I’ve blogged in the past about how hard it is to find decent hosting. Many of the companies that friends have recommended have failed miserably for me, and to make things worse, 99% of web hosting review websites can’t be trusted. HostMonk seemed like a good initiative when it was launched, but it still doesn’t have a quality metric. In comes whoishostingthis.com’s hosting review feature.
More Another legit hosting comparison website

A little while ago, Nickelodeon started airing a new kids TV show called “Team Umizoomi“. It features a team that consists of two humans and a robot… which looks a lot like the green little mechanical man that Google uses as part of the logo for their Android mobile operating system.

On the show, Team Umizoomi solves problems using each member’s unique skills. Milli is great at pattern recognition, Geo has a thing for shapes, while Bot excels at math and has a large display. I see some parallels with the Android OS here too. Things QR codes and Google Goggles are all about shapes and patterns, and modern Android phones have speedy processors and large screens.

But then again, I may be reading way too much into this…

I’m not a big fan of the DVD format anymore. I used to love how they could fit an entire movie onto a tiny disc, and marvel at the image quality. But then they put FBI warnings, trailers, animated menus and all other side of crap onto them, and more and more of my discs got scratched. Time to rip all of them and store the movies on a media server. I’ve been experimenting with different software solutions to do this, and today I tried WinX DVD Ripper Platinum. “WinX” is commercial software, priced at $29.95, but you may be able to get a hold of ot for free if you read on.
More WinX DVD Ripper Platinum quick review and giveaway

I’ve been following the development of Google’s Chrome OS for a while now, and have played around with some of the early builds that have been floating around online. It’s well on its way to becoming a stable and usable operating system, but I’ve been getting the feeling recently that it may have been been surpassed by that other Google OS, Android. Especially since Android comes with a very good browser.
More Does Chrome OS still make sense?

Google’s Adroid mobile operating system is in a bit of a tough spot here in The Netherlands. The first phones running it were released exclusively on T-Mobile, who at the same time were offering the iPhone. Besides the fact that the G1 (HTC Dream) and G2 (HTC Magic) weren’t very appealing by comparison, T-Mobile seemed to not market them much. And then there’s the fact that Nokia had a firm grip on the smartphone market in Europe. I too have been using an E71. But not anymore. My HTC Desire arrived last friday, and I’ve spent some time with Android. What I was wondering most was how it would compare to the iPhone OS.
More Comparing apples and robots

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Nexx Inc. All opinions are 100% mine.

If you’re looking to move your blog from wordpress.com to a self-hosted install, this may be a good deal. Nexx.com has recently been rebranded, and is now offering a new Unlimited Web Hosting. To celebrate their new plan they’re offering it at $10 for the first year, including a free .com domain name. I know plenty of hosts where the domain alone would cost that. And to make things even better, they offer a 1-click WordPress install. You should be able to have your blog up and running in mere minutes.
More Nexx.com: 1 year of WordPress hosting for $10

The great thing about WordPress is that there’s a huge, active and helpful community of users and developers. There have been WordCamps organized all of the world, as well as many smaller meetups. Last week, Kaj Rietberg and I put together just such a meetup in the Dutch city of Amersfoort.

The event was sponsored by open source development company 4WORX and hosted at the neighboring Dara restaurant (recommended!). Kaj and I were happy to welcome around 25 WordPress enthusiasts, a couple of whom had been tricked beforehand into preparing presentations. Kaj has written a more detailed account over at the WordCampNL website (in Dutch) which includes the slides from two speakers.
More WordPress meetup Amersfoort

I used to be a real nitpicker when it came to preparing images for the web. I’d laugh at people using large images in web pages, showing them in a smaller format by setting the width and height properties.

In the days before broadband was everywhere it was bad karma to do this, because a large image file would take a long time to download. You needed to prepare the image at the size you were going to be displaying it. Nowadays, things are a little different.
More Browsers are pretty quick at scaling images

I’ve recently decided to move my business out of my family’s home, to a nearby office building. While this is very convenient in many ways, it also meant I had to find a way to move data to and from there safely. As a web freelancer, I feel it’s my responsibility to keep client data very secure. Not only do I not want to lose it, I also need it to remain private. That’s why I looked into things like RFID protected and rugged harddrives.

There are two distinct threats I wanted to keep my data safe from. One is from data loss through drive failure. I’m going to be taking it with me every day, so I needed a sturdy drive that could take some (accidental) abuse. The other threat is theft. I wanted the contents of the disc to be protected in case it fell into the wrong hands. It was essential for me that I’d be able to use the device on Windows, Mac and Linux computers, which rules out most products that use software encryption.
More How to keep your data safe on a budget

I came across another ad today that advertised high end HDMI cables as offering “superior image quality”. You’d think with all the controversy surrounding Monster cables in the US consumers would know better by now, but apparently, that’s not the case. Most of that controversy was around cables that transport analog signals, but with HDMI it gets even more ridiculous. That’s because HDMI is digital.
More Don’t buy expensive HDMI cables!