Looking for a new web hosting service? - Webhostingrating.com will help you!

I think about creating a new blog about open scource software. And I want my own domain and so I'm looking for a web hosting company. But which service should I choose? If you search for "web hosting" on Google, you'll find a lot of pages, but finding quality information is hard.

The guys of webhostingrating.com invited me to take a look around on their homepage, because they feel their site can really help if you are looking for a new weg hosting service.



And they were right. They provide a lot of useful information about every hosting service in their ranking. Webhostingrating.com lists informations about pricing, marketing bonuses, domain features, e-mail features, security, scripting and much more. Attention bloggers: they also tell you if wordpress is easy to install, yes I'm talking about "Fantastico". The web host rating is based on user satisfaction, support, reliability, uptime and pricing. Webhostingrating.com also hands out awards for the best hosting services, that's good for the hosting companies and for the customers, because they can see easily, which is the best web host on the market.

I also like the article section on webhostingrating.com. It doesn't matter if you are looking for general and specific information about web hosting, you can certainly find a short and informative post there. I find this article about choosing a web host very useful for my web hosting search.

So if you're looking for new web hosting service make sure you visit webhostingrating.com first and then make your decisison!

Transcend JetFlash V20 - The 64GB flash drive

Big and slow..No, I'm not talking about an offense linemen.
I mean the new thumb drive from Transcend. The JetFlash V20 series features now a model with 64 GB storage.


But this thumbdrive won't be that useful, because it's really slow. You can write up to 3MB/sec. and read data up to 10MB/sec. That means you'll need about 6 hours to fill up the thumbdrive and almost 2 hours to read 64GB from the flash drive. Way to slow. A Solid State Disk (SSD) can write data with about 100MB/sec and you can read with about 30 MB/sec.
The 64GB model will be sold this fall. But who wants to spend 200 dollars for a slow flash drives.

Blaze Media Pro Multimedia Software - The toolbox for media files

I have a lot of media software installed on my computer. For almost very task I have a icon on my desktop
But why?
Because I haven't had discovered Blaze Media Pro Multimedia Software, yet. A very comprehensive all-in-one application for media files. You can rip DVDs and CDS, convert different audio formats, extract audio content out of video files. And it's very useful that you can convert DVD to AVI, MPG, WMV. To make a long story short with this software you are able to disassemble a media file and recompose it the way you like it. With the audio and video editing features you can create your own multimedia masterpiece. And you can save it right away because the Blaze Media Pro Multimedia Software is also a CD burning software and a DVD burning software.

Blaze Media Pro Multimedia Software is really a complete multimedia center. I have never seen so many features combined in one application. The program supports every common audio and video format even flash formats like .FLV and .SWF. I think you should give it a try!

mp3-player -Spoilt For Choice

My girlfriend wants to buy a new mp3-player. She wants 4GB to 8GB storage and a big battery, which provides enough power for 25 to 30 hours playing time. And the mp3-player has to be small with a nice design.
We have three candidates for the final decision:

1. Cowon D2 4GB

This mp3-player is my personal number one, because of the touchscreen, the high-resolution monitor and the storage, which can be upgraded with SD or MMC cards. My girlfriend likes the playing time of 52 hours for music files and the 10 hours for video files. But she don't like the idea of a touchscreen because the durability is always a question. She wants a mp3-player that can take some punishment, e.g. getting buried in the purse under cell phone and make up. The display shouldn't get scratches easily. She doesn't believe that the touchscreen will survive a ride in her purse.








2. iriver E100 8GB

The iriver is a mutlimedia player, that can handle a lot of video and audio formats pretty well. The iriver can also manage .txt-files, which can be useful to view documents everywhere you want. I also like the Micro-SD slot for storage upgrades up to 4GB. My girlfriend likes the size of the iriver. It's thinner than the Cowon D2. And she also likes the design. A little black beauty, that looks more like a cell phone than a mp3-player. And of course she likes prize, the iriver is way cheaper than the Cowon D2.





3. Creative Zen 8GB

The last one is the Creative Zen. It is a cheaper alternative to the Cowon D2 and the iriver E100.It also features a high-resolution screen and upgradeable storage. The Zen plays music for 25 hours and videos for 5 hours. And you can use it as an USB hard drive. My girlfriend has concerns about the firmware because some users at amazon.com complain about software bugs. Personally I like the design of the Creative Zen the most of the three players.








Why is there no Ipod on the list?
Because everyone got one, it's time for some individualism.

MacBook - the number one on my wishlist

I want a MacBook!
Yes, I really like to have the notebook from Apple.



Personally I prefer a desktop computer to a notebook, but it is different with the MacBook. I like the design and I like the Mac OS. I really dig the innovative features like the two-finger-controlled touchpad or the MagSafe Power Adapter, a power cord with magnetic connection.
When I tell my friends about my desire for the MacBook, they always come up with the same arguments like it's too expensive or they say I should buy a Sony Vaio because it has also an unique design but much more processing power, more RAM and you can use it for gaming.
Yeah, maybe the MacBook is expensive compared to other notebooks, but I think you buy more than just a piece of computer. You buy a lifestyle and a statement!

Oh, yes I want a Macbook!

Thoughts.com - The versatile community for bloggers

Have you ever heard of Thoughts.com?
No? Then you should read this post, because Thoughts.com has a lot to offer for the blogging community.

So what's the deal?
Thoughts.com is a free blog community with the emphasis on community. Thoughts.com was built as site for people to share their ideas, opinions and of cause their thoughts and now it is an online community of many active bloggers. Thoughts.com even features a rating system to determine the most active writers and publishers and make them eligible to win an all paid trip to a exciting location like Las Vegas in 2007.


What has Thoughts.com to offer?
They offer unlimited bandwidth for a lot of things to do. You can create blogs, upload and share photos and videos, share and manage podcasts and discuss topics in the Thoughts.com Forums. You can also create polls to find what other people think about certain questions of life. All the activities on Thoughts.com are free. Videos, photos, forums and blogs all on one site, I thinks that's what sets Thought.com apart from other blogging communities.

As I browsed the blogs and visited the Thoughts.com Forums I found out that the members really care about quality content. They blog about poetry and religion and the sub-forum "Writing" contains over 600 threads. There is no advertising in the blogs, it's all about content.

Thought.com is definitely a blog community worth visiting!

Cuil - a search engine from ex-Google employees

There is a new search engine in the vast space of the internet. It's called "Cuil", which is the irish word for knowledge.


Cuil has been developed by former Google employee Anna Patterson and Russel Power and Stanford professor Tom Costello.

The whole design of the page is pretty stylish and the page has some nice presentation features like tabs and a drilldown menue for a better organisation of the results. The search results are ranked based on content and relevance not PageRanks or so. The whole presentation of the search results is more like a blog with text and pictures and not so dull like the ordinary search result list of the common search engines .

Cuil already claims that they searches more pages on the internet than the competition—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.

But Cuil hasn't found my blog, yet! What a shame, but they are new in the business, so I will give them a chance: They got one more week!

Apple 3G iPhone: TV ad vs. the real world

I was curious about the new 3G iPhone and searched the internet for some user reviews. The new iPhone is in the shops for 2 months now. That's a good period of time to check what people think about it. The hype is over and as a buyer you had enough time to find out what you like or dislike about the 3G iPhone.

There is one point most buyers point to: the speed of the internet connection.
Apple advertised the 3G iPhone with the slogan: Twice as fast. Half the price.
Twice as fast doesn't means fast, it just means half as slow as the old iPhone. Check out this video:



Nevertheless I still think the iPhone is a nice, flashy piece of technology and I would like to have one. Maybe Santa Claus puts one for me under the christmas tree!

Fix-And-Enhance-My-Template-Contest

Last night I worked on my Blogger template. I made a 3-coluum-template out of my old template without changing the whole template. I just changed the html-code a bit. It's not perfect, but it works.


I always long for perfection, but can one man reach it? No, that's why I hold this contest. Examine my template and tell me what to change. As you can see there are some bugs in the template. I have two main challenges:

1. Center the main-wrapper and correct the paddings and the margins
2. Get Blogger latest feature the Embedded Comment Form to work. (I already tried the tutorial from Blogger Buster!)

Give me some hints or show me corrected parts of the html-code and win 250EC or 750EC!
(You need a Entrecard account to participate!)

How to participate?

There two options:

1. Just write a comment with useful hints or corrected html-code.
The writer of the best comment wins 250 EC.

2. Write a comment with useful hints or corrected html-code and write a post on your blog about the contest.
The writer of the best comment, who mentioned the contest in his blog wins 750 EC.
(Just put the url of the post in the comment!)

The contest will end August 31st at midnight.

Goodbye HaloScan! I just removed it!

I delete the HaloScan comment service from this blog. Unforntunately I lost all the comments, but I had to get rid of the buggy service. I got problems with HaloScan before, but I've always hoped that they could improve their service. But now I'm fed up to the back teeth. I couldn't access my comments for over 12 hours, so I edited the template to use blogger comments again. Thanks to Blogger Buster for the tutorial on how to manually install Haloscan comments and trackbacks. With this tutorial it was pretty easy to remove HaloScan. I just reversed the instructions. Sorry guys for deleting all of your comments. Let's start all over again.

And finally the virtual messy desk - BumpTop

Here is a little video about a new desktop concept with realistic physical effects. It's called BumpTop, because you can bump and pile up documents and files like on your real workplace. Just watch the video and get a idea of BumpTop Check the BumpTop website for more information!

How to challenge Google? - Scour pays you to search

I just read about this new search website called Scour on Tech Spotlight. This website combines search results from Google, Yahoo and MSN and shows them on one site. And you can evaluate every search result with thumbs up or thumbs down or comment a result. So what's the interesting part? For every action (searching, evaluating or commenting) you get points and if you reach 6500 points you get a $25 Visa gift card. I just signed up and I asked you: Do you wanna get paid for searching? C'mon try it!

School starts now - the Poker Professor invites you

I like to play poker. I usally play with my friends at home. I don't win much, but I don't lose much either. I'm a novice player. If you are a unskilled poker player, too, but you want to improve your skills, then this could be for you. The PokerProfessor is an online poker school, that can teach how to play like pro player. And if play like pro, you can become a pro and cash in the big money. If you try the Poker Professor Strategy now, the Poker Professor offers every player 150$ free to start a successful poker career. I like online tutorials or online schools. You can learn poker in the comfortable enviroment of your home and get $150 free. So give it a try.

Aurora - The Next Generation of Mozilla Browers

I just found the following video on the internet. Aurora - the next step in the evolution of web browsers. Mozilla is working on that and I can't wait to see a first alpha or beta version of it. Take a look:
Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo. Incredible! What do you think?

Play with the Laws of Physics

The University of Colorado presents some nice physics simulations on its website. The Physics Education Technology project (PhET) created animated, interactive simulations of physical phenomena such as microwaves, projectile motion or even quantum tunneling. The simulations of the PhET were created for education. The idea was to build a virtual lab for students and teachers. Every simulation contains measurement instruments and changeable parameters to experience the cause-and-effect of Physics. But if you are not a student anymore, it's still a lot of fun to play around with the simulations. The simulations are written in Java and Flash. If you got the latest plug-ins for your browser, they should run using your standard webbrowser.

The FreedomStick - no wall lasts forever

I wrote about the "Great Firewall of China" on wednesday. But I found a solution on the web to slip through that stronghold. The guys from the german Chaos Computer Club present the FreedomStick. An ordinary USB stick with an anonymizer and proxy browser from Tor preinstalled. The chinese internet police can only block what they can see. I hope the chinese people find the CCC site and dig through the Firewall of China!

Write in your blog, but don't become a blob!

I sit at my computer many hours a day. Blogging, gaming or surfing the internet there is always something to do. While I'm at my desk, I don't think about healthy nutrition. I eat whatever I can handle with one hand, e.g. chips, chocolate bars and so. My BMI ( body mass index) is 29, a little bit too high! Check your BMI here. Are you overweight? Maybe Xenadrine-RFA-X is the answer? Check out this site and find out for yourself. Maybe you should combine healthy nutrition, diet pills like Xenadrine RFA-X and a litte bit of workout. Look for a handful exercises, which you can perform at your desk. Train the muscles in your legs to prevent varicosities and thrombosis. Or just take a walk now and then. And don't eat junk food too often. It's ok to eat chocolate or potato chip from time to time, but don't nourish on stuff like that. Watch your nutrition if you work or live in front of a computer screen! Later in August I'll work out at the gym again and I hope my BMI will drops to 25. If not I should try Xenadrine RFA-X.

Photoshop or Corel Draw? No, the answer is GIMP!

My fellow readers know I like open source software. I think there is a high-quality open-source solution for every need. Today I want to introduce the GNU image manipulation program called GIMP. GIMP can handle tasks like photo retouching, image composition or image authoring easily. GIMP can be used like a simple paint program, but you can also do complex photo enhancement. The user interface is clearly arranged and easy to use. You can add plug-ins to get more graphic transformation features. Just visit the plug-in registry. GIMP is available for all common platforms like Windows, Linux or MacOS! Give it a try!

From 600$ to zero - Mircosoft gives away TrueSpace for free!

TrueSpace, the great 3D modelling software, is now freeware. Microsoft took over the company which created TrueSpace (Galigare Coporation) and offers a free download now. The former price of TrueSpace was about 600$. The intentions are obvious. Microsoft tries to compete against Google. Google offers a similar program called Sketchup. SketchUp was invented to pop Google Earth into the third dimension with realistic models of buildings. TrueSpace can also export models of building to Virtual Earth, the Microsoft's answer to Google Earth. Nevertheless TrueSpace is a great program, that offers high resolution 3D modelling for free. Healthy competition is always good for the customer!

Win some cash @ ThaCash.com

I love gadgets, but they cost a lot of money! I want a iMac and a Playstation 3 and I want this Boba-Fett-USB-stick! I need to win this contest, but I believe in sportsmanship! So I will tell you about this one: Just blog about the "Win some cash @ ThaCash.com"-contest and leave a comment here! That's all! You can win 25$, 15$ or 5$ and there is an extra price of 15$ for an extraordinary post! Good luck and may the best post win!

The New Wave - Bloggerwave

During the last two days I made my way back into blogging. And after my 8 month absence I discover new thing in the world of blogging every hour. On my latest journey through "Bloggerville" I found Bloggerwave.com (and the german equvivalent Bloggerwave.de). In the tradition of PPP this service offers opportunities to earn some dollars with writing sponsored posts. What I found out so far is, that they work extremly quick - signing in, being approved and getting first offers, all within a day! How could I resist?!

Open scource - And the Oscar goes to...

The open -source-community SourceForge.net has chosen the best open source software in 2008. Here are my personal favorites from the finalists: open-source game: UFO: Alien Invasion a remake of the classic "X-Com". I loved to play "X-Com" on my Amiga 500 and I really like the remake useful tools: Launchy A toolbar like the quick launcher in Vista or MacOS. You don't need the Windows Start menue anymore! FileZilla I used SmartFtp and WinFtp before, but FileZilla tops them by far. This FTP client is great. Easy to use and really comfortable! I use a lot of open-source software and I'm always excited to find new apps. tools and games! Check out SourceForge.net regularly!

EntreCard - You can drop one here!

I just signed up for Entrecard. This is the latest "thing" in the world of blogging! You can drop Entrecards and you receive Entrecards from other bloggers! My blogging fellows Jason and Hoto wrote about in their blogs. I followed their advise and gave the Entrecard a chance. Let's see if I'll have success gaining traffic and new readers.

Microsoft Midori - Windows is getting old

There are signs that the next Windows release (Windows 7) will be the last. The guys from Microsoft are working on a whole new operating system called Midori! Midori is not the next Windows, it is something new! Faster, smaller and more independent, that's what´is all about. Midori will be independent from harddrives and cpu. It will work over servers and networks, so Midori can run on mini-notebooks and cell phones. There is only one concern: A network operating system - sounds like "Skynet" from the Terminator movies! I hope Microsoft don't causes Judgement Day! More information here!

The Great Firewall of China

Back in ancient times China built the greatest stronghold of all times. And now they try to rebuild this masterpiece in the internet. Did you know that China got over 30.000 people working for their "internet police"? If you type in the wrong word (like tibet or taiwan) on google the connection to the google server will be cut. The chinese "internet police" has invented superior technology to block ip-adresses or to find "harmful" websites. And China sells this "great" technology all over the world. The World Wide Web isn't free anymore!

What's the best DVD player?

I asked the Bald Guy: "What's the best dvd player?". And it took me by surprise to hear him say: "I don't know!" But the Bald Guy told who I should ask: wize.com! They do know which is the best dvd player. They sort their Top Tens in different categories such as home theater, recorder, region free, overall and bed room. The presentation is really nice and the user reviews are taken from sites like amazon.com or bestbuy.com. You don't have to look for the best dvd player on different sites anymore, just visit wize.com

Back in business

Michael Jordan once said: "I'm back!" This blog is no longer abandoned. I'm back like MJ and new posts will be published regularly. The bald guy speaks again!