to leaving for my road trip for a warmer locale, I took the modem back to the Rogers store (more than a week prior to the 21st). The nice girl behind the counter took the device and stated that she could not find a cancellation notice attached to the account..  

Her: “Would you like me to connect you with a customer service rep”

Me:  Hmm.. “No thank you”.

I called Rogers from home. They have this automated system that determines why you are calling. Oh you’re cancelling... prepare to wait. No, I mean prepare to wait with a week supply of nourishment!  

The first line of defense broke down.. the rep insisted on using the terminology "cancel", whereas I referred to myself as their former client. The matter was escalated to a manager.

Although he could see the call history, he insisted the rep I had spoken with a couple of weeks prior, wrote that I would call back and spend another 2 hours on the phone confirming that I hated Rogers to the very core of my being. As Rogers ToS says they need x amount of days to process a cancellation, I would need to pay for another month of service.

This is about the point when I know some laws were broken!

While neither of these two situations involve a web host, the reviews are real. It is not some negative reviews from customers who were suspended/terminated for abuse/violation of TOS. I was their client.. for years.  The Rogers manager hoped we would someday return... I’m hoping the complaint I’m writing to the CRTC (gov oversight agency for communications), when added to all the others that are filed, adds another nail to Rogers coffin. Rogers you suck!

Hawk Host

The Hawk Host homepage states that they believe in one thing above all else: quality. It's the driving force behind the type of servers they utilize, the features offered in their control panel, and why their support team is available around the clock. Their prices are not so bad either. Hawk Host’s goal is to provide you a hosting experience second to none.

Is this the real deal or just hawking web hosting

Starting this coming Wednesday February 27th for 72 hours only, you will be able to get a 60% off one-time coupon / 35% recurring coupon for any of Hawk Host services in their Dallas data center. It’s not exactly the dog days of summer but that’s hot. 

                                              click image to open link in new tab

The Disclaimer:

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... And as always, HostJury makes no recommendation or endorsement of providers. You are encouraged to practice due diligence.. and at some point leave a review of the services provided.

Despite the disclaimer, saving some greenbacks (or any other color of money)  is always cool.. or hot depending on your perspective!

Coupons, deals, and steals may also be found on review pages of many of the web hosts reviewed on HostJury. Look in the right column under the related blog post section.

Web hosts - Got a really great deal - Want to participate in HostJury Deals and Steals - Contact us by email: [email protected]

An interesting legal ruling out of Canada that has nothing in common with web hosts or the reviews of web hosting companies caught my attention. For the tech industry the ruling highlights how technology is permeating society to its core. Legal firms hedging their bets on the alphabetical placement of their names and law enforcement agencies may not breathe a similar collective sigh of relief.

Legaltech advocate Michael Geist wrote an excellent dispose of a legal case involving the individual charged with a Driving Under the Influence (DUI) offence in Alberta, Canada. At the hearing there was no dispute that Christopher McKay told police that he wanted to exercise his right to legal counsel. As the accused cellphone and other personal belongings were placed in a police locker when he arrived at the station, McKay was instructed there was a toll-free number available to contact a lawyer as well as White and Yellow pages that could be consulted.

McKay testified that the telephone call to the toll free number was abrupt and it appeared that the person on the other end of the telephone did not want to talk to him.  At the hearing, McKay when asked about his level of satisfaction with his toll free telephone call replied, “no satisfaction at all”.  Mr. McKay reiterated that at the time, he thought he could only have one telephone call and that his understanding arose from pop culture and Hollywood movies.  McKay did concede that he did not tell the arresting officer that he wasn’t satisfied with his telephone information and he reiterated that he did not know that he had any rights to further opportunities to get legal advice at the time.

Then it gets interesting!

Judge Heather Lamoureux of the Provincial Court of Alberta considered "whether Internet access should form part of police resources provided to detainees in order to facilitate a reasonable opportunity to exercise the constitutional right to counsel." Acknowledging that many teenagers view their smartphone, iPad and other devices as essential parts of their daily lives, she noted that Google is the primary source of information for everything from maps to medical care to access to lawyers.

The judge conducted a Google search for "Calgary criminal defense lawyer" and found that within seconds there was provided with a long list of potential local lawyers. Moreover, the judge noted that police routinely use the Internet for investigations and evidence gathering. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms grants anyone arrested or detained the right "to retain and instruct counsel without delay and to be informed of that right." For this judge, the failure to provide Internet access meant that the Charter rights had been violated, concluding:

"In the year 2013 it is the Court's view that all police stations must be equipped with Internet access and detainees must have the same opportunities to access the Internet to find a lawyer as they do to access the telephone book to find a lawyer."

Read Michael Geist take on the story and the court ruling.

HostJury is getting fired up about some sizzling web hosting deals that won't burn a hole in your pocket!  Stop shopping around for a bargain. We're doing the legwork so you don’t have to! Unless you happen to be residing in one of those hot tropical kind of locales, the only thing hotter than today’s deal and steal would be a plane ticket to some exotic hotspot!

You better get cracking because like all HJ deals & steals, they are limited!

click image to open link in new tab

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... And 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.

Despite the disclaimer, saving some greenbacks (or any other color of money)  is one great way to celebrate!

Coupons may also be found on review pages of many of the web hosts reviewed on HostJury. Look in the right column under the related blog post section. More coupons are added daily!

Web hosts - Got a really great deal - Want to participate in HostJury's deals and steals - Contact us by email: [email protected]

It would appear one of the few freedoms in the land of the free not under attack is the right to propose stupid laws. In what is being billed as an early candidate for Worst Illinois Senate Bill of 2013, Senator Ira Silversten has sponsored Illinois Senate Bill 1614 titled INTERNET POSTING REMOVAL ACT

The legislation to create the Internet Posting Removal Act would require that a website administrator shall, upon request, remove any posted comments posted by an anonymous poster unless the anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post and confirms that his or her IP address, legal name, and home address are accurate. It would take effect 90 days after becoming law.

While the bill has little likelihood of success, it does demonstrate either a gross ignorance, bordering on incompetence, of certain elected officials over how the Internet works, or their willingness to be openly ridiculed by the same to achieve a short moment of glory in the spotlight of shame.

As Illinois does not have jurisdiction over the entirety of the internet the only thing this bill could actually succeed in doing is driving internet-related business (both individual online businesses, as well as the infrastructure that supports them, ie, webhosting companies and datacenters) out of the state.

Luckily, the courts of Illinois continue to exhibit a common sense approach to civil liberties even if a certain elected official insists on leaving his at the polling station.

A decision handed down recently by the Appellate Court of Illinois, Brompton Bldg., LLC v. Yelp!, Inc., 2013 WL 416185 (Ill.App. 1 Dist. January 31, 2013),  affirmed a trial court’s dismissal of the petition that an aggrieved real estate owner filed to discover the identity of a tenant who was badmouthing the petitioner’s rent-collection practices. The decision was a win for First Amendment rights in anonymous online speech.

Ira I. Silverstein is about to become famous... for all the wrong reason. Great job representing your constituents Ira!

The French firm that produces the Michelin Guide claims its name is being hijacked — by a humorous website that has football legend Michel Platini’s face manipulated into every conceivable guide... except the Michelin Guide. Bosses at the French firm whose star ratings are allegedly sought by top chefs worldwide have sent Adam Mascall a stern legal letter warning that the Michelin name is trademarked. Adam insists michelinguides.com is actually MICHEL IN GUIDES and is dedicated to French soccer ace Platini.

Mascall creative use of Photoshop goes beyond superimposing Platini’s face into pictures featuring girl guides. Numerous images have Plantini featured in a garden guide, a university survival guide, a kit guide, as a guide dog (no I do mean as a guide dog), and many other humorous situations.

The michelinguides.com domain was registered only recently by Adam Mascall using domain registrar GoDaddy.com.  
Domain Name: MICHELINGUIDES.COM
Created on: 04-Dec-12
Expires on: 04-Dec-13

Mascall also uses GoDaddy for the webhosting of michelinguides.com 

But it wasn't the first registration for michelinguides.com. A search using DomainTools reveal that since it was first registered by Enom back in 2002, there have been 7 registrars  including Names.com and Tucows.  The nameserver history gets even more interesting with 42 changes  on 23 unique name servers over just the last 5 years alone. The nameserver record suggests that domain squatters have been parking this one all over the internet hoping to cash in.

While Michelin could spend a small fortune on legal black suits to try and gain control of the MICHEL IN GUIDES domain, it may be more cost effective to just pay the piper. For Adam Mascall, beside being ten clams well spent, this could pave the way to pay for some real Photoshop classes!

Recent start-up M.dot Inc, which produced a mobile app for small business website creation and management has been acquired by Go-Daddy. The addition of M.dot to Go Daddy’s product offerings will give Go Daddy’s 11 million customers an easy way to create and manage compelling mobile websites right from their smartphones.

Announcing the acquisition  Go Daddy’s new CEO Blake Irving stated:

We’re pleased to welcome M.dot to our growing Go Daddy family. M.dot’s global vision of a mobile future for small businesses fits beautifully with what our customers need right now. Go Daddy wants to help businesses connect with their customers wherever they are in the world, and that means providing killer mobile technology. It also means helping our customers manage their business from anywhere, anytime with the simplicity of their smartphone or tablet. With M.dot, small businesses can compete on a big-time level without spending big-time money. We’re completely stoked to have M.dot on board.

Over the last three years, mobile Internet traffic has grown more than 10 times from one percent to 13 percent of total Web usage . In that same time period, smartphone and tablet shipments surpassed PCs. Go Daddy customers are using their smartphones to manage their online presence more and more everyday as a means to find and acquire customers. The M.dot acquisition provides Go Daddy’s customers with an innovative platform to capitalize on these trends.

M.dot was founded by Dominik Balogh and Pavel Serbajlo in June 2012. They have the backing (700K at last count)of some of Silicon Valley leading investors including Floodgate, SV Angel and Archimedes Labs. M.dot has been featured by Apple in the iTunes App Store on multiple occasions.

M.dot co-founder Dominik Balogh pointed out the shared values of the two companies.

“Go Daddy is exactly the kind of technology company we wanted to join because they cater to and understand the small business customer,”

(Editor’s note.. what exactly did you expect him to say. Besides reportedly being paid between 5 and 25 mil, depending on how you do the math, for a company started only months ago, the founders and staff will be working for GoDaddy!)

Balogh continued:

We’ve always believed small business is essential for a healthy economy and Go Daddy has extensive experience as the industry’s leading platform for small enterprises. Joining Go Daddy means our mobile software will now be accessible through much larger distribution channels and will help even more small businesses achieve greater success. It also gives us the benefit of integrating with Go Daddy’s immense customer support foundation, which I believe is a significant competitive advantage in this segment.

M.dot co-founder Pavel Serbajlo added:

Go Daddy was built from scratch and is now a multi-billion dollar company – their industry expertise and achievements are inspiring, We're looking forward to taking mobile software for small businesses to the next level with Go Daddy. We share the same vision for mobile. We’re passionate about small businesses, start-ups and entrepreneurs … we all want to build software products that enable our customers to succeed online.

The M.dot app offers mobile website creation based on pre-loaded templates with easy-to-use custom features, such as store location, driving directions, tap-to-call, galleries, business hours and price lists, all in a user-interface designed for mobile device screens. It also includes a blog feature, which allows users to write and insert photos and video with rich text capabilities. It integrates with Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Dropbox.

M.dot is available in the iTunes App Store at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/m.dot/id565017826?ls=1&mt=8

Last year GoDaddy launched a website-building product in partnership with DudaMobile which optimizes existing websites for a mobile presentation. M.dot conversely builds the site specifically for a mobile device.

The domain mdotapp.com was originally registered using GoDaddy in September of 2011. The domain utilized GoDaddy servers until it was acquired by M.dot Inc in November of 2012. Since then M.dot Inc has used a server at Microsoft and EasyDns nameservers. (editors note.. may want to refer to Dominik Balogh statement above!)

Get 3 Months FREE VPS with Superb Internet when you signup for a Year! Use coupon code 7453 at checkout.

Virtual Private Servers are virtual machines (your own slice of the processing power, memory and bandwidth of a very powerful Dual Xeon Quad Core server) that provide you with your choice of operating system and guaranteed resources making VPS a great choice when graduating from shared hosting. Choose Superb.net for VPS Hosting and we provide you with the robust resources of a dedicated server at an affordable price. Administrative access to your virtual private server allows you the freedom to run more resource intensive applications than shared hosting can handle, offers guaranteed performance for processing power, memory and bandwidth; and the convenience of reboots and OS reinstall right from your control panel. Also, the ability to upgrade your plan as your business grows gives you flexibility and is 100% scalable.

Interserver.net is offering Unlimited Space and Domains Web Hosting. First month for only $.01. using Coupon Code: 1cent at checkout.

That's 1 cent for the first months Web hosting. VPS and Cloud: $.01 per VPS Slice. This promotions is for a limited time only.

click banner to open link

HostJury compiles discount web hosting coupons and special offerings by various hosts. As always we 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... And as always, HostJury makes no recommendation or endorsement of providers.   

This is THE BEST hosting coupon that is available for BigRock at the moment.
Applicable to both Linux and Windows web hosting plans.

Use Coupon Code: BR3002 at check out and get 30% off on Web Hosting plus an additional 11% off on Domain Names.

Expired 

click to open link 

This promotions is limited and will end February 28th,  2013.

HostJury compiles discount web hosting coupons and special offerings by various hosts. As always we 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... And as always, HostJury makes no recommendation or endorsement of providers.  

Looking for a way to quickly create your own website?

Then 1&1 MyWebsite is meant for you: Your website is online in a few clicks, and no technical knowledge is required!  With hundreds of industries to choose from, all of which include flexible layouts, customizable images, content and applications relevant to your business. Order the 1&1 MyWebsite Plus package and receive a $20 credit. Credit will be displayed in your shopping cart during your order. Discount reflected on first invoice. Limited time offer. Order now and get your credit!

Click banner to open link in new tab

1&1 Linux Business Hosting Package

Order the 1&1Linux Business Hosting Package and receive a $10 additional credit. Discount reflected on first invoice. Limited time offer. Order now for instant saving! Credit will be displayed in your shopping cart during your order.

Click banner to open link in new tab

1&1 Business Hosting Windows Package

Order the 1&1 Business Hosting Windows Package and receive a $15 additional credit. Discount reflected on first invoice. Limited time offer. Order now for instant saving! Credit will be displayed in your shopping cart during your order.


Click banner to open link in new tab

These promotions are for a limited time and will end March 31, 2013.

HostJury compiles discount web hosting coupons and special offerings by various hosts. As always we 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... And as always, HostJury makes no recommendation or endorsement of providers.  Still saving a few cents is really hot even if the weather in your neck of the woods isn't! 

Super Bowl weekend is about to kick off and along with the pigskin frenzy, the Department of Homeland Security will be playing its own game. The work of replacing numerous website homepages with the now familiar DHS seizure notices, (some for legal reasons, and others for.. well because they can), is fast becoming synonymous with the sporting event. Many have countered these actions by utilizing offshore web hosting for their websites as well as boycotting top-level US domains (TLD) extensions.

Offshore web hosting has offered some protection to those concerned about prying eyes, but even it has seen a continual erosion and diminished benefit to its product offering. Kim Dotcom’s Mega, along with encryption, touted the exclusive use of offshore web hosting as a marketing carrot. Yet despite Dotcom’s flamboyant and flippant attitude towards Hollywood and it “agents”, Mega is now coming under increasing scrutiny from the interwebs for taking down links to legal content.. a move seen as caving into pressures from American interests.

A law being drafted by the Russian Ministry of Culture may now affect copyright takedowns in what has long been considered a offshore hosting meca. The proposed law would require websites and their web host to execute takedowns within 24 hours under penalty of cash fines, 90 day suspensions and even server confiscations for failure to meet the deadlines.

Under current laws, website operators and web hosts are required to remove allegedly infringing content once they receive a properly formatted “good faith” complaint, but enforcement has been seen as lax. The amendments to the current legislation will give website operators a day to remove or block content with web hosts given an extra day in the event they have to discuss the takedown request with the websites they host. Copies of the allegedly infringing files along with the uploader’s personal details will be required to be provided to authorities and/or copyright holders.

The government is suggesting fines of 3,000 rubles ($100) for individuals, increasing to a maximum of 500,000 rubles ($16,630) for businesses. Sanctions could also include business suspensions and confiscation of servers.

The law will come into effect in less than 90 days.

Password strength is measured by the effectiveness of a password in resisting guessing and brute-force attacks. In its usual form, it estimates how many trials an attacker who does not have direct access to the password would need, on average, to guess it correctly. The strength of a password is a function of length, complexity, and unpredictability.

While using strong passwords does lowers the overall risk of a security breach, strong passwords do not replace the need for other effective security controls. As has been seen with some notable breaches, impersonating the password owner using social engineers has also been an effective way to circumvent security.

Google's 2-step verification can also be effective as it requires you to have access to your phone, as well as your username and password, when you sign in. This means that if someone steals or guesses your password, the potential hijacker still can’t sign in to your account because they don’t have your phone. LastPass, WordPress, Dropbox, Amazon Web Services, Drupal, Stripe, and DreamHost can be set up using 2-step verification. 

Big Brain Global Networks, a privately owned division of Big Brain LLC, announced that it is now offering OpenVZ virtual machines in the United Kingdom (UK). Responding to the increasing client demand, earlier this year, Big Brain Global officially established a presence in a leading data center in London. Brian Smith, President of Big Brain Global Networks, explains that “the decision was made for the convenience of our clients. We have a good number of them located in the UK and the surrounding region that are now hosted in Herndon, Virginia, and in Dallas, Texas, so we decided to make our services more accessible to them.” This international expansion strategically aligns with Big Brain Global’s strategy, which centers on increasing their international footprint in the managed IT services field.

“The expansion helps us offer more geographically diverse locations, which translates into improved speeds and service to all clients,” said Mr. Smith. “The UK facility now offers another convenient site for our current and prospective clients, adding to our growing list of existing sites in North Carolina, Virginia, and Texas.” Smith also hinted at the potential of acquiring additional international and domestic locations in near the future, in addition to expanding the cloud infrastructure service offering. Services in the UK are available starting today. Read Big Brain reviews.

——————

About Big Brain Global. Big Brain Global is a privately owned division of Big Brain LLC, the industry’s premier provider of commercial and consumer managed IT services. A carefully assembled team of business and IT experts deliver top-quality services on seller, Managed and Un-managed Virtual Environments, Dedicated Servers, and Colocation opportunities. With over a decade of industry experience, Big Brain’s certified staff is equipped with the analytical expertise and practical knowledge necessary to deliver network stability and business continuity.

At New Year, people are always pledging to try harder and do better. Yet for most the resolutions are short lived, and life soon returns to the drudgery of normal. Henry Ford knew many failures yet he said “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently”.  Many web hosting companies also resolve to try harder and do better. But success is not final, nor is failure fatal. Rather it is the courage to continue that counts.  New years is also a time to reflect and remember past acquaintances.  The HostJury dead pool is a memorial of sorts.. for those web hosts who pass!

Cheap Website Hosting

Maybe it’s just the name of this web host, but an old adage comes to mind. You can have good, fast, or cheap. Pick two. The company described itself as Cheap Website Hosting website hosting plans designed with premium features at affordable prices.
Maybe fast wasn’t even an option. The privacy whois is enabled on the domain. Never a good sign with a web hosting company.

Barber-Hosting

This one is not technically dead. It’s merely “undergoing a lot of changes”. Like a caterpillar morphing into a butterfly, the reincarnated Barber-Hosting will be a new company sporting a new name. An amazing IT company dedicated.. to you. 

Stay tuned. Barber-hosting is expected to rebirth in 51 weeks, 23 hours, 50 minutes, and 33 seconds. (at the time of writing)

cPanelHosting

cPanelHosting team consisted of a well rounded group of individuals that shared the same passion for web hosting and always delivered quality services at the lowest possible price. Cpanelhosting.com was established more than a decade ago in Florida before moving to Ohio where cPanelHosting now reside...

Actually the the HostJury dead-pool is a virtual Hades that looks nothing like the State of Ohio although some argumentative types may feel otherwise.

DJ-Hosting

dj-hosting.co.uk should not be confused with D-J Hosting dot com or D-J Hosting dot net. How about DJ Hosting dot net.  Note to domain squatters everywhere: The domain dj-hosting.co.uk is now available to register

720Leap

The people at 720Leap  were ready to launch out with a whole new 720Leap. The same great company, the same great people, a whole new look! Not sure the new look will attract the right clientele
 

C I Host

Where does one even start with C I Host...

A few years back, C I Host had their collocation facility situated in a less than ideal part of Chicago. After a period of extended downtime they finally came clean and admitted the servers were taken in a robbery... again! At the time, management argued that people were erroneously claiming that this was the fourth robbery at their facility. A spokesperson for the company used media sources to clarify that C I Host had only been robbed twice. The other two occasions had been break and enters. Splitting hairs some may say, and many clients did so with their feet. They sought solace with other web hosts.

In 2009, C I Host announced it had sold its shared web hosting business to X7 Hosting,  a web hosting provider operated by Hostopia.  According to the press release, the sale allowed CI Host and its sidekick Cassiopeia Internet to “focus on their managed, dedicated and collocation hosting for their mid and large market enterprise customers while ensuring improved services for the accounts to be acquired by X7 Hosting.”

Then in 2010 Cassiopeia Internet announced it was launching the Constellate brand to connect dedicated server, collocation and managed services customers in the Dallas region and beyond.

In 2013, C I Host, Cassiopeia Internet, and Constellate are no longer resolving. Many could argue this is a sign of progress.

dotNet-host

HostJury wrote about this last May, but in summary, dotNet-Host got hacked, clients lost data, and the monies paid in advance for web hosting. Along with the anxiety, dotNet-host
clients faced a number of obstacles to regain control of their domain names.  While the dotNet-host domain does still resolve to a server error page, it is unlikely they will be back. The privacy who-is is enabled on the domain. Never a good sign with a web hosting company.

Those unfortunate enough to be clients, yearn for dotNet-host to have a special place in HostJury Hades.

Senta Hosting

Senta Hosting first opened its doors in October 2011. Their objective, to provide cheap yet reliable hosting to users who do not want to, or cannot afford the cost of website hosting.

Not exactly a great business model unless you're independently wealthy.

Lush Technologies

Marketed as a green company promising “Lush's efficiency strategy helps customers lower their carbon footprints” ... to zero. Like Lush's rating on HostJury for uptime and support!

Lush Tech resolves to a parked page courtesy of GoDaddy.

Upscale Host

The Upscale dedicated server provider that offered economical servers with large bandwidth allotment along with great technical support from Canada no longer has a website. It’s never promising when a tech company takes down their website and enables the privacy whois on their domain.

TotalwebHQ

Resolving to a parked landing page is a pretty good indication that the web hosting company is in transition. Move along as there’s nothing left to see here.

Wicks Hosting

Another parked page for the domain!

Where you find yourself tomorrow is a function of the decisions and actions you take today. As the list of defunct web hosting companies attest: Choose wisely! 

A media report of a Chinese man pleading guilty to selling more than $100m (£62m) worth of pirated software raises the question "what type of web hosting would a person utilize for such a ploy"... 

Background

The more than 2,000 pirated software titles were stolen from 200 manufacturers and were sold between 2008-2011 for a fraction of their retail prices. Xiang Li was arrested in June 2011 in Saipan during an undercover sting operation. The software included Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and Rockwell Automation products and was sold to 325 buyers hailing from 28 US states and more than 60 countries. The buyers included a Nasa engineer as well as military contractors, students, inventors, and engineers.

The pirated programmes were allegedly transferred to customers via Gmail, and payment was collected through a various payment processors. The software was said to be sold for as little as $20 to up to $1,200. The retail value of the products were much higher, ranging from several hundred dollars to more than one million dollars apiece, according to US officials.

The indictment (PDF from Wired) identifies numerous instances of Li and co-defendant Chun Yan Li activities. Citations include selling a copy of "An soft Designer 3.5" , retail value $41,000 to a U.S. customer for $40.  Another, a US customer copped an even bigger bargain with a copy of "Agilent Advanced Design System 2008".  The product had an estimated retail value of $229,000... heavily discounted to $60!

The scam came to light after one US manufacturer discovered their software was being sold on Xiang Li website. Li has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit criminal copyright violations and wire fraud.

"I want to tell the court that what I did was wrong and illegal and I want to say I'm sorry," Mr Li told district judge Leonard Stark. It is said that Li disputed the retail value of the software he stole and sold. Li net was slightly in excess of $60,000 in sales revenue according to the indictment.

Not exactly a candidate for a business major!

The whois on the web hosting

Domain tools shows that "lixiang" owns about 2,428 other domains and there are 18 other domains associated with the email address [email protected]

Crack99.com  (now that’s a cool domain name!)

The domain was first registered in 2005 and lapsed in 2007. Crack99 was registered again in February of 2008 by Xiang Li using his own name. (edititor's thought.. Maybe it’s just certain web hosts that are inclined to use aliases!)

Domain expires 2013-02-10

cad100.net

Li using his own name and email address registered cad100.net in November of 2007. The domain was registered using domain registrar Xin Net , and again Li chose not to enable privacy protection. The domain expired in November of 2012 (there’s one for the domain squatters!)

During the relevant time period, November 17, 2007 until taken down on June 12 2011, cad100.net used only one company, Gzidc.com a.k.a. Guangdong Jin Wanbang Technology Investment Co., Ltd., as a web hosting provider.

dongle-crack-download.com

The record is incomplete but looks to be much of the same.. registered in 2008 and Gzidc.com as the web hosting provider.

The transparency of Li’s actions stagger the imagination and begs the question of his naivety. Also shocking,.. during the course of this investigation the undercover agents "relied on the assistance of online translation tools”. Oh great!

Footnote:

The trial of the Nasa engineer who bought the software.. it's ongoing! 

It would appear that the Canadian government is now funding business web hosting through a program that aims to improve Canada’s competitive position in the technology sector... by providing taxpayer subsidized cloud web hosting. 

The Digital Accelerator for Innovation and Research (DAIR) program is offered by CANARIE, operator of Canada’s Advanced Research and Innovation Network, in partnership with two other leading technology organizations, Compute Canada, and Cybera.

Jim Roche, President and CEO of CANARIE states in a media release:

Building or even paying for computing infrastructure can be a huge cost and time impediment for high-tech innovators. The DAIR program effectively removes that hurdle. All Canadian entrepreneurs should think about how this rapid access to low-cost cloud computing can help them improve their businesses.

The program is designed to help entrepreneurs develop and test new products without prohibitive product development costs, so that Canadian companies can get a competitive foothold in emerging technology markets. 

Some coerced web hosting reviews perhaps

Dr. Shahzad Khan, President of Gnowit Inc:

“A startup like ours is very sensitive to incurring costs, especially in high-risk R&D activities like moving to the cloud infrastructure. DAIR enabled us to experiment with the cloud infrastructure for a fraction of the cost (and at a much lower risk-profile) than if we had used one of the commercial offerings -- indeed, we may never have had the incentive to consider this without the DAIR program -- which would have limited our growth significantly.” 

Dr. David Poellhuber, COO of ZEROSPAM Security Inc., points out that it’s vitally important for tech entrepreneurs to keep pace with emerging technologies.

“There is an important shift in our market to cloud-based solution as organizations realize the hidden costs of software and appliance-based solutions. I wish I had known this program existed before.”

Also included on the list of users who started on the pilot and continue to use and benefit from DAIR was ProjectWhitecard.com. 

Count me in.. Not so fast 

Companies need to apply to the program through an online form, outlining the purpose and scope of the product they are developing, as well as the scale of resources being requested, such as data requirements and number of virtual machines.

The use of the DAIR program is limited to one year. Users may request up to four “cores” at no cost for that year. A core is an independent central processing unit (aka CPU)  that can read and execute program instructions. Additional cores are available at $100 each for the year.

CANARIE, along with Cybera and Compute Canada in the past have focused their energies strengthening the digital infrastructure of Canada’s research and education communities. Canarie majority of funding is provided by the Government of Canada. 

So the low down.. 

Canarie.ca resides on a dedicated server in Ottawa Canada. The GTmetrixs performance report for its very simple canarie.ca landing page (link will open in new window. Report shows less than 25 requests), found a very slow page load speed of over a second and half. Tests of the French, and English versions of the canarie.ca homepage returned similar results with even more painfully slow page load speeds. Three of the five ‘F’ shown in the report stemmed from server related issues.

The Cybera.ca domain is hosted on a dedicated server in Alberta Canada

Computecanada.ca, hosted on a dedicated server in Quebec, churned out an error when tested using GTmetrix.

Analysis Error

We detected an issue when verifying this site's certificate.

Oh great. moving on.

Gnowit.com is on a dedicated server with iWeb in Montreal. While its website did return a rather mediocre performance report, of the seven fails, only one was related to the server.

It may be ironic that Canada has been trying unsuccessfully to pass anti-spam legislation for years. ZEROSPAM.ca .. the screenshot says it all.

Project Whitecard is listed as an advocate of DAIR discount web hosting but it website reside on A2 Hosting nameservers in Ann Arbor Michigan. Although projectwhitecard.com isn't breaking any records for speed, its shortcoming are not server related issues.

The Digital Accelerator for Innovation and Research program goal is to support hundreds of projects across Canada over the next three years. The moral of the story.. saving a few bucks on web hosting will cost you in the end, and certainly will not give your project a competitive edge in the technology sector!