As part of our participation in the One Web Day project, I thought it would be interesting to talk to some of our people about one of Tucows’ core values: we believe that the Internet is the greatest agent for positive change the world has ever seen. I asked around to see what the greatest change the Internet had made in the lives of our employees. Here are some of the responses:

Bill Sweetman: I apparently have an “inner teacher” so I love to share my passion and expertise, and the Internet allowed me to do that on a global scale in a highly efficient manner. Before the Internet, I could only reach people in my immediate geographical vicinity. Now I hear from people all around the world who say they have benefitted from reading my blog, listening to my podcast, or visiting one of my web sites. Bill Sweetman is the General Manager of the Tucows Domain Portfolio.


Stacy Reed: Besides the obvious benefits of having a world of knowledge at my fingertips, the biggest changes the Internet has made in my life have been personal in nature. For instance, I can thank the Internet for giving me a humbled ego that desires the knowledge of truth over the desire to always be right, as well as a greater appreciation of our global cultural differences, a bad case of carpal tunnel and a slightly larger arse. Stacy Reed is a software librarian with Tucows.


Adam Elliot: The main thing the Internet did to change my life was to give me a job! I started tech support for an ISP back around 1996 or 1997 and have worked in the Internet industry ever since. The .com bubble burst when I had a whack of stock options from a buy-out of my former ISP by a huge international ISP which afforded me my first-ever sabbatical, and now I’m working at Tucows as a Credit Card Fraud Specialist which has opened even more doors for me careerwise. I love my job, and I feel proud to be an “Internet Superhero.” It’s an immensely gratifying job. People whom I inform about credit card fraud against them often call me back weeks, even months later, to thank me again for notifying them before they found out from any other source, thus saving them even more identity theft damage. I give all my friends great Internet advice and educate them about Internet fraud so they don’t fall victim themselves. It’s been a great ride so far! Adam Elliot is a fraud control officer with DomainDirect.


Kari Dykes: I got stoked on the Internet the first time I IM’ed a friend across the country in the mid-90s, when keeping in touch was the main reason the ‘Information Superhighway’ and I got along. Almost 15 years later, I do everything online; but now and then I’m still surprised by what it can do. In 2006, I hooked up with an organization called Kiva that uses the Internet to connect micro-lenders with entrepreneurs in developing countries. Because of Kiva’s online business structure, overhead is kept to a minimum and admin fees are voluntary for lenders. The money that’s loaned to people is tracked in an online portfolio and returned to the lender through an online refund when the loan is paid back. Plus you can email the business owners to track their progress and growth. Did I mention you can also use it to shamelessly promote good causes you believe in? Kari Dykes is the Customer Success Manager for OpenSRS.


Kevin Hartmann: Yesterday, I gave one of my friends the directions to my housewarming party. I didn’t give her the directions over the phone, like I might have 20 years ago. Instead, I emailed her the invitation, along with a web link to an online map, complete with colour satellite photographs of my house. That map is so detailed that you can see the colour of the cars parked along the side of the roadway on the day the photos were taken, and all the shortcuts through the back alleys are clear and obvious. I couldn’t do that when I was young. Kevin Hartmann is a software developer with Tucows.


Sharon O’Rourke: As a part time ‘mature’ student at university and a full time executive assistant, the impact the Internet has had on my life is almost immeasurable. At work I can book travel - flights, hotel, car - the works without picking up the phone or leaving my desk. I can order office supplies, arrange offsite meetings, find answers to almost any request my boss can make - the Internet makes it all possible. On a personal level, at university the Internet is an invaluable tool - I can do research from home, find articles and books online and if they’re not online, then I can use the Internet to reserve them at the library. And I have found old friends and classmates on social networks and can now keep in touch in a way that was simply not possible ten years ago. I have to tell you, I’m a fan. I love the Internet. Sharon O’Rourke is an Executive Assistant with Tucows.


Nabil Altai: On a personal note, since 2003 I have had more chances for staying in contact with some members of my family in Baghdad through the Internet, instant messenger, email, etc. Without the Internet I would have been at the mercy of the telephone network and lines in Iraq, and pay for my phone calls. I also have family members in a few countries that I keep in touch with mainly through the Internet. Nabil Altai is a data warehouse analyst and developer with Tucows.


Jody Stocks: I’d have to say that the biggest change the internet has wrought in my life is…banking.

Consider what we used to do in a given month:

• flurry of bills arrive in the mail. I start writing cheques and noting them in my account book.
• oops - ran out of cheques. Call up (and then pick up) some more cheques.
• now, into the envelopes. Hey - I actually have enough envelopes!
• …but not enough stamps. Gotta go to the post office.
• Do I have enough in my account to do the grocery shopping? Let’s stop at an ATM and find out.
• Wow - where did the money go? Transfer some more in and we’ll do the forensics when we get the statements.
• Speaking of forensics, check out this credit card bill we got!! If I’d known we’d put THAT on credit, I’d have moved money differently.
• OK - now we have the statements and know where the money needs to go. Let’s go to the bank and make the 7 transfers we need to do to set things to right.

Ouch. I can’t imagine going back. Now, I don’t need to even do half the stuff up there and the other half takes up about 10 minutes of computer work each month, with no waiting in line or anything. Jody Stocks is the Director of Software Engineering at Tucows.

Ken Schafer: Well, I owe pretty much my entire professional career to the Internet. Over the last fifteen years I haven’t had one job that existed when I graduated from university.

But the biggest change I’ve seen has been the ability of my mother - who is now almost 88 years old - to use email and instant messaging to stay actively engaged in our lives and the lives of her grandchildren. She was born before radio, TV and even phones were common and here she is popping up on my desktop at work to see if I’m getting enough sleep and taking good care of the kids! Ken Schafer is the Vice President of Marketing and Product Management for Tucows.


Claire Lam: As any technologist would say, you can never be too rich or too thin and you should never live without the Internet. The Internet has affected my life tremendously. First of all, it’s a huge addiction of mine, and going on an Internet “fast” would be a difficult endeavor. Secondly, it’s simplified communication and truly connected the world together. I remember being 10 years old; while my friends were outside playing in the sun, I was sitting at home logged onto CompuServe through my 14.4 Global Village modem, typing on a black and white terminal and watching lines go across the screen. Today, I’m doing the same thing but on a grander scale. The online community is a phenomenon, allowing us to archive our life histories in words and pictures. The Internet has changed my view of life by giving me diverse points of view, made me find love, lose love and offer new ideas that makes the Internet media so rich today. Claire Lam is the Manager of Implementation Services for Tucows.


Heather Leson: Carleton University had Freenet when I started school. I immediately got an account and was hooked. Being a library girl, I quickly realized that my dream to have information at my fingertips was just a website away. Internet access and availability is quickly becoming an essential service. When I think about the wonderful projects out there such as OLPC or Little Geeks, I can only dream that anyone who ever wants to learn or explore can travel online much like a library. The Internet is full of opportunity and big dreams. We really are becoming Pico Iyer’s global citizens when the boundaries are only a connection away. Heather Leson is the Customer Communications Specialist for OpenSRS.


Chris Mercer: The Internet has changed the way I’m able to consume media and absorb information. Before the age of the Internet, it was difficult to get instant answers to questions and to experience different points of view on a given topic. This also includes information in the form of media and being able to send and receive music, videos, and photos all over the world. This ability has allowed us to discover potential interests that otherwise may have gone unnoticed, especially if you lived in an area where your social circle didn’t introduce you to those kinds of media. In short, the Internet has given each of us the ability to share our perspectives and interests with the world and to find others who might share our personal tastes. Long gone are the days of faxing photos and making mixtapes. Chris Mercer is a Business Development Manager with OpenSRS.

We’d love to hear some of your stories. How has the Internet changed your life? Post a comment and let us know!

In honor of One Web Day, taking place on Monday September 22nd, we spoke to Tucows President and CEO Elliot Noss about one of our company’s core values: “The Internet is the greatest agent for positive change the world has ever seen.”

And then we asked him how the Internet had changed his own life:

We’ll be featuring stories from a number of our employees on One Web Day on Monday. How has your own life changed because of the Internet? Post a comment below.

One Web Day is being celebrated on Monday September 22nd and as part of our participation, I thought I’d point to some of the great work being done by Canadians, either on issues that affect the Internet or using the Internet to do some good locally and around the world.

Fair Copyright for Canada (Ottawa) - Law professor Michael Geist has been a tireless crusader for reasonable copyright laws in this country and he’s taken his opposition to the latest proposed legislation, Bill C-61, to many places both offline and online. His Facebook group has attracted more than 90,000 people and has spawned local chapters right across Canada. His use of the the Internet to educate and inspire ordinary people about a fairly dry issue has been exemplary. By framing this legal and political issue in terms that individual citizens can understand, he’s creating a grassroots organization that will undoubtedly have a voice in whatever legislation does end up becoming law in this country.

Little Geeks (Toronto) - Andy Walker created the Little Geeks Foundation in 2006 in order to help get computers into the hands of children who would otherwise not have access to them. People can donate their old computers and Little Geeks volunteers refurbish them, deliver them and set up software and even Internet access. It’s a great way to help young people access the technology tools they’ll need to succeed.

Give Meaning (Vancouver) - Tom Williams created Give Meaning in 2004 to help non-profit organizations benefit from the incredible power of the Internet. The service hosts fundraising pages for charities, non-profits and grassroots projects. By breaking down barriers between donors and worthy causes, Give Meaning is helping organizations who may not have technical expertise or resources to engage people online.

Akoha (Montreal) - Austin Hill and Alex Eberts are long-time friends and entrepreneurs who were inspired by attending a TED conference to create a new type of game where playing could actually help make the world a better place. Using the slogan “Play it Forward,” they’re creating a system that combines the power of play and the social nature of communities in order to achieve positive social goals. The game is currently in beta and accepting new players. Learn more here.

I’m sure this is just a small sample of all the great stuff that’s happening in Canada. Do you know any other worthy Canadian examples of people using the power of the Internet to do good deeds? Post in the comments below.

Since we’re participating this year in One Web Day (which takes place on Monday September 22nd), I thought I should spend a little bit of time discussing the project and its aims.

One Web Day was started in 2006 by Susan Crawford, a professor of law specializing in Internet issues at the University of Michigan. Using Earth Day as her inspiration, she decided that this now-vital part of the infrastructure of our daily lives needed an event focused on both supporting and celebrating it as well as advocating for its protection.

Crawford explains, “Peoples’ lives now are as dependent on the Internet as they are on the basics like roads, energy supplies and running water. We can no longer take that for granted and we must advocate for the Internet politically, and support its vitality personally.”

On the day itself, there will be both online and offline events taking place all over the world, with large events taking place in New York, Washington, San Francisco, Chicago and Cleveland, as well as in various international cities. A number of Internet superstars are supporting the event, including Lawrence Lessig (Creative Commons), John Perry Barlow (EFF), Craig Newmark (Craigslist), Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Joichi Ito, Doc Searls and David Weinberger.

This year’s theme is participatory democracy, not surprising considering it’s an election year in the U.S. In my next blog entry, I’m going to focus on some Canadians who are using the internet to encourage participation in our political process, to spread good deeds, to enable fundraising for charities and to extend access to technology to children of lower-income families.

How can you participate? Check out the ideas on the One Web Day site. If you plan on doing something in your city or on your site, we’d love to hear about it. Post a comment below.

Just a quick note for those following the Tucows Corporate blog via the RSS feed:

This feed will now provide news releases and posts related to Tucows Inc. OpenSRS Resellers (and those interested in hearing more about our Reseller Services) are invited to visit our brand new Reseller Blog at http://opensrs.com/blog/ You can also subscribe to the RSS feed for the Reseller Blog at http://opensrs.com/blog/feed/

The Little Geeks Foundation has an event coming up in the Toronto area in a couple of weeks and so we thought we’d bring this worthwhile cause to your attention.

Little Geeks works to enhance the lives of children by providing computers to the underprivileged families within the community. They hope to expand across Canada, and beyond in the future.

On June 12th, the Foundation will, thanks to the generous donations of individual and corporate sponsors, hold a special event here in Toronto to give refurbished computers, complete with Windows XP and Microsoft Office to one hundred families of underprivileged children–completely free of charge.

Thanks to our sales engineer Neville Thomas who brought this to our attention. He adds that you can visit the Little Geeks website if you are interested in volunteering as a “big geek” to repair or deliver computers to these kids and their families.

For those outside the Toronto area, there are similar organizations around that are more than happy to take older computers, clean them up and get them out into the homes of those who might not otherwise be able to afford one.

The Inside Ride event we told you about a few weeks back was an absolute blast and we wanted to pass along a quick post thanking everyone for making it so wildly successful.

Between the staff at Tucows, and our friends down the street at ILoveRewards.com who also came out for the Ride, we raised over $19,000 for the Coast to Coast Against Cancer Foundation. The extreme level of commitment to the cause was illustrated by Danny Rego, one of our application developers, who willingly had his head and beard shaved, (by Elliot, no less), in exchange for $1,000 in donations.

By the way, that’s Ken Schafer, VP Product Management and Marketing, Elliot Noss, President and CEO (on the bike) and Michael Cooperman, CFO, from left to right in the photo.

There are a bunch more pictures posted both at Picasa and on Flickr for those who want to have a look.

Ross Rader reports that the Foundation is in awe with what was accomplished and they are incredibly thankful for the generous donation.

Ross also passes along his thanks to everyone who either participated, donated or both.
He’s on his way to the airport on Friday and will be heading out on his epic 19-day ride across Canada beginning on Monday, June 2.

You can follow the progress of Ross and the rest of the riders at his blog. We’ll keep you posted here as well.

Tucows is very happy to provide key technical infrastructure for the ride, including email, domains, and web hosting.

For the cyclists in the Toronto area, you’ll be able to join the cross-Canada riders as they pass through Toronto for either a 20k or 100k route. More details can be found at the Sears National Kids Cancer Ride website.

Ross also reminded me that donations are still very welcome. There are tons of kids out there battling cancer that would be quite pleased with any contribution.

Yesterday a large webhosting company, Dreamhost, told the world that, while they would continue to provide email, their email service was not that great and suggested their customers should probably use Google’s Gmail instead.

They provided some fascinating data about email and support costs. My two favorite nuggets:

“Just over HALF of all the support requests we get are about email. Everything else we offer, combined, doesn’t add up to the amount of trouble, expense, use, and effort that goes into “simple” old email.”

and:

“If a web server with maybe 750 customer sites on it were to go down for even as long as five hours, we’d probably get two angry messages about it. But if email goes down for the same number of customers for just five minutes we’ll have already received 50!”

And they are clear as to their view of quality:

“(email is) something the big free email providers like Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google can do better.”

This post was picked up on Slashdot where the discussion, not surprisingly, swung back and forth between “I am a sysadmin managing 20 domains and use Google Apps and Gmail and love it” and, “You should always run your own mail server for privacy purposes and, well, its just plain fun.”

Both the original Dreamhost blog post and the resulting Slashdot discussion completely missed the point. Luckily the comments on the Dreamhost blog did not. They were very clear.

Overwhelmingly commenters said that they often came to Dreamhost for hosted email, they did not trust or want to use Gmail for their business email and many of them would immediately leave if Dreamhost discontinued offering email.

Every service provider should be required to read the Dreamhost blog post and, more importantly, the comments.

Whether geeks like it or not, the vast majority of people want and need simple, reliable email that is easy to use AND they want a supplier who will help them use it. That means providing phone support as well as resources to make things simpler. Support data provides golden information for i) how a service can be improved and ii) what your customer’s needs and wants are. Guess what? People are willing to pay for this.

Contrast the Dreamhost view with that of Rackspace. Faced with, I suspect, the same or similar data, Rackspace responded by going out and buying Webmail.us.

It is amazing to me that because most service providers have chosen to give away email they take that as an existence proof that people do not or will not pay for a quality email experience. People will pay over $80/month for a single cup of coffee per day. People paid Geek Squad over $1 billion last year to “set up” their wireless routers. Every geek knows how hard (or not) that is! My ten-year-old son does just that for my mother-in-law. With regards to email specifically, RIM, the Blackberry people, have a market cap of over $75b JUST FROM PROVIDING A PORTION of peoples email needs!

People, especially small businesses, use email more than anything else on the Internet—much more than they use or need web hosting. Service providers are in the business of making the Internet easier and more effective—whether they like it or not.

Geeks who run service providers may find Gmail great. Human beings, not so much.

Teams are being formed, challenges have been made and accepted. On May 22, 2008, The Inside Ride happens at Tucows Head Office in Toronto’s Liberty Village.

What is The Inside Ride?

It’s “Canada’s first indoor cycling challenge and fundraising event dedicated to raising monies in support of families and children with cancer.” The fundraising event works like this:

A whole bunch of state-of-the-art stationary racing bike trainers will be set up at Tucows. Then, teams of six riders will ride for 10 minutes, flat out, to see how much mileage they can cover. The individuals and teams with the highest distance, the most team spirit, and of course, the most money raised win rewards.

Get Involved

Are you in the Toronto area? We’d love to have you down to the Tucows offices to take part. Show us what your company is made of, and help us raise money for the Coast to Coast Against Cancer Foundation.

And if you’re not close by, any donations to the cause are more than welcome.

In either case, contact Sherry Azim for more information. More information is available from The Inside Ride website.

Sears National Kids Cancer Ride

This event in support of Coast to Coast Against Cancer meshes very nicely with another cycling-related charity ride for Coast to Coast Against Cancer of more epic proportions. Ross Rader, who heads up our retail division, will be climbing onto his bike in just 24 days for a 19-day, 7,600 km trans-Canada ride from Vancouver to Halifax. Ross has been training incredibly hard over the last while and he’ll join a select group of riders for the cross-country trip.

Some quick math tells you that with 7,600 km (4,700 miles) to cover in 19 days, the riders will have to average 400 km (250 miles) per day.

Show your support for Ross through a donation to the Sears National Kids Cancer Ride

The real winners are the various charities from coast to coast in Canada dedicated to providing emotional, physical and medical support to children and teenagers living with, and beyond, cancer.

Ross pointed me to this video featuring Andy Brooks, an 18-year-old, blind cancer survivor who is taking part in the full cross-country ride himself:

Tomorrow is the night for the Toronto Girl Geek Dinner. As of this writing, there were seven spots left. If you’re into networking with a bunch of women who are passionate about technology, head on over to the wiki and sign up. I’m looking forward to seeing some of my girl geek buddies for the first time this year and hearing about what they’re up to so far in 2008. The featured speaker tomorrow night is Malgosia Green, co-founder of Savvica, an online teaching and learning company. Malgosia will share her perspective on entrepreneurship and using web tools to further goals in education and training.