eating cucumbers without permission...

The old rule of 70% utilization accommodating an unexpected 40% increase in traffic is unraveling. At least eight times in the past month, we've experienced from 100% to 1000% sudden increases in traffic across many of our clients.

Interesting new shared-hosting feature: add guaranteed CPU and RAM to an existing plan (e.g. $15/m for 150MB/150MHz), scalable on-demand all the way up to 2300MB/2300MHz ($230). It's billed pro rata, so it should be possible to automatically adjust to handle load, making it essentially an entry-level competitor to EC2 and Accelerator.

Great collection of articles and real-life case studies.