ServerBeach and SXSW 2009

ServerBeach returned to SXSW this year in Austin, Texas and it was another great success! We had the opportunity to exhibit in the Interactive Festival and meet many of our PEER 1 and ServerBeach customers, not to mention make new friends.

This year we did it a little different. As you know from the last couple of posts on our blog, ServerBeach tag-teamed the event with Lisa Sabin-Wilson. We held a Twitter Trivia contest daily for SXSW attendees, which required them to bring the answer to the trivia question that we “tweeted” to Lisa at the booth and if the answer was correct, Lisa gave them an autographed WordPress for Dummies book. With Lisa with us, an iPod giveaway, cool, free swag, our event there was a total success and we were listed as one of the “Top 10 Companies Most Discussed on Twitter at South by Southwest“!

Head on over to our company Flickr account to view all of our pictures taken at SXSW 2009. If you were there this year and visited us at our booth, please comment and let us know! Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter – @ServerBeach to keep up with what’s happening at The Beach and to play along in upcoming contests!

You’re On My Shirt! SpawnPoint

SpawnPoint is one of the largest public gaming communities on the Internet. If you’re a hardcore gamer then you already know who I’m talking about and if you don’t – give them a look because SpawnPoint.com is THE place for gamers to be!

Whether it’s information you’re looking for about a video game or gaming console such as XBox, Wii, PlayStation, PC, you’ll find it on SpawnPoint.com. If you’re more interested in gaming Forums, Videos, Blogs, and Clans, they’ve got that covered too! Don’t forget the downloads! Whatever you’re in search of, you can bet SpawnPoint has it covered.

Register at SpawnPoint.com, create a Clan, and join their game servers today!

Oh, and one more thing:

Million Hits Twitter Contest

Recently we made a blog post about the PEER 1 Million Hits campaign and shared 3 humorous videos. The response to our campaign has been phenominal! To continue on, we’ve decided to take it one step further and create a “Million Hits” Twitter contest. Do you have a Twitter account?

Sign up for Twitter today if you don’t already have an account and if you do, check out our contest details here: http://www.peer1.com/blog/?p=183

You’re On My Shirt! Doubledot Media

Doubledot Media spends their days drinking coffee, playing foosball, and from time to time  developing training programs for businesses to use online that include multi-media training resources, web applications, and more. Okay, so maybe they spend more time developing but it’s still humorous they state that on their website.

Their most notable programs include “Affilorama“, which provides a free multimedia portal for affiliate marketers, “SaleHoo“, an online wholesale supplier directory, and their most recent tool “Zeadoo“, which is a free browser homepage that helps your business organize and manage websites.  I’m finding Zeadoo to be very useful today as it allows you to save and access your favorite search sites, bookmarks, blogs, videos and more. Zeadoo has that web 2.0 look and feel and continues the trend for social networking sites.

It looks like 2008 was definitely a good year for Doubledot Media as they received multiple awards throughout the year -

* Champion Canterbury Awards 2008 – Global Operator Finalist
* AmCham Export Awards 2008 – Exporter of the Year Finalist
* Deloitte Fast 50 2008 – 23rd fastest growing company in NZ
* Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific 2008 – Winner

While headquartered in New Zealand, Doubledot Media has 12 employees also in Australia, USA, and Asia.

If you’re in the market for simple yet thorough online training tools for your business, give Doubledot Media a look today at http://www.doubledotmedia.com.

Get on My Shirt and I’ll Expose Your Business

I’m launching a new feature on this blog to give your business some added exposure. It’s called “You’re on My Shirt”.

Every week I will post a picture of me wearing a client’s branded T-shirt along with a description of your business and a friendly link to your site or blog.

So what’s the catch, you ask? Nothing really. To be featured, all you have to do is be a current ServerBeach client and mail or courier me a T-shirt with your company name on the front and/or back… and that’s it! BTW, size MEDIUM please.

The ServerBeach Blog has a loyal following and is viewed daily by many online users. This new feature is a way for us to extend some love to our clients and get you some more free exposure.

To get on my shirt, fire off an e-mail to me and I’ll reply back right away with some details and questions about your business, as well as an address to send me your T-shirt.

Be the first one to get featured!

Charnell Pugsley
Community Evangelist
cpugsley@peer1.com

YouTube’s Chad Hurley Talks About ServerBeach Hosting Plan

Liz Gannes on NewTeeVee reports on YouTube CEO Chad Hurley who addressed an audience at a recent Startup2Startup dinner in Palo Alto. Chad discussed how YouTube started, including the ServerBeach $129/mo unlimited data plan they used. It was all caught on tape. Here is an excerpt:

ServerBeach had two pipes, one for redundancy, and YouTube was using one and a half of them, with rest of its customers limited to just half of the one left. ServerBeach had a great plan, $129 month for unlimited data. “They weren’t necessarily prepared for a service like YouTube.”

He’s right. We weren’t quite ready for their explosive growth, but found a way to manage. We captured our sentiments in this tongue-in-cheek video send off to the YouTube gang (who btw, loved it!) after they moved their last servers from the Beach over to Google.

ServerBeach Farewell to YouTube

Steve Chen, Founder

“When YouTube first started to experience its exponential growth and our hosting needs changed, ServerBeach offered us great flexibility. They continually redesigned our streaming architecture for optimum performance while keeping our hosting costs in check.”

Many of you know (or may not know) that YouTube‘s beginning days were with ServerBeach. YouTube grew at an incredible speed and ServerBeach was there every step of the way providing them with the hardware and network necessary to support their amazing growth.

YouTube outgrew ServerBeach in November of 2007. Please take a look at our farewell video to YouTube. We’ll miss them! Really we will…..

Tech Sanity Check: Eight Technology Trends to Watch in 2008

According to a “Sanity Check” article on TechRepublic this morning, the dependence of business on technology will continue to accelerate 2008, but not all of the trends are happy ones. They’ve created a list of which tech trends to keep an eye on during 2008 and how they will impact business and IT — for better and for worse.

1. Enterprise IT budgets will shrink in the U.S.
2. Utility computing will start a new wave of IT outsourcing
3. Mobile Internet will change the way people work
4. Green IT will gain legal momentum
5. Unified communications will unlock the business value of VoIP
6. Businesses will continue to avoid Windows Vista
7. WAN caching will save bandwidth and speed up remote users
8. Demand will grow for alternative form factor computers

A very interesting read.