I thought I would give it a shot to try out Speedtest.net. But knowing I have come here before, with durastically inaccurate results, I thought I would give it one more shot.

It’s one way to see how unfast your internet connection is. Seriously, mine doesn’t go 2.87 Mbps. And you know what?, even when my ISP says that the internet connection packages go up to a certain Mbps, it never is that fast.

For example, as you can see above, this is a download from Rapidshare from another user from another blog. But this is how I test my own internet, go to a big name site that has downloads that you can test your connection speed with, and download it, what ever file that is around 50MB’s to give you some time to watch how fast it goes. Usually the big name sites will give you the fastest possible download speed. So that how I predicted that my connection is around 384Kbps. That’s the fastest I can get in an apartment, but what can I say.. it works for me.

And even for a friend of mine that claims to have the fastest connection in another city, his only goes around 800Kbps. I think that’s extremely lame. We should get faster connection speeds than that in our country.

In a list of the known top WordPress hosts, you will see who is at the top and who is slightly less of a choice to go with. But overall, they are all better than Godaddy, that’s for damn sure. If your totally new to WordPress, then you have come to the right place to find the right WordPress hosting for your blog if you are about to get into it as a business.

But I would recommend to go with a cheaper host until your blog gains more traffic, as the hosting fees are more expensive with these hosts I talk about below. Here is a cheaper host to go with if you are a beginner:

For new WordPress users, go with this host:

.5 Dreamhost

As it is the host used by Digital Inspiration (one of the top technology blogs out there), I can only recommend them as the cheapest, and best WordPress host for the price aside from the more advanced hosts I will be talking about below.

1. WPengine

This is what TBOT is hosted on right now, and out of all the hosts I’ve ever been with, they are by far the best damn host I’ve ever been with. Introduced in 2010, with faster response time in the support tickets, and piece of mind in knowing that all of their support techs are seniors in WordPress knowledge, takes them to the top. One feature I admire is the ability to create “restore points” for my WP blog incase something goes wrong.

2. Page.ly

Another host I am with. I’m quite happy with them with the faster loading times of my other blog, and the fact that all malicious activity on my blog is taken care of by someone else. Plus they say they have made it their mission to be the best host, but I put them in second place since I am happiest with WPengine, but still happy with both.

3. WP Synthesis

It is said by Art Of Blog that WP Synthesis is the best for the money, as they are backed by Copyblogger media. Plus they are also the owners of Studiopress that created the Genesis wordpress themes. They are also behind Premise, and Scribe SEO. They are alot like other WP dedicated hosts that will take care of you and your blog with the security, speed, and caching for you. Page loading is a heck of alot faster, according to other reviewers. But like I said, my list here is based on my experience.

4. Blog Droid

As these guys are a very new service, it is personally used by WP Mayor and it is basically said that they are just another welcomed addition to the managed WordPress hosting market. With more and more competition coming our way for WordPress managed hosting, it will be good to see improvements in the hosting setup throughout all the hosts out there. Their pricing seems to be a bit cheaper than the others shown above in this list.

5. Zippy Kid

Zippykid has four different plans to choose from, with the lowest being at $25/month. Their pricing is very comparable to the others shown above, and I’m not sure how they are in terms of speed, uptime, and security but like I said let’s just say it’s a heck of alot better than GoDaddy or other non-managed WordPress hosts out there.

Above all that, there are hosts out there that claim to have “WordPress dedicated hosting”, despite not saying that on their whole main page but in a small box at the bottom or side of their main page as an advertisement. We want WordPress only dedicated servers sometimes, if you are a WordPress user, and if your WordPress blog is your business.

If you you need a host that means business when it comes down to WordPress dedicated, try any of the 5 I just recommended and you will be very satisfied.

If you ever come across a really expensive host aside from all of these, your best off staying away from them because all you need is hosting that is for a basic WordPress blog.

How do I find software for a specific purpose?

Finding software can range from easy to hard. Depending on what you want, if you think that your computer has the ability to do what you want it to do then there probably is software for that. If you are either using the operating systems below, the links will take you to the most popular places to find software for those operating systems:

Windows

Mac 

Linux

Say you wanted to find a piece of software for your printer, and it was a Canon. Searching on Google for “Canon printer software” would be one idea. Or if you were looking for music software to buy music from, Google search for “music store software”, and you would probably get iTunes as one of the first hits. Or say you wanted to look down on the earth from the sky, that’s software that exists, so if you Google searched “Earth software”, Google Earth would probably come up.

Since this is a huge topic, I will try to go over it as much as I can. First of all, if software is either completely free or paid, sometimes there is only paid software available for what you want to do. Someone asked me for transcribing software once. I looked around on Google, and found nothing but paid software, or services to transcribe videos (copy down all the words being said in a video). But I did find something, by searching “transcribing software for windows” on Google.

Google Search

If you can only find paid software, sometimes you can test a trialware piece of software which is a program that allows you to use the program on a trial basis, for a limited time on a limited amount of days. And sometimes you can cheat and get that software for free, regardless. Anything is possible if you try to figure it out. But I’m not getting into that, you do that at your own risk.

Sometimes when you install software, it will ask you if you want to install some sort of toolbar or something (and this is asked in most downloads you get for windows from Download.com). All you must do is click off all the checkboxes, and always check for when it’s asking that if you “agree” to the terms and conditions, that you do not agree to install a Toolbar as well. With Linux and Mac, toolbars are not really a problem. The same goes for viruses. Windows is the most used operating systems, so they get alot more viruses than the other two operating systems.

But for me, I have always found software for myself, for free. I have never needed to spend a dime, on anything. 

So remember, Google search is your best friend and use it for all your software finding needs. As long as you have a fast internet connection, it will take you there fast, so you can be on your way.

Is AppleCare worth purchasing to protect my Apple product?.

So first of all, you may ask, is AppleCare worth getting with a new Apple product?. I would say most definitely if you are new user when it comes to owning gadgets. We all tend to drop things, and let others use our devices and they could even cause harm by accident to your device. Also it mainly extends your coverage for an extra year incase something happens still. For the price of an Apple product, it’s worth adding an extra $50 to extend the coverage for a year on your Bentley-styled piece of technology.

Can I change my registration information for my AppleCare on my Apple product?.

Yes you can, you just have to call your AppleCare support number and ask them to change it to a different name, and I am assuming your doing this because it’s being sold to a different user. You need to go to this link and select the type of support you need then they will give you the right number to call.

But isn’t Apple profiting mostly off these extended warranties?.

Yes, as it is a market worth around £750 million on Apple’s side of their company, but like I said their warranty is better than some other warranty offered by retailers because it’s directly through Apple and not through the retailer. If the price is right through the retailer, and is offering a replacement if the device fails.. then maybe it’s worth it, it just depends on the price and the amount of time they are offering coverage for.

It happens.

This guide will help you set a featured image in WordPress through a URL, no longer having to upload each and every image and take up space on your blog hosts server.

1. First you need to go to this link, and buy the plugin which is called “Link 2 Featured Image” (It’s only $10 and I’ve been using it for 3 months!.

2. After dropping it into your Plugins folder into your WordPress blog via FTP, activate the plugin (you won’t find the plugin in WordPress’s free plugin repository).

3. Then either go to your post that is saved as draft or go create a new post and find an image from a URL, and then insert the URL in the Edit Post column along the far right side, further down. Click Update.

4. This will either update the post draft with the featured image and will set it as that, or it will update the post that has already been published with the featured image that you inserted through the URL.

A handy Chrome extension 

This new plugin for Chrome allows you to post an image into WordPress directly from viewing the image in what ever web page you see it in, just by right clicking on the image. You can find it here, and it is free but you can only use it with the purchase of the Link 2 Featured Image plugin.

Hope that helps you guys out!.

After all you have all heard of eBay, which has been around for years. Flippa was made for people to buy and sell websites online, and trust me there are alot of websites on this site auction giant site that are going for hundreds to thousands of dollars.

This may be old news to some, but if your reading this now this is probably news to your ear. Basically, just take a look at what sites are going up, anything from social media sites to nursing blogs, you name it.. this is the place to buy content and make profit off of advertising off of.

Picture this, an auction went up for 10 highway advertisement signs that are located along a busy highway. Those are the websites. Companies pay a certain amount per month to have their ads display onto these highway signs. So after you won the bid, and started opening your doors to any interested companies in utilizing your signs for their adspace, you start making some money and eventually earn back the amount you payed for the signs in the auction and then you start making profit. These websites with traffic being sold on Flippa here are basically those traffic signs you bought in the auction.

That’s the idea here, mainly. Traffic to your website translates into ad revenue. But anyways, I personally probably wouldn’t ever spend more than $100 or $200 on a website. And if I created my own website, I wouldn’t sell it if all the content was 100% mine and high quality content that took me 2-3 years to write. That’s Flippan crazy. But some people do it, and make their money, they are happy.

But anyways the background behind Flippa.com is that it was originally called the “SitePoint Marketplace” up until 2009. Then at that time, SitePoint Marketplace was moved to Flippa.com and that marketplace just got a new name because of the domain name, I guess. Also, Flippa.com was co-founded by Matt Mickiewicz, whom also co-founded 99designs.com.

Matt, being an internet entrepreneur, at 16, and found himself closing in on $10,000 advertising deals in between classes in high school. And in the end he barely finished high school and never attended college.

Flippa remains to this day the biggest dedicated marketplace for buying and selling websites.

Big purchases like the Book directory ReadPrint.com was sold for an undisclosed six-figures in September of 2010. The gambling portal BonusBonusBonus.com was sold for $750,000 in August of 2011. Mark Zuckerberg’s old website FaceMash sold for $30,000 in October of 2010. The biographical dictionary called s9.com sold for an undisclosed six-figures in October of 2010. And last but not least the social debating platform Debate.org was sold for an undisclosed six-figures in December of 2010.

I believe Mark’s FaceMash will sell for even more down the road if the site is being kept the same as it is now, because of Mark’s fame from his massive success with Facebook. But come to think of it, I tried FaceMash.com just now and it’s just some dead website loaded with advertisements.

But that pretty much sums it up, ya’ll. P.S. it seems that there are multiple sites going for prices around $25,000 or more in the image at the top, so there are many more high profile sites to be sold down the road through this site.

Via Flippa

This my friends is the annoying “debug.log” window that likes to show up when you start up Windows 7, and affected my main desktop and laptop, and a friend of mine’s computer. It has something to do with Facebook Messenger (the application) which allows you to talk with your Facebook friends on your Windows machine (any version of windows).

To disable it, click on your Start button at the bottom left corner of your main screen and then type in the search field:

msconfig

And press Enter. A window like this below will show up, where you want to click on the Startup tab, which is where you will click the checkbox off of “debug.log” and click Apply and then close the window.

Above, is one of my two 17″ LCD’s made by Dell, and below is my second:

I wanted to show you guys these monitors because I’ve been using them since the 2006/2007 mark. That’s like 6-7 years. These are just the basic 17″ LCD’s you can buy for around $100 now. That’s what their prices were back then. You can usually expect them to last a long time

I remember I found a site that can look up the parts that are used in monitors of cheaper brands like Dell, Acer and so on. I looked these monitors up and there was LG parts inside, I was actually amazed. I cannot find that URL to where I looked them up, but basically it requested my Dell LCD’s manufacturing number and after entering it I got the scoop of what’s inside.

The science behind it all

The CCFL or Lamp inside the LCD monitor slowly degrades with time. Some say that the end of the life of the LCD monitor is when the Lamp gets to 50″ of it’s output lifespan, though I am not sure how you can keep track of the output percentage. Let’s just say, when your monitor is showing green lines or just going green in paticular, that is a sign that it’s nearly dead.

Most backlights for LCD screens are also either cold cathode fluorescent tubes, or garden variety fluroescent tubes. The LED’s are are usually rarely ever used (except for cell phones), which is due to their unbalanced emission spectra. Though the tubes in LCD’s do eventually degrade alot like LED’s though unlike LED’s they sometimes do just die out.

The lower output of your monitor when you are using it, as in the brightness and everything else that makes it very bright and crisp, the longer it will last. I have been using these Dell monitors long enough that the whole time in that 6-7 years, I have always just left them on standby, without turning them off, and that hasn’t decreased the lifetime by much, judging at how long it’s been so far. But once in awhile, I do shut them off.

I also owned a Samsung SyncMaster 2493HM for almost 2 1/2 years, as it was previously owned by my brother in law. This is what it looks like, but that’s not my exact monitor, same model yes. It was able to move in any direction, so from this point where it sits here in the image, I could lift it up, just by using my hands to push it up. Then I could swivel the monitor to it’s side, again by just lightly pushing the LCD to it’s side. This is an LED backlit monitor.

Anyways, the lifespan of this monitor ended about 3 weeks ago. But I think that the display itself is fine, it’s just the wiring inside the monitor that caused to screw up because of the complicated technology behind the swivel design. I used the swivel thing alot, and I also moved it around alot too.

By the time I called Samsung to ask if it was still under warranty (without knowing the actual purchase date), they obviously said it was out of warranty. It only comes with a year warranty. And Samsung said they would fix it for $120, but I noticed 20″ monitors online for $150, so I decided that it wasn’t worth it. For so long, I had this setup:

And that was, awesome. I wish I still had this setup. But anyways, I think the issue with this monitor was like I said, something to do with the swivel, which screwed it up in the long term. It seems to be a power supply issue. I found a video on Youtube that explains on how to replace it, check it out below if you want. I may actually use this tutorial eventually too.

But anyways I also read somewhere that the average lifespan of an LCD monitor is 60,000 hours. I use mine for around 1-3 hours a day. So I will just put onto a calculator, 2 hours x 7 years = 5110 hours. I can’t believe that’s so low. Well, I hope my Dell monitors last around 60,000 hours. At one point I did notice that my silver Dell 17″ LCD kind of was going green before at some point in time, then it went back. I don’t know if the monitor *decided* to keep working but, thanks Dell for implementing that feature if it is a feature that you guys implemented. If your looking for a cheap LCD monitor, go with Dell for sure!.

I think this is pretty much common sense, it’s like the difference between driving a Ferrari vs driving a Volkswagen Beetle. Ethernet of course came in line before wireless. The truth is, the first Ethernet cable was introduced in 1973, in the image below you will see it. Bob Metcalfe had sent an internal memo to his colleagues at Xerox with a proposition of a using a local system of workstations that would interact with each other, along with files, and printers. All of the devices would all be linked together by just one coaxial cable, he had said at the time, and it would run within a local area network, conveniently at that time.

At the time he called it an Ether Network, or in other words, as we call it now, Ethernet. And then by 1976 there were then just over 100 devices linked into Metcalfe’s own local network, and then it was even used to test the globe’s first ever laser printer which was then being created concurrently in a different research facility within Xerox themselves. Metcalfe had an assistant named David Boggs, who had published their own discovery within the Association for Computing Machinery just later this current year. Of course, the rest is history.

This image shows a sketch that Metcalfe had sketched in his original memo to all his colleagues:

Now let’s look at the difference in speed of Ethernet versus Wireless

- A standard ethernet cable goes up to 100MB’s/second without any interruptions.

- Wireless, can go up to 300MB’s/second, but is limited to it’s signal strength. Most often, Ethernet is only faster because your directly connected to the internet modem where with Wireless you have to be very close to the Wireless modem to get the fastest speeds. Wireless also comes in different types, as you may have heard of “802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, or 802.11n”, which all come in different speeds.

Setting up Wi-Fi

If you ever set up a Wireless internet connection, try to have the modem upstairs as well. The signal can be picked up more easily when you are either level with the modem in the upstairs area or in the downstairs area of your house. It’s like gravity can more easily carry an internet connection downwards, versus upwards, which takes more work for the modem to provide a signal to your device.

Setting up Ethernet

I guess I can say that most modems that you get with any ISP (Internet Service Provider) come as a Wireless internet supported modem. Sometimes you can buy a stand alone modem that supports that ISP, so you can then connect that modem to a Wireless Router of your own so you can customize it more.

Anyways, if you have a modem that is wireless, or a modem connected to a router, just connecting your computer through Ethernet to that modem is good enough, don’t worry about connecting the ethernet cord directly to the modem.

Why is Ethernet more secure?

It’s because an Ethernet connection is only accessible from the modem itself. A wireless modem or router can be accessed anywhere that a device is in range of picking up a signal. So for someone to hack into your “wired” network, they would have to break into your house. Where a hacker sitting in their car outside your house or two houses down could pick the signal up and decrypt the wireless password.

Unfortunately most people these days have both a wired and wireless internet connection or I should say “network”, so you just have to set your wireless to WPA2 and you got to create a really long and complicated password. Another way to make your wireless internet network more secure is to disable “SSID Broadcasting”, this way you have to type in your network SSID name and then the password manually to connect in the first place, where normally if your wireless network was already broadcasting it’s SSID name, say you named your network “poodles”, you would just click on it and then type in the password and go from there.

Manually connecting is called creating a “Wireless Network Profile”. All you do is, in Windows you go to “Manage Wireless Networks” and then click on “Add”, and then you type in the wireless network details from there.

My own setup

So, in my own setup, I always am connected through Ethernet to my main desktop computer. I use Wireless for my iPhone and my Laptop, just because it’s easier to use wireless, and I really have no choice but to use wireless with my iPhone anyways.

How often do WordPress updates come?

Updating WordPress is pretty much essential to close up security holes that could let in security threats that hackers take advantage of to gain control of your blog or just general website. Having the right plugins to prevent security threats is essential as updating wordpress is.

The facts are, that WordPress has 62 releases in 87 months in between December 2005 and also February 2013. And that is an average of 42 days per release, pretty much.

On a side note, Drupal 6 has 26 releases in 48 months and Drupal 7 has 15 releases in 25 months, which is an average of 51 days for every release.

On another side note, Joomla 1.5 had around 27 releases in 26 months, where Joomla 2.5 had around 20 releases in about 25 months and also Joomla 3 had 4 releases in around 6 months, so that is another average, going at 36 days per release of an update. Drupal and Joomla are also content management platforms.

So, as a WordPress release comes every 1.4 months, they have pretty much deviated minimally from their schedule ever since 2006. So since you can expect an update every 42 days

We know how much WordPress is updated but should we apply those updates as often as they arrive?

There are a few steps I would take before doing so, if you are worried, that is. To be honest, every update I’ve ever applied to any version of WordPress hasn’t given me any problems, and that goes for plugins for WordPress to go with it. Also, as professional themes have updates too, I haven’t had a problem with those either.

But I am personally worried for the future, so now I wait around 2 weeks before applying every update

Before doing the steps below, I would set a timer for 2-3 weeks after the first update to WordPress comes. Incase the update causes problems, that gives the developers time to create another update to fix the previous update, I think. 

1. First thing you want to do before applying an update is backing up your WordPress files through FTP. Simply launch your desired FTP program, find a folder in your Documents in Windows or Mac, or even Linux and create a folder called “blog files” or something. Then select all your files from your Public_html folder or what ever folder is the main directory for all of your blog’s files.

2. Be ready to leave your computer on for a long time. Even if your WordPress blog is like 40MB’s, it could take up to 30 minutes to an hour to back it all up. Since my blog is like 1.6GB’s in all of it’s files, I do a backup less often but often enough that no matter what I will be okay. Also, my host is a dedicated WordPress host called WP Engine, they do daily backups of my blog files so I can either ask them to restore a backup, or I can manually create a “Restore Point” and then restore that “Restore Point” when ever I have a problem and cannot undo the pr0blem in WordPress, it’s alot like doing creating and using a Restore Point in Windows which is very handy to have.

3. After you have all your files backed up, do the upgrade or update, I would do all of your plugins after, so if the update of your WordPress core does not affect the functionality of your blog, do your plugins after and if there is a problem with loading WordPress you know it’s your plugins and not your blog’s main update for WordPress.

4. If all goes well, then all you got to do next is when the next update comes for WordPress, do the same procedure. I only recommend update your Plugins every time after you update WordPress, as backing up your site is a pain in the butt, it takes alot of time to do for a big blog. Your blog is only going to get bigger overtime, anyways.

I think that the reliability of WordPress goes with the popularity of the platform as it is built by hundreds of community volunteers, with thousands of plugins and themes available to use. Also, over 60 million people use WordPress for their blogs to power their content.