As far as I can remember, Philaahzophy.com is not new to me. I think I’ve seen and mentioned this site on this blog way before when I had a grand review about THC’s lifetime Rudolf hosting plan last February (which is now unavailable — unfortunately). He was still positive to THC that time — far different from his views now.

On Philaahzophy’s latest post as I checked it entitled "Top Hosting Center Can’t Keep Own Website Online!," I believe Aahz missed to read something from his H-Sphere control panel. I am not sure if he is on Rudolf hosting plan or Speedy (I didn’t have interest to research) but I know he is one of THC’s customers and claimed that he used to be a "big fan" of the web host. His post was a bomb to THC and considering that THC announced the event prior to their downtime, this blogger once again shooted blanks.

While it is true that the official homepage of Top Hosting Center was down as of this writing, I wasn’t surprised. I’ve read yesterday from the company’s H-Sphere control panel news section that they are going to change their IP address as they’ve always done in the past months (this is something Aahz missed to read). I’m not sure how many hours had it been in downtime status but I have asked some friends abroad and they told me that they can fully access the website (which makes me believe that DNS information propagation is complete on some places). I don’t know if other THC users noticed the advisory but for sure it is conspicuous enough to get noticed. Since I’m in the Philippines and THC servers are in North America, I guess I will have to wait for the site to go up. It is a good thing that this blog or any customer sites (and hosting functionality) was not affected by their downtime otherwise it would be real shitty.  

As far as I know based on my working Cisco networking knowledge, changing an IP address does not take effect immediately and unfortunately domains undergoing IP changes will experience downtime. Changes that undergoes downtime include IP updates, IP transition from shared to dedicated IPs and vice versa, and name server changes.

To THC: Aahz May Be Right, But Not Completely Right

I do not say that Aahz is completely wrong. He was just shooting blanks on some ways; he may be right, but well, not completely right on his claims since I highly believe he missed the advisory. Plus, he could be on a shared hosting — and you can’t expect a dedicated server quality on a shared hosting plan!

Now this is for you THC: like what he said on his first post,  I agree that there have been quite a few times that THC had problems with their hosting services. Although they are fast in responding to support and delivering solutions to problems, complaints like from Aahz’s is a sign that THC needs to be consistent and make their impatient customers feel what a good host is. It doesn’t feel good to defend something that doesn’t deserve to be defended. Fortunately, THC isn’t as worse as Aahz described it based on my experience. He was a bit too extreme. Perhaps he needs to get a dedicated server. Believe me, you will never find a host that doesn’t experience downtimes especially on shared hosting.

Bottomline

If Top Hosting Center wasn’t good enough, as it never became a perfect web host, I would have flown to other web hosting companies. I’ve got lots of sponsorship offers for this blog from other web hosts yet I’ve denied them all because I like the way THC handles its hosting services. Plus, I don’t need to worry about a thing because they have backups accessible. An anonymous hacker tried to devastate this blog earlier this month and THC was very, very quick to restore my database. I’m sure other customers can have similar experience as THC’s support is just a matter of clicks away. In my case, I write to them via email but I can also use their live chat for basic issues and trouble ticket on my H-Sphere control panel as well.

The speakers of the said event are popular bloggers and known corporate professionals who have established their own business brands on the Web. So to speak, these people surely would share their online strategies, experiences and business tactics to the attendees.

• Anita Bruzzese from Gannett Today, online reputation management
• Brian Clark from Copyblogger, an online business models that work
• Lorelle VanFossen of Lorelle on WordPress, which focuses how to put your business on spotlight
• Chris Garrett, editorial management
• Chris Brogan, social media and social networking choices
• Dave Bullock, effective sales model that converts
• Liz Strauss, building an irresistible offer
• Wendy Piersall on success management

Event organizers are expecting over 200 participants to attend the conference. Most of them are professional business bloggers representing their own business brands. The conference would give each of the attendees a chance to share their online business experience. The coalescence of effective business methods and ideas that would be shared by each participant is expected to actuate new strategies towards successful online business. Participants are guaranteed to bring home a business action plan that can be immediately executed for measurable success.

The registration fee costs $450 for new participants and $350 for returnees. This fee constitutes the participation to the whole event and access to giveaways. Hotel accommodations around the venue will be shouldered by each participant, costing around $139 to $225 per night.

The conference is sponsored by the following online organizations and companies:

• WordPress
• Network Solutions
• b5media
• Top Hosting Center
• Chitika
• Wiley
• ProBlogger
• E-Junkie
• Blogger and Podcaster
• Plante Moran Financial Advisors
• Summit Executive Centre

It is good to note that Mashable, a popular social networking news website, has listed the annual SobCon event as one of Top 10 Events for Bloggers.

My Personal Standpoint

Well, basically I wish I could attend conferences like that. It is good place to meet business people. They give connections and open doors to new opportunities and partnerships. If you have the bucks and the will to succeed, attending SobCon08 definitely is not a bad choice.

One thing about blogging is that is it very time-consuming but very satisfying when your published articles are able to make good traffic to your sites and clicks on your affiliate advertisements. Blogging is very addicting indeed. The bonus is that you also get to know with new people from anywhere in the world and befriend them simply because of a popular blog post you submitted on Digg or get stumbled in Stumbled Upon by other users.

Today, to celebrate the Fool’s Day, I’m going to show you the first craziest video I ever did in my whole life that was uploaded in YouTube. I did not make it for nothing, it is for this blog and for other bloggers. The video actually tells bloggers to take a while and get a break from writing or doing tasks related to blogging. And if you want to know what bloggers should do during breaks — well, just do the locomotion!

If you are a blogger and you want to join the “locomotion” phenomena, then just download that song, get your webcam to record a video, and use that dance step. Send it to me after and I’ll weave all our videos to become a global blogger locomotion.

Well anyway, before I get emotional, if you are wondering where I write my blog articles and do my work in the day, the picture below best describes it.

As you can see, my workplace is not that great. I work outside the house so I could see the nice morning, breathe fresh air, and watch animals and people passing nearby. I tried to put things in my workplace in an effort to make it look cool. As of this writing, it constitutes the following:

White Board
I bought this stuff to be used for my scribbles – lol. Well actually, I used it to write my monthly action plans, the income generated by this website (which as of this writing, earned only $0.84 combined all ad networks), and finally, my scribbles.

Trendy Stand Fan
My mother bought that fan out from her loan last year. She (We) thought it was good since it looks very nice, space-conscious, and very modern. However, the air it produces is very disappointing. I believe my fart blows stronger than it – lol. Well, it can’t beat the great heat generated in my tropical place – but at least it keeps my head’s temperature under 37C! I checked its manual recently and I found out that it has an “ionization” feature. I don’t know how it works or if I ever need that. But personally, I would say a regular stand fan could easily outperform this trendy electric fan. It has an LCD display though but it doesn’t work anymore (what a shame).

Stereo Speakers
My stereo speakers (JBL Platinum Series) are few of the best things I have to cream off the boredom of the day. I bought this ancient relic four years ago at SOS (surplus store) and still working well – not! The left speaker recently had problems. I don’t hear any sound from it and it needs to be shaken to start. I am already expecting the death of this remarkable device. What I am dreaming now is to have a 5.1 surround speakers system (Altec Lansing? Creative?), but it’s still expensive for me.

Laptop
Yeah, it’s where my current life flows. Without it, I don’t know what to do (or how to spend my time) in a day. Since I was small, I’ve been so inclined with computers and video games, and until now, I still am. My old XP computer is now being used by my brother who now exhibits a clear affinity to computer science. My laptop is my only portal to the world and the greatest tool for me. It lets me unleash my computer skills, provides adequate resources for me to be productive, and freaking awesome. This site has been created from scratch on this laptop, along with other things. Its specs and performance have been featured on the Vista-related post I published earlier this month.

Other than work, my laptop serves best in providing me entertainment. Thanks to our slow Internet connection, it takes up to 20 hours to download a 700 MB movie. I got a few gigs of music that I listen all day. I want to express the deepest gratitude to the one who provided this to me – you have a big room in my heart.

Plastic Chair
I can truly say that the plastic chair I am using everyday in my workplace is probably the most stupid chair I ever had. Guess what, in the middle of my job, especially when I am very eager to be more productive than usual (like when I am inspired), it splits up and I almost fall over! I don’t have any good chair around so until it’s usable I guess I can’t do anything but enjoy how I swing ‘till I fall.

Last year and until now, Google actively wipes out the PageRank (PR) of many blogs and websites they believed to have involved to link farms and other schemes designed to “artificially” inflate PageRank. PageRank is Google’s view on how important a web page is, thus favoring more important pages in their top Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Many observations reveal in totality that most penalized sites are those who joined networks offering paid reviews or links. For bloggers, PageRank is significant because many ad network companies (major source of blog revenues), begin to follow Google’s standards. Higher PRs somehow contribute to the continuous existence of most blog sites in the Internet.

This year, most bloggers started with a different perspective. They begin to take advantage and favor services believed to be “top Google alternatives” which, in their view, are less obtrusive to their ideals, more flexible, and more lucrative. It indicates a healthy competition and preludes another possibly more intense search engine and online advertising war this year.

My Personal Standpoint

In my personal standpoint, though I know I am quite a fan of Google services, I share sentiment with other bloggers that Google’s dominance could be an imminent but indirect threat; they impose policies and indirect guidelines associated with the usage of their services, or in relation thereof, that rather inhibit bloggers to be able to benefit from the Web as much as before. Google is giving free services to the masses but isn’t it their strategy to bait our hearts toward their products? This is debatable and I know there are many positive and negative points of view for this. However, for many bloggers, they view that the moves of Google imply that it tries to become the “Microsoft of the Web.” Well, in fact, I suspect one day Google and Microsoft will come to a head-to-head bout in creating their own standards with all people under them. Fortunately, we got alternatives to Google and they are fighting for themselves and for us.

I believe that Google will continue to be in the top ranks in 2008. There are many factors supporting this assumption. One of these, for instance, is Google’s reaction (and to least extent, Yahoo and Microsoft) with the depreciation of the US dollar. Google has safety nets that would ease hurt from the dollar crunch as other US-based companies are feeling. In the second quarter of 2007, Google’s financial report reflected that 48% percent of their income comes outside of the United States. Another point is Google’s acquisition of companies in 2007. If they are able to prove in 2008 that they did a wise move, these innovating companies under their control will push their business further.

In conclusion, like what bloggers predicted, Google might reach its plateau in 2008. Unless they make a good turnaround, its downfall will begin at least to most bloggers’ hearts. This should never be underestimated: bloggers are very influential people and they can badly damage a company’s reputation if they move together towards a similar direction.