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IT hosting provider The Planet (www.theplanet.com) launched Sand Castle, a program designed to help eliminate the technology price barriers by offering one server to individual developers and entrepreneurs looking to develop new applications and products. 

According to its Tuesday announcement, The Planet has committed up to 500 servers to the Sand Castle program, each equipped with Dual Xeon processors, a 146GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, 10Mb per second of unmetered bandwidth, and the CentOS 5 operating system.

"While there are indicators of a turnaround, the economy cannot recover without job creation, and we continue to hear the recovery will not automatically mean new jobs," The Planet chairman and chief executive officer Douglas J. Erwin said in a statement. "With eight data centers, we're in a position to offer a single server to 500 individuals who want to start their own businesses. These 500 servers could create 500 jobs, and then we'll have taken one small step to pay it forward and be part of the solution."

Those who are not current customers may fill out a one-page signup form stating their vision for their software application or web-based design service. The applications will be evaluated, and applicants will know if their project is accepted within a week of applying. After that they must produce a new domain within six months of acceptance into the program.

Small businesses have generated 64 percent of net new jobs over the past 15 years, and hire 40 percent of high-tech workers, including scientists, engineers and computer programmers, according to statistics from the US Small Business Administration's (www.sba.gov) Office of Advocacy.

"We challenge other companies to think outside the box and create meaningful opportunities and incentives. If more companies follow this path, our collective contributions will help move the needle toward job creation," Erwin concluded.

By offering their services for free to those who have a great idea but cannot afford the underlying technologies, The Planet's new initiative could be seen to fall into the same category as Microsoft's WebsiteSpark, which provides entrepreneurs free software and support for the design and development of new websites, as well as discounts on licensing for hosting providers.

Read more: theWHIR.com - Daily Web Hosting News