Hatchling Gators
Written by Chad Bean on April 17, 2008 – 8:31 pm -HostGator has been growing in record numbers lately, and hiring employees just as fast. We thought it might be interesting to go around and harass some of the new trainees. Without further ado, meet our new employees as recorded by Justin…
The first few people we interviewed for the video started saying how much we sucked, but after canning them the morale suddenly increased as you can see in the above video.
The employee culture at HG has generally stayed the same over the years. I started at the company when there were just 4 of us in a small office in Florida, and now we’re closing in on 200 employees in our Houston office.
One of the cool things about the company is you’ll see the owner, Brent Oxley, at the office every day working more hours than just about any other employee. Many new hires would never expect him to be the owner of the company, which reminds me of a prank we pulled on Vincent when he first started.
Vince was heading home after his shift, when he ran into Brent. Not knowing that Brent was the owner, Brent was asking him how he liked it at the job. Of course Vince, like the other new fish you saw in the video, declared his love for the job. He was a bit surprised, however, when Brent started going off on how much he hated the company. Acting as though he was a disgruntled employee, Brent mentioned how he was going to come back the next day with a gun to shoot the place up.
Brent went on for a minute complaining about the “owner” of the company and how much of an @!^hole the owner was before he asked if Vince had met him yet. Vince had tried to reason with Brent not to shoot the place up, until Brent finally broke the news and introducing himself to him.
Good thing Vincent loved his job that day.
P.S. We’re looking for excellent System Administrators and Support Techs to join the fold. Apply today if you want to love your job too.
Tags: Comedy, employees
Posted in Gator Politics | 8 Comments »
CyberSquatting And Copyright Infringement
Written by Justin G on March 28, 2008 – 3:23 pm -
“Cybersquatting” has been something fairly common in the industry for a while. I’m sure even some of you that are reading this may buy and hold domains based on the fact that price and value goes up every year. Something however that has a lot of businesses and organizations on the defense is the fact that thousands of domains are registered every year with copyright names within or as a part of the domain registered.
The views on this issue are somewhat split. While some ’squatters’ have registered domains to put defamatory content about a company, others have registered various domains and jacking up prices to ridiculous amounts in hopes of a company with that name wanting to buy it.
Let me give you one example of what I am talking about. Locally here in the Houston area where our corporate office is located, there is a car dealership that is very well known named Munday Chevrolet. You would think they own mundaychevrolet.com right? Wrong. They own munday-chevrolet.com, a second rate domain name for your company if you ask me.
If you go to mundaychevrolet.com you will find very brief text from the website owner saying why he would never buy a car from Munday Chevrolet. Previously the site was used for pornography. Thats got to be bad for business especially when you have to tell potential customers to add a dash in the middle of your name.
Lets take an even bigger name into consideration that caused a legal battle for years, nissan.com as opposed to nissanusa.com. The only problem here is that this is a bit complicated. What happens when your last name is truly Nissan? This guy is not trying to ‘cybersquat’ at all. He has a legitimate computer business he is running on this site. It’s unfortunate that Nissan motor company had a lawsuit filed against this guy. So where does the gray line run into black and white, making things clear as to what domain you should and shouldn’t be able to own without legal ramifications? (Read more about the Nissan case HERE.)
According to a group called the “World Intellectual Property Organization” that watches over ‘cybersquatting’ occurrences, it has been reported that the snatching up of domain names of popular celebrities names and corporations from the previous year is up 18%, and is continuing to rise. The industries that had the largest issues with this was biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. Closely following was financial institutions and banking.
The fact is, anyone can register a domain name, and people will continue to register domains that contain parts of or even full trademarked names. We could go on even further with domains that are typos as well, but I’m gonna leave it at that. Now its your turn to give us your thoughts. Where should the lines be drawn?
Tags: copyright, cybersquatting, domains
Posted in News Bites | 14 Comments »
iphone “to break or not to break” applications
Written by Justin G on March 21, 2008 – 12:31 pm - 
A lot of people from the get go thought the iphone was a piece of junk, while others thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. Everyone has their opinions about iphone vs Nokia just like Mac vs. PC. So moving on then…
Since Mr. Steve Jobs had announced that there would be an SDK (software development kit) for the iphone, a lot of people have really been excited. Now that over 100,000 people have downloaded the developers kit whats next?
How many people will really switch over from having an unlocked iphone that can run tons of free applications to go legit with Apple and pay a fee for every application? The reason I even ask that is because the current developers kit doesn’t allow for 3rd party music applications. Isn’t music what people would likely use their iphone most for? Or would it be games?
It seems that Apple has decided to do things this way so sales on itunes are not hurt, but there will be an effect with upcoming players like Amazon music as well as Emusic which have compatible DRM free music for the iphone. Will Apple lose some ground with their Itunes music downloads?
One thing is for sure, and that is that Apple will continue governing and restricting their own products and applications like they have been for a while. I think the mentality of Apple which seems to be the ‘we control the product even after you buy it’ for all consumers is getting a bit old. The thing is, that the larger apple gets, and the more popularity that grows for Apple products, the hacking, cracking and unlocking will only continue to grow with it.
Will people be willing to blow their money on new applications approved by Apple, and made by the developer that had to pay $99 to publish that application. Thats right, you have to pay 1 dollar short of 100 to even be able to deploy your application if your a developer, and then if you are a consumer you can buy those applications straight off your iphone for a price, which Apple and the developer split for profit. This whole thing with new applications for the iphone has dropped from a hot boil to a mild simmer, and until Apple comes up with a better plan I’m going to have to say that the majority of people are going to go the free route.
Here below is just a little rundown of some of the FREE unlocked iphone applications that actually have some value. I’m not personally promoting them, but the fact is that they exist and Apple can’t stop it.
SSH For iphone - How to setup and install SSH for iphone.
MobileTerminal-vt100 - A Terminal emulator for the iPhone.
MobileTextEdit - Allows you to edit .txt files within mobilefinder.
Izoho - Full office suite to create edit and more.
Ruby on iphone - An iPhone Ruby interpretor which includes supporting libraries.
Stumbler Wifi Networks Locator - Lets you find wireless networks in your area.
BSD Subsystem - Unix Tools for the iphone.
Iphone Python - An iPhone Python interpretor including libraries.
Mobile Scrobbler - Lets you play music from Last.fm
NES Emulator - Play old school Nintendo games.
Ishare - Works with a Sendspace account to upload and download files.
Swapmusiclibrary - Allows you to sync with another PC without erasing.
Genesis4iphone - Lets you play Sonic and other Sega games.
Navizon GPS - GPS for the iphone.
TouchPadPro - Control your PC or Mac with Your iphone.
RocketShotz - Adds Icons So you never have to Type a Favorite URL to Browse.
Ispit - Acts as an http Server that runs from your iphone.
Funiculus - Guitar Tuner for iphone.
MobileChat - Instant messenger with all the extras.
Ifob - Social Networking application worth using.
iPhlickr - Easy way to browse Flickr Pics.
Expense View - Keep track of finances.
iPhoneDigg - For all the fanatical Diggers.
iPhoneTravel - Easy way to book flights and car rentals.
goMovies - Easy view of movie shows and times.
Google Reader - Clean and easy to use RSS for the iphone.
Iactu - Displays headlines from multiple newspapers.
Tags: apple, applications, iphone
Posted in Around the Web | 8 Comments »
Competition Fights Back
Written by Chad Bean on February 2, 2008 – 12:09 am -I have some bad news regarding HostGator. In our quest to “eat up the competition”, one web host has been busy trying to “bag all the competition”.
I stumbled across a new web host that I can already tell is going to be very serious competition for us. It seems as though we have overlooked a worthy contender — HostGaroo.com (no link for you guys, sorry!)
It’s only a matter of time before their sheer creativity and inspiration overtake us and the ‘Gator is bagged like the rest of them. There’s just one thing that doesn’t seem right here. I know I’ve seen Host Garoo’s design from somewhere before…
Current Host Garoo front page:
One year old Host Gator front page:
Testament to Google’s ingenious:
So what do you think, all things equal, the ‘Garoo or the ‘Gator?
Tags: competition, hostgaroo, hostgator, satire
Posted in Comedy | 53 Comments »
One Laptop Per Child, They Will Fail…
Written by Brent Oxley on January 31, 2008 – 7:16 pm -
I’m very proud to announce that Hostgator has made a $100,000 donation to MD Anderson which is one of the world leaders in cancer treatments and research. They have truly been a pleasure to work with. Working with MD has given many of our employees that warm fuzzy feeling inside that you should have when you are helping people.
I would also like to announce that I feel used, abused, and completely violated on a $25,000 donation hostgator made to One laptop per child. OLPC has a mission to develop cheap laptops for children to educate and express themselves on.
Maybe I’m being a drama queen so please come to your own conclusion based on the following experience…….
It all started with a $25,000 donation being made on their site and the following email being sent shortly after:
“Hello,
I’m the owner of hostgator.com and I just wanted to shoot off an email
to let you know I have just donated $25,000 via google checkout on my
amex. We get dozens of fraud orders a day so the purpose of this email
is to let you know it’s legit. I’m currently on xmas vacation in the
bahamas in the wyndham so the ip isn’t going to match my american address.
Please let me know if you have any questions or if any further
verification is needed. Thank you, and keep up the good fight!!
Sincerely,
Brent Oxley ”
Their Response 11 days later January 11th 2008
“Dear Donor,
In order for me to locate and track your donation, can you please provide me
with your complete address, reference number and the name used at the time
of donation. This will allow me to access the correct donation and locate
your laptop.Thank you for your interest in One Laptop Per Child.
OLPC
Donor Services”
My Reply January 11th 2008
“Are you serious?
Our company name is hostgator.com
My name is Brent Oxley
How many $25,000 donations do you receive? Please spend the minute that
it would take to look up the donation. Thank you.”
(we received automated email back instantly confirming they did receive our email)
Twenty days later and we still have not had a follow up response or anyone in the company making any type of contact with us other then what’s listed above!!!
OPLC has been getting slammed recently after Intel left the group January 3rd of this year. There are many critics that argue the money can be spent better on libraries, food, water, etc. You can read up more on OLPC on wikipedia. Even with all the negative publicity I and many of our customers believed it to be a worthy cause that deserved our help.
Based on our experience it’s quite obvious OLPC is being mismanaged to the point of failure. I now feel our donation would have been put to better use had we mailed 25,000 one dollar bills for the children to use as toilet paper.
Posted in Brent Oxley | 25 Comments »
