One of the biggest issues of webmasters is to find a reliable web host. Most of us want it also to be as cheap as possible. It is normal, when you just want to have your thoughts and ramblings published online, you don’t want to spend too much money for your hobby. In such cases, a really cheap, affordable host would be perfect, because you are less interested that your website is online 24 hours a day, seven days a week. However, when you are involved in an internet business, you can’t afford to go cheap, because reliability and good services come first. Each minute offline can cost you money, so you need to research thoroughly before deciding for a webhosting company to work with. Going offline for longer time may result in you losing important clients and sales. So, in such cases, don’t go cheap.
This is what the WebHostingGeeks.com can do to help you: web hosting companies reviews and ratings. In this way you can find all required information in one single place. For example, you can find out who won the Best Blog Hosting award this year, or which is the best Linux web hosting service. Additionally, you’ll have the chance to find out more technical info, in order to make it easier for you to decide which features you need and which ones you don’t. Nobody wants to pay for something that they don’t need. This is what makes research so important, when it comes to good web hosting.
Web Hosting Rating Site
Farewell, Anca Parghel
I want to introduce you Anca Parghel, great musician who passed away this week, at the age of 51. She was suffering from cancer since long time ago, yet she decided to go on with her career, as if nothing was ever wrong with her health.
Anca Parghel was one of the greatest Romanian jazz singers of all times. I remember how her concerts awakened my interest for this kind of music, which my parents never liked, so I can’t say I grew up with.
This is a recording of her from year 1993:
And this one is from a jams in New York:
Christmas, a Time for Gifts
I still remember the childhood times, when we were under the mickey mouse magic, and we were fascinated by all Disney characters. There were no so many toys by then, so we never had the chance to play like nowadays children do.
I was looking the other day at MEGA Brands: they offer a nice selection of branded toys such as Disney Princess playing kits, or Disney cars, or the Mickey Mouse club collection. The website is well structured, offering visitors the possibility of having their own wish list, where they can include whatever they like from the multitude of famous brands toys available in the shop. In order to make browsing easier, the toys are grouped in age, price and brand categories. Additionally to the shop, there are two entertainment sections, one for kids and one for the family, with fun games and even a club.
How It Feels To Be Homeless At 51
This morning, I went shopping at a nearby supermarket. While I was getting the bags out of the car trunk, I heard a voice behind me. It was a man with white hair and beard, looking at me as if he was about to ask for directions. He was smiling, I smiled back and prepared to tell him that I don’t know the neighborhood (although I’ve been living here since 10 years ago).
Surprisingly, he asked me to give him some money. I asked him why, and he told me that he wanted to buy a bread. I thought that was enough reason for me and I gave him money for the bread, while whispering that I could use some money too, but I don’t ask other people to give me. Then he started telling me his story, how he is currently homeless because he was stupid enough to borrow money which he wans’t able to return, thus being forced to sell his apartment. He looked rather clean and he was not smelling. I asked him where he was sleeping and he told me that his night lodging was in the nearby park. Winter hasn’t come yet, but it is already very cold here, the wind is blowing quite strongly, so I can imagine how pleasant it can be to sleep outside. He didn’t seem to be bothered by that. His strongest wish was to resist like that for 8-9 more years, so he becomes entitled to get a pension from the state.
I asked him how does he manage to eat every day. The answer was obvious: he was looking for people parking their cars, asking for money to buy food, just like he did with me. I noticed that it probalby takes a very long time to gather the money for a day’s food, as everything got crazy expensive over the past years. He agreed, and he said that now he’s acquired the experience to filter the “potential clients” - he said that men are more merciful than women, and that people driving expensive cars were more willing to give him something, rather than those driving cheap cars.
During the whole conversation, the guy was smiling, and he was telling meall that as if it was absolutely normal to sleep in the park and to get washed in restaurants. I bet that when he was young, he would have never imagined that he’d be doing all that at 51.
Isn’t life strange?
How To Zip And Encrypt Your Documents For Free
Do you remember how long ago you have heard about Zip for the first time? I think it was even before Windows was invented. Internet was an unknown word yet at that time. Computers were DOS operated and the instructions for compressing and decompressing documents seemed like magic words to me. What I didn’t know by then, but I’ve just found out tonight is that the .zip standard was invented by PKWARE. This explains why those commands were starting with pkzip and pkunzip. For those of you who are interested, PKWARE is giving away a non-commercial use license of a much more modern version of zip, the SecureZIP Express. Not only it is free of charge, but you have the chance to win cool prizes in the new “Decrypt and Drive” contest.
SecureZIP Express has several useful features. The basic ones are compressing/decompressing and encryption of files that you store or send. Compressing files is a great way to save storage space, especially on memory sticks and CDs; besides, there are situations in which we want our files to be secured, as they are not meant to be seen by anybody. The software also includes a digital certificate so you can exchange files securely with others without using passwords. Only the person the file was encrypted for can open it when you use a digital certificate. SecureZIP Express has no toolbars or spyware. For years, PKWARE has given free .zip software away. Now, together with the software, they are giving away a lot of prizes including a Honda scooter, bicycles, Wii games, gas cards, and more.
For entering the contest, you need to visit www.DecryptandDrive.com, download the free software, then come back to play the game. You need to have SecureZIP, and the digital certificate it installs, on the computer you play the game from. SecureZIP Express is also available for download at www.securezip.com. Good luck and let me know if you win something.
Dirty Blue Widgets Poetry Jam Sessions Are Officially Open
I’ve just launched a new blog and a new invitation for all of you to help me. I’ll let you know how, in a moment.
First, despite the fact that my new blog is somehow connected with internet marketing, it is a poetry blog. Every reader can be an author. I’m only starting the poems, and you are invited to write the next line in the comments. Then, another reader adds a line to yours, and so on, until the poem is complete. Then I publish it in the Dirty Blue Widgets Archive section and I start a new one. My intention is to write a poem a day, but I’m aware that it may be slower in the beginning, as not many readers have yet discovered the Dirty Blue Widgets poetry jam sessions.
The idea came when I was thinking how to approach my participation in an SEO competition. I wanted to make it fun. Then I remembered how I was about to be expelled from school in the 6th grade, because of a poem I’ve written about two of our teachers. They didn’t seem to appreciate my talent. Too bad! The poem had about 20 pages and I’ve written it during several weeks - I was adding new lines every day. Everything was so cool, until my desk colleague thought her mother would like the poem and she showed it to her. That lady liked it so much, that she asked the teachers to keep her daughter away from me.
Too bad I never got my poem back.
What are these dirty blue widgets anyway
Nevertheless, I’m now back to my poetic habits and challenge all of you to bring your contribution to the Dirty Blue Widgets poetry jam, and to spread the word about it. The SEO contest will end on January 20th. Any promotion from you is welcome. If you are passionate about SEO and you wish to join it, please check the previous link. Briefly, the contest is open to all members of The Affiliate Academy, so you’ll have to join in and stay a member for the whole contest duration. There are lots of things to learn in there, so I guess you won’t be sorry for joining. It is not free, but if you are really passionate about internet marketing, you can see a return of your investment pretty soon.
Thank you. I’m looking forward to see your contributions in the poems 
What Do You Know About Web Hosting?
Web hosting is a hot business nowadays. There are so many hosting companies that choice is most of the times at random. Even I own a hosting reseller account, so if I wanted I could have sold such services, but I’m keeping it only for my sites at the moment, because I’m sure there are details which are difficult to handle, especially customer service. Some of my customers would probably know more than I do. This is why I postponed this project until I get to know more about servers.
Speaking of knowledge, there is a web hosting blog where you can read more about various related issues, in case you are interested, or you are seeking for a new host for your websites. These Web Hosting Geeks write about preventing fraud on e-commerce sites, or other security issues. For example, I didn’t know that php has so many vulnerability issues. I was even upset with my former web hosting company, when I discovered that I wasn’t able to run certain scripts on their server.I didn’t want something very complicated, it was just a php function which was disabled by default without any possibility for the customers to enable it by themselves.
The new host allows those scripts, but in exchange, I see much more spam than before. I suppose everything has a price. This is why research prior to purchase is a good idea when buying web hosting. I can give you one more advice: do not pay for one year in advance, as you might be sorry sooner than you expect.
Curiously Awesome Gifts
It’s Christmas time again, so we start thinking at our beloved ones, at possible gifts that they’d like. This year I’ve started looking for gifts earlier than ever. Maybe that’s because of the online shops I’m currently running. I’ve almost persuaded myself that I need an artificial tree this Christmas, although I’ve been a fan of natural trees all my life. Now, after I’ve seen how cool some artificial tree models can be, I’m considering buying one, thus saving one of the real pine trees.
I want to show you some strange gifts in the videos below. I’m not encouraging you to buy any of them, despite the fact that the videos are affiliate and I make a commission for each sale. I just wanted to share them with you, and have some fun together.
Multimedia Software For Video Encoding And Conversion
The multimedia age made all music devices I’ve used in my teens look obsolete. I grew up in the vinyl discs era and I have a great collection of such discs I don’t listen to anymore, but I can’t throw away either. Now we can do anything we want to our music: we can listen to it while relaxing, we can take it away with us when we go out, we can edit it and record our own original songs if so we wish. Of course, we can’t do all these without the help of specialized multimedia software such as an audio converter for changing the audio file format, a video encoder for converting AVI and WMV files to MPG formats. After we convert the files, we surely could use a DVD ripper software, so we can write the music on CDs or DVDs to archive it in our library or to take it with us in the car.
How to Choose the Multimedia Software
Multimedia software defines those computer programs which let you do all things I’ve mentioned above and even more. When choosing a multimedia application, you need to take into consideration your needs: what do you want the software to do? What’s your final purpose? Do you need only to rip music on CDs, or you could use some video creation and merging as well? You need to see what are the supported formats of files, to see if it is good for you.
Blaze Media Pro: All-In-One Multimedia Software
Blaze Media Pro is a multimedia application which offers all these functions: audio converter (supporting MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG and other known music files formats), an MP3 encoder and decoder, MPEG encoder and decoder, CD and DVD burner, video and audio editor, to name only a few of its facilities. The system requirements fall within the average range (800 MHz processor, 1GB RAM, 30MB hard disk, sound card). Of course, for creating CDs you’ll need a CD writer. The operating system can be Windows 98 SE/2000/ME/XP/Vista. I don’t know if it works also on MACs, but you can ask the support staff if you are interested.
I’ve shot some videos recently, and I needed to edit and merge some of them, so I’ve used the free trial version of Blaze Media Pro. The video editing operations that can be done with this multimedia software are multiple, covering actions such as deleting frames, cropping, trimming, flipping, mirroring, text overlaying. If you need, you can overlap an audio file over the video - this was the feature I needed so badly, because I had a part of video where the person speaking made a mistake and I needed to replace the text with the correct one.
What I also liked, but I didn’t have the time to play with yet, are the effects and color adjustments you can add to the video - this is on my to do list for the weekend.
Despite the fact that it’s a big time hog for me, I’m happy I discovered this multimedia software. I enjoy making my own videos, you know.
