ZNet India Blog

The Power 7 processor was finally launched by IBM recently. The new processor chip has eight cores and each core can run four threads! What does that mean? It means that the new processor can handle 32 tasks at the same time which is four times the number of cores on the older Power 6 Chip. The General Manager of IBM’s Power Systems unit, Ross Mauri said, the new chip would run between 3.0 GHz & 4.14GHz. It is slated to come in four, six or eight cores.

The new Power 7 chip would quadruple the energy efficiency and will run Operating systems including enterprise Linux, and AIX offered by Red Hat and Suse. As the latest chip comes with a TurboCore Technology using which customers can crank up the speed of active cores for better performance.

The new Processor chip has a Unique Intelligent Energy technology that turns off sections of the system to save energy. Though nobody is aware of the price of these “world’s fastest processors”, it is clear that these are aimed for financial and electric industries that require servers with continuous uptime.

Industry analysts fear that this latest launch from IBM could kick off a new battle in the high-end microprocessor market where competing companies includes the likes of Itanium chip maker Intel and Sun Microsystems of the Sparc chip fame.

ResellerClub, one of the leading and largest web services providers worldwide, recently released its Season’s Special Promo Pack. Several TLDs (top level domains) would now be available exclusively its resellers on great discounts. The star attraction of this Special Promotion Pack is the .IN domain that can be had at just $1.89″. It is expected to be year 2009’s most extravagant promotion ever sending many players in hosting industry into a tizzy over such disruptive pricing structures.

The new price of .IN is the most unheard thing in the Domain industry being an 85% drop on the original price. It is a record of sorts being the lowest price at which any Registrar is currently vending domains in the Industry.

Bhavin Turakhia, CEO, ResellerClub, was articulate enough to say, “It’s pretty straightforward – price matters in our business, we get that! Every month we pass on all the Registry price cuts we get, giving our Resellers the edge that they need to offer domain names at prices that compete directly with Retail Registrars.”

It is expected that over 50,000 resellers spread across over 240 countries globally would benefit from this Season’s Special Promo Pack. With holiday shopping fever on a high, ResellerClub is confident that its lowest rates on .BIZ, .MOBI, .EU, .IN, .INFO, .TV and .BZ registrations will surely attract great many buyers.
Bhavin remarked on this occasion, “ResellerClub has a reputation of offering the most competitive product prices to its resellers. The aim has always been to build a profitable and secure platform for our resellers.”

ResellerClub today has a comprehensive and much diversified product portfolio that covers Domain Registration, advanced Email and Web Hosting, Website Builder, E-commerce modules, etc. available at industry lowest prices today. Also available on request are total business process automation solutions and a potent Promo Engine that allows Resellers to launch and pass on discounts, promotions, special packages etc, to their customers and Sub-Resellers.

Rackspace, the world’s leading Hosting services and Cloud Computing provider, recently announced the launch of its enhanced Partner Network to help their partnering companies increased opportunity for revenue, training and marketing tools.

Rackspace revealed that it was able to do so purely on the strength of feedback from its partners. The new Partner Network is a four tiered structure depending on company size and level of sales. These four levels are Platinum, Gold, Silver and Member. The latest partner network makes it possible for all partners to aim for aggressive commissions. The most interesting element is that Rackspace at certain partnership levels would also pay commissions on upgrades and renewals- a noteworthy benefit that many competitors fall short of match.

According to Rackspace, some of the significant features of the restructured Partner Program across all levels include:
• Access to a dedicated sales representative
• On-Boarding support
• Sales and Technical training
• Access to the Rackspace Partner Program portal with special marketing, sales & industry information as well as networking opportunities with existing Rackspace partners
Rackspace announced that the partners who move up the ladder to qualify for Platinum Membership would enjoy additional benefits like:
• Access to the searchable partner database on Rackspace.com as well as the database on the Rackspace Partner Network portal
• Access to a Dedicated Channel Manager
• Discounts/commissions on upgrades and renewal contracts
• A Chance to participate in Rackspace and/or partner company generated marketing activities
• Inclusion in Promotions to Rackspace customer & partner base

Robert Fuller, Vice President of Rackspace’s Worldwide Channel said on the occasion, “We regard partners as an extension of the Rackspace family and have updated the Rackspace Partner Network to help ensure they receive the services and support necessary for long-term success.” Fuller added, “Rackers worked closely with our partners to develop a program that creates the biggest impact and provides the best experience for them, which we believe will in turn impact the broader customer experience.”

Jason Crea, VP, Client and Partner Engagement Sitecore, a latest member of the Rackspace Partner Network opined, “Sitecore has built its foundation on providing partners and customers with the best Web CMS platform, so it’s a natural extension to partner with Rackspace for its unmatched service and reliable hosting solutions,” Jason further held, “Performance, security, scalability and price are critical elements for our customers in building and hosting websites, blogs, and other Web applications. Based on Rackspace’s past successes we anticipate a valued experience for our joint customers.”

SmarterTools Inc., an information technology-management software company recently released the latest version of SmarterStats 5.x. SmarterStats 5.x is a wonderful web log analytics system that makes managing web stats and SEO efforts sound like a game. The best thing claimed by Smarter Tools Inc is that this Version 5.x offers total management of SEO reporting and website log data in a single application.

It is expected that key benefits of SmarterStats 5.x would be to:
• Track visitor trends, on-page behaviors, and conversions
• Track search engine positions over time to create successful SEO strategies
• Improve search engine ranking and visibility
• Increase website traffic
• Evaluate a website’s performance for unlimited keywords against competitors
• Identify under-performing areas of a website or online campaign
• Identify competing websites for search engine traffic
• Analyze page-load times and website performance
• Increase sales conversions

Tim Uzzanti, CEO of SmarterTools was heard saying on the occasion, “Your website is your storefront, and how you prepare your store for business will have a direct impact on how well your business will do online.” Tim added “Ignoring SEO is like having no signs and blank windows in your building. Potential customers will drive past your store, not even realizing you are there.”

If the findings of U.S. Small Business Association are to be considered, about 50 percent of small businesses fail within the first five years. Those that stay on usually excel at attracting new customers while developing and maintainig loyal customer base. The new features-packed SmarterStats 5.x will afford businesses with the tools they need to enhance their SEO strategy and attract new website visitors “while monitoring analytics to ensure a positive experience for existing customers.”

The Big-G of online search and advertising, Google has released a new has launched a new public DNS service which can dramatically increase online speed & performance for web users.

This public DNS service can be configured by users to access via their own Internet connections.
Domain names readable by humans are translated by DNS servers into physical IP addresses of email, web and other Internet servers, allowing users to steer using URL or Uniform Resource Location names rather than numerical quad-dot addresses which are employed to approach servers on the Web.

We all know that currently the ISP or Internet Service Provider of users handles the DNS services however, Google declares that its in-house public DNS service will provide superior performance than most ISPs are currently offering.
Google Product Manager Prem Ramaswami in one of his Google posts remarked, “The average Internet user ends up performing hundreds of DNS lookups each day, and some complex pages require multiple DNS lookups before they start loading. Our research has shown that speed matters to Internet users, so over the past several months our engineers have been working to make improvements to our public DNS resolver to make users’ web-surfing experiences faster, safer and more reliable.”

Ramaswami emphasized that the idea behind Google’s new DNS service is not simply to build up customers, but also to incentivize ISPs everywhere to perk up the performance of their very own DNS services.
With Google’ s latest move into DNS services, it has become easier for users to actually avail them. Users looking on to choose Google as their DNS provider can root around in their network settings by configuring them to use the IP addresses 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as the primary & secondary DNS servers respectively. Let’s see how the ISPs respond to this tactical move of Google.

Dear Entrepreneurs, Friends and Professionals,

As You all know that ZNET, a leading Web Hosting brand globally has long been working behind the screens to unleash a powerful, user-friendly and revenue-generating Partnership program for all those who wish to associate with us in our growth curve.

Aptly named, “Private Label Partnership Program”, this PLP would go a long way in creating business growth opportunities for ZNET as well as its partner base.

Please find a presentation on Private-Label-Partnership Program :
Private-Label-Partnership-Proposal

Thanks!

Did you hear of Windows Azure? If not maybe you don’ deserve to be on this planet. And quite probable that you are unknown to the Cloud computing. Cloud computing is the easiest way to avoid capital expenditure where you don’t own physical infrastructure and pay only rentals for service usage to third party. Some of the popular categories of cloud applications are SAAS (Software as a Service), PAAS (Platform as a Service), MSP (Managed Service Providers), Internet Integration. Microsoft recently jumped into this futuristic domain of Cloud service by launching its Windows Azure platform. Windows Azure would function as the hub of the cloud services tactic of Microsoft. It extends a flexible environment for developers to create cloud services and applications. With Windows Azure, you can shorten your time to market and adapt as demand for your service grows.

Touted as the operating system of Cloud services, Azure would unfold as “development, service hosting and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform.” As an open platform, Azure supports non-Microsoft and Microsoft languages. So developers can create applications using Microsoft Visual Studio as well as PHP, XML, REST, SOAP.

The world of mobile advertising was stunned to silence as global search engine major, Google acquired AdMob, the leading mobile advertising player early this week. AdMob, founded by Omar Hamoui in 2006, had made significant inroads in the potential-rich mobile advertising arena in a very short time.

Susan Wojcicki, Vice President of Product Management at Google underlining the importance of AdMob deal remarked, “AdMob is the quintessential Silicon Valley startup — generating impressive year on year revenue growth — and we’re excited to welcome this talented team to Google.”

Google’s expectations from the AdMob deal can be outlined as:

• Enhanced engagement for advertisers in their interactions with mobile user community.
• Greater relevant ads and access to more ad-supported content for users.

Google’s acquisition of mobile display advertising firm, AdMob happened at a cost of $750 million. The deal was a lucrative trade0ff for its CEO Omar Hamoui who observed, I think people underestimate how important ads have been to funding the development of innovative content on the Internet. Our goal all along at AdMob has been to make it possible for developers and publishers to bring their products and ideas to mobile with the same business model.”

Google has recently announced its decision to open source its java script infrastructure behind its web apps like Gmail, Google Docs etc. The decision came in the wake of Google’s genuine attempt to make building of web applications easier. For the uninitiated, it is good to know that Google Maps, Google Docs and Gmail are Java-script intensive applications from the stable of Google.

The closure Java widgetry includes a compiler, server-agnostic library, cross-browser and a host of pre-compiled templates. Developers can adopt a command-line approach to the compiler or pass through a web application that Google has offered that allows code to be compiled through a text box or a RESTful API. Google is also providing a Firefox extension that displays various performance enhancements. The JavaScript optimizer outlined as the “Closure Compiler” compiles web apps into high performance, compact JavaScript code. As it checks, syntax, eliminates dead code, warns about JavaScript shortcomings, then rewrites them and minimizes the rest, so it would run real fast on browser JavaScript engines.

It is not difficult to unravel the strategy behind such opensourcing moves by Google: Microsoft would surely be miffed by the surge in web apps!

Authentication is a process that plays a major role in securing your website and applications. When a user comes to your site and needs to access a particular area, they provide their username and password to authenticate themselves and prove their identity. The application then provides the user with access and provides them with a set of pre-defined privileges based on the their identity and credentials entered. While authentication is intended to give you an extra layer of security, a hacker can use the common HTTP protocol to manipulate this process and gain entrance into your website.

When a hacker uses authentication to break into a website, they are able to do so by proving to the application that they are a known and valid user. This in turn, gives them access to whatever privileges you have assigned to the legitimate user. So, if an attacker is able to enter the system as a normal user, they may only have limited to specific information. However, if they manage to gain access as an administrator with unlimited access across the system, they would likely have total control of the victimized application and all the data it contains. This could be very damaging if you are storing customer data and other critical information on your website.

The Hacking Tool of Choice

In the average authentication attack, the hacker first attempts to gain access to the screen where the application requests login and password credentials from the user. The next step is to enter the details the application recognizes as valid to grant access to the system. Although it isn’t the most sophisticated attack, many hackers have found that guessing the password is one of the most powerful tools to defeat authentication. This technique can be employed manually or through automation as many tools exist for this very crime. Without a secure password, a brute force attack can bypass authentication in a matter of seconds.

Fighting Back Against Authentication Attacks

In order to learn whether or not their attack was successful, hackers use automated tools that access error codes and web page information from the web server. A good way to deter this attack is to configure the server where any errors or unexpected requests generate an “HTTP 200 OK” response opposed to standard 400-type errors. By doing this, you will make it harder for the attacker to differentiate between valid and invalid logon attempts.

One of the most effective ways to prevent automated authentication attacks like brute force is to add random content on the web page presented to the authenticating browser. In order for this to work, the browser must have the ability to successfully submit random content as an inclusion of the authentication process, thus enabling one to proceed further in the application or website. You can do this by presenting the random phrase in a graphic format such as GIF, JPG or PNG using random fonts or colors every time. This will make it almost impossible for the hacker’s automated tool to succeed and crack authentication.

Courtesy ZNetIndia.com