Who doesn’t like free internet? Specially when it’s a WiFi with a good signal strength. If you’re tech freak like me, the first thing you’d probably do is go to speedtest.net and checkout the download/upload speeds. Well, without wasting much time, I’m here to tell you that those results aren’t true, atleast when you’re having high-speed access.

While upto 100MB/s connections might show up to be accurate on their website, connections above 100MB/s are pretty doubtful. I have done some research and I will propose 2 reasons for the mismatch and inaccuracy of these speed results.
1. High Latency/Ping
2. High Traffic/Load on Speedtest.net Servers

Speedtest uses multiple servers in a location to run speedtests for it’s users and as far as I have observed, there are only few locations that support a 10 gigabit port. For those who don’t know, a 10 gigabit port means you can max out the internet speed to 10 Gbps which is pretty much rare.

Now I happen to own a dedicated server that is hosted on a 10 gigabit port and as soon as I have access to it, I open up the speedtest website and run a test.

Results:

Pretty annoyed, I go to my server provider and ask them to fix it. Before I receive their reply, here is another result:

This gets me thinking they have started finding a solution to the problem already and I get a little grin on my face.

Soon enough I receive their reply and they tell me they have started the process which means the improvement in the result above wasn’t due to them fixing stuff. I get curious, but I nod and give them a green signal to proceed with it.

Next Result:

I was expecting atleast 6-8Gbps when 10Gbps was promised to me. Fed up of all this, I initiate a refund request when suddenly I remember I had to download and backup something on the server. I setup Internet Download Manager (IDM) on the server for the download and guess what? I hit 80MB/s for a single file which got me putting a few more downloads simultaneously and holy crap, I was reaching over 1.2Gbps easily.

Proof:

Please note that MB/s > Mbps.
1MB/s = 8Mbps

Now 1.2Gb/s wasn’t what I was looking for, but it was far better than the 300Mb/s I was being showed up on the speedtest results which clearly proves those results inefficient.

The theory behind all this is that the downloads from a single link/server are capped upto a few MB/s. This is not an error or some server incapability, but a cap limit put up by the server companies and ISP’s to prevent excessive usage of their bandwidth. When you put up simultaneous downloads, you reach different servers and try to pull in maximum data from them which gives you a boost in the download if measure altogether. Torrents on the other side run on UDP ports unlike IDM which uses TCP ports, and since UDP connections guarantee better speed, running torrents simultaneously with IDM running multiple downloads already will give you the actual speed result.

Here is a direct link to a Windows 7 Copy from Microsoft which I used in the above tests to measure the speed.
http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-24209.iso

EDIT: I just some torrent downloads along with IDM, and I was able to reach 4Gb/s. Pretty satisfied now.

The only reason you are reading this post is because you just purchased an album or a song off iTunes from your beloved artist a few minutes after it was released on the store and are now finding a way out to rip that song off from the iTunes software into a simple MP3 file so you can share it with your friends or have it transferred to your Android or Windows phone. Well, you’ve come to the right place. Today we are going to be discussing multiple methods of ripping songs off iTunes and converting them to MP3/WAV/WMA etc. just to make the files easily share-able.

But before I proceed, I want to share with you some theory about why you are not able to officially export purchased songs from iTunes to your Desktop.
First of all, if you’re making something that is extra-ordinary or not easily available, you do not want it to be sold free of cost and/or shared with people who don’t want to pay. Same is the case with iTunes. The songs you download from the iTunes store after you have purchased them are saved onto your computer as .m4a’s which are supported by a very less no. of devices, only reason why MP3 is preferred so much. iTunes, in itself has no option of exporting the downloaded song as an MP3 or another popular audio format. This scheme apple uses to not make it easy for users to make MP3′s out of .m4a’s is called DRM Protection and while it is not a protection on the software but exists legally.

Listed below are some methods that allow you to bypass this system and convert the song of your choice into MP3′s etc.

1. TuneClone

By far the most popular software on the market that is used by all the rippers to convert iTunes music purchases into MP3 and share online. The technique used by this software includes installing a virtual drive on your system and then writing a playlist onto that virtual disk using iTunes. The writing process is intervened by TuneClones itself and the music that iTunes burns on the disk virtually is basically saved on your computer as a Non-M4A format.

Homepage: http://www.tuneclone.com
Guide: http://www.tuneclone.com/itunes8-m4p-to-mp3.php

2. Aimersoft DRM Media Converter

I have experienced loss in sound after converting from TuneClone a couple times and while it wasn’t really that much, it wasn’t being fixed after repeated tries which is why I had to go with Aimersoft. If you’re looking to spend money on a very professional software that is not going to disappoint you. This will be the right choice and worth the bucks spent on it.

Homepage: http://www.aimersoft.com/drm-media-converter.html
Guide: http://www.aimersoft.com/m4v-converter.html

3. Media.io

If you don’t have much time to first install the former 2 software on the PC and then start the conversion, this is probably going to be your best choice since this website will use the server side for the conversion and will not need a plugin or anything. However the only limitation, you can convert one file at a time. So I won’t recommend it unless you’re having a couple songs to convert to. Otherwise, the quality of the sound is great with them. Also you get an option to choose bitrate which is awesomer.

Homepage: http://media.io

While this article will free you of the purchase you make on iTunes, I will always recommend you to purchase the songs from Artists you love the most.

Spam is increasing, and with it, are the privacy concerns. More people today use aliases instead of real names to hide from hijackers and stalkers that either make dirty use of your info or just use it for spam.
Almost any website you visit today looking for something will require you to register to view more of such content. While registration can be an easy-peasy process, the main concern lies while giving out your email address. If you don’t know, let me give you an example.

I registered on some online Indian shopping website a while ago and guess what, they sold my email address along with other customers making purchases on their site to other companies in the same market. And now, because I receive spam everyday, I have to unsubscribe to each one of them.
I know that most of you don’t check your email, but I do, and it is a pain in the ass to receive sales emails.

Anyways, back to the topic, the only solution I have found so far is the use of disposable email addresses.
By disposable, I mean temporary email addresses that you can make and use for a particular task just to complete the registration and email activation process and ditch the email later.
It is good in 2 ways.
1. Keeps your real email out of sight.
2. Protects you from spam and bullshit marketing emails.

While many disposable email projects have been out there for a while, only some have managed to stay out of spam filters. One such site is Dispostable.com which is the one site I have been using over years now. The good thing about this free service provider which only a few other providers allow is the use of a custom alias. So if by chance you have to register on a forum real quick and you weren’t expecting a registration, you can make up any name that comes in your mind and register with an email address like anthing@dispostable.com. Once done, you can simply go to Dispostable.com and enter ‘anything’ in the account name and you will have your mail waiting there in the inbox.
Note that unread emails are deleted after 48 hours.

So instead of making an alias first and then receiving email, you just have to think of any name you like on the stop and use it with the @dispostable.com suffix.

The website uses a minimal design and a couple screenshots below show the sleek interface.

Highly recommended.