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Sitting here this morning, as I run through my daily routines of reviewing sales emails, marketing proposals, SEO reports, and general news, I ran across something that made me stop and pause for a good minute. It was a talk by Steve Jobs from 1983.
This was pre-Macintosh Steve Jobs. This was still the bright eyed Steve Jobs that had yet to be “removed from his managerial duties” by the board of his own company only to come back as it’s long lost savior almost a decade later. A Steve Jobs that had yet to earn the labels of “Futurist” or “Visionary.” This was just Steve Job, a 28 year old kid talking to design conference… yes a design conference.
See, even back in 1983 Jobs saw that design was something that needed to be given equal attention when working with technology. It seems something obvious now, but if you think about technology in 1983, design was the last thing on anyone’s mind. PC computers were large briefcase size things that were gray or tan in color.
Even in his talk Steve Jobs says “If you’ve looked at computers, they look like garbage. All the great product designers are off designing automobiles or they’re off designing buildings. But, hardly any of them are off designing computers.” Even in 1983 Steve was looking to change that.
After giving this a listen, I started thinking about 1983. I was 7 years old and already playing with my Dad’s new Commodore 64 typing out BASIC commands to play a game. And after some digging back, I noticed that 1983 was a big year for technology and the internet:
So, an argument can be made that 1983 was a hallmark year for technology and the internet as we know it today. But yet, with personal computing and the internet still in their infancies, Jobs could see what was about to come and where these things could lead.
Listening to the full talk, plus Q&A after, you can hear Jobs talk about ideas and concepts that can be traced forward 25 years later into truths about how we use technology today and every day products like tablet computers. At the end of the Q&A, Jobs even addresses language and voice recognition, which has only now been adopted by the general public with Siri.
So as I’m typing this we have reached the 1 year anniversary, if you will, of Steve Jobs’ passing. For all his flaws (and there were many) it is hard to deny his ability to see past technical limitations and look forward to what he knew was possible.
I was never an “Apple Fan Boy” growing up. In fact I hated Macintosh computers with a passion all through High School and College only using them when all other options had failed. But I did respect how Jobs saw the world in his eyes and was able to rally people around that vision. Listening to this talk only adds to that respect.
We know you’re hungry for the latest and greatest, so we’re really happy to announce that we’ve put away the jackhammers and wrenches, the dust has settled, and Windows 2012 hosting is now available at Winhost!
The Windows 2012 platform supports all of the latest Microsoft technologies; IIS 8, ASP.NET 4.5, MVC 4, WebMatrix 2, Entity Framework 5, ASP.NET Web API, WebSockets, Visual Studio 2012, Visual Studio Express 2012, and even Dynamic IP restriction. That’s a bumper-crop of fresh new goodies to make all of our lives more interesting.
What’s the catch? There isn’t one!
Okay, there is one little catch.
ASP.NET 4.5/IIS 8 is only available on the Windows 2012 platform. If you want to migrate an existing site to the new platform, we can help you with that. Just drop a note to support saying that you want to move to Windows 2012 and they will make it happen. Quick and painless.
We’re not yet sure if or when we will upgrade the existing Windows 2008/IIS 7 servers to .NET 4.5. There are some potential issues that we are keeping an eye on, and when we’re satisfied that we can move to .NET 4.5 on the existing servers without any disruption, we’ll make the move. But at the moment we can’t give you a time frame on when that may happen.
So if you want .NET 4.5 now, just let us know and we’ll hook you up.
Last year you turned out in force and voted for us in the DevProConnections Community Choice Awards, and we placed fourth behind some industry heavyweights!
Well guess what? We are nominated again! And it would be great for this still scrappy upstart to show the big boys what we’re made of. If you have a couple of minutes to spare, we would appreciate your vote!
We’re listed under 10. Hosting Service. Voting closes on Friday the 28th, so please pop on over there as soon as you have a chance.
It would be quite a feat to move up in those rankings considering the competition, but anything is possible, right? Vote!
And thank you for your time, your support, and most of all, thanks for using Winhost!
A few minutes ago the space shuttle flew directly over our offices here in Pasadena.
Well, that’s not something you see every day.
Better pictures to come, but here are some phone pics in the meantime.
(Updated pic:)
I know that when you woke up this morning you thought to yourself, “I wonder what a 1996 instructional video about the Internet would look like?”
Oh, you didn’t?
Well, we have one for you anyway.
Enjoy as a fake fancy archaeologist guides you through the fascinating online world that exists right at the tip of your virtual fingers. Wow!
In some situations, you may not be able to use FTP or Microsoft Web Deploy to upload your applications (workplace FTP restrictions, etc.). To help solve that problem we’ll show you how to install a simple .NET file manager, FileVista, on your site. You can use this tool to upload and download files to your site.
1. Download FileVista from Gleamtech. The single user license is free.
2. On the download page, make sure you select the “Web Deploy Package.”
3. Once you download the zip file, extract it to a temporary location on your computer.
4. Within the extracted directory, you should see a directory named FileVista.
5. Upload the contents to a subdirectory of your site.
6. Once the upload process is completed, log in to the the Site Tools section of Control Panel and click the Application Starting Point icon.
7. In the App Starting Point tool, click Create.
8. Enter the name of the folder to which you uploaded FileVista, and click Create.
9. Now, on your site, navigate to the location where you installed FileVista, in this case, HostingAccountDomain.com/FileVista. You should see the welcome wizard:
10. Click Next. On the next screen, you can choose whether you want to use a file based database or SQL server. We recommend using the file based database unless you intended to have many users.
11. Click Next. You should see a Pop up displaying the preinstallation test result. Click OK.
12. On the next page, you’ll configure the following:
a. Set the administrator username and password.
b. Set the default language.
c. Set the Root Folder. The root folder is where the file manager will point when you log in. If you intend to use this tool to manage your entire site, set the root folder to: /
13. Click Next and you’re finished. You’ll be taken to the login screen.
14. Log in with the username/password you specified during installation.
15. You should now see a pop-up asking if you want to use the free version or a commercial version. Select the free license mode unless you have purchased the product.
Tony Jiang is the man behind the site FastTopTen.com. He says, “I’m a programmer by nature and a guy who just likes to tinker with things. In the past few years, I’ve noticed an enormous growth of “top ten” lists articles which are most of the time incorrect or are missing some items. As a tinkerer, I can’t help but want to fix these lists or at least have a say in them. Therefore, I’ve created an entire website dedicated to “top ten” lists, where anyone can create new lists, and anyone can submit items to the lists, rate them as they see fit, and basically let the world decide on the ranking of the items in those lists. In geeky terms, it’s a site for Dynamic Top Ten Lists.”
When did you first become interested in web technologies?
I got hooked in college, during the great dotcom era. Like many others, I taught myself html back then, adored Netscape, lived in Geocities, and had some blinking fonts on my website (who didn’t?). The dotcom crash happened shortly after I put the blinking fonts on my site but needless to say, my interest in web technologies never wavered and I eventually did remove the blinkies.
If the <blink> tag had been responsible for the crash, I suspect it would have happened years earlier and we would have never recovered. Which technologies are you using for your web site?
FastTopTen.com uses ASP.NET and MS SQL. For IDE, I use Visual Studio and upgrade to whichever is the latest version whenever it comes out.
How long have you hosted your site with Winhost?
Forever. In another word, my site was born with Winhost, it never knew any other. It was born around summer of 2010 so it’s been around 2 years now.
What made you choose Winhost for the project?
There are a multitude of reasons. Speed is probably the top one. I’ve tried quite a few hosting sites before picking Winhost and compared to Winhost, their speed (performance in terms of a user clicking around on your site to delivering your site’s content) was lackluster.
I had figured that I could adapt to most other factors of a hosting site but at the end of the day even if my site is coded properly and optimized properly, the hosting company is the only one that can deliver my content to the users in a timely manner. And this, Winhost does very well.
So you’re happy with your choice?
Yes. Speed, friendly staff, and cost effectiveness of the plans are the strongest points of Winhost. I have to say that there are hosting sites out there that are more flexible and have better hosting solutions but they cost an arm and a leg. Winhost is the only solution I’ve found that offers great service and hosting plans for great rates.
What’s next for FastTopTen.com?
Since I’m a developer, I will be continuously adding new features onto FastTopTen.com. In the near future, beautifying the Forums area, adding more functionalities to it, and putting in filters onto forum postings will be in the works.
Are you excited about any new technologies or trends that you see out there?
HTML5 has my eye at the moment. I’m extremely impressed by its canvas and video capabilities.
What do you do when you aren’t working on sites?
Unfortunately, I find myself devoid of much free time these days but when I do get an hour or two, you can usually find me playing the pc game Starcraft 2 and more recently, Diablo 3.
Thank you Tony, we appreciate you taking time out to talk to us.