Announcing SolarWinds Observability SaaS

Today is World Backup Day so why not heed the call and get busy protecting your precious files?

Plus, tomorrow is April 1st, so get ahead of all the pranks, and do it today.

Today we take a look back at the first mass-produced commercial computer, which was called UNIVAC.

The first model was delivered on March 30, 1951, to the U.S. Census Bureau. As a brand name on computers, UNIVAC survived until 1981.

We have collected some stunning numbers describing this important piece of tech-history. Read on to find out more.

For everyone who has a GSM mobile phone, the SIM card has become a way of life, or at least a way of mobile life. That thumbnail-sized plastic card, which houses our mobile identity, is a necessary evil we’ve had to endure for far too long.

Apple pioneered the micro SIM card with the iPad and iPhone, and now it wants to go even smaller.

We, however, join the ranks of people asking for the total abolishment of the SIM card, and here’s why.

The Apache HTTP Server is the most common web server software in the world, by far. According to one recent survey, over 420 million web sites run Apache HTTP. With such amazing numbers it’s obvious that we’re curious to find out more about Apache.

So it was with great gusto that we sat down with the former Vice President of the all-volunteer Apache HTTP Server Project to talk about a wide range of topics. We grilled him on how the team works internally with keeping Apache HTTP Server secure, if they look at market share numbers, and whether or not open source software is more secure than closed source software.

It was quite an eye opening experience in many ways. Read on to find out why.

WorldHostingDays Global in Germany started yesterday and we want to give everyone attending a really cool gift – a 1-year FREE Pingdom Business Account.

Besides that, to celebrate this annual pilgrimage for everyone in the web hosting industry, we also put together a rather snazzy infographic about WHD.

Read on to find out more about WHD as well as how to claim your FREE Pingdom account.

It was three years ago today (March 19, 2009) that Microsoft unleashed Internet Explorer (IE) 8. According to Microsoft, the priorities for IE 8 were security, compatibility, ease of use, web development improvements, as well as adhering to CSS specifications and other web standards.

Three years on, IE 8 is still the second most used web browser version in the world.

Is that impressive or just simply sad? You tell us!

Do you have a big screen TV in your living room? Of course you do! Do you browse the web using that TV? Probably not, but you will sooner or later.

With sales figures for TVs that can connect to the Internet increasing fast, it’s time to start thinking about how your websites will look and work for someone sitting on a couch in front of a 60″ HDTV.

What kind of adjustments to your site’s design and functionality will you have to do? Read on to find out.

Have you ever had a Mac that didn’t want to start up? Perhaps it was stuck on that gray startup screen with a spinning wheel, without completing the process so you could log in and start working.

That’s exactly what happened with one of the Macs in the Pingdom office. It was a MacBook Pro 15-inch that just had that gray screen and spinning wheel forever, not moving on to the next part of the boot-up process, whatever that was.

Here’s what we did to fix it. It may help you too, at some point in the future.

Have you noticed the appification happening all round us? On your smartphone you have apps, whether it runs Android, iOS, Windows Phone, or some other OS. On your computer you have applications, at least for now. You will, however, soon use apps on your computer as well, regardless of whether you use a Mac or a Windows PC. Both Apple and Microsoft are moving full steam ahead on what we call the appification of software.

But with at least one software manufacturer already declaring that its software is “full software, not an app,” will there be a backlash, and what does it all mean for you?

Call it Facebook Addiction Disorder, Facebook Anxiety Disorder, Facebook depression, or Facebook unhappiness, we have all heard of issues of well-being related to people using the social network too much.

And with visitors during January 2012 spending on average 405 minutes on Facebook.com, is there any wonder that a new study suggests that using Facebook spreads unhappiness and a large portion of users on the site feel bad if they can’t log in regularly?

So with Facebook predicted to reach 1 billion users this year, are we putting too much of our lives in Zuckerberg’s creation?

A team of researchers in Australia has managed to create a transistor that is the size of an atom. That’s the smallest transistor ever created. Considering that the single-atom transistor is only 0.1 nanometer in size, the possible applications are mind-boggling.

It will be quite some time before we see the single-atom transistor technology implemented in microprocessors that we use in computers and other devices. But this is such a thrilling development that we wanted to find out how it fits in with how microprocessors have evolved so far.

So here we go, a wild ride from 1971 to today and beyond.

Even the most hardcore Linux fan would admit that their favorite OS has not captured more than a very small market share on personal computers. And that would include us here at Pingdom: all of our engineers and 50% of or our developers are, in fact, running Linux.

Ubuntu has enjoyed great success, and more recently Mint, as well. But Linux desktop OS doesn’t seem to be able to break free and climb above the low single digits in market share.

But that may be changing if the latest numbers are anything to go by.

Did your jaw drop when you first saw the iPhone 4, which was rendered completely in CSS and JavaScript code?

According to the website where you can view the iPhone, it was created with “no images… just 3,395 lines of CSS code and 335 lines of JavaScript code.”

We talked to the creator of this very impressive project, Vasiliy Zubach, to find out more about him, and learn how he actually made all the thousands of line of code work.

Read on to experience the story of the 3,395 lines of CSS3 code.

Who doesn’t like free stuff? We put together a selection of free Linux e-books that you can read, in many cases download, and use as references, or simply to learn something.

The topics range from advanced programming to Java, from GNU to Emacs, from device drivers to the kernel, and much, much more. You don’t have to pay anything to take part of the wealth of knowledge and information available in these e-books.

Read on to check out the 10 free e-books.

For blogs and many other types of sites, getting an interaction going with readers is essential. But it would seem that many believe that installing a third-party comment system on a website, something like Disqus, IntenseDebate, or LiveFyre, drags down the site’s speed considerably.

Instead of spurring on debate, discussion, and interaction, a slower site could discourage users to take part, and users could instead end up leaving the site. But is it really the case that adding these comment systems slow down sites?

We put five comment systems to the test and found out that there’s less difference in speed than you might think.

Perceptions matter, and the perception of Nokia in the news, on the web, and in the minds of many, is that things aren’t going that well. Even in the Pingdom office, we hear “Nokia is doomed,” but do the numbers support this belief?

Looking at the statistics, Symbian leads the mobile operating system race with just over 30% of web browsing traffic. That’s down slightly from late last year, when we noted that Symbian finished 2011 as the top mobile operating system, with almost 34% of the mobile OS market.

What is even more interesting, however, is that Nokia is also ahead when we look at figures for all the mobile handset vendors. In fact, Nokia is way ahead of Apple, and Android lags far behind.

Pingdom is one of the world’s fastest growing uptime and monitoring companies, measured by number of customers. In our ongoing effort to make the web faster and more reliable, we work proactively to improve our operations.

One such improvement is to register and become a LIR or Local Internet Registry, something pretty special. In fact, there are only 469 Local Internet Registries offering service in Sweden, where we at Pingdom operate from.

Let us explain what this means and how it will help us provide an even better service to our customers.

By some measures, more than 7 billion people now inhabit the world, and more than a third of us are on the Internet. But how many are added each day, each week, or each minute? We think we have a pretty good idea.

Read on for some pretty amazing numbers.

Do you remember the game “Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?” We’re going to play a game of “Where in the world is Tux?” As it turns out, the lovable Linux penguin mascot has been to the far corners of the world and back again.

As you will see, Tux has gathered with lots of his friends in Argentina, played with a robot in Brazil, frozen his tail off in Estonia, enjoyed the beaches in Jamaica, visited a castle in Scotland, and much, much more.

So, let’s see, where in the world is Tux?

Do you lie awake at night expecting aliens to invade our planet? Perhaps you have nightmares after watching “Mars attacks!” or think Jell-O is now yuck after seeing “The green slime.”

Chances are, regardless of whether you are anxious about aliens or not, that it’s not something you think about when you buy a new computer or gadget. For example, have you ever thought about whether the warranty of your brand new computer is valid if (when?) the aliens arrive?

If that’s you, you should definitely not expect Taiwanese computer, component, and gadget manufacturer Asus to help.