Please welcome: Enkodr, the world's simplest text encryption software

After months of hard work we are happy to announce a new Jitbit product - Enkodr - the world's easiest on-the-fly text-encryption software.

It works like this: you write some text in ANY text-editing window (can be an MS Word document, Notepad or even a web-mail form like GMail or Hotmail). Then select this text with your mouse and press a keyboard shortcut. Then think up and enter a password and voila! The text changes to an unreadable set of characters.

Check this video:

Macro Recorder: disk defragmenter sample macro

Just to illustrate that creating an automation macro with Jitbit Macro Recorder is as easy as recording a macro, here is a simple (very simple) macro that starts defragmentation on disk C: in Windows XP, with three easy steps:

1) The first line instructs Macro Recorder to launch Windows XP Disk Defragmenter:

OPEN FILE : dfrg.msc :

2) The next line simply waits for the defragmenter window to appear:

WAIT FOR : Disk Defragmenter : appear : 2000

3) Finally this block launches the appropriate item in the defragmenter window menu (which in our case is "Actions - Defragment"):

Keyboard : AltLeft : KeyDown
Keyboard : A : KeyDown
Keyboard : A : KeyUp
Keyboard : D : KeyDown
Keyboard : D : KeyUp
Keyboard : AltLeft : KeyUp

The resulting macro looks like this:

OPEN FILE : dfrg.msc :
WAIT FOR : Disk Defragmenter : appear : 1000
Keyboard : AltLeft : KeyDown
Keyboard : A : KeyDown
Keyboard : A : KeyUp
Keyboard : D : KeyDown
Keyboard : D : KeyUp
Keyboard : AltLeft : KeyUp

Of course you don't have to actually type these commands when you create a script in Macro Recorder, you can use the toolbar instead. First you click "Insert 'Open file' command", then you click "Insert 'Wait for window' command" etc... Jitbit's macro-language remains "hidden", it is used only if you decide to edit a saved macro in some external text editor like Notepad (which is the preferred way for some programmers and tech-geeks).

Simply select the above text, copy it to the clipboard and paste it to the Macro Recorder. Or save as a plain-text file with a ".mcr" extension to open it in the Macro Recorder.

The VPS saga continues, or "How to Choose a Web Hosting Provider"

Like I said I believe that the best hosting option for a mISV is a combination of a VPS and Google Apps. And like I also said we've recently moved the webserver to a new location. But unfortunately VPSLand.com turned out to be a very unreliable hoster: our server was down twice last week, for 4 hours and for 8 hours. God knows how many clients we lost. So we've spent another sleepless night migrating the server. Now it's KickAssVps.com (and it looks like our search is over)

Lessons learned:

0) Stay away from VPSLand.com. OK, I might be biased. Forgive me.

1) Search for reviews. Always search for the hosting provider reviews before making a decision. The best place to search for VPS reviews is this forum at WebHostingTalk.

2) Beware of low prices. Good service costs money.

3) Beware of unlimited bandwidth. "Unlimited" providers reserve the right to disconnect you because of high traffic.

4) Buy a 1-month test-drive. And only if all goes right - pay annually. Note that some providers may add themselves to your Paypal's recurring merchants list, be sure to remove them. Open "edit profile" in your Paypal account and click "Pay list" to check.

5) Ask some pre sales questions to check the support response time.

6) Check the non-paged memory on your VPS. Some hosting companies provide a lot of memory at cheap prices, but they limit the amount of non-paged (kernel) memory. This can slow down or even freeze your IIS server because HTTP.sys requires a non paged pool structure for every connection. So pay very close attention to this during your 1-month test-drive.

7) Ask about the outbound ports policy. We've faced this one with Godaddy. They block outbound port 25. So if you use Google Apps for your mail and your website needs to send out emails to your customers, remember to check.

8) Don't sit and wait hoping for the best. Run away with the first signs of a bad service. "Maybe it was just a temporary glitch?" "They say they fixed it, what else could happen?" Don't fool yourself! Run, not walk! Grab your backups and deploy them to another server.

9) Subscribe to a website monitoring service. The best option is to find one that sends an SMS message when your website is down. We use host-tracker.com