Though servers and hosting is a necessity for any Web business I have to admit the topic really does not excite me at all. I don't wake up in the morning thinking about how I am going to access my hosting. But I may need to eat those words at some point. Imagine if your blog, site or web product is down at 3 a.m. and aside from a call to support, all you have is the tools provided by your hosting company to try and save it. While I know there are lots of hosting options out there, SingleHop, is a Chicago-based hosting company I have grown familiar with that is trying to provide fresh and helpful tools to help its users manage their hosting with ease. SingleHop has just launched a new Ajax-based environment for managing your servers called LEAP.
LEAP is a control panel (taking the place of cPanel or Putty) for managing multiple dedicated servers. LEAP was developed in-house and largely using AJAX for ease of use. The system was developed as a "webtop" to allow users to have multiple windows simultaneously open with quick access to features like restarting servers, viewing bandwidth graphs, etc. Check out the video demo here.
While there a lot of hosting options out there today I like the fresh approach to a relatively dull topic so I decided to point out LEAP for anyone looking for dedicated hosting. I think it is also important to add that SingleHop believes is building a tighter technology community in their local area through its support of TECH cocktail and other local projects.