As more information is released onto the Internet regarding the plight of the Haitian population, an increasing number of organizations, businesses and groups are stepping up to help those in desperate need. One interesting and normally extremely competitive group to emerge among those giving aid is a partnership of web hosting companies.

Partnering with the American Red Cross, the following web hosting companies have joined forces to help Haitians affected by the recent earthquake:

• Rackspace
• Peer1 Hosting
• GoGrid
• The Planet
• ServInt
• HostGator
• SingleHop
• Laughing Squid
• HostDime
• iWeb
• Site5
• SoftLayer
• Blue Box Group
• Webair
• VPS.NET

These companies are joining forces to help collect donations and are actively spreading awareness of the plight of those left behind in the wake of this horrible tragedy. Hosting For Haiti provides a direct link to the International Response Fund. 100% of the money donated will go to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief and Development fund. Assistance provided may include relief workers mobilization, sending relief supplies, and providing financial resources for recovery. The Hosting For Haiti web site also encourages browsers to share the web site’s URL with friends and family and to get the word out via Twitter.

Tragedy on the scale of the Haitian earthquake can affect humanity as a whole. One of the defining moments of humanity is when we can set aside our normally competitive natures and come together to help those in desperate need. The web hosting companies that have joined forces to create Hosting For Haiti have set the bar for this definition. I encourage you to set your own bar by visiting Hosting For Haiti as well as the participating web hosting companies listed. Do your part to assist Haiti.

The US Census Bureau has jumped onto the cloud computing bandwagon, though not with an “all in” stance. The government information gathering department recently revealed its tentative use of off-site data storage. The Bureau’s intent is to lower costs and increase service delivery time to the public as well as employees.

For those not in the know of the ins and outs of census taking, the entire planning process takes ten years to complete. The actual census itself takes only a few months. Currently the US Census Bureau is busy hiring over 1.4 million temporary employees, opening up 500 temporary offices, and contacting 170,000 potential partners in the whole process. When all the prep work is completed, 600 million forms will be mailed out. At the completion of the census, the Bureau will make budget cuts. It is these budget cuts that present a rather large task for the department.

One way the Bureau plans on alleviating some of the budget cutting work is in the usage of cloud computing. The web site for the 2010 census has Akamai as a content delivery network that will handle any major amounts of traffic. A payoff has already been realized by turning to Salesforce.com to store the data surrounding its 170,000 partners. In six weeks, Salesforce.com was able to deploy a customer database for the US Census Bureau – a task that normally takes months for most government agencies.

For the moment, the US Census Bureau is taking this new technology adoption at a slow and steady pace. This is perhaps for the best as we have already seen how very bad cloud computing can go if not attended to properly. Sidekick cell phone users suffering from the massive data loss of Danger cloud servers could be considered the consummate example of just how wrong things can go.

My one complaint? That you can’t fill out the census form online yet. That would be one massive budget cut. Perhaps we can look forward to that at the next census.

Hostway Corporation and AutomaticSiteMap intend on changing all that. In an announcement made today, the web hosting company Hostway will be the first to integrate the new direct XML sitemap submission technology offered by AutomaticSiteMap into its hosting packages. Every Hostway customer will be provided this new service at absolutely no charge (a $60 per year value).

With this new service, hosting customers will now have their content submitted automatically to major search engine sites such as Google, Bing, Ask.com, and Yahoo. Search engines no longer will have to find their content, their content finds the search engines. Customers also have the ability to control their AutomaticSiteMap service from within their control panels.

Senior vice president of Hostway, John Lee, said in a recent statement “AutomaticSiteMap is an exact fit with the other technologies and services we provide to help our customers make more money online.” The services effectively increases search traffic without the customer having to put a lot of sweat in.

With beginnings in 2009, AutomaticSiteMap has led the way in development of server-based search engine technologies. One of the latest ways the company is getting the word out about their products and services is through sponsoring this year’s WHIR web hosting networking event in Los Angeles, California.

Hostway web hosting has been around since 1998. Since its own beginnings, Hostway has managed to climb its way to being one of the top five leading web hosting companies around. HostReview recently awarded Hostway with the Top 10 Best Web Hosting honor in December of 2009.

Having been one of those web site owners who has had to constantly monitor and submit my own web site to the major players in the search engine game, I can appreciate the beauty and simplicity of this new service. I also happen to write quite a bit and have the unfortunate need to “get the word out” about my latest scribblings. On average, I spend at least an hour a day submitting my web site content, blog postings, and articles to heavy hitters such at Google and Yahoo. That time equates to money. And who wouldn’t want that money back?

Cloud computing is a fairly new bit of web hosting technology that is still stretching its wings and trying to fly right. For those not in the know, cloud computing is basically the term for anything that involves the delivery of hosted services over the Internet. The most commonly used cloud computing service is SaaS or Software-as-a-Service. SaaS services include Web-based e-mail, database processing, and even inventory control (to name just a few).

At this point, cloud computing can only begin to climb upwards in the popularity contest. With this year’s fiasco with the T-Mobile Sidekick and customers losing all of their data, a bit of a black-eye has emerged on the face of cloud computing. The truth of the matter is this was not exactly a cloud computing issue but rather a matter of not following proper IT practices. A backup of data was supposed to have been performed and the ball was dropped. Unfortunately, the end result was a lot of finger-pointing and fist-shaking at cloud computing.

In the coming year, we can expect to see the rise of new technologies designed to improve cloud computing usage and its performance as well as improved security. 2010 should see an increase in third parties focusing on moving data center technologies and applications to cloud computing environments. More companies will be providing virtual systems to their customers for cloud computing usage as well. Security is a big issue with many would-be cloud computing users – the solution may be tougher SLAs (Service Level Agreements) with cloud providers that impose penalties should things go awry. Nothing says secure like knowing your reputation is on the line.

It may seem a bit redundant to say that social media integration will be a big trend in 2010 but the reality is this past year has only been the beginning. Companies such as Comcast, Starbucks, and Ford have paved the way and smoothed out the bumps in the utilization of social media and business. The new year should see plenty more big, mid-sized and small businesses jumping on the social media bandwagon and integrating the monsters of social networking into their company web sites. The name of the game is to sell your products and services – how better to do this than to connect with your customers on a more personal level?

Personally, I would love to see a combination of both cloud computing and social media integration into one neat, working and secure package in 2010. Perhaps there is already something in the works and it is merely a matter of the calendar turning over. If you know of a service that does exactly this, let me know!

How does it work? Lucky SquareUp beta testers with iPhones connect a small swiping dongle to the iPhone audio jack. The customer’s credit card is swiped, the customer signs via the touchscreen and enters an e-mail address for receipt purposes. Currently, the passed about word is there are no lengthy contracts or monthly fees – one can only assume there are transaction fees but only beta testers are currently privy to that information.

This new concept is being headed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and is being funded by numerous angels including Khosla Ventures. Dorsey has indicated that the iPhone is just the first step in integrating with mobile media devices. The Android and Blackberry are the next two devices on the SquareUp path and hopefully followed by many more.

The feedback around the Internet on this new service is a bit mixed. As not a lot of information has been released about the inner workings of SquareUp, much of what can be found is pure speculation. The excitement is most certainly palpable as any inexpensive mode for conducting payment transactions is always a good thing.

However, many are concerned over the security aspect of the service. LiveFyre, a beta service itself, houses an interesting and ongoing discussion on the challenges Internet users feel that may face SquareUp. One user has noted that it may not be too difficult to implement an iPhone-based skimmer – a program that captures bank card information for fraudulent purposes. It has also been noted that as the dongle device connects to the audio jack, two issues may arise – one, many do not want yet another piece of equipment to have to carry around and two, audio jacks are not designed for this type of usage and may end up damaged.

Still, the appeal is there due to what seems to be a lack of ongoing and frankly expensive costs brought about by normal merchant payment gateways. This does not seem like a service for those with numerous daily transactions; freelancers, small businesses and perhaps individuals with the need for a quick way to be paid may be the target market for this service. Until more information is released (which does not look likely until after the beginning of 2010), SquareUp is worth keeping an eye on.

With the current TTL system, a caching or recursive nameserver sends queries to authoritative nameservers requesting a resource record. The recursive nameserver then caches the record for the specified TTL. The standard TTL within a DNS record is usually set at 86,400 seconds or 24 hours. In some cases, the TTL is set for a longer amount of time and can be as long as a week. Even though the error had been caught and corrected in less than an hour, a number of “.se” domains remained inaccessible for at least a week.

These types of issues clearly indicate a need for real-time update processing. Neustar and OpenDNS have combined resources to answer the call with the DNS Real-time Directory. This new service is comprised of three elements: a combined collection of DNS changes, authoritative nameservers, and recursive nameservers. The DNS Real-time Directory bypasses the TTL cache settings and allows for nearly immediate updating of IP and DNS records.

OpenDNS has been using the new service offered by Neustar for over a month and recently publicly announced the service. The announcement just happened to coincided with the latest Google DNS service release. OpenDNS founder David Ulevitch posted out his thoughts on the two services. An online dashboard to control web site accessing, DNS caches that are more up-to-date than Google’s, and differing views on user privacy are the biggest differences.

Personally, I’m excited about the prospect of real-time DNS updates. Having dealt with the tiniest of typos in server updating scripts, I have had to deal with the hassle of waiting for DNS records to propagate throughout the Internet after making corrections. With each passing hour, a business domain that is not accessible ends up equaling to a loss of new and current customers. 24 hours can seem like an eternity. A week? Pure hell and a public relations nightmare for many businesses.

Patience is tossed out the window, it seems, when it comes to all things Internet – whether a web surfer or an online business.  Solutions to long TTL records leading to domain inaccessibility are needed as can be seen by the Swedish domain name fiasco.  The DNS Real-time Directory not only addresses this issue but is yet another step in the direction of a speedier Internet experience for all.

This is an interesting twist considering all the hard work the search engine company has put into attempts to allay the privacy concerns of the web surfing public.  With the roll out of so many products and services over the past few months, a growing number of concerned citizens are becoming less than estatic and increasingly less likely to jump on board the Google train.  Search engine query tracking, IP address stockpiling, e-mails, voice mail, web history and pictures of homes – the list just keeps growing and growing.

To get a true picture of just how much information Google already has on you, a quick check of the Google Dashboard can give a great picture.  Granted, much of this information is willingly given.  This is just the very tip of the iceberg.  Much of what can be seen here points to even more data being saved on a daily basis each every time one fires up the ol’ web browser and starts to surf.

In an interesting twist on all the murmurs and protestations, Asa Dotzler, Mozilla’s Director of Community Development, has put out publicly that a simple solution is to switch from Google to Bing as one’s search engine of choice.  Bing’s privacy policy does a rather spectacular job of not only trouncing Google’s but also manages to keep it concise, clear and to the point.

Personally, I’m the poster child for what not to do when it comes to online privacy.  This is a choice I’ve made willingly and with much thought prior to being very open.  And that is the crux of the whole matter.  It has been a choice and with Google and its myriad of services and products, much of that choice is being taken away.

Google is already busily attempting to stomp out this fire by stating that Mr. Schmidt’s comments were taken out of context.  Viewing the video seems to point otherwise.  Privacy isn’t something to just blithely toss aside as a nuisance we all need to just deal with.  This dismissive response by one of Google’s own is merely adding insult to injury.

Google was brought to life in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin – Stanford University students at the time. The company has since grown from humble beginnings as just a search engine into a growing number of products, partnerships and acquisitions. As a multiple winner of Fortune Magazine’s #1 Best Place to Work and one of most visited web sites (as ranked by Alexa), Google’s mission is not only to organize information on a world-wide basis but also make it useful and accessible. Unfortunately, this has given birth to a considerable controversy concerning privacy of personal information.

For those unfamiliar with the inner workings of DNS (Domain Name System), this service is normally handled by one’s ISP (Internet Service Provider). The basic function of DNS is to convert domain names into IP addresses allowing for computer to computer communication. With the Google DNS service, computer users change their preferred and alternate DNS server entries to those IPs given by Google. This is not a task for the computer novice.  Caution is advised as well as writing down everything prior to making any changes.

Does the new DNS product make surfing any faster? According to PC Magazine with comparisons to the default DNS setup and OpenDNS, the results do not reveal an enormous speed improvement, though some can be seen. The difference is a few tenths of a second or so and, over the course of a day full of serious surfing and web sites pulling up multiple name server information, this can add up.

Where the controversy comes into play is when the computer user’s uniquely assigned IP address is saved by Google. Google has attempted to calm the masses with a public Security Benefits web page and contends that the information is only kept for a short period of time to detect and prevent possible denial-of-service attacks. The search engine company states that all temporary logs are destroyed within 48 hours. Beyond this, there are permanent records kept that store location information (not IP or personally identifiable information) to allow for debugging, abuse prevention and overall improvements of the new DNS service.

As Google is already known for having millions of Internet user’s searches saved in their data warehouses (all only made anonymous after 9 months), this may be a bit off-putting for many, including myself. It seems that Google already has more than enough information about me and I’d rather not give them more. It is more than just a bit unnerving to realize just how much information they might already have given the popularity of the search engine and the variety of products they now offer. Between pictures of your house to what your exact IP address is, where exactly does the information gathering end?

Codero recently announced its 100% green power theme with the purchase of 12,600 Mwh in renewable energy credits.  Data centers for the company are located in Phoenix, AZ and San Diego, CA while its headquarters can be found in Overland Park, KS.   The company is now considered to be the largest managed and dedicated web hosting provider in the industry touting green hosting solutions.  The “Go Green With Codero” motto, according to the Codero web site, will allow businesses utilizing their services be assured of being powered by green energy.

While purchasing renewable energy credits is certain a step in the right direction, I’d hardly call it being green.   It is a terribly misleading statement.  Being an actual green powered hosting company involves solar panels, wind energy, and the like.  Renewable energy credits (also known as green tags, renewable energy certificates and tradable renewable certificates) are purchased by the company but actually used by a third party.   The credits or certificates are not to be considered actual renewable energy used by the company who purchased them.  It is a very nice way to give back to nature but simply not a green hosting solution.

An easy way to think of how renewable energy credits work is laid out very nicely at Native Energy:

“Let’s say your utility offered you the opportunity to pay a little more each month for wind power, and you did.  From that point on, the electricity feeding your meter would be exactly the same as it was before you started buying wind power.  That’s because all electricity is the same, and you can’t tell particular electrons to go to a particular house on the grid.  So what do you get when you buy wind power from your utility?  You get electricity from the mix of all sources feeding the grid, and “credit” for having had the electricity you use replaced with wind power.  That “credit” is the core of renewable energy credits, or RECs. “

While it does end up helping the environment in the long run, it is hardly a “green” solution.  Purchasing renewable energy credits is laudable practice and, if a web hosting company does not have access to solar or wind energy, a worthy endeavor toward helping creating renewable energy overall.  Simply put, these hostig companies should be considered “100% eco-friendly”.  Certainly not “100% green”.

On November 24, 2009 DreamHost proudly announced it had completed its move from the Net2EZ facility to the new location at Alchemy Communications’ data center. After the fact, it appears as though the migration really was not as well planned out at all. The company’s own technical team is attributing the current problems to several factors – shared hosting hardware being upgraded, the upgrade not going as planned, and the customer support team not knowing exactly how to solve the mounting issues.

DreamHost’s status page is long on the reported errors and issues since the company’s big announcement. Among those listed are intermittent web-mail errors, network errors, network failures, and most recently the death of a raid controller. Here is where I have more than just a slight problem. The entire page is written for those who are in the know when it comes to network issues, network packets, raid controllers and more. The average web hosting client is not going to care about the major technical language involved in explaining why a thing is not working. The average web hosting client wants to know in plain language when his or her web site will be operational once again.

The grumblings of DreamHost’s web hosting clients can be seen all over the Internet – specifically on Twitter. A quick search on the micro-blogging web site shows a number of clients tweeting about moving their hosting services and questioning why the down-times are not being handled in a much quicker fashion. In what can almost come across as humorous, DreamHost lists a Twitter update account right on their status page. However, it shows nothing more than what the page already covers. According to the main DreamHost Twitter account update from nearly a day ago, the company is reporting that 95% of its servers and services are back in operation. Yet, it still appears as though many customers are still without working web sites.

Perhaps the most telling thing of all is DreamHost’s Thanksgiving promotional page. Depicted is a turkey reading a newspaper and appearing to defecate out a bunch of stuffing. Probably not the best picture in hindsight.