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Amazon Prime Day has arrived and there is a huge range of products available at knock-down prices, including some of the best Prime Day Deals there have ever been (more offers will be going live over the next 48 hours).
For creatives, its a great time to stock up on art essentials, such as this set of Derwent Inktense Permanent Watercolour Pencils, on sale for less than half price. With an RRP of £121.50, Amazon Prime members can currently pick up this set of 72 professional-grade, quality pencils for just £49.96. We rated Derwent's Inktense range amongst the best watercolour pencils on the market.
Not an Amazon Prime member? Sign up for a free trial to claim this discount.
These pencils can be used dry or with water to give a rich, vibrant, ink-effect to your artwork. They blend and shade beautifully and you can use them to paint onto fabric. Once water has been added, the ink locks down and can be layered. The pencils also work alongside watercolour paintbrushes.
The cheapest we've seen these pencils elsewhere is at Homecrafts, which has them priced at £64.99, so this Prime Day deal is a really great saving.
You do have to sign up for Amazon Prime in order to get all the best deals, but you only have to be a member when you buy the goods so the 30-day trial is a perfect no-strings attached way of tapping into all the deals available. You can cancel your subscription at any time, and if you sign up now you'll be able to take advantage of the full Prime Day event.
Get a free 30-day trial of Amazon Prime: US | UK | Canada | Australia | India
Not in the UK, or missed the deal? Take a look at the best prices on Derwent watercolour pencils below:
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Most respondents in a recent survey say they're losing the battle despite having up-to-date protections in place.
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Vulnerability experts Michiel Prins and Greg Ose discuss the 15 most common vulnerability types.
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If you've been patiently waiting for the best Prime Day deals, the good news is there's not long to go. With the main Amazon event kicking off in a matter of hours, we've already seen other retailers reveal some incredible offers – and this Sony TV deal from Walmart is one of the best so far. Originally $1,998, this Sony 70-inch 4K Ultra HD TV is now just $1,098 – that's a huge $900 saving!
So, if you've got a space big enough to fit in a 70-inch TV, this is one deal you'd be daft to miss. Sony is renowned for its quality products, and when it comes to TVs, it's up there with the best of them. Part of its Bravia range, this X830F model's colours are rich and vivid thanks to its Triluminos display, and the innovative technology of its HDR processor X1 results in remarkable realism.
This deal isn't available outside the US, but that doesn't mean we've forgotten about the rest of the world. Here are the best deals on a range of other giant monitors in your area – see our guide to the best ultrawide monitors for details:
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London's Southwark Park Galleries has really let its creativity off the leash for an upcoming contemporary art show all about dogs. That's because it's enlisted the help of our four-legged friends to curate the dog-related artwork, which will be on display in the Lake and Dilston galleries.
The exhibition, called Dog Show, is part of the celebrations for Southwark Park Galleries 35th birthday. A group of 15 cultured canines were used to help select the artworks, which include a print by Lucian Freud (below), paintings by Ryan Brown, and an animation by David Shrigley (above).
If you like the sound of this show and you're inspired to create your own canine-themed masterpiece, don't forget that you can find tips on our how to draw page, which is packed with plenty of illustration tutorials.
As for Dog Show, we can expect to see a variety of mediums. "With a little help from their human companions, these canine curators have selected artworks in what is believed to be the first exhibition of its kind," Southwark Park Galleries explains on its site.
'Pluto, aged 12' by Lucian Freud is one of the works on display
These aren't just any old dogs either, they belong to a variety of artists and curators. We'll just overlook the fact that their human owners had some influence over the selection process.
Sadly, the galleries don't reveal how the dogs chose their preferred artwork. Were the pieces hidden and the dogs had to sniff them out? Did the pooches show their approval for a painting by performing tricks? We'll just never know.
What we do know though is that the show will run from 18 July until 8 September.
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A lack of a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) pairing mechanism leaves the smart IoT devices open to malicious manipulation.
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The best MacBook Pro alternatives have the great features of Apple's design, but at a lower cost. MacBook Pro may be most designers' laptop of choice, but it’s no longer alone in its prowess for design and performance – there are plenty of Windows machines that have superb specs and, increasingly, look great.
It’s also true that cross-platform software compatibility is now rarely an issue. With so many productivity apps being based on the web now, plus Adobe’s CC (get Adobe Creative Cloud here) having full support for the superb Windows 10, you won’t find yourself suddenly up the creek without a paddle.
Many Windows 10 PCs also have touch screens, which can be rather handy if you do wish to use a stylus – it’s certainly a better touch solution than Apple’s Touch Bar.
Of course, it remains the case that Macs are an expensive investment for a freelancer or studio and some of the Windows alternatives offer the same power for less (although check out Apple laptop deals post to see what bargains are available). Apple has recently slashed its factory-fitted SSD upgrade prices, but if you configure a MacBook Pro with all the bells and whistles things start rising steeply upwards. We must also say though, that although the MacBook Pro has risen in price in the relatively recent past, so have many PC equivalents.
So let’s explore some of the best MacBook Pro alternatives you’ll find. We’ve listed the core specs of the base model in each case, but naturally more expensive (and better performing) options are available in each case.
If you’re looking at a MacBook Pro equivalent that’s a PC you’ve just found it. Available in two sizes, the Surface Book 2 is a powerful, do-anything machine. Its party piece is a detachable touch display that pops on and off of the keyboard base and works as a separate tablet, although the Surface Pen is an optional extra. And with Windows being very touch-friendly, the tablet isn’t just for show – you can really put it to work. The display is excellent, too – pin-sharp – while there’s support for USB-C and USB-A, although you do have to put up with a proprietary power connector that we hope Microsoft will dump when it revises this machine next. While the base machine is competitively priced, things start to jump up when you talk about opting for the Nvidia dedicated graphics that reside in the base (so can’t be used with the tablet unless it’s attached to the keyboard). Another disadvantage is that it’s heavier than a MacBook Pro. But there are few other computers that have the same quality about them – it’s a robust, well-put together machine, too.
This could have gone one of two ways – should we recommend the XPS 13 or its bigger brother, the XPS 15? Well we recommend both, depending on what size you want (and what you need to do). If you’ve got an idea that Dell isn’t a good brand to buy from, it’s time you binned that notion – these are some of the best laptops available anywhere and are very well designed indeed. The XPS 13 comes in various models and could be seen as a MacBook Air equivalent in many ways, but it can be given plenty of power (though not more advanced graphics than Intel’s integrated options, unfortunately). The XPS 15, on the other hand, has Nvidia GTX 1650 graphics across the board as standard in addition to top-line, latest 9th generation Intel Core i7 processors, while several models have 4K OLED displays, too. Both the XPS 13 and 15 are also available in (more expensive) 2-in-1 versions where you can flip the screen 360-degrees.
When Surface Laptop was first announced, it seemed odd – why would Microsoft go backwards from the superb Surface Book? But it makes a lot of sense. By producing a premium device without the tablet part, Microsoft could cut down on the weight and produce a go-anywhere Surface device for those who wanted, well, a laptop rather than a tablet (you can still use the Surface Pen with this super PixelSense display should you wish to). It’s available with some high-end options including bags of storage and memory, while it’s very well designed like its more expensive brother and there’s something distinctive too; hardy Alcantara fabric surrounds the keyboard. Some won’t like it, but it’s definitely a talking point and, before you ask, it doesn’t stain. There is one moot point, however – there’s no USB-C port at all. Goodness only knows why Microsoft has been so resistant to adopt the ever-more-prevalent standard, but we reckon the company will fix that if it does a new model later in 2019.
- Read our full review of the Surface Laptop 2
HP’s ZBook Line comes in a variety of configurations and styles – you even can get a 360-degree convertible version (Studio x360), too. The HP ZBook Studio 15 is our pick of the bunch though since it has workstation-level specs. Indeed, you’d be hard pushed to find as much power for the price anywhere. Not only is there Nvidia Quadro P1000 graphics under the hood, but you also get Intel’s top-line Core i9 processor, 32GB of memory and a 512GB SSD. The DreamColor 4K display also has 100 percent Adobe RGB coverage, too. You’re able to ask HP for a custom configuration should you so wish.
Think business laptops and you’ll probably come up with the ThinkPad. However, since the ThinkPad line was taken over by Lenovo, no longer are all ThinkPads black and rather dull. Indeed, while the 14-inch Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon has an understated look, it’s a genuine MacBook Pro competitor that’s lightweight – starting at around 1.1kg – but can be specified with various options up to 8th generation Intel Core i7 processors, a super-bright 4K Dolby Vision-certified display and up to 16GB of memory and 2TB of SSD storage. However, like the Surface Laptop, there aren’t any discrete graphics options which could be a deal-breaker. But there is a lot to like with the X1 Carbon – the array of ports is impressive for something 15mm thick, with HDMI, 2x USB-A and dual USB-C Thunderbolt 3, one of which is located alongside a proprietary network port – those two can be plugged directly into a desk dock. There’s even a model with integrated mobile broadband – simply slot in a SIM and you’re always on.
What better MacBook Pro alternative could there be than an alternative MacBook Pro? Let us explain. Like many other computer manufactures (Dell Outlet being another good example). Apple sells off machines that get returned to it for less than they were originally on sale for. These machines aren’t faulty – or have had a faulty part replaced. Often they’ve just been returned for refunds because the customer changed their mind. So they’re repackaged, reformatted and sold to you with savings that can run into the hundreds. Sounds good, doesn’t it? The only downside is that sometimes the machines can have odd configurations – or you have to wait around for the model you want to pop-up. Still, it’s always worth seeing what’s available. Everything comes with a one-year warranty and there are plenty of other Apple products available, too.
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When faced with a problem, limited resources can sometimes lead to the most creative and effective solutions. For advertising agency Jekyll & Hyde, the problem was that it needed to find a Russian-speaking art director to design cool packaging. And even worse, it had no budget for a talent search.
Yet despite this, the agency managed to attract thousands of CVs from relevant candidates at a cost of $0, all thanks to a clever piece of copywriting.
Given that art director positions are one of the most coveted roles in the industry, it's fascinating to see how agencies go about recruiting people for the job. If you've always wanted to be one, check out our guide to all you need to know about being an art director, and also check our design jobs board.
So how did Jekyll & Hyde filter down potential candidates? Simple, it spoke to them in their own language.
In a recently released video (below), the agency reveals that it distributed a packaging concept with labels that advertised the art director role – see our packaging design for more inspirational creations. However, given that the labels were written in Russian, only relevant (or at least, Russian-speaking) designers were able to see the vacancy and apply.
"When the packaging was published, the ad was understood only by our target audience, i.e. Russian-speaking designers," the video explains. "For everyone else, it was just ordinary packaging."
As far as filtration methods go, this one is so effective that we're surprised that it isn't more commonplace. (Or maybe it is and we just don't see them...)
And for Jekyll & Hyde, the campaign paid off. The concept designs appeared in front of thousands of designers after being shared by the likes of Packaging Of The World, and the agency was flooded with CVs and portfolios from its target audience.
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3D rigging, like other CGI techniques, can be confusing to newcomers. This guide aims to break it down so that every artist can learn how to rig a 3D model.
A lot of time creating 3D art is spent on how the shell of an object looks. This is great for stills, but when animating, it is just as important to concentrate on where the movement comes from. For most objects, creatures and characters, this is from within.
There is no getting around the fact that rigs are one of the most complex systems in CGI, and like most tools in CGI there is not, unfortunately, a unified workflow between the major applications (see our list of the best 3D software).
That being said the principles of animating a rig are reasonably similar, and processes like forward kinematics (FK), where a joint chain animation originates from the base joint (such as the shoulder of an arm), and inverse kinematics (IK), where the animation of an arm would originate from the tips of the fingers, are universal principles that can be applied across applications.
Let’s take a look at some more of the basics of 3D or animation rigging.
What is 3D rigging?
Think of a 3D rig as a basic skeleton
3D rigging is in effect the process of creating an invisible skeleton that defines how an object moves. An animation or 3D rig usually comprises a system of ‘invisible’ objects that can be seen in a 3D viewport but not in a final render.
At the most basic level, these objects are nulls/groups and joints. Joints are objects that essentially act as the bones of the skeleton, where the nulls/groups/ targets act as the cartilage to define the range of movement. Nulls can also create controllers that are tied to specific objects within a skeleton, to allow an artist to move and control elements much more easily than actually trying to select the specific points themselves.
When parented correctly, a joint and null system creates a logical way of moving elements, and when this system is bound to an organic mesh it can create a convincing range of movements. 3D rigs can work just as well with hard-bodied systems such as cars, where controllers can be an invaluable part of an animation setup.
Rigging a character
A typical animation/3D rig for a humanoid form will consist of parented joints or bones, which act as a basic skeleton.
These joints are controlled by a series of nulls that allow an artist to manipulate the model in a more logical fashion than by animating each joint. Always remember when rigging characters to have the model and rig in a neutral pose, such as a T-pose.
Creating hard-body rigs
Hard-bodied objects can be animated in particular ways
Hard-bodied objects can be animated with a rig as well, but this depends on a logical parenting of objects and control nulls. While joints can be used, they tend not to be used as much in hard-bodied rigs.
A good example of a hard-bodied rig is a car rig, such as the one shown for Cinema 4D by Ahmed El-Hofy (above) that provides a single control for steering and spins the wheels at the correct speed. These sort of rigs can be as complex or as simple as required by the need of the shot.
Binding a mesh
A rig does not simply parent an object
After creating an animation rig, it is not always obvious how to connect it to the geometry that needs to be animated.
This is not achieved by just parenting an object, the mesh needs to be attached via a binding process where the 3D applications apply the rig to various elements throughout the rig, which can be modified after the binding process through weights and constraints. These controls differ between each application, but the underlying process is the same.
Inverse and forward kinematics
Kinematics can control movement and positioning
These define the direction a rig works in when it is being animated. Forward kinematics are the most logical for newcomers, controlling the movement of the rig from the base joint in the process, such as the shoulder or hip joint.
Forward kinematics can require a lot of work if a character needs to sit, whereas with inverse kinematics creating a sitting animation is easy – the rig is controlled by the end points such as the feet or hands, and works backwards through the rig.
This article was originally published in issue 247 of 3D World, the world's best-selling magazine for CG artists. Buy issue 247 or subscribe to 3D World.
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Branding has always been an integral part of being a band or musician. Now, the industry is more crowded than ever before, with Spotify alone adding over 40,000 tracks a day. This means an eye-catching and captivating campaign extends far beyond album artwork.
Branding campaigns for musicians need to work across video content, merchandise, social media, band logos and more. A musician's branding needs to be synonymous with the its music and members, instantly recognisable and above all, timeless. These well-known and indie acts offer a range of examples when it comes to nailing a musician's branding campaign, and they all teach us something slightly different about the art of branding.
For more on branding in general, see our post on logo design and check out our favourite style guides.
01. Taylor Swift
As one of pop’s biggest stars, Taylor Swift is one of the most influential artists out there. She has consistently nailed her branding campaigns, from 1989’s polaroid-heavy nostalgia, to the villainous Reputation era.
Reinventing herself for each album release has become a mainstay for Swift and that Reputation branding campaign, created by boutique agency ST8MNT is a masterclass in marketing. Deleting her entire Instagram feed, Swift then teased fans with images of a snake that flipped her previous bad press as a sneaky back-stabber into someone who was unapologetic, ruthless and inspiring. It’s certainly one way to reinvent yourself.
02. The 1975
British indie band The 1975 show just what you can do with a simple shape.
Creative director, artist, graphic designer and photographer, Samuel Burgess Johnson is responsible for most of their designs, which often include a rectangle surrounding their name across a multitude of their releases – proving that keeping things clear and concise can work wonders.The shape has become synonymous with the group, with fans tattooing the shapes on their bodies and the band regularly using it for merchandise and tour imagery. Although their most recent release A Brief Enquiry Into Online Relationships seemed to stray from the rectangle, eagle-eyed fans pointed out that by connecting the squares, you could make out an array of rectangles.
03. Paramore
If you’ve been a band (or perhaps a studio or brand) for over 10 years, it’s important to keep things exciting – especially if you’ve had a reshuffle of members. Paramore’s 2017 release After Laughter completely reinvented the band’s image from pop-punk kids to a glossy, 80s-inspired group.
Created by LA based designer Scott Cleary, After Laughter used bold duotones, clashing patterns, and zine sensibilities to completely transform Paramore's image (much to some die-hard fans dismay). This new branding extended throughout their videos and merch, with the band also donning bright and bold jumpsuits in press imagery. Juxtaposing colourful imagery with an album that comments on mental health issues and isolation is a brilliant move.
04. Slowthai
Northampton’s Slowthai is a perfect example of grassroots branding done right. With an album titled Nothing Great About Britain, the grime artist had billboards placed all over the UK with facts about the country’s problems including statistics about climate change, homelessness, the gender pay gap, hate crime, mental health and more.
Encouraging fans to locate and send him pictures of the various billboards in London is a great way to engage with listeners and create a buzz around an album, weeks ahead of its release. By placing the name of the album at the bottom of each billboard, the cryptic message would intrigue just about anyone. The lesson here? Where you can, seek to engage and challenge your audience.
05. Christine and the Queens
Here's another great example of an album title doing the talking for you, French artist Christine and The Queens decided to (sort of) change her stage name. Christine and the Queens is very much a character that the pop star adapts as artistic expression but for her second album, she evolved into Chris: a fluid identity.
The album, also titled Chris, was first teased with a crossed out Christine and the Queens logo, prompting an immediate marketing buzz. The scribbled typography went on to cover the artist's merch and encouraged a message of being yourself no matter what. It just goes to show that if you're big enough and you do it right, you can survive a name change.
06. Ariana Grande
Mega-star Ariana Grande followed up her 2016 release Dangerous Woman with 2018’s No Tears Left To Cry, teasing fans with upside-down imagery across her social media accounts.
Created by SB Projects’ art director and lead designer, Jessica Severn, this upside-down branding extended throughout Grande’s video for the lead single while merch was adorned with upside-down portraits of the singer. It makes a case for literally flipping an image for a simple and strategic campaign that works – as Desigual did recently with its logo. The singer also adopted her own Instagram filter for the branding campaign, which is a sure-fire way to engage fans and intrigue others.
07. Ed Sheeran
Back in 2015, Ed Sheeran announced via his social media platforms that he was taking a break to travel the world and see everything that he’s missed. Exactly one year after that, Sheeran returned to Instagram, posting a simple plain light blue square. Of course it caused a stir and marked the beginning of the branding campaign for his album Divide.
It took the singer almost an entire month to post again, this time officially announcing the record. This use of one bold colour along with a simple divide symbol made this one of the singer’s most successful branding campaigns. The campaign was created by UK-based agency Adult Art Club, with loose watercolour illustrations from Kasiq Jung Woo and a typography collaboration with illustrator Charlotte Audrey.
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If you write regularly, you know that sometimes the process can leave you stuck in a rut. Or, the opposite can happen, and your brain is filled with so many ideas that you're in major need of organisation. Either way, Writer’s Blocks 5 is a powerful tool that can help you reach you writing goals for just $39.
With Writer’s Block 5, you’re getting visual outlining tools that will help you capture and organise large amounts of information that may be swirling around in your head.
This is done using "blocks," which is like a word processor document, but it can organise and structure vast quantities of text, notes, and information. Simply drag and drop text blocks easily to rearrange them, and use different fonts and colours to highlight and categorise the information.
Writer's Blocks 5 can change and upgrade your writing workflow for just $39.
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There's just three days to go until Amazon Prime 2019 kicks off and we no doubt see some of the best Prime Day deals surface. But if you can't wait that long to grab a great deal, Walmart is getting the party started early with this incredible 2017 iPad Pro offer. Priced at just $474, this is currently the cheapest price you'll find this 10.5-inch iPad Pro model – saving a whopping $175 on the retail price.
Since it was first introduced back in 2015, the iPad Pro has since become a highly sought-after tool for designers. Featuring power similar to that of a laptop and support for the brilliant Apple Pencil, this quality device provides the perfect great balance of power and portability for busy creatives on the go.
When it comes to Apple devices, it's really tricky to find discounted items. But the good news about Apple's constant innovation is it makes finding great deals on its older models a little easier. So if you're not bothered about the latest, shiny new device, this 2017 iPad Pro is still a very competent tool – and right now it's a bargain to boot!
Want an iPad Pro with different specs? Our round-up of the best iPad Pro deals will have all the best offers in your area.
Not in the US? Never fear, there are some brilliant iPad Pro deals across the globe, details of which you can find here:
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Do colours match shapes? According to Wassily Kandinsky, the two go hand in hand. The Russian painter, art theorist, and Bauhaus teacher put his theory to the test with an exercise for his students, which you can now complete online. Do your answers align with the ideas of the Bauhaus master?
If you're not familiar with Kandinsky, he was an authority on colour theory even before joining Bauhaus thanks to his book, On the Spiritual in Art. In it, he establishes distinct emotional and spiritual associations between specific colours and forms. To communicate the relationship between colour and shapes, he created an assignment for his students.
Now, thanks to an online exhibit created in created in partnership with digital innovation studio yU+co and the Getty Research Institute, you can take Kandinsky's test.
Named the Kandinsky Form and Color Exercise, this simple drag and drop quiz challenges you to match a primary colour with its corresponding shape, including a triangle, circle and square. Take the quiz right now by clicking here.
Artist Erich Mrozek made these colour studies based on Kandinsky’s ideas
Once you finish the quiz you'll be shown if you match Kandinsky's theory. You'll also find an explanation of why a certain colour can be matched to a particular shape.
"The results of Kandinsky's survey seemed to prove his argument," the results page explains, "as the majority of respondents answered according to his model".
The exercise is part of the interactive online exhibition Bauhaus: Building The New Artist, which celebrates 100 years of the famous school through various interactive activities.
"The desire of museums and cultural institutions to engage the public in new ways is the perfect opportunity to combine new technologies with our experience in storytelling in order to create something groundbreaking and enriching," says Garson Yu, founder and creative director of yU+co.
Want some of the Bauhaus aesthetic in your life? Check out our guide to the 10 objects that will bring Bauhaus style to your studio.
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If you're looking for the best iPad Pro deals right now, you've come to the right place. These popular devices offer slick looks, powerful performance, and portability, but they don't come cheap. However, there are bargains to be had if you know where to look.
The article brings you the very best iPad Pro deals. Our dedicated tool automatically searches for the best prices from the most reputable retailers, so you can be confident you're not missing a bargain (including the best Prime Day deals offers from Amazon on 18 and 19 July).
Apple's tablets are now available in a range of sizes, models and colours, and are popular with creatives thanks to their winning balance of power and portability. Team them up with an Apple Pencil and one of the dedicated drawing apps for the iPad and you'd be hard pushed to find a more capable portable creative tool. There are also plenty of iPad accessories you can use to customise your device further.
In this guide, we've rounded up the best iPad Pro deals to be found online right now. Covering both the iPad Pro 11-inch and iPad Pro 12.9-inch models, these deals make the industry-leading Apple tablets more accessible than ever.
The best iPad Pro 11-inch (2018) deals
Don't miss out on this iPad Pro at a rock-bottom price
Offering the strength of a desktop machine in an ultra-thin package you can easily carry around with you, the iPad Pro 11-inch is designed to give users more creative freedom.
For more information, take a look at our iPad Pro 11" review, but headline features include Apple's specially developed A12X Bionic chip. This powerful engine delivers incredible speeds, especially when backed up by the machine's 6GB of RAM. Our heads were also turned by the screen's sharp 264-pixels per inch screen. Promising truer colour reproduction than competitors, the iPad 11-inch's display is perfect for artists.
Other stand out tools include variable pressure levels that bring out the best of the Apple Pencil. And considering that there are plenty of creative apps waiting to take advantage of what the Apple Pencil has to offer, most notably Pixelmator and Procreate, the iPad Pro 11-inch is sure to go down a storm with digital artists.
If you've been put off buying the iPad Pro-inch before now because of its cost, your patience has been rewarded. A limited time offer has seen the price of this powerful tablet come crashing down by over $100. So if this deal puts the device within your budget, make sure you order today so you don't miss out.
The best iPad Pro 12.9-inch (2018) deals
The iPad Pro 12.9 has a larger screen that's perfect for creators
It's not just the iPad Pro 11-inch we've managed to find at a lower price. Apple's biggest and best digital canvas, the iPad Pro 12.9-inch, can also be found for less if you know where to look. Take a look at our full iPad Pro 12.9" review.
Boasting a massive display and an incredible performance, this device is a favourite amongst digital artists thanks to its immersive screen. The recently released 2018 model is a huge upgrade on older models, however even iPad Pros from 2017 are incredible tools for creators.
Notable additions to the iPad Pro 12.9-inch 2018 include the Apple Pencil Gen 2, and a P3 colour gamut that will benefit illustrators and photo editors. There's good news for video editors too as its refresh rate has been upgraded to an adaptive 120Hz. This means that the device offers smooth frame rates that trump other models in the iPad range.
As you'd expect, a larger device demands a larger price. But if you're determined to get the best iPad Pro possible, this is the one you will want to start saving up for. And to make things a little easier, we've unearthed the lowest prices going for the 12.9-inch model. These cover unlocked devices and models from previous years, as well as the 2018 digital canvas.
We sort through thousands of deals to offer the best prices from the most trustworthy retailers. You can support us by clicking these independently selected links, as we may earn a commission on any purchase you make, at no extra cost to you.
Contact us if you have any questions or have found a better price.
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The tech giant addressed a widely publicized Zoom bug with an automatic update mechanism usually reserved for removing malware.
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Unless you're extremely fortunate or exceptionally gifted, if you want to make a name for yourself in design then you'll need to get the self-promotional bandwagon rolling. For some designers, it's a natural step on their path to global domination, while for other, less outgoing creatives, it can feel like a daunting task.
For some, merely having a stunning design portfolio and getting it seen by the right creative directors can be enough to set a fabulous career in motion. For everyone else, though, a bit more groundwork is going to be necessary, so here are eight killer tips to help you start getting noticed.
01. Remember you're the brand
If you've been in design for any amount of time then you'll have worked with a variety of brands, and you'll know all about the importance of brand guidelines. Well, now you're the brand, and you need to apply the same thinking to how you promote yourself. At the very least you'll need your own logo design; a strong, instantly recognisable colour palette is another good way to push your brand identity.
Also, though, you should think about your brand voice and what it says about your business. It never hurts to ramp up the positivity and enthusiasm when you're speaking as your brand rather than your everyday self; it might feel a little alien if you're naturally more reserved and self-deprecating in real life, but it works.
02. Work your social mojo
Social media is a must, but don't let it rule your life
Self-promotion these days can be a lot easier than it was when you had to mail out physical portfolios and do the rounds of agencies in person. A decent social media footprint is a must – check out our guide to nailing your social media strategy for plenty of helpful tips – and can help you get your work seen by the right people. Just don't fall into the trap of spending your entire day chasing likes and retweets; keep things focused.
03. Keep everything updated
The downside to having a heavy social media presence on top of your portfolio site is ensuring that everything's up to date. There are few things more off-putting than visiting a designer's portfolio and discovering that the last update was months or even years ago. So you need to ensure that once you have a new piece of work worth sharing, it gets shared in all the relevant places.
Remember, too, to include as much information as you can; it doesn't have to be a full case study, but at least try to answer the most salient questions that you think visitors might have about each project.
04. Find your audience
Helpful though it can be, social media is merely part of the self-promotion process. If you're serious about raising your profile and finding opportunities then you need to bite the bullet and contact some potential employers. This can be an arduous task, however you can make it considerably less so by being smart about your targeting.
Firing your portfolio at every agency you can think of isn't the best use of your time, but if you do your research and identify the firms whose work you love and where you believe your own work would be an excellent fit, and then contact the key people and make your case to them, you should get a much better hit rate than with a scattergun approach.
05. Meet in person
Nothing makes an impression like going out and meeting the people you want to work with
You can achieve a lot, self-promotion-wise, without even leaving your studio, but don't ever underestimate the potential of getting out there and meeting people. Whether it's turning up to your local networking events and pressing some flesh, or heading for the nearest city and visiting the agencies and studios you'd most love to work with, some face-to-face contact is your opportunity to make the sort of impression that you'll never quite carry off over email or social media.
06. Collaborate if you can
Collaboration is a two-way street. Obviously there are benefits for less established designers in collaborating with a better-known name, but for the senior partner in the project there's also the opportunity to produce some work that's out of their comfort zone and gains them a little street cred to go with their respectability. So if a collaboration with one of your design heroes is on your bucket list, go ahead and make your pitch – the worst that can happen is that they'll turn you down.
07. Grow your reputation
Share your accumulated wisdom with a cracking conference talk
Once your self-promotion efforts start to pay off, you can't afford to rest on your laurels. Now's your chance to build your reputation, whether it's by getting out there and delivering some conference talks, doing some pro-bono work for a good cause that you'd like to support, entering yourself for some relevant awards or pursuing your own individual design dream. If the opportunity comes up to promote yourself in a way that fits in with your personal brand – and it's not going to take up too much of your time and energy – then go for it.
08. Enjoy yourself – but do the work
Self-promotion can feel like a never-ending task, but if you figure out your game plan and devise an approach that works around the sort of promotional techniques that you love to see, there's also a lot of fun to be had in staking out your place in the design industry.
Just don't get so caught up with it that you let the important stuff slide. Keep on creating work that delights people and make sure that's your main focus; the self-promotional side is the means by which you can get people to see it, and to ensure that you get to produce much more of it.
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Apple has disabled the Walkie Talkie app from its Apple Watch products after a vulnerability was discovered enabling bad actors to eavesdrop on iPhone conversations.
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APIs are hugely valuable tools for developers. Big players like Google, Apple, Facebook and Mozilla are increasingly allowing developers to make use of their most innovative IP to plug in fantastic functionality into their projects. Here’s our guide to some of the most innovative APIs around right now.
We'll start with a few APIs you probably should know about – these come from mega companies such as Facebook and Apple (Google has so many APIs we've created a separate Google APIs list).
As with all things web, anything being done by a for-profit company leads to the arrival of at least five open-source alternatives. So further down the list you'll find eight more APIs ‘from the street’ – if you are lucky, your browser already has support for them out of the box.
For more plugins to try, take a look at our guides to the best JavaScript APIs and HTML APIs.
01. Facebook Graph API
Whether we like it or hate it – all roads lead to Facebook. The company has focused its once sprawling API ecosystem into the Graph API. The entity of the social space is perceived as a graph data structure, with which third-party applications can interact using traditional graph theory operations.
While the mathematical part of the problem is usually simple, keep in mind that the Graph API allows for incredibly destructive actions such as posting spam. Due to that, devs working on Graph-API-based programs need to be prepared for quite a bit of verification effort. Facebook requires complex authentication flows, which can become problematic especially when working in a pure JavaScript environment. Nevertheless, the API remains the only valid way to interact with Facebook.
02. Apple Pay on the Web
Payment processors and social networks are especially defined by Metcalfe’s law of network usability – the value of a network increases with the square of its number of users.
In light of this, while Apple Pay may not be quite as flexible a friend as MasterCard or Visa, it does unlock payments with the estimated 253 million people that use the service worldwide.
Should you feel like accepting Apple Pay on your website, implement the various JavaScript-based Apple Pay on the Web API interfaces but do keep in mind that the product remains limited to people owning recent iOS devices. Android and Windows users, obviously, will be left out unless they visit the website with an iPhone – one very important reason why you should not use Apple Pay as the only payment processor in your application.
03. MapKit JS
When Apple decided to ditch Google’s mapping application in favour of its own, pundits had a really good time laughing at the Cupertinians – indeed, the first revision of the product made laughable and extremely funny mistakes. Nevertheless, continued engineering investment has brought the product to a point where it is currently a more than viable mapping solution.
Apple, logically, wants to expand the reach of its product while staying off of competitors’ platforms. Due to that, the decision to take to the web was logical. One interesting aspect of MapKit JS is the extremely generous free allowance – you can run 250,000 views and 25,000 service calls per day through its API for free.
04. Stripe API
An old adage says that open-source developers need to eat too – in lieu of revenue, you’ll find that your landlord does not accept download figures. Fortunately, collecting money from customers is not as difficult as it used to be.
Stripe is a one-size-fits-all company – its SDK provides you with a set of widgets for credit card information input. The Stripe API is not limited to one-time transactions either: if you monetise your service via recurring purchases, a useful extension can collect your money.
While Stripe – obviously – cannot take money from PayPal, the company has an impressive range of partners. You can use both Apple and Google Pay along with the Chinese WeChat and AliExpress payment services. Furthermore, the fee structure of Stripe is simpler than that of its blue competitor – especially if you are worried about chargebacks or refunds. Stripe’s way of handling the problem leads to fewer surprises when the actual bill arrives.
05. Ambient Light Events
PDAs with colour displays introduced developers to problems related to screen brightness – crank it up and the battery will run out; too low and users get eyestrain trying to make out details drowned out by ambient light sources. Fortunately, advancing sensor technology made ambient light sensors affordable and today even cheap feature phones come with fully featured sensors, allowing developers to harness them to drive changes in their apps.
Mozilla’s Ambient Light API lets your website collect information from these sensors. Content can then adapt itself to the situation at hand – for example, an eye- and sleep-friendly night mode could auto-activate in the dark. The API is flexible enough to cover both polling and event-driven scenarios.
However, providing users with a manual override capability is well advised. Some users rising before dawn will help themselves to wake up by reading – forcing them to endure a sleep-inducing colour scheme against their will is a sure-fire way to reduce customer satisfaction.
06. Fullscreen API
While browsers do a good job of using screen real estate, hiding the address bar sometimes helps. In this case, the Fullscreen API is a convenient way to deal with the problem and enabling it requires but a few lines of code.
Once requestFullscreen is invoked, the browser is instructed to display the parent element in full-screen mode. This is especially useful when combined with an interactive tag such as an HTML5 <video> markup element.
However, as with other APIs, invoking the method and getting permission are a different kettle of fish – if the user does not agree to full-screen mode, most browsers will not let you hide the address bar.
07. Geolocation API
Getting access to a user’s location is paramount if many business processes are to work seamlessly. The Geolocation API lets you access position information provided by a device’s GPS receivers and other sensors, such as Wi-Fi.
Thanks to its importance for ecommerce, almost all browsers support the Geolocation API, enabling you to find out where the user is located via but a few lines of code. However, keep in mind that because the information returned is sensitive, the browser vendors require all kinds of additional security. For example, the browser will invariably display a permission dialog before providing coordinates, which is vital when it comes to ensuring you have a user’s informed consent.
08. HTML Drag and Drop API
The HTML Drag and Drop API does what exactly what it says on the tin: some HTML elements are marked as draggable, while others are marked as droppable. From that point onward, the user can drag and drop various elements to move them around in the browser, duplicate them, create links between them or even drag in files from outside of their browser.
Alongside obvious DOM events it exposes like drag and drop, it also offers dragover, which activates when the cursor is over a valid drop target, and dragend, which fires when a drag operation ends.
Sadly, nothing is without its shortcomings: for this API, the main problem comes when you’re working on mobile devices. While Drag and Drop worked well with the resistive streams of yore, few mobile browsers offer support on capacitive screens. Due to that, developers are well advised to provide an alternate way to access drag and drop induced functionality for mobile.
09. Intersection Observer API
Finding out if an element is visible isn’t easy, yet it is a very important job. Not only is this information interesting for advertisers but the data can also be used to implement various effects such as infinity scrolling or lazy loading.
The newly introduced Interaction Observer API helps address this. It expects the developer to provide two elements – one parent container and one child whose visibility is to be tracked. Developers then set up a threshold that determines how much of the element must be visible before the callback function is invoked.
This process might sound somewhat complex but works really well in practice. Furthermore, its browser support is exceptionally wide.
10. Push API
Pulling is a classic anti-pattern in the process computer space – sadly, web developers had little choice. The Push API provides a way around the problem. It is based on a traditional push system, where data is actively driven from the server side rather than by client-side requests.
In short, not only does this prevent users’ devices having to regularly issue pull requests to check whether new data is waiting for them but it also allows sites and apps to issue push notifications to mobiles and desktops.
Sadly, such features tend to invite abuse by unscrupulous developers. Due to that, almost all vendors tend to use a browser-based dialogue to get the user to agree to receiving notifications. Another important issue developers need to keep in mind involves quotas – most, if not all browsers limit the amount of messages that can be delivered at any given point in time.
11. Web Audio API
In bygone days, keeping a MIDI file playing in the background was a given. Some law firms in Austria went so far as to annoy their visitors with an orchestra’s worth of classical music.
The new Web Audio API, which currently is a W3C candidate, has nothing to do with this traditional source of nuisances. It, instead, provides a modern graph-based audio output API. This means that you set up a chain of filters, data sources and output sinks such as headphones or speakers. Once done, these are then fed with dynamically generated or locally stored content, resulting in a completely custom experience.
In theory, you could also use this API to simply play back MP3 or Ogg Vorbis files – a valid strategy but one that can be more efficiently delivered with the HTML5 <audio> element. The API can, instead, play out its strengths whenever you need to modify the output; the system provides a wide variety of nodes such as ConvolverNode and WaveShaperNode, which are used to add reverb and distortion to sound respectively.
Another area where the API excels is creating experiences that react to the music. If you’re working on a 2D or 3D project, you can feed variables from the Web Audio API into the canvas or WebGL APIs respectively, creating visualisations or games that react to factors like the audio’s frequency or volume.
12. WebVR API
While Microsoft’s introduction of the Kinect sensor was ill-fated, virtual-reality technologies are here to stay. Mozilla’s WebVR API – also supported by Microsoft Edge – lets your web apps and sites break the fourth wall.
Sadly, the API is just part of what’s needed for a complete VR scene. In particular, the API limits itself to providing a set of classes enumerating displays and position sensors connected to your user’s workstation or laptop. Actually getting something on-screen requires the use of additional APIs dedicated to the creation of three-dimensional scenes optimised for virtual reality.
One particularly useful candidate comes from the company behind the WebVR API – Mozilla’s A-Frame-API lets you create virtual reality scenes. Do, however, keep in mind that the development of such scenes is a completely different animal to the development work done on websites – yours truly’s painful experience shows that some developers will have a very hard time adapting their brain to the workflow required for the creation of three-dimensional objects.
This article was originally published in net, the world's best-selling magazine for web designers and developers. Subscribe here.
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Threatpost catches up with David Baker, the chief security officer at Bugcrowd, about the future of bug bounty programs.
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German car manufacturer Volkswagen boasts one of the most world's most recognisable logos. And thanks to some recently shared vintage specifications, we can take a look at the fascinating precision that went into creating it.
With its straightforward, stripped back aesthetic, the Volkswagen logo perfectly reflects the ergonomic elegance that has come to define the brand's vehicles. It's a textbook example of our logo design advice in action.
On the face of it, the design might just appear to be the letters VW sitting in a circle. But the logo's composition is so deceptively harmonious that your brain appreciates that it works, perhaps without immediately knowing why.
Don't believe us? Just take a look at these vintage specifications for the logo, which have recently ignited an excited conversation on Reddit's r/Design channel.
It's simple, precise, and it works
As you can see, the angles and the spacing of the various design elements are all clearly labelled in relation to one another.
But what's really got people engaged is that these specifications pre-date vector files. Just imagine trying to create something so precise by hand, without the help of logo design tool such as Adobe Illustrator.
This explains why the specifications were so precise and clear, too. The plans for the VW logo ensure that it will look the same no matter the scale, which helps to keep the Volkswagen brand consistent. In a time before digital art tools were commonplace this consistency required more clarity to achieve, because you couldn't just sling over a vector file to a client or agency.
In the comments section in response to these plans, creators have taken a moment to marvel the old school approach to logo design. "This is fascinating, and really highlights the importance of drawing things with optical proportions instead of technical ones," says user SyntheticEverything.
This really highlights the importance of drawing things with optical proportions instead of technical ones
Meanwhile, user cream-of-cow explains when the landscape of logo design changed. "Up until the mid 1990s, many design schools were still this precise, this was for someone to reproduce or make the logo in 3D form."
"Nowadays, everything is computer perfect, I don't recall when's the last time I had to call out the size of something unless it was for if smaller/larger than X-dimensions, use this version of the logo," they add.
So have designers lost something with the rise of vector files? Not necessarily. But as this amusing tweet from Logo Geek points out, if you're going to rely on grids to help refine and perfect your mark, don't let them lead the design process. Otherwise you can end up with some pretty mangled results...
If these specifications have got you eager to start creating a logo of your very own, check out our guide to the best free logo design tools. Of course, you can always just pick up a pencil and a protractor and do it the VW way.
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F-Secure Anti-Virus is an affordable antivirus solution that's easy to use (particularly in combination with other security tools) and has earned a place in our roundup of the best antivirus software.
F-Secure Anti-Virus is notable for its low price of $35.99 (about £28) for the one-computer, single year license. At first glance it looks to offer an exceptionally good deal, but going over the feature list, we realized how really basic this package is.
F-Secure Anti-Virus has no password manager, Wi-Fi protection, banking protection, file shredder, and no browsing protection. It's safe to say that it’s antivirus, and only antivirus.
Before we criticize it too much, we should point out that this same simplicity can be an advantage, especially for power users that plan to combine F-Secure with dedicated software to cover other needs, such as a URL filter, software firewall and other security software. However, more basic users, as well as those seeking the convenience of a single interface for multiple functions, the lack of features might be an issue.
Another downside is there are no multi-device discounts, extending beyond the three system, one-year license for $39.99 (about £31). Other antivirus solutions are more flexible; for those with multiple systems to protect, Bitdefender has flexible plans that cover one, three, five or up to 10 devices, for one, two or three years. This also is more affordable as well: a 10 PC, three-year Bitdefender license goes for only $162.50 (£125), which works out at a quite inexpensive $5.42 (£4.17) per device per year.
Setup
F-Secure offers a free 30-day trial of F-Secure Anti-Virus, but it's not easy to get. Before you can even download the installation file, you need to provide an email address and solve a CAPTCHA. You'll then receive a confirmation link via email, and after clicking on it, a web page opens to explain that still another email will arrive to provide both the license key and download link.
The next email arrived quickly, but lacked a license key (which we eventually realized was built into the executable name). Next, the software reported that the license was invalid, but that turned out to be an error, and then the installer proceeded to quickly do its thing without any further overtures. We are happy to report that the rest of the installation went without a hiccup, but that only left us wishing the rest of the process had been smoother.
Taking a look at the F-Secure program folder, we noted support files averaging 700MB in size. There was really nothing to be surprised about, but notably, F-Secure (as some others do) integrates the Bitdefender antivirus engine as well as its own. We have no problem with it, and even more so considering that the Bitdefender engine has a reputation for high accuracy, and it's reassuring to have dual antivirus engines.
Features
Nobody could accuse F-Secure Anti-Virus of overdoing it in the bonus feature department, as it has hardly any. It’s simply the basics, with antivirus scanning and the required security layers and settings.
The advantage of this approach is that F-Secure's interface is as simple as they come, and even a complete beginner will have no trouble with it.
The main console distills down to just two buttons: Virus Scan and Settings. Hit the first and F-Secure Anti-Virus performs a super quick scan (taking under a minute), deals with any suspected threats and displays an update on the system’s health. The other button, Settings, has just minimal configuration options.
Scanning
Power-users who prefer granular control will be disappointed by the lack of settings, because F-Secure offers few customizable options and always defaults to the quick scan, despite there being a full system scan buried deep in the settings menu.
F-Secure doesn't offer a removable drive scan, or any way to create a custom scan type. Competitors such as Avast and Avira cover these needs with options for manual scans and custom configuration settings, but F-Secure has a measly two checkboxes: 'Scan only known file types,' and 'Scan inside compressed files.'
However, F-Secure does offer one important extra tool: ransomware protection. For safety, it prevents untrusted applications from accessing files in designated folders. While this isn't a groundbreaking innovation (Windows 10's new 'controlled folder access' feature does pretty much the same thing), we appreciate the additional layer of protection.
At the end of the day, F-Secure excels at its core function, which is antivirus, notable for its quick speed, high accuracy and simplicity in use. It lacks in some other features, such as URL blocking, but these gaps can be filled with other, dedicated software. For users that are fine with multiple pieces of software, then F-Secure makes a fine choice for the antivirus part.
In our own malware tests, F-Secure Anti-Virus delivered a solid performance. To confirm this, we also examined results from leading antivirus testing labs for a comprehensive examination of the program’s strengths and weaknesses.
In AV Comparatives' monthly real-world protection tests, F-Secure performed admirably blocked 100% of test threats. Unfortunately the same testing revealed a high number of false positives, which lowers the total assigned score.
F-Secure ranked second place of the 18 solutions tested, but with 111 false positives. For comparison, Bitdefender (third place) had only two, and Kaspersky (fourth place) had just one.
AV-Test's August 2018 Windows Home User report showed even better results. F-Secure found and neutralized 100% of the test threats, with a lower number of false alarms. With 62 legitimate programs installed and activated, F-Secure blocked only a one, and gave an alarm about another. While not perfect, it was definitely quite liveable. For the rare situation when this does happen, users are given the choice to whitelist the blocked software, and then F-Secure will not banish it again.
Finally, we examined F-Secure’s impact on system performance. The PassMark Software November 2018 Security Products Performance Benchmark report gives an analysis looking at 15 of the top tier programs in the security area. F-Secure placed in the mid-range (eighth out of 14) suggesting that its impact on performance is perfectly average and acceptable. It's also worth noting that the testing was performed using the even higher tiered F-Secure Safe suite, and if anything F-Secure Anti-Virus is even more of a lightweight which will impact performance even less.
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Hotspot Shield is a VPN platform developed by the US-based cybersecurity firm AnchorFree, which started out as a free sponsored Wi-Fi hotspot provider. Hotspot Shield is currently the VPN provider of choice for around 650 million people around the world, and is one of our picks for the best VPN in 2019.
Plans and pricing
Hotspot Shield has a rather generous money-back period. Specifically, if there is anything wrong with the service, you can ask for a refund within 45 days of signing up for a subscription
Hotspot Shield is available for free and as a paid version. The free version is supported by ads and limits the daily data transfer to 500MB. Free users also have a more limited choice of servers than the paid ones.
The paid account is available under three options. The first one is the one-month plan that costs $12.99 (about £10), followed by the 12-month option at $5.99 (about £5) per month, and finally, the 36-month subscription that will cost you only $2.99 (about £2.50) per month.
This VPN vendor also offers subscriptions for businesses with prices that start at $19.99 (about £16) per month.
Accepted methods of payment differ depending on your current location and include credit cards, PayPal, Alipay, Neosurf, Mint, gift cards, and more.
In case you want to test the service out before committing to any of the paid plans and the free version isn’t enough to do so fully, a seven-day free trial is offered. This trial is available if you sign up for any of the paid plans, except you aren’t charged during this period. If you want to avoid being charged, you need to cancel the subscription within seven days of signing up.
Features
Hotspot Shield offers its services on over 2,500 servers distributed across 25 countries around the globe. Virtual locations are available in 70 countries. The availability of the servers depends on the device used, with iOS users having access to the highest number.
One of its industry-standard features is a kill switch, a powerful safety mechanism put in place to protect your sensitive information from outside snoopers. It activates whenever your VPN connection drops, effectively blocking all internet access on your device. Although this tool isn’t available on mobile devices, Android users can make use of their device’s own integrated kill switch.
One Premium VPN account allows you to connect up to five devices at the same time. Unlike with other VPN providers, this number cannot be bypassed as Hotspot Shield doesn’t support installation on routers.
Image credit: Hotspot Shield
Privacy and logging
Hotspot Shield offers strong anonymity protection with the help of its proprietary Catapult Hydra technology. It uses this technology instead of commonplace protocols like OpenVPN, PPTP, etc because Hotspot Shield deems it safer and sturdier. This seems to be the shared view of other companies that employ Catapult Hydra for their own VPN provision, such as BitDefender and McAfee.
This technology is based on TLS 1.2 and utilizes different algorithms for the purposes of connection, authentication, client connections, and payload data exchange within the VPN tunnel. It uses an unusual combination of AES-128 and AES-256, along with the Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (EDCHE) algorithm for Ephemeral Key Exchange. Ephemeral means that encryption keys are generated for every new user’s session and erased from memory when the session is over.
Hotspot Shield promises not to collect, store, or share information that can be used to identify you, including IP addresses. The company states it doesn’t retain any activity logs either. That said, these claims cannot be properly verified without an independent public audit, something that several other VPN providers have conducted.
Hotspot Shield is registered in the United States, a country with a somewhat poor reputation concerning the invasion of individuals’ privacy. This means that, if a government agency asks, Hotspot Shield will probably hand over any information demanded because it is subject to US laws.
On top of that, the provider has been accused of spying on its users for its own gain. Namely, the Washington DC-based Center for Democracy & Technology said in 2017 that Hotspot Shield had been tracking its users’ activities, redirecting their browsing to its targeted advertising partners.
Another privacy-related incident was recorded in 2018 when a flaw in the platform was found, leaking portions of users’ information such as the country of their location and Wi-Fi network name. The problem has since been fixed, according to the company.
Performance
Hotspot Shield’s performance will satisfy even the harshest critics. The connection is stable and speeds are excellent on all of its servers, even those far away from one’s current location. This is especially important if your priorities are unobstructed streaming and exchanging of large files via torrenting clients.
Netflix
Hotspot Shield's high speeds and connection stability allow for unconstrained streaming, especially so when accessing geographically restricted services like Netflix and Hulu. Although not all such services are available at the moment, the website assures they will soon become accessible through the company’s platform.
Image credit: Hotspot Shield
Torrents
All of Hotspot Shield’s servers are P2P-optimized, which means they fully support unlimited torrenting.
Client setup
Clients are available for Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and Windows Phone, while Chrome and Firefox are covered by browser extensions. This is as far as the platform support is concerned due to the utilization of the Catapult Hydra technology.
The clients are easy to install and use, even if you’re a beginner. Even so, should you encounter any difficulties, the website has guides you can consult or you can try your luck with the customer support.
Support
Besides the detailed support section on the website, Hotspot Shield has a team of experts to help you out with anything you need. You can contact them via live chat or email, although you might need to have some patience as they are not always immediately available due to the sheer volume of the provider’s userbase.
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InMotion Hosting is a popular US-based company which provides a wide range of web hosting solutions, and has made our list of the best web hosting services.
Todd Robinson and Sunil Saxena co-founded InMotion in 2001 while working at another hosting company. The pair came up with the idea to start a customer-centric hosting business with an open-source community and InMotion Hosting was born. While it began with only a single server, InMotion has grown rapidly and as of 2018, the company has locations in Los Angeles, Virginia and Denver with over 300 employees now on its staff.
In addition to web hosting, the company also throws in a number of great extras including a drag and drop website builder, basic backups of your site, malware protection and unlimited ‘spam-safe’ email thanks to its SpamAssassin utility.
So let’s take a closer look at InMotion’s plans, features and performance to see if this web host is the right choice for your website.
Image credit: InMotion Hosting
Costs and what's covered
InMotion has a number of web hosting products to choose from that cater to the needs of both businesses and individuals.
To give you a better idea of the company’s pricing, WordPress Hosting starting at $7.25 (about £6) a month, VPS Hosting starts at $19.99 (about £16) a month, dedicated servers start at $105.69 (about £95) a month and business hosting starts at just $5.99 (about £5) a month. However, in this review we’ll be looking at InMotion’s business hosting in much more detail.
InMotion’s ‘Launch’ plan gives you a free domain, two websites and unlimited disk space, bandwidth and email for just $5.99 (about £5) a month with its current promotion. Marketing tools, a security suite and free SSL are also included.
Next up is the ‘Power’ plan for $7.99 (about £7) a month, which raises the number of websites to six and offers twice the performance thanks to the fact that this plan has access to a greater level of server resources like RAM and CPU.
Finally, we have the ‘Pro’ plan for $13.99 (about £13) a month, which gives you access to unlimited websites, pro level support and four times the performance of InMotion’s Launch plan.
InMotion’s prices are competitive and if you check its site often, you’ll find that the company even offers occasional discounts to sweeten the deal. A 90-day money-back guarantee is just another compelling reason to try out the service for yourself.
Image credit: InMotion Hosting
Signing up
From when you first visit its website, InMotion presents its hosting products in a clear and straightforward way with detailed prices and summary information. The company provides a table that helps you compare the features available in each of its plans, and you can even compare InMotion’s prices to its competitors right from its site. There's also an FAQ section to help you find any other answers you may be looking for.
After clicking the Order Now button, the site asked us to choose a domain name for our site. InMotion allows you register one domain for free with each of its plans or you can choose to use one you already own.
On the next page, we were able to choose whether we wanted our preferred hosting center to be in either Washington DC or Los Angeles, and we were given the option to have WordPress, Joomla, PrestaShop or BoldGrid preinstalled with our account.
Payment options are limited to credit or debit card, US purchase order or check. We would have liked to see PayPal as an option in this list, but this is by no means a deal-breaker.
Overall, the signup process was fast and, more importantly, honest as InMotion did not try to upsell us by encouraging us to add additional products or services to our order.
Image credit: InMotion Hosting
Creating a site
One area where InMotion particularly excels is its onboarding process. After signing up, new users are presented with a list of common starter topics (new customer’s guide, pointing to our nameservers, etc) and can pick the ones they need. InMotion then emails you links to these guides to help you get started.
Next we decided to give InMotion’s free website builder a try. Instead of being a standalone website builder such as Weebly, the company’s site builder is actually a set of WordPress plugins called BoldGrid which required a separate installation.
However, once we got BoldGrid up and running, the site builder was reasonably easy-to-use and also contained some well-designed templates as well as drag-and-drop editing. InMotion’s free site builder may lack some of the integrations of its competitors but since it doesn’t have any page limits, you can build a large site without restrictions.
The company also provides access to the Sofaculous framework which allows you to find, install and manage hundreds of popular applications including WordPress, phpBB, Joomla, Drupal and PrestaShop.
Experienced users will appreciate the fact that InMotion allows you to use cPanel to manage your site as well as standard tools including FTP, a file manager, SSH and more at their disposal.
Image credit: InMotion Hosting
Performance
When it comes to testing a web host’s performance, one of the first things we do is to take a close look at its support system, and InMotion left us thoroughly impressed. From the customer portal we could search the support database, and clicking on the Support button gave us links to useful guides, US-based support phone numbers, a form to create a support ticket, and even the ability to launch a live chat window to speak directly with a company representative.
The web support center provided us with a long list of all of InMotion’s resources. There are sections for Tutorials, Product Guides, Frequently Asked Questions, a community forum and more. Few of the web hosts we’ve reviewed have the sheer amount of content that InMotion provides and we found its support articles to be useful, relevant and up to date.
All of its guides are searchable and each document even showed the date it was uploaded on to give us a better idea of whether or not it was still relevant. Surprisingly, there is even a comments section where customers can leave questions and get responses right from InMotion’s staff.
To complete our performance tests, we tested our site speeds using Bitcatcha and other benchmarks to find that our connection was fast and that overall performance was well above average.
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StrongVPN traces its roots back to 1994 when a small company selling PC computers was founded in South Lake Tahoe, California. Soon after, this company shifted its scope to providing dial-up Internet services. In 2005, StrongVPN was born, providing privacy services to users around the world and earning a place on our guide to the best VPN in 2019.
Plans and pricing
While most VPN providers have several subscription plans on offer (six-month, two-year, etc) with savings for longer commitment periods, StrongVPN has only two pricing options available: one-month and one-year. The monthly option costs $10 (about £9), while the annual subscription is more affordable, with a price of $5.83 (about £5) per month. Accepted payment methods include credit cards, PayPal and Alipay.
While there's no free trial per se, the company states its 30-day money-back guarantee is unconditional, which means you have quite a long period to check if the service is the right fit for you. If not, make sure you cancel the subscription and request a refund during this period.
Features
StrongVPN offers its users access to 650+ servers scattered across 46 cities, as well as access to 59,500 VPN IP addresses.
One of the standard VPN features provided by this platform is a kill switch – a valuable mechanism that protects your privacy in case of an unexpected VPN connection interruption. If this happens, the kill switch immediately disconnects your device from the internet.
Another common feature employed by StrongVPN is the automatic selection of the best available location, giving you highest speed possible while using the service.
Although the provider doesn’t have any special or proprietary features like its counterparts, it supports an unusually high number of simultaneous connections – 12. Moreover, it can be set up on a router, increasing this number to virtually infinite. The only catch is that the router itself has to be VPN-optimized, but you can consult the StrongVPN website or customer support for a recommendation.
Image credit: StrongVPN
Privacy and logging
StrongVPN doesn’t stand out much from the crowd in terms of security and privacy either. The list of connection protocols lists all the familiar faces – OpenVPN, L2TP, SSTP, IKEv2, and IPSec – while strong encryption is provided courtesy of AES-256-CBC algorithm. The CBC mode of operation is used due to its performance advantages.
Additionally, the company uses its own secure DNS system called StrongDNS, which is also available as a separate service.
The usual no-logs policy is in force – StrongVPN doesn’t track or store any of your activity logs during its use. The company clearly lists the information it does collect - email addresses and payment information, for the purposes of creating your account. This information isn’t passed on to any third parties.
However, more details about the no-logs policy would be welcome, especially since the physical location of the provider (the United States) doesn’t exactly scream 'privacy protection'.
Specifically, in addition to having a bad reputation concerning the privacy of its citizens and outsiders, the US is one of the members of the so-called Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, and 14 Eyes alliances, whose members track information about individuals and businesses and share it with each other.
Performance
StrongVPN doesn’t disappoint in terms of performance. Download speeds and connection times are fast, while the connection itself is stable. Expectedly, the performance is greatest when using the US servers, dropping a little for servers in more remote locations. This is a common occurrence in this business, and doesn’t affect the overall performance greatly.
Image credit: StrongVPN
Netflix
StrongVPN is an excellent choice if you need a VPN for accessing popular streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, HBO, Popcorn Time and Crunchyroll. It not only provides unhindered access to these geographically restricted services, but it does so at high speeds and unlimited bandwidth.
Torrents
If you decide to sign up with StrongVPN, you’ll also have unlimited, fast, and safe access to sharing large files via torrenting clients like BitTorrent. The provider makes this clear on its website.
Client setup
In terms of platforms, StrongVPN supports a vast range of options. Clients are available for download if you’re using Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and Fire OS, while other devices can be manually equipped with a VPN with some help from the installation guides on the website or the customer support agents. These other platforms include Linux, Amazon Kindle, Nokia Symbian, routers, and many more.
The installation of the clients for major platforms is as simple as they come, and even if you do get stuck anywhere, the website and support agents are there for you.
Support
As mentioned above, support is available on multiple fronts. You can try browsing the website’s support section or typing in the term in the search box there and check the results. If this doesn’t address your issue, then it’s time to give a chance to one of StrongVPN’s helpful customer support agents at your disposal at any time of night or day, regardless of your time zone. They can be contacted via live chat on the website, as well as though email support.
On top of that, this provider is one of the rare ones that have phone customer support, available during work hours (Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm Central Time).
Surface Pro 6 is super-cheap in this mega deal
in Ειδήσεις από τον χώρο του Design και Hosting
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