Today's interactive web (web 2.0) is exploding. From Facebook and Twitter to highly vertical markets the world is coming together to share thoughts, ideas, jokes, concerns, problems and solutions of all manner via membership-based social software sites.

Pacific Data Capture has been involved in social-style networking for in excess of 20 years; first with moderation and hosting of e-mail forums and lists, through creation and hosting of interactive "content management" or CMS systems for public and private use, to WIKIs and now the latest in social software platforms. From conception to design, creation, hosting, moderation and training, social software of all manner requires a deep understanding not only of the people and concepts, but also of the technical and facilities used to host the sites.

Social software is far more technically intense than sites that simply serve up static pages of information. They are interactive and can require some fairly sophisticated underlying technologies if they are to successfully host thousands and tens of thousands of active members. In addition, there are ongoing security concerns that must be monitored and dealt with if the site is to gain and maintain a reputation as a good site to deal with; not one that is full of spam and hacked content or compromised files with viruses and worse in them.

Richard Pitt and the Pacdat team can help you decide which of many platforms will work best with your goals in mind and resources available. We can also work with you to deal with success that might require your moving an existing site to new hosting facilities, either our own chosen suppliers or others, and ongoing monitoring and interaction while the site continues to grow and prosper. Taking the technical load off your mind is our goal and forte so you can concentrate on interacting with and growing your membership.

We are intimately familiar with most of the current open source CMS and Social software packages, from Geeklog/GLfusion to Drupal and the latest social site development platform, ELGG

We're currently working with a number of clients, some of whom are serving literally millions of visitors each month. Can we help you with your site?

The publishing industry has undergone a complete transition from paper-based to computerized layups for books and publications. No longer do they store huge cardboard pasteup pages but instead must store and manipulate digital files.

Hancock House Publishers has been a client of Pacific Data Capture for in excess of 20 years. David Hancock approached us about creating a solution to the problem of keeping all the digital files for their catalogue of books online and available at all times. Instead of the old method of creating paste-ups of the pages of books, now all his printers wanted to receive the books as highly detailed - and large - PDF files.

To facilitate the creation and re-use of book information in both re-releases and new works, David wanted to be able to keep not only the page-layup files online but also their huge and growing catalogue of high-resolution photos; both his own from his wildlife photography and those of his many authors and contributors.

Pacific Data Capture has implemented fully redundant custom servers with multi-terabyte RAID arrays backed up daily to alternate facilities. Over the past several years this infrastructure has grown from the initial two terabytes to where it now includes video from Hancock Wildlife Foundation's video cameras and weighs in at over 20 Terabytes, all integrated into their Windows based editing and production facilities and remotely managed by our staff.

Pacific Data Capture offers small and medium-sized office computer support and service in Vancouver, BC and surrounding areas, as well as remote system administration and consulting to almost anywhere.

A prime area of our business is consultation on, and ongoing support for, integrated Linux-based systems in all manner of small to medium sized business situations. These systems include basic disk server systems using SAMBA, e-mail servers, web servers and Virtual systems integrating both Windows and Linux systems.

We specialize in legacy systems as well as in adding LAN servers to SOHO and office systems. Firewall setup, anti-virus updates, software installation, data recovery and all manner of training and aid.

The Ingram Show ran from 1998 to 2002, amassing over 900 one hour shows on topics ranging from David's tax and immigration specialties to in-depth interviews with some of the most famous authors and statesmen in Canada and the US.

Pacific Data Capture is working closely with David to bring these archival shows to the internet. In addition, we are working to create a video studio in David's office where he will be creating new, live call-in shows each week, again on a mulitude of topics. Our media expertise and internet infrastructure go hand in hand to make David's video offerings cost effective and of immense business value in today's streaming video marketplace.

Our services include provision of hosting and design of the archival and other web sites as well as Search Engine Optimization and local Advertising Server provision and administration.

One of Pacific Data Capture's most basic products is our e-mail infrastructure and consultation services. From our beginnings in the early 1980s with this technology we have grown both our own internal products and our external contacts and customer base. We contract to both end-users and e-mail intermediaries, providing our own facilities, custom facilities, administration and system consulting.

Our product offerings include e-mail list services integrated into custom web systems, custom domain hosting for e-mail infrastructure and hosted e-mail solutions of all kinds. Our customers prefer to have their own domains in use for e-mail to them, even if they ultimately retrieve their messges from the likes of Google, MSN/Hotmail or Yahoo. Our systems act as primary or secondary Mail eXchange hosts for a large and growing number of domains from across the world, and we provide hosted and locally (to the client) spam and anti-virus filtering and monitoring.

The old, traditional tattoo experts are vanishing. That's why Vince Hemingson put together his film project, The Vanishing Tattoo

What started as the promotional web site for a film series has blossomed into the largest and best tattoo website in the world. Pacific Data Capture has been instrumental in its creation and hosting from its start in 1999.

Today the site serves over 6 million pages/month and over 660 Gigabytes of pictures and video. Vanishing Tattoo has its own advertising server running the  OpenX ad software, and serves up tens of thousands of ads per day.

Pacific Data Capture has hosted VanishingTattoo for over 10 years.

Hancock Wildlife Foundation 
Live Streaming Eagle Nest Camera
Discussion Forums and Content Managed Sites

In late 2005, David Hancock, a long-time client of Pacific Data Capture, contacted us about the possibility of hooking a camera in an eagle's nest on Hornby Island, near Vancouver Island, to the internet. The rest, as they say, is history.

The simple phone call that day resulted in the creation of what became the largest, longest streaming video event in the history of the internet, eclipsing even the visit of the Pope the previous Summer. Looking back from today the 40,000+ viewers for over 4 months continuously is still an incredible amount of streaming video.

With all those "eagleholics" watching, the foundation was formed and Pacific Data Capture's Richard Pitt immediately put together a whole web site geared toward the creation of content by members - discussion forums, active content archives for photos, sound and video, and story/news submission. Today the HWF site is a key area for conservation and discussion of all manner of wildlife including cameras from around the world.

WWW.CENTA.COM
A Success Story
and a Site In Transition

David Ingram and Pacific Data Capture have been working together since the early 1980s. As one of the first commercial customers of our old ISP, Wimsey Information Services, David's web site has become the epitomy of a web site with growth pushing it into the top areas of the search engines and driving business to him and his staff.

In fact, the site is so big now that we're in the process of splitting it up into several sections, leaving the original but re-purposing much of the content while we work with some of the new Web 2.0 technologies to make it far more interactive and visual. We're moving to an active content managed site with archive and real-time video shows, including over 900 of his TV programs from 1998 to 2001.

Much of the current work is aimed at making the site more easily navigated as it contains in excess of 16,000 answers to questions posed him over the past 15+ years, as well as numerous articles and "how-tos" about tax and cross-border immigration and working.