Aptimize has released a product called Runtime Page Optimizer. The software runs on your web server and applies performance optimizations to pages before they are delivered to the browser.

Aptimize uses many of the optimizations that Steve Souders describes in his book High Performance Web Sites and the best practices from YSlow.

The software works by reducing the number of HTTP requests and the amount of data that is transmitted. The following features are implemented:

• minifies, combines and compresses Javascript files
• minifies, combines and compresses stylesheets
• combines images into CSS sprites
• inlines images inside the stylesheet
• turns on gzip compression
• sets far future Expires headers
• loads scripts asynchronously

Currently they have versions available for SharePoint, ASP.NET and DotNetNuke and they are working on a Apache version.

Visit the Runtime Page Optimizer website for more information.

By the way, if you’re interested in website performance, you may want to have a look at this Q&A with Steve Souders from back in August where he shares his insights about website optimization and YSlow.

Found via the High Performance Web Sites blog.

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For some time now we’ve been monitoring 34 major US sports and news sites related to sports. Our recent articles on the Super Bowl are a result of that monitoring.

Now you can look at how these sites are doing yourself on the public reports page for this list of US sports websites.

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But in which country can we find the most secure websites in relation to population? The answer may surprise you.

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As exciting as the game sounds, we missed the whole thing, instead spending our time watching the Superbowl.com website.

It turned out to be a rather dull thing to do because the site held up well and there was no downtime at all. The response time also didn’t give away anything significant in terms of online Super Bowl traffic.

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As Super Bowl 46 is approaching, fans will flock to the Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana, and to TV sets around the world to follow the New York Giants battle it out with the New England Patriots.

Kickoff is scheduled for 6:30EST on Sunday, February 5, and we’re already monitoring Superbowl.com to see how the site will handle the event.

What team will win Super Bowl 46? How will the site cope? We can only wait to find out.

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