We’ve partnered with Lisa Sabin-Wilson, celebrity blogger and author of “WordPress for Dummies”, to offer free premium blog templates, valued at $1,200 each, designed exclusively for PEER 1 and ServerBeach.

With an estimated 133 million blogs worldwide and growing, social networking and blogging has become the fourth most popular activity on the Internet, surpassing even e-mail.* For those looking to join the fast-growing blogging community, or just wanting to spice up current blogs, PEER 1 is offering five free custom-designed WordPress themes as a download to anyone who visits the PEER 1 or ServerBeach Web site.

The templates won’t be around for long, available for download only until June 30. To view the different designs and download a favorite, visit the PEER 1 Web site http://www.peer1.com/resources/wordpress_themes.php or the ServerBeach Web site http://www.serverbeach.com/resources/wordpress_themes.php.

To view the full press release, please visit http://www.peer1.com/aboutus/news.php?id=118

A few months back I began a fun little project – exposing our customers and posted about it on our ServerBeach Blog. The goal of this project is 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 PEER 1 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 PEER 1 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.

You can view some of the ServerBeach “You’re On My Shirt” pictures and blog posts here: http://serverbeach.wordpress.com/?s=you%27re+on+my+shirt.

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

We are honored to be listed on The 5 Best Vancouver Business Blogs . PEER 1 has been mentioned as having the ability to come off as personal on our blog, focusing on community-sided topics and contests as well as keeping the balance right between company announcements and posts that are just for fun.

At PEER 1 we’re always striving to continue this balance. It’s very important to us to maintain not only a professional atmosphere to show people how PEER 1 is the smart choice for business solutions, but to also include a personal presence and allow everyone to see that we are real people too.

This past weekend ServerBeach – our dedicated division, exhibited at the Interactive Festival at South by SouthWest in Austin, Texas and were listed as one of the Top 10 Companies Most Discussed on Twitter. Be sure to take a look at the pictures on Flickr that were taken at this event and follow us on Twitter for news and upcoming contests:

PEER 1 on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/peer1

PEER 1 on Twitter: @PEER1

HI! I’m new here – thought I’d drop in and make myself comfortable..knock around a little – kick the tires and see how things run here at the PEER1 blog. Let me introduce myself – Let me introduce myself: I am Lisa Sabin-Wilson and I am the author of WordPress For Dummies, and the creative director of E.Webscapes Design Studio. I’m really excited to announce that ServerBeach and I are joining forces this weekend at the SXSW Interactive Festival and bringing you some really COOL schwag at the ServerBeach/PEER1 exhibit booth!

What kind of schwag, you ask?  Well, if you’re a fan of the WordPress blogging platform like I am (and I KNOW ServerBeach and PEER1 are) – you’re in for a treat if you drop by the ServerBeach booth. I will be hanging out with these great folks and spending some quality time at the booth making sure you have access to the following WordPress goodies:

1. WordPress For Dummies: ServerBeach will be giving away free copies of WordPress For Dummies at their booth, and as a bonus – I will be present at the times stated at the bottom of this post, to do book signings. So stop by the ServerBeach booth and pick up your FREE autographed copy of WordPress For Dummies. Already have a copy? No problem – stop by the booth to say hi … I love to meet my readers, and I’ll sign your copy!
2. WordPress Q&A: During the times I will be at the ServerBeach booth, I am also available to do a quickie WordPress Q&A if you have any specific questions on how to use WordPress on your site or blog. I’ll have my laptop ready with a clean install of WordPress open, ready for your questions.
3. Premium themes, anyone?? I do a lot of custom design work for WordPress users over at E.Webscapes – - for SXSW I am doing 5 free themes for WordPress users – available ONLY to SXSW attendees who stop by the ServerBeach exhibit booth on March 14-16, 2009. Here’s what you do: stop by the booth and ask for the super secret link to Lisa’s WordPress themes they are giving away. That’s it! (the themes are free and completely GPL). (ServerBeach just might give these themes away to the general public after SXSW is over – that is totally up to them, but for now, they’re available from the ServerBeach exhibit booth at SXSW exclusively.)

Let’s see…. today is Wednesday. That means I have exactly TWO days left before I head out to Austin. I’m looking foward to visiting the great state of Texas – I’m originally from Texas (born in Houston). Plus, I’m really looking forward to getting away from this artic Wisconsin weather.

I’ve been hard at work developing the exclusive ServerBeach WordPress themes and I’m almost done! I’ve been working night an day making sure you have some really fantastic WordPress themes to take home with you from SXSW – - a little token to remember us by. I like it here so much on the PEER1 blog, I just don’t wanna leave! So, I’ll stick around a little bit longer and give you a special sneak peek at a few of the great WordPress themes ServerBeach and I will be handing out at the ServerBeach booth at SXSW in Austin this weekend:

Want to see more? Well, you’ll just have to stop by the ServerBeach booth at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin Texas this weekend and you’ll get the whole package of 5!

I am appearing at the ServerBeach booth on Saturday, March 14 from 1-4pm, Sunday, March 15 from 1-4pm and Monday, March 16 from 1-3pm. I’m really looking forward to seeing my good friends from ServerBeach again, after the fun we had hanging out at the BlogWorld Expo event in Vegas last November!

If you’re attending SXSW and have your profile set up at my.sxsw.com – you can add me here. Otherwise, follow me on Twitter – @LisaSabinWilson – I’m sure I’ll be all a twitter about it!

PEER 1 has launched today a new video contest and is giving away $10,000 in prizes to the winner! Along with the contest, the company has released the second episode of it’s award-winning short series “Growing Pains” which follows the trips and follies of a home-based business startup that grows quickly out of control causing new employees and servers to take control of the home.

PEER 1 is giving it’s viewers of the episode the opportunity to create their own growing pains video that shows their personal experiences for a chance to win a prize package of 12 months of free managed hosting, a 15-inch MacBook, and a Sony HD camcorder, at a total value of $10,000.

To watch the new episode of Growing Pains and enter the $10,000 Giveaway Contest, go to www.peer1.com/growingpains

Good Luck!

Episode 2 – “A Walk in The Park.” Some time after being tossed out of the house, Todd and Janet try to mend fences over a nice walk in the park. All seems well and the moment feels right, or so Todd thinks.

“It turns out that the Internet has worked pretty well,” industry mainstay Marc Andreessen told an audience at the Web 2.0 Expo. Andreessen’s keynote interview with Federated Media chief John Battelle was a little bit of a history lesson – taking a glance at the Web many years ago, followed by the requisite speculation about an uncertain future.

“It was a very confusing time,” Andreessen said regarding the Net’s early days. In the beginning days of Mosaic, the browser Andreessen created, that eventually grew into Netscape, that then grew into Mozilla , and eventually Firefox, “the conventional wisdom in the business world and in large parts of the press was that interactive television was going to be the future – the Internet, and the Web and Mosaic were really sort of renegade academic research projects.”

But Andreessen’s current project, Ning, couldn’t be less renegade. Ning, which taps into the social-media trend by letting it’s members build their own networks without requiring them to be technical gurus, has been fueled not only by Andreessen’s Valley popularity but also by a recent $60 million funding round that the exec said was for an economic “nuclear winter.”

Read more on his “history lesson” over at CNET.

On Mar 16, 2008, Ning crossed 200,000 social networks.

For those unaware, PEER 1 also has a community on Ning. Head on over to our community, take a look around, and discuss anything and everything about online business and technology. We look forward to seeing you there!

Visit PEER 1 Community

I stumbled across a website over this last weekend that I found to be useful for keeping up with top stories on the Internet. The site is called Alltop.

About:

Alltop helps you explore your passions by collecting stories from “all the top” sites on the web. They’ve grouped these collections—”aggregations”—into individual Alltop sites based on topics such as celebrity gossip, fashion, gaming, sports, politics, automobiles, and Macintosh. At each Alltop site, they display the latest five stories from thirty or more sites on a single page and they call this “single-page aggregation.”

You can think of an Alltop site as a “dashboard” or “table of contents” for your favorite topic. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points—they are not destinations per se. Alltop tries to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and unveiling stories from sites that you didn’t know existed.

The site seems to be informative and user-friendly. Give it a look.

Many of you know (or may not know) that YouTube’s beginning days were with ServerBeach, a PEER 1 company. In a short period of time, YouTube experienced rapid growth and relied on ServerBeach and the PEER 1 network to help them every step of the way. It was sheer success!
YouTube outgrew ServerBeach in November of 2007 and has moved forward with much success. We’ll miss them! Really. No seriously, we will….

Check out the YouTube Farewell from ServerBeach video here.

We’re sponsoring Launch Party Vancouver tomorrow evening at The Republic on Granville Street. The event kicks off at 5pm with a handful of demos from local start-ups looking to show off their products/services to a primarily techie, marketing and venture capital crowd. Launch Party is described as “a lively mixer for the city’s brightest entrepreneurs, tech junkies, and bloggers, who are doing it, have done it or want to make their ideas happen here. The goal of the event is to connect BC’s growing community of Internet and new media leaders with investors and other trailblazers across Canada and abroad.”

You may have already noticed, there is a thriving technology community here in Vancouver with a thirst for innovation and being on the bleeding edge. If you are not convinced, events like this one, as well as the BarCamps, Massive and Northern Voice will convince you. If you can find the time, I encourage you to attend. You can see the details here. We are also running our 12 Months Free Managed Hosting contest at the event.

The Blog World & New Media Expo will be taking place from November 7th through 9th in Las Vegas, Nevada and it’s going to be an awesome time for anyone who’s interested in blogging and podcasting. Many speakers and exhibitors have signed up and I can’t wait to get there and see, learn, and experience all that’s happening. Some of the exhibitors that are attending are (this is not a complete list):

And so many more.

I’m really looking forward to hearing a lot of the speakers there and going to a few seminars. Being a just getting started blogger, both personally and professionally this should be a really great experience.

Some of the speakers will include:

And again, so many more.

Joe Rodriguez, the Product Engineering manager for ServerBeach, a PEER 1 company (who is also a close friend and co-worker) will be doing a presentation with Barry from WordPress.

For those of you attending… I’ll see you there!