Haiti is one of the poorest and most under developed countries in the world. I suppose that is not a big surprise when you consider its history. It seems that Haiti has always been dealing with one crisis or another — be it humanitarian, political or natural disaster. As I am sure you have heard on the news, the latest crisis to rattle this poor island nation, was the massive earthquake from last week and subsequent aftershock early this week that shook Haiti’s capital. These earthquakes have leveled Haiti’s presidential palace, taking with it Haiti’s government. It trashed a dozens of hospitals,  buried hundreds alive in rubble and wiped out hundreds of thousands of homes. What was left of Haiti’s already diminished resources is now also largely gone. Haiti has been through hard times, but its never needed everyones help like it does today.

Like much of the world, the hosting community, normally comprised of ultra competitive rivals, has really come together in doing what they can by launching HostingForHaiti.com. This is a joint effort between Peer1 Hosting, GoGrid, ThePlanet, Rackspace, VPS.Net, ServInt, and SingleHop, with many more web hosting providers joining.

In addition to joining and promoting the HostingForHaiti program, SingleHop has made a donation of $10,000 to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.

In the immediate aftermath of the earthquakes, President Obama asked former-presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush to start a foundation to raise funds for the Haitian people. The foundation, called the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, was launched just three days after the earthquakes shook the country. To date, the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund has collected over 100,000 individual donations. The funds very simple purpose is to “assist the people of Haiti as they rebuild their lives,” a mission that SingleHop supports and believes in.

While there are loads of great organizations out there to donate to, we picked the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund because 100% of the donations received go directly to relief efforts. In addition, SingleHop will be matching employee contributions to any charitable organizations.

If you’re interested in donating, visit http://www.clintonbushhaitifund.org.

SingleHop is joining the effort to help those suffering in Haiti in this time of need. Haiti is in immediate need of food, water, medicine, workers and other basic necessities. We encourage others to join SingleHop with donating as much as possible, as Haiti tries to rebuild everything the earthquake has destroyed and bring some normalcy to those affected.

More about Hosting For Haiti:

Hosting For Haiti, brings together many hosting companies to provide relief for those suffering from the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12th. Partnering with Red Cross, Hosting for Haiti will donate 100% of the funds raised to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief and Development fund. For those of you who have already donated or are unable to, please help spread the word by sending out or adding the url: http://www.hostingforhaiti.com or tweet the hash tag #hostingforhaiti.

Hello, fellow SingleHop clients and bloggers. It is Migzzy V, coming out to give you the skinny on some of our firewall features that have rolled out at the Hop and will perfectly compliment your dedicated server solution.  After our awesome final third quarter closing last year, which included a company-wide sky diving trip,  Singlehop launched our new Snapshield firewall feature.  The Snapshield Firewall was released late last year and is only available in our Dupont Data Center at this time. This cost-effective, shared Cisco ASA 5510 firewall is only $39.95/mo per server.   The Snapshield firewall is a shared service, offers a 10Mbps port, and is our solution for clients that are working with a specific budget in mind. Also, SnapShield is built right into your LEAP account so setting it up and going is a breeze even if you dont have in-depth knowledge of how to set one of these up.

Now, we do offer other firewall options, such as our software-based firewalls ($5/mo) and our dedicated Cisco ASA 5505 firewalls housed only in our CIMCO facility ($129/mo). What are the differences between the three? Essentially, they all perform the same way, which is to block unwanted access on the dedicated server it is connected to. However, an important benefit in choosing a hardware firewall like the Snapshield and Cisco ASA 5505 is that, unlike a software firewall, no server resources are being used during their process because they are physical devices that are placed in front of your server. This helps prohibit intrusions away from your server, as opposed to a software-based firewall.  I would also stress that if you are operating a system that does not require more than a 10Mbps port and only protecting one dedicated server, the Snapshield shared firewall is an awesome option at only $39.95/mo. For those clients with larger dedicated server configurations that might have multiple solutions and need larger port speeds, the Ciscso ASA 5505 dedicated firewall can support up to seven servers on one device and includes a 100Mbps port.

If you have any questions about what options will best suit you, than you certainly should speak with one of our account executives.  I, as always, welcome any questions or requests you may have at Miguel@Singlehop.com or @MiguelSingleHop on twitter.

Last week there was a buzz going around the office and on Facebook regarding our recently delivered SingleHop Hoodies and American Apparel Jackets. Not only are they warm and comfortable but we were told by countless people that they look good. Really good.  So when the questions of “where can I get one” started rolling in, and the inventory of jackets and hoodies started disappearing, we decided to open up a competition to allow any SingleHop follower to get their hands on their own SingleHop Gear.

How to participate:

-Make a comment on this post and let us know that you will be participating
-Make and post to YouTube a 60 second (or so) video featuring SingleHop- It can be an ad, a song, you jumping out of a plane in a frog costume… anything! Be creative! (But keep things clean plz).
-Send us the link to your video by posting a comment.

Rules of the competition:  1) Video submissions will be accepted and judged on January 26th. 2) The SingleHop staff will review and vote on the videos (be sure to mention your favorite SingleHopper for extra points).

Prizes: 1st Place will receive a Jacket and a Hoodie, a SingleHop glowing cup, and a SingleHop mousepad. 2nd Place will receive their choice of a Jacket or a Hoodie.  BTW: We will pay for shipping for your items anywhere on earth.

Now if you are wondering what do the prizes actually look like, please look at the pictures below and welcome Steph, Chris & Miguel who generously agreed to model for us:

As some of you may remember, about 11 months ago, in February of 2009, we moved into our new office. It took us a long time, but we finally got signs installed — announcing our main sales and operations office to everyone who passes by on Randolph street in Chicago.

For those who have been to our offices, the first thing you might think is: unconventional. We’re a fun company, after all, and we like our environment to reflect our personalities. Our office is located in a 100+ year old building in downtown Chicago. It pre-dates the Chicago fire by a few years and is constructed of brick. We occupy the 3^rd and 4^th floors of the building, and the first two floors are occupied by a Sushi restaurant called Meiji and a bar called Nara. An odd location for a web hosting company, right?

Greetings and Happy New 2010 to all SingleHop clients and fans!

So, back in October (my birthday month) I had a fantastic surprise birthday party and was invited on a short trip to the Big Apple (NY) for the Halloween weekend. While the trip was phenomenal, I would have to say the highlight of the entire month was when I met and lunched with a world-renowned athlete while I was in the city.

Out of privacy, I will not disclose this person’s name, but during our comrade-ly lunch we discussed many aspects of our lives and interests, and I happened to learn that he was looking to launch a viral video and needed some pointers about the hosting side of things.  The video itself, intended to advertise a new fundraising venture, was not going to be large in size, but he was curious about hosting options.  After we exchanged numbers and bid our farewells with one another at the airport, I did not expect to ever hear from him again … but was pleasantly mistaken, since the next afternoon I found myself discussing, with his private secretary, several solutions that could meet his hosting needs.

So, if you are wondering how a world-class viral video hosting solution would work (in a more private and quality-focused medium than YouTube), here are a few pointers:

First, there is no one set way to host a viral video; it really depends on the content and appeal to mass amounts of audiences that makes the vid popular. I already know someone who has successfully launched one viral video on YouTube that became such a sensation it was picked up and used for a South Park episode.  However, because this athlete’s particular venture was for a fundraising event, YouTube was an unacceptable option because of its random pop-up ads and video quality inconsistencies.   Our solution to this was to host the main video on one of our secure dedicated servers and have a redundant solution on hand as a backup. In addition, SingleHop.com was prepared and equipped to offer a CDN (Content Delivery Network) as one of the options for this viral video.  Because the main focus of the video was to get the word out there for large amounts of viewers all over the world, we were able to plan a custom solution that would allow millions of viewers to access the video. A CDN strategically uses several servers in different locations to store and deliver data in a much more efficient way, and also provides connectivity to many more users as opposed to just one fixed, dedicated solution. Because of this, though, the bandwidth usage for a CDN is billed differently than our normal packages, and it’s more costly.

Although my athletic friend has long since placed this viral video project on hold, he certainly was pleased to see that SingleHop had options and technical knowledge to get the job done in a quick and timely manner.  This is why I feel SingleHop.com excels in the webhosting industry:  because we offer high-quality available solutions with the customer service and technical support that people want and need.   And to think … I probably would never have gotten his phone number had I not mentioned work during our lunch.