hosting

Web-hosting service DreamHost warns users of password hack

DreamHost customers should change their passwords asap.

That's the word from the Web-hosting service and domain name registrar, which sent an e-mail to customers last night saying that their FTP passwords may have been accessed by hackers.

The company said it had reset all customer FTP passwords as a precaution and that users would have to create new ones by logging in to their DreamHost Web panel. It also advised customers to change their e-mail passwords, though it said e-mail passwords and billing information were not accessed.

DreamHost added today that handling new password requests was taking some time:… Read more

How to host your Web site from your Dropbox account

Having a Web site to host your pictures for your friends and family is nice, but it can be tedious to set up. While some free options for Web hosting still exist out there, you usually have to deal with ads and strict rules in order to keep your page online. If you have a Dropbox account, you can follow these quick steps to turn your storage space into Web space--for free!

What you'll need: A Dropbox account. The size of the account will depend on the amount of content you want to share.

Step 1: Sign up for … Read more

This Day in Tech: Data leaked from BART police union Web site; Turning toys into medical devices

Too busy to keep up with the tech news? Here are some of the more interesting stories from CNET for Wednesday, August 17.

It looks like hackers haven't given up on BART. Last week, SF subway officials shut down cell phone service and have since taken the media spotlight as hackers respond to the communication lockdown. Today, data containing full names, passwords, e-mail addresses, and passwords was leaked from the BART Police Officers Association's Web site, making it the second site, affiliated with BART, to be hacked.

And of course, here's more news on Google's Motorola … Read more

FBI seizes Web hosting company's servers

The FBI seized Web-hosting servers from a data facility today, causing a number of sites to go down or transfer operations to other facilities.

Agents confiscated three racks of blade servers from a Maryland facility run by DigitalOne, the Switzerland-based hosting company said. DigitalOne's site, as well as real estate blog Curbed and restaurant blog Eater--two sites affected by the outage, according to The New York Times--were inaccessible this afternoon.

Another site, bookmarking site Pinboard, was also affected by the server confiscation but had transferred some pages to a backup server, the site said in a status update: … Read more

'Go to' clouds of the future, part 2

In part 1 of this two-part series, I highlighted my thoughts on why the long-term future of the cloud, at least for consumer and small business, belongs to integrated "one-stop" cloud suites, and why Microsoft and Google are the two companies best positioned for this opportunity. However, I was also clear that success in this space for both companies is far from guaranteed.

The truth is that several potential competitors could overtake either--or both--companies, if they should fail to execute successfully. Here are some of my favorites, and a few that should be contenders but really aren't, … Read more

Hosts manager

Hosts files translate human-readable domain names--"yoursite.com"--to machine-readable IP addresses. HostsMan is a free yet powerful and comprehensive tool for managing, merging, updating, disabling, editing, protecting, and duplicating hosts files from a single interface. It packs some useful extras, too.

We chose to install HostsMan and its documentation but not the optional HostsServer, a local HTTP server for browsing with custom hosts files, or the HostsOptimizer, which is designed to prevent delays caused by the DNS Client Service. HostsMan's installer also gave us the option to disable our DNS Client Service and make a backup … Read more

Amazon cuts off WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks no longer has a home at Amazon.

The controversial site, which has roused the ire of the U.S. government for leaking classified information, is no longer being hosted by Amazon's Web servers as of yesterday.

WikiLeaks had been tapping into Amazon's EC2, or Elastic Cloud Computing service--including earlier this week. WikiLeaks said yesterday it's now being hosted by servers in Europe, according to Reuters.

In response to its expulsion from Amazon, WikiLeaks tweeted two comments:

"WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free--fine our $ are now spent to employ … Read more

Microsoft's hosted services hit a rough patch

Users of Microsoft's hosted versions of Exchange and SharePoint have had to endure a bumpy last couple of weeks, with at least three service interruptions or outages.

Microsoft said in a blog post this week that all of the issues were related to a change in networking infrastructure that the company made last month. The company attempted to fix the issue after a two-hour service interruption on August 23, but the fix didn't solve everything and there were further problems on September 3 and again on Tuesday.

"We aspire to deliver quality services, and in the last … Read more

Microsoft touts cloud computing customers

REDMOND, Wash.--Aiming to show it is still winning customers against Google, Microsoft on Thursday announced deals to provide hosted e-mail and portal software to three big corporate customers.

The software maker said Dow Chemical, Hyatt Hotels, and the University of Georgia are all using the company's hosted e-mail and portal software, known as Microsoft Online. The announcements were timed to come just as Microsoft is set to host its financial analyst meeting here. (I'll be covering the day-long event live, starting around 8 a.m. PT)

In an interview, Hyatt CIO Mike Blake said the company, which … Read more

Get a free .com domain name registration

You know me: I like free. Domain registrations aren't exactly pricey (many places will set you up for under $10), but when I can get one for nothing, well, I'll take it.

If you're looking to carve out your own personal corner of the Web, start a new business, set up an e-mail address for life, that kind of thing, 1&1 Internet is offering a free one-year .com domain registration.

Yep, free. This is good for new domains only, not renewals, and it's limited to one per customer. After the first year, you'll … Read more