If you’re just starting out with your business website, shared hosting can seem to provide you with the needed space you might require for a certain span of time. Although it may seem economical at first, it’s very common when you’re on a shared hosting plan to notice periods of when your website’s response time slows down, which is usually due to another account on the shared server using up the resources. This will compromise the speed of service you deserve, making dedicated server hosting a very attractive alternative to guarantee stability.

With your dedicated server, it secures your customization needs. Although a technical background is required, especially for hosting companies that offer less support features, if you know how to modify your server effectively, then you can utilize all resources that come with your dedicated server.

Though switching to a dedicated server is quite a leap as far as cost goes, you have to look at the price as an investment for not facing downtime due to sharing resources. The server will be yours alone, providing you optimal loading speeds, which equals more business for you as visitors will not deal with slow loading times. Disk space and RAM will be yours to control, which constitute effective bandwidth management for your business.

If you feel that the cost of a dedicated server may be too expensive, you can take advantage of a virtual private server (VPS), which is the intermediate option between a shared and a dedicated server. A VPS allows you to involve yourself in the transition between a shared hosting plan to that of a dedicated server plan. With the provisions of data security, the VPS provides you with security at a cost you can afford. However, with the increasing data management issues that arise, a dedicated server would be the more dependable choice.

Another instance that for considering a move to a dedicated server is for data management. For example, huge organizations may focus on tremendous amounts of data management. This may involve large databases, video files for visitor streaming and other activities related to the business itself. This consumes a lot of bandwidth, especially if there’s a lot of simultaneous uploading and downloading that occurs daily. Having a dedicated server conveniently allows you complete control over your server’s resources, which drops the compromise that you would get with any kind of shared server.

Moreover, with your dedicated server, you can have dedicated email that will allow visitors to contact you more securely. Adding to this, since you have complete control over your server management, you can install firewalls and other protective measures that will ultimately provide your website the security it deserves.

Dedicated server hosting provides you with the highest caliber of stability and performance rates. With your growing business at hand, you may want to consider visitor traffic utilizing your resources effectively. Although it may seem like an expensive upgrade, keep in mind the amount of business you face losing if your shared hosting plan cannot keep your business website up and available to your customers online all the time.

Brian Flores is a writer for InMotion Hosting, one of the top dedicated server providers in the country. He and his awesome team of writers regularly posts useful tutorials on WebHostingHelpGuy. You can follow him on Twitter @WHHG_InMotion or @BrianAFlores.

VPS lies somewhere in between the two options.  Disk space and RAM are dedicated to you, but CPU cycles are shared.  Often times, web hosts will tell you that you have a certain amount of disk space available but in reality, a single disk might be shared amongst several users and the web host assumes that not everyone will be using all of their allocated space.  This is known as overselling. The same applies for memory/RAM.

Advantages of VPS

• Burst memory: although your site has dedicated RAM, when a huge traffic spike hits (for example, if you get front paged on digg or reddit), RAM usage may go beyond what is allocated to you.  In this case, reserve memory is automatically borrowed from the cloud until the traffic subsides.  Occassional burst memory on VPS is supported by some web hosts such as inmotion hosting.
• Scalability: VPS packages come in many forms, from basic plans with little disk space and reserved RAM to full out e-commerce plans with a lot of disk space, unlimited databases and lots of RAM.  Start-ups can easily start with the most basic plan and scale up to the more expensive plans as user base grows.  The great thing about VPS is that everything is virtual, so upgrading from one plan to another is instant and just takes a click of a button — no physical hardware upgrades required!
• Server customization: The VPS runs on a virtual machine with it’s own installation of an operating system and webserver. This means you can customize the server however you would want, just as if you had your own dedicated server.

Given these advantages, I don’t see any reason to stick with shared hosting if you are a web developer. The price difference between shared hosting and the lowest VPS package is small and the customizability is unparalleled.

Eventually you may outgrow what Virtual Private Servers or even a single dedicated server can offer but I think we can all agree that this is a problem we’d all like to have!

But what do I do with the 2G? For a phone that is no longer really in demand, it may not be easy to sell on eBay or craigslist — at least not for a price that can justify going through the trouble of dealing with buyers or even scammers.

What is Tech Twurl?
Tech Twurl offers a service for those that have gadgets at home they want to get rid of to sell electronics.  The concept is simple, you send them your old gadget, and they’ll send you cash as payment.  Although prices are generally a bit lower than the best price you could get trying to sell the item yourself, the convenience is unparalleled.

The Prices
Obviously, the newer and more in-demand your electronic is, the higher price Tech Twurl will offer.  The price also depends on the quality of the product and the accessories (including things like original packaging).  Take for example if you bought the latest 32gb iPhone 4 but you are annoyed by the reception issues and have lost your receipt so you can’t return it to an Apple store.  Tech Twurl will offer you $585 for it (at the time of this posting).  That’s about double the subsidized price you would’ve paid for it.

For an older phone that I’ve used like the Samsung SGH-U900, Tech Twurl’s offer is $68, just a few dollars under the current market value on auction sites.  Again, that difference more than pays for the convenience.

How to sell your electronics
The steps to selling your electronics on TechTwurl is easy.  First, look up the electronic in question (as well as answer a few questions about the physical and working condition) and they’ll give you a price.  No bargaining required.

Next, if you agree to the price, Tech Twurl will send you the necessary shipping equipment, entirely prepaid.  Print out the shipping information, package it up in the provided box and drop it in the mail.  Immediately once they receive your package, you’ll see the payment in your Paypal or a check in the mail. Easy as pie.

Types of Electronics
Currently, Tech Twurl takes the following categories:

• Cellphones
• Cameras
• MP3 Players
• PDAs
• GPS
• Camcorders
• and even calculators.

If you don’t find your item on their site, don’t worry, they’re constantly adding more listings.

And coming soon… Textbooks! For all those University books you kept as reference but end up just sitting on your shelf collecting dust.

Conclusion
Definitely check it out, it doesn’t cost anything or even a sign-up to look up your old electronics. There’s really no easy way of getting rid of your old stuff for cash!

On multiple occasions, I’ve stressed the importance of backing up your files and documents. I’ve also reviewed Mozy as an online backup solution. However, there’s a new competitor in town called Dmailer backup and it gives Mozy a good run for its money. Well, it’s not exactly new as the company has been around since 2001 but I’ve just recently found out about it.

What is Dmailer Backup?
Dmailer Backup is a piece of software that lets users automate the backup process, providing continuous incremental backups for specified files. Incremental backups means that you can ‘go back in time’ to previous versions of a file, not just the latest one. This is especially useful for anyone that does any sort of programming as debugging is made tons easier by comparing old versions of files to current ones. Now Dmailer Backup itself is used to manage backups, but you still need to provide a destination to backup to — for example, an external hard drive or usb key.

A handy feature is to select only specific types of files to backup.  For example, for most people, the important files that require backing up are .doc and .txt files.  For a web developer, one could simply add .php, .html, .css to the mix.  This avoids wasting valuable backup space on those large HD movies (unless you wanted to of course).

Also, Dmailer Backup is a single executable file that does not require installation and works perfectly with U3 usb devices, perfect for that portable web development usb key.

What is Dmailer Online?
Dmailer Online is essentially an online storage space that can be utilized by Dmailer Backup.  Upon sign-up, you are provided with 2GB of online storage. Rest assured, the storage is both password protected and encrypted with one of the strongest encryption algorithms available, 448-bit Blowfish. Like some other backup services, the first 2GB is free.  In fact, Dmailer were the first ones to offer 2GB for free, setting the benchmark for backup services everywhere.  Although this is enough for most people, those that have a lot of multimedia to back up may prefer to pay $35 per year for 30GB or $70 per year for unlimited storage. That works out to less than $3 and $6 per month respectively!

The great feature about Dmailer Online is that the files can be accessed simply from a web browser, so you can access your backups from any computer without having to install any software first.  The web user interface for file access is a search engine that’s intuitive, fast, and easy to use.

Mac Compatibility
There aren’t many online backup solutions out there that support platforms other than Windows. Cross-platform support is greatly appreciated by myself and other Mac users. There’s no Linux support yet, but I’ve been told this is a feature in the works, so Linux users can feel included soon.

Mozy vs Dmailer
There are a few similarities between Mozy and Dmailer. Both offer 2GB of online backup storage for free, both are automated and encrypted, and both run on Mac. Unlike Mozy, Dmailer are the pioneers of “‘dual backup”, which can provide you with an offline backup solution in addition to an online one, all from a single interface. Online backups are safe from things like break-ins and local disasters, but offline backups are easier to access and quicker. If you accidentally deleted a large file that you want to recover, it may take a while to download the backup from an online server, so it is always handy to have an offline backup as well.  So I think Dmailer provides a good integration of both types for maximum ease of mind.

In a country and age where bandwidth is at a premium, it is very important none of it goes to waste.  You don’t want to have to download gigabytes of data only to find out later it was the wrong file, a fake file, or worse: an infected file.

All this preamble was simply to introduce the best BitTorrent search engine I’ve used thus far, VerTor.  What sets VerTor apart from other engines and trackers is that it verifies the content of every torrent file (hence the name).

How does it verify torrent files you ask? Here are some of the ways:

• Lists all individual files contained within a torrent file
• Scans all contained files for viruses (using Clam Win)
• Captures and displays a preview of actual screenshots of video
• Splits a sample of audio files for preview
• Checks to make sure files are not password protected
• Checks for DRM protection on files

Can’t find a torrent you want on their site? You can download the torrent file on another site and upload it to VerTor for verification without taking the plunge yourself.

The site is also very friendly for users new to the whole concept of BitTorrent.  Torrent files can even be opened using the web-based BitLet software so you don’t have to install or configure a client on your own computer.  One disadvantage is that it takes a while for VerTor to verify torrents so it takes a little while for new content to be verified and listed on the site.  A small price to pay for peace of mind in my opinion.

All in all, VerTor is a great site and an excellent example of the type of services the web is capable of these days.

Just remember, make sure what you’re downloading is legal and not copyrighted!

Now’s your chance to put your “traveller IQ” to the test! Tripbase has a fun travel intelligence quiz that will test your “travel-savvyness” based on how you would react in various extreme scenarios.

75% of the world!

Quiz by Tripbase

I did the quiz myself but only got 75%, it’s not as easy as it looks! I found that what seems to be the most logical answer were in fact incorrect.  I went out of my way to look up some of the answers on Google and was quite surprised by what I found.  So go ahead, do the quiz. It might even save your life in the future.

If you’re the traveling type, Tripbase.com itself is a neat site to check out.  They offer suggestions on places to travel based on things that you like to do and present everything you’ll need to know to plan the trip including hotel costs, flight costs and required spending money!  It’s even been described as the Match.com of travel planning!

Many poker sites offer sign-up bonuses but you also need to keep in mind that you don’t want to play on shady and non-reputable sites.  If you’re choosing an online casino to do a little bit of gambling online, you’ll find that it isn’t as easy a task as you would have thought.  There are many things to consider!

For beginning players and experienced players alike, online casino bluebook is a free site that reviews a lot of online casinos, ranking them based on:

• Bonus size
• Payout percentage
• Customer service
• Game features
• Number of games
• Software graphics
• Ease of use

The site itself is simple and straight to the point.  My guess is that the site makes money on affiliate commissions but the information and reviews seems to be unbiased.  There is also a forum that is slowly growing in size but the primary topic of discussion appears to be poker.  Online casino bluebook has been around for a while now (since 2000) so you can assume they know what they are talking about.  The casinos they review also aren’t limited to just the United States!

You’d be amazed at some of the sign-up bonuses you can get with some of these online casinos!  Even if you’re not great at gambling, its a good way to try your luck and kill some time.

Swift To-Do List Online is a web application created by Dextronet.  Although called a To-Do list, it is in fact much more than that.  Being an online application, the biggest reason for using it is that tasks can be accessed and modified whenever you have access to the Internet.  Luckily for me, I’m almost always in front of a computer so it is very convenient.  It might be interesting to get input from somebody that doesn’t always have access to the Internet to get their thoughts on this tool.

Features
With regards to shear number of features, this is by far the most I’ve seen on any to do list software.  Here’s some of the more notable ones:

• Hierarchical tree structure to organize tasks
• Ability to set due dates and use built-in reminders for tasks
• Import lists from XML format
• Export lists to HTML or CSV format
• User management for collaboration and task allocation
• Add notes/files/media to individual tasks

That last feature is a huge one in my opinion.  With each task you have to do, you can associate formatted notes, files, folders and links to it.  A lot of times the task itself can be described in one line but all of the extra things that go with the task need to be stored somewhere else.  By allowing users to add notes and links directly to a task, it really helps with organization.

For example, I might have a task say “Print this document at the office” and then simply attach the document along with the task instead of having to save it to a USB key or e-mailing it to myself.  Not a big deal, but definitely helpful!

A lot of people (myself included) like to keep things simple but it is important to remember that just because all of these features are offered, doesn’t mean you have to use it!  You can make Swift To-Do List as simple or as complex as you need it to be.

User Interface

In true Web 2.0 fashion, Swift To-Do List Online operates exactly like a desktop application.  The UI reminds me of Microsoft Outlook with its 3 panel view.  The buttons (very nice icons by the way) are large and intuitively easy to use.

From a web developer perspective, I can really appreciate the detail and effort put into making the user interface usable and free of bugs.  Since I’ve done my share of Web UI programming before, I spent a few minutes trying to “break” the UI with common oversights but it was nice to see that it was all accounted for.

In my opinion, a couple things that could be added to improve the experience are:

• Keyboard shortcuts – I love keyboard shortcuts
• iPhone App – This would open the application to a huge audience that wants a featureful to-do list application accessible anytime anywhere.

Price
With a web application of this caliber, it isn’t a surprise to find out that it isn’t free.  The online version comes at a monthly cost in 4 different plans ranging from $9.95 to $225.95 a month.  The difference between the versions are the number of users allowed (from 1 to unlimited) and the amount of storage given to store files associated with tasks (from 100MB to 50GB).

For most people, the most basic personal plan should be enough.  The higher tier plans are clearly geared towards businesses that want to manage large projects with many contributors.  I can see it being extremely helpful for a manager to assign tasks and keep track of project progress through this web application, especially if the office is decentralized.

They do offer a free 30-day trial so you can try it to see if you like it.  Or check out their live demo to see if the features suit your needs!

Conclusion
Swift To-Do List is one of the most complete and feature packed online to-do list software I have come across.  I didn’t try using their collaborative features yet since my To-Do list is only for personal use but I can see many possibilities for it.  The only thing I can think of to improve it are the addition of keyboard shortcuts and perhaps the development of an iPhone application to supplement the site.

If you want something for your desktop, Dextronet also offers an award winning to-do list software for Windows, which is what this online version is based off of.

Basically, he is trying to raise $1000 for the skydive.  Anyone that donates at least a $1 to his cause will be entered in a draw for a whole bunch of sponsored prizes (including mine!).

Currently, the prize pool is worth over $2500 and you only need to donate $1 for a chance to win!

You can contact Sean if you want to sponsor a prize for his competition.  Not only will you get a few backlinks from his blog, he will even print your logo/URL on the shirt that he’s going to wear while skydiving!

Go over to smemon.com and check it out!

What is WebUnload?
In a nutshell, WebUnload is a completely free marketplace where you can sell your stuff online.  “Stuff” in this case refers to non-tangible online material including:

• Websites
• Domain Names
• WordPress Themes
• E-Books
• Freelance Services

How it Works for a Seller
If you have something you want to sell, you can register for a new account or use an existing login from another site (Facebook, Yahoo, AIM, OpenID, AOL).  This is a great feature because people usually don’t like registering for sites.

Once you’ve registered and signed-in, you can post a listing.  If you’re a blogger, this step may seem strangely familiar to you.  That’s because the entire WebUnload site is implemented in WordPress!  How’s that for extensibility.  As a seller, you basically become a contributing author to the “blog” and your listing is essentially a “post” under a certain “category”.  What a creative and innovative use of WordPress!

How it Works for a Buyer
Anyone is free to browse the marketplace.  If a potential buyer sees something that he likes, he can contact the seller through a link (which requires registration to use).  Alternatively, if the seller opted to leave contact information in the post then the buyer can contact the seller directly.

It should be noted that WebUnload is simply a marketplace and not a complete transaction gateway so payment will have to be arranged privately by the two parties (usually through Paypal).  There is an option for InstaPay which will set up a Paypal transaction but again, it is up to the parties to make sure that the transaction is completed smoothly.

How does WebUnload make Money?
WebUnload makes money by offering premium add-ons for sellers.  This gives sellers a way to make their posting stand out and attract more potential buyers.  This system is similar to eBay but without the base listing fee or selling fee.

Areas for Improvement
Although registration is made easy by allowing login IDs from a few popular sites, I don’t think buyers should need to register to contact sellers.  Personally, being forced to register in any sort of way is a turn off for me.  I think the ease of use for buyers is one reason Craigslist has been so successful.

Another thing is that the marketplace seems to be flooded with cheap and “spammy” e-books and scripts.  In order to become a powerful online marketplace, the content should be of higher quality in order for it to seem more legitimate.

Conclusion
WebUnload is itself a great feat of WordPress engineering.  It should be on the front page of WordPress to show what that software is capable of!  As for being an online marketplace, it is off to a great start to overcome some of the more popular ones (SitePoint, DigitalPoint and other forums that offer a Marketplace feature).  In fact, it is the first online marketplace I’ve seen that is a marketplace first, not a forum.

I’d definitely recommend everyone to check it out, even if you’re not interested in buying/selling anything, you can stare in awe at this “WordPress site”.