BlueLounge Cable Box
July 16th, 2010 // 6:43 pm @ Terrance Gaines
While searching around YouTube, I stumbled across my main man Marquez Brownlee’s channel and saw an unboxing of a cool gadget for all you cable-management freaks enthusiasts.
It’s called the Cable Box from BlueLounge and essentially, it’s a box that covers up your surge protector and all the power cords bulging from it. It’s pretty straightforward and makes everything behind your desk or workstation look nice and neat.
Below is the video of his unboxing of the Cable Box (make sure to subscribe to Marquez’s channel and follow him on twitter @MKBHD)
Category : Computer/Networking Tech &Random Tech
The Lowdown In Tech This Week: 5-21-10
May 21st, 2010 // 10:43 am @ Terrance Gaines
Google, Google, And More Google
Google I/O Conference is this week, and the giant has pulled no punches with its announcements. One of which is Google TV. A set-top box with Android guts and the ability to download mobile apps, but made to view television shows, movies, and video anywhere they are found on the web. Got an Android phone (or an iphone, touch or pad), well you can get an app that will allow you to control your Google box over wifi.
Speaking of Android, Google also used the Conference also let loose the new Android “Froyo” mobile OS that’s fully Flash compatible and is claimed to run laps around the current iPhone OS (the summer will be HOT when Apple drops their new iphone OS 4.0 this June).
Speaking of Apple, Google has also announced a cloud-based service that will allow Android phones to live stream itunes music uploaded to the cloud. That is in direct competition with Apple that plans to announce its own itunes cloud media service as a result of buying and shutting down the LaLa music site that allowed you to upload, download and buy itunes compatible music and access it via the web.
If you’ve had enough Google for this update, then TOO BAD, because Google I/O also took the time to announce that Google Wave, the online communicating, sharing, collaboration, and networking service is live and open to the public. So if you are looking for a way to meet with your group that’s spread out over the country, or just want to share some pictures with Grandma in real time, you now don’t need an invite to use wave (but you will need either Google Chrome, Apple Safari, or Mozilla FireFox browsers in order to use Wave…sorry Microsoft Internet Explorer users *sad face*)
It seems as if Big Brother Google is in Full effect!
Category : Computer/Networking Tech &Home Tech &Mobile Tech
Cloud VS Dedicated: Best Options for a business
May 13th, 2010 // 8:00 am @ Charlie Homes
If your company generally operates exclusively online then you essentially have two choices when it comes to alternatives to in-house servers. For an established company that has stable growth, their best option is definitely dedicated hosting. If you are a start up though, then you should go with cloud hosting. Depending on what you are looking for these two options can differ greatly and one must be smart when choosing which hosting option to go with.
The Cloud Option
If you are relying heavily on the web for most of your business but are still in the start up phase of your company when downtime has the ability to kill you then you should consider cloud. One major advantage of cloud is that it can easily deal with growth and keep your company active at all times.
The best description of cloud hosting is that it is a rental service. You are renting space on a virtual server much in the same way you rent an apartment or a condo. You are able to adjust your required level of space as the size of your business goes. You are not tied down to a specific level of service. Cloud hosting can be adjusted as required in order to accommodate the traffic levels you are receiving. Also you have the ability to choose which operating system you prefer. If you prefer using a windows or a linux system you have that option. This gives cloud users the same flexibility as those using a dedicated host but with flexible billing along with API server configuration.
All this does not mean that you can just flick on a switch and let your site coast. Your IT team will still have to manage the cloud package to make sure that it is optimized for your site. As traffic fluctuates the configurations will as well. This will be familiar to most IT professionals since it is most likely what they are doing now.
Dedicated hosting
Dedicated hosting is when a company leases one or more servers in order to control the work completely. There are 3 advantages to a dedicated package.
For one, your data center is a stable and secure location. This will lower your hardware costs. You won’t have to spend money on housing space or power for the servers since they are off site.
Two, you have complete control over the contents of the server. The server holds only the information you want it to. You therefore have complete control of the bandwidth on that server. Your load times should not be affected by traffic level unless you allow it.
Third, you can adjust and customize your servers’ performance to fit your level of technology.
Why you might chose dedicated hosting:
- A key component of your business is hosting based
- You are an established, large scale business
- You would prefer not dedicate valuable resources to on-site servers
- E commerce or the internet are essential to your business strategy
If you are a company that is ecommerce focused or are running an advertising network then dedicated hosting is probably the preferred option. Online advertisers place banners across thousands of websites. If their ads go down the sites will not get paid and that leads to loss of clients.
If you are using a customized content management system then dedicate hosting is most likely your best option. This will be beneficial for companies that have online inventories. If you are processing thousands of queries or even orders every minute, down time could be the difference between prospering and closing shop.
Article by Charles Homes who is a consultant at Hosting.com, for more info check out their Dedicated Servers
Category : Computer/Networking Tech &Web Tech
