If you check out basically any technology-related website this week (and many non tech-related sites as well) you will find information relating to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property, Protect IP Act (PIPA).  This proposed legislation (which has, for now, been avoided) would not only halt online piracy, it would take away a whole lot of online freedom too.

Sure, I believe that protecting intellectual property is important. Many artists, entertainers and the companies that employ them don’t want consumers getting their products for free. This is understandable. We all need to make a living. But we can’t protect intellectual property on the Internet by universally censoring content. Before I go any further, let’s explore what PIPA and SOPA really are.

PIPA

PIPA was first introduced by Senators Patrick Leahy, Orrin Hatch, and Chuck Grassley. PIPA would give the government and U.S. corporations the right to seek legal action with any website they determine has allowed copyright infringement. This extremely loosely-defined legislation could potentially:

- Force Internet providers to block websites on their networks.
- Force advertisers on “infringing” websites to pull their ads.
- Seek legal action by suing blogs, search engines, directories or any other site on the internet.

Goodbye, User-Generated Content

PIPA would create a perilous online climate for any website. It would encourage harsh restrictions on user content, effectively censoring any type of user-generated participation. This means user-generated writing, videos, audio files… ANYTHING. The fact is, user-generated content is a huge part of what makes the Internet so rich. If PIPA passes, we will lose our free forum. This will have wide-reaching implications for social behaviors and social control.

SOPA

SOPA would work in conjunction with PIPA. It would allow:

- The U.S. Attorney General to seek court orders to force search engines, DNS providers, advertisers and more to sever contact with any “offending” websites or content.
- Private corporations to create their own hit lists of websites they feel are breaking their copyright policies, for ANY REASON. Read: legal mafia. The companies would be able to contact a website’s provider directly to sever service within five days.

Sayonara, Innovation

Not only would these bills severely restrict user-generated content, they would stifle innovation. Developers aren’t going to experiment with new ways of distributing content if they are constantly under threat of take-down. Think about the big sites we all use today: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, DropBox… none of these would have made it a week under PIPA and SOPA.

Ridiculous Consequences

Imagine this scenario: a child makes a video of herself singing a popular song and posts it to the Internet. That child could be responsible for the blackout of YouTube. That child and her family could face legal action. They could face fines in the millions! Is this the kind of Internet we want?

We are finally starting to move in to our new data center home! We’ve powered up and started the process of migrating our servers and decorating our offices. After so much anticipation, it hardly feels real! We’re all in high spirits and the move is going smoothly without any disruptions in service.

Once we’re all settled in, I’ll take you on a virtual tour of the space. Highlights will include the ironclad vault, the fishbowl conference room and the data center floor where the magic happens!

We’re really looking forward to meeting our neighbors in the bustling town of Latham. We’re also looking forward to all the delicious lunch options, just a hop away from our front door! Speaking of which, it might be time to dust off the treadmill

This month sees the launch of our new TurnKeySSL, a robust SSL solution you can activate with one click! In today’s marketplace, SSL certificates are a necessity. Customers have come to recognize that SSL certificates equal privacy and security and an increasing number of them won’t shop online without the seal.  TurnKeySSL takes this one step further, now bundling our brand new web site malware scaning tool for your web site with our professional SSL certificates!

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with SSL, SSL stands for “Secure Sockets Layer,” a protocol designed to enable applications to transmit information securely back and forth over the internet. Many applications you likely use every day (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, SFTP and hundreds more) are equipped to automatically receive SSL connections. However, if you run your own website and have tried to setup an SSL certificate in the past, you know how complicated and confusing the process can be to get your web applications to establish a secure SSL connection.    Enter: TurnKeySSL the easiest to install SSL certificate available today, with 1-click technology to install on any web site!

Signing up for TurnKeySSL is fast: we don’t require any paperwork to issue your SSL certificate. We issue TurnKeySSL certificates in minutes via our secure website. We have several plans to suit your needs, from our instant 1-click issuance SSL to our Extended Validation plan that comes with the green bar–the same secure seal used by Verisign, Paypal, and all the major shopping sites on the Internet today.  In the potentially perilous online marketplace, visible security means increased sales!

TurnKeySSL certificates come with a clickable secure site seal, malware scanning and multi-year savings. We even offer the brand new one-click SSL creating a simple and  easy way to deploy an SSL certificate on your web site today.

Check out our TurnKeySSL website to learn more:
http://turnkeyssl.com

The suspense is killing us! We just welcomed our brand new 16,000 lb generator that will provide the 100% uptime we guarantee alongside superior performance! The installation was really something to see, with cranes and people scuttling about, and we can barely contain our excitement. Ok, so we’re not trying that hard, so sue us. We are thrilled to report that the generator installation went without a hitch and it is now snugly nestled in its new home.

Beyond the obvious benefits of the new data center (increased capacity by 12,000 servers, green-friendly efficiency, multiple high-speed fiber optic connections and fancy biometric security) we are also very excited about the user-friendliness of the space. The building, formerly a US Postal building, offers great office space, a loading dock, a beautiful (and quite large) server-room floor, and, perhaps coolest of all, a vault! The vault offers literal iron-clad security! We’ll be offering fully-managed colocation suites for those looking for true physical and virtual security.

More updates are coming soon as we put the finishing touches on the space. We can’t wait to get settled and to give you a virtual tour! Stay tuned .

We are very excited to announce the near completion of our new data center in Latham, New York! The new building is undergoing a few finishing touches as we get ready to move on in. We’ve got our new 16,000 lb generator and we’re just waiting on our racks and the decorators!

What does this mean for you? Well, it means we will be able expand in New York’s Tech Valley as demand continues to grow for affordable, web-enabled applications and IT services. It means we will be a stronger, larger company, expanding our capacity by 12,000 servers. It means we will be able to continue to deliver green-friendly service with multiple high-speed fiber optic connections all protected by state-of-the-art video surveillance systems and biometric security protocols. In short: it means we will be able to serve you better, and to bring you new technologies alongside the service and reliability you’ve come to expect.

The new data center is housed in a former federal government building which will protect our infrastructure behind 1-foot-thick concrete walls, built to federal government specifications. We will make the most of this secure space by offering fully-managed colocation suites for businesses looking for secure, reliable connectivity for their own servers and equipment.

We will also be bringing additional staff to the new building, helping bring jobs to the region. The tier-1 data center will be consistent with our industry-leading standards for power availability, environmental control, high-performance web application hosting and 100% network uptime.

Watch this space for updates! More coming soon.

TurnKey made the local news recently with our involvement in the Freihofer’s Community Walk and the Freihofer’s Run for Women. The Freihofer’s Community Walk is a fantastic fundraising event held every year in downtown Albany to raise money for regional charities. This year there were 46 participating charities and the walk raised $45,630. The Freihofer’s Run for Women is an annual 5K run in downtown Albany that brings in elite runners from all over the world. Many of the participating charities are involved in both the walk and the run. These were spectacular events to be a part of and we were proud to be able to participate.

This year, we have been working to become more involved in the community here in the Capital Region and these events seemed like the perfect opportunity for us to get out there. While we are all big sports fans here at TurnKey, the most exciting part of the events for us was the huge boost they gave our local charities. A few weeks before the events we held a breakfast for local non-profits at the Colonie Commons and had a great turnout with 75 attendees. The breakfast was a fantastic opportunity for us to meet the people we’d be working with and to learn about the many charitable organizations in the Capital Region. It also really helped us focus our efforts so that we could make the most out of the event for our community. 

We found the best way for us to help out was to donate an online giving portal to each of the charities involved in the events. Our goal was to help streamline the donation process while increasing the visibility of the organizations involved. The donations were truly humbling this year and we hope our giving portal was a small part of the reason for that.

Check out our local media’s coverage of our involvement in the Freihofer’s Run for Women and the Freihofer’s Walk.

We saw such success with these events that we will continue to donate our online giving portals to local charities for their year-round fundraising efforts. Congratulations to all of the athletes who participated this year!

On June 13th, TurnKey Internet donated an iPad II to the Southern Saratoga Chamber of Commerce’s Spring Classic Golf Tournament at the Saratoga Spa Golf Course. The tournament is an annual networking event that brings together area businesses for a day of golfing and prizes. This year the competition was fierce and we were there to watch as Jack Feyrer hit closest to the pin, winning the iPad II.

Jack Feyrer is Vice President of Trading for Holcim Trading, one of the world’s leading suppliers of cement and aggregates. Feyrer plans on using his new iPad to connect to his TurnKey Virtual Desktop when he travels across the country to the many Holcim Trading ports. Holcim will also be trying out Voxwire Web Conferencing to hold online meetings with their internationally-based staff and customers. We’re excited to see how our products and services can help make Jack Feyrer’s life easier on the road.

Jack Feyrer with his new iPad II

This event was a great opportunity to get out on the green and have a whole lot of fun while making some new connections with the local business community. We’ve been working to make TurnKey a community company, something that we feel is often overlooked by web hosting and SaaS companies who focus on online efforts. We see the value in establishing and fostering local ties as well as a global ones, and events like these are a big part of how we build our local relationships to become involved in the happenings in our own backyard. We believe it is possible to be a community company even if your products are designed for the virtual world.

As the sponsor of the closest to the pin contest Turnkey manned the tee box with its own representative, online sales manager Nick Molik (check out our next blog post for his Staff Interview.) Nick greeted each foursome as they came to the tee box by telling them about the iPad contest for the closest to the pin winner. Nick, always the consummate sales person, used the opportunity to demonstrate how the iPad can access the Virtual Turnkey Desk even from the golf course. Nick explained afterwards that many people were extremely interested in the Virtual Desktop concept while others were strictly there for a day of fun and golf. Nick had a great time chatting with everyone and is looking forward to next year!

Today I am excited to announce the release of our newest product: Windows 2008 hosting with ColdFusion 9 (with full ASP/ASP.net support). Our dedicated Microsoft SQL Windows 2008 servers come packed with the latest IIS 7, optimized with the latest security and performance settings. The Plesk 10 control panel allows for easy set up and management of websites, databases, email and web applications.

ColdFusion 9 is the development platform of choice for many, and for good reason. ColdFusion has a shallow learning curve, it’s easy to troubleshoot and it’s widely supported. It also integrates with many applications and allows developers to condense complex business logic into fewer lines of code. It is a dynamic platform with an incredible range of functionality.

These packages also include Enterprise e-mail with an integrated SmarterMail system; SiteBuilder website building software to quickly and easily create fully-functional websites on the fly; a free SSL certificate ($69 value); R1Soft Continuous Data Protection; free Voxwire web conferencing, webinar and training rooms; and many more bonus software freebies.

Our Windows 2008 packages with ColdFusion 9 start at just $19/month.

Learn more!

This interview first appeared in the Troy Record, March 10, 2011.

Where did the name TurnKey come from?

A The “TurnKey” name came from our core business concept — providing an easy to use, complete, and ready-to-go solution for some specific need or problem. I came up with it initially when starting out as a consulting company, since the idea was to have our name convey the product at the same time.

What is TurnKey’s mission?

A Our mission is to provide easy to use (“TurnKey”) hosted service solutions that help businesses reduce information technology costs and keep focused on what they do best — running their businesses. Our secret sauce has always been that we make information technology as easy to access as possible and avoid complicated computer hardware or confusing software setup.

Did you start TurnKey yourself?

A Yes, I started TurnKey Internet by myself in 1999 as a consulting business after selling my share of the regional Internet provider, Global 2000 Communications. In 2002, TurnKey Internet evolved from a consulting company into an Internet service provider that directly sold IT hosted services to business clients in need of websites, email solutions and other communication services.

What is The Cloud and how can regional companies benefit from using it?

A The cloud, at its most simple form, is a green-friendly, cost-effective way of providing Information Technology to businesses. The cloud lets you take physical computers and software that traditionally would be in your home or office and replace them with lower-cost, green friendly virtual systems that reside in a datacenter somewhere out in the Internet. The green-friendly environment of a properly run data center provides cost savings, while allowing the computing needs of a business to be more efficient, accessible and secure.

Talk about your pending new office expansion. Do you foresee outgrowing that space eventually?

A Last year we purchased the vacant US Post Office building at 175 Old Loudon Road in Latham, and have been retrofitting it for use as a high-tech datacenter. Once completed later this year, the new building will serve as our primary headquarters for staff, and more than 8,000-square-feet of datacenter space. We had such tremendous growth last year, with a 67 percent year-over-year revenue growth, that we already outgrew the power service of the new building before moving in. That growth has caused a six-month delay in our retrofitting plans for additional power service to be brought to the building. We anticipate filling this datacenter within three to five years, and setting up our next datacenter in the capital region to expand further from there.

AngryBirdsNest.com, the world’s #1 fan site for popular iPhone video game App Angry Birds, has selected TurnKey Internet for their IT needs. The decision reflects our pricing, performance and support. AngryBirdsNest.com will utilize our services to increase speed and capacity going forward.

We are thrilled to be able to welcome AngryBirdsNest.com. We’re all big fans of the game here in the office, and have been using the fan site independently to keep up-to-date on game developments. It’s been a geek-out for us to have the opportunity to do what we do for a site we admire, and we wanted to share our excitement with you!

Even more exciting is the increase in traffic AngryBirdsNest.com has seen since they came on board. A word from owner and operator Greg Shepherd:

“At AngryBirdsNest.com, we put our users first, so our #1 objective is making sure the site is stable and quick to load. With the site continuing to grow we quickly maxed out the capabilities of our previous host. I turned to TurnKey Internet because they were able to provide us with instant capacity at an amazing value to keep up with the demands of hosting the #1 Angry Birds fan site.”

If you like Angry Birds (and who doesn’t?) check out Greg’s site. It’s chock full of Angry Birds information, from walk-throughs of levels to downloads to a forum for discussing your experience with Angry Birds with like-minded gamers.