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Archive for May, 2010

Ever since the announcement of the Apple iPad (which was long before its actual release), people have been comparing it with the Amazon Kindle, even though they didn’t even have the final full specifications of the device. This is because Apple themselves said that the iPad will directly compete with Kindle and any other ebook readers, having its own ebook store run by Apple.

Now that the device is finally here, we can make some pretty good comparisons between it and the Kindle (specifically the second release, as the first one is already obsolete).So, let’s start with the strain on the eyes thing, which is the number one argument for buying a Kindle. I don’t know about you, but my eyes have gotten used to various screens with their own light source. We’ve all been watching TV since we were little (well, most of us), and our eyes kind of got used to it.

Plus, there’s all the time spent typing text on a smart phone or sitting in front of a computer.The iPad’s screen is literally a world apart of most TV’s and desktop or laptop screens. Apple seems to have selected the best possible screen for reading, which is a good decision for a device intended to be used as an ebook reader. The 9.7 inch OLED screen is very beautiful, and the contrast is great. It’s not like reading paper – it’s more like reading that white letter size paper under a bright light or the sun (you can configure the brightness, of course).

Plus, there’s the obvious advantage of being able to read in the dark (and the iPad doesn’t light up the whole room, it’s very good at keeping the light inside the screen). I think there are very few people who would find reading books on the iPad more tiring or problematic than on the Kindle, so that’s a score for the iPad.

Now that we’re past that, let’s see what else sets the iPad apart from the Kindle. The most obvious features are, of course, the color screen and the ability to run various apps that are not limited to or even related to reading. You can view videos and pictures, edit documents, surf the web, check your email, manage your tasks, watch online TV (using apps like ABC Player or Netflix) and do a lot of other things that you usually do on your laptop or desktop computer.

To put it shortly, the iPad is a universal portable computer. This sort of puts it in a completely different league than the Kindle, but the latter’s sales will definitely lower because of the iPad.

But let’s say you really just want to read ebooks and are considering both the iPad and the Kindle (most probably, the Kindle DX, which has almost the same price as the iPad and a bigger 9.7 inch screen). For this purpose, the Kindle is better, but not by a big margin.

The iPad has a few unique advantages of its own:

1. The iPad doesn’t have any strict DRM on ebooks (at least for now), so you can read free books like those on Google Books.

2. You can easily read the books published online using the Safari browser and read PDF and DOC documents using a third party app that you can easily get from the Apps Marketplace. Reading PDF’s might be a big deal for some, who buy various ebooks from independent sites and publishers (and they’re in PDF 90% of the time).

But the Kindle is ultimately better for reading ebooks, and here’s why:

1. The Kindle is cheaper at $259 (unless you really need the Kindle DX, which retails for $489, which is $10 cheaper than the starter iPad; in it’s favor, the Kindle DX has a 3G modem, unlike the Wi-fi only adapter of the iPad);
2. It’s much lighter at only 10 ounces, compared to the iPad’s full 1.5 pounds;
3. The screen is much better for reading. It’s just like reading paper, and you can easily read it in direct sunlight. The drawback is that you can’t read it at night without an external light;
4. The battery life is much better on the Kindle, which can work for 2 weeks (with wireless off) before it needs recharging.

In the end, the choice is up to you. I can say that the iPad is a great universal computer that can be used for anything you’re using your laptop for right now (even photo editing!), with the added ability to read books in a pretty comfortable manner on a good screen. It’s the best choice if you read a book or two per month, and would like the ability to view videos and read web sites from it. The Kindle is the best choice if you are reading a lot of books and/or want a separate device specifically for this purpose.

All of us want to be noticed by others with the help of the gadgets which we use. We want others to look at us whenever we are moving around holding these gadgets in our hands such as the mobile phones or the music players etc. Then why do you have the same kind of craving for the earphones? Did you ever think of adding color to this small instrument and of making your music and listening experience even more attractive, stylish and above all colorful?

The look

You do not have to wait anymore. Stop thinking about it and start acting. Yes, the earphones which had always been the demand and need of the people and which you always wanted to grab are the ones by the Empire Brands. Not only one or two but actually four lines of the earphones have been introduced by the brand for the sake of satisfying the customers and everyone’s needs who want to be different from others. These earphones are no doubt quite stylish as well as eye catching.

Specifications

With the help of these earphones you would not only be able to have unique noise isolation but you would also be having a 1.2 extra long meter cords. We cannot forget about the gold plated tips that are designed for the maximum protection of your ears.

It starts with the little buds line, which is quite clear from the name. It is light in weight and also has a semi gloss finish. You can have this one for a reasonable price of $29.99. The second one is the empire line which has prices of $34.99. The third is jaw breaker line available in just $17.99 and the last one is the metallic line that is of $12.99. You would be able to get great attraction for yourself with the help of these earphones.

Shared web hosting is still the most popular type of hosting online, although that will probably change in a few years when cloud hosting will be perfected and everyone will start using it in their datacenters. It is very cheap and if the physical machines are powerful enough and not too loaded, it’s enough for most small-to-medium applications that will have anywhere from thousands to hundreds of thousands of visitors per month.

If you are just starting out and you need a simple, easy to use hosting for your new site, forum, newsletter, e-shop or other online presence, you can easily go with shared web hosting.

Shared web hosting works very simply: a single, powerful machine (most datacenters nowadays use 4-8 processor cores, 8-16 GB of RAM and 2-3 500-1000 GB hard drives for this purpose, which is enough in 90% of all cases) hosts the accounts of 10-30 clients, with their websites, email accounts and everything else they might have.

The resources are distributed dynamically on a per need basis, and the theory is that it’s highly unlikely that all of the websites on the server will be hit by a lot of traffic at once, so most of the time; they are enough to keep a stable, high performance for all the clients. When a site gets to the front of Digg or other social network and starts receiving tons of visits, it uses more resources than usual, but because the other clients’ sites are mostly idle, they don’t notice anything.

If that site uses more than a certain amount of resources (which is set in the customer agreement), it is disabled until the owner does something to lower the load or moves to a VPS or dedicated server. This is the biggest drawback of shared hosting, but can be avoided by using a CDN (Content Distribution Network) like the free Coral CDN or paid MaxCDN (the latter gives you nice analytics and more control, but the former is good enough for basic use), which basically caches your pages on a whole network of servers that then serve them to your visitors, avoiding your shared hosting completely (and therefore, not loading your site).

Now that you understand what shared hosting is and how it works, let’s take a look at the best cheap and reliable web hosting companies and see what they have to offer.

1and1. With over 4 million customers and 5 datacenters all around the world, 1and1 is truly one of the leaders in the hosting industry. They have the cheapest prices and the most features per dollar you pay. I also like how they don’t say they offer unlimited everything (which is just impossible) like a lot of other companies do, but that will probably change. They offer various shared hosting plans from $4 to $20, with a lot of disk space and unlimited bandwidth (although it’s probably limited to about 3000-4000 GB per month, like most other companies). They have a great custom Control Panel where you can control everything (obviously from email to domains to transfer limits and billing. They also run frequent discounts of 50% or more percent for the first 3-6 months, which is great if you’re strapped on cash when you start out. Another great thing they do is give you $75-275 for AdWords, Yahoo and CitySearch, so you can use those vouchers to advertise your products. That can easily cover the hosting price for a couple of years!

HostGator. One of the most advertised hosting companies online, HostGator has offers for everyone. Starting at $4.95, they offer unlimited everything (which is not really true, but I guess they couldn’t compete with anyone if they advertised their real limits), and for the $12.95 plan, they give you a free dedicated SSL certificate, IP address and phone number, which would otherwise cost about $90, and is great if you need them (they can all be used for an e-commerce site, for example). They use the cPanel Control Panel, which is pretty standard and works well.

iWeb. Another great hosting company that makes it to the top lists and receives various awards every year, iWeb has a very good shared hosting offer, even if it’s more expensive: they offer a zero-downtime guarantee, which is achieved by having the shared hosting in a virtualized environment (i.e. a cloud) with a few redundant servers as backup. This is great news for anyone who knows how valuable every minute a site is available is. The rest of the offer includes 600GB which you can’t use for personal stuff (although you can probably host videos for your site), unlimited bandwidth and one domain for $1, which is nice. The cost is $1.67 per month, but only if you subscribe for 10 years. If you want to pay monthly, the cost is $7.77.

ix Web Hosting. This was and still is one of the best hosting companies for the last 10 years. Their current offers are between $6.95 and $12.95 (with a special discount of about 50% for all of them) and include free dedicated IPs (2, 3 and 15, which is just amazing, you could use them for SSL, cloaking, proxy sites and other things) and Adwords/Yahoo coupons ($100, $125 and $150). Not too bad, definitely worth checking out.

JustHost. This company has been getting a lot of attention in the last couple of years, and users say that it’s quite good. They’re pushing the limit with their all-unlimited offer (which I believe isn’t true, as I said before), but the price and uptime are good enough, and the support is great, so they can be forgiven . They also give you a free domain with their $6.95 plan (now only $3.45, special promo offer), which is always a bonus.

Shared hosting is a great way to get your presence online and start a site, forum or anything else. It’s cheap, easy to use, doesn’t require a lot of manual configuration (unlike dedicated servers and VPS), and it’s powerful enough to hold a small or medium site with a few tens of thousands of visitors per month. Unless you need more control over your server, you can easily go with shared hosting.