I have always been a huge fan of website mascots, they are not just great marketing tool, but also a fantastic way for people to relate to their provider, plus for us, it’s a fun way to express ideas by utilizing the mascot, you can create cartoons, explanatory graphics, etc .. much nicer than plain text and a chart.
With that in mind, we decided to create one for VPS.NET .. here is it’s story.
I was reading recently a post on WHT about a customer complaint that he paid $8 /month for a VPS with a certain host, and he was upset he only got 200Mhz per core on a quad core setup (800Mhz total), and not the “entire” cpu … !
That was the kind of post that makes me real happy that I dont work on Sales .. otherwise I’d tell that individual to shove it, take their money and go look for hosting elsewhere.
Lets do the math shall we ?
We know the host is using Quad Core 2.4Ghz CPU’s, and they offer “equal share CPU” .. this means they are putting (2.4ghz / 200Mhz = 12) 12 VPS’s per server, that on itself makes me doubt the sanity of the host, if they sell 12 of their $8 /month plan, it means the server brings in only $98 /month .. for Quad Core .. thats insane.
Why is it insane ?, because these are the kind of people that later on are wondering around trying to sell their businesses at any price, due to the fact their profit margins are so slim, they realize they can make more money per month by selling fries at the Mc Donald’s Drive-Thru than Web Hosting, and second, I am a firm believer you must be a very profitable company at all times, you OWE it to your customers, otherwise they are not safe with you as you are just a bankruptcy in the making ready to go off at any time (ok, I know I am generalizing here, but look at the amount of bargain basement hosts going bely up the past 5-6 years and tell me I am wrong..).
And the delirious customer ?, well, he is a by-product of the bargain basement offering, simply put, $8 for a VPS ?, such product should no exist, it creates a false statement that this technology can be sold at a certain price bracket, and that is just not true, problem is, customers expect it, and then when they get it, they want more, and again expect to be given more .. period ..
Rant Over …..
I signed up for twitter a few months back, but never got much interested on it, until recently when I started reading Everaldo’s Twitter page, and then found Twinkle for the iPhone
Now I am hooked 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said “Sometimes we may learn more from a man’s errors, than from his virtues.” .. I guess we can adapt that quote to the fact these days we learn more from when the systems fail, than when they are working fine .. such was the case today.
We had done some tests on the VPS Cloud self healing measure by shutting down a Hypervisor’s services, and always, the VPS nodes residing there, would automatically boot up on a different one in the Cloud … always below 40 seconds (yes, 40 seconds)… but we decided that was no fun, it was time to go to the datacenter and pull some cables … yes .. I love my job 
Since starting working on the VPS.net Cloud project, several people have asked me … what exactly is a VPS Cloud ?, I quickly explain it’s a conglomerate of high power servers and network based storage working in unison to allow almost instant deployment, scalability and self healing, a true utopian hosting environment…
That is usually followed by “yes .. but where is the actual cloud ?” .. and then my job just got harder.
After months of planning, we are finally in the homestretch towards releasing our (until now, Uber-secret) VPS.net Cloud.
So as such, time has come to start a blog (located at http://vps.net/blog), to keep everybody informed on the latest and greatest features we are working on for the VPS Cloud, as such, during the upcoming days and weeks, we will post details on the new website, the Cloud features, the user interface, and much more.
VPS.net is a new brand by that great hosting outfit that I work for (yeah, we are great, get used to it), the UK2 Group, owners of 10TB, UK2.NET, Midphase, etc ..
So keep checking that blog page every day (or even several times a day, things are moving fast), we expect to release VPS.net LIVE on January 31st, but will be looking for beta testers in the upcoming few weeks 
I finally got a chance to visit the Apple Store in London, I had been wanting to go there since it’s doors open in 2004, but never had a chance, I have visited the smaller one in Manchester.
Yesterday me and Everaldo (who by the way is visiting, it’s been a pleasure to finally meet face to face somebody I have been friends with for 8+ years) decided to just go for it and visit, it was a fitting match, as we both huge Mac fans, while in the store we marveled at it’s huge glass staircase, and where amused by the fact so much of Everaldo’s work was on display, on a window they had a huge collection of prints of the App Store icons, and on them where several of his icons, also on the software isle we found some more of the Apps he designed … it’s a small world indeed.
In the end we both walk out if it a little “disappointed” .. not that the store was not great, but simply put, there was nothing new, thats the problem with the internet these days, we get out news and updates so quickly, that by the time one makes it to the shop, it’s all old news, regardless, it’s a place that warrants at least one visit
Everaldo and I …
We had a desk re-arranging session here yesterday at UK2 .. I ended up on a nice dark corner (I prefer to work in the dark, less glare on the monitor).
So the first order of business today was to nick Ditlev’s lava lamp (we have a few aroudn the office, the motion of the liquid resembles our UK2 blob logo), plus I properly tied it up the desk with the new 3008WFP I got from Dell.
This is how it looks now, perfect
Apple MacBook Pro
Wacom A5 SE Wide Tablet
Dell 3008WFP 30″ LCD
Logitech Mac Wireless combo
I was browsing thru the App Store today with my iPhone, looking for anything new and interesting when I realized 2 things.
First, despite the fact there might be 1000+ Apps on a category, the iPhone will only show you 150 or so.. 25 at a time can be loaded, but when you load 5 or 6 times it won’t let you load anymore.
Second (and this is what I see as a bug), it will list previously listed Apps, so not only you get a limited number of listings, you might get one listed 3 or 4 times.
Case and point, the screenshots below
I have been meaning to post this, on October I got a new job with UK2 .. it’s a great new challenge and I expect this new appointment to spawn some incredible results and a kick ass new control panel .. thats as much as I can say .
Here is the news report by “thewhir“
UK-2 Names Senior Usability Officer
By Justin Lee, theWHIR.com
October 15, 2008 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — UK Internet solutions provider UK-2 Group (www.uk2.net) announced on Monday it has named Carlos Rego in the company’s newly created role of Senior Usability Officer.
In the press release, the specifications of the position and respective duties are somewhat vague, simply stating that “Rego will be responsible for redefining the web hosting end user experience.”
Rego is the former managing director of Positive Software automation division of Comodo, which was acquired by Parallels.
“In an industry where many players are as indistinct as the nodes of the Internet, Carlos is one of those rare few who can point out actual achievements,” says Ditlev Bredahl, managing director of the UK-2Group. “His work at Positive Software elevated H-Sphere from obscurity to one of the top control panels in the industry. He has demonstrably built up several companies and we look forward to a similar contribution here at UK-2 Group.”
Rego was also one of the pioneers of redundant and split web services, which are now industry standards, and implemented software capable of cloud/grid based environments, years before it became a hot topic.
Occasionally in the hosting industry, companies will create an entirely new position, complete with its own unique job title, to fulfill a needed role.
Some companies will create these new positions as a quick fix solution to consolidating several duties into one role, while others develop the new roles to focus and prioritize key activities.
Mosso, Rackspace Hosting’s cloud computing division, is another company that recently created a new role, naming 20-year technology veteran Bruce Runyan the company’s chief uptime officer.
UK-2 Group provides domain name registration and web hosting services to a wide customer base through its several hosting brands, which include UK2.net, US2.net, Midphase.com and Resell.biz.
Earlier this month, the company announced it recently acquired Web host Dotable, bringing with it over 10,000 domains.
Not too shabby