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The Dallas Cowboys are having a hard season. Not only has the team begun with a dismal record of 1 win versus 7 losses, they have had to dismiss their head coach Wade Phillips which will no doubt disrupt any sense of continuity the team had.

To add insult to injury, the team organization apparently ‘forgot’ to renew the Cowboys domain name for the team’s official site: www.dallascowboys.com. According to the publicly available whois records, the domain name was originally registered on November 3, 1995 to the registrant, ‘Dallas Cowboys Football Club, Ltd’. According to the Dallas Morning News, the specific email address administrative contact was for Jerry Jones Jr., son of owner Jerry Jones and executive vice president and chief sales and marketing officer for the team.

You can see the holding page that was up until Tuesday November 9, 2010 below:

After the calamity, the domain was showing as being registered through November 2, 2020. Maybe they should set up a reminder on the team calendar or something…

Here is some advice from companies that understand renewing domains.
UK domain name registrar and dedicated server provider 34SP.com has tens of thousands of domains under management after a decade of domain registrations. The technical staff with the firm offered up an important piece of advice for securing your domain: make sure your email contacts for the accounts are up to date. Domains are tied to email addresses of the registrants, and notifications of expiration and renewal are sent through these email addesses as well. If your email connected with the domain registration isn’t reachable – then you will have problems renewing.

Lou Honick is CEO at HostMerchantServices and has helped thousands of domain registrants. Mr. Honick states, ”Your domain name is the most important piece of online property you own. Business owners should not take chances and not rely on remembering to renew yearly. Even if your registrar offers auto-renewal, there are many things that can go wrong, like credit card expiration, or a new credit card number from a lost or stolen card. You can and should renew your domain for the maximum time possible. It is a small investment for peace of mind and the prevention of embarrassing mishaps.”

From Web Host Blog

I have read so many articles on how Ellison’s grab of former HP CEO Hurd and latest round of insults is a none too subtle jab at HP letting them know in the words of a famous cartoon duck, “This means war!”

Well golly gee commentators you think HP didn’t know this as soon as Oracle snatched up Hurd? Which brings me to a great article written by Rob Enderle at TechNewsWorld (”HP: Finally Some Heroics in a Corporate Boardroom“). He is pretty much saying what I have been thinking… which is kind of freaky. Let me explain. No, that will take too long. Let me sum up.

Oracle goes for blood, they always have, always will. Probably the only thing I actually like about them honestly, but perhaps another time on that. The second Oracle began making overtures towards Hurd, which was not long after Larry Ellison basically called HP idiots for firing Hurd, HP understood that there would be something ugly between them and Oracle.

Which defined their CEO choice. Despite of what you might have read in other articles, Leo Apotheker (former CEO of SAP for almost 20 years) is not a failure. Oracle has a history of killing companies such as PeopleSoft and they are highly effective at it. Despite that SAP still continues to do business. Sure they are not an absolute dynamo running Oracle under the ground, but I challenge any CEO to do a better job at handling the competition from Oracle like Apotheker did.

And now, after investing a large part of his life in SAP, he is jobless. He’s pissed and that anger is directed at Oracle. If my company was in a war against Oracle, I don’t think there is a better choice than Apotheker. But then again that’s just me.

From Web Host Blog

Sources have recently announced that Hewlett-Packard has killed off Slate, the much anticipated Windows 7 tablet computer.

I have said it before and I shall do so again. I am not an Apple user. However, I cannot help but marvel at the skill of their brush when it comes to building user interfaces as well as their marketing precision in creating niches and dominating them. I personally applaud Steve Jobs’ letter on why Apple will not accept Flash. I thought it provided excellent reasons all of which I agree with. However, the hardcore, nigh militaristic, means of 4th gen iPhone retribution is one of the largest fiascoes I have bared witness to in a long time.

On a very small level, I like Flash. I think it greatly helps smaller development teams achieve high levels of interactivity, if used properly. Unfortunately, I rarely see Flash used properly. Even with simple things like ads, I see Flash crashing browsers, slowing down performance, bugging or breaking pages, taking up huge amounts of system resources, etc. The problem with Flash is you don’t have to be technically proficient at it to use it. Heck, you could never code a day in your life and still use it. This is one of the great parts of Flash, but novices rarely check to ensure their code is concise, if it uses only the objects that is required for the Flash project, if it optimized, if it will work fine on all browsers, etc. And Jobs also made it clear that they have done wonders without Flash, so quite honestly, why would they need it?

Now the two steps back. I am not going to rehash everything here because the story has been beaten to death. I would say look at what Renay San Miguel said about it in his article Lost iPhone Brings Scoundrels, Sharks, and Shysters out of the Woodwork.

I don’t consider the issue a First Amendment issue. Gizmodo’s first responsibility is to their audience. They have a history of finding information on new gadgets and telling the world about it. This sort of thing is not only expected, but it’s the sole reason why they are successful. They meet some guy who has new technology and was willing to give them a first look for a small price. Again this is standard stuff in the world of tech journalism. It really is no different than an investigative reporter bribing people to find sources for the deplorable conditions found in large meat processing plants. Sorry, forgot, it’s not a bribe, it’s a gift.

If the device was so amazing that it required law enforcement to break down a door and raid a home office, then what the heck was it doing in some engineer’s hands outside of the company office? Why was it taken into a bar? Why isn’t the engineer being charged with some sort of civil lawsuit for negligence or even industrial sabotage? The reaction to what Gizmodo did is the type of reaction you would see in a bomb making case, not in something as simple as getting a scoop on a story.

I think the thing that gets me the most out of all of this is that it shows two things about Apple. One, it shows on some level that they have no class. This could have been handled quite easily in another way instead of having the REACT Gestapo brought in. Two, it shows that while Apple is marketing savvy in more traditional venues they have a lot to learn about exploiting bad moments. If I ran up Apple’s marketing team I would have seen this as the perfect opportunity for huge amounts of high grade PR. An opportunity like this could have easily given Apple several extremely well placed evangelists, a show that Apple is a class act (which 60/40 they are already), free marketing, and community involvement.

Instead, their overreacting to this situation has cast doubts as to the glamour that was Apple and has wrought the possibility that maybe Apple is the next Evil Empire.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock somewhere you probably heard about that volcano in
Iceland that has wreaked havoc with air travel across Europe since mid-April when it erupted. It happens to be called the Eyjafjallajokull volcano (please don’t ask me to pronounce that though). If you haven’t seen photos of the eruption, you should definitely check out these photos of the volcano. It seems that the ash can enter the intakes of jet engines and cause them to fail. In checking up with a few hosting companies across the pond I heard from them that the volcano actually had a significant effect on website hosting in Europe as well. Here are the reasons why.

Reason Number 1: People aren’t buying web hosting when they are stuck in an airport in another country or city for a week.

Although you might not think that the number of travelers impacted by the complete shutdown of airline travel across the whole of northern Europe would be include a large subset of hosting buyers, the numbers argue otherwise. According to published reports, a total of more than 100,000 flights were canceled outright and the affected airlines are on track to lose more than $2 billion. So that’s 100,00 flights with a few hundred passengers each – you do the math. Therefore, none of those people were buying web hosting during that period, which generally lowered hosting sales for the time of the flight cancellations.

Reason Number 2: Businesses were scrambling to get their people back in their own city.

Compounding the problem of actual travelers
seeking transportation was the issue that businesses now had key people out of the office for overly-extended and unplanned periods. Those left in the office were also often involved in helping arrange accommodations or alternate travel for the stuck passengers. That means that they too weren’t conducting business as usual. This further reduced the web hosting buyers pool during the airline shutdown.

Reason Number 3: Web hosting companies buy servers, routers and switches that are flown in from other cities.

Web hosting companies were also impacted by the disruption in the supply chain for key equipment needed in fast growing hosting environments. For example, Dell has a large manufacturing facility in Ireland. Those servers are generally flown around the UK and into northern Europe as well. It wasn’t just commercial aircraft that were grounded – cargo planes were also halted. UK website hosting company 34SP.com purchases part of its inventory from the Dell factory. The company had recently stocked up on server inventory, but was monitoring the situation in case a need arose for alternative server supplies. While the flight disruptions didn’t last quite long enough to put the true hurt on hosting operations, or to cause prices to go up for available servers – a few more days or weeks of no inventory would have cost hosting firms real money. The Wall Street Journal wrote a piece about these supply chain disruptions for small businesses as well.

In the end, things returned to normal fairly quickly. This is great news for travelers and also the web hosting companies in Europe. Don’t get complacent though – the Eyjafjallajokull volcano could easily spring back to full eruption at any time. Plus, there are many other volcanoes out there that can produce world changing eruptions at any moment. Here’s a photo summary of a few of these actively erupting or recently erupting volcanoes on our planet. You may want to stock up on a few extra servers if you live near any of these volcanoes – just in case.

I am getting tired of all the crying over the court decision that said the FCC doesn’t have the authority to enforce net neutrality. Gee golly, I didn’t see this coming a mile away.

Heck think about this for one second. Congress couldn’t pass net neutrality through so the FCC figures what the hell let’s give it a shot. Does anyone see the fact that this was designed to circumvent actual elected officials and disenfranchise the citizens of the US (regardless if it is a good idea or not). The fact that what they did was unconstitutional should not come as a surprise. The FCC does not have legislative powers. They cannot create laws cause they feel like it. Nor can they enforce rules that they themselves come up with. The authority they have comes from what Congress gives them not from what they decide to give themselves. I am sure in hindsight people will breathe a sigh of relief.

I am also tired of hearing people say this is a setback. This whole thing was never a step forward for net neutrality so its failure is not a step back. If you want net neutrality petition Congress. Until that time however do what is your right to do, SUE! This isn’t a case of McDonalds making hot coffee and oops I dropped it on my lap cause I have the muscular control of an addled toddler (probably from eating too much fast food in the first place). No, instead it is the precise reason why litigation was created.

If your ISP is throttling your connection, or banning you from use either do what Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. did and boycott or instead file a class action lawsuit. We have ways for punishing moronic companies already in place. Both require you to act.

Now if you would rather sit around and cry about how some big bad company is screwing you over, by all means do so. If you do not wish to act and use the thousands of laws already in place to empower you over businesses, then by all means do so. But don’t expect me to listen or care.

I have a deep respect for Apple products in that their ease of use and design is exceptional. When I look at the iPad I see an idea, not yet fully formed, but it is that idea that will become a game changing device for business. The most exciting software programs these days are mainly cloud applications, hosted applications, remote applications, etc. in short, vendors are pushing mobile.

The other day  I talked about how mobile devices have not forced a change in business culture. This I think is where the iPad comes in. I saw this change happen a long time ago with CD-Roms and a game called Myst. CD-Roms required a vehicle to become accepted by the computer using crowd and they found it in games like Myst and 7th Guest. What’s funny to me is that it not the iPad per se that is catalyst.

Like the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe centuries ago, the problem was not the rats. The rats were merely the carriers of the fleas. What makes the iPad viral (see what I did there… yeah ok it was a bad segue) is not the iPad, but the fact that it carries the Apps Store. It is the Apps Store that will show mobile PC users exactly what they can do with their devices. For instance, PocketCloud. The ability for a person to access their computer from their iPad (or iPhone, if you have masochistic tendencies as far as operating a huge virtual desktop using a tiny little monitor) is incredible.

When you factor in some of the changes iPhone OS 4 will bring to the table, the impact iPad will have on the market will increase. Now I don’t think iPad will create a market as vast and powerful as the iPhone or the iPod have. I do however strongly believe that the iPad will showcase why we have mobile computers and what sort of applications were meant to run on them. And this is why iPad is a game changer. Not because of its feature list (or depending on who you talk to the lack thereof), but on its ability to define a market, which will only get more and more pronounced as the weeks go by.

Parallels Summit has been a really good venue for the hosting industry. A fact that only increases each year. Looking over the speaker list I was surprised to see a few Google speakers, considering some of the comments Serguei Beloussov (CEO of Parallels) has said about them in the past. Be that as it may, [...]

When it comes to load balancers, KEMP Technologies has prided themselves on providing the lowest cost solution while still providing high-end quality. In fact, KEMP is still the only company that puts the functionality of a high end balancer into the lower price points. However, other companies have been lowering their prices, so even though [...]

Yesterday we discussed the problems associated with tech specs and web hosting. The main problem with tech specs in web hosting is the vast bulk of the customer has little to no knowledge of anything found in the technical specifications and has no desire to learn them.
When we talked about the difficulty of selling Web [...]