1-800-HOSTING Blog » 1-800-HOSTING http://blog.800hosting.com Inside 1-800-HOSTING Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:00:58 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Send Us Your Postcards! http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/07/send-us-your-postcards/ http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/07/send-us-your-postcards/#comments Sat, 02 Jul 2011 05:00:28 +0000 Jonathan Curry http://blog.800hosting.com/?p=1803

Dearest Reader,

We at 1-800-HOSTING would love to know more about you, your fabulous life & your digs. As such, we respectfully request from you: local, home made – from scratch, store bought, letterpress, inkjet printed, and other letters and postcards! Tell us anything about yourself, places you’ve been, your family, business, or school, your mother, brother, lover, your kick-ass band, favorite drinks, songs you sing in the shower, all-time favorite movies, your skateboarding bulldog, books that make you laugh, cry… anything you want to share with us!

Please send your letters & cards to us at:

1-800-HOSTING, Inc.
3535 Travis St, Suite 160
Dallas, TX 75204

OK – so maybe don’t send us photos of you at 5 months old and playing with your food – but anything else is welcome! :D

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]]> http://blog.800hosting.com/2011/07/send-us-your-postcards/feed/ 0 Employee Appreciation and the Lost Art of the Road Trip http://blog.800hosting.com/2010/01/employee-appreciation-and-the-lost-art-of-the-road-trip/ http://blog.800hosting.com/2010/01/employee-appreciation-and-the-lost-art-of-the-road-trip/#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:14:30 +0000 Christopher Shaffer http://blog.800hosting.com/?p=1140 winnie-road-trip

Here at 1-800-HOSTING, we strive to make sure our employees are satisfied. Creating group incentives that keep our employees happy across the board is difficult as everyone is motivated and responds differently. Nevertheless, one thing is sure, everyone enjoys a vacation. Luckily, for those of us who make it to the magical 5 year mark, we enjoy a company sponsored trip to a destination of our choice. In the past, many have chosen Hawaii, and when I reached 5 years of tenure last August I started thinking about where I would like to go. Given my duties and responsibilities here, it is hard to take a week or two off, but I figured it was time. Because hey, I’m not paying right?

So with the funding and time in place, I pondered the usual places people tend to head to for their vacation getaways. Hawaii, Mexico, and maybe even Europe if I could sell it, but none of these seemed to really interest me enough to make me pack my bags. What I have been doing for some time now are mini-trips of a 2-3 day nature, usually centered around some sort of goal or purpose. But sometimes I just get in the car and drive. Being a fan of the Food Network, Travel Channel, and food and travel in general, most of the destinations end up being a restaurant or a local attraction in a far off city or state. Always the adventurer, I’ve been known to drive 500 miles round trip just to eat a hamburger and am currently 20% through my Texas Monthly top 50 burgers in Texas list.

texas-monthly-50-best-burgers

I must mention that my father never allowed us to fly for family vacations when there were safe roads leading to the destination. So unless we were leaving the country, Canada excluded, (think 36 hour trek from Houston to Calgary Alberta) we drove…always. Ironically, when I was younger, I dreaded the days upon days in our custom Dodge van. I now believe that this is what has instilled my passion for the open road. The trip itself should be the vacation, not the destination.

So with a basic idea in place of visiting unique local establishments and attractions across the country, I am now thinking about how to do make this into a worthwhile vacation.  My travel partner/cohort/ for many previous adventures and I have already settled on a 1-2 week adventure. We plan on heading east from Texas towards Florida, then up the east coast, and then returning through the Midwest. This should give us plentiful amounts of scenery along the way and allow us to sample the most genres of food from local BBQ and seafood, to comfort food and diner joints along the way.

Keeping with the technology geek that I am, and to make the trip more unique, I think we will be renting a Winnebago rather than spend each evening in a hotel room.  With my desire to avoid lodging chains, this should prove a lot safer as well as fun by allowing us to cover more ground in less time. Armed with the latest in wireless aircards and GPS navigation and tracking, I am sure I can find some way to integrate the trips progress electronically into our blog or mini site.

epic-1-800-HOSTING-road-trip-route(Preliminary route courtesy of Google Maps)

I’m interested in hearing about any local attractions or points along the way we should visit.

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]]> http://blog.800hosting.com/2010/01/employee-appreciation-and-the-lost-art-of-the-road-trip/feed/ 0 A Resolution to Keep Resolutions http://blog.800hosting.com/2010/01/a-resolution-to-keep-resolutions/ http://blog.800hosting.com/2010/01/a-resolution-to-keep-resolutions/#comments Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:46:02 +0000 John Cunningham http://blog.800hosting.com/?p=1119 joe-running-bleachersI don’t really understand New Year’s resolutions. Many individuals feel the sudden urge to “change their lifestyle” or “quit the habits” with hopes that sometime during the upcoming calender year, these goals will be reached and their lives will be enriched. I’m a huge fan of goals and I think everyone needs them, whether long or short-term. However, why does it take the turn of the year to initiate any action?

It is undeniable that gym memberships skyrocket and people are under pressure to lose those holiday pounds in time for swimsuit season. Personally, I’ve discovered that goal reaching is much easier with a group of people. So go grab some friends, co-workers, or even neighbors and start hitting those marks. It’s okay if you’re a little late, starting now is better than not starting at all.

My advice: skip the crowded gyms. There’s too much show and tell going on in there right now and Dallas offers some great outdoor activities (if you look hard enough).

Whiterock Lake – Located in the heart of Dallas, this outdoor wonderland is filled with cyclists, runners, and sailors every Saturday morning. Being minutes from anywhere, there’s no excuse for not being out there on a sunny Sunday.

Exposure Rock Gym – Directly across from Addison airport, this corporate building suite houses multiple rock walls and enough activity to keep your arms and lats sore for days. If un-fair weather is your excuse for not exercising, than the indoor rock gym is your answer. $12 for a day pass. Belay on.

Katy Trail – Like a vein coursing through downtown Dallas, Katy Trail is conveniently located in heart of the Dallas urban jungle. The paved trail offers great lighting, frequent water fountains, and a friendly atmosphere for Dallasites at any time of day. If you’re looking for the perfect backyard workout, this is a great solution without the temptation of flakery.

Local Dallas parks – If location is your drawback, don’t forget the simple comforts of your local neighborhood park. A simple google search might help you locate any smaller ones not listed. With all the hustle and bustle of city life, we tend to forget some of the simple pleasures of a day at the park. (Throwing in some push-ups and sit-ups wouldn’t be too bad either)

The key to maintaining any type of consistency and longevity during the goal reaching process is having realistic goals. Try not thinking in terms of numbers and digits, but focus on having fun. Losing __lbs. is a lot easier when you’re having fun doing it. Fueling your body with healthy nutrients and staying active will take care of the weight for you, no need to count tick marks on a scale. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be recording progress. Progress is good. Progress let’s us know it’s working. But be careful; if there’s too much pressure to loose __ lbs., than you might get too discouraged along the way. And we all know what happens in March when discouragement takes over. The dreams and goals fizzle and die. Have some positive, ulterior motives like health, lifestyle and social opportunities.

We here at 1-800-HOSTING have begun awakening from our metabolic slumber also! Katy Trail, located adjacent to our building, will be expecting a visit from us every Monday and Wednesday evening in an effort to activate our lifestyle. Speed and pace are not as important as follow through and consistency. And with Texas weather being as sporadic as a crazed squirrel, this can be a challenge sometimes. Gmaps Pedometer offers a great web application that allows you to plot, measure, and save your custom routes using the Google Maps API. It’s quite handy and is a great way to brag to your peers with just a link.

Here’s the modest, yet realistic route we’ve been running:
1-800-HOSTING-running-route

So cheers to a new year, and here’s to a resolution to keep resolutions!

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]]> http://blog.800hosting.com/2010/01/a-resolution-to-keep-resolutions/feed/ 0 Happy Holidays! http://blog.800hosting.com/2009/12/happy-holidays/ http://blog.800hosting.com/2009/12/happy-holidays/#comments Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:40:57 +0000 Sonya Watkins http://blog.800hosting.com/?p=990 From the 1-800-HOSTING family.

Holiday fun at 1-800-HOSTING.

Linus and Lucy – Vince Guaraldi – A Charlie Brown Christmas

1-800-Hosting Christmas Tree Decorations from Joseph Van on Vimeo.

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]]> http://blog.800hosting.com/2009/12/happy-holidays/feed/ 0 Using Mac as a Work PC, the First 6 Months http://blog.800hosting.com/2009/12/using-mac-as-a-work-pc-the-first-6-months/ http://blog.800hosting.com/2009/12/using-mac-as-a-work-pc-the-first-6-months/#comments Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:05:28 +0000 John Cunningham http://blog.800hosting.com/?p=910 MacBook ProAround four years ago, I migrated to a Sony Vaio notebook running Windows XP so I could be equally effective at the office, on the road, or at home. In the last six months I’ve been using a new 15″ Unibody MacBook Pro and am glad to say that, contrary to conventional thinking, they do make excellent work PCs. Since roughly 99.999% to 100% of our work is done in a browser anyway, it really doesn’t matter what I use. Microsoft Office for Mac is available, and for hardcore Mac guys, there’s always Open Office, which is free and works quite well. My notebook has a variety of applications and I can do so much more on this thing than I could do on a Windows PC. It’s not only funny, it’s eye opening. In all fairness, I suppose that you can do almost everything on a Windows PC that you can do on a Mac, it just takes more patience and clunkier software. Here are a few examples:

Photos
Since I only have one work computer, I obviously have some personal photos and music on my Mac as well. While I never really tried that hard to arrange photos in Windows, it’s a snap in iPhoto. It also syncs with my iPhone perfectly and allows me to organize photos for personal and work-related uses with incredible ease. You might say, “Well that’s not a work function,” to which I would reply, “Says who?” Photos are a big part of our marketing, web sites, branding efforts and the interactions we have with co-workers on a frequent basis. When I can snap a quick pic from my iPhone, sync it with my Mac and upload it to this blog, I just did a work-related task with my Mac and iPhoto. On Windows, you can do the same thing but it just takes longer. You need a separate application to edit photos (like Photoshop) and I’ve had difficulty with Windows discovering certain memory cards, not to mention the ambiguous method in which Windows uses to arrange photos.

Creating Content for Social Networking & Viral Marketing
Aside from the included software that comes with a Mac, I also have Final Cut and Logic Studio, which can be used to create, edit, and master anything from radio spots to a full blown movie. They fit into the workflow fluidly, making it easy to kick around ideas for viral videos or audio spots.

Presentations
This is not a fair fight because you can create a killer presentation in KeyNote, connect your MacBook to a projector, close the lid and control the entire presentation from your iPhone running the free Remote app. Windows, on the other hand, will crank out a mediocre looking PPT file and will have to be controlled at the PC. (Again, in all fairness, there might be a better way that I’m not aware of.)

I’m not much of a gamer but I understand Windows has a leg up in that department and is the clear winner there. But since gaming is a personal activity that should be done on your own time and not on work-related PCs, that’s a moot point.

Yes, I have Microsoft Office installed. Yes, we have a bazillion servers running Windows Server, and yes, we have a plethora of Windows workstations at both of our locations. It’s hard to get away from Windows even if you wanted to and Macs are expensive. It’s all relative and things to take into consideration but for me, it’s a no-brainer. I can’t recall the last time my MacBook required a reboot and I seriously cannot remember ever having an application crash. Even if it did, you would rarely have to reboot the Mac like Windows requires often times just because a program crashed. We’ve even kicked around the idea of integrating some Apple XServer servers into our upcoming Cloud Hosting offering.

Another Final Thought to Consider
As I have migrated from PC to PC, I have never been able to successfully carbon copy the entire Windows operating system from one hard drive to another without a bunch of stuff breaking or it simply not working at all.  Shortly after I bought this MacBook, the new 7200RPM, 500GB notebook hard drives came out and I had to have one. One Saturday afternoon I stopped by the store, picked one up, took it home, made sure Time Machine had run a recent backup, removed the old drive, installed the new drive (no tools required and it took 30 seconds), popped in the Leopard disk and it asked if I wanted to restore from Time Machine. Within two hours it was finished with no errors and everything worked perfectly. In the past when I’ve tried that with Windows, I knew my entire weekend was shot and I would eventually just have to install a fresh O/S, reinstall all applications, rebuild my preferences and then get my data back on there somehow. What a mess.

In my opinion, Mac is great for work environments and by the way, I’m not the only person using a Mac in our office. We also use them in our Marketing and Development departments.

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]]> http://blog.800hosting.com/2009/12/using-mac-as-a-work-pc-the-first-6-months/feed/ 0 Drupal – Free Website Building Tool http://blog.800hosting.com/2009/12/drupal-free-website-building-tool/ http://blog.800hosting.com/2009/12/drupal-free-website-building-tool/#comments Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:56:08 +0000 John Cunningham http://blog.800hosting.com/?p=950 drupal-logoThe Drupal content management system is software that makes it easy to build a great looking website. With Drupal, you can create pages using templates and easily add content using the admin control panel. In my opinion, it is a good choice for all types of sites such as blogs, portals, corporate or government sites.

Drupal is based on a system of templates where you can use the built-in ones or make your own. It has some cool features built in such as chat forums, rss, video and podcasting options. Currently, there are thousands of websites using Drupal such as Spread Firefox, The White house, and The Onion. There are many more listed on Drupal Sites. Drupal is an open source software package licensed under the GNU GPL and runs great on a Linux server with Apache, PHP, and MySQL. We here at 1-800-Hosting are Drupal friendly and can help with installation as well as well hosting technical support like unix file permissions, phpinfo(), mod_security, php file size and memory limits.

The best thing I like about Drupal is that it can be extended with third party modules in order to add functions. You can add search, instant messenger, cron, voting, image browsing, slideshow, google analytics, e-commerce, and chat room. If you’re looking for an easy way to get a website up and running without the hassles of back-end development, take a look at Drupal. It can make building a site a little easier without getting lost in the interweb fray.

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]]> http://blog.800hosting.com/2009/12/drupal-free-website-building-tool/feed/ 0 Hosted Microsoft Exchange? http://blog.800hosting.com/2009/11/hosted-microsoft-exchange/ http://blog.800hosting.com/2009/11/hosted-microsoft-exchange/#comments Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:29:17 +0000 Jay Ellison http://blog.800hosting.com/?p=885 It’s been a long time coming, but we are very close to rolling-out our Hosted Microsoft Exchange email offering. Some current and prospective clients have been asking for Exchange mail for years.

Exchange mail will be delivered to your desktop mail client or accessible via the web-mail interface. And of course anti-spam and anti-virus are included with every mailbox.

We will have many options with all the add-ons to meet the different needs of our clients,  multiple-sized mailboxes and multiple-mailbox discount options for starters. Popular mobility options for BlackBerry Enterprise Server, ActiveSync and Good Mobile Messaging will also be available.

Personally, I’m pretty excited about this new product and I know many clients will be too, as it will compliment our “enterprise” offerings nicely.

Hosted Exchange email – it has been a long time coming, but the wait will be over soon!

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