A few months ago, I decided to create give a name/face to a community around a group of friends who love gaming, particularly Minecraft. Krafters was born¹. I shopped around for a server that would meet the required specs which, for Minecraft, is not easy. Minecraft is built in Java and very resource-hungry. On top of that, we’re running Bukkit with a few plugins and multiple worlds. We also wanted to run some other gameservers (e.g. Counter-Strike Source) which, while a lot less resource hungry, still takes up a bit of RAM. Bottom-line: I was looking at 4GB (RAM) server.

While researching for a 4GB server, I went to my personal preference: Media Temple. I’ve been incredibly happy with them since I first moved there in 2008. At that time, I got a (gs) which had some performance issues. I decided to upgrade to their (dv) service and they were incredibly helpful and even offered me a discount because of the reason I was moving was related to some performance on their other product. Since then, I’ve moved over to a (ve) and I couldn’t be happier. They’re definitely an A-Team when it comes to hosting. But a 4GB (ve) with them would set us back $250/month which, for a group of 6-10 friends, with no contracts and relying solely on donations is a bit out of reach. I needed something cheaper.

Wrong Promo, Worked With Me

DigitalOne is a pretty tempting dedicated host. Very limited choices, but what they do have is VERY competitively priced. @Pinboard’s there.

— Marco Arment (@marcoarment) March 22, 2011

During my research, the FBI seized a few of Instapapers servers at DigitalOne. During that time, Marco tweeted how the only reason he had rented those non-critical servers were their extremely low RAM/cost ratio.

Since our gaming community was everything but crucial, I thought “what the heck” and got ourselves a 4GB VPS for $59/month and, for the past 7 months, I’ve had no major complaints. The server is hosted on the East Coast and, while most of us are from Central Iowa (Ames), we get decent enough latency (sub-30ms) while playing Counter-Strike: Source (where latency is more critical than in Minecraft). Good enough, I guess.

Unexpected Downtime

Fast forward to two days ago and I get an email from DigitalOne saying my VPS had been restarted because they “detected instability of several host servers”. I thought nothing of it and proceeded with my day job as I were. Late last night, I tried to SSH in to make some updates to the Minecraft server and got nothing but timeouts. Tried pinging: nothing. Re-checked DigitalOne’s control panel, saw they have 2 IP addresses listed in different places on my profile and tried pinging both: nothing. I put in an emergency support request at 1:17am (my time, 8:17am their time–Switzerland) and wait. Around 3am I give up and go to bed. When I wake up, I noticed I had a reply sent at about 3:15am (2h after my emergency request) asking me for my root password. Wait: WHAT? Why the HECK would I give you my root password which I may or may not use in other servers, which I don’t even log into directly to?? And why would you ask for that over a ticket system that sends email notifications, meaning my root password would travel in plain text over the wire so that you can check what’s up with my server that YOU rebooted without previous warning or advance notifications so that YOU can check for the OS networking stack (that’s what they told me in a reply to my awestruck respose)?

After I asked them those questions exactly, I get a reply (6 hours later) saying they had managed to reset my password by ____ (the support agent linked to what it looked like an admin FAQ, that I couldn’t see because it was restricted to admins). Apparently the issue was with the VMware Tools that a OS update I had run had uninstalled. Now, I’ve done OS upgrades in other VPS and never had such issue which makes me wonder what the heck are they running there… :S

PS: The sudden restart of the server caused corruption on some Minecraft map files. I restored from backup but that’s unnaceptable.

Support, not Features

This is simply unnaceptable for a company that we pay money to. I don’t care about the price/cost/etc. This is simply a matter of professionalism and service. I don’t want a fancy control panel. I don’t want “ultra-fast high-end SSD disk access”. I don’t even want 24-hour phone support. I’m okay with paying less and getting less. That’s why I chose DigitalOne. But what sets amaterus, pseudo-scamming you (by promising “professional services” when they don’t know how to be professional) and an A-Team apart is the quality of their service. It’s the feeling that, no matter how little you pay, you’re treated as a valuable customer. Doesn’t matter if you’re a “big account” or a user on a free plan. Doesn’t matter if you’re a celebrity or a John Doe. The mark of an A-Team is care, professionalism and attention to detail. Things will go wrong and break, inevitably, but your customers will stick with you through thick-and-thin if you care for them and are honest about your shortcomings. Media Temple’s (gs) is not the greatest hosting service in the world. We know it and they know it. But whenever I had issues with it, I was taken care of regardless of how much I was paying them for it. This is also true for other services and companies I pay money to.

If you’re in the business of getting paid for a service you provice (and you should!), never treat customers differently based on their plan price. At the end of the day, 10,000 customers paying you $10 is better than 10 customers paying you $1,000… That means hiring A-Team employees and creating the right environment where they can help keep your service in check.

What now?

I don’t know if I’ll be able to find an alternative to DigitalOne that we can afford. But I’ll be looking… Do you know of any good/affordable alternatives? Get in touch by pinging me on Twitter or Hacker News.

According to this A+ textbook, the four major functions of an OS are:

• Provide a UI;
• Manage files;
• Manage hardware;
• Manage applications.

So, is it me or was iOS the first one to actually manage b), c) and d)? Previously, it seems, we (the user) were the ones assumed to be in charge of managing those. I understand I’m taking the above quite literally but I can’t avoid wondering if Apple isn’t really on the right track to creating the next-gen operating system and not just another operating system. If anything, Microsoft’s tentative approach to Windows 8 and Metro is a clear evidence of this…

Looking for business cards? Instead of spending $$$ money on that design worthy of the best online “inspiration galleries”, how about simply making sure they:

1. Are of good quality (both paper and print, e.g. Moo);
2. Have only the absolute relevant info in them (do you really need your fax number in there?);
3. What your brand/product stands for matters to who you give the card to.

Fancy designs are expensive and 90% of the time mean absolutely nothing to the folks you hand your cards to. How does having your business card on display in an inspiration website add anything to the actual value of your company and/or brand? I can think of a few exceptions, like design/marketing companies, but the truth is those brands are using that medium less and less.

Before (over)budgeting identity design simply because it’s “cool” and “our competitors did it”, consider how not doing something just because might actually be the disruptive choice that can set your company/brand apart.

It’s not everyday that I decide to simply wipe my existing site and put a blank, non-working solution up. The reason is simple though: I was growing tired of my previous “homepage” and had to pressure myself into creating something new.

Just an FYI: this is not finished and some pretty substantial changes are currently underway. For now, this will serve its purpose and you can find me on Twitter.

Thank you for your patience! :)

PS: Octopress rocks!! :D

Anyone else getting freaking tired of how Google Apps creates a new Google Account for every new domain/organization you’re a part of? Well, I am. I’m tired of having around 10 Google Accounts, having to sign in and out of them all the time, etc…

Solution

I present to you: Google Apps Custom (GAC). The idea is to replace the free version of Google Apps but to work substantially different. Instead of creating new accounts, this package would collect existing Google Accounts. It would allow for domain aliases and everything, but all those aliases would fall into a user’s personal Google account. Here’s an example:

• I own meatyjuicy@gmail.com
• I own a few domains (e.g. meatyjuicy.com, milkybacon.net and allyourfoodarebelongto.us)
• I create a GAC account and add my custom domains to it
• I then proceed to add my Google account (aka meatyjuicy@gmail.com) to my GAC account.
• I can add other Google Accounts to my GAC account too. All I need to do is add them and assign them aliases
• Other GAC accounts can add me as well.

Notes: (1) All emails/accounts count to one’s personal storage limit. If a user needs more storage, they can upgrade their Gmail account. (2) Aliases should be domain-specific unless otherwise noted. That means that, for example, I can add my dad as dad@meatyjuicy.com but not necessarily dad@milkybacon.net, but I can set *dnsinfo@**.

This would be a win-win for Google. It has the potential to increase the number of Gmail paid accounts plus it avoids the incredible myriad of Google Apps accounts just to add custom domains. It would also be perfect for communities and encourage new users to sign up for their own, personal Google account so they can be added to the community.

Shared Aliases

One other interesting feature that could be added would be “shared aliases”. These would be aliases@domain.com that would be received by multiple users and, using some technology that already exists (in Docs and Wave), real-time interaction: if user A is shared email, user B would be notified of that, including real-time composing of new emails and replies from that shared aliases (activated as soon as that alias is selected from the “From” dropdown). These shared emails could have some sort of visual indicator so as to distinguish them in your Inbox. The truth is this technology is out there and we’ve all used it in multiple circumstances. I’m just coming up with ideas on how to use it… :)

Thoughts? Well, first of all, I’d like to get this post to someone at Google. I’d like to hear their thoughts on it, even if they can’t commit to anything. I’m pretty confident with the ideas I’ve presented here. If you want to get in touch with me, please do so on Twitter. Thank you.