Omnis Network is a web services firm located in Torrance, California. We specialize in cloud web hosting, cloud email hosting, domain name registration (ICANN accredited), and a variety of other services….

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(The Hosting News) – A project, which brought together senior executives from the creative and technology industries, has identified that privacy could be traded in the future for content, to generate new revenue streams for creative industries.

Even when we access content for free, we leave a digital trail of metadata behind us. By aggregating this information, organizations can generate a picture of a person’s behaviors and deliver relevant content to them.

John Cass, Director of the Creative Industries Knowledge Transfer Network (CIKTN), the organization behind the project, said: “Even when we access content for free, we leave a digital trail of metadata behind us. By aggregating this information, organizations can generate a picture of a person’s behaviors and deliver relevant content to them.”

The biggest issue with using metadata more effectively in this way are public fears over privacy. However, Cass believes that, in the future, people will increasingly be prepared to trade privacy for content or even financial reward. At present some companies such as Google and Facebook collect this sort of data without the users fully understanding its value.

“The big challenge will be to make the whole process more transparent so people understand the value of the data they have, how it will be used and what they are getting in return for that data,” said Cass. “This model already exists with store loyalty cards where we share information about our shopping habits in return for personalized offers and benefits, or cash back. The same model could be developed in the online world with companies delivering highly personalized content or offers to people.

“The traditional view is that content is free or paid for. The recent introduction of the Times paywall shows how content creators are looking for ways to monetize what was a free commodity. The other option is supporting the generation of content by intelligently monetizing metadata to deliver relevant and personalized information to users. Effectively people choose to trade some of their privacy for either free content or financial reward. More than 40% of the creatives we surveyed felt this could have a groundbreaking effect in their business.

“Content companies that recognize the need to make this process transparent and give consumers the power to make meaningful choices are the ones that will be able to drive new revenue streams and delight customers,” added Cass.

Privacy as a tradable commodity was one of several key findings in the CIKTN Beacon report on The Future of Digital Content, part of a program of 14 projects being carried out by the CI KTN to tackle the big technology related challenges faced by the UK’s creative industries. Each Beacon Project identifies key innovation and business needs to enable organizations to turn creative ideas into business successes for the UK.

Within the UK, the Creative Industries sector contributes over 6.4% of UK Gross Value Added and is growing at a faster rate than the economy as a whole. In 2007, total Creative Industries revenues amounted to some £67.5bn. The Publishing sub-sector is the largest, with Radio & TV and Advertising among the top performers.

Notes:
To receive a copy of the Creative Industries KTN Final Beacon Report on the Beacon projects: The Future of Digital Content, please contact Tony Henderson at:
tony(at)creativeindustriesktn(dot)org.

Internet Users Will Trade Privacy for Content

Omnis Network is a web services firm located in Torrance, California. We specialize in cloud web hosting, cloud email hosting, domain name registration (ICANN accredited), and a variety of other services….

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(The Hosting News) – Future Hosting, an Internet solutions provider serving SMBs and enterprises internationally and developer of Future Engineer™, today introduced Hybrid Servers in Chicago and Washington, D.C., further expanding the company’s global footprint. Hybrid Servers are also available in London and Dallas, allowing clients to now choose from four international cities.

Hybrid Servers from Future Hosting are unique, high-end Virtual Private Servers that deliver full management, high-availability, premium bandwidth, and access to either the cPanel or Plesk hosting control panel. Unlike standard Virtual Private Servers, Hybrid Servers offer an average of 1 CPU core per Hybrid Server and high-performance RAM, disk storage, and network connectivity.

“Offering truly global solutions for our clients remains a strategic goal for Future Hosting. In the past two years alone, we have more than quadrupled our international presence, and created the ability to offer full-service hosting solutions for companies based in the United States and abroad. By adding Hybrid Servers to two new major American cities, we are fulfilling our commitment to continuously build geographic diversity in our services and open the door to even further expansion in the months ahead. This is one more step in our march to globalization,” said Future Hosting Chief Strategy Officer Stephen Kowalski.

Hybrid Servers from Future Hosting are automatically backed up by the company’s next-generation Future Protect™ data protection service, which delivers the ultimate in protection against data loss. Starting Hybrid Server plans offer 80GB of disk space, 2GB of RAM, and 2000GB of premium bandwidth. All Hybrid Servers include SLA uptime of at least 99.9%.

In early July, Future Hosting added complete DNS management functionality to the Future Hosting Management Portal (FHMP), which provides dedicated server clients with complete control of their servers. FHMP is slated to eventually incorporate Hybrid servers, further enhancing user control.

Future Hosting is the developer of Future Engineer™, a technical support automation system designed to automate time consuming server configuration and repair tasks on Virtual Private Servers (VPS), Future Engineer™ allows clients to receive a greater level of technical support than is available when technicians spend their time performing routine or basic maintenance tasks. With Future Engineer™, technicians are free to spend their time offering a level of technical support that is unrivaled and otherwise unaffordable.

For more information about Future Hosting, please visit http://www.futurehosting.com.

For more information about Hybrid Servers from Future Hosting, please visit http://www.futurehosting.com/managed-hybrid-servers.

About Future Hosting, LLC
Founded in 2001, Future Hosting is a privately held leading Internet solutions provider specializing in managed hosting, including Dedicated Servers, Virtual Private Servers, and Hybrid Virtual Private Servers. The company has built a strong reputation for its high-quality service, innovative pricing models, and value-added features. Future Hosting is based in Novi, Mich.

Future Hosting Grows Global Footprint with Hybrid Servers

(The Hosting News) – Hosting Metro, Inc. announced today that it has reached an agreement with long-time Drupal web host company Drupal Value Hosting. With the agreement in place, Hosting Metro will migrate existing services and marketing to its own operations. In doing so, Hosting Metro will be able to offer expanded customer support through a dedicated 24/7 support line, as well as additional hosting features previously unavailable to Drupal Value Hosting customers including VPS, Dedicated Servers and shared web hosting.

Tony Chu, CEO of Hosting Metro stated, “By acquiring Drupal Value Hosting, we looked increase our support of Drupal and its corresponding community by integrating the knowledge and brain share of Drupal Value Hosting’s development team into our already reliable infrastructure. As a hosting company who specializes in application support, this is something that our customers have been asking for and with more than 1% of the web running on Drupal there is a still a lot of room for growth.”

Amit Ghupta, former CEO of Drupal Value Hosting has agreed to stay on with the new company and will continue to provide development and consultation services dedicated to the Drupal community. “Hosting Metro is a great company, and I am very confident that they will exceed the needs of their customers by delivering outstanding support and I have been especially impressed with their solid infrastructure that is focused on delivering the most reliable uptime in the industry.”

About Hosting Metro
Hosting Metro is dedicated to developing innovative services and providing exceptional technical support to meet the Web hosting needs of its customers. As an independent company, they have 13 years of experience in the web hosting industry, and work to integrate emerging technologies and provide comprehensive, integrated solutions to their hosting clients. With their innovative Campfire Support system, Hosting Metro moves beyond standard domain hosting to provide leading technical support and a range of hosting solutions that are focused on improving productivity, increasing profitability, and empowering their clients’ to achieve their goals. For more information go to: www.hostingmetro.com or visit their forum for the latest news.

Hosting Metro, Inc. Acquires Drupal Value Hosting

(The Hosting News) – The internet is buzzing about the termination of open source blogging platform, Blogetery by its web hosting company. Blogetery was recently accused by the FBI of being used by members of Al-Qaeda to recruit and share information.
 
Many Internet watchdog groups and the service’s proprietor believe that the web hosting company took it far away. On Tuesday, The New York Times interviewed Alexander Yusupov, who claimed to be Blogetery’s owner and sole employee. Over the weekend, multiple media reported that Blogetery had been closed. It’s learnt that Blogetery had at least 70,000 blogs—figures are matter of dispute as Burst.net and others have given different figures. On Monday, CNET reported that the blogging platform had been eliminated over a FBA discovery that the blogging site was linked with the terror outfit and was used for sharing bomb-making techniques and details of Americans on the hit list of the terror outfits.

Yusupov, who has no criminal case against him, told the Times that executives from Burst.net, Blogetery’s Web host, failed to furnish any documentation to prove the FBI’s claims. “They just took it down,” he said. The termination of the blogging site led to automatic termination of pages of all the users, including those who didn’t touch al Qaeda or such sensitive issues. Joe Marr, Burst.net’s chief technology officer, meanwhile tendered no apology or regret over the termination of the services. However, he asserted that an employee goofed when the person originally informed Yusupov and members of the media that the FBI had ordered termination of Blogetery. Marr added that the blogging sit was cut off only because it hosted some objectionable content, which breached its term of conditions.

The move, as expected, irked hundreds of users who were not linked with terror issues. Kurt Opsahl, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the Times: the “tragedy is that thousands of blogs will be taken offline for no good reason.”

Blogetery Shut Down by Web Hosting Company

(The Hosting News) – Parallels CEO Serguei Beloussov today outlined the future of Cloud service delivery by announcing the launch of Parallels Automation 5.0 (PA5.0) in his keynote presentation at HostingCon 2010. 
 
The announcement introduced new key features in Parallels Automation 5.0, including support for delivering Microsoft Exchange 2010, unified communications with Office Communications Server 2007 R2 services, improved cloud syndication capabilities, customer on-premise directory integration, as well as over 100 other features.
 
“With the competition to attract small businesses to the Cloud heating up, Service Providers need to deliver profitable Cloud services to market at an ever-increasing pace,” said Serguei Beloussov, CEO and Chairman at Parallels. “Adding Microsoft Exchange 2010, Office Communications Server and customer directory integration to Parallels Automation 5.0 allows Service Providers to increase average revenue per user, reduce operational costs and attract new customers.”
 
Beloussov added, “Service Providers can now be amongst the first to offer their customers Hosted Exchange 2010 email.  It also enables them to increase ARPU and decrease churn by cross-selling the latest Microsoft unified communications services.”
 
This release of Parallels Automation 5.0 also significantly improves Open-Xchange-based services capabilities for business class email providing an additional source of revenue for Service Providers.
 
“One of the advantages of the Parallels platform is that it has allowed us to dramatically expand our product portfolio and ultimately be a single vendor of choice for our customers’ business communication and collaboration needs,” said Chris Damvakaris, Vice President of Sales and Business Development at Apptix.  “On top of being able to offer Hosted Exchange, Hosted SharePoint, and VoIP, Parallels Automation allows us to roll out Web conferencing, secure IM, online backup, DNS hosting and Web site hosting.”
 
The release of PA5.0 also includes Parallels Business Automation 5.0 (PBA) which boasts PCI Payment Application DSS certification.  This simplifies PCI audits for Service Providers that require PCI DSS compliance. 
 
“Parallels Automation provides a carrier-class tool with robust features and the ability to integrate new services such as BlackBerry and GoodLink — but its interface is simple enough so that mobile customers can manage their own accounts through a Web-based control panel,” said David Grantz, Chief Technology Officer at ExchangeMyMail.

Automation is the future of Cloud Delivery

(The Hosting News)  – The Planet, the global hosting leader, and Web Hosting Talk, the largest, most influential web hosting community on the Internet, today announced the beta development of a free, online cloud benchmarking tool designed to save businesses time and money when selecting a cloud provider. The new service, known as Bench the Cloud (http://www.benchthecloud.com), gives visibility into the performance of cloud or virtualized server platforms, and provides standardized performance feedback and comparisons.
The site was co-developed by Web Hosting Talk and The Planet. Web Hosting Talk will own and manage the site, and The Planet will become a charter member of Bench the Cloud’s advisory board.
Bench the Cloud is built on a suite of open-source benchmarking tools and measures three key criteria essential to running cloud applications: CPU performance, disk read and disk write speed. Further information about these three performance indices is detailed in an individualized dashboard. Users can sort and filter the public benchmarks according to provider, virtualization status, total RAM and CPU cores. The application can also be used to test non-virtualized machines, and can be downloaded onto any Linux-based machine.
“One of the many popular discussion topics on Web Hosting Talk is how to accurately compare cloud providers based on a standard set of measurements,” said Kevin Gold, director of marketing for iNET Interactive, owner of Web Hosting Talk. “We hear from our community members that it’s difficult to make informed cloud buying decisions. As active members of Web Hosting Talk and an industry leader, The Planet approached us about co-developing a community-driven benchmarking tool that would bring the transparency the global community is seeking.”
“We contributed real-world feedback into building this industry-first tool with Web Hosting Talk,” said Carl Meadows, senior product manager for cloud solutions at The Planet. “We’ve seen first-hand from our customers the time spent researching various cloud providers, and the amount of confusion and misinformation that exists in the marketplace. Our goal in participating is to provide additional value to customers by offering a quick, transparent view of the strengths, weaknesses and performance of solutions – a virtual ‘Consumer Reports’ for the cloud. Customers can now objectively compare solutions before purchase, and make their first pick the right one.”
Web Hosting Talk will hand out invitations to participate in a limited closed beta for Bench the Cloud at its booth at HostingCon 2010, which begins July 19 in Austin, Texas. Stop by booth 134 to receive an invitation, or visit http://www.benchthecloud.com for more information.

About Web Hosting Talk
Web Hosting Talk (http://www.webhostingtalk.com) is the largest, most influential web hosting community on the Internet with over 240,000 registered members and over six million posts generated. It is one of many social media properties owned and operated by iNET Interactive.

About NET Interactive
Founded in 2002, iNET Interactive (whttp://www.iNETinteractive.com), owner of Web Hosting Talk, is a social media company operating prominent online communities for Internet professionals and technology enthusiasts. Its vertically focused communities incorporate user-contributed ratings, reviews, and discussion augmented with professionally produced content.

About The Planet
The Planet is the leading provider of On Demand IT Infrastructure solutions, hosting more than 18,000 small- and medium-size businesses and 12 million Web sites worldwide. Customers have the power to choose from the broadest range of hosting solutions in the industry, from dedicated servers, Managed Dedicated Servers, Managed Hosting and data center colocation, all backed by 24×7x365 support. With the best choice of servers, software tools and world-class service, backed by state-of-the-art data centers and an enterprise-class network, The Planet turns IT into a powerful competitive advantage that enables customers to grow their businesses. For additional information, visit http://www.theplanet.com.
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Web Hosting Talk and The Planet Unveil Cloud Benchmarking Tool

(The Hosting News) — iNET Interactive has announced today the location and date for the seventh annual HostingCon, the world’s premiere conference and trade show serving the hosted services industry.  HostingCon 2011 will be held in San Diego, California, from August 8-10 at the San Diego Convention Center situated beautifully on the glistening San Diego Bay. 

HostingCon attracts web hosts, cloud services, data centers, software-as-a-service (SaaS), ISVs and other Internet service providers from across the world.  In 2010, HostingCon attendees represented more than 33 countries.  Whether traveling from near or far, HostingCon attendees expect a high-class location to conduct business but they also want to have fun and relax – all of which San Diego delivers.   

As the nation’s eighth largest city, San Diego is easily accessible for domestic and international travelers, home to over 11,000 high-tech companies and showcases great entertainment and attractions.  In addition, San Diego `experiences beautiful weather year-round with an average daily temperature of 70.5 degrees (21.4 degrees Celsius.)

“San Diego has earned a worldwide reputation as a top convention and meeting destination,” commented Bev Yuellig, Event Operations Manager for HostingCon. “It is the type of destination that generates broad appeal from professionals who arrive for business and stay longer for vacation.”

The San Diego Convention Center is just three miles from the San Diego International Airport and just steps away from a 16-block urban paradise featuring some of Southern California’s finest dining and nightclubs.  

“Surveys of past attendees indicated that many wanted HostingCon to visit the West Coast,” stated Kelly Kleiner, VP Sales of iNET Interactive, the producer of HostingCon.  “San Diego was a logical choice — it’s home to many high-tech companies and the city’s easygoing lifestyle, vibrant economy and nearly perfect weather make it an ideal location for HostingCon.” 

About HostingCon
HostingCon is the world’s premiere conference and trade show serving the hosted services industry.  In its sixth year, HostingCon brings together web hosts, cloud services, data centers, software-as-a-service (SaaS), ISVs and other Internet service providers. HostingCon is an iNET Interactive event.  For more details about HostingCon, visit www.HostingCon.com.  For more information on iNET Interactive, visit www.iNETinteractive.com.

HostingCon 2011 to be Held in San Diego, California