New Data Centre

We have moved into a brand new data centre in Sheffield UK.
Much investment in new cabinets so we can now offer co-located servers from £40 per month with 400Gb per month.

New VMWare Hosts installed

We have a brand new data based in Sheffield, UK and started out with a fleet of VMWare ESX 4.0 vSphere servers.
These servers are committed to running customers dedicated servers, we have also installed iSCSI SAN's for redundancy and extra storage.
In an attempt to get these servers earning their keep we have listed them on eBay in our new eBay shop: http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/Dedicated-Servers-2010 at a very good value.

.tel domain names released

.tel domain names have been released (March 2009)
Mantis Computing are doing the best deal you will find on these new domains, have a look here for best pricing http://mantiscomputing.com/domain-names.html.

Why can't I be found on Google?

That is the number one question we get asked here at mantiscomputing.com.

Even in 2008/9, people are still having websites designed and then wondering why the Mighty Google hasn't heard of them.

The simple fact is that Google WON'T put you to the top for the key phrases of your choice just because you've decided to have a website designed. And it really doesn't matter whether you've spent £100 or £10,000 on the site - if it isn't optimised for good listings, it won't get good listings.

At mantiscomputing.com we can get you onto Google.

One of the best ways to get your site more traffic is with our Higher Google Listings packages - ideal for every business website, whether business to business or business to consumer, and with our fantastic pricing, there's a package to suit everyone!
Our Higher Google Listings service does exactly what it says on the tin - helps you to achieve higher listings within the Google search engine.

Pricing includes:

all initial and ongoing optimisation
submission to ODP and Google
XML sitemap generation
submission to the Google Webmaster Tools service
other work needed to ensure higher listings for your website.
You will also receive a weekly report detailing your positions, and regular recommendations, hints and tips that will help you even further.

IE 8 due to be released to manufacture RTM soon

Microsoft's new Internet Web Browser IE 8, is soon to be released from its chains.. or so Microsoft would like us to think, the true fact with IE8 is, instead of becoming more compatible with Internet standards, it has distanced its-self even more, with over 2,000 major website (not to mention the millions of 'non major' web sites, who decides what is a major website anyway?) not compatible - DONT PANIC - there is a 'button' - yes a 'button', what would we do without buttons.... (get cold!), Ok, with IE8 Microsoft have added a 'compatible' button, so when you visit a website and it looks really bad, or totally blank - you can hit this button and the world is normal again!
So why bother? we don't know either, but what we do know is - the likes of FireFox (or Firefix as we like to call it as it makes everything ok again) and Googles Chrome will increase their market footprint on the peoples fav browser list, and IE8 will slide down the scale.

There is an upside to IE8, like Chrome, each tab runs in it's own process, this means that if a website causes IE to crash, or IE just crashes all by itself you do not loose all of your open tabs, just the one that has caused the problem, IE7 will completely disappear if it crashes and you have to start all over again and try to remember which website you had open when it crashed.
Of course there is loads of other new stuff, but to the avegare internet user, these will be unused features.
You have to remember that Microsoft's browsers have 2 roles:
1: To surf the internet,
2: Corporate usage, IE is a very powerful tool in the work enviroment, it can be seamlessly used with very powerful applications such as Sharepoint, CRM, Exchange Outlook Web Access (OWA) plus many more, none of which work at all, or only 'just' with other browsers like Firefox.

So before writing off IE completely, remember that it is a multi role application, but Firefox, Chrome, Safari etc are just built to surf the web - and nothing else.

Protect your information with Domain Privacy

Did you know that when you register a domain name, the contact details you supply are made publicly available using a service called ‘whois‘?
This information is held by the domain registrar companies and is perfectly legal in all countries.As this information is easily accessed by the public it can be a source of SPAM, email marketing and even could be used to try and steal your domain name.
Don’t Panic, help is at hand and it is very easy, all you need to do is login to your Mantis Computing Client Area and from here you can tick the box that says ‘Opt out of whois’ - this is free for .co.uk domains, .com and others do have a small charge of approx £10.
If you want to find out more about this service then please get in touch.

cPanel added to our shared hosting servers.

We are pleased to announce the addition of cPanel to our web hosting control panel systems.
cPanel is now being used as our control panel of choice for all of our Linux based web hosting packages.Q: Why have we chosen cPanel?A: It is very secure with an intelligent firewall built in preventing password and dictionary attacks, it is also very fast compared to other major control panel offerings.You do not need to be a expert to use it as there are online videos showing how to setup an email account for example, more info here http://www.cpanel.net/.It is much cheaper than other similar systems which means our hosting costs stay low, which we can pass onto our clients.
We are still using Parallels Plesk on all of our Windows IIS based servers as over the years this control panel has proved itself to be very powerful.

.info domain names are proving to very popular, get yours before someone else does.Sales of .info domain names increased by 30% in the last month, you have to ask your self “why?”.There are 2 reasons, companies want to make sure they own their own .info to prevent someone else ‘cybersquatting’ on it, and the search engines like them.

.TV Domains proving popular

If you haven’t already got your .TV domain – you’re missing out on the second highest selling TLD (not including .COM) sold in January 2009..TV is receiving a lot of publicity as the destination for rich media on the Internet. If .TV isn’t a part of your web site hostong, then you may be missing out on quailified traffic coming to your website.
What’s unusual about dot-tel is that customers buying the names can’t build a traditional Web site. Dot-tel is the equivalent of an online Yellow Pages.
Each owner of a dot-tel name can use it to list names, phone numbers, physical addresses, Web addresses, Twitter and Facebook pages.
The domain is intended largely for users of mobile phones, who can find it difficult to navigate a Web site on a tiny screen. The listings work on any computer connected to the Internet.

New strain of ‘Windows worm’ could trigger fresh virus outbreak

Hackers have released a new version of the Conficker virus that affected more than 15 million computers across the world, leading to fresh fears of a new wave of cyber crime.
The worm, known variously as Conficker, Downadup and Kido, affects Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Earlier this year, it was estimated that some 15 million computers had fallen prey to the virus, which embeds itself deep within the machine’s operating system. It then provides hackers, spammers and cybercriminals with a “back door” into machines, leaving computers vulnerable to further malicious attacks and even the theft of personl data and confidential information.
The new version, dubbed Conficker B++, circumvents many of the protections put in place to defend against the old worm. It could also make it more difficult for antivirus companies to track down where the virus originated from and put a halt to its spread, by removing the need for Conficker B++ to “phone home” to a remote server in order to download more malicious software to a compromised computer.
Earlier this month, Microsoft issued a $250,000 reward for information leading to the capture and conviction of Conficker’s authors. The company has also released a set of removal tools and software patches to combat the worm, but these may not offer protection against new strains of the virus.
Security specialists feared that the original Conficker outbreak had been engineered by hackers and cybercriminals to build a “botnet”, a network of compromised machines that could then be used to launch malicious attacks, and even to remotely activate tools and software that would have made it easy for cybercriminals to steal personal information or even banking login details.

Judge dismisses Google lawsuit

A legal claim by a Pittsburgh couple that Google’s Street View feature violated their privacy has been thrown out by a federal judge.
By Maggie ShielsTechnology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley
Christine and Aaron Boring sued the search giant after photos of their home appeared on the free mapping program.
The couple accused Google of privacy violation, negligence, trespassing and unjust enrichment.
In her ruling, Judge Amy Reynolds Hay said the Borings “failed to state a claim under any count”.
“We are pleased the judge agreed the suit was without merit,” said Google in a statement to the BBC.
Street View displays street level, 360-degree photographs of areas taken by specially equipped Google vehicles.
Failure
The photographs at the centre of the lawsuit, launched last year, were taken at the foot of Mr and Mrs Boring’s driveway and shows their house, a pool area and detached garage. Signs marked the road as private.
The suit alleged that Google’s Street View had caused Mr and Mrs Boring “mental suffering” and diluted the value of their home.

Google’s free email service ‘GMail’ was down for 2.5 hrs and went off line at approx 09:30 GMT.

Google have apologised for the outage stating that they do not know what caused the problem but are looking it what the root problem was as a priority.

There is independent evidence that the service was down for up to 4hrs for some users.

In a statement posted on its official Google blog it said: “We’re really sorry about this, and we did do everything to restore access as soon as we could.”.
It said its engineers were still investigating the “root cause” of the problem.
“We know how important GMail is to our users so we take this very seriously,” it added.
“The majority are now able to access their e-mail accounts again and we’re hoping to have service restored for the remainder very soon.”

Spam King Sued Again Thanks to Facebook

Have you ever wondered where all that SPAM comes from?We can tell you, the worlds biggest spammer is Sanford Wallace.

About a year ago Myspace won a court case against Wallace based on a phishing scheme he was running on their website. He had created profiles, forums and groups on Myspace with the sole purpose of leading people to his phishing sites.

Well this guy doesn’t seem to be stopped easily, he is now being sued by facebook , more detail here.He has also been sued by: Concentric Network, AOL, CompuServe, and even the Federal Trade Commission, which he paid $4 million. He has rightfully earned the nick name “spam king.”

Three months after being awarded $873 million in a lawsuit against Atlantis Blue Capital for violating the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, Facebook this week filed a federal complaint against “Spam King” Sanford Wallace in San Jose District Court.

Warning - The Domain Registry of America - They will try and trick you

If you own your own domain name then you need to be on your toes when it come to these guys. They are called ’The Domain Registry of America’ or DROA.
Sooner or later you will receive, via the post (snail mail) a very convincing renewal reminder for your domain, regardless of where you domain is actually registered, they don’t care, they just want your money.On the bottom of this letter will be a payment slip suggesting that if you send them payment they will renew your domain, however/but - unless your domain is registered with the ‘Domain Registry of America’ they cannot actually renew it, only your current registrar can do this, in this case they will request that the domain is transferred to them so they can renew it.
Court judgements have been served on DROA, read more here and here, in fact if you search google you will find loads of complaints about this company and their ‘domain slamming’ con.
If you do get a renewal letter from DROA, recyle it, do not pay them anything else you risk loosing your domain.