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(Gawkwire.com) — Applied Innovations today announced the deployment of Applied I Labs —a unique hosting environment where customers can gain early access to experimental technologies and beta programs well in advance of formal release. Applied I Labs launched just in time to support the Microsoft WebMatrix Beta which was soft-launched yesterday to the technical community.
“We wanted to roll out Applied I Labs in parallel with some compelling offer such as the WebMatrix Beta,” stated Jess Coburn, founder and CEO of Applied Innovations. “This is exactly the type of event Applied I Labs was designed for: an open invitation to our customers and the development community to experience and participate in shaping a new platform, technology, application or program. With Applied I Labs, the server is independent and isolated, so it’s a secure environment to explore and test freely.”
A longtime Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and exclusive Windows platform web hoster, Applied Innovations was selected as one of the handful of exclusive hosting partners for the WebMatrix Beta Program. Applied Innovations is offering free hosting to all Beta participants from now until the formal launch of WebMatrix, slated for January 2011. Space is limited in the Beta program, so interested parties are encouraged to sign up early.
What is WebMatrix?
Seamless, small and FREE, WebMatrix features a complete web dev stack that installs in minutes and elegantly presents a web server, database and programming frameworks in an integrated experience. WebMatrix will streamline the coding, testing and deployment of any ASP.net or PHP website. It also dovetails with all of the most popular open source apps such as DotNetNuke, Umbraco, WordPress and Joomla. Running right on the desktop, WebMatrix makes the transition from development to production smooth and seamless by utilizing the same powerful web server and programming environment that runs websites on the Internet.
“WebMatrix is a task-focused tool that is designed to make it really easy to get started with web development,” reported Seth Guthrie in his July 6, 2010 blog entry. “It minimizes the number of concepts someone needs to learn in order to get simple things done, and includes and integrates all of the pieces necessary to quickly build Web sites.”
More About WebMatrix Beta
Through the WebMatrix Beta Program, Applied Innovations and Microsoft are offering early adopters a unique opportunity to experience WebMatrix months in advance of the formal Release. The free Beta program is open to anyone, and will give users a chance to see for themselves how easily WebMatrix will allow them to integrate their overall workflow, seamlessly develop applications and use free open source community apps. Moreover, Beta program participants will be hosted for free by Applied Innovations for the duration of the program.
“We’re delighted Applied Innovations was chosen to support the WebMatrix Beta program,” said Coburn. “It is a validation of our partnership with Microsoft and our commitment to deliver the most innovative tools and technologies for customers seeking to stay ahead of the curve.”
“Applied Innovations recently partnered with Microsoft to provide a year of managed Windows VPS hosting to web development and design companies participating in the WebsiteSpark program,” continued Coburn. “WebsiteSpark provides tools and technologies to build sites and applications, as well as business development programs, support and training to help ensure adoption and success.”
About Applied Innovations, Inc.
Based in Boca Raton, Florida, Applied Innovations is a Microsoft Gold Certified hosting provider specializing in Windows hosting since 1999. Promising superior performance, innovative world-class hosting services and Total Customer Satisfaction at highly competitive rates, Applied Innovations has hosted thousands of domains for small to medium sized businesses worldwide. Applied Innovations has developed a reputation for implementing the latest hosting technologies as soon as they become available, offering customers a cutting-edge Windows hosting experience for PHP, .Net, eCommerce and CMS applications; business, personal, professional and novice customers alike.
One of the first and most annoying things that can happen to a new web site owner is being blasted with spam. There is a dilemma presented when wanting to have potential customers or clients contact you or your company. Either your email has to be publicly posted or you will need to enable a form to allow quick and easy contact. When you do implement either choice, spammers will come and they will do as much damage as is possible.
Email link – bad idea
The first thing that should be done is to toss out the idea of publicly placing your email address in any form that can be clicked as a link. Using a linked email address publicly is an open invitation to spammers. Nothing can be more unpleasant than having to start off your business day wading through hundreds upon hundreds of spam content in your email in-box. If you must use this route, simply place your email in text only – this will make it harder for a potential spammer as they will have to physically copy and paste your address into any email. Inconvenience is the bane of the spammer.
Contact form – can be attacked
If you’ve decided to place a contact form anywhere within your web site, you’ll want to enable some type of security to ensure that an actual human is utilizing the form. This sounds simple enough because, after all, the purpose of the form is to gather human information. However, most email forms have a standard “name”, “email”, “subject”, “content” style to them that is easily recognized and exploited by spammers. Using this standard information, spammers use automated systems to attack a contact form – computer to computer. What can stump them is requiring something that only a human can input or answer and that isn’t part of the standard email form. This is where Captcha comes in.
Contact form with Captcha – better idea
Captcha is a type of test that is used to ensure human interaction. The premise behind Captcha is that computers should not be able to solve something that requires human input. The very early implementations of Captcha were simple generations of a word or series of letters with some small amount of warping. However, spammers quickly adjusted to this warping and this initial Captcha implementation had to be abandoned. Modern Captcha uses two to three regular words that are segmented and have lines through the words making it much more difficult to automatically guess via a computer system.
This all culminates into a small bit of either PHP or Javascript that is placed within your form before the submit button coding. After filling out the rest of the form, a user must then enter the correct words generated within the Captcha coding. You can set the form to lock out a user after a certain number of errors thus staving off the possible attack of spammers for yet another day.
Conclusion
Of course, the simplest way to avoid spammers at all is by not allowing any sort of email contact within your site. But this is not a feasible option – after all, you have your web site online for the purpose of contacting new and old customers or clients. So, before putting your email form online, use a bit of quick security and incorporate Captcha.
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