The Melbourne based company Jumba Online Services Pty Ltd which provides web hosting for numerous small and large websites has been purchased by another company, AussieHQ, which, whilst Canberra based, is another popular host.

As follows is the full email sent out to customers via Jumba Online Services Pty Ltd courtesy of an avid reader Mark (thanks to you!):

Dear Customers,
This email is to inform you that as of Friday the 3rd of August 2007, Jumba Online Services Pty Ltd is under new management.
Jumba Online Services Pty Ltd has been acquired by AussieHQ Pty Ltd (www.aussiehq.com.au), one of Australia’s leading web services providers. AussieHQ is a Canberra based company that is 100% Australian owned and operated.
AussieHQ delivers a wide range of web solutions to business, corporate, and government customers throughout Australia with a reputation for delivering exceptional customer service levels to our customers through a dedicated 24/7 Australian based helpdesk.
Jumba will continue delivering budget web service solutions to small business and personal users while AussieHQ will deliver first class services to the business, corporate, and government sectors.
All Jumba staff have been offered positions within the AussieHQ team, and more than half of the Jumba team have decided to relocate to Canberra and will continue working across both businesses. Operational migration occurred seamlessly on Monday the 6th of August.
Integration of AussieHQ’s highly trained customer service team, company culture and corporate structure will improve quality of service for all customers. AussieHQ also has access to the necessary capital to continue investing in the development of new products and services for Jumba customers.
The economy of scale benefits of the combined entity will mean improvements in service levels across the board. Over the next few weeks, the new management team will streamline the Jumba business, rolling out a number of service enhancements including new better value plans, 24/7 support on the small business plans, and a new backup service which will allow customers to generate and restore data backups on-demand.

New customer service program

Jumba’s new Customer Service Manager (responsible for the delivery of customer service company wide) Adam Macie has kicked off a program to improve the quality of Jumba customer service and win back any past or present Jumba customers who have a complaint with the quality of service they have previously received.
Adam has asked that all customers who believe they have an outstanding customer service issue that was not previously able to be solved through the service desk directly to please email feedback@jumba.com.au with the relevant details. All messages sent to this address are reviewed by Adam Macie and other members of the senior management team, and are brought to complete resolution.

Discussion of the merger

The merger is currently being actively discussed on the Jumba community forums. You are encouraged to read through the following thread and actively participate in the community:
http://forums.jumba.com.au/showthread.php?t=4795

Keep your eyes peeled over the coming weeks for further announcements surrounding upgrades to your Jumba services.
Thank you for your support, and happy hosting!
Cheers,
Michael McGoogan
Managing Director
AussieHQ Pty Ltd &
Jumba Online Services Pty Ltd.

We’re not aware if they will continue to use the same hardware, however we will contact the companies in relation to this question. If you have any questions or comments please post them below.

A popular Social Networking site, FaceBook, has been at the center of the latest source code leak, with users being able to download parts of the popular website for their own use - illegally of course.

A small amount of users were confronted with server issues last weekend, resulting in the front page and search source codes to be leaked. Many site’s, including FaceBook secrets have placed this code on their site’s, for everyone to take a look - including hackers who would like a little more information about how the site is structured.

Brandee Barker, a member of the Facebook team left a message on the TechCrunch website stating this:

Hi Nic-

I wanted to clarify a few things in your story. Some of Facebook’s source code was exposed to a small number of users due to a bug on a single server that was misconfigured and then fixed immediately. It was not a security breach and did not compromise user data in any way. The reprinting of this code violates several laws and we ask that people not distribute it further.

Thanks to you and the TC readers for helping us out on this one.

Brandee Barker
Facebook

Personally I don’t see any consequences resulting from this, however hackers will have more of an understanding about the system and may take less time to hack the site or personal accounts.

Whirlpool.net.au is a well known Australian Broadband forum and plan search website, that not only covers broadband but includes many things such as the latest gadgets, windows/mac applications and interesting websites around the internet. However, today an announcement has been made that one week earlier, hackers ‘may have’ breached security on the site used by over 180,000 users around the world.

“Last week, Whirlpool was subject to a hack attempt,” Simon Wright told users in a post made on the popular site. He also went on to say “it is possible that some forum data was able to be compromised.”

This announcement however, comes 1 week late. Users accounts could have been comprimised, or passwords used on other websites to hack user emails, websites or forum username/passwords. No mention of how secure these passwords were stored in the database, however Whirlpool are stressing that any user with an account at whirlpool change their whirlpool password by using the password reset link and to change any other accounts on other sites which may use the same password.

Does it annoy you when you go to work on that important document but realise that Microsoft Office Word isn’t installed? Or, does it annoy you when you can’t find that document? Well, thankfully the people at “buzzword” have developed a wonderful web application that’ll not only allows you to create, edit and print documents just like word, but also allow you to store all your pages on an easy to use documents page.

At the present moment it is in a BETA release, and for selected testers only (you can still apply and cross your fingers you’re accepted!). However, the crew at buzzword have given me permission to show you some screenshots and walk you through some of the wonderful features that buzzword offers!

The text editor

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Buzzword allows you to import/export documents from/to 3 formats (with more on the way!)

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Buzzword allows you to save and organise your documents

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Loads of features, just like your word processor (but in a cool web2.0 menu)!

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Not only can you edit, but you can load comments onto the document

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Buzzword also gives you the option to share a document, with security rights as well (co-author/reviewer/reader)

Interested yet? Of course you are! To get your name on the BETA list, head over to the GetBuzzword website and signup. If you give them a good enough reason why you want to sign up, you might receive an invite quicker than you can say buzz!

MORE INFORMATION - http://preview.getbuzzword.com/