Category: Web work

These days, most of my work is very related to the online world. Building web sites, reviewing web applications, integrating with web services, coordinating people who are far away from each other, etc. Whenever I find a new tool or service or an innovative, interesting idea about working online, I share it in this category.

Fire and Motion

Joel Spolsky wrote “Fire and Motion” blog post back in 2002, but it is as relevant today as it was 15 years ago. It’s a good read on the subject of both personal and organizational productivity.

What drives me crazy is that ever since my first job I’ve realized that as a developer, I usually average about two or three hours a day of productive coding. When I had a summer internship at Microsoft, a fellow intern told me he was actually only going into work from 12 to 5 every day. Five hours, minus lunch, and his team loved him because he still managed to get a lot more done than average. I’ve found the same thing to be true. I feel a little bit guilty when I see how hard everybody else seems to be working, and I get about two or three quality hours in a day, and still I’ve always been one of the most productive members of the team. That’s probably why when Peopleware and XP insist on eliminating overtime and working strictly 40 hour weeks, they do so secure in the knowledge that this won’t reduce a team’s output.

WPBloggerTricks – The Real Blogger & WordPress Tricks

It looks like blogging is coming back.  At least in the world around me, there is quite a few new blogs spawning up, and the old ones being resurrected.  I don’t know what’s causing that, but I see it as a good thing.

I’ve been answering a lot more basic blogging questions from all sorts of people recently, so I thought, let me link to one of those tips and tricks sites that have plenty to offer.  You know, just to save myself a bit of time.

WPBloggerTricks seems like a good choice here.  It has plenty to offer to the new and return bloggers.

Is VPN Legal in Your Country?

TheBestVPN.com published a study of whether or not VPNs are legal in 196 countries around the world.  There is a summary for each, and some links to details of the research.

VPNs are legal, generally.

It depends largely on the country you’re physically sitting in while using a VPN. But even then, their laws and restrictions are often opaque.  What’s legal vs. illegal is not always clear.  Some activities, while frowned upon, are still shrouded in grey area.  In this research we fact-checked 196 countries laws and their opinions on VPNs.

VPNs are illegal in: China, Turkey, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Belarus, Oman.

VPNs are some-what illegal in: Iran, North-Korea, Turkmenistan.

P.S.: If you can’t access the links above, VPN is probably illegal (or at least blocked) in your country or region.

Domain names and web hosting research

Web Hosting Geeks published a very extensive research into domain names and web hosting provider options.  It includes the analysis of domain name trends by TLD, as well as over 24,000 hosting companies and how they are doing.

Complete with reviews, and detailed stats about each and every company, I think, this is one of the most complete and in-depth data I’ve seen for a long time.