November 13, 2008 6:05 pm
Years ago, when Linode was still wet behind the ears, all new signups were activated instantly. Everyone loved it, and life was good -- until we realized that some people weren't the most honest and liked to use stolen credit card information and rip people off and do nasty things with resources. And so began the age of manually reviewing all signups. At least one person, and likely many more, has looked at each and every signup among the many thousands we've received over the years.
We've turned it into a competition at the Linode office -- who has the most activations, who has the shortest average activation delay (who do you think wins?) -- but it's still a drag when we lose out on an account because someone had an emergency need for a Linode, or when a legitimate signup has sat in the queue for hours waiting for review.
So, we've figured out a way to have those legitimate signups (based on our special secret-sauce criteria) receive their account activation instantly, whilst the more questionable signups go into our review queue.
Combine this with a completely reworked sign-up system, which is simpler and easier to use, and you have the makings of a happy Linode Team.
Check it out:
https://www.linode.com/signup/
Filed under: announcements, features, linode, linode manager, upgrades, virtualization by caker
6 Comments »
September 29, 2008 11:42 am
Linode is proud to announce that we'll be hosting the Rails Rumble programming competition again this year!
The Rails Rumble is a 48 hour web application development contest. As a contestant, you get one weekend to design, develop, and deploy the best web property that you can, using the awesome power of Ruby on Rails.
As a judge, you get to review some great new micro applications and determine which teams fare best in a number of categories.
Registration is now open with 200 seats available (first come, first served). Sign up at http://railsrumble.com/
Registration ends on the 10th of October in order to make final preparations for the weekend long build event on the 18th and 19th.
If you're still on the fence, or are looking for team members or project ideas, please visit #railsrumble on the Freenode IRC network. Also, keep an eye out for more exciting announcements at http://blog.railsrumble.com/ including details about prizes and helpful tips for making the most out of the competition.
Filed under: announcements, linode by tasaro
3 Comments »
September 18, 2008 10:36 am
Randy "you had me at hello" Estelow joins Linode this week full time. He's a hardware guy, and will be lovingly assembling, testing, and bringing all of our new hosts online. Randy impressed all of us when he arrived with a neatly organized toolbox full of implements for computer surgery. He's "restelow" in our IRC chatroom. Pop in and give him a warm welcome.
Filed under: announcements, linode by caker
5 Comments »
July 31, 2008 12:50 pm
Referral System
We've considered adding a referral system for quite some time. Linode does very little advertising, and most of our new business comes from word of mouth -- meaning, it comes from you, our customers, referring your friends and colleagues. We appreciate that, and believe that such loyalty deserves a reward. So, we now have a referral system which works as so:
- You refer someone and they use your referral code during sign up.
- They keep a Linode for 90 days.
- You then receive a $20.00 credit applied to your account.
Your personal referral code and referral statistics can be found on your My Profile page.
Annual Discounts
We're now offering discounts for pre-payment. Annual Linodes get a 10% discount while 24-month Linodes receive a 15% discount. Please note that this is not a contract -- you can remove your Linode at any time to receive a pro-rated credit applied to your account. Feel free to open a support ticket if you have questions or would like to take advantage of these offers.
Filed under: announcements, features, linode manager by caker
7 Comments »
July 19, 2008 10:16 pm
Linode is sponsoring a few episodes of The Web 2.0 Show -- a podcast about emerging web technologies. Josh Owens, the lead developer of Tastyplanner (Rails Rumble 2007 Grand Prize winner) and Adam Stacoviak are the hosts who "focus on interviewing the developers and entrepreneurs who are creating the next generation of web services and media delivery". Go check the show out!
Filed under: announcements by tasaro
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June 24, 2008 5:45 pm
We just released the first version of the Linode API. For now, it only has methods for control over the DNS Manager, but we'll be continually adding more stuff...
To use the API, you must first generate an "api key", which you can do from your "my profile" page in the Linode Manager. The API honors the permissions you have, so you'll only be able to manipulate objects you have access to (the grants system was implemented in our last Linode Manager release). There are already Python and Perl bindings, with more to come.
More information is available here:
Filed under: announcements, features, linode manager by caker
6 Comments »
June 16, 2008 11:04 am
Today marks Linode's 5th birthday, and we wanted to extend our sincere thanks by increasing the disk space on all plans by 20%. The extra space is available now for both existing and new customers. We appreciate your business, so enjoy!
To take advantage of your Linode's new space, simply log into the Linode Manager, shut down your Linode, and resize your disk existing disk by clicking on it and entering in a new size. Alternatively, you could create another disk image and add it to your existing configuration profile, reboot, and mount it.
Again, on behalf of the Linode team, I thank you for your patronage.
Filed under: announcements, linode, upgrades by caker
43 Comments »
May 31, 2008 10:02 am
Last night we turned up our initial deployment of machines at a facility in Newark, NJ. It's operated by NAC, who runs an impressive facility, has many great peering arrangements, and doesn't block any ports. We've got redundant gigabit uplinks, plenty of power and cooling, and room to grow. We're hoping that this facility will improve ping times for those in Europe, Canada, and north east US.
Did you know that you can migrate your Linode to any of our four facilities? Switching datacenters is simple: One button press and your Linode and its contents are automatically migrated. If you're interested, please submit a support ticket. We'll set up a migration and issue you the new IPs, and you can shutdown and initiate the migration when you're ready.
You can test ping and download times for all four of our facilities with the links provided in this forum post.
Filed under: announcements, datacenters, linode by caker
16 Comments »
May 15, 2008 3:46 pm
We've released a new version of the Linode Manager with many goodies. Besides a reorganization of the code (which makes us devs happy), the locations of many pre-existing features have been reorganized as well. But, the real news is this has enabled us to implement some cool features...
Single Sign On
- Multiple Linodes can now be managed much more intuitively under one Linode.com account.
- Linking multiple accounts together is no longer necessary.
- Linodes can be tagged with a label that you can change at any time, which makes identifying multiple Linodes much easier
- Adding a Linode to your account is a piece of cake. It's as easy as: "Add a Linode" link off the Linodes sub-tab, select the plan, confirm. Done.
- A much requested feature, you can now change your username at any time. Amen.
Multiuser Support
- You can now create additional Linode.com users that are able to log into your account.
- Our system now allows you to restrict a user's access to specific Linodes, DNS zones, or even create a "billing only" user.
- Timezone preference setting is now per User vs per Customer
Instance-Day Billing
- Similar to Amazon's EC2, this feature allows you to add Linodes or extras and receive a pro-rated credit to your account when you remove them. This is perfect for short term projects or tasks (or if you want to show your friends how cool Linode is without giving them access to your production server).
Linode.com Account Persistence
- If you remove all of your Linodes from your account (but don't cancel your account), your Linode.com login will remain valid.
- You can return at any time and use any of your credit remaining.
- Your DNS zones will remain, but they won't be served unless you have a billable Linode.
Web-based AJAX Console
- Although we implemented this many months ago, there was no official announcement. Welp, there's browser based console access to your Linode.
- The browser console automatically authenticates you. Entering in your username and password is no longer required
- There is a console server in each data center. Launching the console directs you to the console server in the same data center as the Linode.
Graphs
- Disk IO Graphs to compliment the CPU and network graphs
- A new graph history interface
Support Tickets
- Tickets can be opened regarding a specific object (a Linode or a DNS zone).
- All users with access to that object will be able to see the ticket, receive ticket updates via email, and can participate in the ticket.
My thanks go out to those that helped test the new version -- you guys were a big help!
Filed under: announcements, features, linode manager by caker
12 Comments »
May 13, 2008 4:18 pm
We've had a few requests for larger Linodes. So, a new plan has just been created -- the Linode 2880. Enjoy!
Filed under: announcements by caker
No Comments »