It's amazing what designers come up with at times!

Mouse over it to see what it's all about ....

Posted by Michele Neylon at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For the last few months we have been regular advertisers in a number of UK magazines including Linux Format.

Print advertising is an interesting "game". You can spend a fortune and reap no return or spend very little and see your sales jump over night.

For the first few months of our advertising "run" in Linux format we didn't do anything really "special" with our ads. The ads we ran were the same as any of the ads we'd run in other publications. While I thought this was a good thing on one level I also thought it would be nice to do something a little bit different for the specific demographic of Linux Format (click to enlarge):

I've no idea where Alan, who does our print ads, found the penguin, but it brought a smile to my face.

Posted by Michele Neylon at 5:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I hate acronyms.

Of course they're impossible to avoid if you work in IT, but that doesn't mean I have to like them.

RAID is one of those acronyms that really wrecks my head.

Not RAID itself which means simply Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, but the different types of RAID array that can exist.

RAID, in case you didn't know, is a way of improving redundancy and performance in servers by using multiple disks. Of course you don't have to use multiple disks, but if you don't you will run the risk of losing data.

A few months ago someone posted a very nice simple graphic that explained the differences between the various types of RAID arrays.

Taken from: http://www.epidauros.be/raid.jpg

One of our technical staff sent me a link earlier today to a bash.org quote which sums up the potential issues with single disk servers very nicely:

sterano: Whats the difference between Raid_0 and Raid_1? Steve: In Raid_0 the zero stands for how many files you are going to get back if something goes wrong.

Moral of the story - use more than one physical disk :)

Posted by Michele Neylon at 3:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'd like to think that we don't take ourselves too seriously. Sure - hosting is a serious business, but there's nothing wrong with having a bit of a laugh from time to time - even if its from a competitor!

One of our competitors posted a link to a YouTube video today that was quite amusing. Remember Monty Python?

NB: Contains some language that people *may* find offensive

Posted by Michele Neylon at 9:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

A couple of months ago (time flies!) I was asking people both here and on LinkedIn for product name suggestions.

I was expecting some feedback, but I was totally unprepared for the sheer volume of replies I got.

Wow!

Thanks for taking the time to exercise your grey matter and help us out!

Some of the suggestions were good, some were amusing and some were, well, em, a little, mad!

In the end we'll be opting for something that is hopefully simple enough for people to "get" without being too restrictive:

minimus, medius, maximus

Thanks for the input!

Posted by Michele Neylon at 3:25 PM | Permalink

A lot of our clients share a common trait.

They are confident that their idea will succeed.

It's great to see so much optimism, but people shouldn't take themselves too seriously!

Have a look at this (pump up the volume if you can!):

With thanks to Jimmy for sharing the link!

Edit: Pointed to update YouTube link / version.

Full credits available here

Posted by Michele Neylon at 1:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)