…but not for long!

We’re giving them all away to twenty lucky entrants in our Apple-A-Day Twitter contest!

We had hoped to have these in our hands on the 3rd when everybody else did. Unfortunately Apple cancelled our first order, probably as a result of us ordering twenty when the stated limit was TWO. The credit card we originally used had also been cancelled thanks to the recent Monoprice fiasco by the time Apple was ready to charge it, so that probably didn’t go over very well either…

The good news is we were able to sneak in another order – and that one went through without a problem – and arrived today!

Bingo!

We unpacked 15 iPads, but the fourth box had a note…

Just kidding. I put that there. But it got your heart rate up a little, right?

So what can you actually do with 20 iPads? Quite a lot, actually!

There’s the obligatory doorstop.

Dominoes came to mind as well…

Playing chess on a touchscreen is like nothing you’ve ever experienced.

20 iPads have no problem giving someone bad news.

iPad/crowbar batting practice was a hit!

I’ve played a lot of bowling apps on my iPhone.

This one makes you feel like you’re really there!

The iPad talks a good game, but when it comes time to play a little Call of Duty, he falls flat.

Trash talking only works when you’re good at something. PUNK.

I’ll be honest – the iPad was much better at playing drums in Rock Band than I was. Had some problems hitting the pedal though.

With the day wearing on I decided that maybe nobody would realize if a few iPads went missing. So I thought it might be a good idea to swallow a few and sneak them out that way.

It wasn’t easy. And it wasn’t successful.

The following Twitter users have won a 16GB Wifi iPad:
mrwickedd
enotsola
rafaldyrda
mike_Henderson
raimon49
feltpad
caoanroad4800
daniloeu
omtc
jbchan
twEapen
Onlera
emberna
mattmaher
MinaNJ
lisadrowe
LauraRogner
pkimbrel
benrwoodard
eminsker

If you’re listed above, CONGRATULATIONS! – and be on the lookout for a message from @dreamhost. We’re going to need some shipping information from you!

Winners must reply to @dreamhost on Twitter no later than May 14th at 11:59PM, PDT (one month from today) or they will forfeit their prize. At that time we will pick from the other entries received to select alternate winners. We don’t want to hold on to these things forever!

No iPads were harmed or removed from shrink wrap in the making of this blog post.

UPDATE 5/17/2010: We made several attempts to contact all winners and did not receive replies from four of them. The following Twitter users had not claimed their iPads by the deadline and have forfeited their prizes:
raimon49, Onlera, mattmaher, LauraRogner
So we’ve had to select four alternates. They are:
moonlettuce, JustCallMeJenni, samanatrix, john_blanton

Congratulations! The four alternate winners have until May 31st at 11:59PM, PDT to claim their prizes, after which point we’ll select MORE alternates if need be.

UPDATE 5/28/2010: All iPads have now been claimed. Thanks everyone for entering!

Today we’re revealing some never-before seen photos of some of the darkened corners of our datacenters.

It’s not something we’re proud of, but we intend to do something about it.

You network admins know how it is. Sometimes a server dies and it’s just easier to leave it there and reuse its network cable without rerouting everything. And sometimes it’s just too hard to put a new cable in the channel where it belongs so you end up draping it over the top of everything. It’s easy, it works, and your customers never need to know about it.

Before you know it your hardware is buried in a sea of cables and has become physically unreachable.

Let’s face it. Datacenters are kind of boring. The only major cosmetic change they’ve gotten over the past twenty years has been the size of the computers sitting in them. And maybe the colors of the cables running through them.

We’ve today announced a new initiative : Wireless Datacenters.

At our Los Angeles datacenter we’ve replaced literally thousands of miles of cat5, cat6, and fiber with a large supply of 802.11n USB wireless dongles. Everywhere you look you’ll find dongles dangling everywhere. Dangling dongles. (Internally this project was codenamed “Dang Dongs“.)

We’ve donated all of our old cabling to a local recycler, and the amount of clutter we’ve eliminated in our datacenter is phenomenal. You can now walk through the entire facility without tripping or fear of passing under a cable avalanche.

We’ve also reduced our carbon footprint by a huge amount. Do you have any idea how many trees it takes to make a 6 foot ethernet cable? Probably not very many…but still. Having less stuff generally means you’ve used fewer resources to make that stuff. It’s really a win-win all around.

Ethernet entanglements are now a thing of the past. 802.11n wireless is the future, and the future is now.

In fact it says right here on the box from Linksys that the new router we bought will “stream stored music to devices around your home” – no small feat. Imagine how fast it’ll serve your websites. Should be pretty great.

You can expect a white paper and some more photos of the new deployment soon.

Twitter‘s okay I guess. 10 billion tweets is a big milestone.

But Twitter has one fatal flaw: it caters to people.

Animals are well-represented all over the Internet in wikipedia articles and blog posts, but those are all written by humans on behalf of animals.

Three quarters of Americans think that it’s “‘egotistical and a waste of time’ to develop a Facebook page for a pet”. Surely that means that 25% of Americans – over 75 million people – think it’s a great idea!

The evidence is clear. Pets deserve a voice of their own on the Internet. So today we’re launching…

PetStatus.com is just like Twitter…except it’s very clearly designed for pets, by pets.

Just look at the rich embeddable experience that awaits you and your pets:

And that’s just the half of it. Pets aren’t limited to submitting status updates and following others through the web – they can use a growing number of third-party micro-blogging clients to stay on top of their friends’ latest exploits.

If your pets are anything like mine, they don’t think too much of humans…

They’ve also got a lot of free time on their hands – much more than I do. Suddenly ten billion doesn’t seem so far away!

Remember, PetStatus.com is for non-humans only. That goes double for you, Samurai Unicorn guy.

Status.net, our new one-click software package, powers the entire operation. DreamHost customers can now install Status.net to their own domains with a single mouse click – making specialized Twitter clones at whim in a matter of seconds!

So start spreading the word – your pets will be heard!

For some of you, it’s that time of the year again.. holiday shopping!

I say some of you not because some of you are not Christian, Jewish, African, or employed, but because some of you are not early holiday shoppers.

For those of us already finished with our seasonal purchases, it’s that time of the year again.. holiday sleeping!

Now, when I was young, early holiday shopping meant at least ONE of the big boxes under the tree wasn’t filled with an “I O U: 1 Cobra Terror Drome – SANTA!” But nowadays, thanks to the influences of my lovely spouse, I’ve been able to get all my shopping (apart from gifts for her) done E A R L Y.

What’s my secret?

It’s easy!

She gets everything! Her family, my family, her friends, my friends, everything! The only thing I have to get IS my gifts for her!

And man, she starts EARLY. Like, it’s an all year thing. If she sees something that would be perfect for my brother in May, BOOM she buys it for Christmas. If she finds a sweater on sale in February that would look great on her mom… POW bought and stored. If she comes across an amazing deal on Zhu Zhu Hamsters December 26th.. well, they’ll probably still be popular next holidays too, right?

It’s weird. I mean, compared to how I was brought up (which I’m 100% sure is the norm) it’s down-right un-American. But, I’ve slowly come around. Sadly, I’ve started to find myself buying things in the spring with an eye towards December. And not just me.. DreamHost too!

Remember in the last post when I mentioned how we bought (some of) Alchemy Communications back in May? Well, here it is, December, and that forward thinking is finally starting to pay off… for you!

In honor of our new relationship (and by using ex-DreamHost shared hosting servers) Alchemy has just started offering Dedicated Servers at pretty much the best deal you can get anywhere (we checked!):

We held a t-shirt design contest not too long ago and the response was overwhelming.

After wading through hundreds of entries we’ve finally narrowed down the winners. We assigned each entry a year representative of its style – one for each year we’ve been in business. Every DreamHost employee was then given a chance to vote for their favorites and the top performers for each decade are as follows:

1940s, Andrea:

1950s, Ken Grett:

1960s, Gabriel Mello:

1970s, Brian:

1980s, CSEID:

1990s, Jeffrey Dates:

2000s, Pushka Ben:

Every one of these entries has won their creators a lifetime of free hosting from DreamHost!

You can purchase any of these printed on a shirt (or mug…or apron…or mousepad) right now in our online store!

You can also purchase some of our other favorite entries from the contest that didn’t quite make the cut – and there are nearly 60 of them!

Because we were so impressed with all the entries we received, all of the runners-up (designs in the store that aren’t listed above) will be getting a free year of hosting!

We would have liked to announce the winners much sooner, but a lot of them aren’t big on the whole “answer important emails” thing, and it took some time to get everyone’s artwork and legal paperwork collected.

We’re still waiting to hear back from several of the winners, so you won’t be able to purchase everything you see in the store just yet. If YOUR artwork appears in the store with a “NOT FOR SALE” icon, now might be a good time to check your spam filters for the several messages I’ve sent you!

Thanks to everyone who entered the contest! Now…

Today DreamHost turns 62 years old*! It’s hard to believe, but we’ve watched the hosting industry blossom and grow over the course of 62 grand years – that’s longer than any other web host in the industry. Some would say that’s older than the Internet itself, but they are MISINFORMED.

I was doing some digging in the DreamHost Archives and came across an old steamer trunk full of promotional materials dating back to the late 40s. There was a fair amount of water damage to the contents of the trunk, so much of what was in there has been lost to the elements. The good news is that I was able to salvage a few old photographs that hearken back to a simpler time.

The man with the glasses is one of my predecessors – the great James P. Abernathy III – DreamHost’s first marketing manager. He popularized the use of bumper stickers as promotional materials and is credited with making DreamHost the household name that it is today.

He died of venereal disease in 1953.

Early in our company’s history we realized the importance of buddying-up with famous people. Decades before the T-Mobile tent made its first appearance on the Academy Awards red carpet, the DreamHost milk truck was out in force delivering ice cold milk and promotional t-shirts to Hollywood’s elite.

It occurred to me that our company’s rich history need not spend an eternity buried in a steamer trunk, forever hidden from the prying eyes of the world. So we’re throwing a little contest to bring back the glory days of DreamHost.

Create your own retro-styled DreamHost t-shirt design to recapture the early days of web hosting as we know it. If we like yours enough we’ll turn it into actual t-shirts. Our employees will get them, people on the Internet will be able to buy them, and YOU’LL get a yearlifetime of free hosting! And mayyyyyybe even some copies of your own shirt! What the heck!

You don’t need to be a current customer to win. Just post a link to your entry (or entries) in the comments of this post. If you’re a winner you’ll need to be able to provide your artwork to us as a 200-300 dpi PNG file at a maximum size of 13.5″ x 16.5″. (Don’t forget the alpha channel data for any transparent areas.) File sizes must be no larger than 10 megs. Post an email address with your submission so that we can contact you if you’ve won and award you your prize!

Remember, this isn’t just a t-shirt design contest – this is a retro t-shirt design contest. Walk through a thrift store if you need inspiration. Ask anyone wearing a polo shirt what they think of your design – If they hate it, you’re probably on the right track!

The submission deadline is 11:59PM PST, Sunday October 11th. We’ll announce winners the following week – probably one from each “decade” (the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s). Feel free to take large liberties with the logo, taglines, etc. Good luck!

* Just kidding. We’re 12 today.

UPDATE: The winners have been announced!

You may remember Dream Machine from such sports as basketball, basketball, softball, and basketball.

But what you may NOT remember is that we got in trouble with our building when they saw our elevator lobby table tennis shenanigans.

And what you couldn’t possibly remember, is that Micah and I have been working on our game since then and now are officially USATT rated (771 and 720 respectively).

Which is why I’m pleased to introduce for the first time… Dream Machine Table Tennis!

What’s it to you?

Well, we’re headed to the $100,000 Hard Bat Classic this weekend in Vegas, and anybody who shows up to cheer (either of) us on will get $1 in DreamHost credit for every point each of us score.. THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE TOURNAMENT!

That could very well end up being THOUSANDS of dollars of DreamHost credit .. or very well end up being TENS of dollars of DreamHost credit!

To illustrate, I will now relay to you a little story of the LAST tournament we went to, less than a month ago…

The California State Open

The way USATT tournaments generally work is that everybody is grouped into four person round-robin contests, where everybody plays everybody else, and only the one winner advances to the “playoff” bracket.

When I showed up for my under-1100-rating tournament, I found my bracket on the board… and things didn’t look too good:

Jones, Josh 725

Lee, Kenneth 927

Liao, Hung Ju (Andrew) 844

Lu, David 958

Hmm, Jones vs. Lee, Liao, and Lu. Not to be prejudiced, but I was nervous.

And in fact, it wasn’t good… I ended up losing all three matches, although I did win one game at least vs. Ken.

Overall, it was still a lot of fun and afterwards I got everybody from our round robin together to take a picture to commemorate their victories:

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See you tomorrow at the Venetian!

They say you learn something every day, and although I’m pretty sure I didn’t learn anything on June 24th, 2003, I totally made up for it on March 13th, 2009 by learning TWO.

Maybe “they” just mean you learn something every day, on average.

The number one thing I learned yesterday was that if you don’t show up for the first leg of a round-trip ticket, airlines (at least AA, but I’m sure they all do) cancel your ENTIRE itinerary, with no money back!

Yeppo. I got my round-trip ticket on American (in-flight wifi!) two weeks ago to fly to New York for our second and final open house, and shortly after I booked it I realized my 9:30pm red-eye Wednesday night wouldn’t mesh too well with our 9pm Dream Machine season opener (a 40-62 loss).

It turned out it’d cost as much to change my ticket as booking a new one-way flight on Delta ($129) leaving at 11pm, so I just did that and didn’t bother to notify American at all.

Well, upon my attempt to check in online for my return flight, I found out that wasn’t necessarily the 100% correct course of action. Fortunately the friendly Indian call center guy was very clear; it would now cost me $449 to get on the return portion of my flight that I’d already paid $309 (round-trip) for!

Lucky you, you’ve already hit your learning quota for today!

So. I checked around and found out I could get a flight (through Atlanta) on AirTran for $159, and I booked that.

(Oh, a bonus thing I learned yesterday! On AirTran, they charge an additional $20 to get an emergency-row seat… okay, no big deal, lots of airlines do that now… BUT, they also charge an additional $6 JUST to pick your own seat AT ALL! If you opt out, they will just assign you a middle seat until the day you check in, at which time you can change it for free if there are any windows or aisles left! What’s next, charging to use the bathroom? Fortunately for me, I could immediately check in, saving myself $12 of uncertainty. And I didn’t have to go to the bathroom.)

When I got to Laguardia, I saw that my flight to Atlanta had been delayed 40 minutes. That made me a little nervous because my layover was only about an hour. However, another flight to Atlanta (it’s their hub) was almost done boarding … so I went to the customer service line and was going to see if I could get on that flight, when right as I was walking up the customer service guy announced on the pa, “Could the following customers on flight 339 come see me at gate B8, blah, blah, blah, Josh Jones, blah, blah!”

“I’m Josh Jones!” I shrieked!

Excellent. The guy, who had an African accent, took my boarding pass for 339 and handed me a new one for the flight about to depart; a first class one no less!

I was impressed that AirTran had gone to the trouble of figuring out who had a tight layover in Atlanta and automatically given them priority! I hadn’t even asked! Amazing.

Amazing indeed, I thought. Right up until I was about to hand my ticket to the lady at the gate, when I noticed it read “Josh JOHNS.”

I paused for a second, and considered just getting on as “Mr. Johns.” If was found out, I could always just play dumb! It wouldn’t have been that much of a stretch.

But then I glanced back over at the other gate and saw the guy that must have been the actual Josh Johns waiting patiently to tell the African-accented man that his name been called.

Dammit, I thought. There goes my connection to LA. I went over and handed the guy his ticket.

He was very appreciative! And, after explaining to the gate agent what had happened (and honestly the guy did pronounce JOHNS exactly like JONES), he was able to get me on that flight after all, with another first class ticket, seated directly next to my 20 year-old Georgian doppleganger, Josh Johns.

Which is why the number two thing I learned yesterday was: it pays to be (named) Josh Jones.

Happy New Year and all that Jazz!

Please try not to end up like Santa did at our holiday party last week!

Fortunately, Rudolph was there to guide his sleigh home.

Since the holiday season is upon us, all of us at DreamHost would like to wish everyone on the internets a very happy Thanksgiving.

Well, you know, so long as you live in a country that gets to celebrate it. Otherwise, we hope your Thursday is really nice.

Oh, and go easy on our Support Team, alright? Because while we’ll have people here, they’ll be a bit slower on account of the assorted foodstuffs in their belly.