Caller: “Hello, is this Tech Support?”
Tech: “Yes, it is. How may I help you?”
Caller: “The cup holder on my PC is broken and I am within my warranty period. How do I go about getting that fixed?”
Tech: “I’m sorry, but did you say a cup holder?”
Caller: “Yes, it’s attached to the front of my computer.”
Tech: “Please excuse me if I seem a bit stumped, It’s because I am. Did you receive this as part of a promotional, at a trade show? How did you get this cup holder? Does it have any trademark on it?”
Caller: “It came with my computer, I don’t know anything about a promotional. It just has ’4X’ on it.”

At this point the Tech Rep had to mute the caller, because he couldn’t stand it. The caller had been using the load drawer of the CD-ROM drive as a cup holder, and snapped it off the drive!

*Operator is a British term, we call them System Administrators (or SysAdmins) here.

Spearheaded by rtraction, Orpheum is happy to join in the search for Canada’s Worst Charity Website (or CWCW, if you prefer). The rules are really simple and all laid out. Really what the CWCW contest is looking for are things like:

• Sites that look like they were built in the GeoCities era (or Tripod, Angelfire, Homestead, etc.)
• <blink> tags
• Scrolling marquees
• “Under Construction” images
• Clashing colours

And so on. We’re Canadian… we’re a generous bunch of folks, so chances are you know of at least one charity that you love, you support, but their website leaves a lot to be desired. Well, don’t worry! Now is your chance to help that charity win a $25,000 online makeover complete with a new website, new web hosting (that’ s us!), marketing services, and much more.

So hurry! Nominations end February 21 at 12pm Eastern!

Our Clustered Hosting Platform comes with a 100% uptime guarantee, and that’s exactly what we delivered in January. Pingdom checks orpheum.ca every 5 minutes to ensure we are up and running. orpheum.ca is hosted on the Clustered Hosting Platform along with our clients’ websites.

This report from New Relic shows how long pages take to render in the browsers of visitors from all of PHP-based websites Orpheum hosts. What you see here is that some websites take longer than others to load, and this has lots of variables baked into it like: webpage size, the visitor’s computing power, the visitor’s web browser, the visitor’s country, the size and length of any PHP code, and so on. Most of the time we’re doing pretty good, and this snapshot only accounts for the last 30 minutes.

So there you have it. A small peek into the happenings of a burgeoning web hosting company! We’ll produce a similar report for Feburary next month.

Suddenly the car stops, and the three engineers look at each other wondering what could be wrong.

The electrical engineer suggests stripping down the electronics of the car and trying to trace where a fault might have occurred.

The chemical engineeer suggests that maybe the fuel is becoming emulsified and getting blocked somewhere.

Then, the Microsoft engineer comes up with a suggestion. “Why don’t we close all the windows, get out, get back in, open the windows again, and maybe it’ll work?!”

The frog spoke up again and said, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will tell everyone how smart and brave you are and how you are my hero.” The man took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it, and returned it to his pocket.

The frog spoke up again and said, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will be your loving companion for an entire week.” The man took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it, and returned it to his pocket.

The frog then cried out, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I’ll stay with you for a year and do ANYTHING you want.” Again the man took the frog out, smiled at it, and put it back into his pocket.

Finally, the frog asked, “What is the matter? I’ve told you I’m a beautiful princess, that I’ll stay with you for a year and do anything you want. Why won’t you kiss me?”

The man said, “Look, I’m a computer programmer. I don’t have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog is cool.”

A .PRO domain is the perfect way to establish a professional identity and connect with your client base online. In a competitive job market, stand out with a .PRO domain.

.PRO domains are:

• Professional
• Competitive
• Unique

Create a competitive edge in the job market by choosing a .PRO domain to build your professional online identity. In fact, only licensed professionals, businesses and organizations are eligible to register .PRO domains. And because .PRO is exclusively for registration by the professional community, using a .PRO TLD automatically identifies the registrant to their customer base as an accredited expert in their field.

The best part is that the .PRO domain is international! The letters PRO begin the word professional in a lot of different languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Romanian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Maltese, Lithuanian, Latvian, Indonesian, Galician, Filipino, Estonian, Dutch, Danish, Croatian, Catalan, and Albanian.

Since .PRO is a TLD exclusively reserved for use by the professional community, it is preferred by licensed professionals in fields such as:

• Medicine
• Real estate
• Consulting
• Engineering
• Internet
• Law
• IT

Your .PRO domain is a great way to connect with your client base. Use your .PRO domain to:

• Promote a business
• As a digital calling card
• As a commerce site
• Blog

And until February 15, 2012 .PRO domains are only $9 for the first year! After this promotion expires, the price will increase to its regular $14 per year.

The IT Engineer and the Manager

A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below.

He lowers the balloon further and shouts, “Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?”

The man below says, “Yes, you’re in a hot air balloon, hovering 30 feet above this field.”

“You must be in IT,” says the balloonist.

“I am,” replies the man. “How did you know?”

“Well,” says the balloonist, “everything you have told me is technically correct, but it’s of no use to anyone.”

The man below says, “You must be in management.”

“I am,” replies the balloonist, “but how did you know?”

“Well,” says the man, “you don’t know where you are, or where you’re going, but you expect me to be able to help. You’re in the same position you were in before we met, but now it’s my fault.”

Welcome to the new year. 2011 was a great year for Orpheum as we began offering domain registration, and moved our clients to faster, more powerful servers. It was a banner year, and we’re ready for an even better 2012!

With that, I would like to formally introduce our new IP-based voice services to you. We have two distinct offerings to help your business save money, increase communication flexibility, and drive more value out of your Internet connection.

First, a quick primer. Voice over IP (VoIP) has been around for quite some time now, and it allows you to replace your existing, high cost land lines with more efficient, less expensive Internet-based lines.

But, of course, your business needs enterprise-grade VoIP. You need the confidence that you and your customers can discuss critical details without worrying about your phone line. Orpheum is very happy to announce that we’re delivering just that, at a fraction of the cost of traditional land lines.

For just $25 per month, you can replace your land line with an Orpheum Business iVoice line, saving your business money, bringing additional flexibility, and unlimited long distance within Canada and the USA. Click here for more details about Business iVoice now.

In addition to Business iVoice, Orpheum now offers a replacement for your legacy phone system. Business hPBX is a virtual PBX, hosted and maintained by Orpheum, giving your business the ability to grow, live long, and prosper without expensive changes to a traditional, on-premise phone system.

Each employee can have their own extension and direct number, along with time saving features like Automated Attendant, Conferencing, Find Me-Follow Me, web-based administration tools, and much, much more! Business hPBX is just $25 per month for one number/extension, with discounts for organizations with additional employees.

We hope you’ll contact us and ask any questions you may have about either iVoice or hPBX, and that we can let you focus on making your business grow… not on paying the phone company!

Introducing new bigger, better hosting plans! Our Clustered Web Hosting plans have all been expanded and increased, with disk space and bandwidth allotments doubled, tripled and even quadrupled! Web 1 is now Web 2, Web 5 is now Web 10, but our new high end plan, Web 100, gives you 100GB of disk space and 1TB of bandwidth each month!

We’re also bringing our own email hosting effective immediately. Clients no longer have to use Google Apps – instead, we’re giving you the choice of hosting email on Orpheum’s servers or we can still setup Google Apps for you absolutely free of charge. The default now is to host your email on our servers, but that’s easily changed just by asking!

The best part? Through all of this change and increase in features and functionality, we’ve kept our prices the same. Web 2 is still just $6 per month, and Web 100 is just $21 per month. We love our customers and just couldn’t wait to unleash some goodness on them!

Treat your website right. Host with Orpheum.

- Derek

That’s a $5 discount off each .CA! Now, you may be asking, why .CA? Well…

The benefits of a .CA domain

.CA is a globally recognized and trusted domain extension that identifies your connection to Canada.

Why choose a .CA?

• .CA is Canada’s Internet identity, reserved for Canadians, recognized and trusted worldwide.
• Customers will have a short .CA name that says they’re Canadian, not a long .COM name that says they’re one of almost 70 million organizations that most Canadians view as American!
• Canadian customers want to buy from Canadian companies.
• .CA domain names are trusted because they are kept safe and secure in an independent national registry.

Give your Canadian business a leg up over generic .NET and .COM domains by securing your .CA today. Hurry, this special promotion ends October 31, 2011!

*Renewals and transfers not eligible for this promotion. Sorry!