AISO Launches New Rebranding Efforts Along with “Total Eco Web Server” Technology

 

 

Environmentally-Friendly Web Hosting Company Uses Water Cooling to Go Beyond PV Panels and Maximize Solar Energy

Romoland, CA – March 4, 2009 — AISO.net launches its new website and brand identity with the announcement of the “Total Eco Web Server”™, or TEWS™ as it has been nicknamed. AISO.net, the first and only 100 percent solar-powered web hosting company, launched its new brand identity, symbolizing its commitment to the environment.

“Our new logo and brand identity shows the transformation from being just solar-powered to having a complete hosting ecosystem that is environmentally friendly. This new look reflects the values that AISO.net has been known for in the business community, while also representing our new strategic direction for a complete environmentally-friendly hosting solution,” says Phil Nail, CTO of AISO.net.

AISO.net is located in Romoland, CA, a few miles south of Riverside, CA, where the annual rainfall is minimal and the sun is out over 70 percent of the year. “We have been able to power our office and servers without using the local energy grid via on-site solar power. Even cloudy days can collect the sun’s power and with the new TEWS setup we combine solar power, recycled rain water to cool the data center, air for Internet conductivity, virtualized servers, and other great eco-friendly technologies,” says Nail.

AISO.net recently added four 2,500 gallon water tanks behind the data center to harvest the annual rainfall and nightly condensation. The tanks were installed 20 days ago and they have already harvested 6,000 gallons of rainwater. AISO.net has plans for adding four more tanks which will result in over 20,000 gallons of water collected. The water collected will be used for two things: landscaping and cooling the data center. Special air units from Coolerado use this recycled rain water which acts as a cooling agent to cool the hot desert air down to a cool 67 degrees all using less than 600 watts of power.

“To stay ahead of the industry we have to act and look like rock stars,” states Nail, who always seems to have a smile and his sunglasses. “That is why we chose Thunk to help with our re-brand and strategic business development. They get it. The IT industry is not a glamorous world but we believe our way is how data should move through the Internet. It’s logical and environmental, and that thinking has helped give us exposure. We are in a sweet spot right now because our infrastructure is built on solar panels so the more energy we can get out of 120 panels the easier it will be to scale – and we plan to scale. All it takes is another 120 panels and more efficient technologies and we keep staying ahead of the demands for data.”

“Solar web hosting is not a novelty, this is serious. There is no excuse for companies to use data centers and hosting providers that have old infrastructures and antiquated models with fancy websites that brag about buying energy credits,” says James Tucker, founder of Thunk, Inc. in San Francisco. “Consumers need to be smarter than that and realize that these data centers are sucking the earth dry of resources. I discovered this working on a rebrand for a large data center company and was inspired to shift my clients, company and mission to use alternative energy for web hosting. Fossil fuel hosting companies are going to need to make radical changes – and fast. This comes at a time where change is expensive but the consumer demands companies make the change or they will go somewhere that aligns with their business philosophy.”

“I am glad people choose us because we are a solar web hosting company, but in business, it has to go beyond that. We want people to come to AISO.net because of our service, reliability, uptime, and customer service,” says Nail.

AISO.net also uses LED lighting, solar tubes, thin client computers and other unique green techniques which allow more capacity without having a large physical footprint housing hundreds of servers and cages. The dedicated servers offer high availability and are extremely scalable. All data resides on fiber drives and all data is backed up hourly. The servers utilize NetApp for the data storage and VMware to maximum server uptime. This same solution is used by 95 percent of all Fortune 500 companies.

“Companies like Discovery Channel and Indianapolis Zoo love our dedicated server solution because it gives them piece of mind knowing their data is secure,” says Nail.

 

About Thunk, Inc. - www.thunkinc.com
Thunk is an interactive team located in San Francisco that works with start-ups, agencies, marketers, and directors as a creative resource for web, application, print, video, and Flash projects. We specialize in information architecture, project management, content development, rapid prototyping, strategic lead generation campaigns, and branding.

 

About AISO.net - www.aiso.net
AISO.net has been a trusted name in environmentally friendly web hosting since 1997, providing a level of service that is unmatched in the industry. All network and server hardware is fully redundant with 24×7-automated systems monitoring to ensure the highest possible uptime. Using solar panels to power its data center and network, AISO.net is the first and only 100 percent solar-powered web hosting company. Customers as far away as Kenya, East Africa, rely on the service and reliability offered by AISO.net. For more information on Coolerado, visit Coolerado’s website at www.coolerado.com.

Filed under: Creative Direction, Environment, Positioning, Thunk News , aiso.net, green hosting, press release, solar hosting

Seduced by Generic Design

After seeing a poster for Tropicana Orange Juice, I thought it was an adbuster campaign. The ad looked so generic and so did the product hero shot that it looked like a fake ad with a fake product. So I went to the website (above) and it was their new package design. 

It was a real product with a package design that looked like a generic product. Is the seduction of clean design turning brands into unemotional products?

I have to admit, I do like the way the information is arranged on the package. It also does not disappear on the shelf with the large photo repeating along a row. 

Tropicana is also a member of the Carton Council that has a great campaign about recycling cartons:

http://www.werecyclecartons.com/

During my research of this product I also found that PepsiCo is making to reduce their carbon footprint with this product. How green is your orange juice?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/business/22pepsi.html

Filed under: Creative Direction, Environment, Packaging, Positive Change

Get paid to remove reviews on Yelp!

It is awful how Yelp.com reviewers are getting sued because of their freedom of speech.  The format of Yelp! allows for anybody with a keyboard to flame or rant about irrelevant topics about any business.  Yelp! keeps it there for the “entertainment factor” but they should monitor the reviews, have more criteria to evaluate business better, and have more qualified reviews.  I used to go to Yelp! but now it’s a bunch of writing on the bathroom wall. 

It’s difficult enough having a business in San Francisco – or any city with Yelpers in the mist.  I had a bad experience with a company and the search results come up very high and they said that it was damaging their business.  My goal is not to ruin their business but to warn people about their practices.  But they fixed it. and if the owner contacts you about the review then the reviewer should update the post or remove it. 

The environmental firm Sustainable Spaces broke a mirror and damaged the wood floors at my home but they fixed it after they refunded me the cost of the service and had a good chat with one of the founders.  They are great guys and I doubt they would start a lawsuit but if the issue is resolved and there is no reason to have the review posted then I think it is polite to remove the post or update the situation if resolved. 

The bathroom on the wall now has a signature and an IP address attached to it.

Filed under: Environment, San Francisco

Solar Powered Hosting Rebranding

Thunk was awarded the rebranding and marketing strategy account for AISO.net.  They are pioneers in the solar powered web  hosting industry and have been busy acquiring new business and making sure their current customers are satisfied.  They needed a creative firm who can take over the project and present their products in a way that complements their brand. 

If you are on a non-solar, coal-based, earth destroying web host, you may want to consider a change. Check out AISO.net here:

http://www.aiso.net/

The new site will be live in the first quarter of 2009.

Filed under: Creative Direction, Environment, Thunk News

PET Recycled Bags

Here are some cool bags made from recycled PET bottles. The full article at Treehugger and the online shop is from www.act2greensmart.com. I hope to see some cooler designs from this material from TUMI and other bag designers soon.

Filed under: Differentiation, Environment, Positive Change , design, laptop bags, recycled

The greatest infomercial ever masking as a social enterprise

It’s almost disgusting how T. Boone Pickens can spend millions on TV spots to have people go to a website that looks like he is a social enterprise. It is a well crafted site with visuals and a whiteboard tour that mimics ZDNet start-up entrepreneurs.

In fact the mission is to encourage Americans to think natural gas and wind. This will then feed investors and energy companies to support his wind turbine farms. I am not saying it’s wrong, I think it is genius and in the historical sense, the greatest innovations of the last centuries came from moguls and their way of thinking that persuaded the messes. 

Tires over train tracks. Combustion over electric.

This is one great pitch.

Filed under: Environment, Positioning , natural gas, pitch, social-enterprise, turbine, wind turbines

$10,000 rebate for the 2-Year Plan?

I am not sure if there will really be a “rebate” but the notion of building a company around the same type of love affair people all over the world have with their phones is very clever indeed. Americans have had this affair with their cars for decades but the mobile phone is the object people all over the world love. If the electric car can be introduced to consumers the same way a phone plan is initiated then the barrier to entry will be minimal and attractive.

This is an innovative piece and with the backing they have it is beyond “could happen” and in the realm of happening. This will not happen in the good old USA at first but other countries will adopt this and like the mobile phones, we will get a version that barely resembles the orginal vision because of all the companies who had to get their sticky fingers in the mix.

Time will tell and by the time the warranty is up on the Prius, I can get one of these and upgrade the batter via thrid-party on the Toyota. Petrol? What petrol?

Visit projectbetterplace.com

Filed under: Differentiation, Environment, Positive Change , , alternative fuel, electric cars, prius, shai agassi

We Feed the World

There are a lot of films to watch in my Netflix queue and sometimes a film pops up on Sundance or IFC right before I go to bed. Sure I have Tivo but there is something about documentaries that seem to hover in the “soon to be deleted” bubble but on DVD I seem to watch them right away.

The documentary “We Feed the World” by director Erwin Wagenhofer was done in 2005 and it seems like it shold have been long ago. Why have western cultures trusted everything that is grown and sold at markets for so long? Sure, the price is part of it but when farmers would rather grow vegetables that will look better, taste worse, and ruin the land and any future harvests because of our shopping habits, then it is two colliding forces: 1. poor shopper education influencing the industry and 2. corporations taking advantage of the ignorant shoppers by providing retailers with engineered end of life products. I can only blame myself for falling prey to the the same thinking. If it looks good, it must taste good. Wrong.

But this film goes much further and the main takeaway for me was the fact that we have a global food surplus for over 60 billion people and yet 100,000 people die of starvation every year. Nobody should die of starvation in 2008. Malnutrition cases should be able to drop in half by 2010.

Things are changing now and the internet – and positive change organizations – is becoming the vehicle for the voice that has been suppressed for too long.

http://www.we-feed-the-world.at/en/facts.htm

Filed under: Environment, Positive Change, Poverty , corporate farming, documentary, globalization, starvation, we feed the world