I’ve just switched MyOwnPirateRadio from hosting on iPower.com to WordPress.com. 

If you subscribe to the email version of this blog you probably noticed a few duplicate posts mailed out last night. My apologies, and fear not, for I haven’t yet stooped to duplicating my own blog posts. It was a glitch in the import process.

Why leave iPower?

• Poor availability. 5 hours of downtime in September, a whopping 49 hours in July. Not that this blog is mission-critical, but still, doesn’t 2 days seem a little excessive? Maybe they forgot to plug the server in.
• iPower recently started charging for domain privacy, with no warning. Deceptive.
• Their hosting prices have stayed the same while everyone else’s have dropped. $100+ a year is too much for a simple blog.
• Their web host management UI is geared at selling services, not helping customers get stuff done.
• Switching a domain to iPower is easy, switching away to another registrar is a devilish process. Again, bad business practice.
• Support: not so much.

So, after many years as a customer, I’m moving all my business away from iPower. This blog is going to WordPress.com, my domain registrations are going to namecheap, and 5 Blocks Out is now ticking along happily over on slicehost.

Why rehost on WordPress.com? There are other places I could have hosted, but for running a simple blog with minimal customization requirements it’s a great value. I can just "set and forget"… I don’t worry about security updates, spam, bandwidth, etc. The only downsides I’ve experienced are (1) advertising is present unless I pay to remove it, and (2) there seems to be no way to import images. If anyone knows an easy way to fix #2 (read: takes less than 20 minutes!) I’d love to know.

Zillow CEO Rich Barton announced yesterday in a blog post that they are laying off 25% of their work force. I guess they are taking to heart the advice in the Sequoia Capital "R.I.P. Good Times" presentation: cut the burn rate so you can survive the recession. Or maybe, as Michael Arrington speculates on TechCrunch, they are also joining the trend of using layoffs as a way to get rid of deadwood employees.

Zillow still hasn’t reached profitability. They are cutting back on marketing and engineering, and investing further in sales. I wonder what their workforce composition will look like in a few years. My guess is they will continue to shift from engineering-heavy to sales-heavy.

Inman News says:

The 5.4 million unique visitors to the site in September represented a 42 percent increase over the same time last year, and revenue is growing "at a rapid pace."  … Launched in February, 2006, the company has raised $87 million in venture capital from employees, individuals and several leading investment firms including Benchmark Capital, Technology Crossover Ventures, PAR Capital and Legg Mason Capital Management.".

Zillow isn’t alone… TechCrunch has a web page tracking other tech industry layoffs.

Here are links to some pieces on the economy I’ve found most useful over the past few weeks. I’ve posted many of these on my Twitter feed but thought it might also be useful to bundle them into a blog post.

For everyone:

• The Globe and Mail has an excellent web page that answers readers’ questions in common-sense terms. For example, "Do the interest rate cuts mean my mortgage rate or credit card interest rate will go down?", and, "Should you lock in your mortgage?". They update it daily.
• This American Life put together a 1 hour broadcast that attempts to explain the financial crisis. It’s the definitive thing to listen to if you want to understand what’s happening. It’s also funny, which is a welcome relief from all the panic evident in most media right now. There is also an older episode called The Giant Pool of Money which explains subprime mortgages.
• NPR has an ongoing blog, Planet Money, that digs in deeper on a daily basis.

For startups:

• Sequoia Capital did a secret presentation called "R.I.P. Good Times" to their portfolio companies this week. They gave their analysis of the current financial turmoil and advised the companies on what to do in order to survive. Someone has helpfully leaked the presentation, which you can find on VentureBeat. In short, they are telling companies to move to a strong cash position (e.g. by making cuts to reduce burn rates), consider M&A, and lower expectations of additional funding. Their punchline: "Get real or go home".
• Angel investor Ron Conway gave similar advice to companies he has invested in.