Future of Webhosting

A reader recently wrote-in suggesting that web hosting would be dead in five years. Services like Amazon Web Service (AWS) *could* shake up the industry. This argument has been going on for the last ten years in some form or another, but web hosting has continued to remain a strong industry. This is after talking to CEOs of small- to mid-size operations. Sales aren't declining.

Why?
Let's face it, AWS is overkill for small, static sites. That's what most of the web is, and will be for quite some.

As far as price, bandwidth costs may be falling significantly, but power and cooling isn't getting cheaper anytime soon. Price-savings will only come through automation/efficiency gains

Perhaps I'm just annoyed at any "industry expert" who suggests web hosting is dead or will be completely automated in just a few years. That's far from the truth.

The market speaks?

Burritos

I was sitting in a local burrito joint when it hit me -- I love burritos. But I didn't stop there, I knew I needed to spread the love for burritos to the world. I've registered burritolove.com with this goal in mind. Thoughts on what I should do? I'm thinking social network with a google maps mashup.

Camera Shopping at Best Buy

I'm looking at various digital cameras, when the helpful sales person decides to assist me. He explains that a 512 MB smart media card holds "7 photos" but a 1 gigabyte (1024 MB) holds " a few hundred." He continues with the lies. WTF? Are they this desperate to make a sale? Sadly, Shitty Buy has had quite a shady past. At this point, would you

a.) explain to him that he's a complete moron

b.) walk away

c.) buy it out of pity

Collocation Nightmares

If you've ever purchased collocation space before, especially in the bay area, you'll know what a frustrating process it can be. There's a massive number of middle-men, each adding little or no value to the process. There's practically no one who is willing to put anything in writing, and power is absurdly expensive.

This is the most inefficient industry, ever. I'm in the process of creating a new website (nothing to show, yet) which will hopefully make it clear what companies have reliable datacenters suited towards small- to mid-size businesses. If anyone has any suggestions along the way, please feel free to leave a comment.

Facebook News Feeds

Facebook launched a voting feature for news feeds today. One would presume this is a step towards better personalization and relevancy.

If I were a mid- to large-size community (like Digg), I'd be very worried right now. As facebook recognizes our interests--both implicit and explicit-- they *should* add the news, music, and topics we like from syndicated sources around the web.