Battery life, check. Keyboard? Amazing, I’m typing pretty quickly on it right now. Screen? Gorgeous. Very bright and the vibrant. Just check out the Marvel comics app, the illustrations jump to life. Weight? 1.5 lbs doesn’t seems like much but it does get a bit tiresome to hold it in your hands after a while, but hey, I don’t think they’ve could’ve made this thing an ounce lighter.

Let’s talk a bit about software. Do I miss flash? Not at all. I’m not a fan of flash in the first place and everything I need flash for is either being done via an app (like games) or via HTML5 (the streaming video on CBS is awesome). Now having said that, there are a few apps that are still missing, but then again I can’t blame the developers, this thing has only been out for a day. Amongst these missing apps are:

-Slingbox. I can’t wait to be watching my recorded shows and live tv off my Slingbox at home.

-Orb. Again, watching all the videos I have on my media server on home on my iPad would be great.

-Facebook. The iPhone version just doesn’t cut it.

-Ebuddy. The iPhone version doesn’t look great on the iPad.

This brings me to another point I would like to bring up, and this goes to the app developers; please release your iPhone apps in iPad format. Yes, I know, all iPhone apps work in an iPad but that doesn’t mean they look or feel good. At the native resolution they feel clunky and running them at 2x the size makes the fonts look blurry and the buttons and interface feels like a big waste of real estate.

From now on I’ll be carrying around my iPad wherever I go, as well as my iPhone in my pocket. I don’t need to carry around my Macbook. No need for the 3G connectivity (and paying for data on an additional device), my iPhone acts as a WiFi hotspot thanks to an amazing $10 jailbreak app called MiFi. Hint hint to those waiting for the 3G version of the iPad.

I’ve survived the time I hit the front page of Digg and the couple times I’ve gotten Stumbled-upon; their servers are very robust. I also enjoy their monthly newsletters, blog, and their uncluttered and friendly control panel. They are also upfront with any issues they have with servers, they have DreamhostStatus where you can check the status of their networks. Other webhosts are’t as open as Dreamhost. So, let me tell you why you should sign up and start hosting with Dreamhost.

• unlimited bandwidth and storage + 50 GB for personal backups
• register domains for $10 (not having to deal with an external registar) + a free domain at signup
• unlimited email accounts, mysql databases, users
• mailing lists (no need to signup with AWeber or others)
• Ruby-on-Rails, PHP5, WebDAV, Pearl, .htaccess files, etc.
• Google apps integration (use @yourdomain.com for email address and Google mail)
• VPN access, SSL certificates, Steaming media, Jabber
• One-click installs (WordPress, Gallery, ZenCart, dotProject and many others)
• Great support. Very friendly and they always respond in a timely fashion
• a whole other bunch of programmer and consumer friendly features

If you are just a beginner or an experienced programmer, Dreamhost is a perfect suit for you. Try them today for only about $11/month if you go monthly, $120 per year, or as low as $5.95 if you sign up for 5 years. Click here to sign up!

Here is a list of blogging tips, to increase your readership and exposure. Some I need to apply more myself, but here they are:

• When writting a post for a blog, use  bullet points, headers and try to keep paragraphs short. These things attract readers to actually read the post. Read Melissa’s blog Writing Forward for writing tips, which are very useful.
• Try to always include an image; imagine a newspaper without images. Quite boring. If you can’t find something relevant look for usable images on Flickr.
• Encourage your readers to signup for your RSS feed. Perhaps write a post on how to use an RSS reader (such as Google Reader) and its benefits. Use Feedburner to track your RSS readers and perhaps monetize on your feed in the future.
• Start a contest to give something away, such as something free like an Ebook or perhaps an Ipod Nano. Get people to Tweet about your contest as an entry or sign up for the RSS feed. Reward your commenters too with an entry to the contest. John Chow has great tips for getting lots of subscribe and readers in a short amount of time.
• Thank your commenters, either personally or automatically with a WordPress plugin. Also try commenting on their blogs and if you like what they write subscribe to their RSS feed and ask them to join yours.
• Blog as much as you can without affecting quality. Try for daily postings, but if you can’t, at least a 3 or 4 per week, but remember not to just write for the sake of writing. If you have nothing to blog about, don’t force yourself and comprimise your blogs quality. If you feel real inspired one day and you are able to crank out a few posting, schedule them to be published in the future for the days or just keep of backlog of post for days when you can’t find inpiration (or perhaps time to blog).
• Network: Try to get interviews with recognized bloggers. Perhaps he/she would be happy to give you a quick email interview, in exchange for traffic for their blog. Get a guest blogger to write for your blog and write for someone else’s, both of you will benefit with the cross-promotion

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p.s. I’m abrutly changing the unfinished theme to force myself to do it quick.

UPDATE: Didn’t feel like redesigning (css tinkering etc) so I just grabbed a quick WP theme, changed it around a bit and voila!

I will give Avast a spin for about a month, and then I’ll go ahead and purchase their year license. So far, no issues and installing and maintaining databases is extremely easy. I have also received numerous comments from people who had no issue with AVG 7.5 but started having all sorts of problems with version 8.0. For example, Buck:

I was running 7.5 antivirus on a dell laptop with no problems at all. I upgraded to 8.0 antivirus with spyware,download went find but after it installed I lost my internet connection,wireless and DSL. When I do have internet connection I can’t open internet explorer at all. I also use counter spy and spyblaster on this laptop. No longer running those programs but has made no difference at all. There is something in this program that will not allow me to open internet explorer. Also when I run a computer scan one time it will take about 40 mins for a full scan the next time 2.5 hours. As a long time user of AVG I’am not a happy camper. At this point in time waiting for tech support for help.

Or what Debbie has to say

Been using AVG 7.5 with no problems, had to renew my license and it upgraded me to 8.0 and everything went wrong, The system scan was still running 14 hours later, could not receive my mail (I use Incredimail), system was running slow and freezing up. I emailed tech support two days ago and am still waiting for an answer to my problems. I uninstalled 8.0 and reinstalled 7.5 and everything is working fine. Don’t know what I am going to do when I am forced to upgrade to 8.0. If anyone has any answers please help me out.

And this comments go on and on about how horrible AVG 8.0 is. So, what do I recommend? As a free AV solution, get Avast! which requires you to sign up and receive a key, but hey, thats better than having a crashing computer, right?

In the spirit of attracting visitors to this website, I’ll review JeanCosta’s website, which in turn will (hopefully) result in a review of my site.

What’s JeanCosta.com about?

Jean Costa is a self-proclaimed “internet entrepreneur and college student”. He owns many domains and makes a profit from it (by the way, I’d love to see a post where he explains how he makes money from this, that is, if he isn’t revealing his secret formula). He blogs on numerous (mostly internet-related) subjects on a regular basis (a new post about every other day). Overall he has good grammar and his subjects are usually very interesting. I found his blog thanks to Entrecard, and the post that grasped my attention at first was one titled “Former Software Engineer”, where he describes how he decided to change career paths.

Design and functionality

I was glad that he redesigned his site; his old version was very dark and featured him on the top-left corner posing like a magician. His site now feels professionally designed and coded but unfortunately most of his header-links go no where; only “Home” and “Archive” work, “About me”, “Advertise”, “Contact me”, “My Recomendations” and “Tools” are non-linked. I usually poke around these links on new websites I visit, but after seeing that most header-links are useless, I felt a bit cheated. I would like to see these pages filled with content, especially the “About me” page.

His side bar features the usual, such as Categories, his Blogroll and 125 x 125 ads, and most importantly, he placed his RSS subscription options on top (I’be been wanting to redesign mine, but quite frankly, I’ve been a bit lazy lately), which is a good choice, design-wise. I think he could add a bit more spice to his footer (its almost inexistent). I would recommend that he links his header-image to his homepage, which seems to be a standard practice in the blogosphere.

Final Thoughts

I’ve been a subscriber to his site for about a month now, and I look forward to his new posts, everytime I log onto Google Reader. I hope he continues with the good work wih his new content, and as I said before, I’d like to know more (if possible) about is online ventures. Good luck Jean!

Imagine for a second having the same password for all your accounts, and somehow (either using social engineering or other tactics, such as a key logger) someone gets a hold of it and has locked you out of everything. Your Gmail, your online banking accounts, your goDaddy account and your domains, etc. Now imagine trying to regain possession of all of these accounts. Surely, a nightmare.

In an ideal world, we would have different convoluted (numbers, lower-uppercase, symbols) passwords for every single one of our accounts. Now, at least for me, it would be impossible to remember all of these given the numerous online accounts I’ve got all over the internet. Sure, you can use a program that automatically stores and fills in unique passwords for you, such as Roboform, but just imagine how horrible it would be if, one; your computer caught on fire or got stolen, all your passwords are all gone! Two: if someone got discovered Roboform’s master password. Either way, you’re screwed.

Now imagine a system where you would have easy to remember AND unique passwords for every single account. I’ve come up with the perfect solution. I’ll give you an example of how to achieve this, but remember, just create your own unique way. Just bear with me.

First of all, think of 2 memorable short words and a number. You can use 2 of your current passwords, just to keep things simple, and a number.

• first word: dog
• second word: red
• a number (someone’s birth year, reversed): 37

We’ve got dogred37. Remember, play with upper-lower case combinations.

Now we’ve got doGreD38.

Lets take this combination and make it the base of our unique passwords, and this is how:

For your Hotmail account. Grab the first letter of hotmail, h and the last letter, l. Now combine it with your master password, reversed, and we get: LdoGred37h

• For Gmail: LdoGred37G
• For eBay: YdoGred37e
• For Amazon: NdoGreD37a

Now there you have it. Unique and easy to remember passwords. You’ll never have to click the “forgot your password” link and wait for an email in return EVER AGAIN! Even worse, you won’t be tempted to write down your password on that sticky note on your monitor.

Create your own system. Be creative, but not too creative, where you won’t remember your own combination. Keep it simple.

Please share (without revealing, obviously) how you create and remember passwords in the comments.

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I’ve been using a Mac Book Pro running OS X Leopard as my main PC for about 2 weeks now, and my goal was to adapt without Windows (either via Parallels or Boot Camp) using native software. Browsing, well Firefox and all the plugins I use work in OS X. iTunes? Well…iTunes. Video/Codecs? VLC. FTP? Cyberduck. Office 2007? Well, there’s Office 2008 for Mac.

Everything seamed like a smooth transition until I started using Word, Excel and Entourage. Everything looks different. Tool bars and menus are totally different from their Windows counterparts. It is not easy for Mac-switchers as it is, getting used to not having a taskbar, jumping icons and what not, but why oh why does Word for Mac have to be completely different from regular Windows Word? Why is Entourage the complete opposite of Outlook? I mean, its the same program in essence that does the same stuff, but these having different UIs is confusing and just plain stupid. If Adobe can do it with evey single Creative Suite program Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, etc) why isn’t Microsoft doing it?

My guess is that Microsoft doesn’t care about Mac-switchers and they aren’t the core target. They care about providing Windows-Word like compatibility to Mac, same for Excel and Outlook (or Entourage). If I can open and edit Word documents using non-Word apps on a Mac, then what is the incentive for me to even purchase Word for Mac? I ended up installing Parallels and getting my Office 2007 via Coherence. Call me weird, but I love Office 2007′s ribbon.

I guess that is it. My first Mac-rant and I end up criticizing Microsoft….typical Apple!

Normally, I wouldn’t be blogging about my last visit to the dentist’s office (still no cavities, yay!) but I just had to due to outcome of the visit. I had an appointment for just a general checkup and cleaning. While the doc was taking x-rays he asked me about my work and how I earned a living. I gave him the standard answer, which is something like, “I fix/build computers, servers and I do networking. I also design and develop websites”. It was then that he decided to share with me his computer issues there at his office, which were networking related. Within a couple of minutes his problem was solved and he was very happy. Then he asked me if it was possible for him to log into his work computer from home.

I then proceeded to log into my computer at home remotely and told him that it was possible and that I could do it in about 10-15 minutes. He asked me how much I would charge him to set that up and I replied that I would be free. He then offered me a free teeth whitening procedure ($500 value) in exchange for setting up remote access to his office. What is the moral of this story? Take the extra minute (or just seconds) to explain your services if you are a freelancer, especially if you work with computers/server or do websites; virtually everybody out there has computer issues. EVERYBODY.

Relakks is a VPN connection provider based in Sweden, that allows you to mask your internet activity. Why would anyone want/need such a service? Simple: privacy. Relakks doesn’t keep any records since it is not required to and will only hand information (such as an email address) to authorities if, and ony if, a crime punishable by 2 years in jail has been committed.

I came across Relakks because I wanted to stream a couple of TV channels from JumpTV that are not available in the US because of licencing restrictions. My logic there was that if I was able to make my connection appear to come from another country, I should be able to stream those video feeds.

Signing up

Signing up is easy, only an email address is required, and for my testing purposes I paid for a month of service, which is 5 EUR which comes out to roughly US$10 (you can also purchase 12 months in advance, for 50 EUR).
Setup

Setting up the VPN connection on my Windows XP machine was simple enough, following XP instructions on the website, but I was unable to connect my Macbook Pro running OS X Leopard, it simply kept timing out. I emailed support but after 2 days I haven’t gotten a response.

Speed and connectivity

The VPN connection does not remain connected for long, it disconnects at random times, where it can last anywhere from 2 minutes to about 20. Reconnecting at times would take a bit too, up to 2 minutes. The speed is not what is promised by Relakks, I have a 10 MB cable connection but was only able to get about 200KB, but it was sufficient to stream the TV channels at the lowest bitrate. My guess is that Relakks is currently oversold and have reached maximum capacity.

After-thoughts

Relakks sort of works for my original intention, I was able to stream the content I was after, but the stream kept rebuffering and reconnecting due to the constant drops of the VPN connection. This service might be ideal for those who are concerned with their privacy and wish to spend about $10, but I wouldn’t recommend this service if your intention is to download media since the speeds are way to slow . I am not going to purchase another month of service, I will instead keep looking around for a similar service that will satisfy my need.