HostMDS drops the ball, but can they even dribble?

Clients aren't the only ones left in the dark

Quickly it was found that in fact the owners of the new business did not share the same vision that I personally had, which led to irreconcilable differences, resulting in termination of my employment agreement in October 2008, which of course did not include any form of severance or buyout, I had not even been there 90 days.

- Kevin Moonlight
Source: Inverdigm

After perusing the content further it does mention that the business deal for the Hostingplex acquisition was quick, thorough and almost seemingly without any solid agreements: Kevin seems to be left out in the cold as well, "I did not receive any money and do not hold any equity share in the new company, the sole basis for this decision was that I did not have the resources to continue hostingplex.com to where I was trying to take it, and being acquired by MDS would give me access to the resources to fully execute my vision."

A sad situation, dismal at best. I'm not certain what the future holds for Hostingplex and Vistapages' clients at HostMDS but it looks awfully bleak.

Related hosts:
HostMDS Reviews
Vistapages Reviews
Hostingplex Reviews

Web site owner hosted by ByteHosting Internet Services, LLC should be searching for a new hosting company today after ByteHosting was ordered closed down by a federal judge,  as another major online operation that duped more than one million computer users into buying bogus malware protection using fraudulent ads and false claims viewers' machines contained illegal pornography.

The order against two firms, Innovative Marketing of Belize and ByteHosting Internet Services of Ohio, resulted from a lawsuit filed last week by the Federal Trade Commission.

Recently, another company faced simular actions. Alpha Red chief executive officer James Reed McCreary IV  was sued by Washington state, who accused McCreary of selling "scareware," software that made Windows XP users falsely believe that their registry had become "damaged and corrupted."Alpha Red has recently gone into bankruptcy leaving all their clients scrambling to find new hosts for their sites and hardware

One of the defendants in the ByteHosting action, Kristy Ross of Maryland, spent more than $3 million  starting in October 2004 to advertise products including WinFixer, WinAntivirus, DriveCleaner and ErrorSafe, according to the suit.  The ads produced popup windows that falsely depicted a system scan that invariably found hundreds of pests. Some scareware titles also included a warning that the user's PC "stored numerous items that are dangerous to your reputation" and could result in "accidental or purposeful disclosure of adult materials" and "strong disapproval of your addictions to X+X+X sites." Others fabricated "illegal porn" and displayed "a series of hard-core pornographic pictures," to those viewing the ads.

Innovative Marketing, has its own pending lawsuit in Ontario Canada, against 2 of the defendants Marc and Maurice  D'Souza, alleging millions were skimmed from the IM company. (I'm sure the wisdom of proceeding with this case may be garnering a second look in light of the federal suit)

The order by US District Judge Benson Everett Legg halts the operation through Friday. A hearing is scheduled for the same day to entertain the government's motion for a preliminary injunction, which would remain in place while the lawsuit proceeds. The judge's order also freezes the defendants' assets. An FTC spokeswoman said she wasn't sure how much money that involved, but given the price of the scareware (around $40 per installation) it could easily be in the tens of millions of dollars.

Other defendants named in the lawsuit include: James Reno of Maryland, Sam Jain of California, Daniel Sundin of London, Marc D'Souza of Toronto, and Maurice D'Souza of Ontario.

Clients of ByteHosting can review their services  or review your present host on HostJury

About ByetHosting

Founded in August 1997 as a sole-proprietorship by James Reno, an Amelia, OH Middle School Student, ByteHosting Internet Services has evolved to become a leading Webhosting Solutions provider. ByteHosting has evolved into a full scale webhosting solutions provider and now provides webhosting solutions to companies & personal websites both large and small. We provide all the servers, bandwidth, and provide management services to run almost any application visable on the web. Since the beginning ByteHosting's founder has focused greatly on one thing, Providing Quality Webhosting and Colocation Services & support that you as a customer can trust and rely on.

The web hosting provider Alpha Red Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Wednesday in the Southern District of Texas, claiming more than $10 million in liabilities.

Alpha Red, a hosting provider with two datacenters in Houston that hosts numerous adult-content sites and other high-bandwidth customers, has been in legal trouble in recent months. On Sept. 23, Alpha Red chief executive officer James Reed McCreary IV and the company were sued by Washington state Attorney General Robert McKenna, who accused McCreary of selling "scareware," software that made Windows XP users falsely believe that their registry had become "damaged and corrupted."

The suit claims that through another company he controlled, Branch Software Inc., McCreary sold Registry Cleaner XP software for $39.95 that was marketed by exploiting the Windows Messenger Service with Internet-transmitted messages that made misleading "Critical Error Message!" dialog boxes appear on user computers.

"Contrary to the representation implied by Defendants' message, the user's computer has not already been tested or examined to determine the presence of errors, damage or corruption," the suit states. "Through alarmist language seemingly delivered by a trusted source, Defendants misrepresent the extent to which installing the software is necessary for repair of the computer for proper operation."

The "Critical Error" messages were sent repeatedly to users. McKenna cites one user who allegedly received 214 such dialogs in a 24-hour period. Five causes of action were filed alleging violations of the Computer Spyware Act and unfair and deceptive trade practices.

"We won't tolerate the use of alarmist warnings or deceptive 'free scans' to trick consumers into buying software to fix a problem that doesn't even exist," McKenna said in a press release.

The top 20 debtors in the bankruptcy are owed more than $4.57 million, including $826,000 to the IRS. McCreary owns 82 percent of Alpha Red's common stock, according to the bankruptcy filing.

A Texas state court removed McCreary from management on Oct. 23 and appointed a receiver to run the company, responding to a court action by MegaUpload Ltd., a file-upload site based in Hong Kong that was an Alpha Red customer.

Although a Chapter 11 bankruptcy is designed for companies to reorganize and settle debts to continue operations, the filing includes this statement by receiver Douglas Brickley: "[T]he Receiver deems it to be in the best interests of the Company to file a bankruptcy petition ... for the purposes of winding up the Company's business affairs, liquidating the Company's assets and distributing payment to creditors."

Some Alpha Red customers have been discussing their difficulties with the company for several months on chat forums. Customers who sent servers to Alpha Red facilities in Houston posted that they have been unable to get them back. "The place is locked down and no one answering the phone/mails etc.," one customer complained in October. "Got 10 servers stucked inside and cant do anything."

http://workbench.cadenhead.org/

Everybody is talking about a new start up called CircleofMoms.com.

So you say you've never heard of it. Well neither had I, but with 850,000 uniques hits in 2 months, how could I have just missed it.

Really, with two historic elections, a financial meltdown encompassing the whole of one street, a failed coup d’état of sorts in Canada. Include 2 turkey dinners and a glass of wine at the end of November. Turkey does make you sleepy. Maybe I just missed it.

I couldn't wait to check it out. Even though the subject matter was less than inspiring from my masculine perspective, I am known to be in touch with my softer side. It has been said that I'll make a good wife some day. (I'm still at odds whether that statement is flattering). So I clicked on the link.

850,001 uniques!

It's a site for mothers... and we all love our moms... but it's a site for mothers. Something is sketch.

Checking the stats...

Alexa ranking: Alexa Trend/Rank: 1 Month: 649,962   3 Month: 914,570 (this is not number of hits)

Page Views per Visit: 1 Month: 3.4   3 Month: 3.9 of 945,261

Compete ranking: visitors 132,959         30325.4% (from zero in September)

facebook.com  87.81% (referrals from)

2 viximo.com  3.88% (referrals from)

3 yahoo.com  1.85% (referrals from)

ComScore:    not reported (i.e. under 50k UVs)

Quantcast:    42k US UVs http://www.quantcast.com/circleofmoms.com

Circle of moms facebook app: http://tinyurl.com/6h6y5k

831,413 monthly active users with a total of 98 wall posts and 161 topic posts by a slightly less amount of posters.

Enough stats. Daily I see hosting companies I've never heard of getting fake awards by a nameless panel of judges. I've emailed and called the purveyors of said awards only to have my emails bounce and my call reach temporarily out of service numbers. While trolling forums, I see countless posts asking for people to review their site. (All to raise their unique hits for ad revenue). Now we have respectable news sites misrepresenting the numbers!

I'm not implying that Circle of Moms isn't a great site, with a great idea, and a very qualified and impressive management. but so are sites like momforce.com  or  momtomom.ca  I am saying that most if not all web businesses require lots of tireless effort and elbow grease to be successful. Many willing to expend this effort naturally resent the ones who seem to circumvent the process ... and oh...I want my unique hit back.

It is being reported that the European Dedicated Server Provider Ecatel has been down since 10 eastern (November 26/08)

Clients are unable to contact Ecatel by the internet or landlines. At this moment they are completely down.

Update on Ecatel

At 3:31am, Friday November 28th, there are reports Esctel came partially back on line. There still seems to be no conection in parts of Europe and Asia, as well as much of the USA.

We will update this post as information emerges

Update on Ecatel

Ecatel has responded:

Dear customer,

Two of our main transit lines were cut off without any warning because of many
copyright infringements and spamming from our network.

We proved over and over again that there was no spamming out of our network, they
just laughed at us.
Normally it would take more than 5 working days to find alternative connections,
however after having put in more than 24 hours of solid trying, we've managed to get
back on line again via other operators.

Ecatel did EVERYTHING to get this issue solved at soon as possible.

We sincerely apologize to all our faithful customers for all inconvenience caused.


Best regards,
Network Operations
ECATEL (NETHERLANDS) LIMITED. 

Update Nov 28. 2:30 easten

It's astonishing how often people researching a shared hosting service do so without due diligence.

Shared hosting by its nature is similar to condominium living (might be better described as tenement buildings). You have your space to use as you like within the boundaries of the TOS. But you also have the common areas, used and shared by all the other residents of your complex.

It's astonishing how often people researching a shared hosting service do so without due diligence.

Shared hosting by its nature is similar to condominium living (might be better described as tenement buildings). You have your space to use as you like within the boundaries of the TOS. But you also have the common areas, used and shared by all the other residents of your complex.

Many people choose their shared hosting service based on price, services, uptime, and the reviews written on Hostjury by clients of various hosts. Many people overlook, or do not consider that their IP address may also be considered a common area. Until they are submitting a ticket for email errors and find out their IP has been blacklisted.

Before you sign up for a shared hosing account, find out how often the company was blacklisted in the last year. Discover if they're known to route hijacked network space, or if they have a history of spam/abuse support. If one of your 'neighbors' spams, you can end up listed. It stinks, but if you share the same IP with a spammer... you're banned also.

To determine a host's past record can be found using a handy tool like SenderScore. By entering the host's domain you can find:

MX record

SPF or Sender ID, is an email authentication protocol designed to verify that each email originates from the Internet domain from which it claims to come based on the sender's IP address

Related Sending Domains, are other domains ending in your-new-host dot whatever that are sending email.

SSL Certificate: owner, issuer, and expiration date

The Whois records.

I did a random search of a few hosts listed on Hostjury. I was surprised to find some with expired SSL certificates, and others with no SPF in place. Issues such as these are much better discovered prior to finalizing the short list. Clients uncovering this information after the fact always have a recourse...

Review your host on HostJury

Hostjury has a brand new look with all the same old attitudes. This attitude is the reason people have come to trust HostJury as a honest hosting review site.

Hostjury has a brand new look with all the same old attitudes. This attitude is the reason people have come to trust HostJury as a honest hosting review site.

But we're not done yet! We will continue in the coming weeks to implement many of the new features of HostJury including the forums. We're also implementing a way for hosts to provide special offers and coupons, as well as inform potential clients of services that may set them apart from other hosts.

Hostjury believes that there are many exceptional hosts available to choose from, and we want you to be as informed as possible prior to making your hosting decision. This is why we will continue to inform our users of the changing landscape of the hosting industry. If you haven't already subscribed to the HJ Blog , now may be a very good time.

You'll see many reviews claiming that a company was good in the early days but that was the good old days before they switched owners maybe. And hosting reviews is what Hostjury is based on. New site but same outlook. The ability to recommend and review your web hosting provider to other users and to share your real hosting reviews.

I think that my Wordpress has been hacked. I'm not a technical guy so looking at the PHP etc is not an option.In my dashboard the second box down on the left - the one that tell me all the recent news changed it tells me to Update WordPress 2.6.4 immediately! Then points me to a site called wordpresz dot org where a suspicious download of Wordpress 2.6.4 is waiting for me. Is my site compromised? What can I do? What other damage should I expect?

This post is not about the hoster... rather the hosted.

I think that my Wordpress has been hacked. I'm not a technical guy so looking at the PHP etc is not an option.In my dashboard the second box down on the left - the one that tell me all the recent news changed it tells me to Update WordPress 2.6.4 immediately! Then points me to a site called wordpresz dot org where a suspicious download of Wordpress 2.6.4 is waiting for me. Is my site compromised? What can I do? What other damage should I expect?

This post is not about the hoster... rather the hosted.

It would appear that some hack is trying to spoof the official wordpress site by leading the unsuspecting to a wordpresz dot org.

Peter Westwood, one of WordPress lead developers has responded saying:

It looks like sites which have not upgraded to 2.6.3 are being exploited in an interesting way whereby a hacker, probably using an automated script, is hacking into sites with the vulnerability and changing the settings of one of the dashboard modules to point to a different feed thereby encouraging people to go to a different site which is offering a dodgy upgrade.

"We recommend that people upgrade as soon as possible when we release a security release so as to ensure they are not vulnerable to issues which will likely have exploits in the wild.

Also in the upcoming 2.7 release of WordPress we are including a built-in upgrade mechanism within WordPress which will allow people to upgrade automatically with ease. I would however stress the need with any piece of software to check that an upgrade is real by visiting the website of the software provider manually rather than relying on a link that you have been provided. Otherwise, as with bank phishing scams there is the potential for someone to trick you into doing something you didn't want to do.

We did do any Alexa ranking on the wordpresz page but it came back with no data available!

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/wordpresz.org

This is the real site for wordpress upgrades!

http://wordpress.org/download/

Update on wordpresz dot org

Hostjury has attemped to contact the registered owner of the domain name, Don T Smith of Fort Myers Florida

His phone number doesn't seem to be functional and I have attempted to contact Don through his email address on record for this domain name. We will await his reply... what do you want me to say!

Clients of WebServe, a shared hosting service from Canada are reporting downtime reaching up to six days. They have stated that the Webserve servers are unreachable. Webserve's main site seems to be functioning, so Hostjury contacted their live chat to ask for clarification on whether the reports of downtime at Webserve were correct. It was a short conversation.

Clients of WebServe, a shared hosting service from Canada are reporting downtime reaching up to six days. They have stated that the Webserve servers are unreachable. Webserve's main site seems to be functioning, so Hostjury contacted their live chat to ask for clarification on whether the reports of downtime at Webserve were correct. It was a short conversation.

Below is the complete transcript of your chat session:

Company: WebServe Canada
Department: Sales Support
Operator: Alex <92e5Fbb10>
Visitor: david henderson <email>
Chat Info: Wed 11/05/08 02:58 pm
david henderson: are the servers down?
You are now speaking with Alex of Webserve Sales Support.
david henderson: Hi Alex
david henderson: Why do the webserve servers seem to be down -
Your party has left this session. - ===

Thank you, WebServe Canada

We will continue to update this story as it unfolds

Review the services of WebServe or your present host on Hostjury

About WebServe

WebServe Canada is an industry-leading privately held web hosting and internet solution provider company based in Vancouver, Canada Serving & Web Hosting the Canadian Internet Community since 1999. WebServe provide high quality web hosting services for companies of all sizes that are located across the world internationally and of course in Canada from Toronto to Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax

Everyone seeks peace and harmony, because these are what we lack in our lives. From time to time we all experience agitation; and when we suffer from agitation, we do not keep this misery limited to ourselves. How does one start generating negativity? By becoming very unhappy when one finds someone behaving in a way which we don't like. Unwanted things happen, and it create tension within myself. Me just a moment ago, 2008

Hence the story of dedicated server provider Vectoral Servers, who when they found something they didn't like, became agitated, and start generating negativity !

Everyone seeks peace and harmony, because these are what we lack in our lives. From time to time we all experience agitation; and when we suffer from agitation, we do not keep this misery limited to ourselves. How does one start generating negativity? By becoming very unhappy when one finds someone behaving in a way which we don't like. Unwanted things happen, and it create tension within myself. Me just a moment ago, 2008

Hence the story of dedicated server provider Vectoral Servers, who when they found something they didn't like, became agitated, and start generating negativity !

This story is not a reflection on the dedicated servers network of Vectoral Servers, in fact the poster noted 190+ days of uptime, and a general satisfaction with the service

"Espro", had been renting a dedicated server from Vectoral Servers since December 2007, paying his monthly bill on time without fail. Prior to the following story, had  only submitted a total of 1 ticket for information on a random reboot. His 3000GB bandwidth package, was often sliding in under 65% total usage. He was a dream customer, and all Vectoral Servers did was sit back , relax, and collect the check!

That is of course until October 19th when Espro's server became inaccessible. He submitted the ticket, and was shortly responded to by Ekin.  There was a routing issue which had been rectified, and the server was back up.

Fast forward to October 23rd when the server was down again. No doubt another routing issue, another ticket. After not receiving any response in 13hrs, a quick check of their interface showed the server had been suspended for bandwidth overages (their interface showed the server as 3018GB, 18GB over limit).

On October 19th (remember, the day the ticket was resolved as a routing issue), their graphs showed a massive spike of over 1000GB of traffic which is completely out of line with the usage history.

First ticket after outage: October 23rd, 01:17 (No response)
Second ticket after outage: October 23rd, 19:05 (Closed with no response some time after October 24th 17:54)

Espro's server was brought back online sometime between Oct 24 17:54 and his next ticket on Oct 24 21:03. to Vectoral and was subsequently told the following by Ekin in response (remember, still no explanation for them taking down the server):

Originally Posted by Ekin

You can ignore our interface for now.

On October 30th, Espro put in a ticket with their billing department for compensation for the outage he experienced at the hands of their staff and received no response except an e-mail from Vectoral Servers informing him that he owed $180 for bandwidth overages for a bill issued Nov 1st, due Nov 2nd

Until this whole ordeal, Espro had a very high opinion of Vectoral Servers and their service. But this ordeal had left Espro very little desire to continue being their customer, and even less desire to recommend them to anyone for any purpose. So he did what every webbie would do... he posted his story on the web!

Nov 3 16:57
"

"Vectoral Servers has now terminated my server citing a ToS violation, providing no information for previous outages, mention of compensation, etc."

Originally Posted by Vectoral Terms of Service

17. Public Feedback: We have a zero tolerance policy for posting negative feedback on any public location about our company and/or our employees before submitting a ticket to our billing department to discuss your issue will result in immediate account termination without any refund. Although it is your right to post feedback without discussing your issue with us first, it is undoubtedly unfair and unprofessional not to, which is not the type of client we want to deal with. We have the utmost respect for all of our clients, and are more than fair with all of our clients. We will do anything and everything possible to keep all of our clients satisfied. But in the unlikely event you are not satisfied, all that we ask is to discuss your issue with our billing department first.

Originally Posted by Ekin

There is a set of terms of service in place for a specific reason, the action that will be taken is specified in the TOS itself that you agreed to when signing up:

17. Public Feedback: We have a zero tolerance policy for posting negative feedback on any public location about our company and/or our employees before submitting a ticket to our billing department to discuss your issue will result in immediate account termination without any refund. (HJ edited)
and to quote section 7 about reversals and chargeback threat you made:

8. Refunds & Disputes: All services rendered by The Company are non-refundable. This includes, but is not limited to: setup fees, one time fees, monthly service fees, upgrade fees, additional service fees, administrative fees, and late fees. Customers seeking to resolve billing errors are instructed to open an accounting ticket inside the client area located at. Customer agrees not to chargeback any credit card payments for services rendered. A chargeback of payment for services rendered will result in an additional charge of $150 and will be subject to collection by an authorized collection agency.

If you actually waited for someone to investigate your issue and help you out, none of this would have happened - the minute you disputed the invoice, it was cancelled until further investigation, we have no intention of overcharging anyone.

Originally Posted by Ekin

I will not be able to help you while there is a topic out there, bad mouthing my company - I do believe there was a issue of miscommunication between us but this should not result in a instant topic on WHT.

(Hostjury has edited and removed certain post for breviety. This has not altered the general facts as presented on Wht)

We have contacted Vectoral Servers for a response. At time of this posting there has been no response. We will update this post as information becomes available.

Review Vectoral Servers or your present host

Hostjury has been trying to keep you informed about the ever changing landscape of the web hosting industry.

Site5 has just recently announced on their company blog that they're shaking up their upper management. The head honchos, Matt Lightner and Rod Armstrong have announced that they are giving up the keys to the castle. Quoting, "While this may come as a bit of a surprise, we can assure you that it only means bigger and better things for Site5." They continued, "Matt and I have absolute confidence that they will be able to keep Site5’s original spirit alive while also taking you all to greater heights in terms of service and the web hosting experience.

Hostjury has been trying to keep you informed about the ever changing landscape of the web hosting industry.

Site5 has just recently announced on their company blog that they're shaking up their upper management. The head honchos, Matt Lightner and Rod Armstrong have announced that they are giving up the keys to the castle. Quoting, "While this may come as a bit of a surprise, we can assure you that it only means bigger and better things for Site5." They continued, "Matt and I have absolute confidence that they will be able to keep Site5’s original spirit alive while also taking you all to greater heights in terms of service and the web hosting experience.

So having given up the keys to the castle to a couple of old hands, we began with our obligatory search of Site5 reviews on Hostjury. With an average uptime rating of 30 and support barely reaching 40, one wonders whether Ben Welch-Bolen (Previous owner of WebHostingUnleashed) and Joel Brown have just acquired the rights to be slum lords in their own tenement building.

Bolen introduced himself to clients on the Site5 Blog, stating in part, "I know that a change in ownership might worry some and I just wanted to stress that Site5 will continue to follow the same principles that its founders did," end quote.

I contacted Ben Welch-Bolen and got an immediate response. (Always a good sign).

My first question concerned the number of negative reviews from their clients on Hostjury. So I asked Ben Welch-Bolen, if there a plan on how to counter what may be seen by some as lack luster services.

His response somewhat surprised me. "First, You have to keep in mind that a hosting company can have 1,000 happy customers and 10 unhappy customers and those unhappy customers are going to go leave negative reviews when a happy customer will not. Happy users don't scour the net looking for a place to post but unhappy ones do. This is a big problem with review sites as they don't take this into account. Not that Site5 has been perfect, we need to improve the quality of support and the response time to submitted tickets and that is what Joel and I will be focusing on. Matt and Rod, the founders of Site5, have done a great job and created a company dedicated to webmasters and we plan to continue that vision. "

Ben Welch-Bolen continued "While we don't really check reviews on third party sites, we are focused on improving customer service and know that that will show everywhere that Site5 is discussed as we implement improvements."

The premise of his statements are in fact true. Site5 has a solid and long term foundation with their relationship to the Planet. Focusing on improving customer support and response times will begin to manifest itself in discussions on the web. And yes unhappy customers are more likely to scour high and low for places to vent their frustrations!

But the reality of his statements are less solid. I sought out reviews in two locations. Hostjury, (doesn't everybody), and directly on the Site5 forums. Here's a couple of examples of what was found:

Posted October 29 /08 by webmage
Are you guys going to fix the existing Site5 problems before you move along with your spectacular plans? One huge concern is oversold (and therefore unreliable) reseller boxes still back at liquidweb.

Posted October 29 /08 by Shredfest
Please make the oversold reseller boxes at Liquidweb a priority. ...(deleted partially)... The migration to The Planet was held out as hope for relief from these problems, and I feel like I have been strung along with how long it has taken. I ended up getting a VPS at another host for some personal projects, and I am seriously thinking about moving my clients there as well. I need to know soon when the reseller boxes are being migrated. If it is going to take another 6 - 12 months, I don't think I can wait that long.

Posted October 30 /08 by cGc0202
I just got the email today. I hope this change in management will mean changes for the better too. When I first moved to Site5.com in early 2005, I was really quite happy because my sites were fast. I upgraded to the new higher "grade" accounts then, what had become multisite accounts, because during the early days -- higher grade accounts truly contained fewer accounts per server. The problem started when site5.com started with the $5 dollar deal accounts. ... (HJ deleted details)

Site5 is a great company that needs to really focus on revamping some long running issues, that may be the real reason clients are scouring the web to write reviews. New and fresh management might just be the step in the right direction. Recognizing why clients are writing bad reviews may be another.

Add a review for Site5 or your host on Hostjury.

http://forums.site5.com/showthread.php?t=25045

Landis Holdings Inc., better known as JaguarPC, a leading provider of end-to-end web hosting solutions for over a decade has announced the acquisition of Hosting Zoom, Inc. The deal also includes Reseller Zoom and modVPS, divisions of Hosting Zoom. Customers of Hosting Zoom will see immediate benefits with no impact on their hosting plans.

Landis Holdings Inc., better known as JaguarPC, a leading provider of end-to-end web hosting solutions for over a decade has announced the acquisition of Hosting Zoom, Inc. The deal also includes Reseller Zoom and modVPS, divisions of Hosting Zoom. Customers of Hosting Zoom will see immediate benefits with no impact on their hosting plans.

Seems we've heard that before... Typical spin.. In fact, with the evolving global financial market, we're going to be hearing more about these merging and realigning of hosting providers. Some hosting brands are disappearing while in other cases, the branded host's name is kept.

For potential clients researching a host,  the market can get confusing. There are many companies listed on Hostjury who were great in the early days!  But after their acquisition by either a mega host or capital investment firms, (you know, the ones who need help sending the email asking how much their bonus is going to be), it was all a downhill slide to the mega abyss of hosted hades.

So when Landis Holdings announced yesterday the acquisition of HostingZoom, we began to check the reviews. JaguarPc has glowing reviews by their clients. Their service is described as "Awesome, highly recommended, the gem I have at JaguarPC. Hard to argue with that. ResellerZoom, well not so glowing. From worst host ever to well not so bad!

So I posed some questions to CEO Greg Landis of JaguarPC, as to whether this acquisition was indeed a marriage made in heaven, or whether it would end in a divorce for the clients. The response time for  my inquiry was truly impressive. "

Without question! Since July and all through Aug and Sept we have been hiring people to no end in Jag and for preparing HZ" states Greg Landis. "We made an executive decision to stop some ads and slow other marketing areas. Our main efforts as of now are to turn all our efforts inwards to bolster up the offerings, support, and resources available. Our next stage is to release and share lots of new products and services to all the brands", Landis added,

"Yes I acknowledge some decisions that were made before we acquired HZ, that have caused unnecessary strain on some servers but the majority are in great shape. Still the same, we are tackling these on the head , because we all realize that a reputation is hard to build but easy to lose. I think our actions will speak much louder than my words though.

Greg Landis continues, "I think it speaks volumes for us though to apply some slight brakes during and immediately after an acquisition to make sure we take care of our clients and internal processes. Too often companies buy up another company and end up steam rolling the clients. That won't happen here, not even  come close, quite the opposite. I hope to set a new precedence with acquisitions right now."

 The most recent reviews on HostJury actually reinforce the statements made by Landis concerning HZ. The reviews in recent months have indeed been much more positive.

After some of the recent nightmares highlighted on HostJury concerning acquisitions, Landis Holdings wouldn't have to set the bar very high to set a new precedence. But this one seems to be heading in the right direction!

Hostjury doesn't want to give you our opinionated view of web hosting providers (often geared towards the host that pays the most for advertising) 

Help us to help you and other users by reviewing your webhost!

 About Landis Holdings, Inc.

Landis Holdings Inc., based in Houston Texas, provides high-quality Internet hosting solutions and business services to small and medium-sized businesses, government agencies, prominent individuals and non-profit organizations worldwide. Landis Holdings’ core portfolio includes JaguarPC, Hosting Zoom as well as wholesale VPS nodes. Their companies provide reseller and wholesale products to over 300,000 domains through its brands.

http://hostjury.com/reviews/Resellerzoom

http://hostjury.com/reviews/HostingZoom

http://hostjury.com/reviews/JaguarPC

We have all heard the doom and gloom naysayer whining about the internet running out of web addresses. And you probably never gave it  a second thought until now. With jobs evaporating thanks to globalism and inept handling of the financial markets, many people are turning to the internet as a new source of income or as a cost cutting while increasing business productivity.

We have all heard the doom and gloom naysayer whining about the internet running out of web addresses. And you probably never gave it  a second thought until now. With jobs evaporating thanks to globalism and inept handling of the financial markets, many people are turning to the internet as a new source of income or as a cost cutting while increasing business productivity.

Then you go to register that domain name only to find not only your first choice already taken by cyber squatter, but also your second and third choice! What's a person to do.

You might want to try the cool little tool Domainr. The swiss army knife for domain names! It will return every possible top level domain name, and tell you whether they're available. Basically, it handles everything but the registration.

hos.tj/ury
ho.st/jury

Na... we'll stick with hostjury.com. But sometimes it works real well. Ever hear of last.fm. Ma.tt.. or domai.nr

It seems that the AlphaRed saga of issues continues.

Earlier this week, CWIE Holdings Company Inc., the parent company of CCBill and CaveCreek Web Hosting confirmed in a Monday press release that it had agreed to acquire hosting company AlphaRed, a deal that has reportedly been in discussion since the previous Friday. However, recent updates note that the deal fell through on Thursday.

It seems that the AlphaRed saga of issues continues.

Earlier this week, CWIE Holdings Company Inc., the parent company of CCBill and CaveCreek Web Hosting confirmed in a Monday press release that it had agreed to acquire hosting company AlphaRed, a deal that has reportedly been in discussion since the previous Friday. However, recent updates note that the deal fell through on Thursday.

There have also been some AlphaRed employee blogs,  in which their claiming that  they are now former employees. Which only further muddles the water.

Microsoft, along with the Washington State Attorney General filed a suit against James McCreary whom they say, in addition to being CEO of AlphaRed, is the director of Branch Software, a company that makes and distributes the so-called "scareware" Registry Cleaner XP, designed to trick users into paying for unnecessary "cleaning" software.

We will continue to update this story as it unfolds, but for clients of AlphaRed, it can never be a good sign when the host's site disappears.

Update:

AlphaRed is now back on line! We will continue to follow the saga

Update Saturday Evening By AlphaRed

Dear Valued Client,

Due to recent events, we currently have no access to our DC1 Wedge Data Center. We will gain access again on Monday 10/13/2008, at which time we will do everything we can to restore services. Please bear with us as we work diligently to maintain full operation of the company. We appreciate your continued patience and business. Thank you!

 

Also our phone lines are on and operational.

Support Team

Check out some of the great hosts reviewed on Hostjury. Or write a review about your experiences with AlphaRed Web Hosting

Press Release from the Washington Attorney General's Office

Fright Fight: Washington Attorney General leading battle against scareware with Microsoft

New lawsuits announced today under state’s improved anti-spyware law

SEATTLE – Attorney General Rob McKenna stood at the frontlines with Microsoft Corp. in the war against spyware in 2006. Now armed with tougher legislation, the state’s top law enforcement officer, with the world’s largest software company, is charging forward with new lawsuits targeting scareware purveyors.

“The Attorney General’s Office along with Microsoft has yanked the fear factor dial out of the hands of businesses that use scareware as a marketing tool and have spun it toward them,” McKenna said.

“We won’t tolerate the use of alarmist warnings or deceptive ‘free scans’ to trick consumers into buying software to fix a problem that doesn’t even exist,” McKenna continued. “We’ve repeatedly proven that Internet companies that prey on consumers’ anxieties are within our reach.”

The Attorney General’s Office along with Microsoft announced the filing of new cases under Washington’s recently improved Computer Spyware Act during a joint press conference today in Seattle.

“Microsoft is honored to assist Washington Attorney General McKenna in helping to protect consumers from online threats,” said Richard Boscovich, Senior Attorney for Microsoft's Internet Safety Enforcement Team. “Cybercrime continues to evolve, but with public/private collaboration such as this, we can work to champion tougher laws, greater public awareness and, ultimately, stronger protections for online consumers.”

In 2005, Washington became one of the first states to adopt a law explicitly prohibiting spyware activities and imposing serious penalties on violators. The statute doesn’t stop at outlawing programs that collect personal information, but uses a broader definition of “spyware” and punishes those who mislead users into believing software is necessary for security. The law was updated last session to create additional liability for third-parties that permit the transmission of spyware and to address new types of deceptive behaviors, such as misrepresenting the need for computer repairs.

As of today, the Attorney General’s Office has filed seven suits under the statute.

The Attorney General’s Office filed its latest case today in King County Superior Court against the marketers of a program called Registry Cleaner XP. The civil suit brings five causes of action against James Reed McCreary IV, of The Woodlands, Texas, and two businesses: Branch Software, of The Woodlands, Texas, doing business as Registry Cleaner XP, and Alpha Red, Inc., of Houston, Texas. McCreary is the sole director of Branch Software and CEO of Alpha Red.

McKenna said Microsoft referred the case to the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection High-Tech Unit and has been helpful in assisting the office with enforcement issues.

According to the state’s complaint, the defendants sent incessant pop-ups resembling system warnings to consumers’ personal computers. The messages read “CRITICAL ERROR MESSAGE! – REGISTRY DAMAGED AND CORRUPTED,” and instructed users to visit a Web site to download Registry Cleaner XP.

Computers capable of receiving Windows Messenger Service pop-ups, also known as Net Send messages, were vulnerable to the attacks. Windows Messenger Service, not to be confused with the instant-messaging program Windows Live Messenger, is primarily designed for use on a network and allows administrators to send notices to users.

“Consumers who visited the Web site were offered a free scan to check their computer – but the program found ‘critical’ errors every time,” said Senior Counsel Paula Selis, who leads the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection High-Tech Unit. “Users were then told to pay $39.95 to repair these dubious problems.”

The filings today bring the number of civil spyware actions brought by Microsoft since the Computer Spyware Act was first enacted in 2005 to 17.  In 2006, Microsoft and the Attorney General each brought lawsuits against the same group of defendants under the Washington Computer Spyware Act, obtaining permanent injunctions and settlements.   Additionally, Microsoft has routinely worked with the FTC and other state and federal law enforcement agencies in the battle against spyware.

Spyware has arguably become the biggest online threat to consumers and businesses since the advent of the Internet. Microsoft has said that 50 percent of its customer-support calls related to computer crashes can be blamed on spyware.

EasyDNS is  reporting that lawyers are sending a takedown request regarding a torrent of the film. As they doesn't host the site, its a moot point, but then lawyers are not know for their tech swavy!  "What's a host! "  I've watched the movie and I'm with the critics. Anyway enjoy the read: 

EasyDNS is  reporting that lawyers are sending a takedown request regarding a torrent of the film. As they doesn't host the site, its a moot point, but then lawyers are not know for their tech swavy!  "What's a host! "  I've watched the movie and I'm with the critics. Anyway enjoy the read: 

Michael Moore released his latest film Slacker Uprising for free, over the web. On the download page for the film Mr. Moore has this to say:

"I'm giving you my blanket permission to not only download it, but also to email it, burn it, and share it with anyone and everyone (in the U.S. and Canada only). I want you to use 'Slacker Uprising' in any way you see fit to help with the election or to do the work that you do in your community. You can show my film in your local theater, your high school classroom, your college auditorium, your church, union hall or community center. You can have your friends and neighbors over to the house for a viewing. You can broadcast it on TV, on cable access, on regular channels or on the web. It's completely free -- I don't want to see a dime from this. And if you want, you can charge admission or ask for a donation if it's to raise money for a candidate, a voter drive, or for any non-profit or educational purpose. In other words -- it's yours!"

So, why are his lawyers demanding we take action regarding a torrent posted on a DNS hosting client's website? We received the takedown request via Fedex today:
Yes, he did specify "US or Canada only please", and the offending site is in Sweden (and the lawyers cited the United States Copyright Act but we're in Canada ourselves).

But really, come on folks, please tell that isn't the basis for this take down request. Anybody with half a clue knows the net doesn't work like that.

In any case, I've sent them our standard "we're not the web host, we're just the lowly DNS service", but I did point out this seeming contradiction in Michael Moore's message vs his lawyer's actions.

This smells like one big waste of time to me. A lot of billable hours being racked up for nothing here.

Update: I've gotten an email back from the law firm. Now that they understand what a nameserver is/does they have withdrawn their letter to us, but they have confirmed that their beef here is that this torrent is hosted outside USA/Canada. I've replied that they should know it is highly impractical to attempt to impose geographical constraints on otherwise freely available files but I guess they want to give it a shot.

http://blog.easydns.org/archives/231-What-part-of-blanket-permission-to-download-do-Michael-Moores-lawyers-not-get.html

Adam Fendelman   

Posted September 26, 2008 | 03:23 PM (EST)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-fendelman/why-godaddy-refunded-my-9_b_129485.html

GoDaddy's investigation into my inferno of a situation turned out to be a telling investigation into GoDaddy itself.

This follow-up story isn't just appearing in cyberspace because a call from GoDaddy's office of the president came during my dinner a few hours after "Why I Don't Owe GoDaddy $6,579.51 (or $969)" published. Rather, "Why GoDaddy Refunded My $969 (and Will Be Making 'Significant Changes')" is a just resolution to an initially unjust resolution.

Adam Fendelman   

Posted September 26, 2008 | 03:23 PM (EST)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-fendelman/why-godaddy-refunded-my-9_b_129485.html

GoDaddy's investigation into my inferno of a situation turned out to be a telling investigation into GoDaddy itself.

This follow-up story isn't just appearing in cyberspace because a call from GoDaddy's office of the president came during my dinner a few hours after "Why I Don't Owe GoDaddy $6,579.51 (or $969)" published. Rather, "Why GoDaddy Refunded My $969 (and Will Be Making 'Significant Changes')" is a just resolution to an initially unjust resolution.

A good company makes few customer mistakes, but a company's true spirit is revealed in the resolution of its worst ones.

The caller from GoDaddy's top ranks (for fun, we'll call him Danica) began his missive by mentioning he'd just read my Huffington Post story about GoDaddy. A still-unexplained mammoth amount of data (this is now being investigated by the open source Drupal software community) was deposited into my GoDaddy hosting account.

This kicked GoDaddy's automated system into overage-fee gear. I was blindsided with a charge for $6,579.51, which was later reduced to $969 as a "courtesy" because of a "special circumstance." Danica then immediately proceeded to offer that he wasn't offering a full refund (as seen in the screenshot below) because of the power of the Web pen.

He would have done it any way, he said, even though the countless supervisors I've spent my week speaking with wouldn't, didn't, and told me they couldn't.

Danica commiserated with my situation. He understood and was kind, apologetic and professional. He even offered to call me at another time so as not to interrupt my dinner. (To my friend, Patrick, I do apologize for leaving you waiting at Pizza Rustica by yourself as Danica smoothed the troubled waters.)

As I've been saying all along and wrote in part one of this story on Thursday, Danica agreed that GoDaddy should have processes in place that could have easily prevented this situation. A simple e-mail notifying me that my disk space was spiking and then was at critical risk of exceeding quota, for example, would have been spiffy cool.

He concurred and said it'll be on his suggestion list for next week's innovation meeting. I do genuinely believe that Danica's intentions were sound.

I did feel he takes "part of his job" seriously to proactively seek out publicly documented customer issues (on Twitter, various social networking sites and in the press in general) for the betterment of the GoDaddy customer experience. Still, I question how this situation would have resolved without this particular consumer exercising his hat as a journalist.

That's something we'll never know. What we do know is there are gray areas in GoDaddy's procedures.

Danica would most certainly handle a situation different than, say, supervisor Dale Jr. or supervisor Candice. There also isn't precise clarity on how an emergency situation like mine should have been handled, or if there was a lack of training among the various people who adversely touched my life this week.

While I did feel Danica was honestly straight-shooting me instead of GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons begrudgingly ordering the snuffing of a PR fire, I was concerned to hear that ambiguity exists in GoDaddy's billing systems. He said he couldn't tell me with 100 percent certainty that I wouldn't receive another $6,579.51 bill next month because of mysterious intricacies that exist within GoDaddy's systems.

See, my situation was resolved three days into the next billing cycle. Danica couldn't be certain when the company's computers would "flag" my account and determine whether or not to generate another massively unjust bill. While the situation should be averted, a month from now I'd call him directly and I'd have faith it'd be appropriately zeroed.

Another concern in this ordeal is the matter of proof. GoDaddy's security investigation came back conclusively and fingered my Web site's Drupal software rather than GoDaddy itself or an external hacker. That proof, though, couldn't be shared with me because of "security purposes." I was to merely take GoDaddy's word, and after my week with them, my name as Adam became Hella Dubious.

Danica echoed that no-proof sentiment. He said that's because of my status on a shared (cheap) hosting plan. Still, he said GoDaddy would certainly comply with a subpoena should the matter turn into a legal investigation. Then, he said, all documents and logs would certainly be revealed. That surprised me. I never once mentioned anything to him about the concept of suing GoDaddy.

After dinner, I joined a few friends for a drink. When I came home and hopped back online, my full $969 refund had indeed been promptly processed. Yes, Danica did me right. After being fraught for a week over a situation that could have been averted by a single automated e-mail at a company that automates so many other functions, I can finally heal and return to everyday life.

But questions remain.

While GoDaddy's second resolution was the only action that made sense this week, will its billing system pour salt on the wound a month from now? What caused the influx of data in the first place? Was the refund a result of the Huffington Post blog or would it have come without it? Most important, will GoDaddy listen up, learn and install processes to prevent this situation and others like it in the future?

I'm on the fence whether I'll be around to see GoDaddy through to my 2010 hosting renewal date. On Thursday, I said it wasn't a pleasure to meet you, Bob, and I'm sure you can understand why. Now that it's Friday, we've somewhat kissed and made up. Consumers deserve and demand more, Bob, and it'll take you and your machine time to earn back my trust and your credibility.

In the meantime, I know one lesson for sure: If you're in the right and you've been wronged, people hear you so long as you're loud enough.

Update: As I was awaiting editor approval for this post to go live, I received another call from GoDaddy. This one came from GoDaddy's head of hosting. This gentleman (we'll call him Amanda) had some encouraging words about the positive and lasting effects that will result from this situation.

He said there will be some "significant changes" put in place to GoDaddy's overage policies and disk space/bandwidth systems. He said there will be more "proactive" methods and service operating agreements (SOAs) put in place to improve the way GoDaddy communicates back to customers.

He added: "Though this affected you and was highly visible on the Huffington Post, it has been reconciled for you and will be improved for other customers, too. We appreciate you writing about this. This is how we get better. It sometimes takes these types of things to know that they're happening. We have so many moving parts and things don't always get caught in time."

In the end, that's a promise that my stress will help to prevent yours. To conclude our conversation, Amanda welcomed me to write again about future issues so GoDaddy can continue to evolve.

Adam Fendelman       Posted September 25, 2008     | 04:06 PM (EST) 

Listen up, GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons. This message is for you and your bazillions of customers. While my status as a loyal, longtime customer of GoDaddy couldn't prevent this blatant case of robbery from hitting me, perhaps conveying the story online can save you or someone you know the same grief in the future.

Though the reason right now escapes me, I made the mistake of selecting GoDaddy as my Web hosting provider for HollywoodChicago.com, which is a Chicago film and theater publication I founded in 2007. Since the site has been live and hosted with GoDaddy, I've had what I would now classify as several baby tugs of war with GoDaddy. My Web site being down for a few hours is one thing. Robbing me is quite another.

My hosting account allows for 150 gigabytes of storage space. That's a lot for most people. I was using about 5 percent of it and have been every day since early 2007. On Aug. 3, 2008, my disk space usage mysteriously multiplied five fold.
And then doubled the next day. And then doubled the next day. And on and on. It mysteriously doubled so much and so long that it amounted to 250 gigabytes of new data being stored within my hosting account. The problem? I didn't know.
GoDaddy wanted me to have been monitoring this proactively by logging into my account, digging deep within their tools and checking the one that reports my disk space usage. Unfortunately, I have a life. I don't do that every day (nor would I think to based on my normal disk space trending over the years).

I only found out when I received an e-mail from GoDaddy stating their charge of $6,579.51 to my account had bounced. Thank the heavens Capital One was kind enough to shut down my credit card that day because of an "irregular spending pattern". Yeah, I'd say so. GoDaddy's automated system tried to charge them, too.


This launched a full-scale investigation on Monday. This has stolen countless hours of my time from then until Thursday, four days later. The "investigation" was handed to GoDaddy's security department because their initial belief was that my hosting account had been "compromised." They also wanted to make sure their other systems weren't affected. If that was the case, they assured me I wouldn't owe a penny of that unbelievable $6,579.51 bill. I made sure they notated that on my account.

I nervously waited and waited for days. I was waiting for an impersonal e-mail from "John S.S." (who I couldn't talk to directly). I was assured he was the highest and best security guru at GoDaddy. His e-mail came on Wednesday. It said the problem was my fault. I wasn't "hacked" into like they initially thought. His e-mail said the software running my Web site (it's called Drupal, which is open source software built by and improved by the world) deposited thousands of temporary files into my GoDaddy hosting account.

GoDaddy wouldn't share with me proof of their investigation or reason to believe Drupal was indeed the culprit. They were only willing to not finger themselves or a malicious hacker. Despite not being able to give me adequate proof (because of "security purposes"), in GoDaddy's mind this meant I was liable for the $6,579.51 bill.

Suffice it to say that wasn't the best news I've ever heard. Though I was courteous in the beginning, I was less than calm in dealing with this now. Perhaps GoDaddy felt bad for me, but as a "courtesy," they were willing to reduce that $6,579.51 bill to $969. That new number sounded quite arbitrary, but they said that figure was based on the maximum amount of money they're allowed to "discount" a situation that had a "special circumstance".

That sounds like a partial admission of something being plain wrong with them trying to charge me anything in this case, but you can decide that for yourself.
Now this situation only happened because their automated system kicked out a massive bill to me without any GoDaddy human going whaaaa?. Even more alarming, why didn't GoDaddy have an automated process to just send me an e-mail while my disk space quota was unusually rising? I would have deleted the files right there and then and changed the read/write permissions on that folder before it became a bigger and very expensive problem. GoDaddy has all the automated systems in the world to charge you but apparently not a very simple one to prevent you from being charged.

In the question of whether to pay the $969, I asked what would happen if I just canceled my GoDaddy hosting account. I was informed I would not be reimbursed for the remaining time on my hosting account (which I paid in full in advance), but more important, the $6,579.51 bill (or $969 or any other random number) would go away. I was assured GoDaddy wouldn't go after me for that or send the matter into collections.

It would be cheaper for me to leave GoDaddy and put my business somewhere else. I asked for this guarantee in writing. I couldn't get it. I couldn't get a reason why I couldn't get it, too. I extremely reluctantly paid the $969. I felt robbed. Taken. Violated. But karma is a funny thing. That was on Wednesday.

Because of how much grief I had been through, on Thursday I called back to make sure my disk usage problem had gone away. I deleted all the extra data and it should have. But it didn't register. It would take GoDaddy's systems another month to recognize that change.

Even worse, I learned on Thursday I deleted the data three days after the start of my new billing cycle. The Thursday customer service representative said I'd get another $6,579.51 bill a month from now. The Wednesday customer service representative promised I wouldn't. I fell down to the ground. A little bug scurried by. I actually felt envious of the bug for that moment because he or she would never have to deal with corporate monsters.

The Thursday customer service representative was kind. He cared about my problem. He was even understanding. He recognized that GoDaddy had made my life hell over the past three days. He did things to make sure this potential problem in a month wouldn't be. He was given the authority to upgrade my hosting account for free from 150 gigabytes of space to 300 gigabytes of space, which is just under what GoDaddy's disk space tool reported three days after my new billing cycle. This means the new $6,579.51 bill shouldn't automatically spit out in Oct. 2008.

But what if it did? I don't trust them. I was given the direct phone number of GoDaddy's office of the president and his e-mail address. I've read your blog, Bob Parsons, and now you know me, too. It's not a pleasure to meet you. I hope no one else ever has to meet you like this, too.

Read part two of this story...

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-fendelman/why-i-dont-owe-godaddy-65_b_129276.html

A Franklin County Circuit judge last week ordered the transfer of the domain names of 141 illegal Internet gambling sites to the Commonwealth of Kentucky in an effort to stop illegal and unregulated online gaming. Kentucky is the first state to bring an action against Internet gambling operators that has resulted in the seizure of domain names.

While most hosting companies have TOS's, that prohibit illegal activities, I'm not sure that people looking for a host could envision more than a termination of their services. It seems that some, (although not all) of the domains were registered through their hosting provider. Also the location of the data center may have been a factor. It has not been confirmed whether the data centers were in Kentucy.

The order came Thursday in response to a suit filed by the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet on behalf of the Commonwealth seeking to force the sites to block access to Kentucky users, or relinquish control of their domains. Judge Thomas Wingate ordered a forfeiture hearing for Sept. 25th on the matter. The Justice Cabinet had asked the court to order Internet registrars to transfer control of the domain names to the Commonwealth, pending a hearing on whether forfeiture is required.

A whois of the sites in question now show the domains belong to Kentucky

Read the press release:

http://governor.ky.gov/pressrelease.htm?PostingGUID={6930A5AD-8BF6-499C-A4DB-70A3544BFF7D}

MUSIC STREAMING WILL RESUME AFTER BREAKTHROUGH AGREEMENT

It has been announced that there has been a new agreement reached concerning music royalities for internet music streaming. Many smaller web radio stations were forced to reconsider their long term plans after rates skyrocketed by up to 1200%. With the announcement of this new plan, many small internet radio stations will be looking for web hosts to launch their revamped stations from!

Read the press release here:

WASHINGTON -- In a breakthrough that will facilitate new ways to offer music to consumers online, the Digital Media Association (DiMA), the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), together with the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) and the Songwriters Guild of America (SGA), today announced an agreement on how music creators will be compensated for music distributed through certain online models.

The agreement, in the form of draft regulations submitted to the Copyright Royalty Judges, proposes for the first time mechanical royalty rates for interactive streaming and limited downloads, including for subscription and ad-supported services. The agreement proposes a flexible percentage of revenue rate structure, with minimum payments in certain circumstances.

Limited download and interactive streaming services will generally pay a mechanical royalty of 10.5 percent of revenue, less any amounts owed for performance royalties. In certain instances, royalty-free promotional streaming is allowed. Outside the scope of the draft regulations, the parties confirmed that non-interactive, audio-only streaming services do not require reproduction or distribution licenses from copyright owners.

The agreement does not address royalty rates for physical product or permanent music downloads. The Copyright Royalty Judges are expected to issue a ruling on those rates on or before October 2.

Agreement Facts:

• The agreement proposes mechanical royalty rates that cover both limited downloads and interactive streaming, including when offered by subscription and ad-supported services.

• The percentage rate structure in the agreement provides much-needed flexibility for new business models.

• The agreement permits the use without payment of certain kinds of promotional streams, in the interest of encouraging paid uses of musical compositions.

• The agreement confirms that the mechanical licenses issued under its provisions will include all reproduction and distribution rights necessary to provide the licensed limited downloads or interactive streams.

• Outside the scope of the draft regulations, the parties confirmed that non-interactive, audio-only streaming services do not require reproduction or distribution licenses from copyright owners.

TORONTO, ON – Sept 23, 2008 Managed Website hosting provider Rebel Networks has continued expansions through acquisitions by acquiring the customer base and web hosting infrastructure of Rarehost.com. The Acquisition will enable Rebel Networks to increase its customer base and expand into the UK. Rebel Networks has successfully been acquiring hosting companies such as WRC hosting and ARC Web Scape, Lehost.net as part of there growth strategy.

Rarehost.com has a small customer base, but has facility in a data center in London, England. Rebel Networks, will be converting the rarehost.com name to rebelnetworks.co.uk and begin to accept British pounds as a form of payment effective immediately. Rebel Networks feels this works well with their expansion plans into the European Market, where they currently have thousands of customers. This will give those customers a choice of having hosting with a UK IP address” stated Domenic Macchione, President and CEO of Rebelnetwork.com

Hostjury doesn't want to give you our opinionated view of web hosting providers (often geared towards the host that pays the most for advertising) - we want to give you, the user, the ability to recommend and review Rebel Networks or your web hosting provider to other users and to share your real hosting reviews.

About Rarehost.com
Rarehosts.com is a professional web hosting and web development company that provides multimedia and e-commerce solutions to all sizes of businesses and individuals.

About Rebel Networks

Rebel Networks is a Leading Provider of Outsourced Internet Infrastructure and Managed Website Hosting Solutions. Rebel Networks provides Managed Dedicated Servers, Collocation Services, Shared Website Hosting, E-Commerce Solutions, and Domain Name Services. Rebel Networks is also an enabler of web 2.0 application. With strong and passionate commitment to customer service, and deployment across multiple secure data centers, Rebel Networks is revolutionizing the way hosting is being delivered to the small and medium enterprise.

Jupiter, Florida – September 18, 2008 - Web host, design, development and Internet solutions provider Barak Hosting, has completed the acquisition of 561WebHosting.com.

Marc Burofsky while announcing the acquisition, added that Barak Hosting will continue to pursue additional acquisitions in the near future.

The acquisition adds to Barak Hosting client base and provides the clientele of 561WebHosting.com with access to the ever-expanding line of Barak Hosting server hosting environment, website design/development and managed services offerings. 561 clients can expect to be integrated into the Barak Hosting environment over the next few months.

Hostjury doesn't want to give you our opinionated view of web hosting providers (often geared towards the host that pays the most for advertising) - we want to give you, the user, the ability to recommend and review Barak Hosting or your web hosting provider to other users and to share your real hosting reviews.

About Barak Hosting
Barak Hosting, located in Jupiter, Florida, provides web hosting and web site design services, email, database applications, and Managed Services on Shared, Virtual Private Server and Dedicated Server platforms.

Barak Hosting specializes on the design side in database driven dynamic websites. Performing customer service at the highest levels along with their extensive design capabilities sets them apart. Barak Hosting are a large provider of VPS Hosting powered by Virtuozzo.

After reading this piece,  there may be a  number of hosts reviewed on Hostjury, that may wish to check into the availabilty of their domain+sucks.  I hate to give people ideas but here it goes.... enjoy

A study of Fortune 500 and other companies found that one in three have bought the name, say, walmartsucks.com. But corporate attitudes toward hate sites vary widely between, say, Dell and Xerox:

FairWinds based its analysis on 1,058 domain names for companies on the Global 500 and Fortune 500 lists. Of the companies surveyed, 35% own the domain name for their brand followed by the word "sucks." They include Wal-Mart Stores, Coca-Cola, Toys"R"Us, Target and Whole Foods Market, according to FairWinds. Some 45% of these domains have yet to be registered by anyone. The study found that the majority of companies that do own these domain names publish no content on them.

Some have been much more aggressive than others. Xerox, for example, has bought or registered about 20 unflattering domain names, including xeroxstinks.com, xeroxcorporationsucks.com and ihatexerox.net. But other companies, such as Dell, have taken a more hands-off approach. DellisEvil.com, MyDellSux.com and IHateDell.info are for sale, but the computer maker says it has no interest in buying them.

http://valleywag.com/5046116/35-percent-of-biggest-companies-own-____suckscom

These guys do for domain name registrations what the phone companies used to be so fond of doing... try trick you into switching to them. They do this by sending you a letter by mail that looks very official. The Liberty Names of America letter reads like an expiration notice that a domain registrar might send, but in this case if you look at the fine print you'll see that it's an attempt to get you to transfer your domain to them.

The reason this works, is because a lot of people don't know or remember who their domains are registered with. Make sure you know this, or can at least find out easily by looking it up when you need to.

Things like this are also easy to spot just by doing a quick web search with the company name as a keyword. Whether it's a hoax, scam or just poor service, you'll often find others who have made their own experience public.

If you're the type that likes to do something about this kind of junk, do feel free to file a complaint with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (or better yet, all three!)

To find out more about the Liberty Names of America scam, check out the following:

• Better Business Bureau Reliability Report

Two more creative things you can do to fight back are to not open mail from a known company like the above, mark "return to sender" on it, and send it back which increases their cost of sending junk mail to you. If the company is so kind as to send return envelopes with postage-paid, it can be fun to take one company's junk mail, and send it to another in their postage-paid envelope. All it costs you is a few minutes of time, and you can sleep well that night for having helped to make it less profitable for scammers.

• BEWARE! Liberty Names of America Domain Hijacking Scam!
• Liberty Names of America lnoa.com
• Liberty Names of America or LNOA  MAJOR SCAM
• Liberty Names & Corp.com Scams
• Liberty Names of America domain scam with a twist?
• etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/02/fasthosts_ukmm_court_case/

A county court judge has awarded a disgruntled Fasthosts customer almost £1,500 in damages and costs, after the Gloucester firm failed to meet its uptime and customer service guarantees.

Hampshire consultancy UK Mobile Media was prompted to take Fasthosts to Southampton small claims court yesterday by a four month period that saw its dedicated servers suffer 22 per cent downtime. It was paying about £15,000 annually for its dedicated infrastructure, used to offer clients services such as mobile email.

The claimant's managing director Matthew Rahman told the judge that Fasthosts had repeatedly ignored support requests.

Fasthosts did not appear in court to defend itself, but submitted a document that said: "We feel that we have made reasonable efforts to ensure prompt resolution of the problems reported." The judge felt differently, however, and awarded UK Mobile Media £1,212.68 damages and £220 in fees and loss of earnings. Fasthosts has until 15 September to pay.

Rahman told El Reg today that the worst problems occurred between October 2006 and January 2007 when a repeated hard disk failure caused periods of up to 72 hours offline for some of UK Mobile Media's clients. "It was something you would ordinarily expect to take 15 minutes to replace... we lost significant custom through it," he said.

"We made a big mistake [in using Fasthosts] and we've learned a big lesson. I certainly would never recommend anyone relying on them for anything important to their business." Rahman said other businesses hit by poor reliability and support should consider action against Fasthosts.

Fasthosts declined to comment.

The hosting firm was founded by schoolboy entrepreneur Andrew Michael in 1999. He sold out to fellow budget operator 1&1 Internet for £61.5m in 2006. Fasthosts has since made repeated security, technical and customer service gaffes but boasts it is "still the no.1 for UK hosted websites".

UK Mobile Media switched to another hosting provider in December 2007.

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