Famous Short URL services

URL shortening is a technique used to make the URLs substantially shorter in length and still direct to the required page. This is achieved by using an HTTP Redirect on a domain name that is very short in length, which links to the web page that has a long URL.

URL shortening is also used for beautify a link, track the url activity, in some cases to used to disguise the underlying address for legitimate purposes.

Some of the famous URL shortening services are follows:

1. Adf.ly
2. Bit.ly
3. Goo.gl
4. Is.gd
5. Tinyurl.com
6. V.gd

Top things to look at before developing a Web Site – Part 2

  1. Web Hosting: Once the domain name is selected the hosting account has to be selected. There are different hosting types available. Most commonly used hosting is Shared web hosting. Even though the Free web hosting is used most of the users prefer the Shared hosting and VPS hosting. Beginners can start with a free web hosting account and go for the Shared and the VPS hosting types based on the budgets.
  2. Development tools: After all the above elicitationsare done the development process can be started. The below tools can be used to make the development faster.
    1. Search domain name here and check if it is already registered. If it’s already registered the site might display set of alternative domain names available.
    2. Set up a local environment and test your website. Use XAMPP, IIS, Tomcat to setup Local environments with PHP, .Net, Java languages respectively.
    3. Use Komposer, Amaya to develop the PHP type websites. Obviously only the Visual Studio is used to develop .Net type websites. I prefer using the Eclipse and its plugins to develop the PHP and Java type sites. They provide a very good interface to design, develop and test, integrating with the Local servers.
    4. Use FTP clients like Filezilla, Net2Ftp to upload the tested local files to the web servers.
    5. Many Open source tools that are alternative to the proprietary software are available Here and Here.
  3. CMS tools: Instead of developing a whole website from scratch, there are a lot of Content Management Systems available in the market to make the development time easier and faster. Some commonly used CMS tools are WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc. The WordPress is most widely used CMS for blogging. Similarly select a tool to that suits the site type.
  4. Testing for Browser support: Once the development of the site is completed the testing phase comes in place. Even though the testing is one of the Development Life Cycle step, the Browser support check is a most important thing to deliver your website to your clients as you wish them to be. This is one of the important advantages when using the CMS tools. Because the development community takes care of all these things so that you don’t need to put your time in. The IE Tester is used to check test the website display in the Internet Explorer versions from IE6 to IE10 While writing this article. Alternatively there are a lot of online tools to do the same. The Browsershot.com takes the screen shots of the website in all the versions of the browsers including different operating system.
  5. Get noticed: After all the above said steps, it is very important to get your site to viewers to whom it is intended to be. This set is commonly known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The SEO plays a very important role in making your website popular. I Intent to write a separate article on SEO. But I am placing a simple step to start the SEO.
    1. Submit your site to popular Search engines like Google, Bing.
    2. Once the site is placed the search engine will index the site from there on. As your site’s content becomes unique and popular they will be shown in the search results and visitors will start pouring in.

Top things to look at before developing a Web Site – Part 1

  1. Content Type (Static or Dynamic): The First and foremost thing a Web developer must look at is the “Content type”. Take a justified side between static and dynamic content when you go for the web site. If the site contains only a 5 to 10 pages with just few contents that may not have new change then the web site will be a Static that does not need much of server side support. But if you go for a site with Dynamic contents what may change in time and needs customization then you are onto a Dynamic site which needs immense Server support. Most of the sites now days are dynamic contents which need the servers support.
  2. Development Language: The Language in which you are going to develop the site is very important after selecting the content type. The widely used Language or the scripting for the web developing is PHP. Other famous technologies .Net, Java, Python, Perl etc. Every language has its own pros and cons. The developing languages have to be selected as per the need and knowledge. Usually scripting languages are easier to learnt and develop faster for beginners.
  3.  Web Servers: The web servers are the next thing we should care about. All the Web servers support the static content sites with just the HTML contents in it. When we look for the Server side scripting the Web Servers play a major role in providing the support for them. Web servers can be selected based on the Language by which you wanted to develop the websites. Even though the web servers can support any of the language with a set of customization, it’s better to go for a Web server which can natively support your development Language.  Because usually the customization never comes with less cost. Here are the widely used Web servers in market.
    1. Apache – For PHP natively and with Java support
    2. IIS – For .Net natively and PHP and Java support
    3. Tomcat – For Java natively and PHP support
  4. Domain name: The domain name is the one which is going to show up your stuffs to the World. They play a very important role and they are the entry point that visitors use to view your website on the web. The domain name can be of any length, but my personal opinion is to keep it as simple as possible and less than 8 characters. Choose a domain name that is very relevant to your site content, short, simple, crisp and easy to remember. If you could not specify your theme in just a work keep an abbreviation of the theme as domain name.
  5. Selecting a TLD: A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet. In other words, the domain names ends with the extensions like .com, .edu, .org, .web, .net etc which are knows as TLDs. Select a TLD which is related to your Site theme, locations and other factors.
    1. Examples: If your site is related to education, select TLD as .edu, If yours is a big Organization select .org, if the service you provide is country specific then select a country level TLD like .us, .ca, .in, .ph, co.in, .co.ca, co.in etc.
    2. Make sure you select a reasonable TLD and also consider the cost factors. Some TLDs are very costlier.
    3. If you could not find a specific TLD for your site theme just select the .com, which is most widely used.

Internet Explorer 9 to let Users Block “Tracking”

The Next version of Internet Explorer will let users turn on “tracking protection”, a new mechanism that will block specified users, Microsoft says.
The IE 9 announcement came as the U.S Federal Trade commision proposed that consumers be allowed to subscribe to a “do not track” system similar to “do not call” (in short DND) list that blocks telemarketers.
In IE 9, users can turn the feature on and then choose a list of sites to block. Anyone-Including individuals, companies, and consumers-protection groups-can make lists, and users can subscribe to as many as they please. List authors can update lists; the updates will automatically push out to subscribers, as IE 9 will check for updates once a week. The features will not block Flash cookies.
Some users may be surprised by the result, however: Sites that users block for tracking them will also be prohibited from displaying certain content. Websites will be able to detect when visitors are using the list; the sites will therefore know that some page elements may be blocked for the visitors.
The new tracking protection feature is available from the Internet Explorer 9 Release candidate.

The Next version of Internet Explorer will let users turn on “tracking protection”, a new mechanism that will block specified users, Microsoft says.

The IE 9 announcement came as the U.S Federal Trade commission proposed that consumers be allowed to subscribe to a “do not track” system similar to “do not call” (in short DND) list that blocks telemarketers.

In IE 9, users can turn the feature on and then choose a list of sites to block. Anyone-Including individuals, companies, and consumers-protection groups-can make lists, and users can subscribe to as many as they please. List authors can update lists; the updates will automatically push out to subscribers, as IE 9 will check for updates once a week. The features will not block Flash cookies.

Some users may be surprised by the result, however: Sites that users block for tracking them will also be prohibited from displaying certain content. Websites will be able to detect when visitors are using the list; the sites will therefore know that some page elements may be blocked for the visitors.

The new tracking protection feature is available from the Internet Explorer 9 Release candidate.

How Internet flow to PC – Undersea Submarine Cable System

The South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 project is a next generation submarine cable system linking South East Asia to Europe via the Indian Sub-Continent and Middle East. The project aims to take these regions to the forefront of global communication by significantly increasing the bandwidth and global connectivity of users along its route between Singapore and France.

map_2Cable System Configuration

Cable System provides interfaces for connection in between terminal stations at the following locations

TUAS : Singapore
MELAKA : Malaysia
SATUN : Thailand
COX’S BAZAR : Bangladesh
CHENNAI : India
COLOMBO : Sri Lanka
MUMBAI : India
KARACHI : Pakistan
FUJAIRA : United Arab Emirates
JEDDA : Saudi Arabia
SUEZ,
CAIRO, ALEXANDRIA
: Egypt (land segment)
PALERMO : Italy
BIZERTE : Tunisia
ANNABA : Algeria
MARSEILLES : France

Slow Internet Speed India due to Undersea Cable Cut

India is experiencing a decrease in the overall Internet Connectivity speed and this is accounted to around 50% of the normal speeds. The main reason behind this is the Fibre Cut at South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) undersea submarine cable system which connects South East Asia and Europe. The whole project is run by 16 different International Telecom companies which includes top Indian Telecom companies like Tata Communications, Bharti Airtel which cover a major consumer base in India, hence their customers would be the most effected ones.

SEA-ME-WE-4-Route

SEA-ME-WE-4 Route

Atleast 3 different under sea cables have been broken, out of which the cable located near Italy is going to effect the Indian Broadband Connections. The maintainence and repair work has already started and would be continued for the next four days because of which the impact is going to disrupt the service atleast for the next few days. This is the time when you need to Optimize Internet Connection for making the most of all the speed you get and not just waiting for the higher speed unless the repair is completed.

This is not the first time India had to face slow internet speed due to disruption in a cable system. In Jan 2008, the country lost 50 to 60 percent of Internet bandwidth due to a breakdown in an international undersea cable network.