First off, we really appreciate our customers’ patience with us as we sort out our hosting issues. Everything’s not perfect — yet — but we’ve cleared a big hurdle by migrating to Liquid Web hosting from Rackspace Cloud (before that we were hosted with The Planet). More specifically we’ve moved to Liquid Web’s Storm on Demand cloud hosting solution but we also have a dedicated server with them. We’ve had more than our fair share of hosting woes so it delights me to be able to write a positive review of a hosting company. Full disclosure, links on these page are referral links, however, we’re being open and honest in our review (even their referral program is awesome by the way). Signing up was a breeze. We got someone on the phone easily who could answer all of our questions to make sure their solution met our demands. Once we had confirmation we went through their online sign up process without a hitch. We haven’t been with them long but here’s what we’ve noticed so far. Also, I searched around for online coupons and promo codes but didn’t come across anything. Sorry guys!

PROS 1. Their network is blazing fast. For example, 50 concurrent connections on Rackspace took 16.3 seconds load time while only 1.98s on Liquid Web. 2. Their platform is flexible. It has a quality infrastructure that let’s you do what you want and it just works. 3. Built-in tools like server health and uptime monitoring are included for free. 4. Affordable. The bang for your buck value here is off the charts (resources/features vs. cost). Depends on your setup but about 33% cheaper than RS. 5. Their support is actually helpful and timely in responding. It’s refreshing. 6. They actually pay attention to feature requests and improve their platform often.

CONS 1. They weren’t exactly easy to find. Unfortunately we wasted time/money by migrating to Rackspace first before coming across their solution. Whomever is doing their search marketing isn’t doing a very good job. 2. There isn't a mobile app or web interface for their dashboard... yet. 3.  They don't have the option to have managed support with Ubuntu and you need cpanel on your servers for fully-managed support.

CONCLUSION These guys really have their stuff together. Our websites are more stable and getting faster by the day. It’s been an eyeopening experience working with them thus far. I’m still waiting for the catch but there may actually not be one. We’ll update this review as we get more experience with them. Definitely check Liquid Web out!

ABOUT LIQUID WEB Established in 1997, Liquid Web’s growth has been fueled by providing unbeatable managed services to businesses of all sizes, in all areas of the world. Liquid Web currently serves more than 10,000 clients in over 100 countries around the world. Liquid Web has been honored by INC Magazine as one of the nations fastest growing companies consecutively in 2007 and 2008.

Lenovo's new Y550P is the first laptop from the manufacturer to feature Intel's beastly new Quad Core i7 processor with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology that automatically speeds up the processor when the PC needs extra juice.  The laptop also boasts a sleek design with integrated subwoofer and Lenovo Enhanced Experience features like SlideNav and OneKey.  It's actually Microsoft Windows 7 Enhanced Experience certified, whatever that means.  We recently picked up two of these bad boys as our new daily machines and we've been purty happy ever since.  The biggest change for us was just the switch from Vista to Windows 7 -- much improved, still not perfect... obviously.  We debated on making the switch to Mac but decided against it (see controversial image above). We bought ours at Newegg. (Full disclosure, these are affiliate links above but we do in fact own and like these laptops.) The Good:

1. Looks:  thin, sleek, the copper border around the top with the black textured lid looks great.  The white keyboard lights are a nice touch.
2. Performance:  the processor is a monster, comes with 4GB of DDR3 (expandable to 8GB).  It boots/shuts down quickly, rarely any slow down.
3. Keyboard feels good, the trackpad's great after you adjust the sensitivity settings (the Palm detector and pinch multi-touch zoom in particular need to be less sensitive)
4. Great wifi card (Intel 5300 instead of Intel 5100)
5. Has Bluetooth
6. Built in Webcam
7. Speakers are great for a laptop and it even has a mini-mini-mini subwoofer on the underside
8. Has HDMI out
9. Good battery life for such a powerful machine (~3 hours)
10. Lightweight/portable
11. 1GB of dedicated graphics, nice.
12. Big 500GB hard drive

The Bad:

1. Screen is only 16:9, not 16:10 so it's not true HD.
2. No Bluray player (see #1)
3. Comes preinstalled with a lot of junk... pretty standard these days, unfortunately.
4. SlideNav is pretty useless, I just disabled it.  The pinch zoom is pretty useless too, be sure to lower the sensitivity.
5. Hard drive is only 5400 RPM, this is the performance bottle neck of the system.

The Summary: We looked at other laptops (from HP, Dell, etc..) featuring the i7 processor but nobody could match the looks, price, and features of the Lenovo Y550P.  It has to be the best or one of the best laptops you can buy for ~$1,000.  If you spend some extra coin and put in a solid state drive and 8GB of RAM it would be an absolute monster laptop that is still cool looking and portable. (Full disclosure, these are affiliate links above but we do in fact own and like these laptops.) Specs from Newegg's website:

Model
Brand	lenovo
Series	IdeaPad
Model	Y550P(324156U)
Part#	324156U
General
Operating System	Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
CPU Type	Intel Core i7 720QM(1.6GHz)
Screen	15.6"
Memory Size	4GB DDR3
Hard Disk	500GB
Optical Drive	DVD±R/RW
Graphics Card	NVIDIA GeForce GT 240M
Video Memory	1GB GDDR3
Communication	Gigabit LAN and WLAN
Card slot	1 x Express Card
Dimensions	15.20" x 10.00" x 1.02" - 1.50"
Weight	6.06 lbs.
CPU
CPU Type	Intel Core i7
CPU Speed	720QM(1.60GHz)
Display
Screen Size	15.6"
Wide Screen Support	Yes
Resolution	1366 x 768
Operating Systems
Operating System	Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Graphics
GPU/VPU	NVIDIA GeForce GT 240M
Video Memory	1GB GDDR3
Graphic Type	Dedicated Card
Hard Drive
HDD	500GB
HDD RPM	5400rpm
Memory
Memory	4GB
Memory Spec	2GB x 2
Memory Type	204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM
Memory Slot (Total)	2
Memory Slot (Available)	0
Optical Drive
Optical Drive Type	DVD±R/RW
Optical Drive Interface	Integrated
Communications
LAN	10/100/1000Mbps
WLAN	802.11n Wireless LAN
Ports
Card Slot	1 x Express Card
USB	Two USB 2.0 and one eSATA/USB combo port
Video Port	1 x VGA, 1 x HDMI
Audio Ports	1 x Microphone jack; 1 x Headphone jack
Audio
Audio	Integrated Sound card
Speaker	Internal Speakers
Input Device
Touchpad	Yes
Keyboard	Standard
Supplemental Drive
Card Reader	6-in-1
Webcam	Yes
Power
Battery	6-cell lithium ion
Physical spec
Dimensions	15.20" x 10.00" x 1.02" - 1.50"
Weight	6.06 lbs.
Manufacturer Warranty
Parts	1 year limited
Labor	1 year limited

There's a new Twitter ad network that's gaining steam called Ad.ly.   A lot of people spend gobs of time tweeting, might as well make a little coin from it:

Sign Up Here!

Here's some more info about them:

Ad.ly enables Twitter publishers to make money from the content they produce on Twitter by sending one Tweet every day from advertisers that they approve. In order to ensure authenticity, every Ad.ly Tweet is explicitly approved by the Twitter publisher. The publishers are able to set the price they want advertisers to pay and can optionally donate part or all of their earnings to charity.

Just a quick post.  Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

UPDATE UPDATE: Well, we did what we said we'd do: we got concepts/directions from a lot of different designers and narrowed them down,  then awarded the prize money and completed the logo with one designer.  Our apologies for any misunderstanding and we understand both sides of the #nospec argument now.  Check out the new logo up top and here's a little more info:  click. UPDATE: We have gotten a ton of designers e-mailing, tweeting, etc about this contest.  Who knew it would get so much attention and turn into a "no-spec" debate.  We aren't asking anyone to work for free, but if you have free time time available and want to take a stab at our logo for a chance at $1,000, go for it.  If not, OK.  If you're a designer who wants to share their portfolio and/or meet with us to talk about working together, fantastic.  Great ideas can come from anywhere, from anyone, and at anytime.  We are hoping to be in the right place at the right time. See the comments below for the full discussion, we love discussions, they're so insightful.  Relax. Calling all graphic design rockstars:  we need a new logo to go with our new office and such.  Please submit your awesome designs (in .jpg, .gif, or .png format) to info [at] 3tailer.com after reading these guidelines:

• Send color and black/white version
• Send a 500x500 and 16x16 version
• Must be original, not heavily inspired by another brand
• Must be able to use in Print/Web
• Submit as many as you'd like
• After winning, must deliver in vector format

If we use your logo design, we send you $1,000.  We'll also give you credit for the logo when we unveil it within the next few weeks (including a link!).  No purchase necessary.  Pretty straight forward. If you have any questions feel free to ask us at the above email, we can also give feedback during the design process. The contest ends 1PM EST on Monday, September 7th.  Good luck!