It can be a bit confusing when you begin looking for a web host. This is because there is a lot web hosting companies nowadays, many offering different prices and services. You also need to choose between paid and free hosting, both of which require different considerations. So what are some of the things that you should be looking out for when choosing a free web host? Below are some helpful tips on what criteria to consider.

• Advertising – Instead of paying a web hosting company a monthly fee, they will insert advertising such as banner ads or pop-up windows on your website. This will pay for the costs of your service and how many of these companies make their money. Be sure to inquire about the sort of advertising that will be used on your website. Also consider if this is something that may affect the overall appeal of your site.
• FTP Access – Some free web hosting companies will not allow you FTP access and will restrict you to working within their web page designs and templates. I would recommend only using a company that allows you FTP access, this will allow you more flexibility for changing or adding web pages or content on your site.
• Allocated Space – How much web space is included in your free package and is it enough for website? The types and numbers of pictures and videos etc. that you need on each page will determine how much space you will need. Some hosts will have a file size limit which will restrict the file type and size that you can upload to your website. Also take into consideration any plans to expand your website ie cloud web services.
• Reliability – How reliable and fast is the service? This can be difficult to determine until you have your site up and running. Try it out and different times of the day and see how it is working. Poor speed and reliability can lose you a lot of visitors.
• Bandwidth – Many free web hosting companies will put a free limit on the number of visitors to a website. This may be done on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Depending on the host, if you reach your free traffic limit your website may be temporarily disabled or you may incur extra charges for additional visitors. If you have a new website your traffic requirements will probably be very low but you will need to determine how much bandwidth you will require in the future.

You should always research the needs of your website and the services of any potential web hosting company. Remember that with free services you have a bit of flexibility and you can experiment with a particular host to see if their services suit your needs without losing out financially.

Undeniably, coffee is a beverage that is enjoyed by millions of people worldwide. If you are one of these individuals, there are a number of apps that you should absolutely have, since they are very useful in making your coffee drinking experience much more fun. In addition to that, some of them can also end up saving you a lot of money, since they have a number of features that you can use to reduce the cost of your coffee. Let’s take a look at these 3 outstanding apps:

Barista

When you love making your own coffee or are thinking of doing so, this is the app to get. This app is designed to help one learn how to use an espresso machine to come up with different kinds of coffee based drinks as a professional would. If you have been drinking coffee for any period of time, you would know that quality coffee is not made by just boiling some coffee beans in water. Things such as the pressure of the water, the amount of water used and the duration of boiling all have to be precisely regulated to ensure that one comes up with the best cup of coffee. This app offers all the resources you need to do this. When you follow the instructions you get from it, you will be able to create all kinds of coffee based drinks with the skill of an experienced barista. The app is available for iPhone and only costs $2.99

Dunkin’ Run

When you work in an environment such as an office, you may find yourself being sent on coffee runs frequently. In such cases, you will have to find a way to get your orders right, so that you do not end up mixing them up. If you buy your coffee from Dunkin Donuts, this is one app that you can use to get rid of this problem. With this app, you can have your colleagues send in their orders from their iPhones, and these are then collated on your phone.

This way, you will have a list of all the different orders arranged in an orderly manner, and this will reduce the chances of making any mistakes. This app is also a lot of fun to use both for the person going for the coffee as well as the rest of the staff. The best thing of all is that it is free! Who doesn’t like free stuff? Not me!

Beanhunter

When you are a true coffee fan, one of the problems that you may face is how to find the nearest coffee shop. This is one of the best apps you can use for this purpose, since it offers many features that you can use to find such a shop. It can be used in any part of the world to locate the closest coffee shop. In addition to that, it has a host of features such as reviews that you can read to figure out whether the different shops are worth visiting or not.

Attached Images:

•  License: Creative Commons image source 
•  License: Creative Commons image source 

Brian King is a technology blogger and keeps his readers updated with latest technology news. He says that all Coffee Beans are picked up by selective picking.

How to secure your Wi-Fi home network

Most people who set up the new wireless home networks want their internet to work as fast as imaginable, but forget the most important factor of security. You won’t probably mind if your friend or neighbor use your home Wi-Fi , but someone who has bad motives in his mind could take advantage of your generosity (to be frank your lack of protection) to achieve access to data stored on your home computer.

Hackers are sitting everywhere in search for a hunt. When a guy leaves his Wi-Fi network open, without any password, hackers can easily use this opportunity and suck up all your data bandwidth. You can only imagine the worse if he tries to use your IP for illegal activities. By using some exploits, he can also get access to your personal data stored on your computer.

How To Secure Your Wi-Fi home network?
Below are some easy things that you can do in order to secure your Wi-Fi home network.

Change Default Admin Username and Password: This is one the major reason why Wi-Fi gets hacked. At the roots of any Wi-Fi network, there is a router. A router can be accessed with a username and password. Most of the time people don’t even change the default username and passwords of their router. This increases the possibility of easily guessing of your password. Some of the default username and password are: admin: admin, user: user, test: test, Admin: password.

Encrypt your network: Encryption technology crypt messages sent over the Wi-Fi networks so that the humans cannot read them easily. The easiest way to protect any type of attack is to encrypt the Wi-Fi network. Most of the Wi-Fi routers support WEP key, WPA key, and WPA2 encryption. Never choose WEP key to protect your network. As it is easily cracked using backtrack or wepcrack. Always use WPA and WPA2 standards to guard your Wi-Fi.

Change the SSID name: A SSID is the tag of a WLAN (wireless local area network). All wireless devices on a WLAN must work under the same SSID in order to connect with each other. The companies normally ship their item with the same SSID set. If someone finds such SSID, he might feel that it as a badly configured network and becomes more inclined to attack it. The solution is to change the default SSID name instantly when configuring wireless security on your network. You will find this setting under the basic wireless settings in your router page.

Enable the MAC Address Filters: Each piece of Wi-Fi gear has a MAC address or unique identifier called the physical address. Routers are able to track the MAC addresses of all devices that are inter-connected if the MAC address filters are enabled.

By simply following these 4 steps you can think of a much more secure Wi-Fi home network.

Denis is a freelance writer that loves to write about tech topics especially about the android operating system.

If Android users weren’t already glued to their phones, they will be now. Game apps are constantly popping up, with more fun and exciting designs and developments to really make your noggin churn. The Android Market is blooming with teasers that will keep you addicted for hours, which can come in really handy when those awkward silences surface at your 10 year reunion (or any other less than thrilling moment). Read on gamers, and discover 5 tantalizing word puzzle games for Android.

1. Bejeweled 2: The original and adored match-three-gems game, Bejeweled, has morphed into a more intense version. There are now three game modes from which to choose: Classic, Action, and Endless. The Classic mode allows you to play in the style users are already familiar with, where you match three or more similar gems to earn points; Action mode ups the ante with a timer; Endless mode is a never ending game of Bejeweled, perfect for a rainy day marathon in bed. Matching four or five gems rewards players with points; four gems of the same color explodes into another gem color and when matched with two other gems of that color, the surrounding gems are blasted and destroyed. Like we said, intense.
2. Amazing Alex: From the creators of Angry Birds comes Amazing Alex, a game filled with increasing complexities and addictive graphics. The players’ job is to interact with objects and determine what the best possible way to complete the level is. This cartoon-inspired game boasts 35 interactive objects and an incredible amount of levels, more than 100, which will keep you occupied for quite awhile.
3. Apparatus: Dive straight into the physics lab with this puzzle game. Apparatus invites players to build a complex machine in order to perform a simple task. In this case, it’s moving one or several marbles towards the desired destination. While this version is free, you can dole out some green to the maker’s enterprise ecommerce software to upgrade to the limited Lite version, where more levels and other benefits await, such as building a space rocket to transfer the marbles. Connecting cables from batteries to motors, bridge building, teeter-totter constructing, rope swinging, and vehicle designing are also a little taste of what the Lite version offers.
4. Unblock Me: In two words, simple and addictive.  The gist of Unblock Me is to make moves in order to get the red block completely out of the board by sliding the other blocks out of its way. Precision is key, as well as concentration. With four difficulty levels, Beginner to Expert, and just about 4,200 puzzles, your brain may be mush after a few hours of playing. Plus, you can either pick the Challenge mode or the Relax mode, depending on just how much of a smarty- pants you’re feeling like.
5. Where’s My Water: In this puzzle game, help Swampy the alligator maintain his clean water supply so he can take a shower. While the player digs pipelines to help Swampy, his fellow alligators try to botch the whole thing by adding algae and other contaminants into the mix, which the player has to keep at bay. Swiping, sloshing, and splashing through increasingly challenging scenarios keeps players interested and focused on helping good old Swampy get his bath. 

Kristy Kravitsky is a 2011 college graduate with a degree in English.

Working remotely only works if you have an internet connection. Unfortunately not everywhere in the world is obsessed with the quality and speed of the internet connection like North America is, which can lead to a lot of frustration when you try to get online as you travel.

It’s fair to say that I’ve learnt from my mistakes. In the past I simply turned up to a place and presumed I would be able to find somewhere to get online; a cafe, an internet cafe, an open network – something. Nowadays I look out for the following options:

McDonalds

Love or hate the food, McDonalds tends to have free internet in most of its restaurants around the world. The connection speed is usually quite good and if you don’t want to have a burger you can always just have a coffee instead.

Check out where the nearest McDonalds is using the store locator on their website. Of course other chains like Starbucks and Burger King tend to have wifi access as well, it’s just that McDonalds tends to be the most prevalent of all these chains.

Hotels/Accommodation with Wifi

If I’m staying in a hotel, it has to have free wifi. Some hotel booking sites like Expedia or hostels.com (for cheaper accommodation) allow you to narrow down your search to hotels that only have free wifi, otherwise I tend to search for the “place name + free wifi”, both in English and the native language e.g. Paris hotel + wifi gratuit.

As a sidenote: working in hotels while comfortable can take its toll on you, as you tend to live, relax and work in the same room. These days I tend to either look for self-catering accommodation or house/petsits with free wifi, or I stay somewhere and then go to the nearest hotel with wifi and order a coffee and work from the lobby.

Wifi Apps

There are an increasing number of wifi hotspot apps and websites out there. One of the largest of these is from Skype which shows you hotspots where you can use your Skype credit against internet time.

3G/4G Dongles

If you’re planning on sticking around, then it might be wise to invest in a 3G dongle, especially if you’re going to rely on the internet for your work. Some dongles require a contract, some are available on PAYG; it all depends on what your working situation is like and how long you’re planning on staying around for.

If you have an iPhone it’s also possible to tether your internet connection. Essentially this means using your iPhone as a dongle or personal Wifi hotspot. Some internet providers don’t allow this so be sure to check what the network’s terms and conditions are before signing up to anything. Prepaid with Data is a great Wiki with a lot of valuable information on Dongles and PAYG data-ready sim cards.

Cafes

Some cafes abroad have wifi, but not all choose to advertise that fact. The easiest thing to do is to go around with a smartphone and check which networks are available. While in the US and Canada it’s easy enough to find an open cafe network, in the rest of the world most networks tend to be locked. You either have to ask for the Wifi key or try and guess it. Tip: most tend to use the cafe phone number.

Government Buildings

In some countries, the town hall and the library will have free wifi. Unfortunately not every country does so don’t rely on this, but it’s worth wandering past these places with a smartphone to see what networks are about.

Open Networks

Finding these isn’t always easy and these days most companies tend to install routers with passwords anyway. That said, it is often possible to find hidden networks that are unlockled using tools like Inssider. 

James is currently living and working in France doing the whole working remotely thing. Next stop: Spain.