Now we are looking at $540.00 for his birthday. Now his birthday is in August around other people’s birthdays of people I want to get stuff for and then after that we have Black Friday and Christmas. Oh did I mention I was planning to get engaged to my gf (I do not want to look at rings again) now fiance that year too. So yeah I’m on a budget now. So not backing down by the pressure I figured he has other kids (6 including me lol), I so called them up told them the price and we teamed up to buy him the ipad. My fiance teamed up with me too. By doing this the price was split 7 ways leaving me to  $540/7 = $77.14 and saving me 540 – 77.14 = $462.86. In the end he was happy and we got him the ipad and he still uses it to this day. Funny thing is I think this is the only gift that he has received from my brothers and sisters and I that he still uses.

Now after going to this process you have to ask yourself why do I have to go through this continuous cycle every year not only with my father but friends and family? Than I have to guess what they want which they may not like and spend all this money! It would explain why the majority of the population gives gift cards and hallmark cards or nothing at all. With all this technology and the rise of social networks how come this has not been combated in a graceful way yet?

In comes nobadgift.com! Nobadgift.com was born out of this frustration of birthdays, weddings, father’s day, mother’s day, christmas, going away parties, house warmings, ANYDAY. Now how does it solve this problem. I wanted to first tackle the main problem what do people want? So when you log onto the website, you create a wishlist. After you create a wishlist you add gifts of everything that you want. Next you want to spread the word through facebook, twitter and email. 5 easy steps:

1. Click wishlist tab
2. Create a wishlist of your choosing
3. Add gifts
4. Let your friends and family know
5. And let the good times roll

Lately I have been doing alot of research on how to make an exceedingly fast website. So in order to accomplish such a task I had to identify all the components I use when making a website and what they depend on. So let’s do a break down of the components you use when developing a website:

• Programming Languages – PHP, Java, Perl, Python, C#, C++, Ruby, etc

• Browser – Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer (this browser is not worth mentioning but it is popular so it shall remain) client technologies are HTML, Javascript, CSS and Images (Not a client technology but is loaded by the browser)

• Database – MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server

• Hardware – CPU, Ram, Hard Drive

Programming Languages

This has always been a common debate amongst programmers, what is the fastest programming language? I have heard and heard this time and time again and when I hear the debate it’s something that can be easily SQUASHED! You have two different types of programming languages. You have compiled and interpreted languages. Compiled programming languages (C++) are faster than Interpreted languages (PHP, Python) period. The reason why is because compiled languages go from source code to machine code which is what the computer understands. Interpreted languages have to be read by an interpreter and than changed into machine code on the fly every time it is executed. Better example is imagine a compiled language as a person who speaks English and the interpreted language as a person who speaks Spanish and the computer is a person that speaks English. When the compiled language speaks to the computer it already speaks English helping the computer quickly understand what it is saying. With the interpreter you have to have a person who is the translator aka interpreter to translate the Spanish to English so to the computer can understand. So hopefully at this point you can determine who is faster. COMPILED LANGUAGES!!!

You may ask why do people use interpreted languages instead of compiled languages? Mostly because they make it easier to accomplish complex tasks with less code base on them being created at later times than compiled languages and being made to accomplish more modern tasks with website design. Still there are ways to still use interpreted languages and get around the speed issues. Facebook has came up with an interesting solution. Facebook uses php to fun their famous web application but in order to speed up there website and use less resources they created something called hip hop php. Hip hop php translates php into a compiled language. By doing this Facebook has nearly doubled their performance gains. Python even have frameworks that when started by the server changes the python into a compiled version of the original code creating a faster version of the website.

Browser

Well you may be asking yourself why is he bringing up about the browser since we can’t control what browser the user is using. As true as this is we can control what code the browser sees. The browser interprets HTML, CSS, Javascript and Images from the web server and loads it for your eyes to see. Now the question is how can we speed this up? Well one word compression. For HTML, CSS and Javascript you can use gzip compression. Gzip compression works by finding similar strings within a text file, and replacing those strings temporarily to make the overall file size smaller. This form of compression is particularly well-suited for the web because HTML and CSS files usually contain plenty of repeated strings, such as whitespace, tags, and style definitions. It works by first checking to see if the browser supports gzip encoding. If the browser approves it will send a compressed version of the web page to the browser to interpret it. Here is a better example here if you like pictures. It’s pretty easy to use, just check and see if your programming language supports it and than implement accordingly.

Another type of compression you can also do that works whether the browser needs to approve it or not is minifying your css or javascript files. Just like Gzip compression but eliminates spaces, tags and style definitions within the file so if a request is sent over the internet your browser can download it quicker without any type of approval process and regardless of how old your browser might be. Yahoo has developed program to minify your files here. Jquery uses the same method for their files also. They mention it here

Images are probably one of the main things that take the most time when downloading a website. Especially with newer and newer cameras coming with bigger mega pixels. Usually after you take a picture on today’s camera it will be usually over 1 megabytes which is way too big for a website. So what you do, you guessed it right you need to compress it. My favorite method for compressing files is using photoshop save for web function and resizing the images can reduce the size of a image that is 2.0 megabytes to under 50 kilobytes or less. Another option if you do not wish to buy photoshop for several hundred dollars (understandable) you can use an online program called Image Optimizer. There are other alternatives out there but I have tested them.

Databases

With databases I have tested and played around with such as MySQL, Oracle, SQLite run pretty good considering how optimized the query is and how many results you are fetching. Also it depends on the hardware (read the hardware recommendations) and if it is a 32 or 64 bit version. If you read one of my earlier articles you see that 64 bit is faster than 32 bit versions. But in order to use 64 bit programs you have to first have 64 bit operating system which is offered by every known manufacturer nowadays. I will even recommend that you always get the 64 bit version if it is available, unless it is unstable or not in its final version.

Hardware

This is probably the MOST important aspect with the speed of your website. Programming languages, databases, every thing software related depends on hardware. Even though every thing depends on the hardware you need to know what aspects of the hardware correlate to the software. Since we are talking about the speed of the website the most essential thing with speed of the CPU. The faster the CPU the faster your programming languages, databases run. I would suggest a CPU that has multiple cores.

The next thing is memory, memory can run out pretty fast on high end systems. With hard drives I really like solid state hard drives but they are really expensive for the size you might want. They are the fastest drives on the market right now and you will definitely will see the increase in speed. I would personally suggest getting sata 3.0 drives and sticking with that until the price of regular hard drives drop, because you probably be making several backups of your site and database.

Another aspect of memory to remember is Ram. With the server, database and website running ram can get used up pretty fast but it always depends on what you are doing. If you are just experimenting you really don’t have much too much to worry about but if you are running something the whole world is going see I suggest getting ram that is pretty fast and over 4 gigabytes of memory. Also remember there will be several other applications and plug-ins that you might install to complement your website so we didn’t even factor this into the equation yet but that can vary greatly. Other than that have fun! Feel free to leave any questions or comments.

Thick client applications are your traditional applications. These are the software that you go out and buy from the store then download onto your computer from a CD like Quicken or MS Office. Such applications are then stored on your personal computer’s hard drive taking up memory and runs completely on that computer’s resources. This also means that the security of the application is dependent on the local computer, which in most cases has a limited amount of users and access. These apps, because they are stored on a person’s local computer, are always readily available as long as there are no issues with the computer housing them. This also means that the only way to us such an application from a different computer is that it has to be loaded on that machine, and an individual would have to have there information on some kind of portable media so that it can be uploaded an reused. That means these kinds of apps are not very portable and in most cases can not be used with a mobile device.

Thin client applications are web applications. These are applications that can be accessed from the internet with out the use of a CD or any other type of media. These applications are purchased by paying for an account or subscription to a website which gives you access to the app, as opposed to purchasing it at a store. With the application itself being used from the web it dose not take up any space on the local computer, but still uses other resources from the local computer. Instead the app resides on a server somewhere that can be accessed by many users at any time, which means a need for greater security measures to be taken. Also thin client apps can be accessed by any computer or mobile device that has internet access making them very portable. With that said thin apps are only as fast and reliable as the user’s internet connection and the producer’s server. This also means that if either is not working correctly for any reason then the application could be unreachable or extremely slow.

Now with a better understanding and some background information of what is a thin client and thick client app, I go back to the original questing of which one is better? Well that’s a tough question because at the end of the day they both do the same job and usually cost about the same. Even though thin apps are easier to access and do not take up any memory of the local computer, thick apps are more reliable and usually a lot more secure. Thus I think the best way to answer this question is for users to first decide how big of an issue accessibility is. If it is a big issue for the user then yes, a thin client app is defiantly better. Yet, if that is not the case then maybe a thick client app is better. It all depends on what the user is looking for out of their apps. If you have any questions and want to know more about thick and thin client apps you can e-mail me at me_conwell@compscistuff.com.

Also a side note: Thin client apps are the basis of cloud computing, which is the idea of a computer running with its apps being ran from a remote server as opposed to on the local computer itself. This is an Idea that will be further explored in a later article so being on the look out.

Search Engine Optimization – by using these techniques it will bring your website a long way google alone brought 300 people to our website each month.

Fast loading times – by using gzip and picture compression techniques this allowed our website to load up in considerable amount of time on just about any internet connection.

Search Engine Submission – by submitting our website to yahoo, google and msn live it allowed regular internet users to explore our page without any knowledge of our page.

25 articles – by writing 25 articles on computer technology that readers are normally attracted to it appealed to an already large market of people out there.

Giving free information that generates money or saves money – Giving out free information to strictly benefit people always grasps people attention.

Using a wordpress – wordpress is a beautiful content management system for managing information in your blog and contains several extensions that can take your page a long way!

Passion – Always writing about your passion always produces results. So no matter what it is always follow your passion and pursue what makes you happy!

A note from M.E. Conwell – As the co-writer on this site I too would like to thank all of you, our valued readers, for helping Mike and I make Compscistuff what it is today. Now we want to hear from you our readers on what it is that we can do to make this site even better. We want to know what it is you like or dislike about the site or what you would like to see added to the site. This feedback would be greatly appreciated and will help us take Compscistuff to the next level. Mike an I are committed to making Compscistuff as helpful and useful as possible so be on the look out for more great articles and a few surprised in 2009.

Lately, times have been getting kind of hard for the American economy and even the world’s economy for that matter. When times like this occur and you still need to carry out tasks and buy essential elements where do you turn? Well one web application I have turned to is Retail Me Not. Retail Me Not is a web application in which you input a particular website such as a shopping website, computer website, jewelry website, etc. and it will return coupons or codes that will give you discounts. One feature I particularly like about this website is the percentage in which each individual code work. So check it out when you get the chance it has all the major stores and online businesses and leave a comment to let me know what you think.

Content

Hulu.com displays some of today’s top TV shows and Movies in a very organized manner that you have to love. It displays premium content from Fox and NBC with great speed and quality. I particularly like the structure of the genre section. Most of the time when I’m looking for a movie I don’t know what I want, but I know how I feel. So if I’m in the mood for some action/adventure and don’t know the exact movie that I want to watch, guess where I’m going to… HULU.com!

Interface

Hulu.com has a smooth and sharp interface that is untouched by any video website out there. They have options to:

1. Email a Friend
2. Embed video to your website
3. Share with people in your social networks
4. Display the full description of a video
5. Display the video on your whole screen without losing clarity
6. Pop Out – so you can view the video independently
7. Lower lights – to control the brightness of the video
8. Watch in Hi-Res/ Low-Res (My favorite feature) – Gives you the option to view the video in great quality if you have the internet speed for it.

Functionality

A feature I always analyze on websites that store great amounts of content is their search engine capability. Hulu.com’s search engine is great for the gargantuan amounts of video on their server and displays the search results in such a neat manner.

Overall Hulu.com is the best video website I have seen so far, so how about you give it a try and let me know what you think..