Microsoft Windows Vista was released into retail on January 30, 2007, and there’s not been many nice words said about it since. It suffered from being incompatible with much of existing hardware and software, problems with drivers, imposing annoying security procedures on users, and more.

It seemed like everyone loved to hate poor Vista, enough to earn it a spot on the list of “Top ten terrible tech products.”

So today we can say happy fifth birthday to Windows Vista. But what does it look like around the world when it comes to the use of Vista? Is anyone still using the much-maligned OS?

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With Valentine’s Day approaching – it’s happening February 14, you know – we want to give everyone the opportunity to be a little extra lovie-dovie and cheesy to the geek in their life.

Now we know that many of you will flock to ThinkGeek or some other geeky store to pick up some more or less well thought-out Valentine’s gifts, but that’s not good enough for us.

With just a simple tweet, you can win a gift certificate to be spent on flowers and chocolates for your geek this Valentine.

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Every Friday we bring you a collection of links to places on the web that we find particularly newsworthy, interesting, entertaining, and topical. We try to focus on some particular area or topic each week, but in general we will cover Internet, web development, networking, performance, and other geeky topics.

This week we bring you a collection of articles on JavaScript performance, use of Node.js, PHP, Ruby on Rails, and more.

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On January 27, 2010, Steve Jobs took to the stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. The anticipation was that he would unveil Apple’s long-rumored tablet device.

The headline for the event was “Come see our latest creation.” That turned out to be the first iPad.

And like it or not, the world of technology – perhaps the world in general – has not been the same since.

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China has come a long way fast in the world of supercomputers and now occupies the number two and number three spots on the Top 500 list.

Now the country has taken another major step forward by being only the third country in the world, after Japan and the USA, to launch a supercomputer made out of processors made in the country.

Just a few days ago, the Sunway Bluelight, a supercomputer that uses processors designed and built in China, was put into operation.

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Pingdom’s Mobile Podcast is a weekly show about Internet, web, and mobile stuff.

In this show, we talk about Apple’s amazing numbers from its latest quarterly report, RIM’s announcement that it’s replacing it’s co-CEOs with the COO, and we talk about Nokia’s Lumia 800 and ponder its possible success in the future. Saleh also gives us an update on the submission and fourth rejection of his Carbon for Windows Phone Twitter client.

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When you arrive at a site that asks you to register for an account before you can access certain content or functionality, does that drive you away?

A recent research report shows that a site that requires users to register does just that, drives users away. On the flipside, the same report shows that about half of all users are attracted by personalization capabilities on a site.

So, on the one hand, we don’t want to register but, on the other, we want personalization.

How can you deal with that in a way that finds a balance between the two? Perhaps social login is the answer.

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Have you ever scanned a QR code? If you have, did you get a discount on something? Did it reveal some cool information? Did it give you an offer you just couldn’t refuse?

It’s clear that QR codes are increasing in popularity, but to be truly as viral and useful as many companies hope they will, they have to become more useful.

We have an example from the Pingdom office today of a QR code that doesn’t deliver any value to the customer at all. Read on to find out more.

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We have pointed out China’s amazing potential before on this blog, and we have also made detailed comparisons between China and the USA.

But with over 1.3 billion people, China has “only” 77 million smartphones, which, per capita, is far behind many other countries around the world, including the USA.

So let’s be honest, haven’t you wondered what if China had the same number of smartphones per capita as the USA?

Let’s play a game of “what if.”

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Every single day – well, except the weekend – we’re giving away a 1-year Basic Account package, worth almost $120.

This promotion continues and one lucky person every day has a chance to walk away with this catch.

What we do is that each day, at a different time each day, we post a message to one of our social media accounts – Facebook, Google+, or Twitter – with a link containing a discount code.

The code entitles the first person that applies it to a transaction to a 100% discount on a 1-year Basic Package, worth $119.40.

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