I warn you beforehand. It is not a review of the cheap, soft bike cases which are open to much abuse by baggage handlers and do not guarantee the damage on transit. Instead, I will inform you about the best durable hard bike cases on which their quality was approved by many years.

The first and ultimate option is buying Thule 699 Round Trip Bicycle Travel Case.

This is a gem for serious bike owners. Super rugged polyethylene construction totally eliminates the shocks and even the largest direct hits. It is a large bike case. A standard road or mountain bike will easily fit inside. You even get plenty of free place for other accessories. It has sturdy strap system, wheels and additional lock for more security.

The only downside can be the payments at certain airlines for overweight baggage because Thule 699 bike case is 33lbs when empty. To prevent such situtations, many customers suggest carrying seat and pedals separately on another carryon bag.

Overall, if your bike is your everyhing and don’t care for possible overweight airlines tariffs, go buy it at Amazon. Amazon applies 20% savings on this most durable bike case ever. Read more details at Amazon product page.

Serfas Bike Transport Case is the alternative option. Actually, many bike owners choose either Thule or Serfas cargo bike cases. Serfas bike case is made from hard-plastic shell. It is like an armor in reality. The case has internal straps and a few foams to keep the bike pieces tightly. This hard bike case also has wheels and two side locks which differentiates from Thule 699 model.
Overall, similar features to the Thule. Note that this one is a bit more pricy though.

Read Serfas bike case details at Amazon

Current trends show that mobile broadband usage is increasing in a fast pace and it is destined to be the standard of the future. People want to freely surf internet, connect with friends with their laptops without the tiresome process of seeking a wi-fi spot around. I will first briefly explain what mobile broadband connection is and the difference from traditional wi-fi or 3G networks of smart phones. By using mobile networks with a USB dongle or on-board laptop modem, we are able to connect internet wherever we may be; at home, in the office, on airport, near a beach or in a park. All we need is a mobile broadband service and laptop. So, full mobile internet connectivity especially makes it a perfect choice for Internet professionals who earn their living online, businessmen who travel much and Internet fans who need to communicate anytime, anywhere.

Since mobile broadband is a very promising and fast-paced developing technology, many companies compete to each other heavily with attractive mobile broadband deals. Most mobile broadband services now even offer free laptops with long-range contracts. We will talk about it in detail soon. But before that, I should explain how you would find the best mobile broadband deal. As a customer, taking advantage of the competitive sector is possible by thoroughly comparing the offers from multiple service providers. The best mobile broadband comparison website I could find is Broadband Expert. Their website works by listing top mobile broadband deals from established companies from UK, US and Australia in every detail.

For UK, you can get the best deals from O2, Orange, 3, T-Mobile, Vodafone and Virgin, as they are also biggest mobile phone networks of UK. As of April 2010, the top speed is 7.2 Mb offered on 0,5 GB to 15 GB download limit range. If you are a very busy blogger & entrepreneur like me, you would require the getting the best which is around £25 monthly. 15GB seems much, but actually not. If you make a contract for 1GB and over-use it, you will get extra bills. So, make your monthly data download size estimate realistically. Remember that advertised speed is theoretical top limit, so it can differ in real life usage. You should be also comparing coverage of each deal according to your post code. Speed & coverage will give you a more tangible idea. The more lengthy you sign the contract, the more discount you get as it is natural to any business and it opens the opportunity to get a free laptop with the contract. You can start with a pay as you go contract and change it into a lengthy contract after you become satisfied with your service. Contracts are generally 12 to 24 months.

Let’s now talk about free laptop opportunities when you buy a mobile broadband. I see that Vodafone, 3 and T-Mobile have really good deals. For example, 3 offers a free HP Pavilion DM3 on 3.6 MB, 5GB 24 months contract. 13.3 inch HD display laptop is powered by AMD Athlon Dual Core 1.6 Ghz processor and 4GB memory, 320 GB hard drive are other features. Monthly contract value is £40. For 12 months it would be around £800. Considering that HP Pavilion DM3 is sold around £500, it is really logical to jump this contract if you already have plans to buy a nice laptop as well.

If you are from US, you should check mobile broadband providers here. As you can guess, it is possible to compare all best deals from top companies like at&t, Verizon wireless, sprint, T-mobile etc.

Start taking advantage of mobile broadband for your business and/or personal life today.

We all know about the magnetic field experiment which shows how some particles like graphite inside the pencil can be used to make visible magnetic lines. It is surely a boring stuff if you are over 10 years old.

However, I am sure that many people didn’t hear about ferrofluids which show amazing behaviors which are important both scientifically and visually. The image on the left better talks about the beauty of ferrofluids. Let’s understand what ferrofluid is without going scientific.

Ferrofluids are mixtures of organic solvents and ferromagnetic particles in essence. In normal conditions, if we mix Iron-oxide particles in oil (organic solvent) and bring near to a magnet bar, all iron-oxide particles would be running to magnet bar and piling there without any beauty.

But in the case of ferrofluids, the iron-oxide particles can not be pulled easily by magnets. There are other nanoscale elements called as surfactants which prevent this happening. You can think them as particles in the middle of oil and iron-oxide, thus behaving like a connecting force. So, when a magnet approaches to a special ferrofluid, it would not only affect magnetic particles but also oil attached on nanoscale grade to these particles, leaving us incredibly aesthetic geometrical ferrofluid shapes.

One of the most famous applications on art is ferrofluid sculptures. Here is the ferrofluid sculpture video of a Japanese artist, named as Morpho Towers.

What are Ferrofluids?

Ferrofluid Toys & Science Kits
There are a few nice ferrofluid kits at Amazon to experience this behavior at home. Suitable for children (who can understand that it is not for drinking) as an education material as well.

Ferrofluid Science Project Set 60cc Bottle and Assorted Magnets

I wonder how many bloggers, webmasters have ever heard about what an advertising server is and what it will benefit to optimize, manage ads to make the most money from blogs, websites. Actually, many bloggers are not aware that using an ad server, they can maximize the revenue on their blog networks, especially using the most popular and established ad server, OpenX.

Here is the brief functionality list taken from the OpenX book, I have authored to teach interested people about the usage of OpenX. Reading this, you will understand why you need to use an ad server and why OpenX is a perfect free, open source choice.

* Managing advertising campaigns and banners on multiple web sites from a centralized platform.
* Displaying ads according to their importance and alter the under-performing ads easily and swiftly with a few clicks on multiple websites.
* Filling all unsold ad space by remnant in-house ads and optimize them.
* Using GeoTargeting to show ads according to visitor geographical origin. It would help maximizing online ad revenue because of the high relevancy.
* Using channels to show relevant ads according to website page content
* Integrating Google Adsense, Chitika and many other ad network ads
* Using OpenX as an ad management platform for advertisers, publishers, and ad agencies on a single installation.
* Detailed statistics and reports on banners, advertisers, websites, website zones etc. This would help to change ineffective ads easily.

Additionally, OpenX is the choice of more than 150,000 publishers worldwide and reaches over 5 million clicks a day! They also operate a hosted ad server solution where the banners in your inventory can compete with the ads on their network through bidding on pricing.

By the release of latest OpenX version, it has become now even easier to serve different video ads, inline /overlay video ads etc.

The official OpenX website.