Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
Thursday, January 12th, 2012
Every so often I read news stories about one telecoms provider or another increasing their broadband speeds to N million customers. Just recently I read that one company was increasing its top end speed from 100Mbps to 120Mbps. And I started to think about why would I need 100Mpbs broadband? And if I did need it, why would I need a bump to 120Mbps? First some context, my first “broadband” connection was just 64kbps (that is 0.0625 Mbps in today’s terms). I think the cable company didn’t call it broadband as it wasn’t much higher than the 56kbps modems that existed at the time, but the key was that the connection was permanently on, no more dial up!
64kbps was brilliant, surfing the web became enjoyable and large downloads became a reality (if I let them run over night). Of course at that time (this is back in 1999) there was no YouTube, no streaming of live video webcasts, no iTunes, no NetFlix. Fast forward a decade and a bit and I know have 10Mbps which is 160 times faster than what I had in ’99. Is 10Mbps useful? Yes. Downloads from iTunes would be unrealistic without at least 2Mbps and now with kids in the house there are lots of devices sharing the same connection.
But do I need 100Mbps or even 120Mbps. 100Mbps is 10 times faster than what I have now and 1600 times faster than what I had in 1999. If I buy a movie from iTunes it is normally about 1.5GB in size. My top download speed is about 1MB a second, so to download it takes 25 minutes. Downloading the latest version of Ubuntu Linux takes about 11 minutes. This is quick. If I wanted to watch a film, and it was a “on the spur of the moment” thing, I could start the download, boil the kettle, pop some corn and the film would be downloaded. If I had 100Mbps broadband then it would download in 2.5 minutes. Do I really need to download a whole 2 hour movie that quick? I think the answer is no. Recently a different broadband provider in our area tempted me to change to their service. They offered 50MBps. Did I change? No I didn’t. I like what I have, it is reliable, economical and does exactly what I need.
What do you think? Leave a comment below.
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Monday, August 3rd, 2009
The Mac Sale was launched today and for a limited time only you can get $450 Worth of Apps for $49.99. The bundle of 10 applications combines the products of both established Mac powerhouses and startup indie developers.
The full list of applications in this exciting new bundle is:
- REALBasic Personal – The exceptional rapid development environment. Designed to appeal to newcomers to software development and also old hands looking for another tool to add to their arsenal.
- Iris – A new image manipulation app with a beautiful user interface. It’s uncluttered user interface makes it a joy to work with on everything from photos to logos.
- Interarchy – The ultimate file transfer tool. With support for FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3, WebDAV and more.
- Flux – The powerful web design application. Flux supports just about everything your can throw at it from XHTML/CSS to JavaScript and Flash.
- Scribbles – The innovative sketching program, with a remarkable user interface ideal for anyone needing to make quick sketches or fun paintings.
- TaskPaper – The amazingly simple but flexible task manager. With a restrained user interface TaskPaper focuses your mind on your tasks ahead, and not a complex application.
- WriteRoom – The remarkable word processor aimed squarely at writers. It’s full screen mode has become famous in the Mac community and even got plaudits in the New York Times.
- Stuf – The clipboard manager tool which lets you copy and paste over your local network. You’ll wonder how you ever managed with it!
- Mariner Calc – The lean and mean spreadsheet. This established and mature spreadsheet application is long standing Mac workhorse, and with good reason.
- HoudahSpot – Don’t search, find. HoudahSpot adds the missing “Advanced” function to Spotlight…
(more…)
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Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
The Mac Sale has announced their brand new Mac software bundle, offering a great deal to both the developers of the applications and customers alike. The Mac Sale combines the products of both established Mac development houses and independent startup developers.
The Mac Sale bundle goes on sale on the Tuesday 4th August 2009 for $49.99, so head on over to The Mac Sale to register your interest and also get the chance to win a brand new iPod Touch without any purchase required.
Click here to view more details
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Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
I don’t often “recommend” software but there are two critical bits of software that everyone needs a good anti virus and good backup.
For the anti virus I take the bold step of recommending AVG Free and for backup I just found out about GFI Backup…
GFI Backup for Windows handles traditional folder and files backups, but it also has special options for backing up your registry, email, and program settings (including setting for programs like Skype, Putty, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Winamp, Firefox, IE and Opera).
Backups can be saved to CD/DVD, removable drives, LAN folders, or remote FTP. Scheduling, compression, and AES encryption are also supported. For those who use an external hard drive or a NAS, GFI can also handle synchronization tasks.
Related links:
Free GFI Backup Home offers powerful-yet-simple backup and sync
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Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
SourceForge has announced the finalists for the 2009 SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards. In its fourth year, the Community Choice Awards received the highest number of nominations from its community members to date, resulting in 85 finalists.
The great news is that FreeNAS has been chosen as a finalist in the ‘Best Project’ and the ‘Most Likely to Chang the Way You Do Everything’ categories.
Now, the “second round” is open: Vote for FreeNAS!
Also Olivier Cochard has released a personal message to get out the vote for FreeNAS.
Related links:
FreeNAS: Sourceforge CCA 09: Vote for FreeNAS!
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Thursday, June 11th, 2009
A friend of mine sent me this…
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Thursday, May 21st, 2009
Following the success of my Learn FreeNAS blog I have started a new, wider and more general blog about Network Attached Storage. As well as covering FreeNAS this new blog will cover other NAS products (both free and commerical) including OpenFiler, NexentaStor and NASlite.
The blog will also cover news and tips about the various NAS technologies including iSCSI.
You can find the new blog at Network Attached Storage News.
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Saturday, December 20th, 2008
A teacher from Austin, Texas confiscated a bunch of CDs containing free Linux distributions from a student who was demonstarting GNU/Linux on his laptop and handing out the CDs. After this, the teacher sent an angry email to Ken Starks of the HeliOS Project, where the student got his Linux CDs from.
“This is a world where Windows runs on virtually every computer and putting on a carnival show for an operating system is not helping these children at all. I am sure if you contacted Microsoft, they would be more than happy to supply you with copies of an older version of Windows and that way, your computers would actually be of service to those receiving them…”
Read more here: Enemies of GNU/Linux?
Posted in Oddly Enough, Technology | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008
I have started a new blog called “Virtualization News“. The site concentartes on the increasing popular virtualization technology.
Using virtualization a system manager can run several virtual computers on one single PC or server. This provides an excellent resource for testing new versions of system software without endangering the live systems as well as allowing for server consolidation.
Using a virtualization product like VMware or VirtualBox a single PC can run a number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (XP, Server 2003, Vista), Linux, Solaris/OpenSolaris and OpenBSD.
The site covers VMWare, VirtualBox, Parallels, Xen, KVM and much more.
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Tuesday, December 9th, 2008
I have started a new sister site to the Free Press Release Center. The new site is called “Press Release Writing Tips” and is your one-stop shop for in depth information about writing press releases.
Over 34% of press releases are rejected at the FPRC and as a result I want to educate writer more and more about writing good press releases.
So go look around, enjoy your stay and don’t forget to subscribe to the site so you can get the latest tips in your inbox!
Gary
Posted in Me, Technology, Webmaster | No Comments »
