Wednesday, September 25, 2013

New Web Developement Tool

SolTerra Communications is excited to release a new website tool for web developers and IT professionals. Web developers often discover that their clients know very little about the important Domain Name System (DNS) zone files and registration information pertaining to their existing domains and websites. Domain owners often times don't know who officially owns their domain, what company the domain is registered through, and what the domain's zone file looks like. SolTerra Communications has developed domain-report.info to put this important information all in one spot. Enter your domain into domain-report.info and this report will give you its best estimate on what the current domain zone file looks like, a complete WHOIS report that includes the name of the official owner, and what company  registered the domain. All of this is combined with a world-wide DNS propagation checker to see if the recent edits you've made to your zone file are appearing correctly for end users of your website. Currently there are over 10 locations around the globe, from Chicago, to Singapore, to South Africa, that all relay where they are finding your website and email servers.


"I originally developed this tool for in-house use at SolTerra, but I quickly realized this tool would be useful for many others," says Jeff Huxmann, owner of SolTerra Communications. "Domain-report.info consolidates the important information on a domain into one report I can hand to a client and explain exactly who owns their domain, and how their email is routed. Using the propagation checker, I can tell a client with certainty that their new website has gone live successfully. On a more technical level this tool trys to re-create what a zone file looks like and this can help web developers transfer the zone file to a new server. This is especially useful if you don't have direct access to the current zone file.


Currently DomainReport is a free service open to the public and paid for by users who click on display ads.


Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Apple announcement unexpected, as expected



During his lifetime and tenure as Apple CEO, Steve Jobs made a reputation for surprising the tech community with his product unveilings.  While today was no different in some respects, Apple CEO Tim Cook's product demo may have been somewhat disappointing to many Apple consumers.

A few weeks back many tech speculators had their own ideas about today's announcements.  Few thought Apple would jump right to the iPhone 6, and they weren't disappointed.  Two major products were announced; the iPhone 5C (C for Cheap or China, depending on who you ask), and iPhone 5s.

The 5C is a cheaper iPhone product designed to go after the world's largest mobile network, estimated at 760 million users, in China.  It differs from the iPhone 5 in many aesthetic ways, but offers few features above the current top model Apple phone.  You can get iPhone 5c in an array of colors and the device comes natively designed to be more rugged.  You can order iPhone 5c later this week (16GB $99 and 32GB $199 with a two year contract).

The iPhone 5s boasted over 200 new features, but only three were covered in depth during the conference.  The biggest improvements for the 5s are the A7 and M7 CPU chips, making iPhone 5s the "first and only 64 bit Smartphone" , according to Apple's Phil Schiller.

Apple also made several improvement to the built-in camera on the 5s such as; smarter flash technology for more natural looking photos, an auto stabilization mode that takes 3 photos at once and uses the sharpest parts of each for the final photo, and a better battery optimization.

Finally, the fingerprint security feature of iPhone 5s is something consumers have waited eagerly for more a very long time.

In addition to these new products, Apple will be rolling out OS 7 on September 18th, a free upgrade for devices that can use the robust new OS.

You can visit http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/10/live-blog-from-apples-iphone-5s-announcement/ to check out more information on today's Apple product release.