X13

Your website gently rocks me to sleep

2011-07-14T10:50:55-07:00

Your website is a snoozer.

It's exactly what I hope to find before an international flight. I've printed your site to prop up tables. I've read it to hyper toddlers at bed time. It’s a rambling content waterfall with no purpose.

It tells me about who you are, and what you do, and beats a virtual chest. It’s like everything else.

It does not invite me to take the next step.

And if I am already a client, I am scanning for a phone number.

I want to be your customer.

I have a fistful of cash and want to buy your services.

I do not care that your business is on facebook, tweeting, or chirping like birds.

Let me in.

Engage me with a call to action. Invite me to donate to your cause. Allow me to complete a form and make a down payment. Show me your retail locations. Give me answers. What do you need from me to get started? Why isn’t that on your website? Walk me through the process.

Make it big and bold and simple. We will flock like moths to your lamp.

Your fear is getting in the way of success. Let X13 help you figure it out. They have a bag of candy they’ll share with you.

Hurry, before I fall asleep.

How to wipe a hard drive and prepare a computer for donation

2011-06-28T11:20:48-07:00

Please read these directions completely before proceeding. This will remove all of the information on a computer. We strongly recommend that you recycle the CD after using it, to prevent accidental misuse.
Summary: Create a CD which contains hard-drive erasing software.

Backup your important data.
https://x13.com/backup/

The next 5 steps will walk you through creating a CD which contains hard-drive erasing software. You can use this CD anywhere, and it may be faster to create this CD using the machine you're reading these instructions with, rather than an older machine you're preparing for donation.
Download DBAN (free)
http://www.dban.org/download
Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a self-contained boot disk that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction. DBAN is a means of ensuring due diligence in computer recycling, a way of preventing identity theft if you want to sell a computer, and a good way to totally clean a Microsoft Windows installation of viruses and spyware. DBAN prevents or thoroughly hinders all known techniques of hard disk forensic analysis. DBAN is a free software product.
Download ImgBurn (free)
http://www.imgburn.com/
ImgBurn is a lightweight CD / DVD burning application, enabling you to put an ISO file on a disc.
Insert a blank CD into your drive.
Run ImgBurn. Click on “Write image file to disc”
Drag the DBAN ISO file onto ImgBurn, and write (“burn”) it to the blank disc.
After you create your “boot-disk” (CD with DBAN on it), insert it into the computer which contains the hard drive you wish to erase. Restart that computer and select “Boot from CD”. (On many machines, you may have to press F12 or something similar to enter a boot menu which allows you to select booting from the CD drive)
Enter 'autonuke' at the prompt.

Keep in mind that erasing a hard drive removes the operating system (Windows) and renders the machine unusable. After completing this process, you'll probably need to install an operating system on the blank hard drive to be able to use the computer. While you could install Windows, now is a great time to try Ubuntu Linux, a fast, secure and easy-to-use operating system used by millions of people around the world. Linux is a great way to breathe new life into an older computer, and includes a web browser and office suite.
http://www.ubuntu.com/ (free)

Alternate Instructions:

Put on eye protection.
Follow the above instructions and wipe the drive.
Remove the hard drive(s) from the computer.
Unscrew the drive cover and expose the aluminum platters.
Smash them to pieces using a sledge hammer.
Pour a beverage onto the drive and mourn the loss of your data.

Myth: We've heard rumors about boiling drives in water, but that doesn't change magnetic orientation, so I doubt it works.

To disable a CD, cut it in half with scissors.

By using the information contained herein, you release X13 of any liability and acknowledge the inherit risks.

What do you want to achieve with your website?

2010-09-21T14:16:58-07:00

Many clients approach us and know they want a website, but they aren't really sure what they want it to do. This article contains brainstorming questions to help get the mental gears turning. Hopefully it will help you decide what you want to achieve with your website.

X13 approaches websites differently than most development firms, who view them as electronic brochures. We see it as a way to transform how you do business, as our customers show us again and again our custom software becomes essential for their ability to scale.

Think about 5 specific goals you would like your website to fulfill, as well as 5 websites which you really like. Most successful websites are developed in phases, so don't fear what can or cannot be done at this time, with this budget, before this deadline, etc.

What do you want to achieve with your website?

Attract new clients
Retain existing clients
Payment acceptance
Event Registration
Collect data via a form
Send invoices or information to clients
Surveys or a way to communicate with your firm
Tools, such as stock quotes or a withholding calculator

It's also ok to think about non-public areas of your website, portions specifically for customers or employees, behind a password:

Employee scheduling (Is Fred at the correct location?)
Inventory management (How many cases of product will we have on hand Wednesday?)
Asset tracking (Who has laptop 6?)
Document sharing (Can Anna get the file she needs?)
Customer relationship management (Addresses, Phone, Last time contacted, Notes: "Catherine has 3 children and prefers E-filing")
Process management (For customer X, did step 3 occur before step 4? When? By whom?)

Consider your audience.

Will the information displayed be different depending on the visitor's location?
Will your audience be viewing this at their office, home, or on their phone?
Is your audience generally a certain age? (Barbie.com V. AARP.org)

List 5 websites you like.

You can like them for any reason; it just helps us get to know you better.

We hope this helps get the wheels turning. Call or write with questions.

The death of the domain name

2010-07-23T16:46:47-07:00

Loosely defined, domain names are labels for resources found on the Internet. Two examples are website and email addresses.

An example domain name is “x13.com”. The first part, before the dot, is known as the subdomain. (x13) The right-most label, after the dot, is a top-level domain. (com) The dot, or period, is merely a separator, similar to dashes in a phone number. Domain names can have multiple subdomains, such as www.ci.broomfield.co.us, and are not case sensitive.

Domain names first arrived on the scene in 1985, and were arranged into 3 general groups of Countries, Categories, and Multiorganizations. Countries follow the format of a 2 letter identifier, such as FR for France. These are known as country-code top-level domains (ccTLD) Categories are generic top-level domains (gTLD) such as COM and GOV. Multiorganizations are known as sponsored top-level domains (sTLD). Examples include .INT for intergovernmental organizations such as who.int and nato.int. COOP, MUSEUM, and TEL also fall into this category.

Currently, 288 “endings”, or top-level domains (ORG, JP, etc.) exist. The number of top-level domains grows every year, resulting in greater fragmentation of the Internet namespace.
ICANN, the organization which is responsible for managing the assignment of domain names and IP addresses, has announced it is going to allow anyone to purchase a top-level domain. Pricing starts at $185,000.00.

I feel this will eventually lead to the death of the top-level domain as we know it. Why visit Amazon.com or Cars.com when you could just use “Amazon” or “Cars”? Imagine www.pepsi and borders.books.

Here are the problems I see with our current naming scheme:

Location limitations
Many websites are for an international audience, and sell globally. Sony.jp doesn’t mean much to a consumer purchasing their products in the UK, where Sony uses Sony.co.uk.
Burdensome intellectual property protection
To keep flies and other pests away from your company name, many firms defensively register all top-level domains, such as x13.net, x13.org, x13.tel, x13.mobi, x13.in, x13.mx, etc. The cost is prohibitive, and the result is tiring, most everything points back to a single website maintained by the company, where you can choose your language or area if they have separate information for those visitors. Nvidia and Nike are excellent examples.
Availability
The name you want to register is probably taken. With over 3 million domains registered every month, and 200,000,000 names already registered, the odds of you finding a short, memorable name is low.

I look forward to seeing what the next few years bring. Did you find this article useful? Please let us know. You can ask us anything and we’ll do our best to explain it.

Additional resources:
View a complete list of all top-level domains.
http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/

VeriSign Domain Name Industry Brief
http://www.verisign.com/domain-name-services/domain-information-center/industry-brief/

Register a domain name
http://domains.x13.com/

ICANN New gTLD name information
http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtld-program.htm

X13 celebrates World Diabetes Day

2009-11-13T23:00:00-08:00

X13 recognizes the work of the International Diabetes Federation and its important mission of diabetes advocacy and awareness this November 14th, 2009; World Diabetes Day.

Diabetes currently affects more than 285 million people worldwide. A further 344 million are at high risk of developing diabetes. The International Diabetes Federation predicts that by 2030, over 435 million people will live with diabetes worldwide. Over the past 30 years the global figures for the number of people living with diabetes have skyrocketed, with severe consequences for healthcare budgets worldwide. Diabetes is one of several non-communicable diseases that threaten to overwhelm healthcare systems and are emerging as a serious barrier to economic development.

Congratulations to the Ubuntu community on the release of 9.10!

2009-10-30T23:00:00-07:00

We're excited Ubuntu 9.10 has been released. The Ubuntu distribution of Linux is a favorite here at the office, and we applaud the efforts of the many developers who have worked to bring the world a better free operating system.

X13 relies exclusively on Ubuntu Server Edition for stability and security.

Ubuntu is a community developed and supported open source software project. Since its launch in October 2004, Ubuntu has become one of the most highly regarded Linux distributions with millions of users globally.

Read the release here:
Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop Edition puts the user at the heart of its new design

Moving my music collection to the Cloud with Lala

2009-10-29T23:00:00-07:00

I recently found Lala, a free service which lets you take your music collection with you, so you can listen to it anywhere using a web browser.

They have more than 7 Million songs, it's easy to find new music, but my favorite feature is the ability to have my music collection, of 45 thousand songs, on any device connected to the Internet: My machine at work, my cell phone, my laptop. The ability to walk into my friends home and turn on a play list is convenient.

Lala also sells songs, provided as 2 options. You can either listen to the song online (10 cents), or download and keep as a DRM-free (non-copy-protected) MP3 file (89 cents). If you purchase a song to listen to online, and decide later you want to own it, you can buy it for the difference (79 cents).

The free Music Mover tool quickly uploads music from your computer to your Lala collection, and is smart enough to compare what you have and what files they already have, so when I added a few thousand songs, only a handful needed to be uploaded.

I'm enjoying listening without any commercial interruptions, and their website is also ad-less. The interface is similar to iTunes, and pretty easy to figure out.

Lala gets an A, for providing a useful and entertaining service via the Internet, and for keeping our office rocking.

Faster DNS performance through a simple test

2009-08-04T23:00:00-07:00

note: this article is intended to open eyes regarding client-side DNS performance. As in making your web surfing experience faster, this has nothing to do with the performance of your website.

Using dig for windows, I asked 3 servers to return a record, in this case, cnn.com. Query all servers for the same record, so it's the same size result.

Level3 - 4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.3, 4.2.2.4, 4.2.2.5

OpenDNS - 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220

Comcast - 68.87.85.98, 68.87.69.146

Comcast DNSSEC testing - 75.75.75.75 and 75.75.76.76

Qwest - 205.171.3.25, 205.171.2.25

Google Public DNS - 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4, 4.3.2.1

DNS Advantage (NeuStar) - 156.154.70.1 and 156.154.71.1

Example


C:\dig>dig cnn.com @4.2.2.1

The results will contain lots of stuff, look near the end of the record for this:

;; Query time: 10 msec

So run dig, and compare your results, and choose the option with the lowest query time. I like DNS. Is there any coincidence there are 13 root servers? ;)

Also, if names are not resolving the way you expect, check the cache of your provider.

Comcast DNS Cache Query

Adding a personal touch with a custom font

2009-02-18T23:00:00-08:00

Any design is greatly aided by the use of a font which accentuates its graphic and thematic intent. Creating a custom font for your digital work can add a personal level that is not often present in digital mediums.

Yourfonts.com offers a free online tool that is great for hobbyists and design professionals alike that allows for the creation of a personalized font from hand lettering.

Simply visit http://www.yourfonts.com/print.html, follow the instructions and you will have a custom font in minutes (note you will need access to a printer and scanner).

Verifying your company's identity increases customer's trust

2009-02-06T23:00:00-08:00

We've all visited secure sites; they stand out by showing a small padlock icon either in the browser's address bar or below in the status bar. (Another way to tell is if the address starts with https:// the "s" stands for Secure.)

Handy, but hardly trustworthy. The padlock icon only lets you know the transmission is encrypted, so it's much harder for someone else to see the data flowing by, but it does not let you know if the website you're dealing with is in fact the one you intended to work with.

Think of it as a locked briefcase being transported by an armored truck to an impostor. This isn't good. Phishing, or the attempt to acquire sensitive information by masquerading as a trustworthy entity, is on the rise.

Thankfully, modern web browsers such as Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 8, now make it easier to ensure secure transmission as well as the validity of the organization you are communicating with. If the website being visited is using an EV SSL Certificate, the address bar, or a portion of it, turns green.

5 steps to increase customer's trust

Encourage your visitors to upgrade their browser.
Review your company's privacy policy and how customer data is stored and protected.
Gather materials needed for providing proof of identity.
Contact a reputable Certificate Authority (CA) and purchase an EV SSL Certificate.
Implement the EV SSL Certificate showing your firms' legitimacy.

Web sites using EV SSL Certificates

Bank of America

E*TRADE

X13

X13 works with Verisign and Geotrust, the largest Certificate Authority's (CA) to help customers implement Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificates.

Happy holidays

2008-12-23T23:00:00-08:00

From the entire crew here on board the X13, we wish you a safe and happy holiday season. Forever frozen in time, Cole has chosen to commemorate this moment with the following snapshot.

Looking back at the Cobalt Raq

2008-11-30T23:00:00-08:00

X13 is doing a hardware refresh next week. It's cold out, which makes hunching over hot servers almost enjoyable, especially for a bit-head like myself.

After a decade of walking behind the curtain and seeing what makes global communication and commerce possible, I have both an enormous appreciation and respect for technology. I used to be the server whisperer. Like a veterinarian or mechanic, I could put my hand on a muggy forehead and make an educated guess about what was ailing the machine. (Hearing the whir of 80's era Mac SE-30 hard drives in today's movies thrills me.)

In February of 2001, I left Sun and decided to dust off my entrepreneurial spirit and jump into the hosting industry. With the help of 3 angel investors (craig m., lori g., ken g.) and a business plan guru (chris n.) I was off and running, purchasing a Sun Cobalt Raq 4 for our first server.

Through the favor of a friend, this little blue pizza box sat inside an Inflow (now SunGard) datacenter, nestled between giant colorless servers owned by MessageMedia (later known as DoubleClick, then absorbed into the largest consumer information company, Google.)

Eventually we grew into our own colocation cabinets, paying $400 per megabit (316GB) of data transferred, and servers were about $5000.

Today, premium bandwidth is under $40/Mb, and servers are about $2500.

	OLD	NEW
System	Sun Cobalt Raq 4	Dell Power Edge
Processor	AMD K6-2, 450MHz, Single Core, 32-bit	(2) AMD Opteron 2350 (K10), 2000MHz, Quad Core, 64-bit
Memory	512MB	10GB (10,240MB)
Storage	73GB	3TB (3,072GB)
Software	Red Hat Linux 4	Debian

Five free ways to promote your business website

2008-10-21T23:00:00-07:00

1. Clean up your site.

Akin to washing the car before trying to sell it! Remove old content, ensure all links are working, correct spelling errors, and give it a quick sanity check. Do the pictures make sense? Is the navigation linking to everything which is important? Is the text brief? Use the free tools available at http://www.w3.org/QA/Tools/ to make sure your site is technically sound.

2. Create a site map.

This is a file, which search engines come to your site and read, so they know where to find your content. You can view our sitemap.xml file for reference, make one by hand, or find a site which can generate one for you. When you're done, upload it to your site.

3. Search engine submission.

Google (Also powers AOL Search)

http://www.google.com/addurl/

Yahoo!

http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
Microsoft Bing

http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx

Ask.com

http://about.ask.com/en/docs/about/webmasters.shtml#18

4. Get your name out there.

Email signature, printed marketing collateral, letterhead, voice mail message, etc. Here's some Logo advice from Entrepreneur magazine

5. Talk to you customers.

Repeat business is just as good as gaining new clients. Follow up and see hoe things are going, explain any new products or services you're offering, and ask for a referral. Here's your script: "Do you know of anyone I should contact?" The power of a referral is much greater than any advertisement. After contacting their lead, be sure to thank the referrer. Mail them a gift at Christmas. Continue to build and strengthen your business relationships, but we'll save that for another article.

6. Call X13.

This isn't free, but it could save you money. X13 improves web sites. Tell them what you need, and they'll let you know if it can be done. They manage the project, work with the developers, etc. It's like having a team of Internet experts.

X13