Monthly Archive for February, 2011

Spinal Tap Charity Bonspiel, Good Fun and Great Success

Monday, February 28th, 2011 | by Serra Boten |

Michelle and Tamara strategizing We were all a bit nervous as we stepped onto the ice. Looking like pros but feeling like noobs in our PEER 1 blues, we admitted that most of us hadn’t curled for a decade or more, if at all. We looked around in search of our skips, wondering what we’d gotten ourselves into.

Enter Don Bartlett and Cori Morris. Our skips, our saviours, our Olypians! Both Olympic Silver medalists were patient, encouraging and had a wonderful sense of humour as we slowly swept our way through the first seven ends. Thankfully the PEER 1 teams were paired against each other so the pressure was off and we were able to enjoy the game for what it is – a fun and social sport fueled by good natured heckling and a “winner buys loser a drink” default rule. How very Canadian!

After the last rock was thrown we swapped sliders and brooms for high heels and ties. PEER 1 Hosting sponsored a delicious dinner that was followed by a huge round of thank-yous, silent auction and dance.

This year marked the 20th anniversary of the Spinal Tap bonspiel. The event has grown far beyond organizer Ryan Durham‘s expectations, with this year alone raising over $60,000.

Special thanks go out to Tamara and Doug Backus, Michelle Warren and June and Jeff Wells for coming out and playing on our teams, as well as another huge thank you to Don and Cori for bringing their smiles and expertise to make the day a great success.

The Oscars. Actors, Directors, Glitz, Glam and… Tweeting Moms?

Friday, February 25th, 2011 | by Serra Boten |

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83 years ago the annual movie award extravaganza The Academy Awards started out as a humble affair over brunch, attended by about 270 people at a private hotel in Hollywood. Tickets to the event cost $5, and the results of the competition had been announced three months prior. The following year results were provided only to newspapers in advance, for publication at 11pm the night of the awards.

Fast forward to 2010, when estimated 42 million people tuned in to watch the awards. Far from the days of exclusive hotels in hollywood, in 2011 there are now more ways than ever for movie goers to interact with the event and get their fill of of the red carpet glitz, hollywood glam and celebrity gossip.

Let’s take a look at how things have changed over the years

1929                  Winners are announced 3 months prior to the event
1930                  Results are provided to newspapers and published at 11pm the night of the awards
1940                  Los Angeles Times releases winners before the ceremony, ending early results for
newspapers
1941                   The sealed envelope is introduced, suspense increases
1953                  First telecast by NBC
1996                  Oscar.com is registered
1997                  The Academy Awards have their first official web presence, animated gifs and all
1998                  Viewership hits an all time high as 57 million people’s hearts go on to watch Titanic win best picture. Pan flute popularity skyrockets.
2009                  First webcasts surface around the web
2010                  ABC takes questions for the red carpet via facebook and a custom iphone app
2011                  @Theacademy takes over the twitterverse

Tweeting Moms?

Forget the fancy dresses, this year it’s all the rage for nominees to get their moms on twitter. The academy has encouraged mominees to sign up and tweet using the hashtag #mominees, with a promise of lessons for any twitter noob moms out there. You can join in the coversation here – some of the comments are actually pretty hilarious.

It’s amazing to see how technology has changed the entire experience from a passive, exclusive event to something that allows fans and movie aficionados to really interact with each other and the celebrities they love. Trivial as this may seem, this is a great example of how technology has completely changed the way we share information and interact with people. 83 years ago 270 people sitting in an exclusive hotel in Hollywood got to see the awards. This year anyone with an internet connection can watch them live, ask questions for celebrities via facebook, all while reading what James Franco’s mom (@francosmom) thinks of lolcats featuring her son. (here’s the pic she was referring, for all the james franco fans out there.)

PEER 1 Hosting gets ready to SWEEEEP!

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011 | by Serra Boten |

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Last month we announced our plans to sponsor the 20th Annual Spinal Tap Charity Bonspiel in Toronto. The bonspiel is organized by the Canadian Spinal Research Organization and their goal to find a cure for paralysis caused by spinal cord injury or other neurological deficits. So far their events have raised over $350,000 for medical and scientific research! If you’re interested in contributing to the campaign you can do so online at the CSRO’s website.

In addition to supplying a team of enthusiastic staff members to grab a broom and take to the ice, we’ve also committed to contributing $100 to the CSRO for every new hosting sale into PEER 1 Hosting’s new state of the art data centre in Toronto during the months of January and February.

Our teams will be fueled by a couple of seasoned pros – 2002 olympic silver medalist Don Bartlett and 2010 olympic silver medalist Cori Morris. Initially we were also promised the much anticipated inaugural appearance of our very own Jay Newman the Curling Texan, but now it seems that yours truly will be joining Tamara Backus and June Wells to make a power trio of PEER 1 ladies on the ice this Saturday. (Yes – the same Tamara whose face you see pop up on our website!)

Sweep. SWEEEEEEP. SWEEEEEEEEEEP!! I’ve been practicing. Hopefully enough to make an impressive comeback to the curling rink after a decade long hiatus since my debut during tenth grade gym class. Crossing my fingers for a wave of beginner’s luck! Either way, the weekend is ramping up to be a fun one for a great cause. If you’re in the Toronto area come out and cheer us on! You can check out the facebook group for more info.

Web Hosting to Bull Riding, It All Comes Down to the Crucial Eight Seconds

Monday, February 21st, 2011 | by Serra Boten |

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It is estimated that storefront retailers have approximately eight seconds to engage a customer before their focus begins to wander. Not entirely unlike bull riding, where the rider must remain on top of the bucking bull for eight seconds in order to win. Coincidence? Likely. But the waning attention spans of today’s market are a huge factor and when it comes to online retail, and every millisecond counts. Slow page load times and sluggish services result in lost revenue because competition is fierce, and readily available with just a few clicks in the other direction. So what can you do to prepare – and make sure you’re ready for a million hits?

PEER 1 Hosting senior executive Robert Miggins spoke with Dave Chappelle at InfoExecutive last week and offered some tips on what business owners can do to ready their hosting infrastructure.

1. Pick a hosting partner who can handle explosive growth
Your hosting company must have the capabilities to satisfy your current and future needs, and be able to react quickly when needed.

2. Prepare for the big event by running simulation tests beforehand
Check both your host’s and your server’s ability to handle a sudden increase in web traffic.

3. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
With a CDN, frequently requested content is stored in multiple locations, which enables faster distribution of your content across the entire network, while decreasing overall dependency on your main hosting solution.

4. Have a Plan B
Be prepared for what you’re going to do if you can’t handle the traffic. That might be having ready a page that explains your problem a bit, along with a name and email input form.

Check out the full interview here

PEER 1 Hosting Banner Ad Contest Wants Your Vote

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011 | by Serra Boten |

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Update: Voting has now Ended! Congratulations to Mick, our Winner!

Last week we launched a spontaneous contest, inviting participants to submit a replacement design for a now amusingly notorious banner ad we’ve been running on the Spiceworks online community to promote our Channel Partner program. The contest has inspired some excellent entries plus a handful of honorable mentions that had to be included for hilarity’s sake, but now it’s time to chose our winner.

We Want your Votes
Once you’ve had a chance to check out all of the submissions, leave a comment here with a vote for your favourite design. The winner will replace ours on the site with full credit, plus bragging rights and major kudos from all of us at PEER 1 Hosting. Voting will close Feb 23rd at 6pm PST.

Good luck to everyone and a special huge thanks to all of our designer hopefuls for their submissions!

See the spiceworks thread that spawned this contest.

Magento Imagine 2011, Smiles and Swag All Around

Thursday, February 10th, 2011 | by Serra Boten |

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PEER 1 Hosting enjoyed a tremendous turnout at our lounge as a gold sponsor of the Magento Imagine Conference. Two days of non-stop foot traffic gave us the opportunity to meet face-to-face with many members of the Magento community – and a chance to give away some sweet swag. Sweet meaning 2nd place honors for the ‘Best Swag’! It’s great to know that people from all over the world, irregardless of their sporting preference, can appreciate the finer details of a well-tailored pro hockey jersey.

Peter Krideres of Bing Lee proudly shows off his new, limited edition PEER 1 Hosting hockey jersey.

Special congratulations go out to our winners:

Christian Saunier – MashON
Joe Bianchi – Independent ecommerce consultant
Peter Krideres – Head of eCommerce for Bing Lee
Danny Brand – Runa

The incredible turnout at the show was proof that all the buzz about Magento hosting is well deserved. We’re very excited about our partnership with Magento and look forward to meeting more of you in the community.

See more photos from Magento Imagine

PEER 1 Hosting Banner Ad Fail?

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011 | by Serra Boten |

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We’ve been running the PEER 1 Hosting banner ad you see here on the Spiceworks community site to promote our channel partner program. The ad features two stick men innocently helping one another build a puzzle. Apparently some of the Spiceworks community see something different. Something, well, far too colorful for these pages, but incredibly funny (if you enjoy that type of humor). Oh no, is this where I’m suppose to insert the disclaimer “The thoughts and ideas represented in the following link are not representative of PEER 1 Hosting or its employees”. Good ad gone bad… or just a bad ad?

Well if you think this is a banner ad fail, then mock up a new one that’s better and send it to me sboten@peer1.com. We’ll choose the best one and replace ours with yours, along with a credit to you on the banner ad along with your URL.

You can follow the community thread here.

Update: Have a look at what the Spiceworks community has cooked up for us and keep the submissions coming!

PEER 1 Hosting Sponsors Magento Imagine eCommerce Conference in Los Angeles

Monday, February 7th, 2011 | by Serra Boten |

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This evening the doors of the Hilton LAX will finally open for Magento’s inaugural Imagine eCommerce conference. With an exciting line up of speakers including PEER 1 Hosting’s own VP of sales Jay Newman at the Partner Summit, the conference is shaping up as the place to be this week for many of the key players in the eCommerce world.

The all-star lineup of keynote speakers include Alfred Lin (COO of Zappos) Naveed Anwar (Senior Director of PayPal X Developer Network) Warren Adelman (President, GoDaddy) as well as a handful of the Executive team from Magento – Roy Rubin (CEO), Yoav Kutner (CTO) and Bob Schwartz (President). In addition to the keynote speaker sessions the conference will include discussion panels and break-out sessions covering key trends that will interest both developers and decision makers in the eCommerce industry.

April 2010 saw the birth of a partnership between Magento and PEER 1 Hosting that has focused on enabling merchants to use Magento’s feature-rich, open source eCommerce platform to easily deploy a fully optimized web presence via PEER 1 Hosting. We’ve seen significant growth with this partnership so far, and are really looking forward to meeting PEER 1 Hosting clients who are using the platform, so don’t forget to stop by our booth to say hello if you get the chance.

If the buzz on twitter is any indicator, Imagine is going to have some excellent speakers, informative talks and a great party or two!

Howdy! Meet Serra

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011 | by Serra Boten |

3 Comments

Nice to meet you. My name is Serra Boten and I am PEER 1 Hosting and ServerBeach’s new Community Evangelist.

A little bit about me – I spent the last two years learning the ins and outs of the internet while working as a Network Analyst in PEER 1 Hosting’s Network Operations Center (NOC). I live in Vancouver, Canada where I am an avid cyclist, aspiring hula hoopist and obsessive blogger.

People often ask me what exactly does a Community Evangelist do? Well, it’s quite simple really. I connect with people like you. And by connecting with you, I’m hoping I can get to know you a little bit better, and let you in on what’s going on inside the company. The more we share information and insight, the better PEER 1 Hosting and ServerBeach can serve your hosting needs, as well as be good citizen of the Internet. You’ll find me on our company blogs, forums, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn under the handle “Serra Boten”. Reach out to me at any time, would love to hear from you. And if you’re a customer, would love to share your business story here. Just ping me to get it started.

Now you might wonder – how exactly does a Network Analyst wake up one day and decide she wants to trade in routing protocols for trending topics? Well, the truth is when I finished high school my fascination with the internet motivated me to pursue a career in information technology. I did the helpdesk thing for a few years before coming to work in PEER 1 Hosting’s NOC, but the part I enjoyed most about either job was always the communications aspect of things.

Blogging and social media have also been an almost obsessive hobby of mine since I first learned some basic HTML back when I was eleven years old. Also, I may have kept myself amused during the quieter hours of night shift by maintaining an unnamed number of blogs, twitter feeds and/or facebook profiles (some of which may or may not belong to my cat) – so when the Community Evangelist position opened up I jumped at the opportunity to put my passion for online communications to work.

It still amuses me to no end that my new official job title is Community Evangelist. My job is to Evangelize… for PEER 1 Hosting, ServerBeach and the Interweb! Three of my favourite things! Anyone who knows me thinks the role is hilariously fitting, and I’ve got to agree. I like to pretend I’m like Tron – Fighting for the Users! I’m going to be busy writing articles for our blogs and tweeting up a storm, but please feel free to say hi, follow @PEER1 and @Serverbeach on twitter, and let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see more of on our blogs – I can’t wait to connect.

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Monthly Archive for February, 2011

Spinal Tap Charity Bonspiel, Good Fun and Great Success

PEER 1 Hosting gets ready to SWEEEEP!

Web Hosting to Bull Riding, It All Comes Down to the Crucial Eight Seconds

PEER 1 Hosting Banner Ad Contest Wants Your Vote

Magento Imagine 2011, Smiles and Swag All Around

PEER 1 Hosting Banner Ad Fail?

PEER 1 Hosting Sponsors Magento Imagine eCommerce Conference in Los Angeles

Howdy! Meet Serra

Map of the
Internet 2011

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Monthly Archive for February, 2011

Map of theInternet 2011

Sign up for our Newsletter

Map of the
Internet 2011