Rocketboom Every Day

I'm addicted to my daily dose of Rocketboom and you should be too.

Rocketboom is a videocast (or vblog) out of New York on all the latest tech, world news, and oddball topics that they care to air for three minutes each day. It can be viewed on an iPod (Steve Jobs views Rockboom daily, shouldn’t you?), on a PDA and on a monitor.

Videocast sounds complex, but video’s been on the web for years. Now more web-uses have high-speed access and so that web content producers can take advantage of this medium. A videoblog, sometimes called a vlog or vog, is quite simply a weblog that includes video. The great thing is that anyone can create a videoblog -- all you need is a camera, computer, Internet access, and a blog.

Here’s what Rocketboom says about their videocasts (maybe a great way for company’s to market and for organizations to get the word out) :

”Instead of costing millions of dollars to produce, Rocketboom is created with a consumer-level video camera, a laptop, two lights and a map with no additional overhead or costs. Also, Rocketboom is distributed online, all around the world and on demand, and thus has a much larger potential audience than any TV broadcast. However, we spend $0 on promotion, relying entirely on word-of-mouth, and close to $0 on distribution because bandwidth costs and space are so inexpensive. While TV programs have traditionally been uni-directional, Rocketboom engages its international audience in a wide range of topical discussions.”

CrystalTech – How do I Love You?

Let Me Count the Ways!
I have used various hosting services since 1995. I started with a local Seattle provider, Wolfnet.net, which changed and grew over the three years I was with them. Then, it was sold, possibly closed, and finally resuscitated in Manawa, Wisconsin as a local provider. (I don’t even know if they bought the name, company or just happened to decide the same name.)

After trying a local provider I went to a larger company in Atlanta, GA, right on the backbone of the internet, Interland with 24/7 tech support and all the bells & whistles. Interland had great deals and still exists but grew so quickly that their 24/7 tech support became meaningless. I had to fight my way up through the tiers of tech support until I found someone knowledgeable, which was too tedious to bear.

Finally, I found CrystalTech through one of former our clients, The Brainard Foundation. They have a whole different approach to hosting – they are proactive. We have been using CrystalTech for more than six years and haven’t looked back once.

1. Their Tech Support is equal to none – it’s quick, smart, and very polite.
2. They notify us of changes to our client servers BEFORE changes are made
3. They notify us that they’re working on server problems BEFORE we or our clients even notice the problem.
4. They have REDUCED their prices several times because they’re successful and can afford to do that (they have a “why be greedy?” approach to business – very refreshing!).
5. They give nonprofits half off of the majority of their hosting packages – so a great place for nonprofits to find affordable hosting even if their sites are database driven and have content management tools.
6. They provide a monthly newsletter of their upgrades and services.
7. They’re very programmer friendly and allow us access to set permissions on our SQL databases – their control center is one of the easiest to use we’ve seen.
8. They have an on-line knowledge base.
9. They haven’t let us down in all the years we’ve hosted our site, our development sites, and our client sites.
10. Their on-line hosting set up takes about 10 minutes online and is ready to go in less than 24hrs, usually, hosting is ready in 2hrs of filling out the online form.

Check them out yourselves (click this link before you sign up for hosting and send us $10 for the referral. Nice, eh?).