webtechgal

My contention here is that Google (rightfully) assumes that host close to visitors = faster speeds = better UX, so give it a ranking boost.

One more speed vs. rankings factor is the geolocation of the host vis-a-vis that of the traffic/visitors.

A recent case in point:

Late last month, I was commissioned to speed up a (WordPress) site that has predominantly Indian traffic. (Banking jobs)

The site was hosted at some GoDaddy shared server in the US. I recommended migrating it to Digital Ocean. Their data center closest to India at that point was Singapore and I setup a droplet with LEMP etc. and migrated the site there.

Within a few days, the daily page view count jumped from a long-term average of ~15,000 to 17,000. Then, in the 2nd week of this month, they activated a data center in Bangalore (India) and I immediately migrated the site there.

Since then, the traffic has been rising steadily and today, it has crossed a new high of 25,000 page views. No other changes made to the site (no SEO work either) other than the two successive migrations, and the traffic grew from 15k PVs to 25k PVs!!

I attribute most of this to a general ranking boost owing to the change in the geolocation of the host.

This might help too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11968954

Generally speaking, most of such platforms allow either fixed-price or hourly jobs to be posted and carried out. In case of hourly jobs, some sort of time-tracking mechanism would obviously have to be in place. Not sure about Upwork (haven't landed any job there) but Freelancer does have an app. (Haven't used it because my workstation is CentOS and the linux version of their app is broken.)

In my experience, Freelancer.com and PeoplePerHour.com are the top runners. While the quality of buyers on PPH is noticeably better (mostly from UK/Western Europe/North America/Australia), the deal-flow volume at Freelancer is much higher. HTH and all the best.

Not exactly into iOS dev but based on my experience, it might be worth checking out the following:

1. Freelancer.com 2. PeoplePerHour.com 3. Guru.com 4. Upwork.com

All looked upon as 'fish markets' and 'sweat shops' by many which is not entirely inaccurate, but you will frequently find decently paying jobs too. You might have to struggle initially (with bottom-of-the-barrel jobs) in order to build up your profile and get some reviews, but once you have a few under your belt, things should start getting better. YMMV

> Google Maps starts explaining ...

IMO, 'showing'- rather than 'explaining' - would be a more appropriate term to use in the title.

The 'creative, build-cool-shit part' is always available to those who are so inclined in this way:

Build a rig from scratch (using even discarded components for the most part) and then use it to talk to others across the town (VHF/UHF) or across the ocean (HF), completely off the grid!! How cool would that be? :-)

I was referring to stand-alone stations - as in those with a simple GP antenna (VHF) and a half-wave dipole (HF), where there are no repeaters or other external devices involved.

Yup, with the right ionospheric/propagation conditions, a CQDX call on the 20M/14MHz band could get you some unlikely contacts, even with a pretty low-powered rig (~100 watts) and a well-tuned antenna.

VHF LoS (Line of Sight) would work over a distance of about 65 miles (curvature of the earth) and HF/SW pretty much world-wide, I suppose?

I'm afraid I don't have a ready answer for you, but your question has surely given me a great idea for a side-project!! :-)

> ...and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

You bet. Since OVH servers normally start north of $50-60/mo. (not exactly a very trivial sum), their clients may still be at least somewhat more serious/conscious about security, but talk about the likes of Kimsufi (incidentally, a subsidiary of OVH I believe) where dedi boxes (with low-end configs) are available for < $10/mo.!!!

> It's mostly hire someone as cheap as possible to install xyz on a rented dedicated box and forget about it.

You can say that again!! I routinely come across job postings such as 'Setup my server for $10 to $30' floating about at various freelance tech marketplaces.

Hell, when starting out as a freelancer a couple of years ago, I took up some jobs like that myself, to - so to say - test the waters. I still take up such jobs, but at (much) higher rates and per my experience, most of the clients do not have the foggiest so far as security is concerned.

That (census data search) has worked for me in the past.

I'm kind of new here (long time lurker though), so would someone be kind enough to let me know why the down-votes on my comment above? That will help me know better when keep my trap shut... :-)

I circulated this to some of my friends and one came back thus:

So now, LinkedIn will turn SinkedIn !!

Couldn't have been said better - I mean, even a small, less than half-way competent team could easily build something providing a (much) better UX as compared to the LinkedIn forums.

IMO, Micro$oft can gain a huge amount of positive press/PR as well as user-love by integrating a defense/protection mechanism right into the OS.

Exactly what I was thinking too.

You would be surprised how many people in India (and elsewhere, for that matter), have that as their online banking password.