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IPGP Visitor Origin plugin for WordPress

Administrator — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 11:45:11 +0000

As you may already know, we are doing our best to support the Geolocation API . Despite we are not very communicative, we are working hard to ensure that everything goes well.

In our free time, we are working at nice stuff. Past days we were working at a wordpress plugin that will let users to see details about the visitors inside their wordpress administration panel. The data shown include the country, city, state, isp, organization and visitor referer.

I hope you will enjoy it. You can freely download it from wordpress plugin directory: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ipgp-visitors-origin/

IPGP Geolocation API

Administrator — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 16:34:01 +0000

3 years ago we launched our IP Address Geolocation API. During this time we provided more than 10 billion results. We have constantly upgraded the service to provide better and more accurate details.

Today, using our API you can programatically get the following details about any IP Address:

Country
State
City
Internet Service Provider
Organization
Latitude
Longitude
Link to country flag

Our API is very easy to use. The information is provided in XML format. The URL for accessing the API is: http://www.ipgp.net/api/xml/IP_ADDRESS/API_KEY .

Here is an example of how results are returned:

123.123.123.123
CN
China
http://www.ipgp.net/flags/cn.png
Beijing
Beijing
China Unicom Beijing Province Network
China Unicom Beijing province network
39.9289
116.3883

If you want to try IP Address Geolocation API, request your API key.

Store and Backup Your Data in the Cloud

Administrator — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 20:32:42 +0000

Your data is very important. Not the program files that you can download whenever you want, but your important data: pictures with your kids and family, movie clips, important documents from your work. You may think that your data is unsafe on the Internet, that someone can steals your data or you can lose it, but let me ask you something: Is your data safe on your computer ?

When you don’t pay enough attention, someone can steal your laptop or access your computer much easier than he can hack a website where people are working dedicated to protect that data. If you let your computer open at work someone can steal all your data in 15 minutes or less, without effort.

Data stored on cloud is safer than stored anywhere else, more, you can access it from anywhere and don’t have to worry to sync your music files with your home and work computer, tablet or phone.

There are many companies that offer you cloud storage for your data. To make sure you choose the right one you may want to read some cloud backup review of companies that offer cloud storage. Among the features that you might want to look when you buy a cloud storage are: Speed, Uptime, ease of use, technical support, customer care, reliability and money. I intentionally left the money as last criteria because when you talk about your data, the money are the least you want to think about. I don’t want to ask you how your data is worth for you. You can rent a cloud data storage for as low as 4$/month. Is your data worth more than this ?

To make sure you select the best cloud storage provider you can read some reviews on dedicated websites. On Top 10 cloud storage you can see which are the top 10 companies that offer cloud storage, top 10 companies that offer online backup solutions and top 10 companies that offer cloud servers.

When dealing with private data, the security is very important for all. These companies are paying money to ensure that your data and your connection is protected, so no one can steal it.

I think it is time to move from Windows Xp

Administrator — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 20:45:45 +0000

I liked windows XP, it was a good version of Windows. The problems at the start of the XP was terrifying, but with service pack 2 most of the problems were solved. Despite i like windows xp, let’s face it, it is not getting any younger. Windows XP is losing popularity.

According to a poll i run on my site, 36% of my readers use Windows 7, and only 26% are using XP. The results of the poll may be not representative for the whole world, but they say something: Windows 7 is more popular right now. What happens ? The advantage that everything works on XP will go away. Software and driver developers will start to support less and less the “old” version of Windows and we will start to have problems.

The support for windows XP will end in 2014, but let’s be honest, Microsoft is focusing all the powers to the new operating system, not to the old one, so not much to be done for XP. The support for Windows 98 ended in 2006, but i stopped using it in 2002.

Let’s go deeper into stats. My Google analytics account says that 49% of my users are using Windows 7 or Windows vista, while 48% of them are using Windows XP. These stats are not so bad for windows XP. Some kind of stats may be encouraging for anyone, but as i said before these stats will never improve for windows xp. No new adepts, no new fans. At the beginning of this year Windows XP was at 70% percent. A really huge drop.

Conclusion: Maybe the support from Microsoft from XP stops in 2014, but the support from users already started to drop.

Is Moving from Windows XP to Windows 7 worth it ?

Administrator — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:35:09 +0000

This is a very long debate among Windows users: It is time to move to Windows 7 or not ? Before getting into the debate let’s take a quick preview over the main advantages of sticking with Windows XP and moving to Windows 7.

Arguments for Windows XP

Windows XP is faster.

The main arguments for the ones that don’t want to move to Windows 7 is that they think they have a low resource computer that will be unable to handle Windows 7. This is partially true, Windows 7 is heavier than Windows XP, but that don’t mean your computer will just crash when you try to install. It is also true that your computer will be slower with seven, but not the operating system is the cause. For example if you have 1GB of memory you will find out that your favourite Mozilla Firefox browser with 10 open tabs use most of your memory, while your operating system use only 20% or so. I have some friends with 1GB computers that are using Windows 7, they often complain about the lack of memory that causes the computer to run slow sometimes but it is probably because the browser with a lot of open tabs. If you have less than 1GB you should not try using windows 7.

Windows 7 can’t run all programs that i use.

If you are concerned about some big name software that it will not be available on Windows 7 you don’t have to worry. They already have versions for Windows 7. If you concern about light software that you are afraid that the developer stopped working on it a long time ago also don’t worry, they will surely work. Basically the software for Windows XP and Windows 7 is not that different. The only difference is when you use the version made for Windows 7 you can get more features. There is a bigger difference between W7 on 32 bit and W7 on 64 bit. So my recommendation, if you switch, use the 32 bit version, even if your computer works on 64.

The battery issue

There is a well known issue about the battery problem in Windows 7. If you run a laptop and you mind if you will have to change your battery after 1 year of use, then you should stay away from Windows 7, at least until they fix the bugs that cause the batteries to die very soon. I have a lot of friends with Windows 7 or Vista that are complaining that after 1 year of use their batteries are almost dead.

Windows 7 arguments.

Better visual enhancements

This can be a good argument especially for kids, or girls. It is a known fact that some persons like the animations even if they add few seconds to every action that you take. From my point of view, they are waste of time and they are annoying, i turn them off whenever i have the occasion, but i can’t ignore the fact that a lot of people like it. If you are a gamer that you like to have a dark-blue background image with a lot of things in it, and you think that the screen-saver with the highest animation is the right for you then wait no more and switch, you will find a lot of new visual enhancements that you will like a lot.

More secure

There are tons of malwares build trying to take advantage of Windows XP vulnerabilities, but with a good antivirus and firewall you can fix this once and for all. Is Windows 7 safer ? It is true that windows 7 has less known vulnerabilities, but this is probably because the malware creators didn’t bothered so much to find them. It is also true that Windows 7 have by default some anti-virus security, but they can have vulnerabilities too. While they didn’t improved the file permission system at all, i can’t say that you can be safer in Windows 7 so you will need an anti-virus too.

Want to be up-to-date

Being up-to-date is good. You should be aware that sooner or later the Windows XP will be only history, and if you anyway have to move then why not doing it sooner than later ? But, before you jump in and go to the first store to buy Windows 7, let me remind you that there are other alternatives too. Ask one of your tech friends to install linux on your computer and try it for few days. You will not be able to use it as you use Windows, but you should at least get used to it and the way Linux works. Why ? You already know the hype in the phone and tablet markets. More and more hardware developers switching to tablets, and the phones are getting more and more popular. There is a very high change that your operating system from the tablet that you’ll buy to be based on Linux. I think Linux is the future. What linux provides is a good platform to build on, and this is why no one want to create their own from scratch, they take Linux and build on it. It is time saving and also more secure as we know that the security in Linux is top.

Conclusions

The decision is up to you, the fact is that Windows XP is getting no younger and Windows 7 is getting no faster, but sooner or later you have to move on.

Happy Birthday Ipgp.

Administrator — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 14:56:07 +0000

Exactly 4 years ago, on 7 July 2006 Ipgp.net was created. I am very proud to see that it is still popular, and the signs that it is a grown-up website are so obvious.

When it started there was only an ip lookup form. The loading time was about 30 seconds/query due to a heavy database and the results were inaccurate.

Now, the website responds very fast, accurate results, map included. Now we have this blog too, an API for developers, simple widgets.

I will drink a beer for Ipgp and i hope it will see significant improvements year by year.

What operating system do you use on you PC or Laptop ?

Administrator — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 14:15:35 +0000

Today i’m starting a new poll on Ipgp.net . This will be about operating systems. If you care about your security, the operating system can be decisive. If you have a very popular operating system you expect to see a wider range of viruses created for you. If the operating system is not popular then probably virus creators don’t waste their time to create programs to exploit the vulnerabilities.

Few years ago we had a lot of security problems with windows XP, caused by the weak security measures from the operating system. That was bad and happened at about 2-3 years from the launch.

Now, a lot of people say that Windows 7 is very secure, but it is only 1 year from release so we can expect everything. In my opinion i don’t see too many improvements on Windows 7 over XP, but i know that they got 3rd party software into the system to make it more secure. Microsoft brought some moderately popular anti-virus and security systems and integrated in windows 7.

Will they succed ? We will see this in short time.

What about linux, it is very secure ? Well, linux has an advanced security system that is harder to penetrate, but Linux have bugs and issues too, but it is not so popular and the exploits are not so well known. Beside this linux is very modularized, and if a person can get backdoor access trough a software weakness, he is restricted so some areas of the operating system, so he can’t do severely damages or to take the control over your computer like they can do in Windows XP.

So, i invite you to vote on the poll, let’s see how popular is Windows 7 after 1 year from his official birth.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

More than 50% of Ipgp users had problems with viruses in the last year

Administrator — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 11:31:16 +0000

According to a poll that run on Ipgp.net for over 3 months more than 50% of Ipgp.net users had problems with viruses in the last year. This, taking into account that 17% don’t know that a virus is, that may led us think that they wasn’t aware that they had viruses.

A good thing is 25% of our users never experienced problems with viruses. I hope it was not an answer based on a high self-confidence, or they may had viruses they weren’t aware of. I remember times when i first got to computers, the era before windows. I user MS-DOS + Norton Commander. At that time I was not aware about viruses and what they do and there is a chance that i had some of them but i never noticed. After i switched to windows i experienced some viruses problems in Windows 98 and Windows XP. At that time the Anti-virus term was not so popular.

These days, if you are a first time computer user, someone will tell you that you have to use an anti-virus. In this way there is a 95% chance that you won’t get a virus, although there are so many ways that you can get infected.

If you have any security or virus issue please feel free to contact me using my contact form here . I will be glad to help you to get answers for your questions or to fix any issue you have with your computer.

How to test your PC performance

Administrator — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 17:01:08 +0000

You got a new computer, or you want to buy a new computer. This means that you are interested in testing your old computer and it’s performance to know if you need to move one. You have to test the performance of the new computer.

What to do ? Well, depends on what you want to test. If you are interested in a single aspect you can open 20 programs and see how fast opens them all.

Well, that is just basic test and you can’t take any conclusion. There are many softwares that can test your computer components and compare them with new ones.

The proccess is called benchmark and you can find a list with benchmark software here. VDDFEFJVA4E9

Microsoft and Apple have merged

Administrator — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 12:07:18 +0000

In order to stop the Google domination Microsoft and Apple comes to an agreement. Whatis the proglem with Google? Google started to get into everything: internet, operating systems, phones, everywhere.

It is not enough that they lead the internet, they really want to get both Microsoft and Apple out of business.

To prevent this, Microsoft and Apple comes to an agreement. The companies will fight togheter to stop Google.

Apple announced that they will stop building operating systems and Microsoft won’t buid hardware. The future iphones and MAC computers will use Windows operating systems. A new version will be released in the next years that will implement elements from the current Mac operating system.

The iPad and iPhone will use the Windows opreating system.