I’ve been through a few different hosts and the only one of those that I really was pleased with was V7 Inc Hosting.  And no, its not a shameless plug- its the truth.  I have heard more people complaining about their host than I have heard them praising. 

What I have learned thus far is that everyone claims 99.9% uptime.  It’s impossible for EVERYONE to have that kind of uptime, there have to be people with lesser uptimes, but they’ll never admit it. 

Some “hosting companies” are 16-year-old kids with a server in the basement, or even better yet, a reseller account through some other company.  Luckily I’ve not been scammed by them, but it is something you need to be on the lookout for when hunting for a host.

There are lots of other issues that come into play when you’re deciding on a host, and sometimes its really hard to pick just who’ll you end up with.  If you’re looking for guidance, there are a number of resources available online with reviews and other information that can help you make your choice.  Examples of such site would include Host Ratings at V7N, Webhost Advisor,  Best Host Ratings, and many more.  I recommend checking out more than one rating site to get a more well-rounded opinion. 

Also make sure to leave feedback about the hosts that you have used before. If you love them, great - share the news.  If you’ve had problems, let the world know and you might save a few other webmasters the hassle of dealing with them in the future.

It seems that everyday someone is launching a new web directory.  The directories range from general, all-encompassing ones like Umdum, Submit Dot Com, the V7 Directory, the Alive Directory, and so many more.  However, they also include specialized niche directories that target specific audiences.  Examples of niche directories would include those aimed at video gamers, webmasters, travellers, and more.  There are now even directories of directories!

Before I was up on all the SEO practices and terminology, I didn’t  understand the purpose of having 50 million website directories, especially when you already have large ones like the Yahoo Directory and DMOZ.  But apparently it’s all about getting links.  The more links you have, the higher you rank in the search engines and the more likely people are to stumble on your site.  If the directory has a high PR, that’s another good perk.  Not only do you have a link, but a link from high ranking site.

On the webmaster side of directories, they are also apparently a good source of income.  If you play your cards right, accept quality links, have a good design, and spend some time marketing your directory, you stand to make a decent profit.

So now the question is…….. how many of you out there have your own directory, or are planning on starting one?  I am curious.  I have one directory,WiFi Cleveland, although it is free and I make no money on it.

I never visit Technorati, but I did today.  I guess I was bored or something.  So when I got there, I was checking out incoming links to this blog.  Interestingly, I found a link from Pc-news.us and clicked on over.  I found that all of my posts from here, the V7 Tech Blog, were being republished in full-text over there.  Not only that, but they were hotlinking the images. 

I wasn’t quite sure how they were doing it; I just thought they were copying and pasting the articles.  But as Colleen pointed out, it turns out that they are stealing the content via RSS feeds. 

The purpose of RSS feeds is to allow your visitors to subscribe to the feed, and be alerted when there are new posts.  The intentions of RSS were never to give free content to piece of shit webmasters.  You may think that because you can access the full content via RSS that it’s okay to republish it on your site, but it’s not.

Scroll on down the bottom of this blog and you’ll notice a little statement that says “Copyright 2006 V7 Inc, All Rights Reserved.”  For those that are a bit slow in the brain, it means all content published on this site belongs to V7, and to republish it without the express written consent of V7 is a violation of copyright law. Copyright “protects ‘original works of authorship’ that are fixed in a tangible form of expression,” which would include these blog posts.

The absence of a copyright notice, however, is not a green light to go ahead and steal content: “Copyright [is] Secured Automatically upon Creation.” So unless you see a GNU Free Documentation License, or Creative Commons License outlining the authorized use of said content, back off and write something original.

Hotlinking to our images is also another form of theft - bandwidth theft.  Steal that and you might just end up with the image above appearing on your site.

To avoid pissing me off and getting a call from a lawyer, don’t steal our content. 

(Note: The above image belongs to JuggoPop.)

Google has become such a large part of life and modern speech that it has officially been made a verb. It was added to the latest edition of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as a transitive verb with a lower case “g”. The dictionary defines it as: “to use the Google search engine to obtain information (as a person) on the World Wide Web”.

It was also added to the Online Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary in June as a verb, and is defined as “To use the Google search engine to find information on the internet. To search for information about (a person or thing) using the Google search engine.” Oxford, unlike Merriam-Webster, choose to use an upper case “G.”

Computer researchers at the University of Cambridge claim to have breached the Great Firewall of China, and also to have found a way to launch denial of service attacks against specific IPs in the country (including those of the government). Their findings were published in a paper entitled “Ignoring the Great Firewall of China”.

The paper was written by Richard Clayton, Steven Murdoch, and Robert Watson, and offers insight into the workings of China’s complex filtering systems.

Researchers also proposed using special software or modifications to existing firewall software that would ignore RST packets, thus allowing the user to circumvent the China Firewall.  However, some have questioned whether this method would offer an improvement over the use of proxy servers, which are commonly used by the Chinese to get around government controls.

If you are interested in learning more, you can read the full paper which is available online.

Congratulations to Heather of the V7N Webmaster Forums for winning our first ever Geek of the Month Contest for the month of June!

The June contest asked participants to create a witty promotional banner for the V7N Tech Blog.  JuggoPop’s ads are great, but I felt we need to add some humor to the mix.

Heather’s entry (view below) did just that!  We’ll be adding it to the Supporters page, so feel free to use this awesome new ad to link to this blog.

P.S. - I’ll be announcing the July competition shortly.