AdvancedRun 1.0 – Running Programs Along With Customized System Settings

The AdvancedRun is one of the portable and free tools that allows one to run the program along with customized priority, window state, start directory and the various positions. It even consists of various kind of user accounts and the preferred compatibility of the environment settings. The numbers and the available options present in this tool make up for the cluttered interface along with the checkboxes present everywhere. However, you cannot ignore all the things but there are options that one might need, which makes it quite easy for usage.

Now if the application is not able to access any given file or the Registry key, it won’t be because of the tool but due to the security privileges. For example, all you have to do is browse to the “Program to Run” option and choose the “System User” option which is present in the “Run As” box.  Here the Click Run tool which is the major app that you are using has been launched with the SYSTEM privileges. So, you would probably be able to check out what you need.

The window related options can allow the user to launch the program that is often hidden, maximize and even minimize. This is applicable to the normal windows too and even based on the preferred size of X or Y which is the starting position. It becomes easy for the program to launch along with the lower or higher priority and then even helps in improving the given performance or sometimes reducing the impact it can have on the system.

Also, there is the option for setting the process affinity. In addition, the tool helps in launching the programs with customized Windows compatibility and settings. Even it provides the basic ability for running the programs along with the customized environment variables. Here it can be shorter PATH or any kind of dropping available for other variables.

This means that whatever settings you are able to configure, it can be saved and reloaded as and when required. Even it can launch from a simple script or shortcut. Interestingly, the AdvanceRun is not actually advanced but you can easily achieve various kind of similar things either by using the start.exe or the presences of the advanced properties of the shortcut.

Of course, there are various useful and best features, particularly the ones which can help in the running the program as the SYSTEM and give it a balance which is worth a try.

24 Best Travel Blogs and Websites 2016

When we compiled our original 24 Best Travel Blogs and Websites, we thought we were creating an index that would be useful for readers and for ourselves. Little did we know it would become the most popular feature we've ever published.

Four years later, the web has evolved and new talent has emerged. Our 2016 list includes the best new travel voices along with selected favorites from previous editions of this list — we want to applaud those who consistently knock it out of the park. After considering hundreds of sites (the internet: it likes to travel), we're proud to announce the 24 Best Travel Blogs and Websites of 2016.

Deadpool Opening Day Beats X-Men: Days of Future Past Overseas

After much hype and a killer marketing campaign to get fans excited, the Deadpool solo vehicle is finally here. The good news for moviegoers is that director Tim Miller has delivered a product that lives up to the promise (read our review), with the film even earning a Certified Fresh ranking from review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. Subverting the superhero genre, many are impressed with Deadpool‘s sense of humor and fun.

The critical response all but guarantees that the movie will become a box office hit for 20th Century Fox, with some projections suggesting it could set a new opening weekend record for the month of February. As the studio waits for the domestic numbers to come in, they’re sure to enjoy the news that Deadpool is already a hit overseas, outperforming the last installment of the X-Men franchise to boot.

THR is reporting that Deadpool earned $12 million from seven international markets during its debut on Wednesday, February 10. It made the most money in England, pulling $3.4 million in U.K. theaters. That is the fifth-highest opening day for a Marvel title in the country, even though it sports a restrictive 15 rating. Deadpool also scored the second-highest IMAX opening in the territory, behind only the James Bond film Spectre.

Indian Provider Web Werks Offers Customers Ongoing ‘Rapid Action Support’

Indian provider Web Werks has announced that it now offers customers ongoing ‘Rapid Action Support’. The company, which has headquarters in Mumbai, India, was established in 1996. It is recognized as being “one of the leading data center providers in India”. A ‘carrier neutral’ data center provider, Web Werks maintains five Tier III and Tier IV data centers and has a presence in the United States. 

Web Werks’ wide range of hosting services include cloud and VPS hosting, dedicated servers and colocation alongside data center infrastructure services such as backup and storage options, disaster recovery, and migration services. These services are provided to a customer base of around 5,000 individuals and companies. Its Rapid Action Support is a response to the needs of modern businesses.

Web Werks suggests that with businesses operating on a global basis companies need “round the clock” support to avoid downtime and other issues. The company offers a number of fully trained technical engineers who assist customers with solutions for any technical and maintenance issues. 

“We are focused at delivering value oriented services without compromising with the quality,” explained a company spokesperson in a press release. “Our ultimate aim is to achieve customers’ gratification and our rapid action support, available 24x7x365, will surely add to our customers’ delight. We work toward improving our services through persistent innovations.” The spokesperson added “Rapid progress of Telecom, IT and social media sectors in recent years, has ensued continuous rise in demand for reliable data center services in India and worldwide. To meet these rising demands, Web Werks recently launched its tier 4 cloud enable data center with 24x7 rapid action supports”.

Web Werks’ latest news comes on the heels of the company announcing earlier this year that it now hosts all key Indian DNS root servers, and announcing it was collaborating with domain name body ICANN on a new L-Root server node in India at the end of last year.

Basic Features Of Free Web Hosting

Looking for a free web hosting solution is an imperative decision. Try to identify a reliable web host can be a daunting task especially with so many service providers and options available nowadays. Throw in the feature sheets and promises, the task can be that much more intimidating.

But it doesn't have to be. Let's take a look at some of the most common features a good free web hosting provider should offer:

DISK SPACE AND BANDWIDTH

Disk space refers to the amount of storage space assigned to you by the free web hosting provider. This space will be used to store your web site files, including text, images, audio, etc. files you use for your website.

Bandwidth refers to the amount of traffic that is allowed to access and leave your website. Access means every time a visitor types in your website name in their browser. Leave means every time a visitor receives something from your website, whether it be viewing a photo, listening to an audio clip or downloading a file.

For example, if your website has a lot of graphics (ie. photographs) then you will require higher storage and greater bandwidth.

WEBSITE CREATOR AND FTP

If this is your first website and you have limited or no scripting experience, then look for a free web hosting provider that offers a free website creating application where you can create your website simply by choosing a template and adding in your own text and images.

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. It is the protocol for transferring your website files from your computer to your free web hosting server, or vice versa. This allows you to upload your finished website files (including images and other multimedia files) from your computer to your service provider's server. It also allows you to download your files from your web hosting server back to your computer. A good free web hosting provider should offer 24/7 unrestricted FTP access.

EMAIL

Yes, your free web hosting provider should provide you with email services - so that you can setup @yourdomain.com email accounts. In addition to a webmail interface (so you can login and manage your emails using your web browser), the email service should also include POP3 and SMTP access so you can setup and access your @yourdomain.com emails using your mobile devices.

SUPPORT AND UPTIME

You should always choose a free web hosting service with free, reliable telephone and email support.

While no host can offer a 100% guaranteed uptime (think problems out of their control, ie. city power outage), they should provide "just-in-case" measures to limit website and email downtime to a minimal. These measures may include 24/7 server and network monitoring, redundant hardware and network configurations, and onsite backup power supply. While you might not completely understand the technicalities of these, look to see if your free web hosting provider has these listed somewhere on their website. If not, ask them about it.

PRICING

If you're looking for a free web hosting provider, then you should expect to pay absolutely nothing for all the basic features listed above. You shoudn't have to compromise pricing with banner ads. Any free web hosting providers that forces ads on your website is a no-no.

6 predictions for the future of cloud infrastructure

The future of cloud is bright, but in the coming year, cloud performance will become a critical factor. Organizations will be challenged to build a best-fit cloud environment that meets workload requirements and provides optimal performance.

1. For the cloud, network latency will take the spotlight

As my colleague Mike Palladino alluded to in his recent post, having optimal cloud compute and storage specs does not alone ensure the best possible cloud performance. The performance of your network can be equally and sometimes more important, than the quality of your Internet infrastructure.

This year, Internap found that networks only deliver data over the best path 15 percent of the time, which is a huge issue for companies that are hosting their mission-critical applications in the cloud and need to ensure high-speed access. I expect 2015 will be the year when more companies that have invested heavily in Internet infrastructure will take a closer look at how they can improve their network to ensure the best possible performance.

2. Hybrid infrastructure will go beyond cloud-only solutions

The term “hybrid” has traditionally been limited to public and private cloud infrastructure, but in 2015 and beyond, we’ll see “hybrid” take on an expanded definition as companies concerned with delivering the highest possible levels of performance, security, control and cost-efficiency implement broader hybrid infrastructure approaches.

A few years ago, the only people that cared about achieving the highest possible levels of performance might have been high frequency traders or scientists using high-capacity R&E networks, but today performance-sensitive applications are becoming table stakes across industries. From ecommerce to ad tech and mobile analytics companies, the reliability, scalability and performance of their Internet infrastructure is not only critical to the business; it is their business.

For these customers, public or private clouds alone are not optimal for cost-efficiently scaling their applications to deliver a flawless user experience for their end customers on any device, anywhere, any time, which is driving the growth in hybrid infrastructure environments. In 2015, expect more companies to get realistic about virtual cloud’s role as one element of their overall IT infrastructure mix, along with bare-metal and more custom services like managed hosting and colocation, to best fit their specific applications and use cases.

3. Bare-metal adoption will become mainstream for both stable and variable workloads in performance-sensitive industries

Companies in industries that rely on performance-sensitive, fast data applications will increasingly weave bare-metal infrastructure – which can offer the flexibility of virtualized public cloud with the performance of dedicated servers – into their IT infrastructure mix. As customers become more familiar and comfortable with running their stable workloads on bare-metal infrastructure, we also expect to see companies increasingly take advantage of hourly bare-metal configurations to support their performance-sensitive variable workloads.

We were one of the first-to-market with our bare-metal infrastructure solutions back in 2012, and over the last year we’ve seen many other providers move into the bare-metal space as companies seek higher performing, but equally flexible and on-demand alternatives to public cloud. We’ve already started to see widespread adoption of bare-metal emerging in the adtech industry, and we expect to see continued adoption in industries like online gaming, financial services, healthcare and ecommerce in 2015 and beyond.

4. Reality check: public cloud does not always equal virtualization
The NIST definition of cloud computing includes on-demand self-service, rapid elasticity and resource pooling, among other criteria. Although virtualization is nowhere to be found in the definition, there is still a widespread misconception that it is inextricably linked to public cloud services. According to a recent Internap survey of 250 Internet infrastructure decision makers, 66% of respondents cited virtualization as a defining characteristic of a public cloud.

With the rise in popularity of bare-metal infrastructure, which can offer the agility that defines the cloud without using a hypervisor layer or multi-tenant environment, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that virtualization is not necessary for cloud computing. In 2015 and beyond, this traction will continue to drive greater awareness that public clouds can come in various forms – including non-virtualized bare-metal alternatives – and are still evolving to fit the needs of new and more specific applications.

5. OpenStack will gain more public cloud traction

Over the last few years OpenStack-based private clouds have been adopted by some of the world’s largest corporations like PayPal, Time Warner and BMW, and in 2015 we will start seeing more OpenStack-based public cloud deployments.

For public cloud providers, this private-cloud activity we’ve seen over the last few years has helped to build the overall OpenStack ecosystem, and laid the foundation for widespread OpenStack-based public cloud implementations. Each OpenStack-based private cloud that is deployed represents a future hybrid cloud and an enterprise customer that will appreciate the interoperability that OpenStack offers. With expanding geographic footprints, enterprise-class features and the ability to avoid vendor lock-in, these customers will be increasingly attracted to OpenStack-based public clouds in the same way enterprises started warming up to Linux.

6. Cloud-wary organizations adopting cloud infrastructure for the first time will likely experience fewer security issues than they anticipated

In Internap’s 2014 Cloud Services Landscape Report, we found that 40 percent of “cloud wary” organizations (those that have not yet adopted cloud infrastructure) cited security as a concern, whereas only 15 percent of the “cloud wise” (those currently using cloud infrastructure) cited security as a challenge they’ve encountered. While a portion of cloud-wary organizations are from security conscious industries, such as financial services, healthcare and government, these findings suggest that the majority of “cloud wary” organizations may be overestimating security risks. As more companies adopt cloud infrastructure for the first time in 2015, we expect that many will experience fewer security issues than they might have expected prior to adoption.

What is DDoS and why should I care?

41% of companies suffered a DDoS attack in 2014, their websites or systems either disrupted or taken offline completely. One in five were offline for a whole day. Reaction time is a factor in DDoS, so business owners, webmasters and IT managers should understand the risk that DDoS poses to their own business, and have a contingency plan in place.

A denial-of-service (DoS) is an attempt to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its users. For many businesses, that translates as an attempt to overload your website with spam traffic, with the aim of sending it offline. DDoS simply means distributed denial-of-service, or, in other words, many different computers bombarding your site at once in order to be more effective in their goal, and harder to identify and stop.

DDoS on the increase

DDoS attacks are on the increase. In 2012, a survey by analytics company Neustar showed that 22% of UK companies had experienced a disruptive DDoS attack during the year, 37% of which had lasted more than 24 hours. By 2014, Neustar’s survey showed that the proportion of UK companies suffering an attack had risen to 30%, while the figure for North America was a staggering 60%.

In June 2014, research by BT showed that 41% of organisations around the world had been hit by DDoS during the preceding year, with more than three quarters of those (78%) targeted twice or more in the year. One-in-five organisations have had their systems taken down for an entire working day.

DDoS attacks that make the news are usually large scale attacks on large companies. But the numbers above show that organizations of all types and sizes are affected. Neustar’s 2014 research showed the highest rate of increase to be among retail companies, who also have the most revenues at stake. At the time of writing, a quick Google news search shows news of overnight attacks on XBox Live, the City of Ottawa, a DNS company and many, many game servers. The list goes on.

Why do people perform DDoS attacks? Find out in our guide to website security threats.

Cost implications go further than revenues. Neustar’s 2014 research shows that 33% of DDoS attack mitigation involved 6 or more people. The disruption notably affects staff in the IT, customer service, call center and risk management departments.

Be prepared before it happens

The first step in any DDoS plan is to evaluate the potential cost of disruption to the different elements within your IT systems. The impact of a DDoS attack on a corporate blog, for example, will be a lot less than a website that is your main revenue generator, or a system that is a lynchpin in your operations. The higher the impact of a DDoS attack, the more justified time and money invested in protection.

Mitigating the risk of DDoS attacks means understanding your hosting architecture. Once you have evaluated the elements within your IT systems, understand where they reside on your servers. By knowing which server ports relate to business-critical services, you can ask your hosting provider to close down non-critical ports once you know that you are under attack.

Speak to your hosting provider to understand the steps and the delay involved in making this request, as well as the price of any system administration provided.

Now lets consider those critical components, like your website. An overhead of server and network capacity will allow your systems to handle surges in traffic, whether caused by DDoS or spikes in demand for your services, but comes at a price. The distributed and sophisticated nature of DDoS attacks means that firewalls do not provide comprehensive protection – firewalls do not necessarily detect traffic anomalies, only filter out known bad traffic, while the inline nature of Firewalls means they are actually a target of DDoS attacks that seek to saturate their capacity and cause a failure.

Instead, more sophisticated DDoS protection solutions are needed. These may take the form of data center hardware, offered by providers like Cisco, or network level solutions like Incapsula that are more suitable for servers hosted in a third party data center with a hosting provider like iWeb.

Network level solutions like Incapsula are useful because much of the cost incurred is only incurred with your consent at the moment of an attack. These solutions use a variety of traffic anomaly detection, content delivery networks and traffic filtering to both reduce the impact of DDoS and provide the bandwidth capacity to cope with the attack. Since volume attacks can be measured in Mbps (megabits per second), network level solutions like Incapsula are priced according to the level of protection required at a given moment in time, itself determined by the gravity of the attack and the capacity of your network to cope with the traffic surge.

Game Dev: Beast’s Fury – from concept to crowdfunding

Beast’s Fury, a visually stunning 2D fighter by indie game developer Evil Dog Games, hit its crowdfunding goal on Kickstarter in June this year and is scheduled for release in 2015. iWeb will partially host the online multiplayer support for the game, and we caught up with designer Ryhan Stevens, and Marco Arsenault from Evil Dog Games, to talk about about their journey from concept to funding, and their plans to bring Beast’s Fury to gamers next year.

iWeb: Where did the original concept of Beast’s Fury come from? 
BF: I drew inspiration from Beast’s Fury both from old martial arts movies as well as both modern and older fighting games, things like Street Fighter had the most impact on my design choices and Mike Z’s Skull Girls is what set me in motion for making the game happen.

iWeb: What sets Beast’s Fury apart from other 2D fighting games? 
BF: Probably our ambitious desires to incorporate all of the conflict on screen in every possible facet. Our finished designs for the game involve not only using concepts such as Ground Bounces and Wall Bounces as found in most fighting games these days, but also to use dynamic elements such as stages with ceilings to change trajectories of certain attacks. We also have our ‘Fury’ mode, which is a late game comeback mechanic built to make characters stronger in unique ways, but comeback mechanics are nothing new in fighting games. We just hope players find our mechanic in particular exciting. As more work is done and things progress, we hope to reveal these mechanics in fully once they’ve been finished in programming.

iWeb: What did it take to get from the concept to the crowdfunding stage? 
BF: Heartache and Tears. Mostly Tears. Kidding of course. Honestly it was all about meeting with people almost at random, asking them if they wanted to help on the project, and then going at it with everything we have. It’s been an arduous task keeping fans happy while still producing content, but we hope in the next few months, we have a full demonstration of the game ready for people to play with. Lots of hard work and focus and ambition to keep this going.

iWeb: What kinds of skills are needed to realize this type of project? 
BF: Animation, programming, and fundamental understanding of fighting games as a whole. Without these, the game wouldn’t be anything, and we’re very thankful to have talented people working on bringing the games to life.

iWeb: The game is crowdfunded, has the community contributed to the game design too? 
BF: In some ways they have. Little suggestions here and there and people showing their support and design ideas. We even had people very heavily sharing their influences for our design for a character named Matilda. Otherwise the fans have been very happy with the designs we’ve had so far. Granted, anything could change from now til final product, so who knows?

iWeb: In what formats will the finished game be available? 
BF: Do you mean which systems will we be able to play the game on? So far we’re just shooting for a steam release, so people can play it on PC, Mac, and Linux. However we also hope that we can one day get it on a console release as well.

iWeb: What kind of development and hosting infrastructure will you use? 
BF: So far we’re building the game in the game  engine called Unity3D which greatly handles (so far) our need to make the game multiplatform. It’s also a versatile development tool and hopefully it will stand to the test for this ambitious project. As far as hosting goes, what I forsee is that for our online multiplayer support, we’ll use the GGPO library for the fighting netcode and SmartFoxServer for match making, user management, lobbies, etc.  GGPO works in a peer to peer fashion but SmartFoxServer is a service that will be running on our iWeb server.

iWeb: When can we expect the game to be available? 
BF: The Demo we’re certain will be ready by the end of the year 2014, as for the Final Product, that’s to be decided as more development is done.

Introducing iWeb Game Servers

iWeb is proud and excited to support Beast’s Fury with dedicated hosting infrastructure. If you’re a gamer, you too can host on a ‘No Lag’ Cloud or Dedicated iWeb Game Server, both of which offer lightning-fast 100Mbps connections and free bandwidth.

Otherwise follow Beast’s Fury on Facebook for more videos, fan art and development updates. Or head to Evil Dog Games’ website for a bunch of other cool apps and games.

The benefits of centralized storage for servers

Many organizations know the benefits of centralized file storage on shared drives, and more latterly the convenience of cloud storage like Dropbox and Google Drive. But did you know that the benefits of consolidating and managing information centrally also extend to servers? And to the websites and applications they serve? They do. And they are critical in virtualized environments where computing and storage are separated.

Centralized storage is the storage of files, data and databases shared between computing servers over a network. Indeed, it is also known as networked storage. This is different from storing data locally in the same chassis or directly attached in a neighboring server (known as Direct-Attached Storage).

Centralized data becomes useful when two or more servers need access to the same data. This is commonly the case in high-availability systems, where redundancy and replication play a role, and in virtualized environments, where virtual servers are created frequently or automatically as systems scale (and need to access existing data).

The benefits of centralized storage are several-fold. By keeping data in one place, it’s easier to manage both the hardware and the data itself. That means closer control on data protection, version control and security. It means a single, consistent set of data. It means better control of hardware configuration, capacity and performance. And, by focusing your efforts in one place, it means reduced expenditure and risk.

Even though the additional features of some centralized storage solutions – notably redundancy, disk performance and reliability – come at a premium, the centralization of the investment and the improved reliability often means that the lifetime cost is lower.

And by hosting servers and storage in a third party data center, capital requirements, risk and the overhead of managing hardware and networks are further mitigated.

Popular Storage Configurations

Network-Attached Storage (NAS) - A NAS architecture allows you to connect multiple app servers to centralized storage servers with replication and failover. Each app server accesses the same data.

Storage Area Network (SAN) - A Storage Area Network (SAN) provides a redundant array of disks seen as a local volume by the servers attached to it, for high availability and faster disk I/O performance than NAS. SAN’s are common virtualization clusters and for providing centralized access to I/O intensive databases.

High-Availability Cluster – An HA Cluster contains two or more of each service, not just file storage and database servers but also application or web servers. Traffic is distributed by a load balancer that also ensures failover in the event of hardware or application failure.