ANHosting.com is UP

Now. After chatting online with Mike who mistaken my server from ESC105 to ESC92. That was scaring me. How come my server is moved. Now my site is up and running, and found they just post the issues about ESC105 server on their status blog HERE.



A hardware failure? Hmmmmm... What's going to be next excuse?

Now I am telling the truth as a good customer of ANHosting.com. It's possible that they will come after me and ask me to shut-up. I am not bad mouth about them. I am still hosting with them, because they are better than my ex-hosting company HostingZoom.com (Not recommend!). I won't shut-up, because I have my free speach right for telling the truth.

ANHosting.com down 3 times in 8 days.

"ANhosting is down again", "ANhosting.com sucks". Does this sound familiar to you? Is this what you are searching for?

Now it's getting frustrated with ANHosting.com. Their online support chat is OK, their phone support is OK, but they server performance or their hosting operation sucks! The server I am on is down THREE times in 8 days. The first time was down due to the cooling system failure, the second time is due to the Power Outage (Don't they have backup power generator?). I have never got answer about that. This is the third time it's down.

I was working on my Blog, but just right after I post it, it's down. I can't digg it and can't stumble it. What the heck is going on with ANHosting? Tomorrow is the last day that I can get my 30 days money back promise, since I signup for 29 days now. Again, I have been happy with ANHossting.com since I researched few months ago. Compare with my ex-hosting company "HostingZoom.com", ANHosting.com is much much better and faster. However, no small business can afford to have their site down for hours and many times in less than 10 days.

For just few more posts about ANHosting.com, this blog will be the #1 page on Google search result forever. If you search "ANhosting sucks", "ANhosting down again" on Google, you will see my page at #1. I am not a bad mouth person, but no hosting company want to see this. It's going to destroy their reputation.

At this point, I am on hold with their online support. This is the conversation so far.

Please wait for a site operator to respond.
You are now chatting with 'Mike'
Mike: Welcome to midPhase Live Chat! How can I help you?
you: I can't access esc105
you: It is down three times in 12 days
Mike: One moment please. ---> Wait for 3 minutes
Mike: what is your domain name?
you: www.xxxxxxxxxxxx.com
Mike: One moment please.
Mike: still looking into this
Mike: just a sec ---> Wait for 7 minutes
you: anything?
you: Cooling failure, poweroutage?
Mike: still waiting for second level techs to get back to me ---> Still waiting 3 minutes now ...

ANHosting.com - Power Outage for 2+ hours

At the moment writing this blog, ANHosting.com is still down for 2+ hours due to the power outage. Here is they response on their blog an hour after I first call them for this issues.

Temporary Outage

By Andy Pace | May 29, 2007

We recently lost power to a large section of our datacenter. Power has been restored and servers are coming back online. Several staff members are onsite working to restore service as soon as possible.

We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused.

My hosted sites are all down on one of their server affected by the power outage. They told me not just once that they are unhappy with their datacenter provider. ANHosting is planning to switch to other datacenter, which might cause even more downtime. Some of the site may experience data glitch or difference within the migration period.

This is a horrible fact. If you have to experience the power outage or cooling issues, your business will be destroyed.

ANHosting.com down again in 5 days

This is making me worry about the quality of ANHosting.com. It has been great since I signed up almost a month ago. It, then, crashed few days ago as I blog below.

ANHosing Outage - Over Heating on May 24th
ANhosting unreachable - No phone, no online support on May 24

The excuse was the over heating cooling system. So most of their server are down and phone system was down as well. Today on May 29th, it happens again. No phone, no online chant no server access and no response in their status blog.

http://status.midphase.com/

At this moment, I would not recommend anyone host at ANHosting.com. I might still get chance to switch to MediaTemple.net with dedicated server, which I have my client hosted on.

I will see how long this downtime last. Will post!

ANHosing Outage - Over Heating

Finally got hold with tech support on the phone. ANHosting's Chicago main datacenter is having cooling system issues. You can subscribe their server status RSS here. Or view their most up-to-date MidPhase.com status - blog here.

To document this, I have captured the screen.


This is the support ticket email they sent back, which is sent 5 minutes after I got disconnected by the online chat session.

Thanks for contacting midPhase Services due to the outage you've experienced. We apologize for any inconvenience due to this issue. We are working as quickly as possible to have the problem fixed.

It appears that the cooling system at our data center took on a higher load than normal due to the outside heat index here in the Chicagoland area today. Our Senior Systems Administrators are working with the building engineers to modify the current temperature levels.

If you have any questions, please make sure to monitor the following URL to get the latest updates:

http://status.midphase.com/

Once again, we are aware of the problems you're experiencing and we're attempting to bring all systems back online to restore your service.

Thanks for your patience as we resolve this issue.

midPhase Services
--
Thank you,

Now, what I heard is that this is NOT the first time they have this problems. MidPhase.com is having issues with the current datacenter provider. They will be moving all services to somewhere else in few weeks. All their customer should receive an email notification pretty soon and should expect some downtime.

At the moment of writing this entry, their services have been down for an hours and 40 minutes. The funny thing is that their company web site is still running fine. Their phone system, online chat system are all down.

ANhosting unreachable - No phone, no online support

At the moment of writing this blog, my main web site www.terencechang.com is down for 30+ minutes already. I try to chat online, whenever I sent the question, the chat window is closed and it send me an email saying this.

Hello,

This is an automated response to inform you that your question has been entered into our system, and will be reviewed shortly. Your ticket has been submitted into the \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"General Support\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\" department.

We will respond to you as soon as possible.

==============
Please keep this information, and use it when refering to your ticket:

Ticket subject: When you were offline (via LivePerson)
Ticket number: 1768###
Ticket link: https://secure.mpcustomer.com/ticket.php?ticket=1768632
Ticket body: unable to reach my site

I tried to call the support line at 866-643-7427. There is no one answering the phone. It ask me to leave message after the beep. Well. It them prompt this message "The user's mail box cannot accept more messages."

What the heck is going on with them. This is the first time I have problem with ANHosting. I was really happy with them since I signed up a month ago.

Free Small Business Directory - Help Small business grow

It's many small business owner's questions. "How do I get my new designed web sites published quicly and cost less?". Most small business owner are worry about their budget. Every advertisement will cost a lot of money to get their small business name out to the world. Now there is solutions. The goal is to help each small business owner to get their name out. So small business should help each others to make their business success.

SmallBizDir.Net - Free Small Business Directory is just launched. Small Business directory is here to help other small business successed, since Small Business Directory is a small business as well. The web site allows small business owner to list, share and broadcast their web pages for FREE. Listing is free of charge. There is no hidden fee or whatsoever. There is not even a banner or advertisement on the Small Business Directory web site.

Why Free? It's just the same concept as FindMyPages.com - Free listing, sharing and broadcasting network for Pages. It's like a social network for pages. Now Small Business Directory will become the social network for small business web sites and small business owners. No matter you are a small business owner or home based business owner or a stay home mom starting their home business, you can list your web sites on smallbizdir.net for free. You will grow you business while Small Business Directory grow.

Terence Chang official web now moved to ANHosting.com

Finally, after three years hosting at HostingZoom.com, I moved my TerenceChang.com blog site to ANHosting.com - An advanced shared hosting located in Chicago. The speed of page load and mysql connection are way better than my old hosting company.

With 250GB ridiculous disk space, I can pretty much host my entire photos collections. The server will hung up before I can fill up the disk space. Some people say they are over sell with this giant disk space and bandwidth. I don't give it a sxxt. I have post my review about ANHosting.com on my blog. You can find it at
http://www.terencechang.com/2007/05/16/terence-chang-is-now-hosted-on-anhostingcom/ and
http://www.terencechang.com/2007/05/16/anhosting-vs-bluehost/

I believe that a good hosting campany can increase your web exposure and image. So I would rather pay a little bit more to get a stable hosting company. Here I am.

ANHosting.com - they even provide coupon code / discount code for three months free.

Here are the discount code for three months free hosting.

SAVINGCENTER-93818 - 3 Months off
GOTAPEX-ROX-BIG-DISCOUNT - 3 month off with 10 domain pointer

Share just one Photo - Who wins? AOL Pictures or PicasaWeb?

After hearing the news that Yahoo is shutting down their wonderful photo sharing services, I have to continue to find my best resources for sharing photos and blogging.

Now, my last two choices are PicasaWeb.Google.com or AOL Pictures. Please read my previous blog about the comparison between Yahoo Photos, AOL Pictures and Picasa web album. I want the best photo sharing and blogging service and it has to be FREE.

I sometimes have to share just and only single photos with friends. I don't want them to find out my other open/public gallery or album. I find the winner for this. AOL Pictures wins. Why?

Whenever I want to share one and just one photos. I uploaded the photos to the photo to Picasaweb album, I have the option to share the photos. It asked to share as Email/IM or blog. I choose Email/IM it gives me the full URL of the pictures. However, when I sent the link to my friends, the actually click and see the picture in the album.


It does show the image, but it also allow you to click the arrow to navigate through other pictures in the same album. That is NO GOOD. What is the purpose to show other pictures while I just want to share one?

I do the same thing on AOL Pictures, it turns out showing me just the picture alone.

It's just the image no other crap. In this case I can secretly share only photo with friends.

Its'n this cool?

So what is my choice to share one photo and one photo only? AOL Pictures - Free and unlimited space.

Little bird

Yesterday I was cleaning my yard. I saw there was a nest in the drive branch of my queen palm.

I guess I scared the families of a small new born baby birds. Two small bird were scared and fly out from no where. It did not fly very well. I guess that is it's first time. How can it fly with just a little tiny wings?

One of the small baby bird land on the brick and have his/her mouth wide open waiting for parent to feed him/her. What a cute little birds. He/she is so little and so tiny compare with the bricks. I was waiting and waiting to see if the parent birds will come back. I was out of patient and finished my yard work. I saw the small baby bird hiding under one of the palm with his/her mouth wide open. What a cute bird. An hour later, he/she is gone.

Yahoo Auction will be shut down

That doesn't sound good if Yahoo shut down their auction site. I just finally got on to the auction site a month ago. I have spent time on getting list on Yahoo auction site, now they are shutting down the services.

Is this a sign of troubles of Yahoo? Just few days ago, they were talking with Microsoft about the merger, now they are shutting down the auction services. Few days ago, they also announce that they will shut down their Photo sharing services, while MySpace.com is going to take over Photobucket.com.

What is going on with yahoo? I have been yahoo's fan and royal for so many years. I guess Yahoo is trying to make huge changes about their Business structure. I have to admit that Yahoo have done some many good things and bad things, but regardless what they are going through, they was once the king of the internet. I still like their following services.

1. Yahoo Mail
2. Yahoo Messenger
3. Yahoo Phone-Out
4. Yahoo Map
   
5. Yahoo Financial
6. Yahoo match - Taiwan
7. Yahoo Blog - Taiwan
8. Yahoo Search
9. Yahoo Auto
10. Yahoo SiteExplore
11. Yahoo News
12. Yahoo YUI
    

There is no doubt that Yahoo will continue provides good services. Just hope they come up something wonderful again.

Yahoo Messenger for the Web

As a long term Yahoo fan, I have to say that Yahoo messenger is one of the best communication tools. It's free with many fetures. As I traveled to many cities and countries, I sometimes can't carry my laptop and using the messenger on my laptop. Some coffee shop do not have Yahoo Messenger installed as well.

Few years ago, Yahoo had java based web messenter, which is so slow. Now they released the beta version of Flash based yahoo messenger for the web. It's nice and clean. Best of all, there is no issues with Java based program. No download needed. There is also no worry about the fire wall. Although I can exchange files, seeing someone's web cam, but as communication tool at any location. I kind of like it.

The first sign-in screen is clean. It does support multiple languages.


Once you logged in, you can chat with your friends just like I always do. The best part of this is that most of my friends are still on MSN messenger, which I can just added them from the Yahoo Messenger and chat as much as I want.


I can also record the history of the conversation. However, I am unable to store the conversation history between my MSN buddies. It only store the history between your Yahoo buddies.


Overall, I give it two thumbs up. I would love to see it with web cam, since flash now can support and access your web cam.