My Very Own Single-Serving Site - Is it 18:00 yet?!

Single-serving sites are awesome. Well, some of them are. Some of them answer really crucial questions.

My contribution to the world of SSS: Is it 18:00 yet?
Sometimes you really really need to know if it's 18:00 already. My informative site "Is it 18:00 yet?" is here to the rescue!
It also shows a countdown till 18:00 (or a count-up, showing how much time has passed since 18:00).
What else happens on the site at 18:00? I'll let you browse and see the wonder for yourself!

GitHub hosting
This SSS is hosted on GitHub (yes! it's possible!). A link to the repository: IsIt6.
To learn about GitHub hosting go to GitHub Pages.

Other examples
Here's a part of my SSSs collection. Some more useful than others:

Alon In The World - Now on Facebook

Like my blog?
Really like my blog?
Now you can really really my blog...
Join the sensation! Because that's what all the hip hipsters do!

Yo Dawg, I heard you like tech blogs and liking things on Facebook,
so I put my blog in your Facebook so you can like while you like!

Oh, and thanks for liking my blog!

Babylon-based dictionaries on Kindle - Round 2

My post "Using Babylon-based dictionaries on your Kindle" seems to have gotten relatively wide attention. Currently the statistics show that 2595 users have seen it, 31 of them commented, 2 more via Facebook and a number of emails I've received from readers.
People's interest in pre-built dictionaries which they can run on their Kindle devices (specifically English-Hebrew dictionaries, but not just) is understandable. There are some issues with the BabylonToHtml conversion tool I've put together.

Due to lack of time for resolving the known issues with the project, or for production of pre-built dictionaries, I've decided to share BabylonToHtml publicly as an open-source project, for anyone who wishes to update/improve it.

Pre-Built Dictionaries in this post!

I'm sharing some pre-built dictionaries in this post. Some were produced by me and some by others. They are shared here so that they can be freely downloaded and used by anyone.
This section will be updated with dictionaries which the readers share with me over time.
 Jump to the pre-built dictionaries section!

Full Recordings of my C# Programming Course on YouTube

The complete set of recordings of the "Programming Fundamentals with C#" course (presented in English) which I've lectured between 2011-2012 on the Telerik Academy, was uploaded to YouTube's Academy channel.

I've compiled here the full list of the videos, in their original presentation order. This may help anyone interested in following this course from start to finish.
All lectures were presented by me, except 3 in which I was absent and were presented by George Georgiev, and the general introduction to the course, presented by Svetlin Nakov.

For convenience, here are links to download the book of the course in Bulgarian and in English, and for each lecture I'm also linking the PowerPoint presentation and the demo materials from the academy site. Additional materials and demo tests can be found on the course's materials page.

Infographic: How the Internet works

Evolution
I started working for an Internet service provider in 1997 as a dialup networking technical support representative. This means people were using their analogue landline phones in order to get online. I was very proud to be working for the largest ISP and for not having to pay for phone and dialup internet service by the minute.

Most users were running Microsoft's Windows 95 at the time and browsing the pristine web using Netscape Navigator (the great-great grandfather of Mozilla's Firefox and the leading web browser at the time) or early versions of Internet Explorer 4.0 (the molesting uncle of today's Internet Explorer), alongside other software dedicated to long-forgotten non-web-based services with exotic over-smart geeky names like IRC (with its most popular application mIRC, which is still alive and kicking), Archie, Gopher with tools like Veronica (all are great-great-great grandparents of today's search engines like Google or Microsoft's Bing which everyone now takes for granted).

According to statistics, in that year the Internet counted (including myself) 70 million users, which represented just 1.7% of the world's population. This was 15 years ago.

via Fail Blog

Revolution
Around 2.3 billion people, out of a total of 7 billion, 32%(!!!1) of the world's population, are now using the Internet. This number is already twice(!!!1) as large as it was in 2007, just 5 years ago.

The dialup internet I used was transferring data at a rate of 1.44 kilobits per second. Today's slowest internet account I could sign up for is 30 megabits per second, 20,000 times faster than the old account. I have 3 laptops at home running over a fast gigabit wireless network and 2 Android smartphones connected over 3rd generation mobile connectivity..
Last year the UN declared Internet access a basic human right and countries like Finland have already declared Internet access as a basic legal right!

Where the magic happens
People today take Internet for granted. Surprisingly, many of them think the Internet is (or is in) their web browsers. The magic of data communications is still unknown to many of its every-minute users.
How does all this happens? What's going on behind the scenes? The essentials of of networking and computers communications haven't changed much. It's simpler than most people think, once broken into small functions, but still with all the moving parts and computers along the way, it's still a miracle that data can reach from one end of the world to the other with such accuracy and speed.

An animated much-simplified infographic showing how things work was sent to me. I am, as usual, gladly sharing it.

Importing HTML5 and CSS3 templates as themes into Sitefinity

This session with the Telerik Academy's "Web design with HTML5 and CSS3" course was an extensive demo showing how a web design template, consisting of an HTML5 page, a CSS3 file and some images can be imported as an ASP.NET theme into Sitefinity and used as a design template for robust pages with dynamic Sitefinity content.
From my lecturing experience I've learnt that the best way to learn something is to teach it. This session was quite interesting for me: being a senior developer of some main parts in Sitefinity for around 3 years now, I've had the pleasure to meddle with many of its internal nuts and bolts, but hardly ever touched the frontend design side of it. This academy session made me dive into the uncharted territory of UI charting and it was loads of fun. I enjoyed it very much.

Wikipedia and the triumph of human knowledge

I see Wikipedia as one of the great triumphs of human technology. After celebrating its 10th year anniversary last year, it never ceases to grow.

"Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable" (Isaac Asimov).
It's is becoming a fact that science fiction often turns into science (at least since the vast technology leaps of the 20th century). Dan Simmons prophesied the DataSphere in his Hyperion book series, a self-aware network encompassing the complete human knowledge. This is what the Internet is rapidly becoming, and Wikipedia is taking a huge part in it.
Alongside the knowledge revolution, in the past few years we have been witnessing the  reverse process of the the print revolution from the 1400s. Electronic books are taking over not-so-slowly. Amazon now admits to sell more electronic Kindle books than printed ones. 
Even the printed version of the great Encyclopædia Britannica was discontinued this year (2012) after 244 years of print! As you can see in the infographic below, Wikipedia currently contains enough English articles to fill 952 volumes of Encyclopædia Britannica (the printed encyclopaedia has merely 32 volumes). The era of digital of knowledge is present..


Here is an informative infographic with a few interesting statistics about Wikipedia. I have received it privately with a request to share. I gladly agreed.