More big news, more exciting news, more green news!

We are thrilled to announce that our green data center in Latham, NY has been named an ENERGY STAR® certified data center by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This is no small feat, everyone. Since the day we opened our doors at this facility, we have been undergoing an energy efficiency audit. That’s 12 long months’ worth of reviews, inspections, assessments, etc.—I’m sure you get the idea. Finally, the process has reached its end, and we are officially an ENERGY STAR® certified data center!

There are several requirements for an ENERGY STAR® certification. A commercial facility must use an average of 35% less energy than traditional facilities, and release 35% less CO2 into the atmosphere. Not to toot our own horn, but—OK, to toot our own horn really loud and aggressively—with our zero carbon footprint, we’ve actually surpassed the EPA requirements to become an ENERGY STAR® certified data center… and pretty significantly, at that.

Another reason we are so excited about this accomplishment is that we are one of only two ENERGY STAR® certified data centers in the entirety of New York State! New York is ENORMOUS. There are loads of data centers in New York. We are also one of less than 50 in the entire US! 39 data centers are ENERGY STAR® certified, to be exact. That averages less than 1 ENERGY STAR® certified data center per state. This sets the bar pretty high… if we do say so ourselves (and we do).

Here’s what Adam, the man on top, had to say:

“We are delighted to have completed the ENERGY STAR® certification process. Through the ultra-efficient design of our data center and our use of green renewable energy, TurnKey has catapulted past the industry standard. We are one of only two data centers in the entire state of New York that has received this exclusive certification from the EPA. Since data centers are expected to be larger polluters than the airline industry by 2020, I can confidently say that TurnKey Internet is among the best of the best for energy efficiency in the data center space.”

This year has been packed full of exciting news like this, and it’s not even June yet! From our SSAE 16 Type 2 certification in February, to our ReCharge New York installation last month, across everything in between, our fingers are crossed in hopes that the trend continues!

Read the full press release on our company news page!

I am the one percent.

No, I don’t have the 99% Movement outside my office, protesting here at TurnKey, but in a way, I am the One Percent. That is, the one percent of the office—and maybe of all IT offices in the country—that does not have an iPhone, Droid, Blackberry or any sort of smartphone device. Yes, I do hear it every day, people. I have been stuck with my Samsung Intensity II for the past 2 years, and the only thing intense about this phone is the scrutiny I get for it from my friends, co-workers, and loved ones.

Every day is like showing up to move-in day at college and bringing my desktop computer, while everyone else is running through the hallways with their iPads playing Angry Birds and Temple Run.

Imagine that it is 1997, and you are walking through a park, jamming out to Jewel’s new single “You Were Meant for Me.” All of the sudden, you see a guy with an 80’s boom box on his shoulder, pretending he’s “got game by the pound”, belting out Blackstreet’s “No Diggity.” Well, that guy would be me. And while I may have better taste in music than you, I certainly would be jealous that you could take a stroll and listen to your music privately with that classic Walkman.

There may be a problem, however—one that has persisted straight through years of technological developments to smartphones. These days, it seems easier to disconnect from human interaction and to hide behind a four-inch screen. I see it all the time. A few of my friends will get together on a Friday night and, at some point, I guarantee I’ll look around and find all of them silently Tweeting, texting, Instagraming, Facebooking, etc. It’s a problem that my 23-year-old self and most people 50 and up can relate to… We are not a part of the Smartphone Club.

I’ll admit that, even without a smartphone, I do this from time to time. I’ll be walking through the mall, and, although I’d love for someone to massage my hands with lotion, I am not willing to spend $50 on it and then have to do it myself every time after that. That is when I quickly grab my phone and pretend to check my text messages, avoiding any and all human interaction and blatantly ignoring the people waving products in my face. It is a habit—without a doubt, a bad one—but one that is shared by most of the people I know.

These issues are long-coming, and continue to rise as new technology does. It is inevitable that all of us without a smartphone will have to accept them. We will eventually have no option but to buy a smartphone, and will ultimately be a part of this culture someday.

But of course, these devices aren’t all bad, right? It is reported that nearly half of all Americans own a smartphone. So for what reasons may I soon jump to the maybe-not-so-dark side of the mobile telephone?

The first reason is that smartphones have basically eliminated the use of a GPS system, a map, or however you prefer to navigate. I can’t count how many times I got lost when living in New York City, and again after moving to Albany. Albany is one thing, now that I have my car and my GPS, but being lost in The Big City is a whole different ball game. Forget the danger of being alone and lost at night in the city (I leave my safety in the hands of Batman), the frustration of trying to get from one place to another, or simply being able to find a location, was enough for me to almost crack and get a smartphone.

Music is another reason that I became envious of smartphone owners. With applications like Spotify, a smartphone can eliminate the need for an MP3 player. A few months ago I left my iPod at my friend’s apartment in NYC and I still haven’t gotten it back. At this point, I don’t really need it since almost every song on that iPod is on Spotify. I can access Spotify with my computer, but I can only imagine how much I would use it if it was with me everywhere I go. It’s amazing to think about how much music I could consume in one day—while on a walk, driving in my car, grocery shopping, working out, etc. Smartphones open up a whole new outlet to discover, stream, and share music.

The last reason—for now—is what I feel my life, and millions of other people’s lives revolve around lately: the Internet.

I know this kind of encompasses the reasons I mentioned before, but it just goes to show how many benefits there are to a smartphone. To be able to Google a restaurant, find the time a movie is playing, Instagram a photo, Tweet a message to someone, or whatever else you are trying to do—having a computer in the palm of your hand, I imagine, makes some things in life a little easier. Being able to keep a schedule of what you need to do and where you need to be, to write notes and answer emails, to use the thousands of helpful apps available—a smartphone is becoming almost the staple of being a professional adult…or maybe even a functional member of society.

Here is where I need your help: Which smartphone do you prefer?

When I finally man up, grow a mustache, and get a smartphone, I’m sure Emily Wegener will keep you posted on the progress here at TurnKey Internet via our Instagram.

Just a friendly update from the social side of TurnKey Internet: Yahoo! has acquired Tumblr! If you’re unfamiliar with either, wake up. Just kidding (kind of). Yahoo! is an Internet corporation best known for its web portal and search engine, and Tumblr is a multimedia microblogging and social networking site.

These days, alliances and acquisitions are forming between prominent Internet sites faster than you can say “prominent Internet sites”. We’ve mentioned a few of them on the TurnKey blog before, like in my tirade about Instagram’s policy changes following Facebook’s billion-dollar buy-out, for example. I still think that was so uncool, but I’ll leave it at that… for today.

Speaking of billions of dollars, Yahoo! purchased Tumblr for $1.1 billion… in cash! I wonder which lucky Yahoo! employee was given the task of making that truckload of bills rain all over the Tumblr team. That probably didn’t happen, but maybe it did, and this is my article.

To give you a snapshot of the information that I’ve dug up in my webscapades (did you like that?), apparently Tumblr will remain its own entity, as a separate business, independently-owned and operated. The deal is being spoken of in an almost partner-like manner, with mentioned plans of integrating search functions into the microblog as a means to surf its content more easily.

I think it was pretty smart of Yahoo! to shell out the big bucks and scoop up Tumblr. Let’s just hope they keep their very public promise to “not screw it up”. I wonder what that was a reference to…

Anyway, I’ll keep this article short and sweet, and leave you with one final bit of cliff-hanging wisdom: When are we going to start mashing up company names like we do with celebrity couples these days? Facebingagram, AndroogleTube, Twittine… and now Yahumblr? How catchy! We’re wasting so much of our valuable time with all of these unnecessary letters and syllables.

Why move to the cloud? Here is May’s cloud tip.

Businesses are more agile in the cloud…

Agility in business operations is made possible through the use of effective and efficient tools. These tools ultimately help make a business or work environment strong. Cloud technology is built on certain business strategies. For example, understanding service-level agreements (SLA’s) and developing various strategies to better understand the business as a whole. The steps of these strategies can then be analyzed—as well as improvised—in order to keep the business running smoothly, and this is all made easier with cloud technology.

We have news, everyone! A new product release! We just introduced our ultra-fast, super-advanced line of TurnKey Internet Virtual Private Servers, and we couldn’t be more excited. Really, this kind of thing makes us all go a little overboard in the zeal and enthusiasm department, but, hey—worse things could happen.

Have you seen those hilarious “It’s Not Complicated” AT&T commercials that have been all over the place recently? Now that DVR is a thing, I generally try to skip commercials—shh, don’t tell—but if I see that one of those commercials is on, it’s likely that I’ll stop fast-forwarding in the interest of a guaranteed laugh. For those of you who haven’t seen these commercials, check out AT&T’s YouTube Channel. There are quite a few of them, and they are all really well-done and funny.

Aside from entertainment value, our High-Speed Stock Trader Desktop VPS release is the reason I’m bringing these commercials to your attention. This one, in particular, really hits the nail on the head.

It really is a no-brainer. It’s not complicated. In the tech world, faster is better, period, and that is why our new High-Speed VPS’s are, simply, a better option.

TurnKey High-SpeedVPS’s take the virtual private server experience to a whole new level. Why? How? Let me rattle off a few reasons for you.

• Our TurnKey High-Speed VPS’s contain solid state drive (SSD) disks, which have crazy-fast input/output speeds; much faster than traditional disks. Traditional disks are rotational, and SSD’s have no moving parts at all. They run solely on flash memory. No movement = faster. You got it? Good.
• At the core of the TurnKey High-Speed VPS is Intel’s® new Xeon MP X7550 2 GHz Octa-Core CPU. This can increase speeds up to four times that of a Quad-Core.
• The TurnKey High-Speed VPS allows for one hundred thousand IOPS (input/output per second) per drive, due to the combination of these SSD disks and the Octa-Core technology. Talk about TEAMWORK.
• The TurnKey High-Speed VPS has the most innovative, highest-performing node configuration on the market There are multiple SSD disks and multiple Octa-Core CPU’s in each (node), configured in RAID-10, using high-performance RAID cards with significant on-board caching capabilities. This is a revolutionary alternative to the other VPS options out there. See? Like your mom’s car, cheetahs, and space ships, virtual private servers are better when they are faster, and it’s not complicated to see why. Check out our High-Speed VPS page. You’ll see what I mean.

Now, you may remember my first blog post here at TurnKey. Remember–the one about Twitter’s video app, “Vine”?

Back in February?

Hello?

Well, regardless of if you read it or not, let me give you a little run-down on what it was all about!

Twitter acquired the company “Vine” back in October of 2012, and released it to the public this January as an iOS app. Vine gives users a “stop-and-go” way to record whatever they want, and to compose it into a six-second video.

For example, this one, of a cute dog.

Or, similarly, this one, of Busta Rhymes and crew.

Vine has quickly caught the attention of Twitter users all around the world, and just last month it was the most downloaded free app in Apple’s App Store. Judges at the Tribeca Film Festival even asked people for Vine entries this year, and said they were “impressed with the creativity at play when it came to the submissions.”

In a response to Twitter’s acquisition of Vine, YouTube has created an app called “YouTube Capture”. Now, while Twitter focuses on the brevity of a six second Vine, YouTube is sticking to its “post what you want” approach. This app makes it easy and hassle-free for users to record videos on their mobile phones, and upload them straight to YouTube.

With YouTube Capture, you simply press a button and the video begins to record. It continues to record until the button is pressed again, then the video is over. Next, you are asked to enter a title, then given options to color correct, stabilize, or trim the video, and even to add a “soundtrack” to it. The soundtracks are pre-made, ringtone-type music clips, which I thought was an interesting idea. Lastly, you press “done”, and the video is uploaded directly to your YouTube account.

So, who do I think wins the Video-App-Super-Bowl-World-Series-Stanley-Cup-Green-Jacket-Gold-Medal-Championship Award?!

I give it to Vine, simply because of its originality and the fact that it’s so easily shared among friends on Twitter. Vine has limited functions, but with a six-second video you’re just trying to get to the point. Vine videos can also leave a lot of room for creativity, like in this one, for example.

YouTube’s app is incredibly easy to use, and very handy if you want to make simple videos of day-to-day things, like a visit to the zoo, or your cat in water. The features that YouTube Capture provide are pretty nifty, but it lacks any major editing tools and the app itself is a lot less interactive, in my opinion. While it depends on the purpose of your video, both apps are great in their own way, but Vine just has that easy-to-use, interactive element. Sorry YouTube, but you are about 100 years old in technology years, and while you are a classic, my friends need to see my life played out in 6 seconds at a time!