Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Pingdom Now Offers Free Website Monitoring

Pingdom Now Offers Free Website Monitoring

pingdom_logo_jul09.pngOver the last few years, Pingdom has established itself as a well-regarded uptime monitoring service, but until now, its services were only available to paying customers. Today, however, Pingdom launched a free version of its service. The free service offers all the features of Pingdom's paid accounts, though users are limited to monitoring just one website or server. This free account also comes with up to 20 SMS alerts per months, which is a nice perk, given that you probably want to know that your site or server is down as soon as possible.

Sponsor

Pingdom gives users a large number of options. You can, for example, choose to have it ping your server anywhere between once per minute or once per hour. Pingdom is also flexible enough to be able to ping specific ports on your server and also check the state of your SMPT, POP3, or IMAP email server - though with the free account, you can obviously only choose one of these.

pingdom_graphs_jul09.jpg

In addition to its free service, Pingdom also offers a basic account for $9.95 per month, which allows users to monitor up to 5 sites. The company also offers a business account for $39.95 per month, which can check up to 30 sites. The basic account also comes with 20 free SMS alerts, while business account users can receive up to 200 alerts by text message.

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3G Speeds Tested & Compared, City by City [Performance Tests]

3G Speeds Tested & Compared, City by City [Performance Tests]

As wireless users know all too well, not all 3G networks are created equal. PC World recently put Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T to a multi-city test to determine which best delivers speed and reliability.

The magazine took a snapshot of the performance of those three major networks in 13 markets during March and early April (specifically, 5443 individual tests from 283 testing locations). Weather, time of day, and other variable factors not withstanding, the magazine found that Verizon had an average download speed of 951 kbps, and produced uninterrupted speeds in 89.8 percent of tests.

For its part, Sprint's 3G network delivered solid connections in 90.5 percent of cities tested, with average download speeds of 808 kbps across 13 cities, while the AT&T network's average download speed clocked in at 812 kbps. But where reliability was concerned, AT&T delivered only 68 percent of the time.

Take a look at the link below for the full city-by-city results, then let us know your take on PC World's conclusion. Do they match up with your own wireless experience in those cities? Let us know which network you use and how it fares in your location.



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Aviary.com Creates Edit-Ready Web Screenshots [Screenshots]

Aviary.com Creates Edit-Ready Web Screenshots [Screenshots]

Looking to grab a copy of the entire scroll-able content of a web page? Aviary, makers of a previously mentioned online image editing tool and Firefox extension, make it really simple: just add the site's URL after aviary.com/.

The speed with which Aviary's Flash-based editor pops open depends on their server load and the content of the site you're trying to paste over—Lifehacker is a "large image," while aviary.com/xkcd.com loads just fine. But the full-length capture works, allows you to save to the desktop (through the "Export" function) and make basic edits like cropping and text and shape addition. Our initial tests showed some real lag, and a few failures, when trying to open the right-hand tools for "Advanced Editor" or "Image Effects" on larger web captures, but when they work, you're getting a pretty neat Photoshop-lite to play with.

Aviary's URL appending service is free to use, requires a free account to save images online and access certain advanced features.



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The Most Detailed 3D Map of Earth Yet [Maps]

The Most Detailed 3D Map of Earth Yet [Maps]

Forget Google Maps: NASA and Japan's Ministry of Economy have released the most detailed three-dimensional map of Earth yet. It covers our planet between the 83 north and 83 south parallels thanks to 1.3 million stereo images like these:



The images were captured by ASTER, ! and then stitched together into a seamless map. ASTER—Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer—is the instrument taking maps of land surface temperature, reflectance and elevation flying onboard NASA's Terra satellite. Once the Global Digital Elevation Model was complete, it was divided into 23,000 GeoTIFF files, each covering 1 x 1 degree of the globe. You can download the map here. [JPL]




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Philips Cinema 21:9 TV Will Cost $7400 [TVs]

Philips Cinema 21:9 TV Will Cost $7400 [TVs]

I don't know if we will ever see the 56-inch Philips Cinema 21:9 in the US, but if I didn't have a projector, I would totally fall for it. Even at the $7400 price tag just published in the UK.

The Philips 56PFL9954H Cinema 21:9 uses the same aspect ratio of most movies out there, which means that it eliminates the black bars while watching a Blu-ray title. And while every single consumers electronics expert in the UK is raving about the amazing quality of this 8.3-million-pixel TV set, the Philips Cinema 21:9 still has to do zooming to make the movie to fill its 1080-pixel vertical resolution. In other words: It looks great, but it's still not perfect. [Daily Mail]




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gdgt, the Data Driven Gadget Site, is Live [Media]

gdgt, the Data Driven Gadget Site, is Live [Media]

gdgt is a new gadget site that's database driven. You pronounce it either g-d-g-t or "gadget". I like it, mainly because I can track pieces of information about gadgets I own, but also tech I would like to have.

See, here's my list of gadgets.

Since the database is user generated, I can't wait to get in there and add some classic tech and offbeat stuff. Using it is peculiarly thrilling. The problem with general news sites is that you don't always get news that relates to the gadgets you own; the problems with forums is that the information is relevant to what you're interested in, but highly unstructured. This fixes both. A year or two ago, we decided to cover less new product, and cover more software and updates you can use to improve the gadgets you already have. gdgt is built upon this philosophy.

The site's just launching today, but Ryan Block and Peter Rojas (Engadget and Gizmodo alum) are only getting started and I've been told the road map is epic and long. (Disclaimer: I advise gdgt here and there, too.)

How do you get started? You sign up. Quickly, so you get the user name you want, I would suggest. I'd explain how it works in depth but Veronica Belmont, has a video here with all the details.

Oh and here's my account. Add me as a friend!

UPDATE: Looks like they're down because of traffic, time to ease up a bit and check back later.
[gdgt]






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NVIDIA said to be prepping Ion 2 for late 2009

NVIDIA said to be prepping Ion 2 for late 2009


NVIDIA obviously isn't doing much talking about it itself just yet, but Fudzilla apparently has it on good authority that the company is indeed already hard at work on Ion 2, which promises to bring with it plenty of improvements over the already impressive Ion chipset. Chief among those is a decreased die size, "much faster graphics," and more than twice the shaders of the original Geforce 9400M /MCP79 chipset that the current Ion is based on (which uses 16 shaders). Not many more details than that, unfortunately, but NVIDIA is supposedly looking to launch Ion 2 by the end of this year -- although not before it sells plenty more Ion 1s, of course.

[Via SlashGear]

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NVIDIA said to be prepping Ion 2 for late 2009 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook ad metrics (click-thru rates) still abysmal, despite known click-fraud problem - http://ping.fm/o8S9X

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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Skype 3.0 for Windows Mobile Shares Files, Sends Texts, Skypes [Windows Mobile Apps]

Skype 3.0 for Windows Mobile Shares Files, Sends Texts, Skypes [Windows Mobile Apps]

Skype's finally dropped a brand new version of their app for Windows Mobile. Three dawt oh brings file sharing and SMS texting, for free. Weeeeeeeee. [Skype via jkontherun]




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TubeMaster++ Update Makes Grabbing Videos and Music Easier [Downloads]

TubeMaster++ Update Makes Grabbing Videos and Music Easier [Downloads]

Windows only: Last year we shared TubeMaster Plus with you, an extremely handy program for downloading videos and music from streaming sites. TubeMaster++ has been released and comes with a slew of new features.

TubeMaster++ makes grabbing streaming videos and music incredibly simple. As long as TubeMaster++ is running, it will grab nearly every kind of media you watch over your internet connection thanks to its ability to scan the incoming data and not rely on the browser itself. Whether you're watching a video in Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Opera, as soon as you start watching it, TubeMaster++ will begin capturing it.

You can save files, play them back right in TubeMaster++ and convert them. What formats can you convert into? A better question would be what formats can't you convert into. You can convert audio formats into WAV, MP3, OGG, and AC3, among others. Video can be converted into dozens of formats and presets for mobile devices including the Creative Zen, iPod, Blackberry, PSP and PS3, various mobile phone sizes, and more universal formats like AVI and MPEG4.

TubeMaster++ does lose one feature from its predecessor, because of dependencies it has on installed software it is no longer portable. The trade off will be more than worth it for most people however as the new version is more stable, offers more features, has a built in video and music search engine, and has dropped upgrade requirement to download from adult video-sharing sites. TubeMaster++ is freeware, Windows on! ly, and requires Java Runtime Environment and WinPcap (both of which are included in the installation if you don't have them.)



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Tourist Remover photoshops stray tourists out of your snaps -- Boing Boing Gadgets

Tourist Remover photoshops stray tourists out of your snaps -- Boing Boing Gadgets

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel's spotted "Tourist Remover," a service that takes the stray tourists out of your shots of famous landmarks.

"Tourist Removed" is a web app that will remove other tourists from the photos you took of landmarks while on vacation as a tourist. All you have to do is take multiple shots of the same location, and Tourist Remover will only keep the bits that stay the same. It's like diff for photos!
"Tourist Remover" cleans up your vacation photos

Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

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Great post by @glenngabe - Facebook or Just Face-Look? Are People 55+ Really Using Social Networking Websites? - http://ping.fm/I11Lp

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NVIDIA Tegra smartphone due from a "top five" manufacturer before 2010?

NVIDIA Tegra smartphone due from a "top five" manufacturer before 2010?

NVIDIA Tegra smartphone due from a
If you want to get HD in your handheld, NVIDIA's Tegra processor is the hot way to do it at the moment, and we've got reasonably concrete sounding rumors from disparate sources that a handset containing one of the chips is currently under development by a "top five" smartphone builder (we're guessing it's not Apple), and that it'll be out sometime before the end of the year, selling at T-Mobile and AT&T for just $199. The details of the device beyond that are scant, with Android being a possibility but Windows Mobile looking more likely, and a continued pledge of battery life of rated for "days and days" of mobile multimedia. We like the sound of that.

Read - NVIDIA Tegra phone due from "big five" firm
Read - Rumor: NVIDIA Tegra phones in Q409?

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NVIDIA Tegra smartphone due from a "top five" manufacturer before 2010? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Micron's smaller NAND chips mean more, faster flash memory in the same old enclosures

Micron's smaller NAND chips mean more, faster flash memory in the same old enclosures

Micron's smaller NAND chips mean more, faster flash memory in the same old enclosuresNeed a little more proof that Intel's got some fly SSDs about ready to roll? We have confirmation from Micron that it's working on new and improved 34nm chips in capacities of 8, 16, and 32Gb. These lovelies are 17 percent smaller than the previous rainbow colored flash delights, and are faster too, offering 200Mb/s transfer speeds and when combined into an SSD, able to keep up with SATA 6Gb/s transfers. This press release confirms the chips will show up in flash memory from Lexar, but we're guessing that official Intel announcement can't be far off now.

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Micron's smaller NAND chips mean more, faster flash memory in the same old enclosures originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Video: Mobinnova élan sporting a custom Tegra UI

Video: Mobinnova élan sporting a custom Tegra UI


Although we get irked by all the names assigned to netbooks, smartbooks, or in this case, viewbooks, we are still pretty excited about the élan's 1080p capabilities, and now the Netbook News crew are adding to our enthusiasm with a pair of videos investigating the machine's chassis and software. The UI they looked at is notable for being supplied by NVIDIA, and may therefore give a good indication of what future Tegra-based devices of all shapes, sizes and naming nomenclatures may look and feel like. We like the media-centric approach, which complements the platform's strengths well, and the chunky navigation icons avoid the pitfalls inherent in a screen of this size (8.9-inches). Click through for the vids, but be warned: super-glossy screens and pink laptop enclosures lay ahead.

Continue reading Video: Mobinnova élan sporting a custom Tegra UI

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Video: Mobinnova élan sporting a custom Tegra UI originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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