For those of you who are keeping up with every little piece of bad film I appear in, here is the second episode of Layered Tech TV. In this episode, we talk about security and the actions you can take to ensure that your server is not compromised.

My guest on the show is Layered Tech’s resident security expert Terry Perkins. With a special appearance by some bears. Enjoy!
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Oh, my. Cali Lewis, everyone’s favorite video podcaster, stopped by Layered Tech to learn about our top secret project (code named Astro) a couple of weeks ago – even though we made her keep it under wraps until yesterday!

Anyway, Cali interviewed LT’s Director of Software Development, Josh Bosquez, in part one and learned all about whats been under development for like a year. In part two I give a mini-tour of the data center and you get to learn a few things about it. The data center tour was more extensive, but some of the video had to be taken out for security reasons. Still, it’s pretty cool!
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Here is a special treat for you guys. Last week I got the opportunity to take Cali and Neal from GeekBrief.TV to visit the old Federal Reserve Bank in downtown Dallas, they brought their cameras so everyone could tag along. Why were we there, you may ask? Well, the Layered Tech datacenter in Dallas is located in the very building that was the old Federal Reserve Bank, which is now designated as a City of Dallas historic landmark.

The seven-story building was originally completed in 1921 to house the United States Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. The Beaux Arts-style limestone building established Dallas as a center for economic development in the Southwest prior to World War I. The Bank significantly expanded and modernized the property in 1959. Its distinctive architectural style and detailing led the city of Dallas to designate the building a historic landmark in 1979.
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It pains me to share this, mainly because I don’t think anyone really wants to see themselves on video. But we launched a new video blog over at Layered Tech (where we do dedicated server hosting), and this is the very first episode. So if nothing else, I’ll share it for posterity.

The initial video primarily focuses on cloud computing, and gives a few industry updates as well as addresses some of LT’s cloud computing news. If anyone enjoys these shows we’ll keep em’ going. Otherwise, we’ll kill them off. You decide!
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I’ve had a lot of friends lately asking me for hosting advice since I happen to work at Layered Tech. Since everyone’s situation is different, I’ve kind of standardized on an approach to explaining the hosting situation…

Since the dawn of the World Wide Web, Webmasters have sought out the fastest hosting options with the greatest bang for the buck. We often start with shared sites that can accommodate many infrequently visited domains (like a $5 per month hosting account), but after achieving popularity on at least one, a Webmaster’s attention usually turns to a dedicated server to avoid the pain of service interruptions.
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Jason Falls posted an article over on his blog Social Media Explorer a few days ago posing the question, “What is the ROI for Social Media?”

Jason’s overriding theme was presented early on in the article:

The problem with trying to determine ROI for social media is you are trying to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are not quantifiable.

He sat down with Katie Delahaye Paine and had a conversation regarding this topic.

I’ve long been a fan of the business card. I think it is a serious art form because you try and say so much about a person or organization with so little room to work with. It takes a creative genius to really make a fantastic impression with a business card, and after all… that’s what they’re all about!

Since I’ve been collecting these in a directory for years, i decided to upload the entire gallery right here. If I ever come across more, I’ll add them. But until then, have fun wasting your entire afternoon on these!

Now, I’ve never uploaded this many images to a single post (in fact, this may be a world record!!!), and I’m sure this article is going to put some serious load on the server because so many images have to be downloaded by each visitor. Hopefully no one Diggs this thing, cause the server is going to die for sure!

Seriously! 250+ thumbnails on every single page load… well, let’s just say I’m glad I work at a hosting company! Cause I may be needing a whole lotta bandwidth real soon… Thank you Layered Tech!
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So, you need a Web site developed, you’re looking for a new logo, or you’ve got a business application you need created. OR, you would like to be developing Websites, logos and apps for other people! But you don’t have a clue how to go about matching yourself up with someone who can fulfill your needs?

Don’t worry, I hear this a lot. My recommendation is to create a simple description of the type of work you are looking for, and post it on one of the many freelance developer sites that have sprung up online. I’ve actually used a couple of these myself, and have been impressed with the quality of work that I’ve managed to get done.

So whether you’re looking to get hired or hire someone else, here are 8 sites you should definitely check out:

• Elance.com – One of the largest freelance sites around. Membership accounts range from FREE to $39.95/month for large businesses. Elance charges a service fee of between 6.75 % – 8.75 % for paid jobs.
• RentACoder.com – Claims to have over 200,000 registered members, and over 2,500 active jobs (as of the day I published this).
• GetACoder.com – Large list of jobs available with commissions comparable to the other services listed here.
• GetAFreelancer.com – Most projects seem to range from $500-$1,000, with the company charging a commission for paid jobs.
• Guru.com – Claims to be the largest freelance site out there. Guru offers FREE, as well as paid, memberships that range from $29.95 to $99.95 per quarter. Guru takes 5 % – 10 % commission.
• ScriptLance.com – ScriptLance is FREE but charges 5% commission.
• iFreelance – Membership levels vary between $4 – $7/month but that is all you pay. iFreelance doesn’t charge a commission.
• ProBlogger’s Job Board – pretty much nothing but jobs for writers or bloggers.

Earlier in the week while I was at VMworld in Las Vegas I had the opportunity to attend VMware CEO Paul Maritz’s keynote address, and to film it with my little Canon G9 camera. The video turned out pretty good. so I wanted to share it with you guys.

Paul is talking about the future of virtualization, and I will say that I basically agree with him 100%. If you don’t know anything about virtualization, now is the time to watch this and find out all about it.
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Last Tuesday I was in Chicago, and all was going well until a seemingly unlikely event started a chain reaction that would lay me up in bed for nearly three days… It rained.

Yep. It didn’t rain very hard, or very long, but it just so happened that I was walking about a mile or so through the city back to my hotel during the light rain. I could have caught a cab, but instead I ducked into a Walgreen’s and got a baseball hat and kept walking.

I know what you’re thinking. But no, I didn’t catch a cold!

I was taking my time, even stopping to snap photos of skyscrapers in the rain, when about halfway back to the hotel I started having difficulty catching my breath. Now I don’t have asthma, and I can generally out walk anyone I know, so it took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on. I was having an allergic reaction to something.
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For those of you who are interested in the presentation I gave at HostingCon on cloud computing I just wanted to pass it along. It’s embedded here, so you can flip through the slides.

They obviously lack the discussion that goes along with them, and all of the animation is missing along with some of the formatting being messed up, but hopefully they are somewhat useful anyway.

For you guys who are beta testing Woopra for us, first of all – Thank You! Secondly, I’m happy to reward you with a link to the new Woopra 1.2 release candidate. This is the second iteration of the release and we are being extra cautious before we roll it out to everyone. (Heck – 30,000 people will get it!)

Having said all that, I highly, highly encourage you to download the new version if you are using Woopra. Soooo much new stuff to see, faster performance, and just generally major enhancements.