I liked Thunderbird, it was great, reliable all the basic features I needed but there was one thing lacking. Yes, the supurb features of Gmail.

So the other day I decided to make the switch, it was the easiest switch I have ever experienced. On Thunderbird I was using IMAP with Google Apps so all my emails were there, beautifully intact.

Reasons I switched to Gmail (Google Apps).

Labels

This is an awesome feature that most people don’t know about. You can basically make “labels” to label your incoming messages on where they are from. For example every night this website is backed up and a copy is sent to me by email. I really don’t want to receive these emails everyday so I archive them straight away and a notification shows up on my label that my backup has been received.

Filters

Labels cannot work without this important feature. Filters lets you filter your message depending who it is from. For example all my Facebook, Twitter etc notifications are directed to their respective labels and do not even hit my inbox. As soon as I receive an email from Facebook it is automatically archived and sent to the Label, it never shows up in my inbox.

For anyone with overcrowded email problems, this is probably the best email management tool I have ever come across.

Amazing Search

This has got to be my favourite feature in switching to Gmail. The awesome functionality of Google search is applied to email. I can search by from, subject, body of the message or even label! Thunderbirds inbuilt search feature was really hard to deal with. Google search for Gmail is awesome for anyone who wants to find email fast.

Keyboard Shortcuts

This is a huge productivity booster. All I have to do is click a few keys and I am away composing, managing or sending email. For example all I have to do is press “c” an magically the compose window shows. There are heaps of shortcuts though, I am planning to learn them all slowly so soon enough I will have learnt them all.

Spam Filtering that Actually Learns from your Actions

Spam is a huge problem these days. With Gmail I get very few spam messages a month. I also get very few normal messages that go into the spam folder. However with the very few messages I tell Gmail to mark it as spam or to not and it actually learns. No spam filter system is fool proof and Gmail does a great job of combating spam.

These are my favourite web Gmail features. Of course there are other great ones such as Chat, Contacts and Labs however I think these universally apply to most people. There are also awesome Gmail features whether you use an email client or not, such as awesome security, spam filtering etc.

So what are your favourite Gmail features?

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• Google Labels John Key as Clueless
• 7 Clever Google Tricks Worth Knowing
• Google Chrome: The Good and the Bad

Where to study

Creating good conditions to study in can help you make the most of the time you spend revising. Here are some suggestions:

• Find a quiet place to study and make sure you are sitting comfortably
• Make sure your desk is well lit
• Keep background noise to a minimum
• Avoid studying in an area where there will be distractions (like television!)
• Have everything you need to do your revision to hand before you start

Practise mock exams

Look for exam papers from previous years and have a go at answering all the questions without any help during the time allotted for the actual exam. Practise-exams are a great way to help you uncover any weaknesses you might have, as well as help you soothe those exam nerves.

Last-minute revision tips

Although time may be short, you can still make a difference to your grade. Try and prioritise; do what you can.

• Use your revision tools (prompts, diagrams etc) to check final facts
• Keep calm and consolidate your existing knowledge rather than trying to learn new topics
• Don’t stay up all night revising; being overtired will not help you to do your best

If all else fails, procrastinate and hope for the best!

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So with the help of a fantastic plugin called InstantUpgrade (which is now obsolete due to to Wordpress having this inbuilt feature) I quickly updated my blog. The obvious huge change was the visual design. All the actions are now on the left sidebar with drop down menus making it easier to find what you want when you want. The overall feel of the admin panel is much nicer due to the matching soft colour tones.

Another cool feature I have found is Quickpress, this lets you write a blog post right in your dashboard

and quickly and easily update your blog without any complicated hassle. Wordpress has also added a feature called Turbo which allows for use with Gears. This will let you store most of WordPress’ images, scripts, and CSS files locally on your computer. This speeds up page load time. Another productivity tool that comes with Wordpress, is the ease of uploading plugins. You can either search for plugins from the Wordpress website or upload them, this is straight from your admin panel. So if you are at a computer without an FTP program you can still easily add plugins to your blog.

However with a beta release there are still going to be features that have not been included with this release. This beta release is for users to try out and find bugs etc. Already I have changed some CSS of my theme and now I cannot access the editor. I’m sure this will be fixed in the final release, due November 10.

So what is your favorite feature in the Wordpress 2.7 beta 1 release?

• What I Learnt from my Blog FAIL

So basically the other day, my blog died. I spent an hour trying to restore it but my Wordpress database was corrupted and I hadn’t backed it up since two months ago. So from then till now I have been trying to desperately repair my database and thanks to a few free tools and people I have succeeded.

However this has been a huge pain and wasted a lot of my time which could be spent doing many other things I have to do, so this is basically what I learnt from my blog FAIL.

1. Backup your database every night

Your database is the brain of your Wordpress blog, it contains all the posts, comments, tags, categories, modifications, settings etc. Without this you would have no blog so this is a must do. I use a plugin called WP-DB Backup, which emails me a copy of my database every night. So if a problem ever happens It won’t be to much of a problem to restore it.

2. Have the latest version of Wordpress running

This post mainly applies to Wordpress blogs, but can be used universally. Newer versions of Wordpress constantly fix up security holes and bugs in your blogging platform. Having the most up to date version of your blogging platform running means that you will have the best protection offered at that moment. Instead of struggling to upload the newest version each time it comes out there is a plugin called Instant Upgrade for Wordpress which will easily take the files from Wordpress and upload them to your blog with very little work done by you.

3. It’s not really the end of the world

It may feel like it but its not. All it is just a pain. If this happens to you and you havent followed steps listed above then take a deep breath and get to work. If you have a RSS feeds then your actual posts arent really lost as all the content is still in your feed.

So save your time and energy, a few moments spent now will save you a lot of time in the future.

• Wordpress 2.7 Beta 1

So over the past week I have been playing with my Linksys WAG54G modem and been having a lot of fun. However I have been unlucky increasing Wi-Fi speed to my laptop around 10 metres away. I tried DD-WRT to try ‘hack’ my modem to run to its maximum potential, however it wasn’t compatible with my particular version.

It took me over a week to really point out the obvious, my modem was positioned extremely badly, it was nestled under computers, printers, wires and plants. So being the geek I am, I decided to run a few tests on whether the change in placement of the modem would increase my speed.

So from these results we can see that placing a modem just half a metre higher can double your speed. Try this trick before you try any other of those ‘tin foil’ or ‘mega-booster’ ones. I’m certainly looking forward to improved speeds.

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Buy a Domain Name

A domain name is basically your home/address on the internet. This is the key to looking professional to have a domain such as yourname.com, instead of yourname.someone.com as this can easily link to someone else’s site, which will detract traffic from your site and help either your competitors or domain name provider. I am not going to go into detail about choosing a good domain (that will be covered in another blog post). A good domain provider will be reasonable (no more than $15 USD a year) and provide a great service. I use SmokyHosts which is a great site for all my needs, they provide Domain name forwarding (forward your website to another), URL Masking (make your visitors think they are still on your original site) and of course Domain name servers (the link with your domain and hosting.) If you buy your domain and hosting from the same company you shouldn’t have to worry about this. There are also other popular Domain registrars/hosting sites such as GoDaddy, BlueHost and Homestead

Buy Website Hosting

Website hosting is the place on the internet where your website is stored for everyone else to view it. Here are 5 important points to choosing a great webhost.

1. Don’t be cheap – This never works. Before I found SmokyHosts I had been through around seven different webhosts that seemed great but had false promises and never suited my needs. Such as too little space, wrong programming languages, banned file types etc. This brings me into my next point.

2. Assess your needs first – Think of what you will need for your website and go with that. If you need any special programming languages such as java or Perl make sure your webhost offers it. If you think that you need 150mb of space, go with 250mb as your website can rapidly grow and you don’t want to be left with no more space. As mentioned earlier be sure that your website doesn’t ban selected file types such as .zip, .doc, .pdf or .exe. As you may need those file types and will have to resort to hosting them on an external website.

3. Don’t pick a site that sounds too good to be true – Because it probably is. Website hosting sites that offer unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth often are dodgy. They are either are too expensive, can steal your credit card details or have another catch. Stick with what you need not what you want.

4. Thoroughly read through the Terms of Conditions/Service – This is where most Web hosts sites catch you out. You are probably paying for something you don’t want. Such as if you wanted to create a proxy server or a secret forum, web hosts often don’t allow that and will cut your website with no refund. Stay safe and read through the Terms of Conditions to know exactly what you are signing up for.

5. Read many reviews on your potential web hosting sites – This will help you greatly as most users have experienced the advantages/disadvantages that you will experience. It is also great for others opinions on what you are going to put your hard earned money into.

Again I use SmokyHosts for my web hosting as well. The other sites mentioned above also provide great website hosting services.

Download an FTP Client and Upload Your Website

To transfer your website to your webhost you must use a FTP client, (FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol) this is your door towards uploading and updating your website. There are many great FTP clients out there, (they should all be free) my favourites are FIleZilla (made by the people who make the popular browser Mozilla Firefox) and SmartFTP. These are both free and very easy to use.

Once you have downloaded just enter your FTP details that you should have received in an email when you signed up for a webhost, enter those into your FTP client and add your sites files to the relevant directory. For updating your website you can change/add/replace different web files and reload them.

You’re Done!

It may take 24-78 hours for your website to become live (depending on your hosting company) then your website should show up at your chosen domain name. Just sit back and watch traffic increase. You may want to add your website to Google.

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The great thing about Twitter is the use of third party applications with Twitter. The Twitter web interface really isn’t the most convenient way to tweet for us all (however there has been a great redesign). In this blog post I will outline my favourite Twitter web apps, these are great not only for tweeting but for finding information and fun from ours, our friends and the Twitterverses tweets.

TweetStats:

TweetStats is one of the best statistical tools for Twitter out there. It lists many stats about the way, you tweet, when you tweet and even what you tweet. TweetStats gives you statistics on how many times you tweet a month, aggregate daily tweets, aggregate hourly tweets, interface used and so on.

Another awesome feature is the TweetCloud. Basically like a tag cloud, but words that appear most often in your tweets. Best of all you can look up the stats of any Twitter user you know. The only downfall is if you want to refresh your stats, you can only do that every 8 hours and you have to retype in your username, except for that it really is an exceptional service.

Twitterfeed:

If you run a blog then Twitter is a great tool to direct traffic to your posts. As we all know its a huge pain to remember to tweet our blog posts. With Twitterfeed the hard work is done for you.

Twitterfeed can automatically check your blogs RSS feed from 30 minutes intervals and you can specify how many blog posts it lists. You can also change the opening text such as “New Blog Post:” for your kind of blog.

TweetWheel:

Twitter can also be about building a community of like minded people. However its a pain looking through your friends followers and so on to see who follows who. TweetWheel really simplifies this problem, by creating a unique wheel you can really see who know who on your Twitter profile and who you should maybe stop following.

One problem with TweetWheel is if you have a slow internet connection and follow lots of people and your friends follow lot of people it can take an age to load the page.

TwitPic:

The old saying goes “a picture can paint a thousand words”, a tweet can only say 160 characters. This is where TwitPic comes to play. TwitPic gives you the ability to share photos with your Twitter friends easilly.

You don’t even need a unique login, TwitPic utilises the Twitter API so the only login you have to give is your Twitter login. Photos are a breeze to upload and share.

Twitscoop:

Twitscoop is quite a cool service which can be a source of some fun. Twitscoop shows in the form of a “tweet cloud”, telling you trending topics in real time. For example A search can often show up word such as “2am”, “3am” etc as people realize that the are up late.

Twitscoop describes there process as:

Through an automated algorithm, twitscoop crawls hundreds of tweets every minute and extracts the words which are mentionned more often than usual. The result is displayed in a Tag Cloud, using the following rule: the hotter, the bigger (no joke here).

Quite a unique service that should definately be checked out.

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• Google Labels John Key as Clueless
• Twitter

It’s been a long couple of months but I think I have now found my footing. Let me give you a very short background story on this blog.

Wordpress: June/July 2008- I started off with this blog but didn’t ever get any traffic or anyone really reading it so I tried and I gave up.

Tumblr: August 2008- I gave Tumblr a try as I had paid hard earned money for this domain and I didn’t really want it to go to waste. What I liked about Tumblr was the ability to not have to create long posts, as I could simply post a picture or a video. However I really missed a self hosted blog platform as there were little customization options for Tumblr.

Wordpress: September 2008- I missed Wordpress. I missed the huge customization options, the themes, the plugins, the self hostedness.

So i’m back, and really am better than ever! The initial problems I had with Wordpress are now gone, I now have reliable webhosting thanks to Arkhalon and to match I have a great new theme and now a huge drive for writing which I am sure won’t be going any where anytime soon.

So let me fill you in on the changes you will be seeing on my blog:

• Header: Now I have a much more appealing header that clearly tells you what this blog is about: “Ant”, short for Anthony, the creator of this blog. I now have a Social Media tab and a contact tab. We can now connect in more ways than before and if you want to contact me I now have a neat little PHP contact form.

• Sidebar: Pretty much the same as before but firstly much more simple and stylish. Also for my Twitter sidebar widget I now have a small Twitter web 2.0 icon.

• Body: This is the part of my blog thats ultimate focus is content. The font changes and colours are now much nicer so while your reading great content you can look at a great design.

• Footer: I’m a strong believer in an informational footer. There are three elements in my footer. The About Me page is for the reader to get to know the writer, which is me, it’s just a short snippet and there is always more information on my About page. Second is my Recent Posts section where you can find great content written by me and third is my Flickr feed, I love photography so hopefully this will integrate a link between my Flickr page and blog.

There we go! I’m really happy with my new updated blog and am looking forward to updating it with awesome content often! What I really want from you guys is feedback. I want to know EVERYTHING, what you think of my posts, the redesign etc. So please comment, discuss and enjoy!

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If you go onto google.co.nz then seaches “clueless” under “pages from New Zealand” then press enter or “I’m Feeling Lucky” You will see John Key’s website as the first result.

Not once is the word clueless mentioned on John Key’s website. This technique is known as “Google Bombing”. Where an undesirable word has been linked with a person. George Bush has also been “Google Bombed” with the word “Miserable Failure”.

Auckland computer programmer Rochelle Rees emailed friends a year ago asking them to link “clueless” with John Key’s website. “But at the same time the word describes John Key’s performance”.

There is not much John Key can do to stop this though. Google said that it would not alter bombing as it wants to keep the integrity of its search engine.

Enjoyed this post? You can subscribe to my RSS feed here. Or if you would prefer to subscribe by email you can also do that here. Interested to know what I’m doing? You can follow my constant status updates on Twitter.

• Bye Thunderbird. Hello Gmail!
• 5 Awesome Twitter Web Apps
• 7 Clever Google Tricks Worth Knowing
• Google Chrome: The Good and the Bad
• Twitter

1.  Find the Face Behind the Result – This is a neat trick you can use on a Google Image search to filter the search results so that they include only images of people.  How is this useful?  Well, it could come in handy if you are looking for images of the prominent people behind popular products, companies, or geographic locations.  You can perform this search by appending the code &imgtype=face to the end of the URL address after you perform a standard Google Image search.

• Examples (notice the differences in each URL):
  • Image Search for Google vs. Faces Behind Google Image Search
  • Image Search for Digg vs. Faces Behind Digg Image Search
  • Image Search for California vs. Faces Behind California Image Search
  • More info.

2.  Google + Social Media Sites = Quality Free Stuff – If you are on the hunt for free desktop wallpaper, stock images, Wordpress templates or the like, using Google to search your favorite social media sites is your best bet.  The word “free” in any standard search query immediately attracts spam.  Why wade through potential spam in standard search results when numerous social media sites have an active community of users who have already ranked and reviewed the specific free items that interest you.  All you have to do is direct Google to search through each of these individual social media sites, and bingo… you find quality content ranked by hundreds of other people.

• Examples:
  • site:digg.com free “desktop wallpaper”
  • site:reddit.com free “wordpress templates”
  • site:del.icio.us free “stock images”
  • site:netscape.com free “ringtones”
  • site:stumbleupon.com free icons
  • More info.

3.  Find Free Anonymous Web Proxies – A free anonymous web proxy site allows any web browser to access other third-party websites by channeling the browser’s connection through the proxy.  The web proxy basically acts as a middleman between your web browser and the third-party website you are visiting.  Why would you want to do this?  There are two common reasons:

• You’re connecting to a public network at a coffee shop or internet café and you want privacy while you browse the web.  You don’t want the admin to know every site you visit.
• You want to bypass a web content filter or perhaps a server-side ban on your IP address.  Content filtering is common practice on college campus networks.  This trick will usually bypass those restrictions.

There are subscription services and applications available such as TOR and paid VPN servers that do the same thing.  However, this trick is free and easy to access from anywhere via Google.  All you have to do is look through the search results returned by the queries below, find a proxy that works, and enter in the URL of the site you want to browse anonymously.

• Examples:
  • inurl:”nph-proxy.cgi” “start using cgiproxy”
  • inurl:”nph-proxy.cgi” “Start browsing through this CGI-based proxy”
  • More info.

4.  Google for Music, Videos, and Ebooks - Google can be used to conduct a search for almost any file type, including Mp3s, PDFs, and videos.  Open web directories are one of the easiest places to quickly find an endless quantity of freely downloadable files.  This is an oldie, but it’s a goodie!  Why thousands of webmasters incessantly fail to secure their web severs will continue to boggle our minds.

• Examples:
  • Find Music: -inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(wma|mp3) “Counting Crows”
  • Find Videos: -inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(mpg|wmv) “chapelle”
  • Find Ebooks: -inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:”index of” +”last modified” +”parent directory” +description +size +(pdf|doc) “george orwell 1984″
  • More info.

5.  Browse Open Webcams Worldwide – Take a randomized streaming video tour of the world by searching Google for live open access video webcams.  This may not be the most productive Google trick ever, but it sure is fun!  (Note: you may be prompted to install an ActiveX control or the Java runtime environment which allows your browser to view certain video stream formats.)

• Examples:
  • Axis Webcams: inurl:/view.shtml or inurl:view/index.shtml
  • Cannon Webcams: sample/LvAppl/
  • MOBOTIX Webcams: control/userimage.html
  • FlexWatch Webcams: /app/idxas.html
  • JVC Webcams: intitle: intitle:”V.Networks [Motion Picture(Java)]”
  • More info. - More info.

6.  Judge a Site by its Image – Find out what a site is all about by looking at a random selection of the images hosted on its web pages.  Even if you are somewhat familiar with the target site’s content, this can be an entertaining little exercise.  You will almost surely find something you didn’t expect to see.  All you have to do is use Google’s site: operator to target a domain in an image search.

• Examples:
  • Digg in Images
  • Wired in Images
  • Reddit in Images
  • More info.

7.  Results Based on Third-Party Opinion - Sometimes you can get a better idea of the content located within a website by reading how other websites refer to that site’s content.  The allinanchor: Google search operator can save you large quantities of time when a normal textual based search query fails to fetch the information you desire.  It conducts a search based on keywords used strictly in the anchor text, or linking text, of third party sites that link to the web pages returned by the search query.  In other words, this operator filters your search results in a way such that Google ignores the title and content of the returned web pages, but instead bases the search relevance on the keywords that other sites use to reference the results.  It can add a whole new dimension of variety to your search results.

• Examples (notice the added variety between search results):
• allinanchor:”google hacks” vs. basic search for Google hacks
• allinanchor:”wordpress exploits” vs. basic  search for Wordpress exploits
• More info.

Bonus Material:

Here is a list of my favorite Google advanced search operators, operator combinations, and related uses:

• link:URL = lists other pages that link to the URL.
• related:URL = lists other pages that are related to the URL.
• site:domain.com “search term = restricts search results to the given domain.
• allinurl:WORDS = shows only pages with all search terms in the url.
• inurl:WORD = like allinurl: but filters the URL based on the first term only.
• allintitle:WORD = shows only results with terms in title.
• intitle:WORD = similar to allintitle, but only for the next word.
• cache:URL = will show the Google cached version of the URL.
• info:URL = will show a page containing links to related searches, backlinks, and pages containing the url. This is the same as typing the url into the search box.
• filetype:SOMEFILETYPE = will restrict searches to that filetype
• -filetype:SOMEFILETYPE = will remove that file type from the search.
• site:www.somesite.net “+www.somesite.net” = shows you how many pages of your site are indexed by google
• allintext: = searches only within text of pages, but not in the links or page title
• allinlinks: = searches only within links, not text or title
• WordA OR WordB = search for either the word A or B
• “Word” OR “Phrase” = search exact word or phrase
• WordA -WordB = find word A but filter results that include word B
• WordA +WordB = results much contain both Word A and Word B
• ~WORD = looks up the word and its synonyms
• ~WORD -WORD = looks up only the synonyms to the word

Have fun Googling!

• Bye Thunderbird. Hello Gmail!
• Google Labels John Key as Clueless
• Google Chrome: The Good and the Bad