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Jason Harris

Portland, Oregon - http://www.techcraver.com

Jason Harris has been a technologist for most of his life. As his love of technology grows, so does his desire to share it with those around him. Jason is a web application developer, blogger, podcaster, and tech evangelist. When he's not blogging here at Download Squad, he explores other tech subjects at techcraver.com

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Troubleshooting

Web Toolkit: Find out who else is on your web host with MyIPNeighbors

myIPneighborIf you have a web site, you're probably using shared hosting. Shared hosting, for those unfamiliar with it, is when a company takes a single web server and hosts many web sites on it, sharing the web serving duties and making it possible for the company to make a profit while offering us $3.99/month hosting plans.

While it may be economical, sometimes shared hosting means your site is slow depending on whom you're sharing your site with. For example, if someone has a blog that is hosted on the same server your domain is hosted on and they have a really popular post (perhaps getting on Digg), the server will become slow under the heavy load. This heavy load can bog down the server and make it slow, sometimes unresponsive for everyone else being hosted on that server.

Enter myIPneighbors.com. By giving them a website's address or IP address, they report back with how many other websites are being hosted on the same server as yours. For example, my site is sharing it's web server with 191 sites. Yikes, that's a lot!

If you're having performance issues with your web site and you feel the server might be to blame, check out myIPneighbors and assess for yourself if you web host is spreading it's resources too thin. Depending on your analysis, a web host change might be in your future!

BBC's iPlayer adds support for Firefox

iPlayer
Rumors have been swirling for months that the BBC was going to allow users of their iPlayer service to access the popular player on a computer or platform other than Internet Explorer for Windows. Well today British citizens are part way there as the BBC has announced their support for the Firefox browser. Mac and Linux fans are out of luck as iPlayer still demands Windows, only now you can view iPlayer content in the alternative Firefox Browser.

The popular iPlayer is a service that acts as an on-demand viewer of BBC content. Similar in functionality to a web based TiVo. The BBC is very happy with this new development and proclaimed, "It's good because it's the first real non-Microsoft thing we've been able to do with the download iPlayer".

What's the hold up with bringing iPlayer to Mac and Linux? None other than our old favorite acronym DRM. BBC's iPlayer relies upon Windows Media Player and it's related DRM to enforce the BBC's viewing policies.

Are there any Brits who have used iPlayer? What are your thoughts on the service? Please share in the comments.

[via Afterdawn]

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Productivity

Clear your browser cache with these one-click solutions

Clear Cache Add-inIf you are a web designer or developer, one of the issues you probably face on a daily basis is browser cache. For those who are unaware of this issue, your browser - whether it be Firefox or Internet Explorer - captures all web pages and images when you browse and saves them in the browser cache. This is so that next time you go to a website, you can quickly access the saved files in your cache rather than re-download the image or related content.

This presents an issue for web designers when they make a change to a website, when their own browser uses the cached files rather than downloading the new version off the server. What web designers need is an easy way to empty their cache. We have two suggestions for this type of functionality:
  • For Firefox, check out the Clear Cache add-on. This fantastic extension will add a broom logo to your Firefox toolbar that will instantly clear your cache when you click it.
  • For Internet Explorer, we suggest you look at CachePal. Installing this will give you one-click access to the cache clearing functionality.
We hope these utilities will ease your web development duties. Check them out and let us know what you think in the comments.

[via NoHeat]

Filed under: Business, Fun, Utilities, Troubleshooting

Web toolkit: find out a site's web host with WhoIsHostingThis

WhoIsHostingThis

For bloggers or anyone who wants their own website, a natural question always is - who should I choose for a web host? There are many guides and ways to get advice on this subject. But the fact is that choosing the cheapest isn't always the best. If you know someone who has a site and you're impressed with the speed and uptime of that site, it might be beneficial to know who their web host is.

Finding out is easy with a great website called WhoIsHostingThis. When you visit the site, there's a simple box where you type the name of any site, hit "Tell Me", and the web host is revealed. Very cool.

We appreciate that WhoIsHostingThis doesn't require registration. Additionally, there's no annoying Flash ads (yet) or any other factors that drive us nuts when browsing the web.

This is a very practical website to add to your web toolbox.

[via MakeUseOf]

Filed under: Internet, Productivity, Social Software

Egypt calls for bandwidth rationing after tubes get clogged

WiresIf you remember the late 70's, you probably remember gas rationing in the United States when OPEC cut oil production. This lead to pandemonium at the pumps and confusion for American citizens. Well to a lesser degree, having bandwidth cut off would also lead to having to make tough choices.

Perhaps this is why the Egyptian government has asked that all Internet users temporarily stop downloading movies, music, and other large files as a result of their Internet access being hampered earlier this week. Egypt's main cable link to Europe was inadvertently cut by a ship's anchor, causing widespread Internet bottlenecks to Egypt and the rest of the Arabian Peninsula.

Egypt's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has asked that consumer stop downloading large file so they don't affect "affect businesses who have more important things to do.'"

Ars Technica points out that this isn't the first time this type of event has occurred. Algeria, Taiwan, and Vietnam have all had their Internet access affected by similar circumstances. As the world becomes more and more dependent on the 'Net, we think it's alarming to see how fragile the infrastructure truly is.

So, in conclusion, if you're in Egypt and your downloading last nights Lost episode, knock it off! :)

[via Slashdot]

TweetStats displays your Twitter activity in graphical form

digg_url = "http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/01/30/tweetstats-displays-your-twitter-activity-in-graphical-form/"; Earlier in the month, we told you about TwitterStats, a downloadable script that would graph your Twitter statistics. The author of TwitterStats, Damon Cortesi, thought it would be great to take TwitterStats to the next level. He did so by making TwitterStats into a Ruby ...

Skype released for PSP

During CES, we reported that Skype was coming to Sony's PSP. Today, anxious PSP owners can jump for joy as Sony has released the new firmware with Skype loaded and ready to rock. If you have a Sony PSP Slim or Lite model, load up version 3.90 to get Skype on your portable piece of gaming heaven. Once you have it loaded and signed in, you can easily make free calls to your Skype contacts as well as ...

Enhance Google Reader with the Better GReader Firefox add-on

Google Reader is the RSS aggregator of choice for many a Download Squad reader, but everyone has an idea of how it could be improved in one way or another. There are some popular Greasemonkey scripts that enhance the experience, but what if these scripts could be rolled into one Firefox add-on? Lifehacker has set out to do just that. A while back they released Better GReader, a Firefox add-on ...

Seesmic announces new features, much needed mobile support

Social video site Seesmic has announced some cool new features at DEMO08, a conference that showcases new software and web projects. Even though it's still in private beta, the so-called video Twitter now allows you to instantly see video responses to posts as an uninterrupted stream. Now Seesmic also has a mobile application for Nokia's multi-talented N95 smartphone. Rather than being a live ...

Roll your own Twitter with Prologue

If you've used Twitter, you've probably wondered what it would take to have Twitter-like functionality either 1) on your own blog or website or 2) inside your own company or organization. If so, your wait is over. Automattic, the company behind WordPress, has released Prologue, a smart theme for WordPress weblogs that allows you to roll your own Twitter. As you can see on the screenshot above, ...

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The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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