No. 29

January 2, 2001

 

Technology:

Hosting

A small nonprofit organization has asked me recently to look at three commercial hosts and recommend one of them. The organization had a minuscule budget, no hope of having its own server, and no technical staff to speak of. What it did have was a large, relational database filled with interesting data, waiting to be transformed into a Web application with the help of Cold Fusion (the organization's platform of choice.) Hence, the host would have to provide: a Web server with FTP access, Cold Fusion application server, domain name hosting, development rights, robust remote administration. Oh, and it would have to cost very little.

I looked at the three preselected options and was positively stunned. I did not expect to find such wide range of flexible services offered at prices so low. For those of us used to working in highly controlled, corporate (or even academic) environments it is a shock that could be compared to moving from a military base (or a dorm) to our own house in the suburbs. My own belief that having one's own server (hardware AND software) was the best way of achieving creative freedom and flexibility on the Web was thus shattered. Now I can't see why any small organization, a project, a team, or an individual would want to incur the expense and hassle of owning a server, when $20 or $30 a month can buy essentially the same thing on somebody else's server farm. (Unless, of course, serious issues of privacy and security stand in the way.)

Let me give you two examples of hosts I found I could use for my own needs and recommend to others. These are only examples. There are many more available. There may even be better and/or cheaper ones, so please do look around for ones that fit your specific needs and budget. (I'll be happy to hear about them, too.)

My first example is Intermedia.NET, offering a good selection of hosting plans built around Microsoft OS and tools. $24.95/month plus a one-time setup fee of $25 will get you: 50 MB of storage; IIS 5.0 Web server on Windows 2000 with unlimited FTP access; mail server with unlimited e-mail accounts; developer's access via FrontPage or Dreamweaver; support for MS Access databases and ASP (Active Server Pages); WebTrends site statistics; support for Cybercash and Signio payments. Next level, at $49.95/month with a setup fee of $50 will get you all of the above plus: Cold Fusion 4.5 and FoxWeb application development with unlimited data sources; security certificates; Verity Collections search engine. The third level, at $79.95/month throws in a few more goodies, including a chat server.  There is also an impressive list of add-ons one can add to the package for extra monthly fees: disk space ($5 for each 25 MB); virtual board on WebBoard ($20); MS SQL Server ($50); etc. Finally, Intermedia.NET offers hosted Microsoft Exchange, with monthly fee of $20/user. Administration of any of the packages is done entirely via a standard browser.

My second example, CodeIt Computing does not offer the same range of hosting options, but will certainly appeal to those, who are firmly on the side of the Open Source movement, as it is built around technologies such as Linux, Apache, Zope, MySQL, and Python. The basic Web hosting package, at $25/month, is rather lean: 25 MB of space, 5 e-mail accounts, Apache Web server with FTP access (limited to 1 GB of transfer per month), access to server log files. Thus, the next hosting plan is much more attractive, adding Zope account (the open source application server and development platform) for only $10/month more. Still not very competitive with Intermedia.NET. However, the third and final plan offered by CodeIt is quite enticing: for $50/month one gets all of the above features plus a database on MySQL server and the ability to add third-party Zope plugins. This makes the development options nearly limitless, opening the path for such features as discussion boards, chat rooms, file exchange, etc.

Administration tools (click on thumbnail):
Intermedia.NET 
CodeIt

For more information please visit the Intermedia.NET site or CodeIt site.
 

Conference:

Stop Surfing - Start Teaching 2001
  • National Conference on Teaching and Learning Through the Internet
  • Held February 11-14, 2001 in Myrtle Beach, SC
  • Higher education is involved in a technological and instructional revolution that will most assuredly change the way colleges and universities meet their teaching, research and service missions. The power of the web has broken down the traditional barriers of distance, time, and place. Confronting today's leadership are a myriad of new issues that will redefine the way teaching and learning occur. Institutions that seize these opportunities and successfully meet new challenges will be propelled to the forefront of higher education. The conference program committee has determined that the focus of the conference will be on ideas and solutions as opposed to technical demonstrations. Participants will include higher education faculty, academic staff and administrators, student services professionals, marketing directors and consultants who are committed to launching their campus onto the information superhighway.


Initiatives:

Bridging the Digital Divide.

Launched less than a year ago, OneNetNow is a portal for online communities, "specifically designed to bridge the Digital Divide by providing content, community and e-commerce relevant to multi-ethnic groups". Free membership allows the users to: join existing communities of interest or propose new ones; participate in discussion boards, vote in polls, access chat rooms, view multimedia content, publish their own content, maintain personal home pages. Web-based e-mail is also part of the package. It is not the first initiative aimed at making the cyberspace more attractive to minorities by building online communities of interest to them. However, two things make this effort somewhat unique:

  1. Unlike portals such as AsianAvanue.com, NetNoir.com, BlackPlanet.com, or Latino.com, which target specific ethnic or racial groups, it reaches out to both Latinos and African Americans, and aims to promote cultural and ethnic diversity.
  2. Its Board of Directors is composed of high-profile individuals, including: Rev. Jesse Jackson, Yusef Jackson, Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, Sammy Sosa. (This explains, at least in part, significant publicity OneNetNow received before its launch.)

She said, he said:

"Virtual teams have been around long enough now that people are beginning to recognize them as a fundamental shift in the way people work." -- Andy Campbell.


© 2001 Vlad Wielbut and the Alliance for Community Technology