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MaxCDN has the best implementation of web based management console. I really enjoy using them and still do use them on R3 Media sites (SlashPhone and AndroidCommunity). The cache-hit number is pretty impressive at 96.62%. Unfortunately MaxCDN does not have presence in Asia where 12% of our traffic came from (95% for SlashGear Japan). Last I heard, they are planning POPs in Asia.

I don’t have many complainw on InterNAP, however they are not the fastest of bunch, but not the slowest either -routing sometimes does not provide the best route.. Pricing is pretty competitive.

HighWinds is a very affordable CDN vendor, unfortunately it rewrites files URL rather than sticking with predefined CNAME you have setup for the account. Great reporting tools (entirely made of Flash) and control panel.

Akamai is the big dog in CDN business; I was very excited when giving it a try. It has robust control panel, fast aggregation of content when setting up origin pull, and it has many POP around the world. Speed is impressive, however I was disappointed to find out it was not the fastest out of the bunch and pricing is amazingly high unless you commit to a high bandwidth bucket. If you don’t need much bandwidth you can try VPS.NET, they are Akamai reseller with reasonable price.

EdgeCast was one of the CDN I didn’t plan to include in my search for CDN vendor, but I’m glad I did. Sales were very accommodating and responsive. Setup was quick and simple, however I wish their management control panel would provide origin pull progress and detail reporting. They performed the best during my usage (Pulling data from Dallas, LA and Nagoya), almost 28 percent faster compared to InterNAP and 14 percent faster compared to Akamai. I was very surprised by the delivery speed on small object (has not tested video delivery yet – large file object). Pricing is very competitive and they will work it out depending on your situation and usage.

So by the end of the day, I picked EdgeCast CDN to power SlashGear.com, and SlashGear.jp due to its performance and pricing. However video files are still being serve-using HighWinds as part of UK2Group sponsorship.

Disclosure : MaxCDN sponsored SlashPhone & AndroidCommunity CDN bandwidth. UK2Group sponsored SlashGear TV videos bandwidth using HighWinds CDN.

The position of a blog in the Wikio ranking depends on the number and weight of the incoming links from other blogs. These links are dynamic, which means that they are backlinks or links found within articles.

Only links found in the RSS feed are included. Blogrolls are not taken into account, and the weight of any given link increases according to how recently it was published. We thus hope to provide a classification that is more representative of the current influence levels of the blogs therein.

Moreover, the weight of a link depends on the linking blog’s position in the Wikio ranking. With our algorithm, the weight of a link from a blog that is more highly ranked is greater than that of a link from a blog that is less well ranked.

The rankings are updated on a monthly basis.

The Wikio rankings do not take into account either the Google PageRank or traffic of your blog. We use our own algorithm.

In another words, Wikio is an upstream analytics provider and gather their own data rather than aggregating it from other services. Below is the Feb 2010 Ranking that Marjorie sent to me for sneak preview before it goes up on Wikio this Friday. Wikio publishes ranking monthly on the 5th of each month. SlashGear seats at #16 this month.

Microsoft’s adCenter Analytics was touted as a way to allow web advertisers to get more in touch with their target market while at the same time increasing the effectiveness of their advertisements. Microsoft claimed that clients who chose to use the service would be able to get their advertisements out to a larger audience which would produce greater returns. There are a number of tools inside of adCenter Analytics that were designed to provide demographical information about the web advertiser’s audience as well.

Apparently Microsoft has decided that adCenter Analytics was not exactly producing the results that they were hoping for. In a brief messaged posted on their website they have informed users that they were appreciative of their efforts. It said “You’ve helped us work towards making an informed decision about building a general Web analytics solution, and despite the end-of-life plan, the beta was very much a success. It enabled us to confidently determine that we can be of most value to advertisers and publishers by offering a tailored solution that meets more specialized needs.”

When the developers of dfGallery said they are committed to make the best looking free flash galleries, they weren’t joking. dfGallery is designed to support custom themes with multiple skins for each theme giving users great flexibility in term of UI. The first version of dfGallery was downloaded over 200,000 times and the newly released successor (Currently 2.0) will probably break that record. If you are looking for free, cool, and easy to use gallery, give dfGallery a try.

I’ve just put up SlashGear’s holiday gift guide for 2008 today. It is still work in progress and will be updated from time to time.

With the big push of first Android device from T-Mobile and HTC (The G1), we gain at between 150-300 droids (that’s what we call our members) and 2000+ posts daily. Android Community is not only a forum, but also a social medium for Android platform users; hence conversations on the community go beyond Android itself.

According to Quantcast, AC served roughly 3.6 million pageviews each month and that is some serious number for a site that has been running less than four months. With only the first Android device out, we are expecting rapid growth in coming months following the extensive flow of new devices to the market.

With the additions of Android Community to R3 Media Network, we are dishing out almost 8 million pageviews monthly and it’s a very good growth rates for us in this coming quarter.

So if you have not visited Android Community, you might want to hop over there for a visit; once you become a droid, you will stay a droid. Are you ready to evolve?