ServerBeach Blog

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt will detail the company’s plans for Google-izing the health care industry at a health care trade show on Thursday morning, starting with a consumer destination site called Google Health. Schmidt is scheduled to give the morning keynote speech at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2008 annual conference here and will outline Google’s vision on tackling the next Internet frontier of medical data. The move, rumored for a few years, makes sense, given how much people use the Web to get health information and how much they spend on medicines and health care.

Google Health is being previewed at the company booth and gives a glimpse of what consumers participating in a trial in Cleveland will experience–a clean and simple interface where people can get to their health information in one place, share it with others, and search for information and care providers. Google Health will be available for anyone with a Google account to use later this year, said Missy Krasner, product marketing manager for Health Team Google.

Read the full story here.

According to an article on Reuters this morning a top U.S. regulator on Monday said the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is ready to stop broadband providers from interfering with users’ access.

Many Internet service providers denied accusations it discriminates against users. We’ve heard a lot of press commenting on one provider in particular, while not mentioning any names, they’re sticking to their guns stating that they do not block or limit any access to any Web sites or online applications, including file sharing.

The FCC has been looking into complaints by consumer groups accusing such Internet service providers of blocking some file-sharing services which are used to distribute large digital media files such as TV shows and movies.

The network neutrality issue also has attracted the attention of lawmakers in Congress, who are weighing a net-neutrality bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives last week.
Critics of such an approach have argued that imposing network neutrality would hinder development of the Internet by creating uncertainty for investors and service providers.

What are your thoughts?

Earlier on this month I posted about a promotion here at ServerBeach with a few details. Today, I’d like to share the press release that went out today that includes full details of our “Sandbox Servers” -

Developers explore and test a suite of Microsoft design and management tools within a secure, dedicated environment

VANCOUVER, BC – February 26, 2008 – PEER 1 Network Enterprises, Inc. (TSX-V: PIX), a leading provider of online IT infrastructure, has partnered with Microsoft to offer 50 free developer sandbox servers for a 30-day trial. Web developers now have a chance to work with full control on a collection of Microsoft website development applications in a dedicated server environment.

“We are pleased to offer this great program that meets the needs of developers who want to explore new applications and ensure that they work well before exposing them in a production environment,” said Robert Miggins, vice president of business development for PEER 1. “With the sandbox servers we give developers the platform and tools they require to build applications, test, and deploy, all with a seamless experience.”

The 30-day free period is a unique opportunity for web developers and agencies to explore both the internal and external aspects of testing and developing a website and other online applications using some of the latest Microsoft software that has been pre-loaded into the sandbox server and is connected into PEER 1’s extensive online network infrastructure.

“This program is a good opportunity for developers in any field,” said John Zanni, director of hosting for the Microsoft Communications Sector. “Working together in a more collaborative and supportive environment enables developers to build better applications and compatible offerings, which can better meet customer needs and increase both business and customer revenue.”

The developer sandbox supports IIS 6, .ASP.NET 2.0 and PHP 5 and provides the following design and management tools:

* Microsoft® Expression® Studio: Expression Studio includes Expression Blend, Expression Web, and Expression Design - The professional design tools and innovative technologies in Expression Studio give you the flexibility and freedom to bring your vision to reality.

* Microsoft Visual Studio Express Editions: Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition and Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition – This is the ideal tool for productively building object-oriented applications for Windows on the .NET Framework.

* Microsoft Silverlight – A cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web.

* Microsoft SQL Server Standard 2005 – This tool contains features that will help your team develop data applications in a fraction of the time, helping to drive data to the corners of your business.

Microsoft and PEER 1 invite developers to apply to participate in the sandbox. Once approved developers gain free root access to a server set up in PEER 1’s San Antonio data center for 30 days with no contract and no obligation.

***As a bonus, developers who decide to order a server from PEER 1 at the end of the free sandbox server period will receive a Microsoft tool package, including Microsoft Expression Web ($299 value), Microsoft Expression Studio and Microsoft ASP.NET training ($1099 value), at no additional cost.***

Visit http://www.peer1.com/hosting/sandbox.php for more information.

About PEER 1
PEER 1, a leading online IT infrastructure provider, believes in the limitless opportunity of the Internet and the business growth and continuity it provides for its more than 9,000 customers. PEER 1 delivers highly scalable managed hosting and co-location solutions to ensure customers’ online presence is always fast, always available. Since 1999, PEER 1 has grown to include data centers and network points of presence in 17 major cities across North America and Europe. Serving a variety of companies, PEER 1 offers solutions that grow through every stage of web commerce, regardless of company size. The company’s headquarters are in Vancouver, Canada and the stock is traded on the TSX Venture exchange under the symbol PIX.

For more information visit: http://www.peer1.com.

We are proud to offer the MGuard Smart hardware firewall, the smallest security device available delivering amazing security and performance. *

With the growing problem of malicious activity on the Internet, security is a huge concern. To counter this growing issue, ServerBeach has released the mGuard Smart single server hardware firewalls on Category 3 and Category 5 servers.*
To order a mGuard Smart firewall, please contact an account manager or a sales representative at 1-800-741-9939.

* Available as a limited release starting February 25, 2008.
Available only in our San Antonio, TX data center at this time.

“Sometimes being a web-developer is just damn hard.” Says a writer from Smashing Magazine. Those of you who are tasked with web development certainly understand that statement.

How often do you find coding is responsible for slowing down your workflow? How many of you spend sleepless nights with pizza and coffee laying around the laptop? The reason says this writer: “with a number of incompatibility issues and quite creative rendering engines it sometimes takes too much time to find a workaround for some problem without addressing browsers with quirky hacks. And that’s where ready-to-use solutions developed by other designers come in handy.”

About a year ago, Smashing Magazine published “53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without“. This year, they’ve published a follow up, “50 new CSS-techniques, ideas and ready-to-use solutions for effective coding.” Many of you already know some of these techniques, but I recommend checking out the article. There may be some techniques that you’re just not aware of that just might help you out.

Happy coding!

The MTRON MSD-SATA 6000 Series features high performance with sustained throughput reading at 100MB/s and writing at 80MB/s. The Access time is less than 0.1 mses!

The MTRON MSD-SATA 6000 has high reliability with

- Wear-leveling Algorithm
- BCH 7 Bit Error Correction Code (ECC)
- Bad Block Management Algorithm
- Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF): 1,000,000 hours
- Data Retention: 10 years at 25 degrees Celcius

A ServerBeach customer, Kevin Burton has been testing and running benchmarks on this drive and posting frequent updates on his blog. Thanks Kevin!

While this is still being tested at ServerBeach, we expect to be able to offer this to our customers in the near future. Be sure to keep an eye on our website and your future e-mails!

It seems that Microsoft began feeding Windows Vista users last week updates to prep PCs for next month’s release of Service Pack 1. These updates have crippled some machines, according to messages posted to the company’s support site.

Last Tuesday, Microsoft started sending Vista users two final prerequisite updates that are required before SP1 can be installed in March. The updates to the operating system’s install components were delivered via Windows Updates, which automatically downloaded and installed them on the majority of Vista machines. Looking at the feedback on the support site, it appears that users were quite unhappy and they have every right to be.

In many instances, users reported that the final update hung while displaying the message “Configuring Updates Step 3 of 3 - 0% Complete,” which was followed by a reboot of the PC. Which was followed by another reboot, and another. “[It] reboots ad infinitum,” said Frank Melk on the Microsoft support newsgroup. A smaller number reported a different problem: After the update, their computer refused to boot normally.

Trying to boot into Safe Mode did no good, users said; the reboot loop cranked up then as well. “I am unsure as to what to do, because entering Safe Mode gives the same screen,” Melk said. “Furthermore, I have no restore points saved, so going back to a known previous good config is no good either!”

Users are posting situations they’ve experienced:
“The first two restore points available to me failed,” noted another user, pegged as phazedoubt. “I had to go back 3 days before I found one that worked.”

Some users who posted messages to the same newsgroup said that they had managed to regain control of the computer by booting from their Vista install DVD, and selecting the “Restore from a previous restore point” option.

“Apparently, so Microsoft says, my machine was restarted thinking it had downloaded an update, but really the update hadn’t been downloaded,” said user bicksbah on the support newsgroup. “So, upon reboot, it couldn’t find the update and Vista kept trying to install it endlessly.”

Messages left on the newsgroup indicate that Microsoft is aware of the problem.

Mendacious machines controlled by hackers that reroute Internet traffic from infected computers to fraudulent Web sites are increasingly being used to launch attacks, according to a paper published this week by researchers with the Georgia Institute of Technology and Google Inc.

” The paper estimates roughly 68,000 servers on the Internet are returning malicious Domain Name System results, which means people with compromised computers are sometimes being directed to the wrong Web sites - and often have no idea.”

And often have no idea. That is what bothers me the most about users on the internet. Most harm done to users is because of of their own lack of knowledge as well as just not paying attention. There are ways to protect yourself, your systems and servers, it’s just taking the time out to learn, pay attention, and do it.

Read more about “servers that lie” here.