FatCow Hosting Reviews

Throughout the years, FatCow has sponsored some fun and cool giveaways– And this year was no different!  This years winners won a smart fortwo coupe, a Vespa scooter and 4 people won a Schwinn bike.

This year’s “Host Smart, Drive Smart” giveaway was an extension of FatCow’s ongoing commitment to the environment and our Green Initiatives. We love being a fun and quirky web host, but we’re also very conscious of the decisions we make, and how they affect our customers and our environment. What better way to prove that than to give stuff away to our loyal customers – stuff that is not only fun, but also eco-friendly?

Our grand prize winner was David Campbell of inthecorners.org, a non-profit organization providing free labor for home repair and maintenance, primarily for widows and the elderly. David won a smart fortwo, but opted for the cash stating, “Can you picture us trying to haul a sheet of plywood and some lumber in a smart car?  We choose to take the cash and plan on using the money to further the cause of inthecorners.org.”  Congratulations, David!

Laura Negrete, our first place winner of the Vespa, has been a FatCow customer since 2003.  Her website inkstains.org is a literary magazine, publishing poetry, art work and fiction.

For Laura, “the most helpful aspect of FatCow was how user friendly the company is.  For a newbie like me it was really great that the FatCow website was not intimidating.  It helped the process of getting my website up and running that much easier.”

Winners of a Schwinn Bike

Russell Johnson of i35marketing.com, an online Marketing company.

Joshua Ziegler of jczdesigns.com, used as on online portfolio.

Claudia Sims, of radiatedjupiter.com, a personal blog.

Shannon Hill, of http://shannonlhill.com, a writer, speaker and blogger who specializes in animal welfare.

To Celebrate…

Each time you refer a friend to FatCow from now through December 31, 2010, you’ll earn a $20.00 credit.

It’s simple. Be sure your referral enters your domain or username in the “Friend or website who referred you” field during the account setup process, and after they’ve been with FatCow for 30 days, you’ll receive a $20.00 credit.   For full Referral Terms visit our TOS page.

The Moo Crew is MOOved and excited to learn that we earned new web hosting award! Over the years we have received numerous awards, but still each one of them is very special to us. We work around the clock to provide the best service to our customers and an award like this from an independent, respected web-hosting-review site is a real encouragement and honor.

John K, a spokesperson for MyBestRatedWebHosting.com, explains in their press release why they think FatCow is a worthy winner:

“The MBRW Second Semi-Annual 2010 Hosting Award was awarded after careful consideration of the web hosting market. Considering an extensive field of strong competitors was a difficult process, but we felt on balance that the customer service and reliability of FatCow was enough to make it our clear winner. The low price points belie the true value of FatCow’s customer support functions, available by email and telephone around the clock.  In a highly technical industry, there’s a trend away from quality customer support, but we’re happy to see FatCow blazing the return of a high-quality user experience.  For overall value, FatCow represent worthy winners of our Second Semi-Annual Award.”

I would like to use this opportunity to thank our team for staying true to FatCow’s original goal – delivering the best value and customer service experience in Web hosting. And we are happy that FatCow gets recognized for it! Also we thank YOU, our customers, for your trust and look forward serving you for the years to come.

Paul Bukhovko
Brand Marketing Manager

The Internet not only needs to be able to bridge the gap between different languages, but also different alphabets and characters. Now, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has announced they will now take non-Latin character Web addresses. This would essentially change the way Web wanders see the Internet.

Jordan’s Proposed ccTLD

The ccTLD that Jordan has proposed is ‘Al-Ordon’, the Arabic name for Jordon and الاردن in Arabic. The reason for the non-Latin characters is that it’s the country’s official languages and met the requirements set out by the DNS Stability Panel. The IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process for Jordan’s TLD was approved in October of 2009 and the first requests began appearing one month later.

How They Do It

To begin these IDNs, countries need to complete three phases. First, the country in question must prepare for this process before they undergo the second step, which is the string evaluation phase. During this step, the linguistics and technical aspects of the country’s IDNs are tested and defined. Then, they can apply for the string delegation. So far, four countries have passed the evaluation phase. These include Russia, the UAE, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.

So far, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers have received 21 requests for IDN ccTLDs in 11 languages, according to TheWhir.com, 13 of which are ready for string delegation.

The ongoing evolution of the Web 2.0 framework continues to change the way marketing and publicity work in the new digital world. Everyone knows that the groundswell of awareness that services like Facebook, Twitter and other peer to peer networks can marshal has to be worth something, but the question is, what, exactly? The quest to figure this out has lead to a number of social networking analysis services. One of these services, Virtue, has just come up with an answer: $3.60 each.

How they arrived at that number is the subject of the link at the bottom of the page, but a quick review of what they mean seems warranted. Virtue tracked the number of wall posts for brands whose Facebook fan pages they manage. These brands had a grand total of over 45 million individuals as fans. By averaging revenues from their client’s fans, Virtue found that, on average, over the 45 million users, each fan was worth around $3.60 in advertising revenue.

After the successful launch of the Apple iPad, many are wondering what Apple will do next. Their success in the electronics industry is truly incomparable. Through the iPod series, iPhone, iPad, iMac, MacBook and countless other computers, electronics and accessories they have developed, the question that has to be asked is what is left?

According to a report on cnet.com, it appears that Apple is looking to develop an alternative to Adobe Flash. Gianduia, the Flash alternative introduced originally by Apple last summer, is described as a “client-side, standards-based framework for rich Internet apps.”

The framework has already been in use by apple on their iPhone reservation system, the Concierge program for Genius Bar and Personal Shopping reservations.

The Battle With Flash Heats Up

The clear action to move in on the market long held by Adobe’s Flash software (originally developed by Macromedia) is only the latest in a battle between Apple and Adobe. Apple’s stance to support HTML5, JavaScript and CSS instead of Flash was the beginning of dissension between the two companies.

The fire was fanned when Apple changed their iPhone Developer Licensing Agreement to ban the use of technologies other than Apple’s to develop iPhone apps. This action took place after Adobe had begun advertising the use of Flash to develop iPhone apps. As a result, Adobe has filed complaints with the FTC and Department of Justice which may result in investigations.

4G is the newer, faster mobile internet service that is expected to speed by 3G services within the next couple of years. According to MSNBC, web standards expect that 4G coverage should reach download speeds of more than 100 mbps, faster than most home and business services available. Current 3G download speeds range between 400 kbps and 1.5 mbps and will soon become a thing of the past.

What about the new 4G services that are being advertised? Are they the real deal? What you need to know about the future of mobile connection speeds.

The Truth About The New 4G

While web firms agree that the standard should be set much higher for 4G service, marketers certainly are not “up to speed” with what this mobile technology really has to offer. The new 4G being advertised falls far below the standards that have been set. However, it will still be much faster than the current 3G services and will surpass most low-end DSL internet services available for homes.

The fourth generation of wireless services is expected to offer from 4 to 10 times faster service than 3G. To put it into numbers, 4G should provide download speeds of somewhere between 2 mbps and 12 mbps depending on the service. In preparation for the switch to mobile internet, companies are already starting to offer wireless hotspot devices that will connect up to eight devices to the internet.

Attention designers! Our comprehensive set of free web icons just got a whole lot bigger. We’ve added 400 new free web icons to our farm-fresh set — perfect for both PC and Mac users — and they’re free to download with a simple click. Check ‘em out!

Last fall, FatCow put together a professional set of 1000 free web icons to show their support for the web design community at large. Like the original set, the new icons are a great mix of images perfect for application and general web site usage.

Download the full 1400 icons, and you’ll get both 16- and 36-pixel versions in PNG. Use them to polish your design templates and websites, add functionality to your blog, and more.

And be sure to tell your friends you don’t have to host with FatCow to take advantage of the extensive set of icons. They’re free for everyone and anyone, so help us spread the word! Be the first to show friends and family where they can find hundreds of free web icons worthy of professional design, and share this post!

New plans revealed this week by Facebook stand poised to provide a major change in the internet. The Facebook F8 event, patterned after the MacWorld expo, was host to several major announcements by the social media powerhouse, many of which may have far reaching implications in the way that the Internet functions. Facebook, with 500 million users, is already a huge player in the on line world, commanding huge advertising revenues and an impressive amount of social and cultural relevance. With the new initiatives announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook is expanding out of the semi-walled garden that it has resided in until now and expanding out into the Internet as a whole, directly challenging Google with alliances to Microsoft.
Essentially the ‘like’ option in Facebook will expand out into the Net. It also connects users to a social fingerprint, dragging along Facebook information with them to other sites and allowing Facebook to gather even more information than it does now. By partially opening up Facebook to the wider web, Zuckerberg has expanded the amount of customer data it has access to and with the advent of a Facebook wide ‘currency’ called the credit, it incorporates a distributed system for commerce across the entire net.
This is a major change in the way that the world’s largest social network interacts and it will have far reaching implications for everyone on the Internet, some of which are discussed in more depth here: http://scobleizer.com/2010/04/22/facebook-ambition/

The popularity of the iPad has proven this format will certainly create a profitable marketing base for those willing to work with it. This means making sure websites are optimized for the iPad to give them an edge over their competitors. Here are three ways to do it:

Start with a Basic HTML Coded Site

Using only head, title, body, heading, and <P> tags, code a basic page in HTML that can be displayed on any browser no matter how basic or antiquated it maybe. Images, bold, italics, and underline as well as fancy fonts should also be avoided in order to avoid the possibility of display issues. Google finds these sites easy to crawl and index as well.

Add CSS To Style the Site

To add style to the site and define its structure, use CSS classes and IDs. This will allow you to give the site the look it needs to succeed, but it also lets you divide and customize the various sections of the site.

Add the Needed Components, Not Luxury Options

The rest of the site’s components such as JavaScript should be added next, however, be careful not to weigh the site down with unnecessary items. Only add things such as menus and Flash control that make the site work. Lastly, make sure to test and check each element as it’s added to ensure it works with the appropriate browser.

To find out more about optimizing and marketing your website, visit FatCow’s marketing services.

FatCow is excited to announce our ”moovelous” giveaway, “Host Smart, Drive Smart!” A few lucky winners will drive away with a smart fortwo coupe, a Vespa scooter, or one of four Shwinn bikes.

FatCow is giving any person who signs up for a hosting plan an automatic entry into the giveaway. “The Original FatCow hosting plan, much like the company, is a unique breed,” says Sophia Nobrega, a member of the Moo Crew. “Not only is it beefed up with everything one needs to build a successful website, but it also provides friendly 24×7support with the Moo Crew, and a guaranteed ‘green’ online presence.”

There are multiple ways to enter the giveaway in addition to purchasing web hosting. Become a MooMoney affiliate, Refer a friend, or add a client to your reseller console and you’ll automatically be entered to win!

FatCow encourages customers to enter the giveaway in as many ways as possible before it ends on September 30^th, 2010. For more details, view our Official Rules.

No purchase necessary to enter or win. Host Smart Drive Smart Giveaway is open to legal residents of the 50 United States (and D.C.) 18 years or older. Promotion starts on May 17, 2010 and ends at 11:59 pm ET on September 30, 2010. Void where prohibited. For full entry details see Official Rules at www.fatcow.com. Sponsor is FatCow Web Hosting, 70 Blanchard Rd., Third Floor, Burlington, MA 01803. Smart USA Distributor, LLC, Piaggio USA, and SCHWINN, a Divisions of Dorel Industries Inc, are not affiliated with FatCow or this promotion.

A new study produced under the auspices of the venerable environmental group Greenpeace focused on the climate change impact of cloud computing and web hosting. According to their study, many components of web hosts and cloud computing service providers like Google, Yahoo and Facebook provide power to their servers by using fossil fuel derived power. According to the Greenpeace study, the combination of power generation from coal and the increasing size of cloud computing could contribute to global carbon emissions and the climate change that results from carbon dioxide emissions.
The study is designed to increase consumer consciousness of the energy costs related to web hosting and cloud computing and spur development of ‘green clouds’ and web hosting services that get their power from renewable or carbon-neutral power. Here at Fatcow, we’ve already thought about the impact of our servers and anticipated most of the findings from Greenpeace’s study by moving to wind powered servers. That’s right, at Fatcow we’re actually one step ahead of Greenpeace when it comes to environmentally responsible web hosting.

For more about Greenpeace’s study, look here: http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/033010_Greenpeace_Says_Cloud_Contributes_to_Climate_Change

The number of satisfied customers purchasing through e-retailers has reached an all-time high according to a study from Foresee Results. The study was completed on the top 100 e-retail websites as reported by Internet Retailer.

The study showed that, on average, the overall satisfaction increased by 5 points on a 100 point scale receiving an average score of 78.

“The state of the economy really forced e-retail to step up their game,” said study author Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results. “Customer satisfaction is not a byproduct of a healthy economy. Instead, a healthy economy is a consequence of satisfied customers.”

Industries that were a part of the review included: books/CDs/DVDs, specialty (non-apparel), computers/electronics, and much more.

Who’s On Their Way Up?

Companies who saw the largest jump in customer satisfaction were Abercrombie.com, Etronics.com and MarketAmerica.com; which saw the largest jump at 12 points. Nexflix continues to lead the pack for the sixth year in a row with a satisfaction score of 87, which was also an increase from the prior year. Amazon not too far behind to the video rental and streaming company retained their position of second place. A full report of all top 100 retailers is available at the website for ForeSee Results.

Between the recent Greenpeace report on the state of cloud computing and recent adoption of data center efficiency metrics developed by The Green Grid, a data center regulation and efficiency organization, the world is beginning to take serious notice of the energy costs of computing. With the increase in web activity and the growing popularity of cloud based computing, the energy (and climatic) impact of the Internet has become an increasing concern for environmentalists. Part of the problem in addressing the energy costs of the data centers that provide much of the muscle behind web hosting and other Internet services has been a lack of universal standards to gauge how efficient a particular data center is.

Green Grid’s metrics and standards will, now that they’ve been adopted by most of the developed world, allow efficiency technicians to understand exactly what energy costs can be improved on and where the most effective changes can be made to improve the economic and environmental impact of data centers. While these efficiency reports and measurements will improve computer efficiency and improve how green the average web server is, converting web servers away from fossil fuel power supplies will also help make the net green. For example, we here at Fatcow already get the power for our web hosting services from purely green sources.

For more on this, check here http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/040510_US_Europe_and_Japan_Agree_to_Use_Data_Center_Efficiency_Metric

During Twitter’s first official conference, Chirp, the CEO of the social network revealed it was creating its own link shortener and dumping the bit.ly shortener it had made so popular. The CEO of bit.ly, John Borthwick, wasn’t too concerned.

Bit.ly Not Official, But Still a Favorite

Even prior to the network promoting the use of the link shortening tool, it made up for 5% of all link encodes and has since fallen to just 1%, noted by Tech Crunch. Even so, this still amounts to 3.4 billion links because many of the desktop and mobile Twitter users still use the shortener. This may also be the reason no one seemed to notice the shortner was dropped by Twitter in December; most of the network’s power users access the site through a platform such as Tweetie or Tweetdeck.

The Ups and Downs Of Link Shorteners

Twitter’s move into areas previously filled by other applications has left developers disgruntled. How do they know the applications they build next will not be taken over by the social network? With the introduction of promoted tweets and commercial accounts, Twitter will certainly have the money to do it.

On the upside, the numbers released by bit.ly is an indication of exactly how popular link sharing has become. Therefore, the easier business owners can make it for visitors to share their content, the more likely it is to be shared, read, and enjoyed.

If you’re a Tweeter, make sure you’re following FatCow on Twitter!

Web hosting is a constantly expanding industry, with millions of new users requiring additional services, which in turn require new servers to handle the load of hosting web pages. Web hosting and cloud computing have driven an intense amount of competition between producers, which leads to a number of rather creative marketing approaches intended to distinguish a given company’s product. Sales incentives designed to push a given product, are common in many industries but the fast paced and intense competition over web server sales has produced a number of pretty strange incentives. The most recent winner of the ’strangest incentive’ award is most likely ServerBeach, a hosting company that promised to give a free piercing ‘of their choice’ with every server purchased on April 1st.
No, this was not an April Fool’s prank.
And it wasn’t quite as out of left field as it may appear. Other sales incentives and marketing plans in server sales have included tattoo based human billboards and other body art for successful sales members. The recipients of ServerBeach’s newest sales incentive can pick up their piercing at the Internet World conference in London in late April.

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2010/03/31/want-a-body-piercing-with-that-server/

In the thousands of years since humanity developed writing, we’ve come up with countless variations on its production, storage and transmission. People have written in pictures, words and ideograms, on paper, stone, clay and papyrus, and shared their words through books, telegraphs and now the Internet. But the act of reading has remained essentially the same: a passive process where words on a page (or what have you) are consumed by the reader.
Now a German Artificial Intelligence researcher has developed a new approach to text. By combining AI with a simple eye tracking device, Ralf Biedert and his colleagues working at the German Research Center for AI have come up with active text. Predictably dubbed Text 2.0, this new approach to text follows the attention of the reader and automatically produces content in response to the rates of speed and latency time on specific words. By submitting this information to the AI at the heart of Text 2.0 the computer can provide translations or definitions for unknown words, give pronunciation tips or even highlight important words in a sentence to facilitate speed reading or skimming.
If you’re interested, there’s a fascinating video demonstration of the technology here: http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/ai/does-headline-know-you%E2%80%99re-reading-it.

When you consider the amount of information that’s now accessible online and how connected everything and everyone is, security is a huge concern. In many instances, if someone were to gain access to a useless Social Network you tried once, they can use that information to gain access to everything including your email and even more frightening, possibly your banking information. Here are some common mistakes people make with their passwords:

Using Common Phrases or Words

LifeHacker recently published a post entitled ‘How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords‘. In it, the author John Pozadzides listed ten words and phrases people often use as their passwords. And while the name of your spouse might be a bit more difficult to guess, a little bit of quick research online should take care of that. After all, we reveal this seemingly innocent information all the time in regular conversation.

All it takes are one of the free software programs out there or a simple script for a computer to automatically figure out your login details. Therefore, always add numbers, symbols, and upper-case letters to make the password more complex.

Using the Same Password Everywhere

Tim Nash and his associates recently experimented with password security and they discovered 92% of people use the same password for their email and all other sites. They also blindly gave permission for websites to use that information. This means that many people willingly give up this information leaving them open to hacking and theft of all kinds. Never use the same password!

Password security is extremely important at FatCow and that’s why we require a ’strong’ password criteria and have certain ‘rules’ that need to be followed when choosing your password. You can find out more about our password security in our knowledge base. Just never use PASSWORD, as your password!

Email marketing can be an extremely effective tool, particularly if you already have a list of targeted recipients interested in the information and products you have to offer. Unfortunately, a lot of spammers use this same method, so it’s imperative to be smart and get this type of correspondence right from the start. Here are three important tips to boost the effectiveness of your next campaign:

Avoid Spammy Phrases and Industry Specific Slang and Abbreviations

If the subject line or email sounds like the normally spamming content that fills our inboxes, chances are pretty good that people aren’t going to bother opening them. Instead, use power words like ‘free’, ’save’, and ‘guaranteed’ to grab attention while inspiring trust in the reader. It also helps to personalize the email to give your email marketing a sense of quality while making the recipient feel important.

Don’t Fall For ‘Pretty’ Emails

Emails loaded full of graphics, posted on pretty stationary, and in HTML might look great, but it greatly decreases the chance the email will get read since many people only read text emails and have images turned off. These graphics and textures can also make the text difficult to read and distracting, which can cause people to miss important information. Stick to simple text emails with concise content.

Use a Reliable Email Service

Sending large amounts of email can get you blacklisted for spam, but you can avoid that and improve your delivery rates by using a reliable email service. As an added benefit, these types of services can provide you with templates, tracking, monitoring, and list management to make email marketing quick and easy.

With FatCow and Constant Contact, you’ll find it quick and easy to create beautiful templates, use email tracking and reporting, and improved deliverability. Find out more about Constant Contact and FatCow’s email marketing services today. Right now we’re offering a 60 day free trial!

www.Fatcow.com

- Fatcow.com offering Green Hosting, since year 1998 - Unlimited storage space, Unlimited data transfer bandwidth. - 24/7 fatcow support, phone support, live chat support, email support. - Free domain for life & free setup. 30 days money back guarantee. - Unlimited Emails, unlimited FTP, unlimited MySQL database. - Recommended for ecommerce, blog, forum, cms, gallery, joomla, etc. - $75 dollars free marketing credits. Search engine submission. - Fatcow Coupon 35% Off: Fatcow Coupon 50% Off - Fatcow Coupon $46 Off: Fatcow Coupon $46 - Fatcow Discount $46 Off: Fatcow Discount $46 - Fatcow Coupon: Fatcow Discount $3.67/month ** This Fatcow Review is hosted with Fatcow Hosting.

Fatcow Special Discount $3.67 per month

Fatcow customers can now get 1000+ free icons from fatcow hosting. Today we receive this email notification from fatcow hosting, and notifying us as a fatcow customer are entitle for these free icons. And we can use it for our website, blog, template and more. Thanks to fatcow hosting for their 1000 free icons

Fatcow hosting discount price is now only $3.67 per month, and its with 1000+ free icons now!

“Free Farm-Fresh Web Icons
Download hundreds of FREE, beautifully designed icons from FatCow Web Hosting! Icon set includes both 16 and 32 pixel versions of icons shown below. Images have been saved in PNG format on transparent backgrounds for your convenience.“

“These icon sets are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. This means you can freely use these icons for any purpose, private and commercial, including online services, templates, themes and software. However, you should include a link to this page in your credits. The icons may not be resold, sublicensed, rented, transferred or otherwise made available for use. Please link to this page on FatCow.com if you would like to spread the word.“