Internet

Naming a baby 30 years ago was much easier. Parents just needed to pick a name they liked, say Lawrence or Michael, add the surname, and that was it.

Enter the Internet, and everything changes. Now you need to think twice before naming your kid, else he will have a lot of trouble on his digital interactions. Below we cover 5 new considerations parents must make when naming a baby these days.

1. Is NameSurname.com Still Available?

In the future it is very likely that every person will need to have an online presence, and having the namesurname.com domain is the best way to go. How would you feel if your child needed to build her website on namesurname.biz or namesurname.info? Pretty bad I bet.

2. Is @NameSurname Still Available on Twitter?

Another cornerstone of your online presence will be your Twitter account. Make sure to secure @namesurname for your kid, else he will need to use some crap id like @marksmith1253 or @TheRealMarkSmith.

3. Will the name trigger email spam filters?

Email will probably remain the digital communication channel of choice. As such, it is essential to make sure that the name or surname of your kid will not trigger spam filters. Name your son Mark Cumming and no one will ever get his messages….

4. Will it be easy to rank in Google’s first position for “name surname”?

Evaluate whether or not it will be easy to get your kid’s website ranked in the first position of Google for the “name surname” search query. Virtually everyone will use a search engine to find information in the future, and you don’t want people who are searching for your kid (i.e. to make a job offer) ending in the website of some footbal player or rock star.

5. Will the name of your child need disambiguation in Wikipedia?

As a parent, you certainly hope that your child will be famous one day right? If that is the case, make sure that when people search for him or her on Wikipedia they will not need to go through the disambiguation page. It is really annoying….

Bonus: Is NameSurname still available as a vanity URL on Facebook?

Personally I think that Facebook is overrated, but people seem to be using it. So it would be worth to check if the vanity URL with the name and surname of your child is still available.

Obviously I used a satirical approach while writing this article, but some of these points are becoming more serious that what you might think. Feel free to leave a comment below with your take on the issue.

If you have a website, you probably know how tough it is to find an affordable and reliable hosting plan. If you don’t have a website but are planning to, well, be warned.

One thing that can help in this decision is a web host rating website. It will allow you to compare different hosting plans side by side, including the features and prices offered by each. Good comparison sites will also have independent reviews written by the users, and this feedback can be very useful when choosing between a handful of companies that seem to offer similar plans.

Finally, here are some quick tips that might help you in the research process:

1. Give preference to Linux based hosting plans, as they are more reliable and have more features.
2. Don’t go with the cheapest plans. You will always get what you pay for.
3. File a customer support ticket to test how fast they will answer it. Responsive customer support is a must.
4. Don’t get seduced by huge disk space or bandwidth offers. It is very likely that your new site won’t consume even 10% of that.

Recently I was browsing through broadband penetration reports and I found some interesting data. First of all, for the record, there are around 1,6 billion Internet users worldwide. That is about 25% of the world population.

Now that number obviously includes dial-up connections and even people who don’t have an Internet connection at home and use the Internet at work or on Internet cafes.

So have many broadband connections do we have? According to Point Topic, a research firm, by June of 2009 there were 444 million broadband subscribers around the world. If you want to get details about prices and bandwidth, however, you need to check local websites. One that we found useful is http://www.broadbandexpert.com.au/, which is dedicated to the Australian broadband market. If you visit the page with broadband plans you will find 44 offers compared. We did some calculations and found that in Australia the average monthly price for a broadband service is $63, and the average bandwidth speed is 16 Megabits per second. Not bad huh?

Again according to Point Topic, the 10 countries with the highest broadband penetration are:

1. Monaco
2. Luxembourg
3. Iceland
4. Denmark
5. Switzerland
6. Norway
7. Australia
8. Netherlands
9. Malta
10. Sweden

As you can see most of them are small countries, but Norway, Australia, Netherlands and Sweden perform well despite their larger size.

Finally, it is also interesting to see the rise of wireless Internet connections. Analyzing the numbers on the BroadbandExpert portal we can see that the average wireless broadband service in Australia costs around $30 and provides a speed of 3 Megabits.

What about in your country? How much do you need to pay for a broadband connection, and what kind of speed do you get in return?

If you are looking for a job or at least about to be part of the workforce in the near future, you might as well start cleaning up your online activities right now before its too late as a recent report by CareerBuilder point out that more employers are doing their background check on social networking sites. [Read more…] about Job-Seekers Beware, Employers Use Social Networks for Background Check

We got to admit that the iPhone is possibly one of the most useful and used gadget that came our way in this modern times. Practically anything can be done through the iPhone and its many apps. But do you trust the iPhone’s online system enough to use it for sending bank checks? Apparently, one U.S. Bank, USAA wants you to trust the iPhone to do this task. [Read more…] about Do You Trust the iPhone Enough to Use it for Sending Bank Checks?