During the last month, CDN77.com, has upgraded its servers significantly. Let’s have a quick look at the results.

Technology

The nature of delivering web content requires the servers to be both fast in responding to requests and to be able to cover huge bandwidth peaks. That is the reason why all the CDN77 infrastructure relies on fast SSD disks only and links to backbone network via two 10 Gbps ports for each of almost 30 nodes.

Setting up

The process of setting things up was surprisingly easy. Enter your domain name + the subdomain name that will be used to serve the cached content and you are ready to go. Since CDN77.com uses so called pull cache, you don’t have to upload anything. Servers will reach to your domain themselves.

During the process we learned that there is something called “origin” this is your server that hosts the website data for let’s say http://example.com. Then you create a subdomain, let’s say cdn.example.com and point its DNS entries to the CDN77 IP address. This means whoever will ask for let’s say cdn.example.com/image.jpg will be pointed to CDN77 “edge server” (the one closest to the visitor) and the edge server will automatically reach to http://example.com for the image file image.jpg. The visitor does not see that the image was loaded from a different location, but should see a difference in loading time.

Does it work?

We tested the service with few experimental microsites HTML page with text, images, CSS and JavaScript files, just like any other webpage, and measured the loading times via developer extensions in browsers.

Without the CDN set up, we have waited 380 ms for the page to load in average, mostly because the images took long to download and for few CSS files, the server took time to even start sending the data. The response time was quite stable and varied from 270 to 420 ms. Server was not under load.

With the CDN set up, for the first request, we got 400 ms response time and were surprised. Only after then we realized it is the pull cache system for the first request, the data were not cached yet and the CDN server needed to ask our origin server for all the files. Then, right for the second try, the page was loaded in 70 ms! Once cached, the times varied from 55 to 180 ms and averaged around 130 ms.

A great surprise came when testing from a remote location. We asked a friend in Asia to load the test page and without a CDN, his loading times average exceeded 1200 ms! That’s because his request needed to cross many many nodes on its way to our datacenter in North America. With CDN77, our friend measured similar times as we did with CDN set up. That was because CDN77’s nodes are spread all around the world and our friend’s request did not have to travel to North America, it was served from an Asian CDN edge server.

Summary

We have seen stable 60% drop in loading times for the whole web page. The difference got more significant when more files were linked, bigger images added or visitors from other parts of the world were asked to load the page. It is also safe to assume that heavy load on the server would show even bigger gap between the power of our server and the power of a CDN network.

Using some sort of content delivery mechanism seems to be essential today for almost any website, big or small.

The post Content Delivery Networks: CDN77.com review appeared first on ENFEW.

What is Monosnap?

Monosnap is a very simple to use and easy to install free screen capturing tool for multiple platforms. They have versions for Mac, Windows, iPad and even Chrome browser. The print screens you see in this post are created by Monosnap version for Mac OSX.

 How to start?

Starting is easy. You just download version of Monosnap for your platform, install it and you are ready to go. Mac version of Monosnap installs quick icon on you top bar, you can always click it and select to capture full screen, portion of the screen or record the video (yes, this tool records a screen capture videos as well).

What else is good about it?

All bunch of things we like at Monosnap – its easy to use, doesn’t cost you anything to download, can record screen sharing videos and and even make selfies!

But another additional functionality Monosnap app provides – it allows you to upload and share the print screens on cloud servers. This way you can make a print screen and instantly share it with someone whom you want to send it to.

Application supports FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3 storages as well as popular tools like Dropbox, Box.com Yandex.disk. So you can choose how do you want to share you monosnaps. Really good work by the team who made this app!

Example?

Yes, let me share you example monosnap I have created in less then 2 minutes. Its about how we write posts at Enfew.com blog

The post Review: Make screenshots easy and free. Monosnap appeared first on ENFEW.

What is DiskDrill

Like it or not, sometimes we have to recover files. Because we have deleted them and removed from trash, because we removed them from memory card, USB flash etc.

And in most cases we need to recover them quick. DiskDrill for Mac does exactly that. It allows for fast recovery of data from your local drives, external hard drives, USB storage and even Amazon Kindle devices. It scans the disc, finds the files and lets you recover them.

How to Start

Starting is easy. You will have to download the app from DiskDrill site, install it on your Mac and you can start scanning. You can scan partitions as well as full disks. The scanning view looks like this if you are running the latest version of the app (2.3.3 in the time of writing).

Its actually simple as this. The main idea DiskDrill team are proposing – recovering files should be simple. You will not see any disc scanning algorithms or functions displayed in this app. All of it runs under the hood, leaving you with list of files to go through and find what you want to recover.

Useful bits

There are couple of other useful bit this app provides. You can choose which file types it searches for. App supports great number of file types by default but you can disable them if you know what you are looking for

Another useful bit is the actual DiskDrill tutorials and how to’s for different recovery scenarios which you can find at the bottom of their web page. How to recover memory card in Mac OS for example.

Overall, nice and simple to use product. Has both, free and PRO versions. Let us know about your experiences while using it!

The post Review: Recovering Mac OSX files with DiskDrill appeared first on ENFEW.

What is Icons8?

Its a web site with many free PNG icons for Windows8, Android, iOS and Mac OSX applications. You can download PNG files and start using them right away at no cost. If you want to download vector formats like SVG, AI or EPS you will have to buy the icon packages.

How to start?

Well there is not much to it, really. Just download the icon packs and start importing them into your application projects. PNG file format is supported by XCode and many other development tools and IDE’s.

What else is good about it?

We have created several posts here on Enfew about free icons available for your mobile application projects.

We think Icons8 folks did very good job in creating these icon sets and they are constantly working on keeping them up to day to reflects new trends in mobile application design and development space. Try the icons yourself and let us know if they fit your needs!

Something we have missed? Leave your feedback in comments.

The post Review: 850 free Android icons for your mobile apps appeared first on ENFEW.

That being said, here’s the list of FREE video production tools for your startup.

Powtoon

If you like animated video explainer, this freemium online tool is one of the best go-to for animated explainers. The platform is very easy to use which you can learn in less than an hour. You can also create an animated video explainer for your company in just 30 minutes. The beauty of Powtoon is that it allows you to be extra creative even without formal training as an animator or as an illustrator. Everything is a template and you just have to drag and drop the elements in your presentation. We can say that Powtoon is an upgraded version of ordinary slide presentations. The platform offers a paid account and a freemium account. You can export all the videos you created on Youtube or even download it to your computer. Premium account offers a better quality of video, longer videos, and does not have any Powtoon logo in the corner of the video. The freemium account does have a Powtoon logo in the corner, maximum of two minutes video, and has low quality resolution but it doesn’t seem awful at all. In fact, it still looks professional. Paying for the premium account would be really worth it since you can save quite a deal compared to the regular outsourced animated video production which should cost you at least $1000K

Magisto

Magisto is an online video editing tool wherein you can mash-up, improve, and style your videos. You can even edit your videos through your tablet or smart phones. They have apps both for android and iOS system. It’s easy to use and has a very user friendly website. If you’re aiming of an indie type of video theme, you can opt to use this tool. You can produce a more “down-to-earth” feel for your video.

iMovie

Most startups use Mac as their power tool for their projects. One thing that has been undervalued is the use of iMovie for video marketing campaign. Believe it or not but, this free software is being used by pro film makers. All you need is a decent HD camera.

Animoto

This toll has been around since 2005 and has been featured by leading media outlets. Like Magisto, you can also mix and match your video clips and your pictures for the presentation. They have free and paid account.

Youtube Editor

Of course, we cannot miss Youtube. Google has a very fascinating way to amaze us. Youtube Editor is a very user intuitive online tool that you can compare to iMovie. For starters, you might find this a little difficult to master but you’ll get used to it.

Vine

Video marketing doesn’t have to be so fancy. Sometimes, all it needs is ingenuity to deliver the message to your target audience. Vine is a very potent tool that can offer so much for your video marketing. Aside from the fact that it’s a social platform, vine videos are very easy to produce.

Lightworks

If you have the focus to use highly sophisticated video editing tools, then Lightworks is for you. This has a lot of usable feature that can improve your video quality. This tool has also been used by the pro of the video editing and film industry. It can be downloaded for free and there is also a paid version.

Windows Video Maker

We cannot ignore WVM which has been continuously evolving since first release in 2000. We can say that most of the online tools were “patterned” after the WVM. Though the feature of this tool is still quite limited, it can help you with your simple video editing task.

Freemake Movie Maker

This is a popular tool for video conversion and editing. It can help you cut unwanted video parts, merge several clips into one, rotate video, change or add audio track to your movie and much more. Plus, Freemake can combine photos into a slideshow with music. All these features are free, an upgrade will be needed for unbranded videos.

Screecast-o-matic

You can use this tool if you’re just demonstrating instructions to your audience. This is widely used by online marketers in promoting their digital goods. In using this tool, you have to be organized and have “preset” windows for your demonstration. Screencast-o-matic has both free and paid account.  The limit for free account is 15 minutes per recording.

Prezi

This is another fresh breath in presenting ideas online. Prezi allows you to present your idea in a logical, creative, and clear flow of communication. You can customize your presentation, collaborate with your teammates, and export it from their platform (paid feature). The transition is seamless and not to mention, entertaining as well. You have to try it yourself to discover the magic of this tool.As a startup company, you have to be prudent and wise with all your decision. Using free online tools does not devalue your product or service. It only makes you resourceful and more creative. Some of these tools have been used by many startups and have taken fresh and ingenious way to present their product through these free tools.

David Jenyns is a startup founder of
Melbourne Video Production which offer high quality web videos for various brands in Australia. Find out more about David on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 10 FREE (and Cost-Effective) Video Production Tools appeared first on ENFEW.

What is Folx

Folx is a versatile Internet download manager solving the problem of convenient downloading of multiple files and managing those downloads on your computer so that you can always easily organize and find any of them. It was just recently updated to version 3.0 with lots of new options and revamped interface.

What is new in Folx 3.0

As just said, Folx 3.0 has even greater interface than before, and it is simple and clear for everyone.
Folx 3.0 offers you various ways of adding files to it for downloading:

# Simply copying the download link into Folx;

# Adding the download in a download window of Folx with lots of advanced options: splitting download in threads, choosing when to start the download, assigning the download with tags according to its content, making some comments;

# Intercepting download links directly in your web browser. You can choose what file types to intercept, and what not to intercept.

Also new version of Folx offers handy file manager for easy browsing through completed downloads.

What hasn’t changed is the quality of Folx and its unique tagging system. When downloading a file you can assign it with one or many tags characterizing it the best. You can sort downloaded files by tags in Folx and you can always find those on your Mac even after time goes by just by remembering any of the tags you have assigned.

Choose your Folx

There are two editions of Folx: Free and PRO.

Free Folx offers all possible options for convenient management and sorting of the downloaded content, including smart tagging, splitting downloads in 2 threads, resuming interrupted downloads, and so on.

Folx PRO gives additional possibilities: splitting downloads in up to 10 threads for faster downloading; smart speed adjustment in either manual or automatic modes; downloads scheduler; automatic adding of downloaded files into iTunes playlists. If you ever decide to upgrade from free version to Pro use the ENFDSC code to get 20% discount.

We hope you will enjoy Folx downloader!

The post Review: Manage Multiple Downloads with Folx appeared first on ENFEW.

What is Magento SEO extension?

Its All-in-One Magento SEO extension for managing most important search engine optimization settings for your Magento based ecommerce store. It allows to edit robots.txt rules file from within administration panel, decide which url’s will be indexed / not indexed by search engines, insert pagination to page headers, create meta description templates for specific product categories, generate page titles for paginated content and many other important SEO tweaks which cannot be done on Magento projects by default.

How to start?

This extension is installable through Magento admin interface but if you want to try it without installing first, this link will bring you to demo frontend and the following link will bring you to admin area of demo web site. In both cases login details are these: login name – seo_demo and password – password123
You can test full functionality this plugin provides for Magento CMS system.

What else is good about it?

Folks who developed Magento SEO extension have prepared informative video explaining the main functionality of this plugin, how to start and how to achieve the best configuration results after installing it. We hope that from now on you will keep your ecommerce stores well SEO optimized!

The post Review: Magento SEO Extension appeared first on ENFEW.

What is Trello?

Trello is a project management and collaboration tool that organizes your projects and ideas into boards.
Its as simple as having the board for each project with the lists and cards on them.
With minimalistic and intuitive drag & drop interface you can move cards from one list to another as your project progresses. There can be as many or as few lists as you decide.
Being collaboration a tool Trello allows you to add people to the project by simply finding them through the search field.
You can assign cards to specific people, add comments, to do lists and attach files.
Trello supports archiving, and sharing via shortened url’s.
And it is free online product.

How to start?

Sign up process is quite fast and smooth. You can create account by specifying name, email and password (email confirmation process is required) or simply use your Google credentials to log in. Once logged in with new account you will see an empty board list and your new project board is just a click away (click New Board link below your profile photo).

What else is good about it?

We ourselves use Trello for many projects. All the content calendar and any technical improvements needed for Enfew.com are currently being maintained via Trello. We just like simplicity and collaboration options this tool has. Trello now has mobile applications for iOS (iPhones and iPads) and Android powered phones.
And yes, being free it reduces costs for our team as well.
You might also find these stories on how other people are using Trello for their projects useful. There are now good few of them in the Internets. Using Trello for Scrum, Trello for project management, Optimising and prioritizing with Trello

The post Review: Simplify and get your projects together again with Trello appeared first on ENFEW.