I am a long time LayeredTech dedicated server customer. Today out of the blue LayeredTech increased the price by 26%! None of the “service improvements” directly benefits average customers like us:
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Check out our career page and open positions. We prefer candidates from Kolkata, India. Exceptional candidates out of state will also be considered. In short we are looking for:

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I was looking for a simple free & open source trouble ticket system. I checked several of them, all the popular ones and more. I scanned through all the lists, which unfortunately haven’t been updated for years. Anyway after slogging for several hours, I present you with the simplest, easy to use and well featured trouble ticket system I could find.

Note: Don’t forget to read the disclaimer section (not your standard stuff) with interesting tidbits on other trouble ticket systems.

Trouble Ticket System / Customer Support System Requirements

First let’s look at the requirements:
Most people make the mistake of thinking that a trouble ticket system is nothing but a defect tracking system and so they recommend systems like trac. Trouble ticket system, while similar in concept to defect tracking system, is significantly different in nature and purpose. A trouble ticket system is primarily concerned with accepting issues from end-users and routing them through the workflow system to get it resolved. It should also allow for escalation, if required, and prioritization.

A trouble ticket system, may (mostly for open source projects) or not allow viewing defects reported by other users. A trouble ticket system is more concerned with providing a service to get the troubles / issues resolved. It may or may not want users to view issues reported by other users. However when it doesn’t allow viewing issues by other users, it should be complemented with a FAQ system to reduce load on customer support.
A valid use case for not allowing viewing issues for other users is when you are reporting an issue to your web hosting provider. Your report may contain details of login, password or other sensitive information which you do not want other users, or worse search bots, to browse through.
Many defect tracking systems, including the one I currently use - Mantis, doesn’t allow this simple functionality out of the box!

A defect tracking system on the other hand is focussed on getting defects resolved for a product or project. It isn’t focussed as much on providing timely resolution of customer defects as it is on timely fixing of bugs. So while they are similar, they intent and purpose is different.
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Automattic hosts WordPress.com using dedicated servers from LayeredTech. According to Todd Abrams, President & COO of Layered Technologies:
“The Layered Technologies support database was a target of malicious activity on the evening of 9/17/2007 that may have involved the illegal downloading of information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and server login details for 5 to 6,000 of our clients.”
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As you all probably know by now Sun decided to sell Windows 2003 servers (gasp, sputter… Scott McNealy would surely turn in his grave on hearing this news; wait a minute, he is still the Chairman of Sun) on its hardware. The key question on everyone’s mind is has Sun finally found a direction as Microsoft’s partner or has Sun joined the dark side as some would like to say or has Sun finally lost its marbles or whether it is really a strategically brilliant move? Significantly Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems, is eerily silent on his blog about this initiative and continues to promote OpenOffice as an alternative to Microsoft Office.
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Vista Service Pack 1 is likely to be released to manufacturing in the first quarter of 2008, will not be as significant a feature release as Windows XP Service Pack 2. It will roll up many of the incremental performance and security updates Microsoft has been making since last November.

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1. They, for all purposes, do not have customer support:

1. There is a number (1800-424-1600) but when there are problems in the line, nobody picks it up.
2. In the rare cases when somebody does pickup and answer, they can never solve any problem. They will just take the complaint and give you a number.
3. The complaints are never attended; they are silently closed.

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Chuq Von Rospach is an Adobe Photoshop veteran. Recently he had series of bad experiences with Adobe Photoshop customer support. In essence what was promised on Adobe’s site wasn’t honored by Customer reps, what customer reps said wasn’t honored by another group, resulting him paying much more for the software than he should have. I was reading through the rather rambulatory article, the pain I can sympathize with (as it is common to many other customer support divisions including but not limited to BSNL, AOL etc.) but not his decision to still end up purchasing the software. Adobe Photoshop has a very nice and capable alternative which allowed us, and we haven’t regretted it since, fully migrate from Windows to Linux.

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Waterlogged streets and flooded homes everywhere in Kolkata thanks to inept Kolkata Municipal Corporation and heavy rains last few days. Personally we haven’t suffered.

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Angsuman’s Translator Plugin Pro 5.0 will be released on 13th June.

Angsuman’s Translator Plugin Gold (32+1 Language translation) will be released on 13th June. This is a limited edition release. Only 100 copies will ever be released. Each will cost $100. Existing users of ATPP will be offered a discounted price of 80$ for upgrading ATPP to ATP Gold. ATP Gold will come with array of features targeted for popular blogs. Advanced load distribution and load protection measures will be provided.

Please advance book your copies for ATP Gold now by sending me an email ( angsuman [at] taragana [com] ) or commenting on this post to let us know about your intention (your comment may not be published but will be processed). This is a one time release only. Unlimited free upgrades will be provided.

Existing ATPP customers will receive their upgrade within June 30th. We are providing web based access to your plugin which can be downloaded at anytime from our website (url will be released soon). This will be in addition to email based update. In future any upgrades will be on the same date as general release for all existing customers.

Our products have been extensively tested on variety of browsers and operating systems. We test various themes and compatibility with third party plugins. In short we go the whole nine yards to make it a high quality product for you.

Remember with Taragana products (ATPP & ATP Gold) you will get unlimited free upgrades. You will also receive free support for 6 months. In short we will make it work on your blog, we won’t leave you hanging midway as with many open source products. You get what you pay for. Our success is defined by your success and satiisfaction.

Update: Please book your copies now as they are running out fast.