This year I will be attending Blogworld in Las Vegas for the second year running.  I’d like to mention a few reasons why this show is really important as it is not always obvious with industry trade shows or for that matter internet technology events.

The thing that makes this trade show important is the opportunity to do with a number of other bloggers and people who touch the Internet world in a new media fashion. That’s unlike a lot of Web 2.0 hype, but what really means is that the people that you want to do business with, the people that can help you get attention, and the people that know how to achieve the goals that you’re striving for are going to be at this particular conference.

You can learn as much from the people that will be at the conference as you can from the actual sessions of the show itself. After all this is the Internet were talking about and most of the speakers are going to show for going to be preaching in explaining things that those people at the show already know. The speakers are just people that happen to be a little bit more successful at these individual practices or possibly further along in exercising these practices.

So I highly recommend this particular conference especially if networking is a strong point for you. If you know how to network with people, collaborate with people and brainstorm new ideas and projects then you’re going to get a lot out of this conference. If you’re a wallflower and you’re not very experienced at trade shows or if you’re not very good at talking to people and you may not get your money’s worth out of this conference at the hundred dollar level. However you could definitely get your value from the show again for the sessions that $3-$500 a pop.

Where will everyone be networking at the BlogWorld Expo?

Probably at the Tempo Bar downstairs in the Hilton, next door to the convention center.

So you’ll have to decide what the right level is for you, but the reality is that the opportunity is definitely there and I highly recommend. I say all this as I write this blog article from Myrtle Beach a few hours south of the Outer Banks. I’m from North Carolina these days myself a spending the weekend at the beach in South Carolina, and I’m writing this particular article while it away dishes and the vacation house were staying in. I’m using Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 10 WriteNow to write this article while I put these items away as the rest of us prepared to box dinner this evening.

I mention this because this is the type of thing that you’re not going to hear at any conference unless you actually talk to people that are doing this type of thing. You’re not going to a conference where they will tell you my Dragon NaturallySpeaking such an enjoy life while you’re working as a blogger. For great tips like that you actually have to talk to the people that do it and let it in day-to-day.

If you are into masochism then I highly recommend IPower Hosting.  They run one of the best hosting companies around designed to ruin your day and provide less than adequate service while trying to overcharge you at every turn. 

Today, their surprise attack came in the form of an automated email informing me that they would charge me $8.99 for domain privacy on an account that was renewed a month ago for domain registration and that had domain privacy specifically turned off!

To top things off, when I asked a help representative why I was being threatened with the new charge, she indicated that I had already been charged for it!

There are times, when I just think its impossible to win with these guys.  They just seem to make stuff completely up in their billing system.

The Help Representative from IPower Hosting: Hi Brett. My name is Melanie, how are you today?

Yours Truly: Hi, I just received an email from iPower indicating that I would be charged for something I am not enrolled in.

Yours Truly: I received this message

Yours Truly: Your “someplace.net” domain name has an August renewal date and is enrolled in our domain privacy service, which protects your identity by keeping your contact information from being published online. To ensure that someplace.net remains protected, we will automatically initiate a one-year renewal of the domain privacy service on August 29. We will charge $8.99 to the credit card we have on file for your account to renew this annual subscription. To review or update your credit card information, log in at: http://www.ipower.com/secureControl/EditCCInfo.bml ****************** INSTRUCTIONS FOR OPTING OUT ****************** If you do not want us to renew your domain privacy service on August 29, please log into your Support Console and submit a new request, indicating the domain from which you wish to remove domain privacy. BE SURE TO SUBMIT THIS REQUEST BY WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27, 5:00pm EDT, so we can process your opt-out request in time: http://www.ipower.com/member/sconsole/index.bml

Yours Truly: My domain someplace.net is not enrolled in domain privacy. I specifically opted out of it over a month ago.

The Help Representative from IPower Hosting: May I place you on hold while I review your question? It should take about 3-4 minutes. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.

The Help Representative from IPower Hosting:

Yours Truly: sure

The Help Representative from IPower Hosting: Thank you for holding.

The Help Representative from IPower Hosting: To protect your account from unauthorized changes, can you please verify for me the answer to the Security Question:

The Help Representative from IPower Hosting: What is your mother’s maiden name?

Yours Truly: ‘some name’

The Help Representative from IPower Hosting: Thank you for the authentication.

The Help Representative from IPower Hosting: I have checked your account and the Domain Privacy is already renewed for your domain.

Yours Truly: OK, well that raises 2 or 3 problems.

Yours Truly: 1. Why does my domain central show that it is turned off?

Yours Truly: 2. why am I receiving an email to charge me for it in 3 days?

Yours Truly: 3. if already renewed, why is my account showing an expiration date of 8/1

Yours Truly: correction 8/1/2008

The Help Representative from IPower Hosting: I have checked in the payment history and it is already paid.

The Help Representative from IPower Hosting: It is due on August 1, 2009.

Yours Truly: Yeah, I remember renewing it, but why am I being threatened with renewal again, along with turning on a service I don’t want and have turned off?

Yours Truly: you can see the email yourself above ^

The Help Representative from IPower Hosting: We have to ask our specialist to turn it off.

Yours Truly: can you clarify more? Does that mean, even after I turn off domain privacy on domain central, I then have to ask a specialist to do it?

Yours Truly: I have close to 100 accounts with you and that would be a major pain in the rear.

The Help Representative from IPower Hosting: Yes.

Yours Truly: Your serious! Then why do you even set the option up in domain central if the button doesn’t work?

The Help Representative from IPower Hosting: We have to tun off from backend.

The Help Representative from IPower Hosting: I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you.

Yours Truly: So is that why I was charged for domain privacy when I renewed, even though I specifically turned it off? How do I get a refund?

The Help Representative from IPower Hosting: It is already enabled and we cannot refund it.

Yours Truly: Well, I specifically disabled it before renewing.

Yours Truly: I want a refund. Its not my fault that you enabled it when someone forgot to do some work on the backend a month ago.

The Help Representative from IPower Hosting: Yes, I understand.

Yours Truly: So please process my refund.

The Help Representative from IPower Hosting: It is already enabled and we cannot refund it.

Yours Truly: You charged me for something that I did not order, specifically removed. You owe me the money, its your problem that you enabled it not mine.

Yours Truly: So get me a refund or I will file a complaint with the Attorney General.

Yours Truly: Its illegal to charge someone for something they did not order.

At that point, the help desk representative almost started to become helpful.  But ultimately, she punted telling me that a ticket would be created in the system to solve the problem, but would not tell me whether that involved giving me a refund or not.

Plus, it has now been 48 hours since that ticket was created and I have heard absolutely nothing from IPower on this issue.  I might as well be playing golf under Orlando golf rules, where by you automatically add 20 strokes to your game if you are under the age of 62 or have not spent more than $5,000 at an approved Orlando theme park.

This week, I came across a small but helpful place for yet more free photo hosting.

This service is provided by Nikon, who has a vested interest in providing a good customer experience for its customers of cameras.

They offer 2 gigabytes of free photo hosting space including the ability to upload and preview RAW files from the web.  If you need more photo hosting space, they charge $3 per month for the next 200 gigabytes.

Its not the best deal in the world, but when you are looking for freebies, every little bit can be useful.  You might not save enough money to buy a Harley or even used Harleys for that matter, but you might just save enough to buy some gloves or a tank of gas. 

The the United Kingdom hosting company known as one and one announced on Wednesday that it has established a new dedicated line of servers that features AMD processors large quotas of RAM which help database intensive applications such as WordPress run more efficiently and RAID one or RAID five technology.

Their pricing this at 69.99 pounds per month plus value-added tax. In addition for an extra 30 pounds per month they are offering a number of game servers or e-mail servers that provide additional value-added services to people looking for hosting solutions.

Google helped to disprove a popular urban legend, “that gmail is more reliable than other email hosting services.”

Tens if not hundreds of thousands of Gmail users this week experienced a severe service disruption. People were not able to retrieve their e-mail and cases some were not able to send e-mail and many even lost e-mail altogether.

This serves to disprove that popular urban legend that I’ve mentioned before because many people over the years has started to think that if Google hosts their e-mail, that’s about as reliable as things can get. After all Google spends billions on servers and maintenance tech support and everything else.

The fall is he in this hypotheses though lies in the fact that Google is notably terrible at customer service. They provide many free services that are excellent services and designed and built such that they will not require a great deal of maintenance, and Google lives up to that goal by not providing hardly any maintenance in the form of customer support.

So the next time you hear a Web 2.0 type of person talking about how much better Google Gmail is compared to other he now serves as the crash all the time, just remind them that Google Gmail is really no better than anybody else.  They can go whistle that tune of theirs at a set of wind chimes the next time Gmail crashes for a few days and Google officially describes it as a ‘Screwup’.

I used to pick up domains from the cheaper source possible.  Later when I was ready to develop a domain name into a site, I’d then turn to InMotion Hosting for my hosting and redirect the domain from wherever over to InMotion Hosting.

That worked great for several years and I saved a lot of money.  But over the last year or so, those great domain deals are not as good.  Even worse the hassle of dealing with the companies that offer them is just not worth it.

So the other day, when I needed to pick up a single domain for a future project, I turned to InMotion Hosting.  The price isn’t too bad, just $7.95 per year, which is only just a little more than what I’d pay about anywhere else these days.

Buying just a domain there is not exactly easy.  In fact they almost seem to discourage it.

Its buried at the bottom of this page, that tries to up-sell a hosting plan (which is in fact a good deal).

Once you get that far, you still have 2 more screens to click through, a car cover to remove and you have to dance a jig underwater before you actually see the price is $7.95. 

But hey, I understand that.  Their just trying to turn off domainers.  Each unto their own I guess.

They do have great deals on hosting, and that deal is a lot sweeter when you experience their awesome tech support, which makes their prices look like their free. 

Business Class Hosting by InMotion Hosting Plans Starting at Just $6.95/mo • Unlimited Disk Space • Unlimited Data Transfer • 90 Day Money Back Guarantee • True 24/7 Support Rated 3 Out of 3 Stars by CNET.com!