Posts tagged: Developers

May 19 2012

Online Train Games

For the past several years, online train games have become increasingly popular. These games were developed in the early to mid-1990s. As you can imagine, many of the people who initially flocked to this particular game genre were people who had a great deal of interest in model trains and locomotives in general. Many of the developers themselves were people who had a long-standing interest in this particular genre.

From a conceptual standpoint, many train games revolve around the idea of developing an infrastructure through which an ever increasingly complex assortment of trains can operate. Some variants include attempting to become a tycoon, and others focus more closely on some of the engineering is required to put together a well-planned train system.

Throughout the past several years, as online graphics and Internet connectivity speeds have improved, these games and have taken on an even more realistic appearance.

Not to mention, there is a great deal of effort that has been put into organizing these games in a way that truly creates an interactive environment in which players feel as if though they are playing a significant role. As a matter of fact, many people who have been playing train games since the very beginning will tell you that the genre has truly grown from very rudimentary graphics and simple gameplay environments to ones that are significantly more advanced.

While it is true that many people who happen to be interested in model trains and locomotives in general are still attracted to these types of games, and also attracted a wider audience of players. This is good news given the fact that the more people who play these types of games, the more incentive developers have in creating ever increasingly more complex and diverse game environments. Train games are certainly here to stay and will remain a part of the Internet for many years to come.

Jan 27 2012

BackupBuddy ? The Ultimate WordPress Backup Solution Plugin

BackupBuddy, the best WordPress Backup Plugin. Use BackupBuddy plugin backup your wordpress websites. It easily, selful and quickly! Here use the Backup Buddy coupon to buy the BackupBuddy plugin, Get discount off!

BackupBuddy is an all-in-one solution for WordPress backups, restoration, & migration. Running on thousands of sites. Whether you’re a blogger or developer, this plugin is sure to bring you peace of mind & added safety in the event of data loss. Back up to your server, Amazon S3, a FTP/FTPS account, or an email. Use the backup with the Importing & Migrating script to quickly and easily restore your site on the same server or even migrate to a new server with a different domain and database.

Whether you’re an end user or a developer, this plugin is sure to bring you peace of mind and added safety in the event of data loss. Our goal is to keep the backup, restoration, and migration processes easy, fast, and reliable.

Here are the BackupBuddy plugin primary features and benefits:

* Backup your entire WordPress install – including the widgets, themes, plugins AND SQL database … the entire package! You should not leave the backup process up to your web host … just like your laptop or desktop computer, you should be doing regular backups of your blog or website … with BackupBuddy, you can schedule backups and have them sent off-site to Amazon S3, an FTP/FTPS account, or to your email.
* Restore your WordPress site fast — the restore function within BackupBuddy is a simple restoration process where you upload a script and your backup files and it restores WordPress, your themes, widgets, plugins, and everything else.

Other backup solutions only backup; BackupBuddy restores too!
* Migrate a WordPress site to another domain or server easily – If you build custom WordPress sites for clients this plugin is for you! This is a HOT feature for WordPress developers who build a custom site for a client on a temporary domain (like a sandbox or playground site) then want to reinstall the ENTIRE site with widgets and all on a live client domain.
* Backup Scheduling – BackupBuddy can do daily, weekly, bi-monthly, monthly backups … and includes email, FTP, FTPS, and Amazon S3 options to another server
* Automatic Plugin Upgrades in WP Dashboard – When new versions of BackupBuddy come out during your membership year, you can easily upgrade the plugin straight from the Dashboard

Other Features

Remote backup storage to Amazon S3, over FTP / FTPS, email backup files, email notifications, option to back up entire database, directory excluding, backup file integrity checks, built-in help and hint system.

Jan 06 2012

Web Designers Design Brief

When first contacting web designers about your website or online project, it’s very important to have a written brief. Without some kind of brief, it can be difficult for web designers to fully understand the project and what it entails.

Spending time writing a clear and consise brief will make your project run a lot more smoothly and quickly than without. The more detailed you can be in the brief about both graphic design and functionality of the site, the better. For example, it’s always a good idea to include in your brief any existing logos, branding colour palletes, copies of current business cards, corporate fonts to ensure the graphic designers are aware that there is already a brand identity that must be adhered to. Secondly, if the site is to be redesigned, the more guidence you can give your web designers on what style of design you like, the better chance of success you have of having design developed that you like, first time. It’s helpful to let your designers know of 3 or 4 websites you like the layout and design of and specify what it is you like about them. Perhaps the colours, whitespace, clean, uncluttered feeling or perhaps a busy site with lots of text and images. These sites generally do not have to be industry related, only seen from a graphic design point of view. Lastly, supply your web designers with 3 or 4 of your competitors websites so that they can see what you are up against.

It’s also crucial to give your potential designers a sitemap. A list of the pages that are going to be required such as Home, About Us, Our Services, Contact Us, Media Library etc.. in addition to this, any special functionality that is required such as online payments, a user registration area to access a document library perhaps, ecommerce facilites are just a few of the functionalities that may be required. Giving this kind of detail to your developers will allow them to study the project in detail.

Once your developers have a solid idea of your design and development requirements they can spend some time researching ideas for the site and if time allows research some of the latest technology on the web that could be used. Once ideas have been discussed, your web developers should be able to give you a good idea of the cost of the project and estimated timescales for design and development.

Should you wish to move ahead with the project from there, you will have a good foundation for the project and should feel confident that both parties understand the project in detail. Your web designers should be able to design and develop a first class site on-time and on-budget.

Jan 01 2012

Hd Widescreen Computer Monitor

To be truthful, there’s not much better way to boost efficiency on your computer than by getting yourself a wide screen personal computer monitor. While you could set up a dual monitor to expand work space, it is simply not as practical and handy as getting a wide screen monitor. Attaching a double screen to your current monitor requires technical know-how to install.

Having a wide screen personal computer monitor, you don’t need to be worried about focusing on 2 different displays. Having two displays can be a little bit too distracting and actually reduce work productivity. As an alternative, you can do every thing on a single wide screen monitor. With more space on your display, you can open more windows and focus on a number of programs simultaneously.

When you’re busy working on several things at once, it may be incredibly annoying to hide windows to view another. Sometimes you might have plenty of applications open and the screen is just a busy mess. This could critically reduce your effectiveness to work successfully and will waste significant amount of time.

Wide screen personal computer monitors are large, with the standard size being around 21 inches. Thus giving you a lot more room to be organized and also do more. You don’t only have more space, you can also enjoy much better clarity. Plenty of widescreen monitors are usually HD and provide amazingly fine detail in addition to color. For graphics developers this really is beneficial as it helps give a far better concept of the final product.

Generally, widescreen personal computer monitors feature 16:9 display, which is the general standard for most movies and TV programs today. You’ll find that most video web sites on the internet also offer the ability to view movies within widescreen. What this means is you’re able to appreciate motion pictures and television as it really is meant to be, without seeing the black bars.

You can effortlessly change your PC into a digital TV set by investing in digital television card. Using this method you can take advantage of the HD quality display when watching your favorite programs. As opposed to analogue, you can enjoy crystal clear digital broadcasts directly on your PC. As many computers have DVD drives you may also appreciate the movies too in widescreen format providing you with an enhanced watching experience.

That’s not all; wide screen personal computer monitors are usually much more energy efficient in comparison to common screens as well as space-saving. You’ll find brand new widescreen LCDs extremely compact and also lightweight.

Apr 13 2011

Cloud Computing – A Game Changer in Emerging Markets?



In emerging markets it might be hard to find the money to start up a business. Could cloud computing be a game changer in these markets?

The emerging markets are definitely interesting to cloud developers and providers. Cloud computing is popular because of the low running costs and low need of knowledge, but for the emerging markets, there are still obstacles to overcome.

Advantages.

One of the main advantages with cloud computing is the low cost of implementation. You don’t necessarily need a server, but can instead use of one of the many cloud providers out there. Most small and medium businesses will find that the cloud has a solution to suit their needs. Furthermore this also means that you won’t have to pay for an expensive license. As we’ve seen in both webOS’s and dedicated cloud OS’s most of the software bundled with an OS is included in the monthly subscription or even free. Furthermore if developers need more resources cloud servers are easy scalable, due to the fact that many of the providers offer pay-as-you-go solutions.

Another advantage is, that the cloud can be set up anywhere with an internet access. Since it is possible to store everything in the cloud, you can practically access your systems from a bamboo hut in the jungle. Furthermore if you provide your employees with a cheap netbook, you actually don’t need to provide an expensive office. This also means that if you require a person with certain competences, but such a person isn’t available in your region, you can still collaborate on projects over vast distances. As we saw in LotusLive communication and collaboration isn’t a problem since these functions often are integrated in cloud interfaces.

Then what about finding clients? Well, since your business is already using the internet on a daily basis it is even easier for you to bring it online and by this making your services available to customers worldwide.

Basic issues.

To be productive in the cloud requires some sort of a computer device. One obvious example could be a chromebook, but they are still as expensive as an ordinary laptop. Netbooks are much cheaper and it’s easy to install a hybrid OS or use a webOS. Simmtronics have tried to make use of this and are now selling their 199$ netbook in emerging markets. This is of course positive since several organizations have stated that 200$ is the point where computers becomes widely available to the public in poor countries. It can still be done cheaper. Raspberry Pi, a UK-based nonprofit organization, are currently working on a computer of the size of a credit card. The expected price for their device is 25$. The cheapest monitor on Bestbuy.com is sold for 80$, and then you’ll need a keyboard and a mouse which is 20$. This way you’ll have a full set-up for 125$. Their system runs on Ubuntu, but another Linux distribution, TinyCore, could be configured to start up directly in the web browser.

In developing countries and also emerging markets power isn’t always stable. Since power is necessary for a computer to work, then this is definitely an obstacle. The solution to this problem could be solar power since many of the emerging markets are located in sunny locations.

Another problem is connectivity. In quite a few emerging markets the access to broadband connections is very limited. The reason why the advanced economies are so well connected is that they had a huge density of preexisting phone lines which were easy to convert in to broadband connections. But digging cables in to the ground is expensive. Wireless internet access is much more interesting for small and medium businesses in emerging markets. VSAT was one of the first solutions, but with low bandwidth and high pricing it isn’t a viable solution. Instead 3G and Wimax could be the solution for these countries, but of course wireless as well as wired connections requires investments.

Each year the World Economic Forum publishes a report on the global ICT (internet and communication technology) and measures the network readiness of each country. In this statistic education plays an important role. Education must be prioritized in emerging markets for them to evolve in to an advanced market. In relations to cloud computing the question is if they know about this great concept. Is information available to entrepreneurs in emerging markets?

Three ways to evolution.

The development in the countries which are emerging markets moves to a more urbanised society. Therefore cloud computing knowledge centers need to be established in the biggest cities in these countries. By doing this both providers, developers and users can benefit from the concept. IBM is a huge player in the cloud industry and seems to spend a lot of time on developing new markets. They could be a great provider of such a facility.

To reduce costs and improve connectivity, new businesses could start out in a shared office facility. That way the firms could share a wired broadband connection, which is often more stable and faster than a wireless connection. There are obvious advantages for governments supporting such a facility. If you make it easier to start up new companies, then even if only a small percentage of these grow bigger over the years, these companies create jobs, income, export and in the end an increase of the annual GDP.

Of course we can’t just invest in the main cities. If a country’s leading communication providers don’t continuously work to expand the country’s communication infrastructure, the government has to step in. It must not act as a service provider itself though. It would be far better to present the providers with a reward as for example an exemption of taxes on new network areas within a limited period of time.

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