We're sending the February issue of the WHIR magazine off to press next week, and along with this issue we're including a supplemental booklet that will help you to make plans to get the most from the vast selection of conferences scheduled for 2007.

Our guide includes a calendar listing details for more than 70 Web hosting related events scheduled for 2007. Some of them you're probably familiar with. Some of them may surprise you.

For some of the conference schedule's most well-traveled spots, we provide tips on some of the best places to stay, ways to stay connected while traveling, and places to meet up while attending events.

Smaller Web hosts hoping to get more out of attending Web hosting events will make good use of features offering expert advice on how best to plan your trip to make sure you make contact with the other attendees that might best benefit your business - too many hosts leave the kinds of encounters that make or break these events up to chance.

There's always plenty to take in at a conference, but small hosts underestimate the opportunities for them to capture some of the spotlight, even if they don't have the budget to set up a booth. For these hosts, we've included a guide to getting noticed on a budget.

So when the February WHIR magazine arrives in your mailbox, pull out the guide and start planning out your conference attendance for the year.

I'll be at many of this year's big hosting events myself, And I'm looking forward to making connections with more of the many Web hosts out there.

Earlier today I spoke to Gabriel Murphy, who recently acquired - and became CEO of - Web hosting provider Aplus.Net. The interview will appear in the upcoming issue of the WHIR magazine (and eventually on the Web site), but there were a few interesting points I thought it would be worth sharing right away.

As you may know, Murphy founded Communitech many years ago, and at one point owned iNet Interactive, which operated HostingTech and WebhostingTalk.

We talked about his recent investment in Aplus.Net, and his plans for making that company into a force, in terms of technology and scale, in the Web hosting business.

A big part of that plan to add technology and scale involves acquisition. And he hinted at some upcoming news to that effect.

Murphy and Catalyst Investors bought Aplus.Net quietly in July of 2006, but didn't officially announce the deal until December. Part of the reason for that, he says, was that they were waiting to announce another acquisition at the same time.

He said the new deal is about 45 days away. And about that deal, he said this:

"We're not buying $5 million to $10 million hosting companies. Were looking to scale. We're looking at substantial Web hosting firms in terms of size."

You heard it here first (I think): expect Murphy and Catalyst to announce another "substantial" acquisition about a month from now.

Tags: gabriel murphy, aplus.net

On Friday, a colleague sent me a link to the Silicon.com weekly round-up podcast, the recently-introduced audio supplement to the site's long-running round-up feature.

(You can find the podcast in MP3 format here.)

The show itself is pretty amusing - a look at mainstream technology news with the same sort of flippant wit that pervades the Silicon.com site. They take a few stabs at the Windows Vista UK launch (apparently some stores stayed open overnight to facilitate a mostly-ignored midnight launch), an event that apparently featured the ultra-palatable sounds of British band The Feeling

(I hadn't heard of them until now. A sort of Supertramp-by-way-of-Coldplay mixture so blandly agreeable that it might have actually been written for tv commercials. Their myspace page loads one audio track and two music videos simultaneously upon opening, unleashing a mind-bending onslaught of dull, dull sounds.)

This leads the show's hosts to criticize "dodgy celebrity endorsement for technology products," a trend that includes the arrival of Apple's mac-vs-PC television ads in the UK, featuring British comedians Mitchell and Webb, who are apparently also famous. (Incidentally, those ads inspired this rant)

Finally, the hosts arrive at what they deem the most egregious of these "dodgy celebrity endorsements," and the real reason for my post, an appearance by reality-blurring character and actor Mr. T in a promotional video for Hitachi Data Systems.

They play audio clips from the video during the podcast, but the video is on YouTube, and it appears to be just a few weeks old.

I say "promotional video" because at three-and-a-half minutes, it's a little long for a traditional television spot. And its story is a little dense for a simple commercial. It's probably something else.

A group of IT zombies listens as a consultant insists "virtualization belongs in the network, never in the controller."

Fortunately, the T bursts through the wall, puts a stop to the consultant's jibber jabber, declares himself "the T in IT" and explains to the zombies that intelligence in the network is for suckas. Finally, he virtualizes them in a process that involves shooting lightning from his gold chain.

Pretty magical.

Highlight: "You know, you've got a lot of mouth. And I've got a lot of fist for your mouth."

The folks in the podcast seem to think it's pretty silly, which it is, and that it's some sort of embarrassing failure, which it isn't.

Sure, high-tech marketing jargon is even more jarring when it's being barked by B.A. Baracus. But it's also a hell of a lot more engaging. This was never meant to be a slick, polished production. It's meant to be funny, and it is.

I'm not sure if there's any standard by which the clip's success can be measured, as it was probably meant for internal use. But on YouTube, it has been viewed rougly 11,000 times in two weeks. And I definitely enjoyed myself.

Tags: hitachi data systems, mr. t

We're into production for the February issue of the WHIR magazine, which should start hitting mailboxes in about three weeks, so I thought now would be a good time for a bit of a preview of what to expect from the upcoming issue.

Incidentally, if you're not familiar with our print magazine, I encourage you to visit the magazine section of the site, where you can read the online edition of our October issue, subscribe for free (in North America) or buy back issues.

We've had some fun with, and some positive feedback from, past WHIR issues that have focused intently on a specific theme, our "Ten Turning Points" or "Hosting from the Beach" issues, for example. And with this issue, we've attempted to produce not just a themed issue, but a useful handbook: The Web Host's Marketing Toolbox.

In a series of how-to guides, we'll attempt to show Web hosts, particularly the smaller reseller shops that have minimal marketing staffs or budgets, how they can improve their online marketing efforts.

Some of the highlights:

A user's guide to adCenter: longtime WHIR contributor Wayne Epperson explores some of the finer points of Microsoft's recently-launched pay-per-click service, and how it can be incorporated into existing PPC spending.

Site design for SEO: WHIR regular Dennis McCafferty offers an overview of design techniques that can help Web hosting providers optimize their Web sites for search engine optimization, improving their rankings and increasing organic traffic.

Site design for sales: WHIR blogger Paul Hirsh examines some of the techniques Web hosts can use to make their sites more effective at turning visitors into customers, streamlining the checkout process and presenting a unified vision.

Banner and directory advertising: regular contributor Esther Bauer examines some of the vast potential held for Web hosts in the sometimes-ignored world of banner advertising and directory listings. (Of course I endorse it, however I can also testify to its effectiveness.)

Something I really expect this issue to excel at is remaining relevant to readers after the first time they read it. I absolutely think it will be something they keep on their desk as they re-examine their marketing efforts.

And I certainly hope that doing so helps them to improve conversions, increase signups and expand their businesses. That would be nice, right?

Tags: WHIR Magazine, Marketing, Pay-Per-Click, AdSense, SEO

I spent perhaps too much time puzzling over how to best combine the words "diversify" and "virtualization" in crafting this post, when the result of that work amounts to maybe a halfhearted (and mostly beside-the-point) chuckle.

Divirtualsify. Divirtualizify. Divirtualizationification.

You see what I mean.

SWsoft issued an announcement about its successes in 2006 this week, and, being as one of those successes was "MacWorld Readers' Choice Award and the first non-Apple product to win - Parallels Desktop," the company decided it was the right time to publicly discuss its control of the software company Parallels.

This may have been fairly well known already. I'm not sure. But it certainly wasn't officially widely known, as is now the case.

Parallels produces desktop virtualization software that, while compatible with Linux and Windows, is most popular among MacOS users (hence the MacWorld award). The company doesn't dabble in server virtualization just yet, though something is apparently in the works. The Parallels Desktop for Mac software (the award winner) enables Mac users to run Windows on their Apple machines.

SWsoft acquired the company about three years ago, an interesting diversification of SWsoft's bread-and-butter business, but the company has been operating pretty independent of SWsoft's other businesses since then.

This week, SWsoft CEO Serguei Beloussov and Parallels CEO Nick Dobrovolskiy sent a letter to employees explaining the choice to reveal the relationship, saying that the companies would remain separate and maintain their own identities. But we may begin to see the companies working together.

The letter discussed the breadth of solutions offered by the two companies in combination:

"The combination of SWsoft and Parallels means that we are the only company in the world to provide a complete suite of virtualization and automation software that includes operating system virtualization (Virtuozzo), desktop virtual machine technology (Parallels) and our range of automation solutions across all major computing platforms including Windows, Linux, MacOS and beyond."

And it mentioned some plans for future products:

"SWsoft and Parallels will be announcing more products that will enhance the choices available to IT professionals, developers and consumers. These will include a server edition of Parallels, as well as tools for managing multiple virtualization technologies - whether from SWsoft, Parallels or other vendors - with one user interface."

Tags: swsoft, parallels, virtualization

Never a dull moment in Sealand, it seems.

The Times reported this week that the 6,000 square-foot abandoned gun tower located in Europe's North Sea, occupied and declared sovereign in 1967 by British war veteran Roy Bates - was for sale.

No doubt it's the nature of the thing that invites dramatic results. A lawless "nation" the size of a very large house located outside the jurisdiction of any larger, more established country is the kind of thing that gets outlaws salivating over the devious possibilities.

One possibility was the "offshore data haven," which was realized by the company HavenCo in 2000. HavenCo set up a colocation facility on the platform, suggesting that international copyright and intellectual property laws did not apply, or were not enforced, in this particular country. Legal problems, uptime issues and other complications plagued the company, which appeared by 2003 to be coming apart.

HavenCo appeared to be in operation as recently as July, when a fire on the platform required one security guard to be rescued by the Royal Air Force. Presumably, he was guarding something.

This morning, BoingBoing.net pointed out that Pirate Bay, a torrent tracking site that, judging by the name, just might be up to some illicit activity of its own, is working on a plan to buy Sealand. It set up the BuySealand.com site, and is offering citizenship to anyone who donates money to the cause.

If it fails to raise the Sealand asking price, Pirate Bay has other plans:

"Plan B: If we do not get enough money required to buy the micronation of Sealand, we will try to buy another small island somwhere and claim it as our own country (prices start from USD 50 000)."

It's probably worth pointing out that the reason Sealand's sovereignty has never really been challenged is the fact that it operates well under the British government's radar. I'm sure in the 60s, letting a crazy man live on an abandoned platform and refer to himself as a "prince" probably seemed a lot easier than, you know, going to get him.

And by the sounds of it, HavenCo was so poorly and unreliably run that it never mounted much of a credible threat to liberty and justice around the world.

I'm sure the day somebody sets up a noticeably illegal operation on Sealand, the British government will pretty quickly demonstrate the extent of Sealand's "sovereignty" (note: the extent is zero).

Anyhow, I'd better spend all these Sealand dollars before the country closes down.

Tags: sealand, havenco, pirate bay

This week, Mark Fontecchio of Techtarget's SearchDataCenter site covered a new data center study by The Boyd Company, a "location consulting" firm that helps businesses pick the sites on which to set up shop.

The study included a list of the best places to build and operate data centers, from among a list of 50 American cities, based on the annual operating costs of a 150,000 square-foot facility staffed by 150 employees. The study focused specifically on the healthcare industry.

Sioux Falls, South Dakota rated the cheapest location to operate a facility, with an annual cost of $16,131,793. New York city ranked the most expensive, at $22,542,097. That's a not-insignificant yearly difference of more than $8 million.

The majority of the most expensive sites, it turns out, are located on the East or West Coasts, while many of the cheapest locations are in states like Indiana, Kentucky and Nebraska. The cost advantages of those locations include salaries (related, no doubt, to a lower cost of living). And the sites are removed from many of the natural disaster and terrorist threats that may exist on the coasts and in major metropolitan areas. The study doesn't appear to have mentioned any of the disadvantages of setting up in the cheaper locations, or the advantages of setting up in the more expensive areas. I'd assume that while their access to real estate and power is more limited, data centers in New York or Silicon Valley have better access to things like bandwidth, skilled workers and leaders of industry.

And, of course, a Web hosting facility is not exactly like a healthcare data center, in that its physical availability to customers, while not necessarily essential, is at least more relevant.

Still, with the power crunch in California, this study may help to identify some of the locations that may see increased data center traffic as Web hosts, and anyone else who operates data centers, seek out new locations in which to set up shop.

Tags: data center, the boyd company

We reported this week that ICANN had taken a second look at a revised proposal for the .xxx domain, submitted by the ICM registry. The domain was struck down in May of 2006 by ICANN, in a 9-5 vote that reversed an earlier endorsement by the governing body.

The ICM Registry's new proposal includes additions to the ICM Registry's efforts to protect children, ensure registrants label content clearly, prohibit spam, prevent certain religious or culturally sensitive names from being registered and donate money to child safety organizations.

The .xxx domain has been in the works for years. And in case you're just getting caught up, we happen to have been paying attention from the start (In 2005, for instance, we published an interview with the VP of the ICM Registry, Jason Hendeles).

I thought perhaps I'd take a shot at summarizing the arguments for, and against, the .xxx domain - a project that has been particularly polarizing.

PRO

The arguments in favor of the .xxx domain generally have to do with its regulatory potential, or the fundamental value of compartmentalizing the Internet along the lines of the .travel or .museum domains.

Obviously, the domain would be a very effective classification for potentially offensive material. Hypothetically, adult material located on the .xxx domain would be much easier to: a) block, if you were a parent or a business owner; b) find, if that were what you were looking for; and c) avoid accidentally stumbling upon while innocently searching for something like "shirtless cowboys."

The specialized domain would, hypothetically again, enable easier regulation over the Internet's adult content, with sites hosted on .xxx domains held to certain professional standards, along the lines of the .mobi or .pro domains. Adult publishers would presumably be legitimized by virtue of their willingness to participate and submit to further regulation.

CON

Interestingly, opposition to the .xxx domain comes from people involved in the pornography business and from conservative Christian groups - two factions more typically found on opposing sides of a given argument.

The creation of an xxx domain would seem to imply a specialized area online for adult content. Of course, profitable, professionally-run adult businesses currently operating on .com domain in perfect compliance with every applicable law would not want (and, presumably, would not be expected) to give up their .com properties and move to the .xxx domain.

Despite the fact that the domain was not necessarily created to contain online pornography, adult publishers fear (and probably rightly so) that the creation of .xxx would inevitably lead to conservative legislators at least trying to legally limit adult content to that domain.

Whatever regulation the .xxx domain registry set out to impose would run into difficulty in accommodating standards of decency, ages of consent and other local variations from around the world. The other danger here is that the knee-jerk "solution" to that problem might be to impose American standards of decency on material hosted in other countries (not to mention the conflict inherent in anything that implies an American control over Internet oversight - a little ironic, considering that the US government's influence is the main reason the .xxx proposal was rejected).

The creation of the .xxx domain, the regulation it would impose, and the separation it would attempt to create would invite many difficult-to-answer questions about what kind of content can be described as "sexually explicit."

For existing adult publishers, of which there is certainly no shortage, the .xxx domain would seem to be short on tangible benefits and long on hassles. In a sense, it's just another domain to register, another property to manage, another channel in which to defend copyrights and another opportunity for cyber squatters.

The folks who object to adult material in general on ethical grounds object to the creation of a domain specifically for adult content because it lends that material a legitimacy they don't believe it should possess.

While the anti-pornography argument made up only a small slice of the overall theoretical objection to the .xxx domain, it was the overwhelming cause for the original rejection of the domain's proposal. Conservative groups like the American Family Association exerted pressure on the US government, which in turn exerted its influence over ICANN.

I'm skeptical whether the re-submitted proposal will have ultimately result in a .xxx domain. After all, the movement that saw the domain rejected in May was driven by an opposition to pornography in general, not by a rejection of the ICM Registry's specific plan for the domain's operation.

I'm also skeptical as to the value of a .xxx domain, as I generally am with sponsored top-level domains. I've never visited a Web address with a .aero extension, for instance. In fact, I couldn't name a single .aero site. But I suppose maybe the airplane business types don't want me nosing around their Web sites anyway.

The people building .xxx Web sites, though, they do want new visitors on their Web sites. It's their bread and butter. Frankly, I just don't see the domain's value.

(As with previous declarations of skepticisim, I'd like to invite anybody who feels they could offer up another pro or con to leave a comment.)

Tags: .xxx domain, icann, icm registry

Ordinarily Isabel covers this sort of thing, but I got a heads-up straight from the horse's mouth, so I thought I'd step on her toes a little with this post.

David Altschul, co-founder of DivShare.com sent me a note advising of the new free file hosting site's launch. According to his email, the service is "a cross between YouSendIt, ImageShack and Flickr."

(He also sent a link to a gallery of screencaps illustrating the site's functions)

The service is designed for uploading and sharing pictures, music, video and whatever other material people are into sending back and forth these days (PDFs, maybe?). It creates thumbnails and image galleries automatically, and it has co-branding features designed specifically for bloggers, enabling them to add their site's name and logo to their file download pages.

Interesting feature: "files stay online forever!"

It would certainly seem that DivShare stands to push into further obsolescence the once-upon-a-time notion of the Web hosting account as online storage for the distribution of files. What can't you distribute online these days through a free blogging account and the ever-expanding range of supplemental services?

So how, exactly, do the folks behind DivShare intend to make money by hosting and distributing my files for free, forever?

According to the "advertise" link on the site, well, with advertising.

"As you may have noticed, there are no ads on the site right now. We'll be putting a few up shortly, but we also promise never to invade your DivShare experience with loud, unstable or otherwise obnoxious ads.

If you're in the business of reaching thousands of diverse web users every day, we'd love to work with you to set up a DivShare campaign."

There's definitely advertising in the site's future. And perhaps a paid version a la Flickr is somewhere down the line. Right now, however, it's free, it works (assuming you can see the DivShare-hosted screencap in this post) and it's one more reason your average small-time Web publisher no longer needs to rely on an ordinary, old-fashioned Web host to store and distribute its files.

Tags: divshare, file storage

Dotster issued a press release today revealing that it has completed the long process of assembling its crack team of nice-looking gals, the "Dotster Dots."

Here at theWHIR, we have dutifully covered the process, in part because of the amusing deviation from the more common day-to-day Web hosting hustle. But don't discount our genuine interest in the fairly bold message of a technology company ascribing to the fairly outdated concept of the "spokesmodel."

Yet, as interested as I was in the project, my overall response to the announcements could generally be summed up as "really? Really?"

Granted, Go Daddy did once famously parlay its work with a bona fide bimbo into some serious mass-media attention. But that seemed from the start like a "lightning doesn't strike twice" kind of circumstance that even Go Daddy has been unsuccessful in recreating (see slide number 6). And Dotster's announcements seemed to indicate that it was going more in the "classy lady" direction.

For whatever reason, I developed the impression that when I actually was able to see these women, I'd be able to "connect the dots," so to speak, and come up with a better understanding of exactly what Dotster aspires to in all of this.

Fortunately, the company's most recent announcement was accompanied by the posting of plenty of fun talent-search stuff, including an apparent collage of the Dots themselves.

Unfortunately, I am left with more questions than before. For instance: do they have actual super powers, or are they just regular action heroes?

I get the feeling Dotster has a sense of humor about the whole thing. At least a little bit. They posted some pretty silly clips from the talent search.

But for me, the question is whether there really is a need on Dotster's staff for six fairly attractive women who don't appear to have any real training or experience relevant to Web hosting, regardless of their ability to drop science.

Dotster is obviously going after a very mass-market Web hosting audience with its MyInternet service - a domain name and Web site package pitched in the strictest layman's terms - which brings me back to the question of how you market Web hosting effectively to people who don't know they want Web hosting.

The problem with Dotster's approach, I think, is that the company isn't giving its customers much credit. Pretty girls and tricky "less than a dollar a day" math may get a consumer's attention, but I doubt it will build a solid foundation for any long-term loyalty.

Consider me skeptical.

Tags: dotster, spokesmodels